CrossTown
Loren W Cooper
Genre: Fantasy/SF
Publisher: Red Hen Books
Date of Publication: Nov 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1939096029
Number of pages: 340
Word Count: 95000
Cover Artist: Red Hen Staff Artist
Tagline: CrossTown is the crossroads of possibility.
Book Description:
Zethus is a sorcerer―a self-described spiritual thug for hire. He makes his living in CrossTown, a place where the manyworld hypothesis of modern physics manifests itself, where possibilities and probabilities overlap.
Caught up in a web of intrigue as he investigates the death of his master, Corvinus, and pursued by agents that want to erase all knowledge of Corvinus’ work, Zethus discovers that the key to his master’s murder lies in the last project he had pursued before his death. The roots of this project lie deep in the past, at the origin of CrossTown’s fractured reality.
Once he understands the stakes, Zethus must make the dangerous journey to the cradle of history. The price he must pay to find the answers he seeks will threaten everything he holds dear―including his own humanity.
“Beware the road outside your front door, for it is all at once old friend and passing stranger.” –CrossTown
“A sorcerer explores the frontier of theoretical physics.” Publisher’s Weekly
Excerpt:
Dark, lush trees heavy with black fruit
covered the grounds of Eliza Drake's holding.
The sun never shone there. Only
certain lichens grew under the trees, taking sustenance from the minerals of
the rocks and moisture from the dew. The
trees nourished themselves on blood, or so I had been given to understand. I walked cautiously through the trees, down a
well-worn path lit dimly by a pale glow rising from the lichens.
That landscape hadn’t occurred
naturally. Eliza could shape the
Ways. Old in the powers of the vampire
kind, she could also touch the life and growth in living things and twist that
life into new forms. She had the same
touch for death, or so I had heard. I
believed what I had heard, considering the size and nature of her estates and
her retinue. On the other hand, in all
the time we had spent together I had never seen any sign of her overt power,
though I had a feel for her considerable ability to mold the Ways.
The path divided, one branch continuing on
into the forest, the other leading to an enormous manor house, every window
ablaze with light. Music filtered out
and into the night--the sounds of fiddles and pipes predominating. Inside, I felt certain, someone would be
attempting a jig.
I
had decided to be circumspect with Eliza.
Cautious but truthful. It seemed
the safest course I could live with.
I walked up to the brick portico and gave
the chain a good hard pull. I didn’t
know if Eliza would be at this particular manor or not (she had a few) but I
figured someone here would let her know of my presence one way or another. The door opened after a brief pause, letting
a rush of light and music come roaring out into the night.
A woman stood in the doorway, dressed in
crimson--even the ribbons in her hair were bright red. The red went well with her pale skin, green
eyes, and dark hair. She looked me over
disdainfully.
“Your fangs are showing, Teila,” I told
her mildly, letting Shaper’s facade slip away.
She laughed. “Zethus!
It’s been a while since you’ve graced us with your presence. It looks like it’s been a rough day.” She smiled and beckoned me into the house.
I wiped my feet and stepped across the
threshold carefully. “Is Eliza here?”
Teila nodded and closed the door behind
me. “She’s upstairs. She’ll be happy to hear that you’ve accepted
her invitation.”
I had expected that the unread missive
from Eliza had contained a more recent invitation, in addition to the standing
invitation she had extended to me. She
was a socialite, like most of the vampire kind, constantly sending numerous
invitations of one sort or another. Some
were less dangerous to accept than others.
I let Teila take my filthy, ragged coat
and my battered hat. She disappeared
into another room. When she returned,
she paused to lay fingers on the rents visible in my clothing. “You need a new suit.”
“A seamstress would be cheaper.”
She laughed, and linked arms with me. “Let’s go inside.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you planning to let Eliza know that
I’m here?”
“Already done, my dear.” She gave me a wink.
“Ah.”
Teila, predictably enough, led me to the
bar. On an enormous expanse of gleaming
floor a number of people, mostly human in appearance, danced to music from a
band whose shapes had a tendency to ebb and flow with the harmony. The gray horse on drums kept up a complicated
roll of precision percussion, but the six-foot rabbit on fiddle stole the show,
his long ears twitching in time to the rhythm.
Teila leaned close. “No one plays Irish like the Pooka.”
I nodded and rested my forearms on the twenty
foot long, massive length of smooth polished dark wood that surfaced the
bar. It had been a long day. Events were beginning to catch up with me. I forced myself to remember that Eliza
Drake’s was not the place to be relaxing my guard, not matter how warm and
comfortable the surroundings seemed.
