Showing results by narrator "Christopher walker" in All Categories

My name is Rylee and I was a Tracker. The final battle is over and The Blood of the Lost was spilled. In the aftermath, the humans still have mysteries they call upon me for. Except I can no longer Track, and my new abilities terrify me. A salvage is offered to me, and with it a chance to redeem myself. A missing girl, her brother desperate to find her. Simple and straightforward, this salvage should be a piece of cake—and a chance to learn some discipline with my powers. Except the girl is somehow tied to the world of the Elementals, and with that comes a danger I could never have expected.

While out scouting in southern Indiana, Alessa Duvalier comes across a Kurian Conference being attended by every major military sect the Kurians have in the Midwest. Taking advantage of the strategic opportunity to cripple their enemy, Alessa and her warriors strike and achieve victory—only to discover an even greater threat to humanity. Most of the world's resistance leaders and the Lifeweavers are gathering for a peace conference in Helsinki, Finland, and according to the intelligence materials Alessa recovered during her raid, the Kurians have already inserted an agent among the delegates.

D is a vampire hunter—and he's just been paid ten times his asking price to do exactly that, an assignment to destroy Duke Van Doren, administrator of the northern Frontier. Among the complications are that no less than three other groups, each with their own agenda, are headed for the Duke themselves...and D's supposed to hang back from striking until his target has eliminated all three! The question is, will the Duke oblige the terms of the contract—or does he actually want to be destroyed?

After surviving countless perils and dangers, including an examination by the Blood Council, Fred is preparing to take on his most important adventure to date: marrying Krystal. That is, if he can get everything handled in time. Visiting Boarback, hiring new staff, clearing out his schedule for a honeymoon; there’s no shortage of tasks to check off before the big day arrives. But not everyone views the occasion in such a happy light. With new dangers looming, old debts raised, and grudges rekindled, it’ll take everything Fred has to finally make it down the aisle.

On a crisp January day, a presidential inauguration day, a one-megaton blast ripped through the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. Subsequent explosions around the globe changed the face and the shape of the earth forever. Out of the ruins emerged Deathlands, a world that conspired against survival. In the blasted heart of the new America, a group of men and women plan desperately to escape the eerie wastes and mutated life forms of their nuclear hell.

He is the Leonardo da Vinci of his age, but his insights violate the rules of the Order magic of Recluce, and in order to pursue his invention he must go into exile - in the lands of Chaos. Tortured by the knowledge that to preserve Order he must create new devices for war, Dorrin stands between Recluce and the forces of the Chaos that seek to destroy it.

Master thief, rogue and chancer Gideon Sable is back for another fast-paced supernatural heist—and this time he has the vault of a Las Vegas casino in his sights. Judi Rifkin is one of the world's most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with. And Gideon Sable—thief, rogue and chancer—owes her a very large favour. Judi makes him an offer he can't refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, kept safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she'll wipe the slate clean.

Much to Clothahump the Wizard's distress, ex-hippie Jon-Tom and Talea's son Buncan wants to be a questing hero, but not a spellsinger. Instead he forms a band with Mudge's kids, otters Noctor and Squill, one that creates a wild unpredictable magic - based on rap! Then an anteater arrives with rumours about a dangerous legend. Soon the young rappers, aided by a drunk rhino, are off on an odyssey to a fortress where evil sorcerers threaten the world. And where only the unknown power of Buncan's beat can stop the hordes of hideous hybrids.

In a world where any act of magic could open a portal to hell, the Order insures that no wizard will live to summon devils, and will kill as many innocent people as they must to prevent that greater horror. After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, the village girl Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village.

World Peace turns into global civil war. In the future, the leaders of Hive nations—nations without fixed location—clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Rather than accepting a marriage arranged by his mother, the powerful military matriarch of Westwind, Creslin chooses exile, setting out to find his own identity and developing his magical talents through conflict with the enigmatic white wizards of Candar. What Creslin doesn't know he stands in the way of their plot to subjugate the world.

The Great Reawakening did not come quietly. Across the country and in every nation, people began “coming up Latent,” developing terrifying powers - summoning storms, raising the dead, and setting everything they touch ablaze. Those who Manifest must choose: become a sheepdog who protects the flock or a wolf who devours it. In the wake of a bloody battle at Forward Operating Base Frontier and a presidential impeachment, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Thorsson, call sign “Harlequin,” becomes a national hero and a pariah to the military that is the only family he’s ever known.

Young Gideon Smith has seen things that no green lad of Her Majesty’s dominion should ever experience. Through a series of incredible events Gideon has become the newest Hero of the Empire. But Gideon is a man with a mission, for the dreaded Texas pirate Louis Cockayne has stolen the mechanical clockwork girl Maria, along with a most fantastical weapon - a great brass dragon that was unearthed beneath ancient Egyptian soil. Maria is the only one who can pilot the beast, so Cockayne has taken girl and dragon off to points east.

Nylan, the only man among the matriarchal band of “angels” marooned on the high plateau of Candar. Forced to seek a life elsewhere, Nylan decends into a world of warring kingdoms and strange magics in search of a peaceful life with his wife and infant son. His talents, however, make him a valuable weapon - and so the war between chaos and order begins anew.  

They say that home is where the heart is. And no one knows that better than Perley Gates. After helping the lovely Miss Emma Slocum reunite with her sister’s family in Bison Gap, Perley can’t wait to rejoin his own kin at the Triple-G Ranch. No sooner does Perley settle in when he receives an alarming telegram from Bison Gap. Emma’s brother-in-law has been murdered. Her sister wants justice. And Perley is their only hope to get it. Perley can’t refuse a family in need. So he saddles up with his salty cowhand Possum Smith and heads to Bison Gap.

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war, a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end. For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed location, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds. And yet the balance is beginning to give way.

For five long years, the Adversary and his infernal allies have ruled the earth, herding mankind into demon-controlled enclaves and hunting those that remain near to extinction. The Templars, a mere shadow of their once-powerful organization, have continued to fight against overwhelming odds, but for many hope and a belief in a human victory are things of the past. Then, from the depths of the Beyond, a pair of legends emerge.  

Shona Scott would much rather putter in her garden than deal with brides that get hysterical over floral arrangements. Fed up, she quits the wedding business and renovates a small cottage on her property for holiday rentals. Without the weddings crowding her calendar, Shona will finally get some time to explore a newfound talent. An unexplainable one, at that.

Cursed with a magic ring that forbids skullduggery, Tyvian Reldamar’s life of crime is sadly behind him. Now reduced to fencing moldy relics and wheedling favors from petty nobility, he’s pretty sure his life can’t get any worse. That is until he hears that his old nemesis, Myreon Alafarr, has been framed for a crime she didn’t commit and turned to stone in a penitentiary garden.

"Work Sets You Free" by David Barnett is an original short story featuring the protagonist of the forthcoming novel Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Gideon is a young fisherman in Yorkshire, England, in an alternate 1890, who embarks on a journey to find Captain Lucian Trigger, the famed Hero of the Empire, to deal with a mystery plaguing his home village.