by J. R. Rain
The blaze looks at me, recognizes me.
I feel like I’ve seen a wall of fire once like this before. Once when I’d been a little girl, but the memory is fleeting.
“Amari!” yells Dunn. “Get out of here before it all comes down! I’m pinned.”
Squinting into the glare and smoke ahead, I spot Dunn half-buried under a pile of former ceiling. An I-beam lays across slabs of concrete, pipes, and wires. He’s trapped up to the thighs.
Deep crackling emanates from random places above me in a rapid staccato; I picture concrete breaking apart. The floor at my feet vibrates with heavy grinding. The twenty-ninth is losing structural integrity. Any second now, we’re going to be on the twenty-eighth. Buildings like this can pancake if it gets hot enough. One floor gives out totally, and it’ll take everything below it down to the ground.
Dunn does not have time for me to get backup.
“This is Captain Walters. Everyone out!” comes over the radio. “That’s an order.”
Jason lifts his head at the death rattle of the building. He knows it too. “Get out of here, Amari. I’m fucked.”
“No you’re not!” I sprint for him.
A large blur falls toward me, knocking me into a stagger, but I keep my balance, swatting it aside with an oof. When I’m about ten feet from the debris pile, a room door pops open in a blast of fire. I cringe away from it, but it wraps around me. Not too bad, only a little toasty. No pain.
I power past it and skid to a halt by the mountain of debris. Dunn’s eyes are huge white spots in the grime covering his clear facemask.
“Get the fuck out of here, Amari! This is my last ride, babe.” He waves both hands in a repetitive ‘go away’ gesture.
“No.” I stare at the I-beam and lock onto it with my telekinesis. If I can shove a truck out of a parking spot, I can move this.
He screams as the beam shifts. Concrete dust pulverizes around it, but it jerks only a few inches back and forth. I gasp, grunting like I’m trying to lift a 400-pound barbell without special powers. Dammit, it’s wedged. He shouts again, pain mixed with panic.
The floor shudders like an earthquake.
Damn it. “I’m not leaving you here. You’re not dead yet!”
For all the good it’ll do, I lurch forward and grab the I-beam with my bare hands. I have to move this thing. I have to pull it away so he can survive.
I.
Will.
Not.
Let.
Him.
Die.
My temples throb with a bizarre sensation. The first thought that filters past the ‘must lift this’ mantra is I’ve strained so hard I’ve given myself an aneurysm. A sharp yank rips the air hose away from the bottom of my facemask, pulling it down and twisting it so I can’t see shit. The harness holding my air tank, and my firefighter’s coat are torn off me to the rear. A hunk of concrete must’ve fallen on me.
“What the fuck!” shouts Dunn.
The I-beam gives way, rising. I’m lifting it. Telekinesis plus my arms. Holy crap. I’m doing it. I grunt, strain, pull, and…
Feel the metal bend between my fingers?
I blink.
What?
The I-beam comes clear of the mound of crap and I haul it into the air. It’s much lighter without concrete on top of it. I pivot to the side and give it a toss before reaching up to fix my facemask. It refuses to sit properly; when I try to force it, my head twists. My frustration level goes from zero to ‘break everything I can touch’ in an instant. I rip the facemask off and hurl it to the floor. It falls through the hole the I-beam made, and tumbles to the twenty-eighth.
Holy shit. I lose two seconds staring at the damage the thing I just lifted caused. How heavy was it?
Dunn crawls backward from the debris pile, staring up at me like he’s about to (or already has) loaded his pants.
“What?” I ask.
At that instant, it occurs to me that the ceiling is closer than it had been. I look down at myself. My hands have sprouted black talons, and the floor is farther away from my head than it ought to be. At a strange sensation of ‘touch’ I’ve never before realized, I shift my gaze to the left and catch sight of a wing, like a dragon’s, mushed against the wall. A patch of sapphire light illuminates the spot, mirroring the motion of my head. I raise a hand to my face and it turns blue.
What on Earth? My eyes are glowing and I’m like seven feet tall now?
“Amari? Is that you?” breathes Dunn.
Another ripple of shuddering and crunching emanates from everywhere. The whole building is teaching itself how to breakdance.
