I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the TRAVELERS by Brett Riley Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Brett Riley
Pub. Date: August 2, 2022
Publisher: Imbrifex Books
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, Audiobook
Pages: 311
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org
Falling in love. Evading the authorities. Chasing the rabbits.
Now high school sophomores, the self-styled “Freaks” are back in class in quiet Quapaw City, Arkansas. They grapple with the ordinary challenges of everyday teen life: cliques, cars, and crushes. While everything appears normal on the surface, looks have rarely been more deceiving. A secret government task force—fully aware of the unusual powers the Freaks have acquired—is determined to capture them. Even as the mysterious Baltar Sterne shares ancient wisdom and offers hope, a new menace silently emerges in the woods outside of town. Clever, inexorable, and far more lethal than the Freaks’ first superhuman foe, this traveler from another world possesses powers that can only be described as godlike. The Freaks and their town will be tested in horrific ways they are powerless to predict or even imagine.
Reviews:
“Riley
weaves explorations of anger issues and budding romance as well as forthrightly
confronted themes of racial, religious, and class conflict.”—Kirkus Book
Review
“Riley
possesses a rare, writerly ability to remain in the moment once the action
heats up. In this installment, the Freaks face their most dangerous enemy yet,
and the menace fairly leaps off the page.”—PaulEberly.com
"The
book is riveting. Compelling and totally different. I read it one sitting and
was seriously bummed it had to end. His writing is remarkable and had me
wanting more. I devoured Travelers and his ones before
this."—Rubie Clark, @RubieReads
“Brett Riley
has done it again, as he continues his story of teenage supers battling
monsters – fantasy beasts and Government agents alike. An enthralling, fast
paced, fantasy horror.”—Peter Thorburn, UK educator
“A great
spin on the superhero story, told with genuine depth.”—Mark Waid,
best-selling author of History of the Marvel Universe, Doctor
Strange, and Superman Birthright.
“A fun and
fresh twist on the superhero story!”—Jennifer Brody/Vera Strange, author
of The 13th Continuum Trilogy, Spectre Deep 6, and
the Disney Chills series.
CHAPTER ONE
I was the last to travel through the hole between worlds, and when I arrived, I filled it in behind me. The children who opened the aperture believe they undid their night’s work by closing their book of magic, as if something begun with an ancient dance and a song could be stopped so easily. They were wrong.
On that night, I had been sitting on my green hill by the river of time, feasting on the meat of a deer older than white man’s language. A ripping sound, like some shredded heavy cloth, and then the hole burst into being, glowing like a star. I shielded my eyes. The children’s song floated through, faint at first, then louder, like the approach of war parties. Shadows danced in circles, spirits perhaps, and then the starlight flared, and the opening churned and swirled—a nexus. Beasts from other worlds appeared and vanished, leaping or being sucked into the land where the children sang. I had encountered these creatures or their kin on my journeys across the omniverse. Some were gentle, some dangerous. Some could devour a civilization, a world, a whole plane. Many, many more were drawn to the light as fire lures certain insects. I knew that, in moments, those beings would reach the nexus and cross over. But still I sat, for this event concerned me not at all. Hardly the first time some brash fool had doomed its fellows.
Then the song’s words grew louder, and I recognized the language. Not mine or that of the humans I once walked among, but the tongue of that people’s great enemy. The singers came from my native land, or one very like it on the sidereal chain. A pup from an infinite litter that was itself only one of a limitless species. The omniverse was deep and wide and always growing. Even such as I could never see it all.
But that world. Its people. Maybe even my world and not one of its reflections.
I would not let them die in the mouths of monsters and mad gods. Some other way, yes, as all things must die. But not that way. And so I hurled myself through, knocking aside the horrors that had not yet passed over. I landed in a tiny lodge filled with trinkets and tools—bladed weapons white people used to tame the land, boxes full of memories. On the ground lay children dressed in long, coarse garments. Two slept. The rest stared into the starlight they had summoned, shielding their eyes. Their terror struck me like a demon wind. In the middle of the lodge, their book lay open, a line of sheer power connecting its pages to the bottomless gap in the fabric of being. I opened my mouth and spat out half my heart. As the children struggled, I threw it into their aperture, where it grew and grew until it squeezed the killing light out of this reality, diverting that world-crushing power to the end of the sky.
