Three all-new short stories of the supernatural and steampunk kind…
$2.99 | August 3, 2011
EBOOK ONLY
Kindle | Nook | Smashwords | All Romance Ebooks
“The Blushing Bounder” by Meljean Brook
An Iron Seas novella: While the search for a killer puts Constable Newberry’s life in danger, he faces a danger of another kind: to his heart, by the woman forced to marry him. What will it take for this prudish bounder to convince his wife to stay? Read an excerpt –>
“Vixen” by Jill Myles
Miko’s denied her were-fox nature for far too long and turned her back on her vixen heritage. But when she meets two very sexy cat-shifters, she has to decide if she truly wants to give up on her frisky side, or embrace it. Because the were-fox in her doesn’t want to choose between both men…it wants them both. Read an excerpt –>
“Kitten-tiger & the Monk” by Carolyn Crane
A Disillusionists novella: Sophia Sidway, Midcity’s most dangerous memory revisionist, seeks out the mysterious Monk in the wasteland beneath the Tangle turnpike, hoping for redemption…but it turns out that the Monk is not all that pious, and the turnpike is no turnpike at all. Read an excerpt –>
Excerpts
from
THE BLUSHING BOUNDER
by Meljean Brook
~ Chapter 2 ~
The nightmare came, and she saw herself emaciated and pale and ravenous. Temperance opened her eyes to the dark, heart pounding, her linen shift twisted and clinging with sweat. As always, the laudanum weighed on her chest, pressed her into the bed, and she had a moment of terror that she wouldn’t be able to get up, that she was already dead.
But her legs moved, and she swung her feet to the wooden floor. From the other room, she heard a deep coughing. Newberry, but he didn’t suffer as she did. His cough was of his own making.
Desperate for air, she opened the window to the warm night, but it wouldn’t be fresh air—not in London. The gray haze of smoke that hung over the city during the day was still visible at night, the glow of the gas streetlamps casting a dirty yellow into the dark sky. She breathed it in, though the filthy air would kill her faster and was already clawing at her husband’s lungs, air that she could hear being made dirtier in the distance, on the busier streets of London, the never-ending rumble of the steamcoaches and lorries and carts belching their exhaust.
Their second-level flat overlooked the cobblestone alley between the mews and the lockstitch guild’s great stone house—an aristocrat’s house, perhaps, before the Horde had come and most of the nobles had fled to the New World. She looked to the end of the alley. Miss Lockstitch had told her that a park lay not far away, the Embankment alongside the River Thames. From there, she would be able to see the bridges, the colorful tents over the Temple Fair, and the crumbling tower that had once broadcasted the radio signal the Horde had used to control the bugs.
She would like that—the tower was only a curiosity, but the Embankment’s gardens sounded like heaven, and the strange amusements of the Temple Fair diverting. Perhaps she and Miss Lockstitch could hire a cab this week, and if Temperance could not manage a walk through the gardens, at least she could sit.
Feeling light, lighter than she usually did after a draught of laudanum, Temperance idly glanced to the other end of the alley, and realized that she was still in her nightmare. What else could that man have sprung from?
Tall, so tall that the blond woman he faced only came up to his middle, his eyes burning orange like the bowels of a furnace. His legs were long, thin compared to the bulk of his torso, and deeply jointed, bent far over at the knees though he stood upright—almost like the front legs of a mantis, but these were his only legs, and she saw the glint of metal instead of green.
And he was rumbling, too. It was not only the distant traffic. Wisps of steam wafted from the back of his head. Was it even a man? Temperance could not tell anymore, and it looked as through her nightmare was ending, because the blond woman had turned away from the rattling man, as if they were leaving the alley. But, no—not over yet. The man’s metal hand flicked out to his side, then back around, and came down over the woman’s head.
The woman crumpled to the ground.