I looked down the length of the bar, past
the bartender, who gave me a friendly nod.
Couples nestled together at tables set strategically around the parlor,
absorbed in the pleasure of the moment and the delight of the chase. I wondered idly how many of the guests who
wore a human guise still retained their humanity. A lone human at a party in NightTown can
quickly find himself classified as an hors d’oeuvre.
A man wearing white ruffles under a black evening
jacket sat down at my other side, and proceeded to study me in a rude
manner. I returned the favor. Not one black hair strayed from its appointed
place on his head; his features were dark, narrow, and vaguely Spanish; his
clothing and jewelry were expensive and meant to look it. When he spoke, his voice was cultured and
what he thought sounded menacing.
“You’re a little out of your depth here, aren’t you?”
I had never been fond of smoothies, con
men, or ladies’ men. Call it the thug in
me. The son of a bitch seemed to be
trying for all three. I don’t like to be
threatened, and I hadn’t had the best of days.
“Who are you?” I snarled in return.
“Other than a major stockholder in Bryll Cream?”
He flinched, then his lips curled back
from his long, pointed teeth. The Legion
bristled as I sneered at him, but I relaxed as a delicate hand drifted down
from behind me to pull back the sleeve of my ragged shirt. “See those marks? That’s a captive Swarm of Tindalans. If you managed to get lucky and kill him
before he ripped what little remains of your soul out and bound it into a pile
of dog shit, where it belongs, the Tindalans would tear you apart, inside and out.”
His eyebrows shot up as he looked past
me. “Is this to be your treat,
tonight? I hadn’t meant to poach. Though I thought you had more refined
tastes.”
A dark woman in white eased into view, her
full mouth smiling. “I don’t recall
inviting you, Emory.”
He smirked. “I go where I please. I don’t have to beg for scraps from your
table anymore.”
“Then why are you here?” the dark woman
asked, ice in her voice. “There’s
nothing here for you, Emory. Find your
own kind, if you can. Hunt your own
grounds. Don’t leech off mine.”
“Leech, is it?” Emory’s nose wrinkled in a snarl, his lips
drew back to show his extended fangs.
With his eyes smoldering like red coals, he suddenly didn’t look such a
ladies’ man. The bartender leaned across
the bar, a pale light rising in his eyes.
Emory’s glance shifted between the dark lady, the bartender, and
me. Finding no sympathy or fear in any
of our faces, he turned and left in a swirl of coat tails.
A number of the people in the room stopped
to applaud politely as the dark lady called after him, “That’s right,
Emory--you go running back to momma.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes
sparkling. “I’m glad to see you, Zethus,
even if you are looking a little scruffy.
It’s been a while.”
“Not so long, Eliza,” I responded
gently. “Last winter, subjective.”
The shade of her eyes darkened. “Here, it felt like an eternity,” she said.
The bartender set a wicker basket on the
counter.
“Ready for a picnic?” Eliza asked, cocking
her head at me.
I laughed incredulously. “You didn’t know I would show up.”
Her smile faded. “I’ve had a basket waiting, ready to go,
every time I’ve invited you.”
I picked the basket up with my left
hand. “Well then, we’d better not let
this one go to waste.”
The moon had the rich color of glacial
ice. Fat and full, it washed the glade
with pale light. I pulled velvet
blankets out of the basket and spread them out over a bed of thick, soft
lichen. Eliza had chosen the spot, of
course. We settled there under the
trees, watching the moon. She drank wine
while I ate a steak sandwich and a couple of firm, juicy apples, washed down
with sweet red wine.
As I finished, Eliza grinned at me. “You were hungry. You’re on the run again?”
“It’s not an everyday thing,” I sputtered.
“For some people it’s not.” She ran a finger lightly down my cheek. “For others...”
I looked at the wine, as dark and rich and
red as blood, and set the cup down.
“Corvinus is dead, you know. I
have the Fae after me and a bounty on my head.”
“I heard about Corvinus,” Eliza said
softly. “The Whitesnakes involved there
as well, do you think?”
I yawned.
“I’m not sure yet. I don’t know
enough.”
She put her arm around me, gently turned
me, and pulled me back against her.
“Relax here for a while. You’re
safe with me.”
Curiously enough, I was and I knew
it. I could trust Eliza. She was a creature of her word. My concern with Eliza wasn’t due to a lack of
trust: I feared more the price I might pay for enjoying her company too much.