Then, darkness.
One of the lodge’s walls had been destroyed from the inside. Splinters and dust lay everywhere. A great force had burst through. One of my fellow travelers.
The children still lay at my feet, dazzled and sluggish. Their raiment was strange, as if they had cut holes in blankets and wore them like skins. Even then, the smallest coals of power glowed inside them. They had taken their first steps down a hard trail from which they would likely not return. Though their book had closed when I destroyed the nexus, it emanated dark power in gusts both intermittent and rank. Where had children found such a tome? And how had no one taught them the sly ways written language can steal your life and send your tribe west into the sunset?
I stepped outside, each movement a war with myself. I had walked the paths between universes, but now, if I had brought a horse, I would have ridden even those few steps. Vomiting out your heart leaves you weary, diminished.
The night air kissed my fur. The grass was cool under my feet. On the wind, an odor like burning hair, the scent of anger mixed with confusion—my fellow travelers.
I needed to see them. I became a falcon and soared high above the trees.
Riding the winds, I found another scent, like that of the kill a bear leaves half buried to season itself with decay. But where was the corpse? Those winds spoke of smoke-choked skies and melting ice, of herds and flocks hunted and butchered until not even the ghosts of their footprints remained, of fouled rivers and misshapen fish and thick forests cut down to the roots.
This was my homeland, where I had walked for centuries, tricking the First Peoples and fattening myself on the forest’s plenty. But it was not the world as I had left it.
I flew higher, watching those that did not belong here. Each had already gone its own way, as if the presence of the others repelled it. My eyes grew heavy. Sleep would come soon.
As the travelers moved beyond the borders of the village, I marked them. Down in the stone waterway beneath the city fled a Go’kan, a four-armed blood-drinker bigger than any bear. I knew him. A prince of his people, his name was Na’ul, which, in the Go’kan tongue, means Breaker of Bones. I once spent a few winters in his world, watching his race feed. He even tried to eat me, to his sorrow. Now I wished I had killed him instead of driving him away and moving on. Unchecked, he would purge his humiliation through inflicting destruction on my home world.
I could have tracked him and, even in my weakened state, killed him. But if I did that, I would have lost the other travelers. Who knew if I could find them again?
So weary. Perhaps I had given more than half my heart. Even for me, such matters leave much to chance.
Six trails led far away. Two rode the air, two the water, two the forest paths. As long as they did not threaten the land I once loved, I cared nothing for them.
Besides Na’ul’s, two other sets of tracks ended nearby. One being had scurried through the human village and splashed into the river beyond its borders, nestling somewhere deep in the muddy bottom, its life force strong and steady like sleeper’s breath. Perhaps it felt as I did. Or maybe this was its way. I had not seen its form, so I could not be sure, but evil dripped along the path it traveled like blood from a wounded deer. Hopefully, it would sleep forever. But I marked it anyway—its scent, its dread energy.
The other creature had risen from the children’s lodge, growing as it flew. It came to rest deep in the woods between villages. I knew its form, its tribe. Once they roamed this world, this sky, like scaled hawks. Their breath laid waste to whole forests. Their claws could rend a horse or a bear to pieces with one slash. A more dangerous creature had seldom walked the earth. Still, she would likely keep to herself, if allowed. And, like me, she would soon need a long sleep. Her kind dreamed away the colder months.
Three travelers who seemed intent on dwelling here, at least for now. One certain threat, two more possibilities. Na’ul would wake first. His force seemed most vital that night, though he was by far the least of us.
