Fading Light

by Nick Cook

  Ethan frowned. ‘Great, I see dead people. That’ll be really useful.’

  ‘Who’s to say it won’t be, Ethan?’ Sentinel replied. ‘Besides, that could be just the start of your ability. We’ve all witnessed the incredible way that Gem’s gift developed – why should you be any different?’

  He raised a shoulder. ‘I guess. But it’s going to take a lot to get anywhere near Gem’s achievements.’

  ‘I’m just pleased that for once I was able to help,’ she said.

  ‘Gem, you were far more than just a help,’ I replied. ‘I would have been torn to pieces by the portal if you hadn’t intervened.’

  ‘Yep, I so much prefer this new you,’ Ethan said. ‘Mind-frying demons are really not my thing.’

  Gem gave him an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m hoping that particular part of my psyche has been banished for good.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Chloe said. She turned and scowled at me. ‘But as for you, mister, I could still happily throttle you for pulling that heroic stunt with your dad. You were prepared to get yourself killed.’

  ‘Yeah, not cool, Jake, taking all the responsibility like that,’ Ethan said. ‘You need to remember we’re a team now.’

  ‘I didn’t want you guys to risk your lives,’ I explained.

  Chloe shook her head. ‘That didn’t give you the right to make the decision for us. Next time, just tell us, OK?’

  ‘You’re right, sorry.’

  ‘Nah, you’re good, man,’ Ethan said. ‘Maybe just turn the hero mode down from eleven to ten in the future. We all want to star in the Netflix mini-series when they make it, not just you, OK?’

  I snorted. ‘Got it.’

  The lawn by Kelly’s house came into view. As the helicopter descended, the trees whipped around.

  I spotted Kelly walking out from the house and waving up at us. The other thing I immediately noticed was the number of cars jamming the driveway.

  With a roar of rotor noise that made Domino whimper louder than ever, the pilot settled the helicopter on the ground. We had to wait another minute as the blades slowly decelerated before we were allowed out.

  Domino was first out, barking and hurtling away like a greyhound. He cast horrified dog looks back at the flying man-made monster he’d been forced to ride in.

  ‘He’ll be licking the ground next,’ Ethan said with a shrug.

  Kelly strode towards us. ‘Welcome to Alderney, everyone. A place that’s good for the heart and soul.’

  ‘Is that on your Airbnb blurb?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘It isn’t, but it flipping well should be.’

  Domino cocked a leg and started watering one of Kelly’s eagle sculptures.

  ‘Sorry about that, Kelly,’ Ethan said.

  She laughed. ‘Seems everyone’s an art critic.’

  Gem pointed at the manor’s windows. ‘Who are all those people watching us?’

  I turned and saw at least five curious faces peering through the windows of the dining room.

  ‘Ah, them, yes… We’ve had rather a lot of Awoken visitors since the storm stopped,’ Kelly said.

  ‘So the Summoning is beginning to work then,’ Sentinel said from my phone.

  ‘It certainly is, but we’re already fit to bursting. If many more turn up, we’re going to have to seriously consider the logistics of all of this.’

  Chloe waved her hand as though she were trying to swat the problem away. ‘A conversation for another day. For now, bath, food, bed – and in that order.’

  ‘Come on then, stop yakking and help me make it happen,’ Kelly said with a smile.

  As we headed towards the house, my eyes fell upon Allan’s bench.

  ‘I’ll catch you up, guys,’ I said to the others.

  Chloe cast me a questioning look.

  I gave her the barest headshake and walked over to the bench.

  I sat on it, so clearly picturing Allan in my mind’s eye, imagining him sitting by me, looking out at the view of the ocean. Maybe in a way, he was still here. I felt the cracks inside open up again.

  A shadow fell over me and I looked up into Gem’s face, silhouetted against the setting sun.

  ‘Are you OK, Jake?’

  ‘Not really. Just remembering Allan. Being back here has made the fact that he’s gone all real again.’

  I spotted Chloe pausing at the threshold of the house watching us. She caught me looking at her and nodded, then ducked into the doorway.

  Gem sat next to me. ‘You should know, Jake, that I had a bit of a sister chat with Chloe. She filled me in on all your history. Actually, it was her idea that I came to see how you were doing.’

  ‘That figures.’ I smiled to myself. ‘Chloe knows me better than anyone – probably even myself sometimes.’

  ‘It must be nice having a close friend like that.’ Gem wrapped her arms round herself.

  Her own loss radiated from her. ‘And what about you? How are you doing?’

  ‘Sometimes good, sometimes bad. It feels as if I’ve gone through enough heartache to last me several lifetimes.’

  ‘Yes, there have been too many good people lost in this war already.’ I gazed out towards the horizon tinged pink in the dusk. ‘But from now on, wherever the Shade are and whatever they’re planning, we’ll be ready for them, Gem.’

  Her hand wrapped over mine. ‘Yes, we will, Jake. For Mum, for Dad, for Allan and all the others.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  I wrapped my arm round her shoulders. ‘For all of them.’

  Gem leant into me and, just like that, my tears started to fall. This time I didn’t fight them. We held on to each other and wept, releasing our deep-buried grief.

