It's Monday, so I'll post an excerpt. This time it's from Touch of Danger, the first volume in the Three Worlds Saga. This is the book you get free when you sign up for my seldom-appearing newsletter. Yep, this book has SUPERHEROES. But here our super guy, Londo (aka Valiant) has just helped our timid (but psychic) heroine, Lina, escape a burning hotel on an island in the south Pacific. Lon's had most of his powers temporarily stripped from him by Bad. Guys, and has dislocated his shoulder in the escape. He has also discovered that everyone else at the hotel has mysteriously disappeared. Let's peek at the two:
He turned back to her and took her measure from a more professional standpoint. Was there anything in her open and rather inept body language that disguised deceit? “Except you.”
“What? Where are all the others?” She snapped to attention, her gaze raking the windows and grounds of the hotel. “But just thirty or forty minutes ago, there were maybe six people in the pool, another fifteen or so just walking around. I was surprised because it was so early. There was a big group of Australians or New Zealanders here, some sort of convention. They were all men. Creepy men. They’ve been running around drunk all night. I bet you anything one of them started this.”
“Eh bien, they’re not here now.”
“That’s impossible,” the girl said flatly. “They must be on the other side of the hotel.”
There was no one trapped in any windows. Lon’s paravision still operated to an extent. Through the fog of smoke the beach showed deserted as well. The girl ran across the lawn to the other side of the building and the gravel parking lot there—empty.
Lon followed her, holding his mangled arm and grunting. “We need to get out of here,” he told her. “The reason I’m powerless—”
As she turned to face him her eyes went wide. She sucked in a breath and leapt for him.
“Get down!” she yelled, taking him down with her onto the sharp gravel with no regard for his shoulder.
Ba-whu-whoom!A curtain of fire and glass, cement and wood splinters blasted through the smoke.
Valiant looked up through the pain to see a sheet of glass flying through the space he’d just been taking up. If he had been standing there—
The girl put her palm on his forehead and pushed down. “There’s something else,” she said, and then another explosion went off, this one even closer than the last.
Shock wave! A wall of air lifted them up and threw them across the hotel lawn. He heard her cry out as she landed, but then he did, too. It felt like someone sledge hammered his shoulder. All his senses except touch blanked as agony jolted through him down to his feet.
He shouted his torment. Tears of pain ran down his face. Stop it, stop it! Get control!He was still alive. He needed to protect the girl!
Cracking his burning eyes open, he squinted back at the hotel. Everything was gone—leveled. Only piles of cement blocks and debris remained. A pea-soup haze of yellow dust left from disintegrating masonry swirled in a sour, choking cloud he could feel as distinct particles when he breathed. Where was the girl? Londo coughed through the filter of his hand as he peered around.
A hundred feet from him the ocean breeze lifted the dust-covered hem of her nightie, but she lay very still.
In his life he’d seen far too many other still bodies.
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