Excerpt

April 23, 2013 4 comments

Cut scene from Allies & Enemies

Half editing this monster (Allies & Enemies) in my spare time. I like this scene, but it’s most likely going to be cut because it doesn’t really serve a purpose. I just thought it was cool.

I was thinking I might turn it into a one-shot or the opening scene of someone else’s story. There’s gotta be other prisoners of these guys looking for a chance to shine, or at the very least reclaim their lives.

EXCERPT:
Rating: teen+ (language, description of gore)
*** = small spoiler for A&E removed.

He’d given up that life. He wasn’t that guy anymore. He’d made promises and commitments. But that was all in the past tense. He was in the moment, in the now, and there was the thunder red of rage-rage-rage burning across Vereint’s brain.

All this time, Warrick had been so great about following the rules. So why did he have to fuck up now?

Vereint had come back to an empty cabin, a TV still showing GNN and a note. Warrick had seen something and it reminded him of some unfinished Blue Ice business, so he’d gone off to handle it.

Vereint’s panic as he chased after Warrick had gradually turned to burning anger. Didn’t Warrick understand what putting himself in danger did to Vereint? The sense of helplessness and suffocating worry?

Vereint wanted to scream in Warrick’s face, but he knew he would probably end up on his knees begging him to never leave him again. And that patheticness only made him angrier. Never in his life had there been anyone to bring him so low as Warrick could.

By the time he reached the warehouse, he was mostly cool. Then he broke the lock and slid open the door.

Warrick was dead.

There was blood everywhere in a butterfly spray, and at the center the torn cocoon. Flesh splayed open in pink and white ridges of muscle and tendon. Eye sockets blackened and exposed amongst the brain matter. Warrick’s face was pasty and still, his shattered lips still parted around where his teeth had been kicked out.

Vereint sucked in a hissing breath and his hands clenched into claw shapes at his sides. He was going mad. The world was a riot of bright reds and softer pinks and the glistening lengths of intestine. The image before him was soaking itself into his brain. Becoming the truth of his existence.

Then he noticed that the Blue Ice uniform was wrong. It was one Vereint knew for sure had been ruined in a fight with Behemoth. He’d thrown it away himself, which had been a real hardship. It had been his favorite.

Just that quick he knew someone was messing with his brain.

It was as though someone had snapped a new lens on a camera, everything coming into focus. He could still see the mind fuckery of the illusion, but it was hollow and thin, all the emotional impact sucked out.

There were two men in black three piece suits standing next to a card table. They were laughing and joking, placing bets on how long he would freak out for.

As his mind started working again, Vereint’s eyes were drawn to the vibrating silver device on the table. He’d only ever heard about them, but he was pretty sure that was a Psiren. It sent sound waves focused to some frequency that could force the human brain to experience different emotions. The feelings drawn up were so strong that some people experienced correlating hallucinations.

Vereint tried to make his body convey terror and grief and was glad of the ski mask he’d pulled on before leaving. He’d never been that great of an actor, which is why he usually let Warrick do the lying for the both of them.

His eyes slid to the back of the room where he’d spotted the glint of a blade pressed tight against the real Warrick’s throat. Warrick wasn’t moving, was flopped limply, but Vereint could see the minute quiver of his breaths. He was pulled across the over-sized lap of a man that had to be a good fifteen hundred pounds.

Vereint recognized the man as Jericho Slim, sometimes called the Knife Man because he could do horrible nightmare things with a blade. He could draw them out of his flesh like gall stones. He would gag and a blade would come out from between his lips or sometimes it would just be slivers. It was said he could spit his Needle Darts faster than a viper and he could hit a target up to two hundred feet away.

Even though he was sure he was faster than Jericho Slim, Vereint didn’t want to risk the guy getting lucky. It was better to play it safe and maneuver the situation to where he’d have better odds of keeping Warrick alive.

After what he figured had to be a good five minutes, Vereint let himself sag to the floor with a low moan. From what he knew, an improperly used Psiren could cause catatonia in people that had experienced severe psychological trauma in the past.

He was worried about Warrick. ***. Being hit with the effects of a Psiren could give him permanent damage.

Vereint was pretty sure he was going to be killing some people today.

“He’s passed out,” the skinnier of the two men at the table said.

“Wonder who he is,” the other one said.

“Who cares? He’d down and out,” Skinny said. “What do you want us to do with him, boss?”

Jericho Slim had a surprisingly sweet voice for a man that was so large. It was the kind of voice that could have done commercials or read off movie times. “He must be working with this one here. Bring him to that chair and get that stupid ski mask off. Let’s see what kind of fish we managed to catch in our trap this time.”

