Merry Christmas and a King of Spades excerpt.

December 24, 2017 4:24 pm Published by EverEden Leave your thoughts

Merry Christmas everyone! Thank you for supporting the journey and for the encouraging reviews, comments and messages about King of Spades. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the book is available in all the usual places. I would appreciate reviews on Amazon and Goodreads if you do decide to have a read 😀 and I look forward to your company on this ride. It was around this time last year when I gave King of Spades to a good friend to read. It wasn’t in its final beast-mode form but it was close enough so it was ok. It was also scary AF.

King of Spades and the Darkrose series have been with me for a long time. Nearly all my friends (as the dedication suggests) know just how long Cleo has been a part of my life. They have read parts of the books, heard about it through confessions on how late I am staying up and copped a nudge in the ribs during a movie when something happens that is similar to a scene/chapter in the book. But I haven’t read King of Spades myself. (IKR.) Every time I picked it up, I always slipped into “edit mode” and I couldn’t get a story out of it because I’d be wishing I’d written the same sentence a little differently or wondering if a scene was strong enough. Tonight was the first time I picked up the copy I saved for myself and opened it… I opened to a random chapter towards the end of the book where there is blue dark and a lot of action and heart. I read a few lines and was unable to predict the subsequent ones the way I used to. It made me happy because I might actually get to read it for real. 😛 Tonight, however, I am trying desperately to adult and cook things for tomorrow’s Christmas lunch so it probably won’t happen for a few days. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start!

An excerpt from King of Spades… THE HALLWAY WAS A DARK CATWALK, two rooms either side and the last one further back on the right. This was what some people called a Fatal Funnel; exposed, potential attacks from numerous angles while silhouetted by her entry point. Lighting was about thirty percent when Cleo breached the front door and clipped it behind her. She blinked the code for Nightvision in the Adonai contact lenses and a green world was born in front of her eyes, showing her everything in the room. She moved soundlessly on the wooden flooring, Beretta M9 out in front, CRONE holstered on her right hip, RavenEye secure in the rig on her left thigh. That, and her knife meant she was as armed as she was going to get. The front door had been the best option, cover in the front yard, shrubs and plants and pillars around the entrance she could use if she had trouble on the way out. Intelligence via the POD suggested the area was usually quiet and the two occupants of the house were going to be towards the back of the structure where the kitchen and main bedroom were. It looked like they were right, the entry alcove was dark and empty. She skulked the shadows in the hall, closing in on muffled voices up ahead. Her MDS-issue black boots padded the flat hallway carpet silently as she coasted past framed photographs and side tables with vases and wilting flowers that had been expensive once. She approached the room on her right first, gradual strafe steps around the open door, clearing a few inches at a time without entering. It showed her a switched off TV and an old-style couch patterned with some flower design, probably cream coloured in the daytime. The glass coffee table in front sported two recently abandoned mugs side by side. Adonai exposed steam coming off them. Adrenalin secreted with no use. Cleo breathed in nice and slow to counter the flow. No one jumped out of the darkness to ambush her and she slunk back out and into the hall again…but someone was going to die, she could feel it in her guts. Good intuition blessed all the Red Tag Combat Agents. The lowered voices were coming from the second room up on the left, sounds and hurried whispers she couldn’t understand. The door was wide open inwards, giving her a full view of the room as she approached to engage from the dark of the hall. The POD had been clear, secure the civilians. Translated, it meant extract their asses and get the hell out. Someone wanted them dead, and for some reason, Number One actually cared. Her eyes darted over the scene in a second from the doorway; two females, centre of the room, a woman hunched over a bed frantically grabbing at clothes and passing them to a teenage girl sitting cross-legged on the floor. The girl snatched them and piled them on top of photos in an open suitcase by a dull lamp before she looked up and screamed, eyes on the gun in Cleo’s hands. Cleo shoved the M9 in the shoulder rig, striding across the room and jerking the girl up by the shoulders, wrenching the spaghetti straps on her top until they threatened to tear in her hands. She didn’t know when the girl stopped screaming but she’d shut her big mouth when they were face to face and she could smell lipgloss–berry, cherry, strawberry–some shit. Adonai recognised her face instantly, probably some social media syphon; an online profile sucked dry. The square lining the girl’s face blinked bright green twice when the match was made and threw up the name “Tanya Pierce” at chin-level in clear font in front of Cleo’s eyes. “Tanya Pierce, I am Agent Darkrose. There are people coming to kill you. Come with me,” she said, voice habitually ominous with lack of emotion. She gave the girl a full second for it to sink in then pushed her towards the door and turned around for the older one. A black double barrel jutted forward and struck her in the chest like a long cattle prod trying to shoo her in the other direction. The woman’s breath was shaky behind the long firearm, her hands lumbering and desperate to keep control of it. The thing was probably going to go off by accident and the recoil was going to shit them both up. Cleo kicked the gun up from the woman’s grip. Precision flipped it. It smashed her in the head before plummeting down and landing in Cleo’s hands as though it was magnetised. Tanya Pierce screamed again from somewhere near the doorway and then both civilians fell mute, didn’t know what to do next, standing in the dark separated and unarmed. A crash across the hall ruptured the quiet panic. The older woman’s eyes got wide and fixed in the direction of the splintering glass. Adonai blinked the frame around her face and flashed the name “Julia Pierce.” When her eyes were back on Cleo, they were wild. Someone had kicked in the kitchen window and cocked a gun. Shit just got real but Julia Pierce didn’t run for the door. She swooped down and began scooping up more clothes from the bed, clumsily tossing them into a giant handbag with some notebooks. There was a half-second of disbelief before surging outrage and Cleo grabbed her wrist and twisted it. Julia was off-balance and rocking when they were looking at each other.

