Invasion! - Chapter 4

Since the Invasion! release got screwed up, I took a week off to calm down. Now, I'm reviewing it for typos one last time before I release it. If you want a free copy, it's not too late to sign up for my newsletter.

Also, I finally posted November's free short story, "A Place at the Table". It takes place in the Solar System Services, Inc. universe, a few centuries after "Alone Is Not Lonely".

In the meantime, here's Chapter 4 from Invasion!

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Otherwhere, Time - Irrelevant

Samantha Marie “Sam” Ridgeway St. James, the vampires’ goddess of Death, locked the gate to her afterlife and trudged through the black sand of Otherwhere, a region between places no one but the gods traversed. Even then, none of the deities she personally knew took Otherwhere, or the things that hunted here, lightly.

She wasn’t sure she liked being so busy lately. Even worse, she wasn’t sure she liked being worshipped. It gave her a weird feeling. She’d never been the center of attention when she’d been alive. Now, it was just plain uncomfortable. But when the dying called for her, she had to respond.

And very few of the dead were people she personally knew. Ares and Morrigan had ripped her new assholes for turning Duncan, Alex, and Connie into gods like her when the stupid, fucking dino demons had killed the three of them. But according to Sam’s deity pals, the other pantheons would regard Sam making gods out of more of her dead loved ones as an act of war.

Ares and Morrigan would know as the patrons of War in each of their pantheons.

The warning came because Alex’s death was technically the Incan god of Death Supay’s fault. Alex made the mistake of promising Sam’s Incan counterpart he’d hunt down the assholes who stole Supay’s tumi, the symbol of his power. Which Alex accomplished, a few seconds before Sam engaged the dinosaur god trying to break into her home dimension, causing Mount Rainier to erupt.

Come to think of it, Puget Sound didn’t look much better than Otherwhere these days.

The sepia sky in the between space looked bleaker than normal, and a sharp, arid breeze snapped her long black coat against her legs. In the distance, something howled. Something she didn’t recognize as a denizen of Otherwhere. A chorus of familiar shrieks and screams answered the initial howl.

The birdcats hunted something, which wasn’t a good sign.

She stopped and sniffed the air. The odor of something living penetrated the acrid scent of Otherwhere. Ginger mixed with something else. The second scent was vaguely familiar. She sniffed again. Not quite the smell of a dinosaur demon, but still slightly reptilian. But the ginger scent she definitely knew.

Now, why the hell would any witch be stupid enough to enter Otherwhere? Not even a god in their right mind would come here unless they were desperate. Only death resided here. A living soul would attract the undead predators who prowled this place, which explains the familiar shrieks and screams. And there were worse things than the birdcats in Otherwhere.

Sam took another deep breath. Along with the ginger came the smells of rotting jungle vegetation and—

She sniffed again. Chinese food? But underneath them all was the odor of fresh apples.

Humans. More than one.

Shit.

Sam ran in the direction of the living. Behind her came the skittering of chitonous feet on the diamond-sharp sand. She glanced behind her. Eyes glowed blue and orange amongst the ever changing shadows. Another pride of birdcats followed her.

Fuckity-fuck. If she didn’t reach the humans first—

Well, watching someone’s soul being eaten wasn’t a pretty sight.