Vereint kept his eyes closed as he was patted down, then hung limp as he was hauled up by his arms and tossed onto a hard wooden chair. It was one of those kind that had a rocking chair back and he could feel the knobby round spokes pressing against his spine. He let himself be lashed in place by rope, though a minute flex of his muscles let him know he could break free easily.

He felt the ski mask get ripped off his face and let his head flop forward when it was released. His chin was grasped by a slightly sticky hand and his hair was shoved out of the way as his face was turned toward the light.

“He’s a pretty one, isn’t he?” Not-Skinny said. “He should make good money on the market.”

“Someone might pay a lot of money for a face like that,” Skinny agreed. “Are we going to sell him, boss?”

“We’ll find out when he wakes up,” Jericho Slim said. “If he’s got more to him than a pretty face, we could get a better price.”

Racking his brain, Vereint didn’t remember Jericho Slim ever being caught up in the flesh trade, but it looked like the man had changed professions. He would wait until they were put in some sort of cell or something and he could just carry Warrick away rather than risking something happening.

“Are we going to sell that one too, boss?” Skinny asked.

“No,” Jericho Slim said, stroking Warrick’s hair. “This one here’s a special case. I think I’m going to keep him for myself.”

It was a struggle for Vereint to remain unmoving. His mouth wanted to snarl and he was nearly trembling from holding himself still. He didn’t want to know what Jericho Slim wanted with Warrick and there was no way he was going to let anything happen. He would just have to make sure he was both strong and decisive when he made his move.

He kept his body completely limp as he was lifted up roughly by hands under his arms. His heels scraped the floor as he was dragged toward a door at the back of the warehouse.

The route incidentally took him passed where Jericho Slim held Warrick.

Opportunity knocks and the devil rocks.

/ EXCERPT

Read some of my other stories free at Kimichee.
Examples: The Panic Pure, From Diamond to Coal, Idlewile.

“Heroes & Villains,” by Harper Kingsley will be returning August 14 from Less Than Three Press. It’s a superhero mm romance action adventure story. You know you want some…

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon

March 20, 2013 0 comments

Marshal: The Panic Pure

I’m wrapping up The Panic Pure and I’ve been going back through and rereading some stuff. Which means I get to see my characters from a bit of a distance. Here’s my thoughts on Marshal:

Marshal is almost sickeningly romantic, and I like that he realizes it. He has these sweeping thoughts and a stylized image of Danny, but he’s just a guy when he talks out loud. He thinks all kinds of sappy stuff. Writing him feels a bit like letting go.

I’m a closet romantic. Meeting me in real life, you’d be shocked by how nougaty my inner core is. My personal idea of romance is pizza and a movie, though I guess somewhere in me I dream of white lace and flowers.

Because otherwise, I have no idea where Marshal came from.

He’s a terrible FBI agent, by the way. A beautiful lover of Danny, but I don’t think he could solve his way out of a paper bag.

Read The Panic Pure at Kimichee.

Here’s Marshal and Joanna being paperwork ninja:

EXCERPT:

Marshal could feel Joanna burning a hole in the side of his head with her eyes and more than anything he wanted to yell at her to cut it out. Instead, he gave her a steady glance and calmly asked, “What?”

She smirked. “So, word on the street is that a guy in a suit dropped off that fancy lunch for you. Dare I ask who the sender was?”

Marshal shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He double-dipped a gyoza half in sauce and popped it in his mouth.

“That’s a very fancy box that your lunch came in,” she fished, raising her eyebrows.

“Why don’t you just eat your sandwich and apple and let me enjoy my meal?” he asked.

“Because I’m super curious about how you managed to get your hands on such gourmet goods,” she said, while obligingly picking up her sandwich half–he saw that it was peanut butter and grape jelly, which only made him appreciate his food more.

“Hey, is it my fault that you have an elementary school lunch? I wasn’t the one that packed it for you this morning,” he said.

Joanna made a face, though her eyes danced. “We both know that I have about zero cooking skills. Peanut butter and jelly is just my speed, you know, unless I want to take up vending machine bingeing again. And we really don’t want to go there.”

“What you need to do is find yourself a man that knows how to cook,” he said.

“Like you did?”

Marshal couldn’t help looking around to make sure no one else was close enough to hear. Sure, the Bureau was supposed to be all about non-discrimination, but he’d lived long enough to realize that most policies were entirely dependent on the people you worked with.

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. She took a sip of her coffee. “Even if I yelled it from the rooftops I’m pretty sure that no one here would honestly give a damn.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “And shouldn’t you be drinking a juice box with your kid lunch? Coffee seems way too grown up for you.”

She snorted. “If I could have my drink of choice here at work, this coffee would have a couple of shots of Irish love in it. Especially since I’ve still gotta go through all of these reports.” She lifted a stack of files a couple of inches before dropping them with a grimace. “Why can’t we be out on the streets catching the bad guys?”

