Teaser | Flash Fiction
Edge of Heaven: A “Fallen Sky” Teaser
Where Angels Fear to Tread…
Gray tower blocks shimmered beneath the sunset, swathed in a ruddy heat mirage that transformed the rocks and shrubs beyond the city wall into a coral sea. Queen Mahla fixed her gaze on them, but the illusion persisted: her kingdom was underwater and the bloodshot sky was the ocean.
“Satellite data confirmed, your majesty,” a technologist’s voice announced through her earpiece. “Aether burst forming three klicks south.”
Her twin sister stood near the edge of the palace roof, her muscles taut with fight-or-flight dread as she scanned the horizon. With Zoe, it was fight, always fight. The young queen moved to join her, then froze in mid-step as the crimson haze beyond the edge of the residential district ignited into a fluorescent glow. Ozone wafted through the gusting wind and stung her nostrils with an electric twinge. And then the storm broke.
A dozen Powers swept through the azure rift and flew across the rampart, past the minaret towers, and then scattered above the aeroponic gardens that crowned each tenement block. The city of Almaladh, from one edge of its walled circumference to the other, formed a ten-story oasis amid the peaks of Mount Hermon, a bottled forest beneath a thermoplastic canopy. And those whirring, diamond-winged orbs of celestial light overhead would burn every last acre down to a blanket of ash, given the chance.
So they wouldn’t get that chance. Not today.
One of them launched a stream of fire across the marble parapet. “Ar’dox.” Mahla caught the blazing lance with a fling of her right palm and a breathless word; it dissolved into motes of cool white light, and she lifted her left hand toward the hovering angel. “Don’la.” Its iridescent core shriveled to a smoldering ember and plummeted earthward, followed by six burning wings that boiled away into moonlight as they fell.
“Ial’pirgah,” Queen Mahla chanted with a twirling leap and an outward swing of her arms. “Purgel.” Another one of the Powers burst into flames as she spoke, then another. She watched them tumble away; three down, perhaps nine more to go. Then she glanced over at her sister.
Zoe hadn’t said a word, hadn’t joined the battle. The princess just watched the swarm, her skin glowing, fists clenched, lucent eyes shining with tears. Grief. Sorrow. Rage. Her voice came in a scream. “Coraxo!”
The heavens answered Zoe’s cry with a chorus of thunder, with arcs of lightning between the churning clouds. A shockwave-burst through the sky, a rain of gossamer wings and stardust, and it was over. They’d won.
“A-are you,” Mahla stammered as the shining figure before her faded back into a young woman with short, messy brown hair. “Are you…”
Are you still Zoe?
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” the woman said. She met Mahla’s stare with a winsome smile and then she was Zoe again, her twin, her best friend. “We did it.”
This is an original flash fiction set in the world of The Fallen Sky, a paranormal fantasy-romance spinoff of the Dreadful Desires series that blossomed into my first novel. You can find the omnibus on Kindle and Smashwords!
