Some of these excerpts have not been completely vetted by the publisher.  These are technically "Unedited" copy.

Excerpt One of "Loki's Sin"    Book 1 of Infinity: Earth

“And you used your own genetic code as a blueprint?” Renee asked, peering through the microscope.

Loki nodded, then realized she wouldn’t be able to see him.  Idiot.  “Yes.  I thought that would work.  After all, it was a metavirus much like this one that changed us from what we were to what we are now.”

“Immortals.”  Renee laughed, almost gleefully.  “That explains so many things—are all the gods of mythology from among you?”

“Not really.  Some were purely the invention of human imagination.  As were most—but not all—of the myths themselves.  There are some truths hidden within the fiction, if you know where to look.”

“How amazing.  I have friends who’d have fits if they knew.”

“Speaking of which—are you going to try to regain your mortal life?”  He knew he didn’t have to warn her away from telling their secrets.  She had secrets of her own she needed to protect now, secrets as large as the immortals’.

She lifted her head from the microscope and seemed to consider it for a long moment.  “I don’t think so.  I’ll miss them all, but…”

He nodded.  “There are too many questions all the way around.  We know what you appear to be, but how much of the old legends have any bearing?”

“It begs a whole host of questions,” she murmured.  “Are there others like me out there—ones not created by accident in a laboratory?  Will sunlight kill me?  Will a stake through the heart?  Will I burst into flames if I try to enter a church?”

“At this point you know about as much as I do,” he answered.  “If you’d like, we could find out these things together.”

She responded with a tentative smile.  “I’d like that, Loki.  I really would.”

Excerpt Two of "Loki's Sin."

“Well, boss, I’m not sure you’re going to like this.”  Athena said without preamble as she strolled into Shea’s office.  Renee followed her, a pale, silent shadow with dark eyes that seemed to take in everything.

Shea peered at her suspiciously.  “What now?”

“Loki’s missing, maybe captured,” she told him.  “This is Renee, his…lady friend.”

Shea didn’t blink.  “Loki’s notoriously fickle and impetuous,” he said, dismissing the suggestion he’d been kidnapped without a moment’s hesitation.  “You’re better off without him,” he told the woman briskly.  His eyes flicked back to his computer monitor.

Athena opened her mouth to object but never got the chance.  Renee brushed past her and slammed her hands down on Shea’s desk.  “That might have been true in the past,” she said through gritted teeth, just loud enough for him to hear, “but that’s not true now.”

He shook his head, obviously unconvinced.  “I’m sure other women thought the same thing about him.”

“Believe me.  I’m not like other women.”

“Small, dark, pretty, in a plain sort of way.  A little pale and underfed, but, yeah, you’re a lot like other women.”  His tone and smile both bordered on insulting.

“Deryk.  Don’t be an ass.  Do you really think I would’ve brought her here if I didn’t think this was different?”  Athena gave him a pointed look over Renee’s shoulder.  Or do you think I’m that stupid?

He considered this for a moment.  “Okay.  Suppose for a moment I do accept that he’s been somehow snatched right off the street.  I seriously doubt it, but I’ll give you at least that much.  What do you propose we do about it?”

“We track him down and kick his captor’s ass,” Renee answered firmly.  “What else is there to do?”

 “Who is this woman?” he asked Athena blankly.

“She’s the secret Loki’s been keeping,” she growled in response.  “And one hell of a big one at that.  Deryk, she knows all about us.  I doubt there’s anything he hasn’t told her.”

“What?  He knows the rules.  He can’t just—“

“—I think you’ll agree he was well within his rights to do so in this case.  Renee, if you please?”

Obviously deciding a display of her fangs wouldn’t be enough, she did a disappearing act, transforming into mist in a swirl of moist wind.  He stared at the space she had been with a slack expression.  “She’s not one of us,” he stated firmly.

He would know.  He had the image of every immortal who’d traveled here on the Mythrender locked up in that amazing brain of his.

 Athena shook her head.  “No, she’s not one of us.  She’s one of Loki’s experiments.”

Excerpt One of "Of Man and Monster"    Book 2 of Infinity: Earth

Cory woke suddenly, confused.  He lay on a rough dirt floor, surrounded by stone.  In a cave somewhere, obviously.  He lay for a long moment blinking into the harsh light of a propane lantern.