“Because we’re paperwork ninja,” he said. It was one of the sad facts of his career that he had never been shot at, threatened by anyone other than Joanna, or been able to violently take down a bad guy. For the most part, he went to work in the morning and made it home at the same time every night. “We live the life that other agents’ wives only dream of. Too bad neither one of us has any kids or anything because we’d be able to spend plenty of time with them.”

Joanna chuckled. “But at least one of us has a warm body to go home to, right?”

“Yes, I keep my body temperature to a toasty ninety-eight degrees,” he dead-panned, then ducked the pen she threw at his head. “Watch it, you could have put my eye out.”

“At least then you’d have a story of danger to tell your sweetie. It might get you some freaky death-risk smoochies.”

“Are you two discussing job related topics again?” a cool voice interrupted.

Marshal jumped a little, then turned to see that Agent Barry Landau had somehow managed to come right up to his shoulder. “Whoa, I didn’t see you there.”

“Duh,” Landau said, rolling his eyes. “You and Starkweather were too busy gossiping like girls. Shouldn’t you be working?”

“It’s our lunch break,” Joanna said, not-quite glaring at him.

Landau scoffed. “Is that all you do, come in and eat lunch and talk all day? ‘Cause you know, the rest of us are out there actually getting the job done.”

“You know what, I’m pretty sure that we’ve cleared more cases than you ever will,” Marshal said.

“Yeah, by doing all the desk work that no one else wants. You spend all day reading reports and filing paperwork. I’m pretty sure the Bureau could replace you two with a couple of secretaries,” Landau said. “Two pretty ladies instead of you two… might be nice.”

“Why don’t you crawl back under your rock or something?” Joanna growled menacingly. Marshal didn’t like how she was squishing the remnants of her sandwich in her fist.

Landau laughed. “Smooth comeback, Starkweather.” He walked off, back toward the corner where his cronies hung out.

“That guy is a real dick,” Joanna said, glaring after him.

Marshal looked at her, his eyebrows feeling like they were touching his hairline. “That’s really all you’ve got to say about him?”

She shook her head, the corner of her mouth twisting. “That’s all I can say about him at work. I’ll write up a list of his attributes and email it to you later. Off the clock.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Starkweather, you know that?” he laughed.

“Finish your food, Newman,” she said.

It was their personal joke. They had called each other by their first names from the very first moment they’d met. It was as though they had been born to be partners, there was just this instant sense of camaraderie and comfort.

/EXCERPT

December 28, 2012 3 comments

“Paradigm Shift,” by Harper Kingsley [science fiction, mm]

Well, I’m currently working on “Paradigm Shift,” a story about a world where people are broken up into three sub-species: Firsts, Twos, and Thirds.

Firsts are stronger, faster and more aggressive, all of their senses and reflexes having been amped up by the genetic changes made by the Cure. They are type A personalities, no holds barred. They fill up the military and police. They run corporations and build empires.

Twos are normative humans. Not hyper-aggressive or super protective or dominant; they are normal people living normal lives. Some are brilliant or brave. They make up every walk of life.

Thirds were the lucky few that were naturally immune to the Phage Virus that took so many. The Cure changed them, giving them all — male or female — the ability to impregnate or be impregnated.

At first the Thirds were viewed as a genetic oddity, to be pitied or exploited. Then, decades later, the Plague hit and billions of people were instantly sterilized. Only the Thirds were immune to the Plague, just as they were immune to the Phage. They are humanity’s last hope, as any children they have will be fertile.

SUMMARY: Gregor Tierney has been hiding as a Two for most of his life, but now his cover has been blown. His status as a Third has been permanently tied to his Identity and all he can do is make the best of a bad situation.

He has been forced to enter the Duadenora Family as the chosen Bondmate of the Family heir. He can choose to Bond, or refuse and hope for a better offer. But he WILL be Bound, or he will be declared property of the State, all his rights and freedoms revoked.

He must choose and choose quickly. It’s just too bad his attention has been caught by someone else. Someone he can’t have.

A/N: That’s right, it’s an mpreg. I got to talking with someone and a request was made and I promised a somewhat realistic mpreg. So when the Idea Fairies started fluttering their wings, I got to writing.

It’s somewhat difficult creating a feasible idea for male pregnancy, but I hope I did better than the movie Junior. And I promise the story is more sci-fi intrigue, than horrible traumatizing ass babies. There is DEFINITELY none of that.

There’s romance brewing, but there’s more than that going on. Gregor is suspicious and schemy, and the Duadenora Family is full of secrets and half-truths. Plus there’s a huge story-breaking reveal that will hopefully blow the hell out of some minds.

