ATOMIC: A new short story I’ve written staring Sigyn and Loki...

ATOMIC: A new short story I’ve written staring Sigyn and Loki will be available September 21st as part of the Nightshade Short Story Anthology. It will be 99¢ for just one week on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay, and iBooks.

Other authors in the set are: Donna Augustine, Annie Bellet, Sarra Cannon, Selene Charles, Deanna Chase, Kate Danley, Debra Dunbar, Hailey Edwards, Colleen Gleason, Helen Harper, Shawntelle Madison, Christine Pope, SM Reine, Anthea Sharp, Colleen Vanderlinden, Phaendra Weldon … basically, a whole bunch of NY Times, USA Today best-selling authors (and Hugo nominees), and me.

Atomic takes place before I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves … Here’s an exclusive excerpt:

Sigyn
is prophesied to be the consort of a king. Instead she marries a
fool. Centuries after his chaos destroys their marriage, the fallout
begins … 

Chapter 1 

Sigyn ’ s
grandmother had stopped eating the youth-bestowing apples of Idunn
decades ago. Her fingers are papery with age when they grip Sigyn ’ s
chin.

“Look up at me, child.”
Sigyn
cranes her neck to meet her grandmother’s
eyes, so high above her own.Grandmother’s
gaze is foggy, but her smile is sharp. “Oh, it might have been
worth living to see you grow. Sigyn… Victory Woman, it means.
You’ll
find yourself consort to a man of great power.” Grandmother lowers
her head so her eyes are level with Sigyn’s.
“A king maker you’ll
be, Girl. A king maker.”

***

“Mama,
it hurts! It hurts!”  The language of the prayers is Japanese,
and those words are the only ones discernible in the cacophony of
cries of terror, pain, and loneliness crowding Sigyn’s
head, or more accurately, her heart. Covering her ears would do
nothing to stop the psychic roar. Only moments ago she’d
been in Asgard, realm of those once worshipped as gods, beneath a
golden sun and a crystalline blue sky. Now on Earth, in the city the
prayers have summoned her to, the sky is choked with soot and smoke,
the ground beneath her sizzles, and a wall of fire rings the eerily
circular plane she’s
standing on. Strangely, she feels an overabundance of free particles
in the breeze. She is a magical being, and has more natural
resistance to radiation than a human, but if she weren’t
wearing armor, she thinks it would be too much for her.

“My
God, what have we done?” This prayer is in English, and the
accent sounds American.

“It
hurts! It hurts!” rises in
Japanese, above the wordless chorus. 

 She
blinks. She must be in Japan. Sigyn turns, and something crackles
beneath her feet. Looking down, her jaw drops. A thin crust of glass
covers the sandy soil. Lifting her gaze, she sees a dome stripped of
everything but twisted and charred steel supports. She’s
on a battlefield, obviously. But where are the wounded …
and the corpses?

Concentrating,
she sends a magical apparition beyond the fiery ring, a trick learned
from her ex-husband. A few meters away, her doppelgänger
sees a reverse shadow on a stone wall that looks like the silhouette
of a woman and child. Sigyn’s
apparition moves on and sees a few more such shadows; and then an
amorphous shape on the ground catches her eye. As she approaches,
realization hits Sigyn swift and hard. Her concentration breaks and
her consciousness snaps back into her body. She vomits, but she can’t
expel the memory of melted eyes and skin sliding from a corpse.

Body
bent, she blinks as ash falls around her like snow. What is she doing
here? It is said that prayers are only heard when they relate to a
magical being’s
higher purpose. Although her skill with burns is better than most,
the burns she saw are beyond the skill of any Asgardian. 

Wiping
her mouth, she picks a direction at random and moves toward the
flames. Her armor is enough to protect her, and she is determined to
find her purpose. Before she reaches the fire, the voices in her head
become a wail that splits her eardrums and her skin burns with such
intensity it feels like it’s
bubbling from within. With a cry, she stumbles back to the center of
the crater. The prayers immediately become a murmur and her skin is
cool again. Peeling back a piece of her armor, she finds her skin
unmarred. It is a phantom pain related to the magical summons in her
head.

“Please,
don’t
let me lose him in Japan,” she hears in English, and in
Japanese she hears, “Water! Please water.”

She
exhales in frustration. Obviously, she’s
supposed to stay here for a purpose, but what? Canting her head, she
listens to the swell of prayers, the roar of flames, and the buzz of
radiation. And then, above it all, she hears a hiccup, not ten paces
behind her. She feels the sort of flickering magic she associates
with one person. 

Rubbing
the bridge of her nose, she turns and finds whom she expects: Loki,
the so-called God of Mischief and Lies, legendary drunk, the King of
Asgard’s
fool, and her ex-husband. 

… To Read More Pick up Nightshade for only 99¢ at your retailer of choice:  Amazon, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay, and iBooks 

And if you absolutely can’t wait until the 21st, I Bring the Fire Part I Wolves, the first part of my Loki series is FREE and available just about everywhere for everyone (much like Loki):  Amazon, iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords & Google Play.