Excerpt Thursday: CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER
It’s Excerpt Thursday! This week’s excerpt is from CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER.
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I crossed the street and walked into the parking lot. Half of the street lamps were out, and the freeway passed over the lot, the constant rumble of traffic echoing off the massive concrete pillars. Groups of young men stood in the shadows, speaking to each other in loud voices. Homeland Security did regular sweeps through this neighborhood, and anyone not under the protection of Mr. Rojo and his bribes to the local commander would find themselves getting flogged on a Punishment Day video. A few of the men glanced my way, but I held the Mask in place, and they left me alone. No one wanted to get on Mr. Rojo’s bad side.
My battered van sat beneath one of the functioning lamps. It was a big old Royal Motors Caravanserai model, designed to hold fifteen people, painted a dull beige with 200,000 miles on the odometer, but it worked quite well when I needed to travel cross-country. I could have taken the train or the zeppelin, but that left records, and records were bad things for someone in my line of work. It was safer to drive anonymously across the country than to fly or take the train.
I unlocked the driver’s side door and climbed in, making sure to lock it behind me. I wanted to drop the Mask, close my eyes, and rest, but that would have been suicidal. Instead I glanced at the golden medallion I had taken from the dead anthrophage. I was sure there was a spell of some kind on it, but I could investigate the thing later. I tossed it into the back of the van and started the old Caravanserai. The engine rumbled to life, and I backed out and put the vehicle into drive, rolling my way down the aisles of cars.
I turned around one of the massive concrete pillars, and a surge of fear went through me.
A gaunt man walked down the center of the aisle, clad in a trim black suit, his hair close-cropped.
He looked absolutely identical to the disguised anthrophage I had killed outside the Silver Dollar. The man’s shadowed eyes met mine, and he started to change, his human guise dropping away to reveal the grotesque features of an anthrophage.
I stomped on the gas.
The anthrophage’s yellow eyes just had time to widen.
The creature hadn’t seen that coming.
The van’s bumper hit him in the waist, and I ran right over him and kept going. I felt a nasty thump, and then I spun the wheel, the tires squealing as I slid onto the street and slammed my foot onto the gas. The big van surged forward, shooting past the Silver Dollar, and a short time later I was on the freeway, driving exactly the speed limit to keep from attracting the attention of Homeland Security patrolmen. Traffic in Los Angeles is horrendous, even at one in the morning on a weeknight, but about an hour later I was out of the city, past the suburbs, and heading into the desert.
-JM