His memory looked in his mind’s eye like a block of Swiss cheese.  He remembered being in the canyon with Ben, then…what?  A sound from above, a panicked run, the lights go out, then…  He couldn’t remember.

“So you’re awake.”  The voice came from somewhere on the other side of the lantern.  It took him a moment to recognize the dark form over as a human shape.  His face was round, hair shaved, which simply added to the illusion of roundness.  He leaned forward, a little past the lamp, and the tattoos covering his thick forearms swam into high relief.  He smiled, which Cory assumed was meant to be reassuring.  The inch-long canines on each side of his mouth didn’t exactly go a long way toward establishing confidence.  “Tell me, kid.  You want to live forever?”

“Huh?”  Cory crawled up and backed himself against one of the stone walls.

“You heard me.  Me, I don’t really care.  I just gotta eat.  You can either die or you can live forever.  Your choice.”

He wasn’t really a vampire, was he?  Sure looked that way.  “Why me?”

“Why not?  You’re here.”

“But…”

“Ah, Jeez.  Listen, kid.  I’ve got a powerful thirst, and I’m not interested in jawing ‘til dawn.  You know what I am, and what I’m offering you.  Eternal life.  More or less.”

Cory paused, chewed his next few words carefully before spitting them out.  “I just want you to know, first off, that I really appreciate the offer.  And I’m probably going to take you up on it.  But I need to know some things first.”

This seemed to amuse his captor at the same time it aggravated him.  “Like what?”

“What would my weaknesses be?  Garlic?  Crosses?  Holy ground?  Sunlight?”

The vampire sighed.  “I shoulda known it would be like this.  Okay, kid.  You want to know the buzz?  Listen good, cuz’ this is important.”  His eyes seemed to bore straight through Cory’s.  “You religious, boy?”

Cory shook his head and shrugged.  “Not really.  Been to church a few times, but it wasn’t for me.”

“You’re lucky.  Means that the crosses and shit won’t affect you.  Holy water, either.  Someone weird about being a vamp--shit can hurt you just ‘cuz you think it can.  Sunlight will burn the crap out of you, though.  You can tolerate it a little, but you’ll be dopey any time the sun’s up anyway.  Weaker than you are now.  One vamp I know passes out when the sun comes over the horizon.  Sleeps like the dead until dusk.

“A stake through the heart won’t kill you, but it’ll paralyze you long enough for someone to chop your head off.  And that will kill you.  Get me?”

Cory nodded.  It made sense. 

“Smart kid.  I tell you, I don’t even want to be here.  I’m just following a problem I made by accident.  As soon as I get you on the road to handling it for me, I’ll be heading south to Cali, or maybe even Old Mexico.  Still a lot of places a hungry vampire can vanish into down there and not leave a ripple.”

“Me?  Handling it for you?” Cory asked suspiciously.  “Handling what?”

“There’s a female vampire in town, kid, a crazy-ass bitch by the name of Veronica.  She was my first get.  An accident.  I fell upon her in Olympia and drank her down like a iced latte before burying her in a shallow grave.  I didn’t know she’d climb back out of her grave three nights later.”

“Other than the obvious, what do you want from me?”

“Not a damn thing, kid.  It’s what you want that matters.  You want to protect your people, right?  This little Podunk town is yours.  You don’t want some strange vampire coming in and turning people at will.  Do you?”

“No.”  Cory blinked at him, not sure he had heard him correctly.  “There’s a vampire in town killing people?”

“Turning them,” he replied with a tight smile.  “There’s a difference.”

“How much of one?”

“Enough.  The mortals investigating the ‘murders’ won’t be able to see it.  And it puts them in jeopardy.”

In jeopardy.  Mortals investigating murders…Ohmygod.  He’s talking about Mom.  “And what can I do to stop it?”

“You can rise in three nights and work against her.  Make your own get.  Make a thrall or two.  Save your mother--save your town.”

Cory pressed his back against the wall, the jagged stone digging into his flesh as his heart pounded in his throat.  “Put it that way and I guess I can only give one answer.”

“Good.  Enough talk, then.”  The vampire stood and Cory felt himself cringe just a little.

“Wait!  I don’t know how to make…get…or thralls.  If there are any other secrets you think I need to know…”  He let the thought trail off.