“So they tell me.” I’m not sure if he can hear me since my mask is one floor down. I’m about to take a step toward him when I get a sudden flash of insight that this entire hallway is a second and a half away from being full of fire. A strong gust of wind whips up out of nowhere and rips past me from the front.
My wings catch it and pull me back two steps.
With a thrust of my arm, I telekinetically shove Dunn. Hard. He zooms off down the corridor like a human torpedo. A tremendous roar builds behind me, and I barely have the time to whirl around and shield my face―with one arm and a wing―before the backdraft explodes.
I close my eyes, expecting this is the end of my line. But intense pain never comes. The sensation reminds me of a pleasant summer breeze. Small pieces of wood hit me and clatter away. Seconds later, when the push of wind dies down, I open my eyes.
Most of my clothes are smoking cinders. My boots kinda survived, but that’s the extent of it. I’m more stunned by not feeling naked. Where bare skin ought to be, my chest resembles armored plates. I still have the general shape of breasts, but they’re like made of snow-white Kevlar or something. Same with my arms and legs… and tail. Say what?
Tail!?
What the fuck am I?
Did I get a contact high from being in that druggie’s room?
The floor lurches, about to drop out from under me.
Dunn’s muted scream snaps my head around. He’s scrambling to get a hold of something as the rug below him gives way, chunks of concrete falling. Above us, the heavy thud, thud, thud of pancaking floor slabs rumbles closer.
I’m not sure what makes me react, but I sprint straight at him. Oh, hell. I’ve got goddamned wings. I wonder if they work. He doesn’t see me coming, which is probably a kindness. I’m more than a little freaked myself; I imagine seeing a whatever I am galloping straight at him wouldn’t be a fun memory.
The floor starts to buckle under my steps the closer I get to him. Clawed toes grip the carpet, keeping me from sliding. When I reach him, instinct takes over and I hurl myself forward, dragging him. Somehow, I wind up flying horizontally down the remainder of the corridor, cradling Jason to my chest.
My left shoulder bears the brunt of our impact with the wall, and we smash clear through the cinder blocks to the outside amid a rain of small chunks. An instant after we’re out, a blast of thick grey dust rushes out to surround us. Our floor just pancaked. Shit. I can’t see a damn thing, but I can still feel gravity. With a lean, I trust my ears telling me there’s open air in front, and dive. We clear the dust cloud in a few seconds.
Dunn lets out a scream far too high to have come from a man. We’re twenty-nine stories in midair over the hotel courtyard. My wings stretch far to the sides, acting like a parachute. As if on autopilot, I steer into a spiral that bleeds off speed, heading for an open yard a short distance away on the other side of an empty street. Jason groans, keeps his eyes closed, and keeps muttering “holy shit” over and over. My desire to not smack into the ground slows us even further, as if reality or gravity listened to me. Wings flared, I extend my legs and glide into a landing in an alley half a block away from the fifty-two-story-high Roman candle. Somewhere out of sight in the smoke, the thudding of a helicopter continues.
Jason stops screaming a few seconds later. He uncurls himself from
my embrace and stares into my eyes.
My reflection in his visor isn’t as bad as I feared. By and large, my face looks the same, except my eyes are glowing pools of dark blue energy and I’ve got horns. They’re maybe four inches with a slight curve, and onyx black like my claws and toe-talons. Hmm. Guess that explains my subconscious attraction to black nail polish.
“Amari?” he asks.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds the same.
“Did that just happen?” He pulls his mask off and gulps down fresh air.
I look back at the inferno belching fire from windows wherever the building crumbles in fits and starts. The floors have collapsed to about the nineteenth, great plumes of dark grey dust and smoke shroud the structure like a cloak, creeping downward. By some miracle, the pancaking stopped before it went all the way to the ground. Shit, I hope they got those people out.
“If it didn’t, we’re having one weird-ass afterlife,” I say.
“What are you?”
“Other than naked? I have no idea.” I brush ash off my arm. Am I stuck like this? Or how can I change―
I shrink back to my normal five-foot-six. The armored chitin becomes skin, my wings go back to wherever they came from, and my tail feels like it retracted up into my spine. Now that is funky. The sensation leaves me squirming and paralyzed with ‘ick.’
And quite normally naked.
Damn it’s cold. Or… maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s cold to me.
