Cover & Excerpt
When the Unelmoija and her sister dropped Ernie off at Harry’s house near Portland, Maine before vanishing into time, they hoped to give him a fresh start. Unfortunately, Ernie, a lanky shy man with a natural gift for technology and gadgets enhanced by his superhuman Weeia abilities, fell in with the wrong crowd. Left holding the bag for a crime he did not commit, Ernie is sentenced to the Weeia equivalent of public service, doing grub duty at the Marshals Academy, where the Weeia super cops are trained to keep the superhuman race hidden.
Breaking the rules there is not a good idea, but Ernie cannot resist a good challenge, never realizing he will be swept up in the middle of a sinister plot that could cost him his life.
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content/Theme(s): Superhumans, Sci Fi, Maine
Release Date: June 21, 2015
Publisher: Poyeen Publishing
Giveaway, Excerpt & More
Purchase link(s): Amazon AmazonAU AmazonCA AmazonUKExcerpt:
It was strange the way the color was gone. I was sure I saw a pool of bright red liquid not ten feet in front of me. I felt woozy. When I looked up the liquid had turned gray, everything was gray. I was wondering what had happened when Benjamin pulled on my sleeve. I turned toward him and noticed with relief the blue of his shirt. His face, a mask of fear and urgency, was returning to its normal cinnamon color. Although his lips were moving as if he was talking to me I didn't hear anything. For a fraction of a second I thought he might be pranking me.
I opened my mouth to ask him what had happened. Before I had a chance to speak, he grew agitated and motioned for me to follow him.
"Where are TMD?" I asked about our companions Tamzin, Mark and Dak as I rushed to catch up, noticing I couldn't hear myself.
He gave no signs of having heard me either. Instead he sped up, darting around the fast moving crowd closing in on the place we had come from seconds earlier. Once we cleared the gates he began to run. Not wanting to stay by myself I chased after him. By the time we stopped we were both panting and sweating. Although we had only run two or three miles we were moving at a pretty good clip. Besides, neither one of us had an athletic muscle to call our own. I ran my sleeve over my brow to wipe the sweat before it fell into my eyes.
"What's the matter..." I stopped when I heard no sound. I tried again after clearing my throat with the same results.
It was odd to speak without the words reaching my ears. I felt as if I was enveloped by a thick and invisible cotton cloud that separated me from all sound. I shook my head wanting to rid my ears of the sensation. It had no effect. When he saw me move my head Benjamin motioned to indicate he suffered from the same problem. He drew his hands together in front lifting them in a sharp upward movement, mimicking the explosion we had witnessed minutes before. Just because we were Weeia, humans with long lives and extraordinary attributes, didn't mean we didn't get hurt.
Pulling out his phone Benjamin texted Dak, his older brother and my least favorite of our small group. Where Benjamin was kind and without malice Dak had a mean streak a mile long. When he wanted me to do something he put on what I thought of as his fake face, and adopted a creepy tone of voice. Tamzin was the nicest of the bunch aside from Benjamin, and a big reason I hung out with them. I always felt she appreciated me the most. Mark was okay. He seldom spoke unless it was to agree with Dak. I figured he wanted to tag along and be liked. I couldn't blame him. If I was honest with myself I spent time with the group because I wanted to belong.
Benjamin turned the screen of his phone so I could read his brother's message. "Go home and keep your trap shut. Tell that big mouth to do the same."
Benjamin and I walked in silence to his car. The shock had faded a bit, but we were both in a somber mood. He dropped me off at Harry's house where I lived on a semipermanent basis. In addition to being my landlord Harry was my mentor and my friend. He didn't charge me a penny for rent, although he allowed me free reign of the grounds and my very own private accommodations, the in-laws quarters of his big house. All he asked was that I take care of his electronics and small tasks around the property in exchange for my rent. Each Weeia, with few exceptions, developed his or her special ability or two when they reached their early twenties. It could be something mundane like a superhuman sense of smell, sight, taste, touch, speed walking or any number of possibilities. Mine was an uncanny way with gadgets and everything electronic and mechanical.
Since Harry was out of town I had the place to myself. Guilt sank deep into my gut as I sat in the dark remembering what we had done. They said it was for grins. Nothing was supposed to go wrong. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. The crunched up metal, screaming voices and blood were proof their perfect plan had gone south. Whether I liked it or not, I had joined them. I was up to my eyeballs in alligators again, all because I was afraid to say no. I wanted them to like me.
When I turned on the news on television the announcer said vandals has broken into the fairgrounds and damaged one of the rides. In the studio, the anchor, sporting too many plastic surgeries and blond highlights, said with the same detached voice she used to report milk and strawberry recalls that because two people had died and several had been injured, it would be the subject of a detailed investigation. She went on to say the police were searching for whoever had tampered with the equipment, while the video showed emergency crews airlifting a teenager and forensic staff arriving at the scene.
Not for the first time, I worried about leaving traces of my work that might give me away. It was Dak and Mark who had broken into the park the first night. Benjamin and I had been too afraid to participate. Tamzin had a family dinner and stayed home until late that night. I wasn't careful, but on the other hand what I did was in the electrical and electronic systems of the ride.
"Your fingerprints could be on the equipment," Benjamin said when we saw each other the following morning. "Did you wear gloves or wipe your prints away?"
He had to know I didn't. He had been standing a few feet away, fidgeting and nervous while Dak had a smoke.
"That doesn't worry me," I said, leaving out any mention of the horrible guilt I felt about those poor people who were injured and died. "My fingerprints aren't in any government system. What about you? You helped them break in."
"I kept an eye open in case anyone was coming," he said. "They did the actual breaking in part. I didn't touch anything."
Several days passed with no news. Benjamin and I sighed with relief. Tamzin had gone out of town without a word to us. She wasn't replying to calls, emails or texts. We hadn't seen her since the accident. Although I heard Dak and Mark were back to their usual shenanigans I had not seen them since the accident.
"It looks like we're off the hook," Benjamin said to me one day when we got together. His confident tone belied the worried expression on his face and the beads of sweat above his upper lip. Whenever Benjamin was nervous that was the first place it showed. I raised an eyebrow in a questioning glance to which he responded "What?"
"Spit it out," I said.
"I don't know what you mean," he said, avoiding the subject for the rest of the time we spent together while I fixed a bug in his laptop. As soon as I finished he left in a hurry. "See you when I see you."
Two days later Harry, who had been home for less than a day, came to find me at my gadget table, which was littered from end to end with the usual half started gadgets and unfinished electronic repair items.
"What happened while I was out of town?" he asked in such a measured tone I sensed his concern before he completed the sentence. I knew my puzzled expression did nothing to help the situation when he blurted, "Oh, don't give me that 'who me' look."
"I, uh, was hoping it would—" I began to say when he cut me off.
"You were hoping deaths and injuries would disappear as if by magic?" he asked in the same tone.
What I didn't answer was that I had hoped it would all go away and Harry would never find out. A loud silence stood between us for what seemed a long time, but was only seconds. I shrank back not so much out of fear of the consequences whatever they might be, but because I had disappointed Harry, the one person in the world I never wanted to let down.
~~~~~~
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