The vampire uttered a low growl and sat back down.  “Fine.”

“Let’s start with your name, if you don’t mind.”

“My name?”  The vampire laughed, actually sounding amused this time.  “Dave.”  He leaned forward once again, eyes glinting strangely in the harsh glow.  “You’re going to wake up thirsty as hell three days from now.  You’ll need to feed, and do it quickly.  Find yourself an animal--preferably one you already feel some connection to.  If you feed from it first, you’ll gain some of its traits, and create a lasting bond with all creatures of its kind.

“Creating a get is easy.  Just drain the victim completely, put the body somewhere safe, and wait the three days.  You can choose whether or not to share the secret about the animal.  It’s always good to keep a secret or two in reserve.

“Thralls are even easier.  Just feed a mortal some of your blood…without draining him.  It’ll grant him some of your strength.

“One more warning.  The bitch you’re after is creating her own get, but feeding them first on her blood.  It makes them into a kind of slave, bound to follow her commands no matter what.  The only way to free them is by killing her.  They can’t betray her, so don’t even try.  Understand?”

Cory nodded.  “I guess I’m ready then.”

“About fucking time.”  Dave surged to his feet.  He crossed the tiny cave and swooped down on Cory like a hawk hitting a field mouse.  Cory had time for one terrified squeak before Dave’s consciousness rolled over him like a fifty ton boulder and he found himself floating alone in a sea of inky blackness.

Excerpt Two of "Of Man and Monster."

It was supposed to be her day off, but right now a day off was a luxury no one on the force could afford.  Least of all, me.  Rachel sat at her desk, pouring over a stack of reports that seemed to be growing all on its own.  She glanced up as the Sergeant Shelana Gibbons, a sweet-voiced African-American woman who, given enough time and experience, would eventually make a great detective in her own right, slid her ample frame around the cubicle wall.  “Detective—I’ve got another missing persons report.”

“Figures.  Well, throw it on the pile with the rest.”

Gibbons winced as she was suddenly shoved aside.  Standing beside her, literally in her shadow, was a tiny young woman that, on first glance, looked about twelve.  She stood maybe five feet tall, with long auburn hair waving wildly about her shoulders and a pretty, fox-like face currently framing sparking green eyes partially hidden behind square, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Has it ever occurred to you, detective, that the fact that you’re dealing with so many missing persons cases at once might be indicative of a far more serious problem?”

“Ya think?”  Rachel let just a hint of her frustration surface.  “So who the hell are you, anyway?  And who’s missing this time?”

“My name is Amanda Keening.  My mother and half-brother are missing.”

“Keening?  As in Gina and Jason?”  She shot a nod at Gibbons, a silent indicator that it would be all right if she disappeared.  Gibbons offered her a sympathetic glance and walked away.

“Damn.  Good guess.  So I take it their names are somewhere in that pile already?”

“Uh…not that I’ve seen, though your brother’s name popped up in another kind of report.”

“Really?”  Amanda’s brows shot up.  “What kind is that?”

“He had a run-in with another kid at the bowling alley last night.  Tossed a star running-back through a truck windshield.”

“Jason?  He’s about as big as a gnat’s kneecap,” she said incredulously.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.  He’s a friend of my son.  Who was one of the first ones gone missing, by the way.”

“Oh.”  Amanda blinked.  “Oh.  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean—“

“—to come across as a pushy, thoughtless, teenager?  It’s okay.”

“I’m not a teenager,” Amanda told her coolly.  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Rachel gave her the once-over for the second time.  The fact that she was barely five feet tall and probably bought her clothes out of the Junior department didn’t make her the pre-teen she resembled.  “No offense, but…yeah.”  She was far too self-assured to be a kid, though, any way you cut it.

Excerpt One of "Freak City"    Book 3 of Infinity: Earth

Arm in a sling, hair pulled back into a single pony-tail, Amanda stood in Breed’s office, looking through the heavy drizzle at the cold expanse of Commencement Bay.  “I can’t believe it,” she said.  “What the hell got into him?”

Breed tapped a pencil on her desk and sighed.  “You telling me you don’t know he’s got the hots for you?  Everybody else knows.”