He drags himself upright, favoring his left leg. After shrugging off his air tank, he removes his long coat and offers it. “Here. You’re, uhh, a little out of uniform.”
“Uhh, thanks.” I pull the coat on and close it. “Maybe we should keep this quiet huh? Like not tell anyone?”
Jason nods. “Sure, if you want. You saved my ass. Whatever you want me to say, I say.”
https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/nascent/
J.R. Rain is the author of thirty-three mystery, supernatural, and romance novels and five short-story collections.
He’s sold over one million books online. Moon Dance, his supernatural mystery, has been translated into four languages, with audio and film productions pending.
The literary heir to Robert Parker, his novels feature challenging characters, complicated relationships, and page-turning modernist prose. The gritty realism in his mystery novels comes courtesy of years working as a private eye.
A So-Cal native, Rain relocated to an enigmatic and shadowy island outside Seattle.
Originally from South Amboy NJ, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Since 1996, he has developed the “Divergent Fates” world, in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, The Awakened Series, and the Daughter of Mars series take place.
More recently, he has forayed into young-adult and middle grade novels.
Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom systems (Chronicles of Eldrinaath [Fantasy] and Divergent Fates [Sci Fi], and a fan of anime, British humour, and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.
He is also fond of cats.
Now that you have completed this book, we hope you will leave a review so that other readers may benefit from your perspective. Authors like J.R. Rain and Matthew S. Cox live and die by your reviews, after all!
Please visit http://curiosityquills.com/reader-survey/ to share your reading experience with the author of this book!
Prophet of the Badlands, by Matthew S. Cox
(https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/prophet-badlands/)
For most twelve year olds, being kidnapped is terrifying. For Althea, it’s just Tuesday. Her power to heal the wounded and cleanse the sick makes her a hunted commodity in the Badlands. For as long as she can remember, they always come, they always take her, and she lets them. Wandering after an escape, she is found by a loving family who helps her find the courage to defend herself. Her newfound resolve is tested by an ancient evil, and a dangerous man bent on exploiting her abilities.
The Dead Detective, by Rod Kierkegaard, Jr. and J.R. Rain
(https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/dead-detective/)
When hard boiled police detective Richelle Dadd wakes up to find herself lying dead inside a chalk outline, her only mission is to find out who killed her—and laid a Gypsy curse on her that keeps her alive, sort of, as a zombie assassin. Now she must stop them before she is forced to kill again and again.
The Accidental Superheroine by Kris Cary & J.R. Rain
(https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/the-accidental-superheroine/)
When newly-coined physicist Mira Verborgen sprung for a cushy internship at CERN, she did not expect to end up working side by side with sensitive European hottie, Giancarlo Colombo. Nor did she expect the two of them to end up the inadvertent subjects of a megalomaniac Russian scientist’s deadly energy experiment. When the pair begin to develop a startling mutation, they’re placed directly in the crosshairs of Swiss, French, and American governments - not to mention the dastardly Dr. Gavrilov.
The Curse Merchant, by J.P. Sloan
(https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/the-curse-merchant/)
Baltimore socialite Dorian Lake makes his living crafting hexes and charms, manipulating karma for those the system has failed. His business has been poached lately by corrupt soul monger Neil Osterhaus, who wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for Carmen, Dorian’s captivating ex-lover. She has sold her soul to Osterhaus, and needs Dorian’s help to find a new soul to take her place. Hoping to win back her affections, Dorian must navigate Baltimore’s occult underworld and decide how low he is willing to stoop in order to save Carmen from eternal damnation.
Destruction, by Sharon Bayliss
(https://curiosityquills.com/kindle/destruction/)
When David’s two lost children are finally found, he learns they suffered years of unthinkable abuse. The children claim to be dark wizards, and David believes they use this fantasy to cope with their trauma. Until, David’s wife admits a secret of her own—she is a dark wizard too, as is David, and all of their children. Now, David must parent two hurting children from a dark world he doesn’t understand and keep his family from falling apart. All while dealing with the realization that everyone he loves, including himself, may be evil.
Appetizer:
Book Cover
Title Page
Main Course:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Dessert:
A Taste of Nascent Shadow: Temporal Armistice, Book One
Closing
J.R. Rain
Matthew Cox
Copyright & Publisher
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