We hope everybody has enjoyed ringing in the New Year – whether it was through a fantastic party or hunkering down in the comfort of home. A chance at new beginnings should never be passed up.
We’ve spent the first of 2015 planning the last bits of our second novel. It was so much fun to get back into the swing of things. One of us spent the last week of December dealing with a break up – but everything feels fresh and new, now. The will to continue working on what we love has never been stronger.
Together, we would like to leave you with a small token of Book I.
Just a piece. Of Chapter One.
And the wolves rounded on Izobel.
She was quick. Always had been. They were quick as well, reaching her before the scene went dark again, but they were not quick enough. She ducked the first blow, down on her knee, and threw one leg back out—into the Lykos’ ankle—and it collapsed, sending him even quicker into the dirt.
Another was on top of her with a blunt stick before he could notice his comrade was down. She slipped to the side, shifting her weight, twisting below and around the strike that was meant for her to come up behind him and land her own—the side of her palm fast against the pressure point in his neck.
Blue lightning became pink and struck again, a chorus of ear-splitting thunder along with it, and all who stood bore into Izobel as if she were the cause. The thunder shook the earth beneath their feet, staggered them, made one second guess a decision. The Lykos looked up at the fire the sky created, while others went straight for her.
Rain began to pour.
Rain was never just rain, anymore.
As if on queue, they all stopped to raise their heads.
Along with the slow, wet droplets, so hot they stung, came something improbable. Izobel saw them when the lightning flashed anew—charged crystalline shards of ice, scattered, shining like precious gems in the blackness, high, high above them.
They seemed to move in slow motion. As she stared up at the frozen fragments, intermittently hidden between huge beads of water and dissipating fog, they glittered, flickered in and out of focus, closer, heading right for them. Izobel followed the path of the brightest, trying to spot its final resting place, and when the sky flashed again the splinter burned pure white while the rest only trembled.
She looked straight ahead at the Lykos that stood before her.
Within seconds the shard shot through his eye and out of the back of his head, and he was on the ground.
Izzy didn’t think—she just moved. She saw the others from the corner of her sight, like smears of dark paint on a flashing, booming canvas, as they abandoned their spoils and fled. Ice crystals fell in clusters, in tune but not in reason with the rain, erratically spaced and nearly unpredictable. They battered the ground and splattered wet mud in every direction; they carried pink red lightning from the swirling clouds to the rumbling earth and electrified it.
By the time she reached the boy, the Lykos were either down, or gone. He lay, bloodied and beaten, and rain washed away the red dirt in long streaks from his face. In the rush she bent her head to his chest, ear to his heart, heard it pump—curiously loud, cavernous—as if it rested in a place much larger than he was. Then she bent to lift him.
Sharp, pointed hail ducked across her cheek as they rose. A thin line of blood seeped through, but she ignored it. He moaned softly as she threw his arm around her shoulder to steady his beaten legs, then carried him with surprising ease—she surmised the height of her adrenaline made this possible—and as she rose, as if to make it easier for her, for them, the downfall came instantly to a halt.
Or, rather, the downfall changed completely.
The lightning had not stopped, but the clashes of thunder died off as though they never were. She chanced a look towards the colorful lights dancing above them. A soft, chilly snowflake swam through the air to greet her. She watched it land on the tip of her nose.
Snow fell in her hair, on her shoulders, and granted cold, wet relief as it melted into the fresh cut on her face. She found herself smiling at her luck, and at the strange new marvel of the boy she’d saved, clinging, stumbling on, next to her.
~PG.
The Space Between Worlds 