PBW Stories

An Excerpt from Shadowlight
A novel of the Kyndred
by Lynn Viehl

Rowan left her bike under a tree by the pretty fountain in Price Park, and scanned the area. A couple of people with dogs were walking on the other side of the grounds, but she saw no one else. She checked her watch, and saw it was two minutes to noon.

“You’d better show, Drew,” she muttered, “or I’m going to be pissed at you forever.”

“What else is new?” a voice said from above.

Rowan tilted her head back and saw a man standing in the tree over her bike. “What are you doing up there, you idiot?”

“Maintaining cover, smartass.” He jumped, dropping down twelve feet before landing neatly beside her. “Were you followed?”

“Am I six years old?” she countered.

“No.” He looked her over. “Sixteen, maybe.”

“Twenty-one, and legal, thank you very much.” She shoved her spare helmet into his hands. “Hop on. We’ve got a lot road to cover.”

Something whizzed past her cheek and thunked against the tree. Two more things zipped past her nose before Drew knocked her to the ground.

Drew seized the back of her collar. “Keep your head down and crawl,” he said. “Behind the fountain. Move it.”

Rowan crawled, ducking again as more bullets hit the tree where she’d just been standing.

“I wasn’t followed,” she insisted as she got behind the fountain and huddled next to Drew. “They must have been tailing you.”

“If they’d spotted me,” he said, “I’d be already laying on a slab at GenHance.” He looked up as something pinged against the metal sculpture, and grinned. “Oh. We’re okay.”

Rowan stared at him. “We’re being shot at. We’re unarmed. We’re about to be killed or taken, or both. Probably both. We’re screwed, is what we are, Andrew.”

“Have faith, baby girl.” He lifted his head and looked toward the source of the shots before ducking down. “Do you have any pennies?”

“A couple thousand in a jar back home,” she snapped. “Tossing one in the fountain and making a wish will not make the bad guys go away. Just FYI.”

Drew shoved his hand into her hip pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He sorted out the silver and dropped it, curling his fingers over the remaining pennies.

“So your bike, is it pretty good on gas?” he asked in a conversational tone. “I’ve been thinking about getting one for years, but with gas prices the way they are, seems like the right time.”

“You’re crazy. That’s it. I’m going to die with a crazy man.” She folded her arms over her waist. “Well, at least I never slept with you.”

“You’re going to live long and prosper, baby girl. And you never know.” Drew made a V-sign with his fingers, winked, and stood. “Hold your fire,” he shouted at the men crossing the park. He held up his arms. “We’re not armed. We surrender.”

Rowan grabbed the leg of his jeans. “Hey. I’m not surrendering, you nitwit.”

“Get up and raise your hands,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “So the nice shooters think that you are.”

Rowan realized something, rose and stood beside him, holding her hands in view. “The fountain is made of copper.”

“Uh-huh.” He lowered the fist holding the pennies and pretended to rub his nose, while the fountain began to shake.

She sniffed. “You could have mentioned it before.”

“And spoil the fun?” Drew glanced at her, his eyes glittering like two new pennies. “I thought you’d be more wild, biker chick. You sound just like my mother.”

Rowan watched the men advancing on them. “Four of them.”

“Yep.”

“What are you going to do about the guns?”

He opened his palm, and the pennies in it began to float around his fingers. “Put a cork in them.”

The fountain stopped shaking and produced an eerie whine as the copper basin began undulating.

The shooters stopped a few feet away from the fountain, and aimed for their heads.

“Guys.” Drew smiled. “Put down the guns, turn around, and walk away.”

One of the men laughed. None of them moved.

Drew sighed. “It never works in the movies, either.”

The pennies streaked away from his hand, moving so fast Rowan couldn’t follow them. One man’s gun exploded in his hand, and as the blast knocked him backward the others dropped their guns and shouted, seizing their bloody hands, in which Rowan saw penny-size wounds.

“Hell, Drew, you only hit one out of four.”

“I got their hands, didn’t I?” He scowled at her. “You try ramming a penny down the barrel of a weapon from thirty yards away, then you can complain about my aim.”

She chuckled. “Okay, it was pretty cool.”

“And everyone says pennies are worthless.” Drew touched the basin of the fountain and slowly raised his hands like a magician trying to conjure. The copper screamed as it flared up as if molten, shedding flakes of green rust as the water it contained poured out and flooded the ground.

The uneven wall of copper split in two, then four, then eight sections before they lifted into the air and stretched out over the four men. Each of the copper strips wove through the others before the ends drove themselves into the ground. Drew sent more copper from the fountain to reinforce the strips, until he had fashioned a crude but effective cage around the shooters.