  Fading Light took me on something of a journey as an author. The penultimate chapter is set in St Paul’s, in which Gem transforms into an angel. It may surprise you to hear that when I was writing this sequence I suddenly found myself with tears in my eyes. I think it wasn’t just because of the content of that chapter, but also because I knew at that point that the whole story had come together far more powerfully than I could have hoped for. Sometimes when you dig so deep with a story, and even with the best planning, you aren’t quite sure what it’ll be until you have completed the manuscript. Though it isn’t always this way for me. Sometimes the story comes together quickly, a sureness in its step as it awakes in your imagination. Others, like this book, have to be coaxed and nurtured from the nooks and crannies of your mind. And in my experience, it’s often the stories that give a writer the greatest struggle that are the most rewarding. This has certainly been true for me with this book.

  As I write this in April of 2018 – the day after SpaceX’s amazing Falcon Heavy took its maiden voyage into space – I know it will be around six months before my readers get to experience this book. And I really can’t quite wait for that moment. Stories are made for sharing and this one so wants to escape my computer like nothing else, but countless sessions of editing and proofreading still await before that can happen. I’m one of those authors who loves to polish every facet of their stories before I let them out into the world to fend for themselves.

  On that subject, I must give a big shout-out to Catherine Coe, my editor. She has been working with me since Breaking Storm in my Cloud Riders trilogy, and it has been her fantastic professional guidance that really helped me tame the monsters that were my early drafts of the Fractured Light trilogy, when I knew I had something, but wasn’t quite sure what. Catherine, none of this would have been possible without you. Oh, and the swearing? You can blame Catherine for that…but you just have to love an editor who gets you to put cuss words into a manuscript.

  The inspiration behind Ember and the worldwide augmented reality sim came from my twenty years in the computer games industry. I drew on my experience as an artist and art director in that industry when putting the ideas together for what Ember would evolve into. My personal view is that although VR is exciting, AR goes much further, especially when it can augment our view of the worl
d around us. As we all know, our smartphones can be highly addictive and VR has to represent the biggest possible escape from reality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that occasionally, but being present in the incredible world we are privileged enough to live in is even more important – to get out there and smell the roses or, is often the case for me, smell the coffee. AR used in thoughtful ways can actually enhance an experience. For example, I’ve recently being playing with a device that overlays a star map from your phone over a glass screen. As you look up at the real stars though the screen, it tells you their names and details. Now that’s cool.

  Anyway, back to the book. In Fading Light, I introduced two new key characters: Gem and Ethan. Both of them easily came to life on the page. Gem’s sense of tragedy spoke to me – a long story for another time – and Ethan’s interactions with Jake (and later Chloe) were an absolute delight to write. It might be a cliché for authors to say that their characters become real people to them. But I swear that Ethan is. Maybe I’ll need to add him to my Christmas card list.

  Choosing Alderney as a location had everything to do with a literary event I attended on the island of Jersey in 2015. As part of this, I did a Skype call with a school on Alderney and the location completely captured my imagination. The seed was planted for the setting of the second book in the Fractured Light trilogy. If I have made any factual mistakes about Alderney, I apologise most profusely to the islanders and beg their forgiveness.

  Throughout the story, Jake’s and Chloe’s powers begin to develop. I’ve always found psychic powers endlessly interesting. As for future human evolution, I wrote a blog article about the subject here: https://therealnickcook.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-tricky-thing-about-biological.html

  And so now I’m off to start writing the final book in this trilogy, Death of Light. Big things await the Awoken army, including the ultimate battle for the survival of our species – not to mention reality itself. See you again on the other side of the creative process and do please remember to leave a review on Amazon. It really does make all the difference.

  To get exclusive cover reveals and sneak peeks of my new books before anyone else, subscribe to my newsletter here: www.subscribepage.com/b4n4n4

  Nick Cook, April 2018

  Somewhere back in the mists of time, Nick was born in the great sprawling metropolis of London. He grew up in a family where art was always a huge influence. Tapping into this, Nick finished college with a fine art degree tucked into his back pocket. Faced with the prospect of actually trying to make a living from his talents, he plunged into the emerging video games industry back in the eighties. It was the start of a long career in which he produced graphics for many of the top-selling games on the early home computers, including Aliens and Enduro Racer. Those pioneering games may look crude now, but back then they were considered to be cutting edge. As the industry exploded into the one we know today, Nick’s career went supernova. He worked on titles such as X-Com, and set up two studios, which produced Warzone 2100 and the Conflict: Desert Storm series. He has around forty published titles to his name.

  As great as the video games industry was to work in, a little voice kept nagging inside his head, and at the end of 2006, he was finally ready to pursue his other passion as a full-time career: writing. Many years later, he completed his first trilogy, Cloud Riders. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  Nick has many interests, from space exploration and astronomy to travelling the world. He has even soloed in a light aircraft, an experience he tapped into when writing Cloud Riders. He’s always loved to cook, but then you’d expect it with his surname. His writing in many ways reflects his own curiosity about the world around him. He loves to let his imagination run riot and to pose the question, What if?

