Afterworld is now live!!
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I'm pleased to announce that Afterworld: The Orion Rezner Chronicles book 1, is now live! You can grab a copy at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.
Afterworld is a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy set in the year 2040 that I've been working on for the better part of a year. It was a lot of fun writing this book, and a big change from epic fantasy. I didn't really realize how hard epic fantasy was to write until I started the first draft for Afterworld. It is a breath of fresh air to be able to write about OUR world. I believe that fans of my Whill of Agora books will enjoy this romp through post-apocalyptic Boston full of wizards, witches, ghosts, demons, magic...and of course, Dude, the genetically altered chimpanzee.
Fans of Agora will also be pleased to know that Sea Queen, The Windwalker Archive book #2 will be released on Dec 1, and is now available for pre-order Here. Also, I have plans for Whill of Agora #5 sometime in 2015.
I hope you enjoy my newest offering. Happy Halloween!!!
Here is a sample chapter:
Chapter 1
Brave New World
I
walked past Trinity Church and marveled for the hundredth time at its beauty.
My eyes were drawn to every curve and crest of its brilliant stonework, and for
a moment, I forgot the darkness I was about to face.
Father Killroy paced my long strides with his quick short
ones. He clutched his Bible against his robe as if it were a secret. As he
squinted against the rain, I wondered why he didn’t have his hood up. Maybe he
thought the cleansing rain would help against the evil that awaited us. His
portly belly led the way, and if not for the red puff of hair atop his head, he
could have been mistaken for the Buddha. He reminded me of one of the Tweedle
brothers from Alice in Wonderland.
I tried to quiet my restless mind and divert it from
cracking jokes in my head, but it wasn’t working.
I was nervous as hell, and for good reason—I was about to
take part in an exorcism. Father Killroy had performed dozens of the rituals,
and that alleviated some of my anxiety, but not all. Don’t get me wrong; I’m no
coward. I’ve faced my share of baddies in my day, but I detest dealing with
demons. Many of the hunters of man are victims themselves. They are possessed
of a hunger that drives them to act—to feed, to kill—like vampires and
werewolves. Demons, on the other hand, are pure evil. They live for darkness,
destruction, and death…and they give me the creeps.
Last summer I encountered one for the first time, a lower
demon who had possessed a farmer and killed everyone near to him. On a mission
with a priest and two other wizards, I found the man in the barn, bathing in
blood. Above him, dripping blood into a horse trough, we found nine of his
victims. They exorcised the demon quickly, but I missed it—the scene had made
me sick. While the wizards and priest valiantly defeated a homicidal demon, I
puked my guts out. I admit it wasn’t my most shining moment. Since then I have
seen worse, and I have gotten used to the blood and bodies and brutal violence.
These days, ever since the great culling of 2033—on
Halloween, the day of reckoning—we humans are an endangered species. Humanity’s
clock was reset to zero, and so was the date. New Year’s Day is now Halloween,
and this year will mark the seventh anniversary since the Culling—7 AW.
Some say it was the true Armageddon. Others disagree. The
religious believe we survivors are actually in hell or some sort of purgatory.
All I know is, if the people of Boston saw what was waiting for them beyond the
walls, they would believe in hell.
Though the Culling lasted only a day, it changed the world
forever. The end came in the night, riding on the wind, a whisper of death—a
virus that killed 99.9 percent of all humans it came in contact with. Those who
survived had either been given the vaccine, were naturally immune, or were the
Cain. I was one of the immune—the Witnesses, as we are called by the Elite.
The morning of the Culling, every broadcast in the world was
hijacked. Every TV, radio, computer, and cell phone played the same message in
all languages. On the screens came a face made of a thousand faces, flashing
one after another in a strange meld that left you in awe of its dark beauty. It
has become known as the Faces of God. It spoke in a thousand voices as well.
The words have become like scripture to the Cain:
Tomorrow most of you will be dead. Already you feel
different. Already you feel sick, and you know it to be true. As we speak,
sirens are going off in every miserable shanty in the world. You are dying—but
you can be saved. You all know this world is overpopulated; you know that you
are a virus, a plague of sinners. The world needs to be cleansed. There must be
a culling—call it survival of the fittest. We are taking on only the strongest,
only the fittest. Therefore, to save yourselves, to prove that you deserve to
live on into the brave new world, you must drink the blood of another. If you
do this, if you drink the blood of other infected humans, you will be cured of
your sickness. You have one hour to act, or you die.
All that I saw that day, I cannot share. But what I will say
is that I would give my life to undo it. Once people started getting sicker,
the panic rose. The world’s cities turned to death and mayhem. The last thing
to be seen on American news was a never-ending slideshow of the world tearing
itself apart. Some people, men and women alike, took the advice of the Voices
of God. Every city in the world became an orgy of vampiric murder. Some of the
last reports said North Korea had fired nukes, which they supposedly didn’t
have, at neighboring South Korea. Another chain reaction occurred in the Middle
East. Humanity’s true nature was tested that day, and the outcome was nightmarish.
