Earthbreaker
Page 17
Continue the Gaia Charmer, World Warrior Series in Book 3, Earthtaker.
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Robert Jeschonek is a USA Today bestselling, envelope-pushing author whose fiction and comics have been published around the world. His Gaia Charmer, World Warrior urban fantasy series features an edgy heroine with the power to control the substance of the Earth itself. Robert’s work has appeared in Fiction River, PodCastle, Pulp Literature, Galaxy’s Edge, and other publications. A member of the Uncollected Anthology urban fantasy collective, he has written official Doctor Who fiction, as well as comics for DC, AHOY, and others. His young adult fantasy, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, was named a Top Ten First Novel for Youth by Booklist magazine. Robert has won an International Book Award and a Scribe Award for Best Original Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. Visit him online at www.robertjeschonek.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter. For free fiction and fun, join his reading group, Robert’s Readers, on Facebook.
Special Preview: Earthtaker
Gaia Charmer, World Warrior Book 3
Sexy private eye Gaia Charmer was once the greatest defender of Mother Earth. She controlled earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, mudslides, and more…but now all that has turned against her. Stripped of her powers and framed for murder by her evil twin, Gaia fights for survival on the run.
I was breathless as I got out of the cruiser and looked around, taking in the natural wonder that sheltered us. Once again, cut off from my link with the Earth, I felt more overwhelmed than ever by the staggering beauty of the South Dakota Badlands around me—more like a child enraptured by what to her is fathomless, magical grandeur and not just the product of natural elements and physical forces.
“Stay close,” said Ebon as he got out of the car. “We don’t know for sure how this will go.”
“Sure we do.” Mid approached us from the Corolla. “My money’s on it being a total cluster…”
A loud rumbling under the canopy cut her off. The three of us stood together, looking around, as the ground shook under our feet.
The quake intensified fast, nearly knocking me over…but Ebon caught my arm and kept me upright. His gaze met mine briefly, and I thought I glimpsed genuine concern in those warm, dark eyes.
As for Mid, she seemed the steadiest of us all, completely unfazed. She closed her eyes and spread her arms wide, speaking loud enough to be heard over the rumbling. “Lady of the Badlands, hear us. We come only in peace to discuss matters of great import.”
As if in reply, the ground shook harder. A spike of gray-and-rust banded stone thrust out of the sand not three yards away from where Mid was standing.
Still, she seemed unbothered. “White Buffalo Calf Woman, we humbly ask your forgiveness for disrupting the wilderness of your domain with our concerns. If there were any other way, we would not have interrupted your blessed slumber.”
Another spike punched up from the ground nearby, then another. I heard a cracking sound overhead and looked up in time to see a spike extrude and snap off from the canopy, plunging downward. It missed us all by a few yards, but the message was clear.
The Lady of the Badlands could kill us at any moment.
Heart pounding, I was seized by the impulse to jump in the car or just run as far as I could. It’s funny how, when you don’t have powers, you soon start to think like an average human being.
But I fought back the urge and stood my ground alongside Ebon and Mid. It wasn’t like the Lady’s reaction was a surprise, after all; Mid had warned me the night before that things could go like this.
Maybe Ebon saw the stirrings of panic in my eyes, because he dropped a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be fine.” His voice didn’t sound as reassuring as perhaps he’d intended. “And it could be worse. At least Big Mama Earth isn’t the one bringing down the hammer.”
As he said it, more rocky spikes shot out of the ground, surrounding us. Their points were aimed right at us; I could imagine what kind of damage they’d do if they shot up close enough to catch our soft parts.
Meanwhile, Mid’s voice grew louder. “Please, Lady! We ask for an audience, not a fight! The matter we want to discuss is of grave importance to us all…and all of humanity, as well!”
Cracks opened in the ground, widening as they ripped toward us. Dust and fragments rained down from the canopy, followed by showers of dartlike spikes. Holes blew open, ejecting hunks of rock like cannonballs that blasted the Corolla, smashing the windows and pummeling the car’s metal body as if it were tinfoil.
The skeletal bison came next, wrenching up from the ground one after another. There were three, then five, then seven, all enormous, at least twice the size of any bison or buffalo I’d ever seen. They tossed their great horned heads with restless vehemence and pawed the earth with their hooves, backs arched.
More rose up with each passing minute, clambering out of ancient, dusty tombs. When they got around to charging, I couldn’t see how we could possibly survive that monstrous rank.
Another volley of cannonball rocks pounded the Corolla, obliterating every glass surface and leaving the doors, roof, and hoods a crumpled wreck. Again, spikes surged out of the ground, and debris showered down from above.
Two bison launched themselves across the ruined ground, horns forward, aiming right at the little old lady calling out to their mistress.
“Stop!” Mid swung her arms around, aiming at the charging bison, and glared with dark intensity. Golden light pulsed around her hands, then shot out of them in twin, blazing beams.
One of the beams blew apart a bison in mid-run, flinging the white shrapnel of its shattered bones in all directions. But the second beam missed its target.
It was then that Ebon stepped forward and raised his arms overhead. A strange black nimbus swirled around him, so his body looked like a negative exposure, etched in white against the darkness. He chanted something in a language I didn’t understand, and bolts of blackness flashed out of him.
All the bison stampeded at once, roaring in the sweltering heat. The bolts slashed through them in quick succession, changing their bleached white bones into gouts of black smoke that puffed up and whirled away.
“I end you again!” he cried. “I banish your breed from the face of the Earth for now and evermore!”
The rumbling and blasts faded for an instant, but it didn’t last. The noise and shaking and eruptions surged again, more powerful than before.
This time, they were joined by crackling arcs of ley line energy snapping out of the ground. They clustered around Mid, lashing at her from all sides with searing energy. She deflected them as best she could, but one got through, leaving a sizzling line like a lit fuse between her shoulder blades.
That was when I realized we were doomed. The Bitch of the Badlands was going to kill us.
What happens after Earthbreaker? Find out in Earthtaker, Book 3 in the Gaia Charmer, World Warrior series, now on sale!