“Everybody else?  Everybody else who?”  The panic was unreasonable, but completely natural.  She did not want to talk about this.  Especially if they were the subject of gossip.  And, what was worse, the subject of cop gossip.  It didn’t get much worse than that.

The tall blonde woman simply smiled over her steepled fingers as she leaned forward over her desk.  “Never mind that, for now,” she said, prompting Amanda to nearly melt with relief.  “I’d be upset too, if I were you.  Your grandfather’s on the warpath.  He wants to press criminal trespass charges—if he can manage it, he wants his aide Baraz to file assault with intent against him.”

“Great.  What’s the PA say?”

 “You’ll have to ask her yourself…she’s on her way up here right now.”

Keisha Sloan arrived a couple minutes later.  She was a tall, voluptuous African-American woman in a blue skirt, ruffled white blouse, and a pair of silver pumps that could’ve doubled as stilts.  She walked in, slung her briefcase onto the beige sofa standing kitty corner to Breed’s desk, opposite her prominently displayed bookcase.

“Well,” she said briskly, “ and here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

Both women blinked at her in momentary confusion.  Then Breed chuckled.  “I haven’t heard that since I was a little kid.”

Amanda didn’t get it—but, then again, both the women were considerably older than she was.  Whatever the reference was, it wasn’t one she had any memory of.  “So—are you giving my grandfather want he wants?”

“I don’t see that I have any options,” she answered irritably.  “He’s got a lot of pull—almost as much as Athena Cross, or Deryk Shea, when he was still around.  If he files the charges, I pretty much have no choice but to prosecute.  ADA Clarke’s made it pretty clear that I’m supposed to play along or else…”

 “Or else what?” Amanda asked suspiciously.

“Or else I can start looking for another job,” Sloan replied casually.  Her tone was casual.  The fire in her eyes wasn’t casual at all.  She looked as though she wanted to flay someone alive.  ADA Clarke was probably only the first candidate.

“So what kind of case do you have?”

“One that’s out of my league,” Sloan sighed.  “Just the description of the events makes me want to beg off on it—your friend Ben Dalmas isn’t a normal human.  As a meta—or whatever the hell he is—he falls under Federal jurisdiction.  This is a job for a federal prosecutor.  But unless you ‘out’ him as a meta, there’s nothing I can do but take the ball and run with it.”

“Keeping with the sports analogy,” Breed cut in, “what’re the chances we can get you to fumble?”

Sloan shook her head.  “Not going to happen.  The pressure here is intense.”

“It’s a power play on Grey’s part,” Breed said.  “He wants something, doesn’t he?”

Sloan shrugged.  “If he does, no one’s telling me.”

Excerpt Two of "Freak City."

 Who were these people?  The girl wasn’t the one he’d been guarding for the last few days.  She looked like her.  Hell, she even sounded like her.  But one thing he knew almost immediately after she’d grabbed him—this girl wasn’t human.  She wasn’t even alive.

He felt the bite of the steel barrel at the base of his skull.  “What does the old man want with her?” the male voice asked.

Like I’m going to tell you,  was Armageddon’s initial thought.  The woman’s icy gaze bored through the front of him while the cold gun barrel chiseled through the back.  “He thinks he’s dangerous,” the woman remarked absently.  “Do you want to show him what dangerous is?”

“Sounds like he could use the lesson,” the male voice purred.  Skin like icy silk pressed against his cheek as the male leaned close.  He caught whiff of a slight, almost reptilian scent, like a drying snakeskin in a dank cave.  He shifted his gaze slightly and caught sight of the man—no, boy—out of the corner of his eye.

Not alive!  A shudder of pure atavistic fear ran up his legs and his back, centering like a single spike where the pistol barrel bore against the back of his skull.

A hand cold as a corpse’s wrapped around and flowed across his abdomen, slowly sliding upward and across his chest.  “You’re a full meal deal,” the male murmured softly.  “A bubbling cauldron of electric tea waiting to be tapped.”

He saw the boy grin, saw the white gleaming fangs glistening wetly at the corners of his mouth.  “We could feed on him for years,” he told the woman.  “We can’t kill him—he can’t even get the disease.  His masters couldn’t have given us a better gift.  The blood of an immortal.  Forever.”

“You’ll never hold me,” Armageddon grunted, but he heard the terror behind his words.

