July 16th, 2065

Six Months Until Doomsday.

CHAPTER 41
Our route wriggled and danced across the map, from Toulouse to Lastours, Carcassonne to Peyrepertuse, and then Beziers. Each held one or more castles, each held a story, and it was some time before I realised how much each place held for Alys. I had a hint of what was going on when we had passed Lastours, a spectacular chain of towers along a ridge, and continued uphill to a small hut with a tourist info place inside, where Alys had raved over some butterfly or other, as well as any number of short-toed eagles, lizards, plants, slime moulds, whatever.

The birth of the Umbra Knight part 2

“She already knows, Cami. I talked to her.”

I must have looked as astonished as I felt. Though he was uncomfortable, he didn’t look away.

“It was a couple days ago. Before we made love. I knew what I wanted, but I was so afraid that I would hurt you, somehow. Especially because of your issues with PTSD. So I talked to Fiona. She’s your dragon. I figured if she thought there was any likelihood of a problem, she would wave me off. She . . . ah . . . well. She didn’t.” He was blushing, bless the man. “She also wasn’t surprised.”

[At the State Trooper HQ in Spokane, WA]
The Lieutenant turned the laptop around and showed me the screen. On it was the front page of that day's Washington Post. The headline got my attention in a flash.

Marcy’s epilogue

It had taken Marcy a while after John was finally permanently gone from her life to truly relax. She had felt his eyes and control on her for so very long that even now after weeks she still felt like she was being watched at times. It was always slightly unsettling, but in the end she managed to tell herself that it was just her imagination, after all if John hadn’t been gone he would have certainly reared his ugly head by now.

The ball popped out like a 5-cent sour cherry gumball.

I slid, as quietly as possible, another ten yards down the hill and began to circle away from the Cabin and the track down to the road. The small bushes and trees that had been left to grow in recent years gave me plenty of cover. The ‘crew’ that my half-brother had with him were making plenty of noise like you do when driving hogs into a trap. The hog they were after was me!

Antibodies 22

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He continued to glare at me, until suddenly his expression changed completely and he simply looked like he’d been hit by a locomotive. “Fi IS saving the world, jackass,” I said conversationally. “And you’d be the first to agree that the world can spare a lawyer or five. So stop being stupid, will you?”

The Judge made me feel very much at home in the cabin. It felt odd. Not odd for anything bad but odd for me to actually like a place. I’d been on the run for so long that there were times that I thought that I was destined to be a ‘queen of the road’ for good but there was something about the place that got to me within a couple of hours of me seeing it for the first time.

awyers can usually find trouble to get into. COVID’s a disaster, and disasters breed lawsuits like prize bitch spaniels breed puppies. I doubt I’ll see the inside of a courtroom anytime soon though. So, I decided.”

She said, “Decided what?”

I opened my hands and showed her the bottle.