Excerpt #1 ...

I am fucked.

The thought flicked through Kev’s head, calm and detached. The roar of icy water filled his ears. The current would pull him loose in counted seconds.
Seconds measured by the pounding pulse of blood through his brain. Each throb hurt like a raving motherlover, but there was nothing like imminent death to take a guy’s mind off a headache.

His little angel’s face flashed through his mind. His dream companion, his spirit guide. Her big eyes looked sad, and scared.

He’d known since he got out of bed that the day was going to be day. He’d had that prickle, as if someone was looking at the back of his neck. Not surprising, since he’d set the day aside for high-adrenaline sports activities, his chief joy in what passed for his life. One would think, having gotten a clue from the Great Beyond that death lurked nearby, that a reasonable, sane person would spend the day on the couch, watching reruns. Cruising the mall bookstore, reading about mindfulness or voluntary simplicity. Lying low in a multiplex, watching a nature documentary. Sipping a green tea latte. Well out of sight.

Not him. The reasonable, sane parts of himself were out in space. Along with his memories and his normal and natural fear of death. Danger? Bring it the fuck on. He should be dead already anyway. Look at his face. Kids ran screaming to mommy when they saw his bad side.

Cold had numbed the pain. He no longer felt his hand, clamped around the boughs of the dead tree. He did not feel the compound fracture in his other arm. His injured limb flopped in the water, sucked by the current, a few yards from the head of the falls. His broken bone tented out the nylon of his jacket, pinkish with blood. But he doubted he’d be using that arm again, once the water flung him over the brink.

Whatever. He’d been smash totaled years ago. Living on borrowed time. Half a brain, half a life. No clue at all.

Don’t start with that. Just shut the fuck up. He did crazy shit like this for the express purpose of keeping himself too zapped with adrenaline to indulge in self pity. That was why he hung off the edge of cliffs, hang-glided treacherous air currents, rafted bad-ass rapids. When he was that close to death, he felt buzzing, connected. Almost alive.

Since Tony found him he’d had some mechanism functioning that damped his emotional volume way down. High enough for function, but no more. Probably caused by the trauma to his brain that had caused the amnesia, and rendered him speechless, back in the bad old days.

Whatever it was, he was bored with it. If he could, he’d join the military, fly fighter jets. Playing with toys like that, yeah. Talk about a coping mechanism. But the military wouldn’t want a guy with crossed wires, a questionable identity and a black hole in his mind to fly their hundred million dollar toys. They’d put him to work cleaning engines. If they took him at all. No, he had to make do with high-risk sports. They kicked his ass into high gear, and he liked that gear. The color, the noise. The buzz of being awake to it, aware of it. Giving a shit.

He’d gotten what he wanted. But he was going to pay big. He stared at the top of the falls. Clouds of vapor rose from the thundering tons of water crashing down, hundreds of feet below. How many hundreds? He tried to remember. Several. Well over three. Whoo hah.

Not that he was afraid of dying. At most, he was curious. Sorry he’d never unravel the great questions of his existence, at least not as a living man, and who knew what happened after? He’d never speculated. His present mortal existence was problem enough, for as long as he could remember. Roughly half of his life. He didn’t know how old he was. Tony put him around twenty when he’d saved Kev from the warehouse thug eighteen years ago. So he was fortyish. Give or take.

At least the boy was going to make it. Kev was immobilized by tons of rushing icewater, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw activity in the trees choking the cliffside shore. Rescue proceedings were underway. Other people besides Kev had been at the point when he’d put ashore, where he’d seen the kids spin past, oarless and out of control. Only a guy with a black hole in his brain would be suicidal enough to jump in after them at that point in the rapids, but he’d taken no time to ponder that implacable truth. He just went for it.

And then, a long, hopeless wrestle with nature while the water got wilder, the roar of the falls louder.

While death approached, smiling. Happy to see him. His old pal.

Maybe he’d subconsciously wanted it. Bruno threw that death wish crap in his face a lot, whenever he got cracked up doing daredevil sports. Could be. Not worth worrying about, though. Particularly now.

The kids had capsized by the time he caught up. Kev saw a bobbing head and scooped one out of the water by sheer, blind luck. Then they plunged into a trough, the raft flipped, and they were tossed like twigs, the boy flailing, choking. He’d clamped the kid against him, struggled, kicked. He’d wanted to save that kid. Wanted it ferociously. He was played out, now, though. In fact, he felt strangely serene.

The other boy was gone, over the falls. That was fucked, and he was sorry. Rescue was on the way for the other one, but the greedy way the water sucked at the tree told him the hard truth.

He was going down. Anytime.

He forced his head to turn, checked on the kid. Sixteen or so. A drowned rat, clinging to the lucky side of the rock that split the top of the falls into two long, thin tails, hence the name, Twin Tails Falls. The weight of rushing water pinned him against the bulwark of the rock. He couldn’t move if he wanted to. But he’d live. That was good.

It wasn’t strength or skill that had smacked them up against that jutting rock. Just chance. And then, just as fast, bam. That bastard came up so fast, he barely shoved the kid out of the way before the tree trunk snapped his arm, smashed God only knew what else in his thorax, knocked him loose—and then spun out perpendicular to the falls, catching on a rock across the torrent. It formed a barrier, trapping him against a temporary dam. But not for long.