“No?”  A whisper of silk sheets against bare flesh, the voice flayed his confidence like a surgeon’s scalpel.   “We are both magi, Armageddon.  We are the things that even the things in the dark run screaming from.”

“Do you want me to hurt him yet?” the woman asked, fingers digging a little deeper.  The faintest trickle, a tiny rivulet, ran down his neck beneath the indentation  under her index finger.  “He excites me.”

The pressure eased slightly and he found himself panting around the tiny blades pressing into his throat.  “I will bind him first.  Then we can spirit him away to somewhere cold and dark, chain him with unbreakable manacles of power, and drink our fill.”

The woman laughed brightly.  That in itself was more chilling than all the threats they’d whispered into his brain.  “We will make you curse the day you were made an immortal, Armageddon,” the woman said softly.  “And rue the day you thought to lay your filthy hands on me.”

Excerpt One of "Lady of Blades"

His eyes blazed out of the darkness like tiny twin suns as he watched her.

The woman was beautiful--supermodel beautiful--or perhaps even that would be an understatement.  She was tall, lean, and well muscled, her magnificence perhaps all the more engaging because it required no artifice to sustain it.  Her dusky skin needed no cosmetic enhancement and her windblown hair, the color of liquid midnight, billowed around her shoulders, as likely to be managed by a distracted sweep of her long fingers as to see a brush or comb.

She wore a pair of black jeans and a matching black sweater, sleeves rolled up around her elbows.  A pair of black high tops and a black leather motorcycle jacket completed the ensemble.  She wore no jewelry but a pair of metallic bands, one on each wrist.

She was magnificent, a primal feline soul trapped within a sea of humanity.  Just to observe her feral gaze slicing across the crowd was enough to bring a rush of heat to his groin.  The impact felt a lot like a punch to his lower abdomen.

He leaned farther over the railing and watched her glide through the mall until she disappeared from sight.  Once she had gone he heaved a deep sigh and ran his hand over the top rail, imagining for just a second he was touching her naked flesh.

He wanted her.  Would his mistress want her as much as he did?  He thought so, but he couldn’t know for sure.  Calling the mistress capricious was an understatement.  There were times he thought her just a touch insane.  But when you ruled your own universe, you could afford to be a little mad.

The soft Spring sunlight fell upon her shoulders like a warm blanket.  Jaz leaned against the brick façade and folded her arms over her chest.  Sixth Avenue was bustling, but, then again, it always was around this time of day.

She hated the crowds.  She’d have much rather been sprawled out atop her favorite vantage point, watching the city writhe below her from the roof of St. Joseph’s hospital, than be in the thick of it like this.  But one did not capture a criminal by lounging around hundreds of feet above the city streets.

At least not a gutter worm like this guy.  She’d been following him for six hours and hadn’t seen him do anything out of the ordinary, but she knew it was simply a matter of time.  The sick bastard couldn’t help himself.

Having a peeping tom who could phase through walls was bad enough, but this guy had quickly graduated to flashing.  Jaz had to chuckle at that.  Imagine walking into your living room to find a stranger wagging his wienie at you.

And by all reports, it was a little wienie.

She wanted to get this guy.  His favorite target was teenage girls--anywhere from barely pubescent to about sixteen years old.  Sick bastard.

The Sex Crimes Division of the PAC family was new, and Jasmine Tashae its only operative.  Paranormal sex crimes were still something of a rarity.  Thank God.  Sex Crimes was a new Division, and Jaz its only operative.  She’d almost turned down the post when it was first offered, but Athena had put it to her in the best way she could have.  “There’s no such thing as a consensual sex crime as far as we’re concerned.  What we’re dealing with are metahumans victimizing people who have no way to defend themselves.”

Good enough for Jaz.  She, if anyone, knew exactly how that felt.  As long as I don’t have to chase hookers and johns, I can live with the assignment.  She had no intention of wasting her time trying to enforce other peoples’ moral judgments.  She thought the laws against prostitution were as stupid as any laws ever written.

She glanced over at just the right time.  There he was, striding out of the video store with a package tucked under one arm.  Doesn’t this asshole have a job? she wondered.  This was the third day she’d spent trailing him, and he’d yet to do anything suspicious.  Unless one considered almost daily trips to the porno shop to be suspicious.

A bit distasteful, perhaps, but certainly not illegal.