  Afterword

  I hope you enjoyed Fading Light as much as I enjoyed writing. If you have the time please do take a moment to leave a review. Here is the direct review link for Amazon:

  https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_wr_but_top?ie=UTF8&channel=glance-detail&asin=B07GNS9V45

  And to leave a review on Amazon UK here’s the link:

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/create-review/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_wr_but_btm?ie=UTF8&channel=glance-detail&asin=B07GNS9V45

  Fading Light took me on something of a journey as an author. The penultimate chapter is set in St Paul’s, in which Gem transforms into an angel. It may surprise you to hear that when I was writing this sequence I suddenly found myself with tears in my eyes. I think it wasn’t just because of the content of that chapter, but also because I knew at that point that the whole story had come together far more powerfully than I could have hoped for. Sometimes when you dig so deep with a story, and even with the best planning, you aren’t quite sure what it’ll be until you have completed the manuscript. Though it isn’t always this way for me. Sometimes the story comes together quickly, a sureness in its step as it awakes in your imagination. Others, like this book, have to be coaxed and nurtured from the nooks and crannies of your mind. And in my experience, it’s often the stories that give a writer the greatest struggle that are the most rewarding. This has certainly been true for me with this book.

  As I write this in April of 2018 – the day after SpaceX’s amazing Falcon Heavy took its maiden voyage into space – I know it will be around six months before my readers get to experience this book. And I really can’t quite wait for that moment. Stories are made for sharing and this one so wants to escape my computer like nothing else, but countless sessions of editing and proofreading still await before that can happen. I’m one of those authors who loves to polish every facet of their stories before I let them out into the world to fend for themselves.

  On that subject, I must give a big shout-out to Catherine Coe, my editor. She has been working with me since Breaking Storm in my Cloud Riders trilogy, and it has been her fantastic professional guidance that really helped me tame the monsters that were my early drafts of the Fractured Light trilogy, when I knew I had something, but wasn’t quite sure what. Catherine, none of this would have been possible without you. Oh, and the swearing? You can blame Catherine for that…but you just have to love an editor who gets you to put cuss words into a manuscript.

  The inspiration behind Ember and the worldwide augmented reality sim came from my twenty years in the computer games industry. I drew on my experience as an artist and art director in that industry when putting the ideas together for what Ember would evolve into. My personal view is that although VR is exciting, AR goes much further, especially when it can augment our view of the world around us. As we all know, our smartphones can be highly addictive and VR has to represent the biggest possible escape from reality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that occasionally, but being present in the incredible world we are privileged enough to live in is even more important – to get out there and smell the roses or, is often the case for me, smell the coffee. AR used in thoughtful ways can actually enhance an experience. For example, I’ve recently being playing with a device that overlays a star map from your phone over a glass screen. As you look up at the real stars though the screen, it tells you their names and details. Now that’s cool.

  Anyway, back to the book. In Fading Light, I introduced two new key characters: Gem and Ethan. Both of them easily came to life on the page. Gem’s sense of tragedy spoke to me – a long story for another time – and Ethan’s interactions with Jake (and later Chloe) were an absolute delight to write. It might be a cliché for authors to say that their characters become real people to them. But I swear that Ethan is. Maybe I’ll need to add him to my Christmas card list.

  Choosing Alderney as a location had everything to do with a literary event I attended on the island of Jersey in 2015. As part of this, I did a Skype call with a school on Alderney and the location completely captured my imagination. The seed was planted for the setting of the second book in the Fractured Light trilogy. If I have made any factual mistakes about Alderney, I apologise most pro
fusely to the islanders and beg their forgiveness.

  Throughout the story, Jake’s and Chloe’s powers begin to develop. I’ve always found psychic powers endlessly interesting. As for future human evolution, I wrote a blog article about the subject here: https://therealnickcook.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-tricky-thing-about-biological.html

  And so now I’m off to start writing the final book in this trilogy, Death of Light. Big things await the Awoken army, including the ultimate battle for the survival of our species – not to mention reality itself. See you again on the other side of the creative process and do please remember to leave a review on Amazon. It really does make all the difference.

  To get exclusive cover reveals and sneak peeks of my new books before anyone else, subscribe to my newsletter here: www.subscribepage.com/b4n4n4

  Nick Cook, April 2018

  About Nick Cook

  Somewhere back in the mists of time, Nick was born in the great sprawling metropolis of London. He grew up in a family where art was always a huge influence. Tapping into this, Nick finished college with a fine art degree tucked into his back pocket. Faced with the prospect of actually trying to make a living from his talents, he plunged into the emerging video games industry back in the eighties. It was the start of a long career in which he produced graphics for many of the top-selling games on the early home computers, including Aliens and Enduro Racer. Those pioneering games may look crude now, but back then they were considered to be cutting edge. As the industry exploded into the one we know today, Nick’s career went supernova. He worked on titles such as X-Com, and set up two studios, which produced Warzone 2100 and the Conflict: Desert Storm series. He has around forty published titles to his name.

  As great as the video games industry was to work in, a little voice kept nagging inside his head, and at the end of 2006, he was finally ready to pursue his other passion as a full-time career: writing. Many years later, he completed his first trilogy, Cloud Riders. And the rest, as they say, is history.