Subgenre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Mystery
About The Wounded Ones:
Demons and serial killers are Iona "Sully" Sullivan's bread and butter,
but nothing could have prepared her to face off against the full weight
of the British Empire at the height of its power. With the War for
American Independence in full swing, she finds even her prodigious
talents pushed beyond their limits when citizens of the American
Colonies begin vanishing amidst rumors of crop circles, hydra sightings
and worse. Through a wild and lethal adventure that will see her
clashing with the Empire around the world and beyond, the only constants
in Sully's life are an undead girlfriend, a giant demon crow that has
taken a shine to her, regular assassination attempts by enemies on all
sides, and the cold certainty that nothing and nobody is going to make
it out of the war in one piece.
Excerpt:
The Gobi Grill was a Mongolian joint on Staten Island. Of the
different boroughs of New Amsterdam, Staten had always been the
wealthiest and the most resistant to what the IBI used to call
“foreign influences,” but even here, the Gobi stood out. Amidst
French cuisine, Italian pizzerias, Greek salad buffets and stolid
British pub food, it was the only place with anything spicy on the
menu. Sully had always hated it, which meant that every time it was
her partner’s turn to pick a take-out joint, the delivery came from
there. On the late nights in the office, there was nothing that
Ceejay had enjoyed more than watching Sully eat the spiciest thing
he could find on the menu without flinching. Sully had always
appreciated his sense of humor, even when she was the victim of it.
Right on cue at twenty minutes to nine, Ceejay swaggered in through
the door in a sky blue Ophiran suit. He spotted Sully sitting by
the bar and spun on his heel to walk back out again. He made it as
far as the street before Sully’s snort of laughter brought him back
inside.
“General Sullivan! Haven’t you won this war yet? I can’t sleep at
night with all the banging on the barrier. You are so negligent. It
is amazing that I didn’t steal your job years ago.”
Sully got up to shake his hand but stiffened as he engulfed her in
a hug. Softly he murmured, “It is good to see you.” Then he stepped
back and was instantly back to his full braying volume. “Two
coffees, please, and four Nai Wong Bao.”
They settled by the bar after Ceejay had made a big show of yawning
and stretching so he could get a good look around the place. There
was no breakfast crowd to speak of—a few people were grabbing
take-out coffee orders and there was an old Oriental man snoozing
over a bowl of fishy soup in a booth. As far as Sully could tell,
the Gobi never closed.
The food was in front of them before Sully could get a word in.
Ceejay asked, “You came alone? I thought you would have bodyguards
and sycophants dribbling out behind you these days.”
Sully scoffed, “Like I’ve keep telling you all these years, I can
take care of myself.”
He raised an imperious eyebrow. “I seem to recall your telling me
that—just before I had to pull your ass out of the fire.”
Sully prodded at the gelatinous white lumps on her plate. “What am
I eating here?”
“Steamed buns. They have custard inside. Very British. You should
like them.”
She took a small bite. Swallowing took some effort. Ceejay waggled
his eyebrows again. “No?”
“I didn’t miss eating your weird food.”
“I’ve missed watching you eat my weird food. Your face—”
She cut him off. “How’s business? They haven’t kicked you back down
to the mailroom yet?”
Ceejay chuckled. “I think that if there was no war going on, all
the polite white people would’ve had me taken out back and shot by
now. But since you keep dragging your feet, I get to keep being top
dog in the IBI.”
“Well, I’ll do my best to keep fucking up then. For your job
security.”
He gave a little mock bow of thanks, then tucked into his own buns
as Sully tried to wash the texture out of her mouth with coffee.
After a moment of comfortable silence she said, “I hear you’ve
caught an interesting case.”
“I catch all the interesting cases. I am like a net that hangs
underneath a thousand useless constabularies, catching everything
that isn’t completely obvious.” His voice was slightly muffled by
the mouthful of food.
“I was thinking about a specific interesting case. One that is
almost as interesting as the one that I had just before I left the
IBI.”
He sighed. “I don’t know why I pretended this was a social call.
You are here about work. You are always all about work.”
Sully stared intently down into her coffee. “When things are
settled and the war is over, there will be time to be friends
again. Hell, I might even apply for my old job. You could be my
boss.”
