by Alexie Aaron
Norwood, Sabine: Sensitive, clairvoyant, and medium, associate of Father Santos, widow, cousin of Mia, and mother of triplets.
Reynolds, Quentin: Mia’s half uncle, son of her grandmother Fredericka and a fallen angel, Nephilim.
Roumain, Judge: Judge of Purgatory.
Ryan, John: Sheriff of Big Bear Lake.
Santos, Father (Paolo): Roman Catholic priest, exorcist, mind reader, and leader of a professional group of paranormal investigators.
Sariel: Archangel.
Shem, Gerald: Associate of Father Santos, businessman who trades in favors, Beverly Cooper’s paramour.
Simon, Father: Assistant to Father Santos.
Smithe, Sean: Teenage paintball gang member who survived Sentinel Woods, brother of Vince.
Smithe, Vince: Teenage paintball gang member who survived Sentinel Woods, brother of Sean.
Stavros, Orion: Birdman, scribe, researcher, field medic, Mia’s grandfather, Angelo Michaels’s friend, and Audrey’s husband.
Summerfield, Blair: Leader of the bullies that hunted Rory Kline in Sentinel Woods. Possible psychopath.
Summerfield, Keith: Teenage paintball gang member who was killed by the Sentinel Woods creature. Younger brother of Blair Summerfield.
Varden: Part of Angelo’s birdmen guard, brother of Victor, killed in the battle of the witch trees.
Victor: Angelo’s birdman General, brother of the fallen Varden.
Walters, Doctor: Emergency physician for Green Ridge Hospital.
Wayne, Wyatt: Demon, also known as Altair.
Wesley, Dr. Bernard: Director of the Culture Department of Chicago’s Field Museum, friend of Father Santos, Mia’s godfather, and married to Ralph Mendelssohn.
Terms:
Attrpeur-âme: A catcher of souls.
Between, The: A dimension between what the human eye can see and navigate.
Big Bear Lake Cemetery: Graveyard that was built on unconsecrated ground. Evil tends to thrive there fueled by the corrupted ground.
Cynosura: A cult of wealthy people who operate under the guise of bringing enlightenment to all but, in reality, want to enslave all for the benefit of furthering their agendas.
Dark Vault: Vault where information, relics, and entities of Dark Magic are contained.
Earcom: Communication device worn inside the ear while investigating.
EMF: Electromagnetic field.
Flitch: A demonic parasite that slowly takes over the mind of his host, causing the host to act contrary to their natural makeup.
Gray Lady: Female birdwoman whose vocation is healing.
Locked-in Syndrome: a medical condition, usually resulting from a stroke that damages part of the brainstem, in which the body and most of the facial muscles are paralyzed but consciousness remains, and the ability to perform certain eye movements is preserved.
Mind Palace: A way your mind stores memories. The consciousness invents a place that you’re familiar with. It’s basically how it separates thoughts and stores memories. Each person’s is different.
Other: Paranormal contract negotiators and enforcers.
Opticals: Wormlike robots with one lens. Used for recon by PEEPs.
OOB: Out of body. State of bilocation.
Pocket dimension: An engineered place between dimensions, first mentioned in A Rose by Any Other Name.
Red shirt: Last PEEP hired. In homage to Star Trek’s red-shirted crewmen and women who were the first sacrificed.
Rem-Pod: Monitors changes in the electromagnetic environment.
Sentinel Woods: A nature preserve that is the domain of an ancient deadly entity that appears in the form of twisted branches. She protects the wood and uses sinkholes to trap intruders. She travels underground like the roots of trees.
Alexie Aaron
After traveling the world, Alexie Aaron, a Midwestern native, returned to her roots where she’s been haunting for years. She now lives at the top of the mitt with her husband and family.
Her popular Haunted Series was born from her memories of fleeting shapes rushing around doorways, an heirloom chair that rocked itself, cold feelings of mysterious dread, and warm feelings from the traces of loved ones long gone. From the series, another series was born. The Cid Garrett P.I. series, which takes the reader on a more conventional paranormal adventure.
Alexie also writes the Cin Fin-Lathen Mysteries. These mysteries, set in England and south Florida, combine action and intrigue with a liberal dose of humor.
Want more information? Visit www.alexieaaron.com for updates, blog posts, podcasts, and much, much more.
Poems by Alexie Aaron
A Table for Two
Words tumble from my mouth
Dying on breaths
Too weak to sustain them
Furtive glances breed
False hopes and uncertainty.
How did we get here
From a life filled with conversations and laughter
To the metal of harsh words and haunting silences?