“Just go!” Cleo thrust the shotgun back to her, swapping positions with her and pushing Julia and Tanya into the hall then to the right, towards the front door before the intruder could clear the other room and come into the hallway. It was going to be close. Both civilians snivelled, messily grabbing at each other in the dark and pushing and bouncing against the walls as they ran. They tripped over small items in the shadows and looked back to see if they could be salvaged. Cleo trampled everything and ripped the side tables down to the ground so they were obstacles for anyone who followed. She shoved Julia Pierce in the back, smelling sweat, fear and perfume mixed into a sick blend of something she was forced to breathe in while she brought up the rear. Heavy steps crushed glass in the other room and someone kicked furniture out of the way and sent it scraping along the ground. Cleo drew the RavenEye and cocked it while she pushed the civilians forward. They snapped their heads back at her, sensing she had gone to her main weapon. Cleo squeezed between them with the safety off when they reached the front door. The risky move left the civilians unprotected from behind while she opened the door and surveyed the street but she didn’t want them walking out into a storm of bullets. The black SUV she’d driven up was waiting out of the streetlights to the right of the yard. She pressed the ‘unlock’ button on the controller in her pocket.

“Duck and run in a zig-zag,” she said, leaning into Julia’s shoulder, “Lock the doors, keep low. The windows are bulletproof.” Julia and Tanya gave her a look then pulled each other into the yard. Cleo watched them go, her back up on the side of the wall, RavenEye covering them but she didn’t follow. She listened to their messy footsteps turn to mild thumps through the grass then she stepped back into the house and shut the door when they reached the vehicle. She put her back against the door and squatted down waiting for Adonai to adjust again. She could hear two intruders sniffing in the night air and tracking through the house like hunting dogs. Their breathing was uneven and laboured like the break through the window and climb into the kitchen had tired them. The way they placed their steps was different, she could feel the weight discrepancy between them through the floorboards before the male duo came into view. They were silhouetted partners walking side-by-side and holding handguns out in front. The one on the right was taller, had a flashlight too and was pointing it at various items around the house. The beam lit up the tacky wallpaper then the floor so they could navigate the upturned tables. Cleo leaned her head back against the door, high dark plait pressing into her head as she pushed the RavenEye back in her thigh rig slowly until it clicked. Then she slid her hand inside her right sleeve to the knife strapped to her forearm and undid the push-stud to release the weapon, coolness of the handle familiarity as it came away. A torch beam shot past her face and forced Adonai to compensate. She breathed out and stood. Torchlight spotlighted her the same time she flicked her right wrist and ran at the wall on her right, enough momentum to go upwards. Her knife plunged towards the silhouettes as she pushed off the wall and somersaulted backwards, above probable trajectory if they opened fire. The following sound confirmed her blade struck the target, burrowed through the sinus cavity of the taller man and he dropped the torch as he went down. She landed the same time he did, only he was on his ass and losing half his brain out of a nostril. She had the CRONE in her hand the moment her boots hit the floor. The second man fired his weapon, desperate and off-target, and bent to make a grab for the torch. Cleo used the moment to slink by him in the dark so she was behind him then she put a hand on his shoulder as he straightened and fired a blue charge into his back. The guy was instantly gasping and clutching his chest, back rigid like something had hit him from the front instead. His gun clattered on the ground and he writhed. Cleo slid her arm around his neck and grabbed her other bicep, squeezing while he thrashed, keeping him in the chokehold until he was still and sucking shallow breaths. She saw a small tattoo on the back of his neck through Adonai as he slumped. It was a black spades symbol, the type found on playing cards. Her mouth was on the side in some kind of smile as he hit the floor at her feet.

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