I relaxed, easing down until I could pillow
my head in her lap. She rubbed the back
of my neck with one hand and picked up my right arm with the other. “And what is your answer tonight?” she asked
me quietly.
I felt a thrill of fear and desire work
its way up my spine as she softly kissed the veins of my wrist. “My answer is the same, I’m afraid. That immortality comes at too high a price.”
I wanted life, yes. I clung to life, and youth. But I loved all that the worlds could offer,
as well. I had no desire to accept any
bargain that limited me so severely. I
wouldn’t give up the sun for anyone, not even Eliza. So she always asked, and my answer never
changed. Every choice has a price. It’s good to understand that before signing
any contracts. I wished I had kept that
in mind when I had dealt with Titania.
Then there’s the diet. I understand vampires don’t manage too well
on blood that isn’t human. Something
about needing to nourish themselves on more than simply the blood, but the
vitality, the experience, the heart, mind and soul. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the
idea of anyone else paying the price for my extended life. I didn’t bother myself with anyone else’s
choices so long as their choices didn’t threaten me directly—Eliza had to live
with herself, and made what compromises she felt necessary. But I could control what choices I made, and
the prices I paid.
Besides, I loved the hot juicy texture of
steak in my mouth, the crisp tart snap of a firm apple, the warm golden crunch
of fried chicken and the cold smooth glide of ice cream. The idea of a liquid diet for eternity didn’t
appeal to me.
In spite of all that, my breathing came
with difficulty as she kissed my throat, the chill of her lips hovering over
the pulse of the blood before she drew back and looked me in the eye. “I would not be such a harsh mistress.”
“That’s not what I fear,” I told her
firmly.
She smiled sadly. “I know.”
Her mouth moved to mine, and time passed as we danced together, under
the shade of the trees, in the light of the moon. Later, I felt the day catching up with me,
and I grinned up at her. “No tricks,
now.”
Her eyes smoldered in the shadows. “I’ll never take advantage of you, you
know. When you fall to me, it will be of
your own free will.”
Still grinning, thinking about temptation,
I faded to sleep.
Chapter XII
Fear, rage and sudden isolation drove me
from pleasant dreams to madness. I
reached into the darkness with all the strength I had in me, seeking to break
bonds I could sense but not touch.
A slap shocked me awake, bringing the
metallic taste of blood to my mouth. I
opened my eyes to see Eliza silhouetted above me, open hand drawn back to
deliver another blow. I rolled away from
her and to my feet in one motion and looked out into the shadows and moonlight
of Eliza’s glade. I felt the ingathering
power welling up from within me. Trying
to contact the Legion felt like fighting an eiderdown quilt, but I could feel
the White Wolf reaching through from his side.
I stood in the tangle of blankets and gave some direction to the power
surging up through me.
That power called to the storm clouds
roiling in the darkness above. Lightning
flashed down, blowing one of Eliza’s trees to splinters and nearly deafening me
with the hot crackling fury of the strike.
More power rose up from the fortress of my spirit, so I molded it, the
White Wolf’s paws over my hands like spiritual gloves, and hurled it from
me.
A mighty wind rose around the mossy bed
where Eliza stood next to me, whirling, rose to the clouds, then dropped back
in a funnel to touch delicately to earth less than two hundred paces away from
us. The funnel uprooted trees and
smashed them down against their fellows in a fearsome display of strength. Then, as abruptly as it had all begun, the
winds subsided and peace slowly descended on the forest. A swath of destruction had been cut through
the middle of Eliza’s glade. Thick, dark
red droplets seeped from split trunks and broken branches.
I felt Eliza’s hand run along my
shoulder. “Trying to impress me?” Her expression and tone were light.
I shuddered and turned away from the
carnage. I fought nausea. “Digestion problems, I think. It’s never been this bad.”
She started rubbing the tension out of my
neck. “Tell me about it.”
So we sat back under the trees, looking
out over the wreckage of the lightning and the wind, and I told her about my
recent encounters. At the same time, I
held a discussion with Blade and the White Wolf.
“It’s from within.” The White Wolf didn’t look happy.
“But it’s not focused.” Blade’s expression was, if anything, even
less cheerful than the White Wolf’s.
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t isolate it,” Blade said
grimly. “There’s a single force behind
it, something that would be as happy to see you dead as anything else, but the
source of the attacks...it doesn’t feel like one entity. It feels spread out.”