Smashing him, then saving him. When it worked loose, it would fuck him again, definitively. He’d ride that bastard out over the cliff.

The story of his life. Something inside him laughed, with stony irony.

Wasn’t it always the way. Like Tony, who’d dragged Kev out of his own rapids years ago, and kept him there, brain damaged, shambling and speechless. Washing dishes, mopping floors for room and board at the diner. Lying on a sagging cot, watching paint peel in the windowless mildewed room behind the diner where he’d slept. For fucking years.

The rope thrown out to save him. The same rope that he strangled himself on. It was almost funny. Except that it wasn’t.

The tree was about to go. The branches stuck on the rocks on the other side were wavering, wild water bending the flexible limbs, teasing them loose. The tree shuddered, rolled. The water sucked and insisted.

Any time now. He composed himself, tried to pay attention, to be present for it, to breathe. Difficult. So cold. So much water. The kid’s mouth gaped, begging Kev to do something. As if he could swim against that current, even if he weren’t fucked up. He had as much strength left as a broken doll. A final swell shook the tree loose. The ponderous slow motion made those last moments of clinging stretch out, infinitely long.

He struggled to stay conscious. The last wild ride. He’d better enjoy it. He wondered if he’d know, once he was dead, who he’d been before. What he’d done, who he’d known. Who he’d loved.

Probably not. This was all he got. It would just have to do.

Whoosh, the river rolled him under the tree and spat him far out into vastness. Endless space, above, below. Turning, head over ass.

The angel flashed across his mind. Those big gray eyes, so achingly sweet. A sharp sting of regret that he didn’t understand. And another face, too, scowling his disapproval as the immutable laws of physics had their stern way with him. A face he saw in his dreams every night. A young guy. His face maddeningly familiar.

Kev had been having a dream argument with that guy, that very morning, he suddenly remembered. The man had been scolding him.

“Dying is easy. You told me that yourself,” the guy said. “It’s living that’s hard. Meathead. Hypocrite. You piss me off.”

So that was how he’d known today would be dangerous.

Part of his mind hooted and shrieked with unreasoning joy at the icy rush of air and water, on his face. Whoa. This shit is fun. Another part pondered acceleration rates of falling objects, wind shear, probable force of impending impact on the rocks below. He calculated it down to ten digits after the decimal in that last, eternal instant—

And hurtled into a blank, white nothing.

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EXCERPT # 2 ...

“Any more questions?” Edie looked around the crowded room. Today’s booksigning was a talkative, enthusiastic bunch. The ego strokes from fans were nice, but it took energy to be smiling and chatty with a bunch of strangers.
She pointed to a tall girl with dyed black hair and black lipstick.

“Where’d you get the idea for Fade?” the girl asked eagerly. “He’s so real! And so intense. Is he based on anybody you know?”

Edie felt her smile falter. “Not exactly,” she lied. “He came to me in a dream once, and I never forgot him.”

That, at least, was the truth. Fade Shadowseeker had visited her dreams ever since she’d started drawing him, when she was eighteen. It hadn’t taken long for those dreams to turn scorchingly erotic.

A redheaded girl jumped up without waiting to be chosen. “Fade is so sexy. I love it that he and Mahlia finally get it on, in Midnight’s Curse, but then the bad guys abduct her and everybody gets distracted. Are they ever going to, um, you know? Get together? Like, a couple?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I find out that kind of thing as I go.”

The redheaded girl looked disappointed. “But can’t you just, like, make them do it?” she said sharply. “I mean, you’re the boss, right?”

“Wrong. I’m not the boss at all if the story is working. It’s a paradox. But I really hope that Fade and Mahlia get together, too.”

“Are you Mahlia?” the redheaded girl demanded. “She looks kind of like you. Is Fade, like, your own fantasy?”

The personal question startled her, and she stuttered. “Um, I, ah . . . no. I never thought of it. I don’t particularly identify with Mahlia, no.”

She felt bad, for lying like a rug, but give a girl some privacy. The redheaded girl subsided, looking unsatisfied. Edie’s publicist made a brisk wrap-it-up gesture. They’d run twenty minutes over for the question and answer session, and she hadn’t even started signing yet.

The booksigning was the easiest part, though she felt silly repeating the same scrawled sentiments on the flyleafs of each book. She made an effort to chat, but it was going to feel good, to sprawl on her couch with a cold beer and a rented movie. Mutants taking over Los Angeles. She loved mutant movies. Couldn’t imagine why. Hah hah.

The line was almost finished, and the redheaded girl was coming up next. Edie smiled as she took the girl’s battered copy of Midnight’s Curse. A compliment if she’d ever had one. Out less than a month, and already dog-eared. A generous impulse spurred her to open it to the blank page after the title page. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Vicky,” the girl said excitedly. “Vicky Sobel.”