I’ve had such fun with this project and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it just as much.

~Pax

Ubiquitous EXCERPT:

December 21, 2012 0 comments

Faizel, by Harper Kingsley

Title: Faizel
Author: Harper Kinsgley
Genre: mm supernatural, vampire
Word count: 10,400
Rating: Adult

Available as KDP Select. If you’ve got an Amazon Prime membership, go read it for free.

EXCERPT:

He was a handsome stranger in painted on pants and Chuck Taylors. His dark brown hair curled around his ears in enticing tousled waves. He had rich olive skin and a straight nose with perfect nostrils. He was built in lean lines and looked like he should be an endearingly dorky guy, completely oblivious to his own good looks.

Except he walked like a predator. He tried not to, but his hips insisted on falling into their natural position when he didn’t concentrate. An arrogant, rolling walk that caught and held the eye, luring in his prey.

He’d always been so well-known that he couldn’t have pretended to be anyone other than himself. He was more easily recognizable than the Master. The name FAIZEL was synonymous with power and prestige. He was always near the top of every Most Wanted list the Resistance put out.

He’d always enjoyed playing with the Resistance. Hunting them down and spoiling their plans had been endlessly entertaining. It was why he’d never just completely exterminated them all the way the Master wanted.

The Master was talking synthetic blood and genocide. He had wanted a world completely devoid of normal human life. The Phageless would cease to exist and only the New Breed would remain. He wanted a world of rules and restrictions, a totalitarian empire with himself at the top.

Faizel enjoyed being powerful, but he wanted the thrill of the hunt. He was young and virile and he’d been Reborn without a soul. But he still remembered his human days and all that burning hate and rage was still there, bubbling under the surface of his skin.

He’d killed most of the people that had made his living life so miserable in one wild spree of blood and viscera. After that though… he’d spent enough time around the Master to realize that he didn’t want to live in that sterile, cruel world with only his own kind for company.

He hadn’t been able to stand it.

He had secretly begun to sabotage his own mission plans so there were weaknesses able to be exploited by a clever but desperate human. He’d sifted out the weakest of the Resistance to leave the best behind, separating the wheat from the chaff.

Then he had waited and enjoyed being able to toy with his new playmates. He was going to kill them, but he built them up first before he hunted them down. He loved that sweetest first sip of panicked blood, packed with all of that desperate will to survive. It made his heart sing.

He slid through the crowded club to one of the tables at the front. He sat down with such a charming smile that the women already there giggled and gave him flirty welcomes. He smiled but didn’t really interact, just nodding his head here and there when they spoke to him.

Faizel gazed up at the main stage and absorbed the sight of a supernatural cabaret show. It was like Rocky Horror Picture Show with even more garters and lace; there was a bit more skin showing, and both men and women wore short-shorts and a mixture of glitter and glamour.

Dancing and singing men and women, some entirely human while others stretched and bent with supernatural ease. Here and there one of the dancers would flash a mouthful of fangs as they playfully “menaced” their delighted audience. Their faces would twist and turn into a monstrous mask of bulging bone, glaring yellow eyes, and a double row of teeth that were nothing but jagged points.

Money was offered at the end of each set and a pretty girl with flaxen curls and a smattering of glitter on her cheeks went around with a cloth bag to collect the cash. She was wearing a flirty red skirt and a black crop top vest that revealed a toned stomach and a sparkling silver bead dangling at her navel. She wore high-heeled gladiator sandals that crisscrossed up her shins to just below her dimpled knees.

Faizel fumbled in his pocket for a few crumpled bills. He stuck them in the bag quickly so no one could get a good look at them in case money was different here.

Vampires sure were.

He was utterly fascinated by their monstrous faces and the claws he thought he’d spotted amongst them. They were like a mix of human and animal. Even when they weren’t trying to be frightening, their mouths easily shaped snarls.

He was utterly captivated, his eyes trailing up and down the beautiful bodies on display, but what he was really drawn to was the feral nature of them. They were apex predators, of that he had no doubt, though he had to wonder why they were so intent on living amongst the humans, working with them. The idea of it intrigued him.

Faizel had been suppressing his Allure from the minute he’d fallen out of the glowing portal and discovered that he was in a world not his own. The air had smelled different and there was the caressing vapor of distant, strange Power.

His first impulse was to ride in under the radar, to look around for himself and see what kind of world this was. And so far he had been very pleased.

There were vampires here, though a much different kind than he was used to. He could practically see the souls binding them to their bodies, and though their faces turned to those of monsters when they let their Hunger show… they were human on the inside. Beautiful, fragile humans.

He had never seen anything so entrancing. He wondered how hard it was to break them, these dancing, singing, oh-so-human vampires.