I thought about that. “That would fit with the Gold’s technique:
every member of the Legion absorbed a significant amount of unfocused energy
when we took down the Gold’s legion.
What if it’s working through them?”
“It doesn’t feel like the Gold,” the White
Wolf growled. “And that’s not the only
problem.”
“Explain.”
Blade answered first. “I agree with the White Wolf. It doesn’t feel like the Gold’s work. There’s a consistent element of deception here,
and considerable subtlety. Do you
remember the dream?”
I fought back a shudder. “Not clearly.”
“The dream was twisted, and you were
slowly cut off from your surroundings by mounting filth,” Blade said. “Deception and decay were not tools the Gold commonly
used. The jigsaw man, Vincent’s ghost,
was another story. The attack was
subtle. The dream turned and bound you,
and a barrier rose between you and your own Legion, and then something called
up power from the Legion.”
That startled me. “From the Legion.”
The White Wolf snarled assent. “From myself among others. It felt as if my own power had gained an
independent will.”
“You’re communing with your ghosts,” Eliza
said.
“We’ll finish this later,” I told the two
of them, and gave her my full attention.
“My apologies.”
“No need for apologies,” she
answered. “I can understand your concern
and need to investigate. What happened?”
I
shifted uncomfortably. “Good
question. I consumed some considerable
power lately--more at one time than I ever have before. I think that may be causing me some
problems. I may have an internal
insurrection brewing.”
“Bad timing,” Eliza noted, her gaze sharp
and attentive. “You need to quell that
insurrection before you’re too deep in the process of dealing with your
hunters. You have too many distractions
now—this matter of the Whitesnakes, Fetch on your trail, and all the rest. This time you were with me. I felt your power rousing and woke you, which
wasn’t as easy as it could have been.
Considering the damage to the trees, I’m glad that you had enough
control to redirect what was called.
Next time you might not be so lucky.”
“You have a point.” She seemed a little stiff, a bit more rigid
where her body brushed against mine. I
knew how she felt. Neither of us had any
particular inclination to reveal too much to anyone else, and what she had seen
left us both a little uncomfortable.
I spared a glance for the
devastation. Tiny, naked humanoids,
their pale skin lambent in the moonlight, were emerging from the shadows to lap
at the fluid seeping from the broken ends of branches with long, thin
tongues. I shuddered and looked away.
“You should stay here until you have laid
this matter to rest,” Eliza said. “I can
protect you from Fetch. His strength is
death and age--I can resist him. I could
teach you to resist him as well, if you would let me bring you over into the
Night. Together, we could face him
down. I would help you, if you would let
me. Is the price really so high? It’s not such a bad existence. And I would make the passage easy for you.”
I smiled at her, thinking of what it must
cost her to make that offer outright. I
traced a line down Eliza’s cheekbone from eye to mouth, and denied her
gently. “You never give up, do you? This isn’t the way for me. I want it all, you know. Life, youth, enough power to be
independent. And I don’t want to pay too
high a price.”
“You don’t know what you’re risking,”
Eliza argued. “You don’t know what
you’re up against. I fear that if you
chase this thing too far, you’ll find only death. Think about Corvinus. He was older than you, stronger, more
subtle. He staked it all and lost. Why don’t you settle here until this blows
over? Or take sanctuary with CrossTerPol
and or the Union and Emerantha Pale if you’re not comfortable here?”
“The reason I live in CrossTown is because
of all it has to offer,” I told her bluntly.
“If I can’t settle with Fetch and the Whitesnakes, I’ll have to give up
everything I’ve worked for. I’ll never
be able to live freely in CrossTown, or walk the Ways without always looking
behind me. If I can’t live this life
I’ve chosen, that’s just as good as dying.”
I thought about that. Even if I did not have an obligation to my
late master, I knew I had no choice any more.
I had to resolve this problem with Faerie, with the Whitesnakes, if I
meant to go on living in CrossTown. At
the same time, I suspected that there must be some connection with Corvinus’ murder
and my present troubles.
“NightTown isn’t enough for you.” She caught and held my gaze. “Staying here with me isn’t enough.”
I looked her in the eye for a long moment
of silence. “No,” I said at last.
About the Author:
Loren W Cooper is the author of four novels, one short story collection and one nonfiction work. He has won the NESFA in 1998 and the EPPIE for Best Anthology in 2001. He is married with two daughters. He currently lives in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Favorite authors include Zelazny, Hammet, Steakley, and Catton. Loren Currently works for Hewlett-Packard.
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