Edie wrote, Thanks, Vicky! Here’s hoping for Fade and Mahlia, and the triumph of true love. Best wishes, Edie Parrish. Then she sketched a quick drawing of Fade, with his arm around a woman. For the face, she glanced up to sketch the redheaded girl’s pretty, wide-eyed face.

The eye didn’t usually open up so quickly. Usually she had a minute or so of grace, but when she looked up from scribbling the flourishes of the girl’s curly hair and up into her eyes—she saw it.

Something else. A flash of double vision. Another embrace, except that the girl wasn’t embracing a man. She was wrapped in the coils of an enormous, strangling snake. Edie saw the dead girl’s face, superimposed over the smiling, live face. Blue eyes staring and empty.

Edie opened her mouth to speak, but her voice stopped. Her heart kicked up, a sick, vertiginous feeling, and she opened her mouth—

“Stay away from Craig,” she burst out, her voice shaking.

The girl’s face went stiff. “What do you know about Craig?”

“N-n-nothing,” Edie stammered. “It just came to me, to say that.”

“Why?” The girl leaned over the table. “Why did it come to you? Are you sleeping with him? Do you know somebody who is?”

“No,” Edie said quietly. “I have no idea who this Craig person is. Just that he’s poison for you. Drop him. Run away.”

“I love Craig!” The girl’s blue eyes bulged. “And he loves me! So just . . . stay away from him! Shut your mouth! Don’t talk about him!”

Why, oh why did she do this to herself? Why didn’t her psychic gift come with a protective mechanism attached that would let her know if there was any point in giving a warning or not?

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It wasn’t my business.”

“Shut up,” the girl said, her voice wobbling. “You . . . you nosy bitch.” She grabbed her book, and ran, shoving people out of her way.

Edie shuddered, seeing the empty, bulging eyes, bulging. Dark marks on her throat. Strangled. God forbid. But maybe, just maybe, being warned might make a difference for her. She could only hope. It made her feel raw, helpless. A mass of antennae, and no off switch.

Except the meds. If she preferred dead calm. No pencils, charcoal, ink. That was her off-switch, if she could swallow it. But she couldn’t.

She pasted a smile on and looked up—

And forgot the red-headed girl, her deadly lover, and everything else she’d ever thought, or known. Including her own name.

Fade Shadowseeker stood right before her.

Edie rubbed her eyes, looked again. Still there. Still him.

He was extravagantly tall, broad, built. His face was thin, cheeks carved deep under jutting cheekbones. The spiky hair, the flat, grim mouth. The scars. The invisible mantle of controlled power humming around him, brushing against her body like a million tiny tickling fingers, though he was a yard away, across the table.

And his eyes wiped her mind blank. That piercing green that laid bare everything it looked upon. She knew that face, though she’d only seen it once. She couldn’t mistake those eyes. Those scars. She’d seen the wounds that caused them. She wished that she had not.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. Their eyes were locked. His eyes glowed with some intense emotion. There was an angry crimson spot in one of them. It made the green seem even more intense.

The person behind him in line began to clear her throat. Fade stepped forward and laid down his books. He held out his hand.

She took it, and dragged in a breath at the shivery feeling. It flashed across her skin, like wind rippling grass, rustling leaves. The ringing and dinging of a hundred tiny bells and chimes inside her.

She stared at her hand, swallowed up inside of his. Her publicist approached, coughing discreetly. “Edie? They need to wrap this up.”

Edit tried to reply, but a dry squeak came out of her throat. The guy gazed down, unmoving. A monument, a mountain. So silent, and intense. So beautiful. Like glacial lakes, like thundering waves, piled up banks of clouds. Wild animals. The uncontrollable power of nature.

She cleared her throat. “I sign with my right,” she told him, her voice thin. “You have to let go, if you want me to, um, sign your books.”

He let go. She took her hand back, peeking at it as if expecting it to be somehow changed by that momentous contact, but it was just her usual thin, inkstained paw. She opened his first book, struggling to remember what she was supposed to do. Um. Yes. Signing books. She paused, pen poised over the paper. “Your name?”

Something flashed in his eyes. “You don’t know it?”

She stared up at him. How could she? Was she supposed to know it? She shook her head, mutely.

“My name is Kev,” he said quietly. “Kev Larsen.”

She scrawled something unintelligible to Kev on all four books, and pushed them back. He took them, moved aside politely for the next person, but didn’t go away. Oh, God. He was waiting for her. Oh God.

Excitement bubbled inside her. She was so aware of his presence, looming by the table while she chatted with the last few die-hard fans.

Julie, her publicist, came marching over, and gave the guy a cold look. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked him.

The man ignored Julie. “I was wondering if you would have a cup of coffee with me,” he asked Edie. His low, quiet voice was wonderfully resonant. Full of sparkling harmonics that made her body tingle.

Edie hesitated, and Julie chimed in. “Have you two met?”

“Yes,” he said. The certainty in his voice brooked no argument.

Julie gave her a sharp look. “Is this true? Do you know this guy?”

Know him? As if she could be said to know him. But she couldn’t explain anything so improbable to the practical, nuts-and-bolts Julie. She hadn’t even grasped it herself yet.

She nodded, jerkily. Yeah. She, uh, knew him. Close enough.

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