Free First Chapter of my new book!
Night of the Teratorn is available for Purchase on Amazon!
Here is the entirety of Chapter One for my first Novella: Night of the Teratorn! The first entry in the ongoing saga of the Order of St George, a Christian order of knights dedicated to fighting monsters.
Enjoy!
Chapter 1:
“I can’t take you to HQ yet,” Hyam said. He shifted the gear down as the road’s incline increased. He looked out the window at the trees surrounding them and said, “This area is really beautiful in the summer.” They were in Northern California, heading up a mountain.
“Why not?” Idris said in response.
“Oh a few reasons. The big one being I don’t know where it is.” Idris looked at him sideways. “It moves. I never know where it is. They find us when they need us. Truthfully I’ve only been there a handful of times.”
The early morning sun glinted off the front of the rental jeep and briefly blinded Hyam. He put his hand up to block it so he could see. When he took it down, the cabin appeared at the end of the road.
“Pretty nice,” Idris commented. And he was very right. Multi-storied. Not some cheapo redneck thing from an 80s horror film, this was more of a McMansion than a cabin in the woods. The family that lived here had money.
Hyam pulled up in front carefully. He looked around, then pulled out his notepad and map to ensure they were in the right spot.
“I forget, why don’t you use a smart phone?” Idris asked.
“Because they’re unreliable for this kind of work. Pixies especially will mess with electronics just because.” He looked intensely at the map and the address he had written down, then said absentmindedly, “I really hate pixies.”
Idris nodded with a wry grin. This was his first official case, and he still wasn’t sure how much of this he believed; but he was using his inherent sarcasm to stay aloof. Hyam talked about pixies the way a normal person might talk about a rash or the homeowners association.
Hyam confirmed to his satisfaction that this was, in fact, the address they had been sent to. Then they both got out of the car. Hyam wore faded black jeans, black cowboy boots, and a gray t-shirt that said Dickies on the breast pocket. His hair was short and brown, starting to recede in middle age. You could tell he hit the gym regularly, especially his chest and arms showed it, but his stomach sagged a bit. He replaced his sunglasses with regular glasses and moved to the back of the Jeep.
Idris wore cargo shorts, tennis shoes, and an old Dodgers t-shirt. He also took off his sunglasses, grabbed a blue baseball cap from the dash, and put it on. He was much younger, with dark curly hair and a medium build. His skin was dark brown.
“So, we getting out some weapons?” Idris asked as he followed the older man to the back of the Jeep.
Hyam nodded. “The report said suspected Djinn activity, but I try to keep an open mind until we know something for sure. For now, let’s go with crosses, daggers and guns in case this turns out to be an animal attack like a bear…or some creepy cult murder. You can never tell, especially when it’s isolated like this.”
Hyam opened two large black suitcases lined with foam. Inside, there were various armaments including swords and even small shields. They each took a large wood cross necklace, iron daggers which looked almost like military style bayonets, and short nosed revolvers. Hyam loaded both guns and handed one to Idris. They each took a shoulder style holster to carry the weapons, and grabbed some extra ammo. Idris put the extras into one of his cargo pockets while Hyam stuck his into a small backpack. Then, each grabbed a big mag light and walked over to the front door.
The house was built with logs and designed to look retro or antique, but you could tell it was relatively recently built. All the windows and doors were of a modern design.
“Why these daggers again?” Idris had his in hand, examining it.
Hyam stuck his into his belt.“For some reason, solid cutting tools can disrupt the body of some spirits, especially if they’re blessed. These are specifically made from iron, which most creatures from the other world have trouble with for some reason. I’m not a tech, I can’t explain it. I just know it saved my life before when I went up against Djinn.”
Hyam looked around, peeking in the front windows. The place seemed deserted.
Idris said, “You want to ring the doorbell?”
Hyam shrugged. “In a minute, maybe, but I don’t think anybody is here. Let’s go around back.”
Idris followed Hyam. He tucked the dagger into his belt like Hyam had, but he kept touching the dagger and the pistol with his free hand. They felt foreign and dangerous on his body. Even the slight weight of the cross on his chest felt out of place. He didn’t think of himself as religious and rarely wore jewelry of any kind. All of this felt very weird to him.
The silence was broken only by the crunch of their shoes on the wooden walkway surrounding the cabin. The windows were all closed. They couldn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary. Hyam kept scanning the woods around the house, looking for potential physical predators.
Idris finally broke the silence. “You know the California grizzly is extinct, right? I only mention it because you said you were concerned about bears, and black bears don’t really attack people.”
He nodded. “But the California lion is not extinct.”
“Lion!” Idris exclaimed. “Oh you mean mountain lion.”
“Let’s try to focus here.” Hyam was already annoyed that he had to train a new partner, but Idris’ youth and naivety made it all the worse.
The only entrances they could find were the front and back doors. In the back, there were some low cellar windows that a small person could shimmy through. The back door was locked. A large bird cawed overhead, and Idris jumped.
“Hey, take it easy,” said Hyam.
“It’s just so quiet. There have been no animal noises at all till now.”
“Yeah, it is quiet…” Hyam looked up at the bird that had made the noise. He was shocked to see it was an absolutely massive vulture of some kind, flying overhead. Idris followed his gaze.
“What kind of bird is that?” Idris asked fearfully. “I’ve never seen a bird that big before.”
“A vulture or a condor. I’ve never seen a bird that size either, it doesn’t seem like it belongs here.” Hyam knew it was difficult to judge the size of birds in the air; there was no frame of reference, but the wingspan looked to him to be easily twenty feet. It flew over the house, disappearing from sight, then came back and disappeared again behind the pine trees. After a few moments, it flew back around. Every time it passed overhead, they both felt a little shiver in their spine.
“I read that they’ve finally been able to reintroduce the California condor; maybe that’s what it is,” Idris said.
“Maybe.” But Hyam knew it wasn’t a California condor. He realized he had seen an animal like this once before. It had been circling Mount Ararat. He hadn’t thought much about it then, probably because it had been farther away. But it was huge and had the same white feathers interspersed with black. This one was just a couple hundred feet up in the air. A few years ago, he had seen a cryptid documentary about extinct birds called teratorns, giant vultures that used to eat dinosaur carcasses. Except for the white feathers, the teratorns had looked the same: all black except for their bone white naked head and neck, and dark orange beak. The bird above kept circling, occasionally making a caw sound. Weirder things than a giant bird had happened on that trip to Ararat, but he shook those out of his mind. Had to focus, work the case.
They made their way back to the front. Besides their jeep, there was no car around, and no garage for one. They rang the doorbell. Nothing. They finally checked the front door. It was locked, too.
Idris put his hands on his hips and looked up at the big bird still circling. “Well, what do we do now?”
Hyam looked into the windows. “We don’t have jurisdiction to break-and-enter without permission. We’ll have to make contact with the Order. It would be different if the door were unlocked.”
They headed back to the Jeep. A third smaller, briefcase-sized object had a blinking green light on it. Hyam opened it, and there was a small fax machine inside. A readout printed; he tore it off and read it silently. “Well, we don’t have to reach out. HQ tracked down the daughter. We just need to go talk to her.”
“I’m hungry, let’s stop at In-N-Out on the way.”
“You mentioned yesterday that you had to get some In-N-Out while back in California, but it’s going to have to wait, because the closest one is in Oregon. I already checked. If you’re hungry, drink some more water or have one of my protein bars.”
Idris made a face like a disappointed little boy, then begrudgingly got into the passenger side. Hyam put the Jeep into gear and took off down the mountain.
When they left, the teratorn stopped circling and landed on the cabin’s roof, watching them drive off.
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