Temperance screamed. And screamed again, scrambling away from the window as the man suddenly rose up in a great hiss of steam, bounding toward her, springing as high as their second-level flat, his orange eyes glowing with the fires of hell. Her next scream caught in her throat, became a cough, and another. Her bedroom door crashed open, Newberry shouting her name, and she flung herself toward him, because he was horrid but also so big that even a nightmare could not get through him. Strong arms hauled her up against a wide chest, and he demanded to know what had happened, but she could not tell him, she could only cough and point to the window.
Cradled against him, Temperance fought not to hide her face in his shoulder as he carried her over to look—but the man wasn’t there. The alley was empty but for the figure still crumpled on the stones. Newberry’s body stiffened slightly when he saw her, his arms holding Temperance a little tighter.
“I’ll send for the inspector,” he said.
Back to top | Excerpt from The Blushing Bounder | Excerpt from Vixen | Excerpt from Kitten-Tiger & the Monk
from
VIXEN
by Jill Myles
“Two pair, kings and jacks.”
“Beats me,” Jeremiah said, leaning over her again and turning his cards over. “Nothing.”
“Ditto.” Sam’s hand was nothing but a pair of tens.
She rubbed her hands and grinned, getting to her feet. “Let’s see both of you take something off, then.”
“Both?” Sam gave her a skeptical look.
“Both of you.” So it was a bit of a rules-bend. It was strip poker – this stuff wasn’t set in stone anyhow. “It’s you two versus me, right? So if I win, I remove something. If you two lose, you both remove something. Seems fair to me.”
“You could always just pick one of us,” Jeremiah said reasonably. “My hand was worse than Sam’s. I lost.”
“Why should I have to pick between both of you?” Miko’s hands went to her panty-clad hips, assuming a flirty stance that belied the quiver in her stomach. “I can handle you both.”
“Both at once, eh?” Sam said, a slow, lazy smile crossing his face. “Big words.”
She simply cocked her hip a little more and gave him a smile, inwardly disappointed that he didn’t seem to be taking her suggestion seriously. “Oh, definitely both at once. Don’t you worry about me. Just worry about taking those pants off.”
On cue, both men reached for their zippers.
Back to top | Excerpt from The Blushing Bounder | Excerpt from Vixen | Excerpt from Kitten-Tiger & the Monk
from
KITTEN TIGER & THE MONK: a Disillusionist novella
by Carolyn Crane
~ Chapter 2 ~
Sophia couldn’t really say when she’d begun to hate herself; she’d lived with low-level self-loathing for a while. Lately it had gotten a lot worse. God! She’d crawl out of her own skin if she could.
The Monk would disillusion her, make her stop. He had to.
The elevator rose by slow lurches toward the Tanglemaster’s tower, some twenty stories up.
Creak.
It was corrugated metal, inside and out, designed more for freight than people. Not like anybody used it, except the Tanglemaster.
She sighed and crossed her arms. The Tanglemaster was the only one who knew where the Monk lived—mastermind Packard told her so a couple months ago. It had started as a game, her trying to get Packard to reveal secrets about the mysterious Monk, the most dangerous disillusionist. She remembered how his eyes twinkled when she’d pressed him on it.
Why do you want to know where the Monk is? Packard had asked.
Because it’s a secret you won’t tell anybody else, she’d replied coolly.
He’d laughed about her always getting her way, and he promised that meeting the Monk would be an unpleasant experience, though he seemed highly amused at the idea. Then again, everything amused powerful Packard.
She’d replied that being told No was a very unpleasant experience for her, too.
More amusement. Packard knew she was a memory revisionist—did he think she’d try to revise his memory? She’d never had the guts to try a revision on Packard. Luckily, she didn’t have to, because, for whatever reason, he’d revealed that only the Tanglemaster can find the Monk. If he feels like telling you, he’ll tell you. Even I have to go through the Tanglemaster to get to the Monk, Packard had said.
The floors went by. Seventeen. Eighteen.
Damn good thing she’d gotten this lead out of Packard early on—Packard was long gone now. He would never help her now.