I hoped he would keep. Sleep called to me, gentle but insistent. I landed in the woods, far from every human village I could sense, and changed back to myself. Then I dug my burrow, crawled inside, and curled up, dreaming of the old days, of scampering amid trees and thickets and fields of sweet clover. Perhaps, before I left this world again, I might play tricks, as I was born to do, as I did for ages here in the place where people still told my stories.
They called me Rabbit. It was not the name I was born with, but it had always seemed as good as any.
Something woke me early—power rippling through the land like water from a dropped stone. Power that burned. The woods’ inhabitants felt it, too, as they sense the storm before the lightning strikes. Their paws and hooves struck the ground above me, squirrel and deer and rabbit, a bobcat, boar. Wings beat the air. Insects scurried past. Even the worms fled in their slow, slow manner.
My heart was not yet whole, but another traveler had awakened. Or returned.
I crawled from my burrow and stood, the pulses from the west lapping against me. I closed my eyes and sniffed the air.
Na’ul. Of course.
But not only him. I sensed others, their essences as red as blood where Na’ul’s was bright blue, like his skin. The children had discovered their powers, though those energies were still aborning, the merest spark that might grow into an unimaginable fire, power to rend the heavens, to raze the earth.
My eyes can see far along the curve of the land, through the spaces between worlds, but too many objects lay between me and the others. My ears hear more than I sometimes wish—from that battle, roars like a great cat’s, splashes, shouts in the odd blunt language of the white men who drove my people west. The odor of burning flesh filled the night.
Against the flow of fleeing animals, I scampered to the village, fol lowing the power surges until I found those young warriors charging their adversary, circling him in a death dance of their own making.
Na’ul, prince of the Go’kan, even larger than I remembered. The children felt unlike any beings I had encountered in my ageless life. Their human selves had mixed with something strange, like the smokes from burning hickory and a cookfire fueled by dung. They likely believed themselves no different at the root, the same people they had always been. But I knew better. No mortal wields power like that without its forging them anew.
Who had they been before they used the book? And who were they now?
One of the males gestured, and Na’ul caught fire. A trail of ice stretched from the child’s other hand and bound the prince’s feet. One of the females shot lines of sheer white force out of her hands and drove the prince into the nearby pond.
Another male flew without wings. Such had seldom been possible in this world.
Grown men followed the shoreline and watched the battle. They carried weapons like those their ancestors had brought to these woods: guns and arrogance and a desire to conquer. All but two wore uniforms like the armies of old, and only those two were not afraid. Hatred wafted from them like sweat. The uniformed men trembled, their terror acrid like Na’ul’s burning flesh, yet they did not retreat. I admired their bravery, their dedication, if not their intelligence. What could they do against beings like those now battling to the death on that beach?
The two who stank of hate seemed to be the chiefs, and they kept the others back in the trees, probably hoping the battle would weaken the winners. A crafty strategy, if not an honorable one. Strong beings who follow weaker ones have always saddened me. The omniverse would benefit if those servants overthrew their masters, for masters ride servants like beasts until their legs collapse and their hearts burst.
Prince Na’ul emerged from the waters where the children had driven him. He swung his mighty arms as a second female ran faster than any creature I had ever seen. She circled the Go’kan, surrounding him all by herself.
Something about her—I concentrated my senses, sending part of my own spirit to commune with hers. She moved so fast that I could barely touch her, yet even a glancing connection served. Now I could see it, smell it—a faint, diluted echo in her blood.
Before I could ponder what this meant, the last boy, bigger than the others, fought Na’ul hand to hand. How strong the child must have been, to stand before such a force and acquit himself honorably.
The battle splintered trees and churned the waters. Weak as I was, I planned to enter the fight. None of these beings could be trusted, not with power such as I witnessed on that shore. If I have learned one lesson, it is this: power always destroys, and power without conscience or experience destroys indiscriminately. A wildfire cares not whether it eats a family’s lodge or a rabbit’s warren, a forest or a prairie stretching beyond the horizon. It feeds itself and starves the world.