Those who fed off the dying lived, and almost everyone else died. By the next
day the world of man had been reduced to smoldering cities filled with dead. It
was estimated that ten percent of people on the planet cannibalized to live,
and maybe one percent got lucky and were immune.
Due to some nature of the virus, the killers’ faces were
permanently stained by the blood of their victims. There are many names for
them: the Marked, the Lost Ones, the Final Sinners, and—most notably—the Cain.
Perhaps the greatest sin of all committed that day was,
ironically, the saving of the children. Many parents and caregivers, themselves
having turned to vampirism to survive, also fed their children the blood of
their victims.
I can still see their faces, their mouths stained with the
blood of their parents’ victims—parents who committed the most heinous of
crimes to keep them alive. And while it was done with loving intentions, they
in truth condemned their offspring to a life of hell. Most children had since been
taken either by the larger groups of Cain as slaves, or by the Elite for
reasons unknown.
I, like so many others on the East Coast, followed the only
radio signal on the air after the Culling. It came from Boston. Though I hadn’t
actually heard it, I joined up with a group of survivors who did. They were
immune as well, of course. Anyone with bloody lips was shunned—an outcast.
Since the Culling, the surviving mortals have learned that
many of the things which had been taken for myths and fairy tales in the old
world were indeed real—vampires and werewolves, ghosts and demons, witches and
warlocks, and most other varieties of childhood nightmares, for instance. In
the days before the Culling it was easy for these mythical creatures to stay
hidden, hunting with ease, as they picked here and there from the flock of
billions at their leisure. But now they are hungry, and humans are few.
Wizards, of course, are real as well, and now that
nightmares walk the earth openly, we do what we can to even the odds. For a
long time we kept out of the affairs of humans—were even shunned and hunted by
them. Now we are their protectors and guardians once again. Boston is the home
of the Order of Franklin, the East Coast chapter of the American Wizard Council
of Light, of which I am now a member.
Long ago it was determined that the wizards would no longer
meddle in human events, as the power we possessed would lead inevitably to
dictatorial rule. Instead, the ruling council at the time ordered, on pain of
death, that magic never be used against humans, neither to kill nor to control.
This law was broken many times, of course, and in the early days, most of the
time was taken up with battles against renegade wizards. But now we have come
out of the shadows again, to keep the people safe from the forces of darkness.
Be it at the hands of the murderous Cain, the creatures of legend, or the Elite
and their war machines, the survivors of the Culling are in danger of
extinction, and it is our duty to help. It is our penance for not intervening
when we could have.
Those who had the antidote on the day of culling, the Elite,
are said to live in great palaces above and below the earth. It is said they
watch from the sky through satellites they still control. We are entertainment
to them and nothing more. They too hunt the children of the Cain, and us as
well, as they choose. Their machines of war can be seen from time to time,
hovering over the partially ruined city of Boston. We are not yet strong enough
to dare all-out assault, but so far the spells of the strongest of us have
shielded the city from any attacks.
Technology had advanced to the point at which the Elite
could meld with machine, becoming immortal cyborgs. They had created robots to
do what humans once did. The megalomaniacal group had been steadily gaining
power for hundreds of years, hiding behind secret societies and shadow
governments. They are worshipped like gods by the Cain, who strive to prove
themselves and earn a place in their brave new world.
And like gods, the Elite give the Cain commands. They are
used as cannon fodder when it pleases them. Reanimation as a cybernetic clone
is the prize for a successful suicide mission, though it is not known if the
promise is actually kept.
Many think that there is no hope to be had—that the age of
free humanity is over, and that we can never again know what was once taken for
granted. I happen to disagree. I have, my entire life, been a student of
history, and though Old Ben would tsk,
tsk at my apparent vanity, I can confidently say that humans have never
been free. I have studied the many cultures of man—from Babylon to Rome, from
Greece to Persia—even the modern industrial nations. They all tell the same
tale. While some were freer than others, one and all were destroyed by the rot
of corruption. One and all were destroyed by lust, money, greed, and power.
It is why I fight. I cannot stand by and watch bullies at
play. I have been given the power I possess for a reason. And I will use that
power in defense of the weak.
The rain came down with renewed vigor. We came to the stoop
of the house the demon had chosen, and Father Killroy gave a prayer. His voice
boomed out Latin as fluently as if it were his native language. I understood
most of it, even at the vigorous speed with which he spoke. To my great relief,
I then noticed my mentor standing atop the landing, waiting silently. His
usually cheery face was troubled. I could tell he didn’t want to be here any
more than I did. I nodded him a thanks for coming, and he winked in return.
The father and I climbed the short stair to the
door and went inside. Behind us followed my mentor, the ghost of Benjamin
Franklin.
End of sample. Pick up your copy HERE. Enjoy!
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