Excerpt Two from "Lady of Blades"

“Boss?”  Quickfingers trotted through the apartment, his wide mouth turned into a deep frown.  Silence.  He sent out an inner sense he usually used to locate his creator and found nothing.  Panic filling him, he began to teleport through the apartment, calling out her name.  “Jaz!”

Nothing.  He skipped over to the Shea Building, to her apartment there, but found it empty as well.  He made another leap, this time to Athena’s office.  The whoosh of air from his arrival brought Athena’s head up from her desk, a thin trail of drool running from her lower lip.  She snarled something he didn’t catch and wiped the spittle away with the back of her hand.  “What the fuck do you want?”

“The boss is gone!  She’s missing!  I can’t find her!”

Athena, having just awoken from an unexpected nap, wasn’t in any mood to deal with the imp’s shit.  She glared across her desk at him, standing on her guest chair, waving his spindly little arms around and tugging on his long, thin ears.  “Oh, put a sock in it,” she grunted.  “What are you raving about?”

“How can I put a sock in it and answer your question?”  The imp was genuinely puzzled by the contradiction.  He blinked at the Amazonian head of the PAC, a woman who massed somewhere near ten times what he did, and flashed a broad grin.  “Oh—it’s an expression.”

“Yeah,” Athena said tiredly, “it’s an expression.”

   “Good.  Because I don’t wear socks, and I doubt you wanted me to take one of your socks.  Or did you?”

She ignored the question.  “Why do you think Jaz is missing?”

“She gave me a job and I was doing it, and then when I went back to get her like she told me but when I got there she was gone and as near as I can tell she isn’t anywhere, at least not anywhere I can find her and I can usually sense her wherever she is, so I’m really worried about her and so I came here to tell you because maybe you’d know where she was or know where I could start looking for her.  I call her boss, but you’re her boss.”

She pinched her eyes shut and shook her head.  Quickfingers didn’t need to breathe, and when he got going he kept going.  Sometimes she wondered if he’d ever shut up.  He did, eventually.  For a few seconds, anyway.

She had to admit this didn’t sound good.  The imp’s connection to his creator was the stuff of legend.  If he couldn’t find her, it signaled trouble.  What kind of trouble was the question of the moment.  Athena had the feeling it was big and bad.  And she had no answers.

And Quickfingers saw it in her eyes.  He met the PAC Chair’s gaze and gave two of his five jesters-cap ears a hard yank.  “You can’t help me, can you?”

“I can’t help you.”

“Then I’ll find someone who can.”  The imp’s departure was like a small thunderclap.  It seemed louder than usual but Athena passed it off as her being overly sensitive.  It wasn’t as though the creature could change his mass to displace more air because he was upset.

Excerpt 1 of "Sword and Shadow"

Raven let out a particularly vitriolic curse as his hands dove inside his trench coat, emerging an eye-blink later with two chrome-plated contraband weapons. The one in his left hand spat fire at the figure writhing on the floor while the other simultaneously shifted to cover the woman. The roar of the pistol filled the tiny room like a bolt from heaven and Val backed away, wincing.

She felt outrage welling up and did her best to stop it from spewing forth but wasn’t entirely successful despite her resolve to keep her mouth shut. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she spat out at him.

Raven turned a cold gaze on her as he leveled both pistols at the captive woman.

“Dealing with a lycanthrope the best way you can,” he replied in a chilly tone. “You have a problem with that?”

“Actually, I do!” she snarled at him. “Those are banned weapons!”

This provoked a bored look as he slid one of the pistols home under his jacket. “Uh-huh. They’re also the most efficient way to dispatch a lycanthrope. What did you want me to do, wrestle him into submission?”

Val blinked at him in something akin to shock. Then she began to put the pieces together in her head. When he’d identified himself as ‘Raven,’ she’d felt a glimmer of recognition, but the fact that he was a vampire, added together with the twin pistols he’d used with such ruthless effectiveness, told her exactly who he most likely was. That they hadn’t bothered to warn her who and what she’d be dealing with her went a long way toward alleviating the awe she might have otherwise felt. She was too pissed to give a damn whether or not this renegade Sash agent happened to be the legendary Raven from Earth Prime. “Actually,” she said, flashing him a too-sweet smile, “I would assume that you’d have no problems doing precisely that, considering who you are.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “And who do you think I am?”