The strong boy drove the prince to the ground. The girl with the force blasts brought a sharpened stake. The fast girl, moving so quickly I could barely track her, drove it deep into Na’ul’s heart. The prince shrieked in pain and outrage. And when he died, his deepest energies burst forth in one great wave that saturated his enemies. They did not know it, could not feel it, but I sensed those coals of terrible power inside them grow brighter, hotter. Some of Na’ul’s energy entered me, and the night grew clearer, the forest’s sounds crisper. Every leaf the humans treaded on whispered to me.
If only I could have absorbed everything the Go’kan lost, much that happened later might have transpired differently. Perhaps better, perhaps worse. Such truths are hidden from me.
Before I could engage them, the children vanished. The flying boy took one girl in his arms and soared away. The fast girl carried the others to safety.
I sat in the forest, thinking of what I had seen.
The adults searched the grounds. Their anger and frustration could have boiled all the water in the pond, but as the leaders began to shout at the others, I lost interest. Their power lay in their malicious wit and their weapons, but the armaments they had brought to the pond posed little threat to the children, none at all to me.
I slipped past them and bounded through the woods. The breeze wafted through my fur and brought to me the new scents of the young ones, like smoldering oak. I could have followed them to the edges of the earth. Instead, I stopped for a moment and turned, looking past distance and obstruction to see where they burrowed.
The flying boy took his girl to one lodge and then soared to another alone. So they came from different families.
The other girl ran too fast for me to follow in my weakened state, but it seemed likely that she and the other two boys dwelled in this village. Humans of this era seldom took what they owned and moved. They lived only feet away from dozens of others, whether they loved each other or not. I knew all this, having sometimes watched this world’s progress from the other lands I walked. Most of white people’s progress had seemed more like destruction to me. For every lodge they built, for every life they nurtured, a hundred winked out of existence.
I had never intervened. After all, I had seen whole planes rot. But beings like Na’ul did not belong in this world. Nor did these children anymore. They had to be removed.
I needed more sleep. The sliver of Na’ul’s power would help my recovery, but only if I returned to my warren soon.
What to do?
In the end, weariness stole over me. My limbs grew heavy, my breath slow. I crawled back into my burrow and slept, hoping the earth would still be turning when I awoke. The last image in my waking mind: Prince Na’ul on his back, the stake deep in his heart, his mouth open and screaming.
Almost thirteen moons had passed by the time I awoke. So had most of my weakness. I crawled to the surface and shook the dirt from my fur and stretched my limbs. Nearby, a buck watched me. It would make a good meal.
From five separate points in the village, the children’s coals glowed and pulsed. After so much time, how hot might their fires burn? Still not at my full strength, my heart not quite whole, I needed to watch and listen and think. Then I could truly hunt.
About Brett Riley:
BRETT
RILEY is a
professor of English at the College of Southern Nevada. He grew up in
southeastern Arkansas and earned his Ph.D. in contemporary American fiction and
film at Louisiana State University. His short fiction has appeared in numerous
publications including Folio, The Wisconsin Review, and The
Baltimore Review. Riley's debut novel, Comanche, was
released in September 2020 and Lord of Order was published in
April 2021. Freaks, a superhero thriller featuring dangerous
aliens and badass high school kids was published in March 2022. The second
novel in the Freaks series, Travelers, will be in bookstores in
August 2022. Rubicons, the third novel in the Freaks series will be
released in 2023. Riley lives in Henderson, Nevada.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
1 winner will receive a finished copy of TRAVELERS, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
|
7/11/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
|
|
7/12/2022 |
IG Post |
|
|
7/13/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
|
|
7/14/2022 |
Review/IG Post |
|
|
7/15/2022 |
TikTok Review/IG Post |
Week Two:
|
7/18/2022 |
IG Review |
|
|
7/19/2022 |
Review |
|
|
7/20/2022 |
Review/IG Post |
|
|
7/21/2022 |
IG Review |
|
|
7/22/2022 |
YouTube Review/IG Post |
No comments:
Post a Comment