That earned her a belly laugh. “I can just picture it—‘Sully, I
need you to investigate this terrible crime.’ ‘Ceejay, go to hell,
I am hungover.’” His smile never faltered as he hissed, “Did you
check that we are safe to talk here?”
Sully let her arcane senses sweep out of her body and through the
restaurant. She could feel the fire runes in the kitchen like a
crackling pressure at the edge of her consciousness, and the alarm
charms woven into the doors and windows vibrated softly against her
gentle intrusion. Laid over all of it was the sensation of her own
magic, an almost imperceptible bubble blocking anyone from scrying
on them. “We’re good for now.”
“No pattern,” he started. “These people, they seem to vanish with
no logic at all. They go to bed one night and the next morning, poof. Nothing. It is not isolated to Nova Europa. The Northern
provinces of the Republic have been losing people too. I know that
the United Nations have lost some, but they don’t trust us enough
to even give names or locations. They give me nothing but dates of
the disappearances and then they expect everything that we have in
return. Pricks.”
“And the Schrödingers?”
“They go haywire. Spike off the chart. There is definitely magic at
play, but if any of our guys have a clue what it is, they are
keeping it to themselves.” Ceejay knocked back the last of his
coffee.
Sully sipped hers. “Any theories?”
“The smart money is on spies. Everyone knows that the British had
them everywhere. Now that the hammer is about to fall, they are
pulling them all out. The crazy power spikes may be some sort of
pumped up portals to get past the blocks your friends cast.”
Sully frowned. “That makes no sense .You don’t withdraw your spies
when you are about to fight someone, you keep them in place so they
can feed you vital intel—troop movements, morale on the ground. I
don’t buy it.”
Ceejay was scowling. “It doesn’t matter what you buy. It isn’t your
job anymore. Remember? You quit.”
A bitter laugh escaped Sully. “Yeah, lucky me.”
It was only when he turned on her that she realized he wasn’t
joking. “Back off, Sully. You have your own business to be dealing
with. Stay out of mine.”
Sully’s jaw clenched but she forced her temper down. She had a
lifetime of practice at that. “I don’t know what you think is going
on, but I don’t want my job back.”
“What’s going on is that just when I thought I was going to see my
friend again for the first time in months, a spy walked in dressed
in her clothes. Fuck you very much, Sully.”
Sully did not blow up the Gobi Grill. She even paid the tab for the
coffee and glutinous lumps. When she stepped out into the street,
the gathering of three dozen crows perched on every flat surface
was probably a complete coincidence and nothing to do with her
mood. She shooed them away and waited to watch them circle up
through the canyon between the skyscrapers to vanish into the chill
blue sky. She blew out a warm cloud of breath after them. She
didn’t know what was worse: Ceejay’s calling her a government
stooge or his being completely right. Her phone started to vibrate
in her pocket and with great reluctance she drew it out. She wasn’t
sure how Ogden had adapted to modern technology faster than she
had, given that she had several centuries head-start, but there was
his name flashing on the screen.
She grunted, “Sullivan.”
He replied, “Ogden.” She could almost hear the smug grin.
“What do you want, Ogden?”
“I just thought that it might be an auspicious time to invite you
to visit with us in Manhattan.”
Sully tried not to growl. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“You could take a look at the unique architecture? Get to know your
new friends and allies? Come and witness the ritual that we use to
tear down the Veil of Tears?”
Sully huffed out another plume of steam. “You finished the spell.”
“We have most assuredly finished the spell.”
What Manhattan used to be could be seen in its foundations. As she
soared over the water Sully caught a glimpse of wood and whitewash
here and there. The ground gravel beneath her course still bore the
shape of cobblestones in places and there was unmistakably dirt and
dung beneath that. Once upon a time, this had been a human place.
The moment that she looked higher than knee height the illusion
that it still belonged to mankind vanished. Conjured stone twisted
up into the skyline, jagged and impossibly symmetrical. The spires
of Manhattan resembled nothing so much as gargantuan termite mounds
and the fact that the doorways and thoroughfares of the city had
been designed with residents many times the size of humans in mind
just hammered home the idea that humans were visitors here. The
outer wall stood at more than twenty feet tall and the smooth white
expanse of it was oppressive, but it also hid the strangeness of
everything within its circumference very well. There was no gate in
or out of Manhattan; there was no need when every one of the
residents could fly. Sully tried not to shudder as she saw the
demons coiled along the ramparts beneath her, nesting in the
belfries and lurking in the shadows between the towers. There were
not as many of them as there were Magi, but the numbers were close.