“Name’s Raven, you’re a vampire, and you’re carrying twin automatic pistols. A dead giveaway, when you get down to it.”

“No pun intended.”

“Hah-hah. Funny man.”

“As amusing as this is,” the woman cut in, “I’d like to—“

            “Shut up!” they snapped in unison.

Excerpt Two of "Sword and Shadow"

She approached Raven slowly—she might not have been able to sense his mood empathically, but he fairly radiated tension simply by the way he stood, like he was carved out of wood and placed there by the shipwrights who’d built this vessel.

Has his heart withered? She remembered the feel of his hands on her arms as he’d pushed her away after she’d kissed him. There had been passion there; he’d felt something when she’d kissed him, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not.

He didn’t turn to look at her as she walked up on him. “When I was first turned, I was afraid of becoming a monster. The one who turned me seemed callous, uncaring, though honorable in his own way. The vampire he made me to fight was a madwoman, a dark queen in truth. But before I’d been a year dead I made a deal with a devil, and made vampires at his whim.

“I became a monster’s monster. I secretly hunted those I created at his command, and destroyed them. I took their lives and then killed them. I’m not even sure I regretted a bit of it. I was Raven, the hunter of the night, death to the undead. I was the vampire bogeyman. I was the thing that the fearsome feared.”

He uttered a bitter laugh, his voice wafting over the deck of the ship as if abandoning any concern for keeping his secret. “I don’t even know how many I destroyed. I lost count. One thing an uneducated vampire does is propagate…making more vampires comes as naturally to us as breathing does to the living. We feed and spread the virus.

“I was only fifteen when I was turned. I was a kid. I played a game that featured vampires as the protagonists—I thought I knew what it would be like. But I didn’t. Not really. I didn’t know what it would be like to watch the years roll on, to see the world changing as I remained the same.

“These hands…” He raised them as if in illustration, so pale they seemed to be glowing as he held them aloft. “…should be stained scarlet. But they’re not.

“I thought I was in love once. Briefly. She was a lycanthrope, the child of a powerful mob family who’d repudiated everything her family stood for. She saw me for what I was, finally, and walked away without looking back. She knew a damned thing when she saw one.”

Even as fitful as her sensitive psi talents were, she could still sense him there like a black hole in her awareness, radiating pain she could not feel. She could hear it in his voice and it left bleeding wounds in her psyche nonetheless. “If you were truly damned, it wouldn’t tear you up like this.” She spoke softly, knowing he’d hear her.

“The woman told you her name,” he said out of the blue. “I heard her.” He whirled, leaping the distance between them and landing silently in front of her. “I wish she was right,” he said. “I wish my heart was a withered thing, unable to feel. But it’s not. She’s wrong. But she’s right about one thing—I’ve walked in the shadows a long time. Maybe too long.”

“There’s no such thing as too long,” Val whispered, reaching out, grabbing him by the back of his head and pulling his face to hers. Their lips met, tentatively at first, but with growing heat as she felt a tingle run through her. Her legs threatened to buckle, but his arm, strong as stone, wrapped across her back and held her to him.

She fell back a moment later, gasping for air. “Whew. No one ever warned me what kissing a vampire would be like.”

He gave her a thin smile, eyes dancing with something approaching humor. “When you don’t need to breathe, it makes a difference.”

Excerpt One from "Tales from the Magitech Lounge"

Call me Jack.  Most people do.

I started out as a time traveler, but I had to give it up.  Not only is it illegal, but it’s dangerous to the continuum.  One cannot go around creating new universes willy-nilly, and that’s the most probable result of time travel.

I became a time traveler completely by accident, stumbling across what I assumed to be a unique device while exploring some ancient ruins in South America.  The device had apparently been left there by another time traveler, whom, I’m sure, wasn’t thrilled when I accidentally hijacked it.

Unlike many such devices, this particular gadget, which looked a lot like a small pyramid crafted out of blue glass, could cross both time and space with equal efficiency.  It dumped me in the American West in the year 1884.

That was the first of many stops and it’s possible I’ll share them with you at a later date.  But this particular story is not so much about my travels as it is about how my travels ended, and how I ended up where I am today.