She planned to ask the Tanglemaster outright first. Where do I find the Monk? If he refused to tell her, she’d erase the whole interaction from the Tanglemaster’s mind and approach him again, with trickery. Then money. Then threats. You never get a second chance to make a first strike, her dad used to say when Sophia was a kid, holding her proudly on his lap. Unless you’ve got my kitten-tiger with you. That was Sophia—kitten-tiger. She’d been manipulating people’s memories for so long, it was like breathing.
The tower elevator clanked to a halt.
Kitten-tiger Sophia stepped out into a small, dark vestibule. The door to the Tanglemaster’s control room stood ahead of her. To the right, a little scratched-up window provided a view of the Tangle. Formerly known as the Sidway multi-turnpike, the Tangle was a hulking and misshapen rollercoaster-like traffic structure. Darkness had fallen now, and headlights and red brake lights swirled over it like ants.
Ugh.
This lead she’d gotten from Packard better be worth it—she avoided the Tangle at all costs, even if it meant going an hour out of her way. It was a bad sign that only the Tanglemaster knew how to find the Monk. It meant that the Monk probably lived down in the Tanglelands—three square miles of lawless wasteland down below the turnpikes, a kind of city-beneath-the-city, a mutant and misfit war zone that was worse than ever, thanks to the sleepwalking cannibals.
Her brown high-heeled boots created a hollow ring on the corrugated metal floor. Some women liked ‘fuck me’ footwear, but Sophia went a step beyond, with Don’t fuck with me footwear—all the better to announce her around town. Sophia Sidway: efficient and trustworthy advisor to the powerful. A woman to be feared.
She knocked.
A voice from inside: “It’s open.”
She stiffened. That voice. Was it him?
No way.
Louder now: “Door’s open.”
Heat flooded her face. It was him. The one man she’d never wanted to face again, back in Midcity! She could still turn and leave, but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Had to see. In a kind of trance, she turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Robert’s back was to her; he seemed focused on a console of flashing lights and monitors, but she’d know that big set of shoulders anywhere. His trunk of a neck. He still kept his brown hair in a short, choppy cut, just like ten years ago. There were holes in the elbows of his big gray sweater. The thing needed patching. His jeans needed patching, too. Hiking boots all muddy.
Robert Ferguson. The man she’d loved….and then violated and betrayed. Robert was the Tanglemaster?
Sophia wondered suddenly if Packard had sent her to Robert as a perverse joke. Was it possible Packard, with his scary powers of insight, knew their history, knew how she’d betrayed Robert? She hoped not. Even Robert didn’t know. All Robert knew was that she’d abandoned him during his darkest days—coldly and inexplicably left him.
Robert didn’t know that she’d caused those dark days. He didn’t even know she was a memory revisionist. That was the nature of her power as a memory revisionist. They never remembered how truly awful she was.
They never remembered, but she did.
“What?” Robert barked, not looking up.
“What the hell are you doing here, Robert?”
He spun around, surprise showing on his face. And then it was gone, replaced by a squint—part anger, part bewilderment. Hardness around his eyes and his cheekbones made him look less boyish than he once did. At first glance, a person might say Robert was a plain-looking man. He had a face that was strong and sturdy and well-built as anything he’d ever created; his particular mutation gave him the power to interact with buildings, changing their shape and extending force fields over them.
Her family had always considered him to be dumb highcap muscle. Human scaffolding, the Sidway construction crew used to call him. But once you got to know Robert, you knew he was emotional and artistic, and that his face was full of feeling and nuance. You knew how his brown eyes danced when he got excited about an idea. You knew how that tiny gap between his front teeth made his rare smiles friendly. You knew the hurt in his gaze could seem bottomless. You knew he was beautiful.
She wanted to turn and leave. But also, she wanted to place her warm palms over his smooth cheeks, to put her forehead to his forehead, her breast to his breast, just like she used to. She wanted to breathe in one moment of their old love—just one. She could live on a moment like that.
“What do you want, Sophia?”
Back to top | Excerpt from The Blushing Bounder | Excerpt from Vixen | Excerpt from Kitten-Tiger & the Monk