In all of the dull meetings since the war began, Sully had not
voiced her suspicions that behind their impassable walls the Magi
were summoning more demons to bolster their forces. It wasn’t as
though there was anything that could be done, even if they were;
Manhattan was a law unto itself. That had been the problem since
before it popped back into the world.
Sully took the scenic route down to the massive ritual circle in
the center of the city where the mass of Magi were gathered.
Intelligence about America’s allies had been even harder to come by
than information about the British in the past months, so she was
making up for lost time. That was what she told herself to justify
her slow descent. It wasn’t because she was frightened to go down
into a massive nest of demons that would eat her magic and tear her
to shreds and it certainly wasn’t because she was keeping an eye
out for Mol Kalath. The bird could be here or not, it made no
difference to her. Once she was sure that it was not, she dove to
land gracelessly by Ogden’s side. He was grinning. “A very pleasant
afternoon to you, Miss Sullivan.”
“Right. How long have we got until the fireworks start?”
He swept his arms out to encompass this little town square. “They
have already begun the preliminary casting. Each component shall be
bound within the circle and when all of the parts have been
assembled—”
Sully grumbled. “I know how ritual magic works. I’m asking for a
time.”
When he laughed it tugged on the scars across his lips, making him
flinch. “By this time tomorrow, the Veil of Tears shall be unpicked
and all the hell of Europe will be unleashed upon the British. Even
now we ready our envoys to meet with the trapped demons. We shall
marshal our forces in France, then strike out before tomorrow ends.
They will not stand against such an onslaught for long. I would
expect surrender by the following dawn at the latest.”
“Good job. Has Pratt been told?” Sully cracked her knuckles.
“The Prime Minister has been informed, yes.”
Sully closed her eyes and felt the magic taking form, each caster
stitching their spell onto the last, every spell simple and easy to
replace if an error was made, but woven together into an immense,
complex tapestry. She had punched through a few barrier spells in
her day, but that was a momentary disruption of the stable
patterns, not a permanent solution like this patchwork monstrosity
of a spell. She could already see the shape that it was going to
take from the gaps left in the framework that they had cast so far.
Understanding the totality of it was probably beyond her, but she
could appreciate the craft.
“So, did you invite me here to watch you all casting for twenty
hours? Because I might need a seat or something.”
Ogden shuffled his feet. “Knowing the little that I do of you, I
had assumed that you would want to be at the front lines when the
fighting begins.”
“You assumed right.” Sully flexed her hands. The dense magic that
saturated the air was teasing little sparks of spellfire from her
fingertips.
“Which is why our mutual friend has offered to carry you with the
vanguard to Europe.”
Sully grimaced at the tell-tale rustle of feathers behind her.
“Hello again, Mol Kalath.”
“GREETINGS, SHADOW-TWIN.” The voice tore right through Sully every
single time. Even the other demons roaming free around Manhattan
chattering in their own tongue didn’t make her head creak as much.
“I guess that you’re my ride to Europe?”
“THE DISTANCE IS TOO GREAT FOR YOUR SPELLS OF FLIGHT. YOU SHALL
RIDE UPON MY BACK AND AT LAST WE WILL HAVE TIME TO CONVERSE.”
Sully ground her teeth together while Ogden clapped her on the
back. “Just think, Miss Sullivan. In two days’ time, the war will
be over and we will have toppled the British Empire.”
She unclenched her jaw. “All right. Let’s do this.”
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About G.D. Penman:
G.D. Penman is the author of the Strata Online and Witch of Empire
series, the ghostwriter of more than 50 books, and a freelance game
designer. A firm believer in the axiom that any story is made
better with the addition of dragons, he is fulfilling his destiny
as an overweight bearded white man by pursuing a career as a
fantasy author. In “real life” he lives in Scotland with his
partner, children, dog and cats. Just . . . so many cats.
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About Meerkat Press:
Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*
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