The year is 2267.  The place, San Francisco, California—in the former United States.  The exact locale is on Haight Street, less than three blocks from the legendary Golden Gate Park.

I’m probably lucky to be alive, considering that no one told me that time travel was illegal until I ran into a group who took it upon themselves to police the activity.  I’d skipped back to a time just around the second year BC in an attempt to meet Jesus Christ.

Apparently that’s not an uncommon thing for time travelers to do, so this aforementioned agency keeps a monitor in place to watch for our arrival.  I was snatched off the dusty road within minutes of setting out to find the guy.

Two people seemed to pop out of nowhere, each grasping one of my arms, and frog-marched me into an alley between two mud huts.  One, a remarkably tall fellow (he must’ve been seven feet if he was an inch), shoved me against a wall as the other, a short, elfin-faced woman, went through my pockets and frisked me in a so professional a way that I didn’t even consider making a lewd comment about it.  That should tell you how freaked out I was.

“He’s clean,” she said finally, glancing up at her companion.  “Where’s your time machine?” she asked me.

Shocked to my core, I saw no option but to answer honestly.  I’d been running around in the thing for nearly a year by this time and hadn’t ever ran across anyone like these two.  I had the feeling that if I jerked them around, I’d live to regret it.

“You take care of him—I’ll go get the machine,” the woman told her partner.

The big guy nodded.

“What’s all this about?” I asked him, as the woman dashed away.

“It’s about you being in big trouble,” he told me soberly.  “Time travel is illegal, dangerous, and really, really stupid.”

“Okay,” I said.  “When was it made illegal?”

This took him by surprise and he gave me an odd look.  I noticed then that the whites of his eyes were literally silver in color, the iris an extremely pale green.  I couldn’t quite tell, but there was something weird about the pupil as well.

He never did answer me, but I found out on my own later.  Time travel was made illegal in 2236, years before I ever found my time machine.  I’d been breaking the law the whole time and had no idea.

Yeah, I know.  Ignorance is no excuse.  I have discovered, however, that stupidity makes a great excuse.  Sometimes.

Excerpt Two from "Tales from the Magitech Lounge"

I hadn’t quite gotten used to the enthusiastic greeting I received when I strode through the door into the Magitech Lounge.  It wasn’t all that long ago, as I measure time, that I was one of the greatest villains Earth had ever known.

An ironic fate for a man who’d originally turned to science to help people.  Then death had come to my world and only a few of us survived to flee here.  After that I guess I let bitterness and envy rip apart any sense of decency I may have initially had.

My name is Hades, and I used to be the Lord of the Underworld.  Not the one from mythology, though I suppose you might say I’m the person from which that mythological figure was crafted.  I’m the very same Hades who stole thousands of mortal children and transformed them, twisted them, through magic and genetic manipulation, into an army of goblins.

Yes, that Hades.

I’m the very same Hades who lied to the Sidhe, and used their bloodline for my own purposes and deliberately turned them into things most people would perceive as monsters.

That Hades.  Otherwise known as ‘that scheming, immoral bastard.’

As I entered the lounge and climbed the ramp to the main floor, my eyes flicked  to the table in the corner, where the manager usually sat.  Tonight the girl sat with him.  They were eating a delicious looking meal of lasagna with garlic bread and my mouth watered slightly as I approached.  It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself a proper meal, especially something as enticing as that.

I enjoyed good food, and refusing to eat those things that I found most compelling was one of the ways I punished myself for my crimes.  I forced myself to consume the cheapest, blandest forms of mass-market neo-protein available.

It was a small enough sacrifice, considering the price other people paid for my arrogance.

When my mechanizations had finally been revealed, and those I had betrayed had rightfully turned on me, I realized it was nothing more than I’d deserved.  I’d known it even as I pulled myself from the floor where I’d been thrown and used Thomas Grey’s abandoned wheelchair to escape before the authorities arrived.  I had a long time to think about it as I recovered from the blow dealt to me by the vengeful arm of Carth, the last surviving full-blood Sidhe.

I hated what I’d become, once I’d actually been made to turn and face it.  I could not cure the goblins of their affliction, nor could I restore the Sidhe bloodline to what it once was.  The evil that I’d done was permanent and I nearly lost myself to despair and self-loathing when I realized how unconscionable my crimes had truly been.