Rowan heard a shout, and looked over at a white-face man who had stopped at the curb and was peering through the open window of his car. “Call nine-one-one,” she yelled to him. “These terrible men have vandalized the park.”

The man gunned his car and sped off.

“No one wants to do the right damn thing anymore.” Rowan walked over to the cage, reached in, and grabbed the uninjured hand of the man closest to her. The image of a voluptuous, Marilyn-Monroe type blonde in a tight sequined dress filled her head, and her body went into shift. A moment later she pouted her red lips and looked into the man’s wide eyes.

“Honeybunch, how could you shoot at me?” she said.

“Rosie, I swear I didn’t see you.” Caught up in the vision of the woman he loved, the shooter smiled. “I thought you were back in L.A.”

“I was too lonely for you, sweetie pie.” Rowan leaned close. “How did you find us? Who else is going to try to hurt me?”

The man’s eyes glazed over. “We tracked the bike. Teams all over the city.” He grunted as one of the other men slammed a fist into the side of his head, and he slumped back.

“You can’t get away,” the second man told her. “You’re dead.”

Rowan stood, shifting back into herself as she turned to Drew. “What?”

The side of his mouth curled. “Can you do the blonde again? Maybe for the rest of the day?”

“Shut up.” She walked past him. “And come on. We need to steal a car.”

Labels: excerpt, Shadowlight

An excerpt from Shadowlight
A novel of the Kyndred
by Lynn Viehl
to be published November 2009

Lucan noticed three things about the state of Georgia: the land was beautiful, the natives’ dialect made them almost as incomprehensible as the Cubans of south Florida, and the men in authority here did not care for females having the same.

“That there’s the problem, Miss,” the fat desk sergeant said as he settled his bulk on one elbow so he could get a better view of Samantha’s neckline. “Y’all come here without an invite to pick up a prisoner after hours. I don’t know how y’all run your department down there, but that’s not how it works in Atlanta.”

Much to Lucan’s disappointment, Samantha did not leap across the scarred surface of the reception desk or rip out the offensive mortal’s throat. She, the soul of patience, merely smiled.

“The prisoner has considerable financial resources at his command and is a serious flight risk,” she told the insolent mortal. “The last time he made bail on capital murder charges, he fled the state. The district attorney wants only to assure that he stands trial in Fort Lauderdale.”

“Lady, my captain don’t care if he has to go before a judge in the North Pole.” He chuckled at his own joke. “We got our way of doing things, and this ain’t it.”

“Obviously.” Lucan took her elbow and pulled her to one side. “This is a waste of time. I will go and retrieve the bag of scum.”

“Scumbag,” she corrected. “We had an agreement. We’re here to extradite Grodan, not terrorize and destroy half the city.” Before he could reply, she added, “Behave yourself, Suzerain, or I’ll make you fill out the paperwork.”

He eyed the stack of forms the desk sergeant had produced. “You would not be so heartless.”

“Keep pushing and find out.” She went back to the desk, collected the forms, and made an appointment to see the chief of homicide the following afternoon. “Would it be possible to obtain a copy of the arrest reports?” When the man scowled, she added, “I have to call the district attorney tonight, and I’m sure he’d be interested in how cooperative your department has been.”

The sergeant released a long suffering sigh before he trudged into a back office and returned a few minutes later. “Here’s copies of what all the Feds sent over with him.”

“Thank you.” Sam took the folder and glanced at Lucan. “We’ll need a hotel room.”

“Five of my favorite words.” He clasped her hand in his. “But I’ve already arranged suitable accommodations.”

She didn’t seem to hear him, engrossed as she was in the contents of the file. In the car, she finished reading and closed the folder. “That’s odd. I thought they caught him in the act, but they didn’t even know he was in the city. Stop driving so fast.”

“This is a Ferrari,” he reminded her. “It does not allow itself to be driven slowly. What act?”

“Setting up another con,” Samantha said. “The guy uses his partners for everything – making hotel registrations, renting cars, buying whatever he needs – all under their names. That way there’s never any evidence implicating him. He never leaves a trail. I figured his new partner tipped off the Bureau. Instead, they get an anonymous phone call reporting him and the partner.”

Lucan shrugged. “So a good citizen did their duty. Mortals are forever blowing the horn on each other.”

“The whistle, not the horn. This someone knew everything – where he was, who he was with, what they’d already done in New York and what they planned to do here. Max is a ghost. He just doesn’t exist.” She frowned, thinking. “Maybe one of his old partners got away from him. But how would she know where he was, and what he doing?”

Labels: Darkyn, excerpt, Shadowlight