Each of us holding on to the pain
Knowing it was better than feeling nothing at all.
Is our love merely a token now
Of a world we once cherished
Best left between tissue paper, pressed between pages?
Dead with only the faint scent of what once was
Can it be revived by the nourishing rains of April?
A hand reaches across the table
Like a bridge to a better world, a canoe to ford a river
I look at your palm, reading the lines
Is our future there?
Or it this just a wave goodbye?
Identity
It occurs to me that I’m neither free
nor chained to the humble ground.
I sit here pondering what it’s like not to be
A horse nor a rodeo clown.
Waiting for an Answer
I asked her to the prom,
she didn’t utter a word.
She just wrote a note
and passed it first to Fred
and then to John.
Finally, the note landed on my desk,
I opened it,
and it said yes.
Crush
This girl, she’s a fox.
I’m not sure she’s crazy or not.
She leads me one way and then the other.
I went home and complained to my mother.
New Green
Her color drew me to her,
I could smell
the return of life
before she had taken a breath
The Return
Shadows of trees fell across the dell
I looked for her in every rose
in every smell.
Her leaving took me by surprise
I thought I would choke
I thought I would die.
But time cured the yearning, the pain
I had to move on, even if life
would never be the same.
Love lost, is never like love regained
There is no hope
Only fear and pain.
Had my tale ended here without a fight
There would be no happiness
No air no light.
But here I am breathing
I’m on my feet
standing and reading.
Love is not for any of us to discern
We just need to leave ourselves
open for the return.
Brian’s Poem
My family is large full of many people
Some small like Varden some tall as a steeple.
Some have wings and others don’t
It’s up in the air whether I will or won’t.
My mother’s a warrior, my father is proud
Sometimes he talks a lot, and is very loud.
She looks at him and gives him goofy smiles
They go in their room and stay quite a while.
All in all, we are the happie
st bunch
We’re happy at breakfast and at lunch.
Murphy is my mom’s best friend
I think he’s going to stick it out until the end.
The Promise
Deep in the forest there is a tree
Beautiful and fragrant it attracts many bees.
Still young it has to live through many snows
Many springs and summers will come and go.
I will be there forever to protect this tree
This is the promise I give to thee.
Brian Corrigan
Brian Corrigan lives in N. CA, is a poet, writer, and lover of words, music of all types, and spending time with his kids. Brian also loves to sit at his laptop drinking massive cups of coffee with generous portions of French vanilla creamer while writing.
Poems by Brian Corrigan
Lost in You
Her heart was a complicated
Maze of passageways,
But she drew arrows at every turn
For me to follow.
Rallying Cry
How can alliances be forged
When deceit runs rampant
Within the ranks
When even a friendly hand
Has become tainted by
the blood of betrayal
Pray that our mission
Has not been compromised
That we have not lost sight
Of our true objective
And as we enter the fray
Let love be our rallying cry
A Cappella
She has a voice
Like a songbird
I haven’t heard it yet
But I could read her lips
The Last Kiss
Kiss me long
and slow
as if it were
the last kiss
before I go.
A Broken Silence
She always knew what I was thinking
Just as I could read her thoughts
It wasn’t anything psychic
Just one of the many bonds we shared
But the day I stood in the hushed silence
of the sounds around me
I knew that she was gone
Shine
You are the Sun
And I am the moon
Without you
I cannot shine
Twilight
Visions of her
Had a particularly
Vivid clarity
In the kneeling light
When the sky was ablaze
With a symphony
Of golden hues
Life Sentence
My Hell was living
Serving a life sentence
Exiled from you
Closer
Press your body
So close to mine
That I won’t know
If it is your heart
I feel beating
Against my chest
Or my own
The Death Spiral
We mounted the waking light
Rising on a cool morning breeze
We crossed the swift current
Of a northern jet stream
then drifted high above the stratosphere
Until we reached the last dying breaths of the sun
Our wings pumped the thinning air
In long slow drafts
As the tide of a solar wind
Lapped gently at our sides
I pulled her eager body in close to mine
Surrendering to charity of her soft affection
And as we fell back toward the earth
I glanced up at the distant fires of a billion suns
Until my own soft fire consumed us
And we spiraled downward
In a raging whirlwind of love and light
A comet of unknown origin streaking across the sky
Land’s End
Follow the path
laid down by
the sleeping moonlight
Where the sky
meets the great lake
Overhead where
the dark clouds in motion
are a silhouette of wings
And when you hear
the husky breath
of a distant shore
calling on the breeze
Look for the island
where the cliffs
rise like sentinels
and are crowned
in a stand of willow trees
