Darkness & Light

By Dean Murray

Ride along with a cyberpunk operative out to capture one of the paranormally active 'potentials' destined to degenerate into a mindless animal, or shadow a teenager exposing new levels of vulnerability to the boy most able to hurt her.

Darkness and Light offers up glimpses of Dean Murray's most popular worlds, introducing new characters and reacquainting us with old friends:

Scent of Tears:
Living in the city is hard for a shape shifter, especially one as young as Shawn. He’s been anticipating the coming trip out to the country for months. The fact that he’s going to be allowed to run around unescorted only makes things better.

The vacation turns serious when he decides to leave the estate. A pack of hunting dogs is more than capable of bringing even a shape shifter to bay, and he’s starting to understand that more than just his own survival hinges on what he does next.

I'rone:
I'rone's guardians have never particularly like Betreec, but that hasn't damped her determination to catch his eye. When every able bodied person in the Capital is turned out to search the abandoned sections of caverns for a lost child, it seems like the perfect opportunity to get him out where she can start acting on her interest.

When the stakes grow to include more than just a few stolen moments, Betreec will realize just how little she really knew I'rone before they set out.

Absence:
Lacy has been fooling herself for years. She'd nearly convinced herself she's happy with just being Dan's friend, but as they've begun drifting apart she's realized she's losing more than just her best friend.

Beginnings:
Coffee has been on the run ever since she defected from The Company. Her nominal allies in the Resistance have finally begun to trust her and she's now got access to the secret weapon that's allowed them to stay half a step ahead of their bigger, more technologically-advanced opponent.

Croaker isn't much to look at. He's certifiably insane and has at least thirteen separate documented personalities, some of which would like nothing more than to see Coffee and the rest of the Resistance dead. On the plus side, some of those personalities can see into the future and one of the weaker ones seems to be trying to warn her that events are approaching a pivotal decision.

The Company rode the last pivot point into ascendancy, and the one before that produced a being of godlike power who's still shaping the world in ways the masses don't begin to suspect. Croaker's fragment of personality has finally produced a location and a day. It could be another of the hostile personalities' elaborate traps, but it's not the kind of lead she can ignore.

Backlash:
Jerome has spent his whole life working for the 'bad guys'. Born in the slums of Chicago, he'd always figured he'd come to an early end working for one criminal organization or another. Then the Company came along and implanted him with several million dollars worth of technology so bleeding edge most governments didn't even know it was technologically feasible yet.

Most of what he did was still illegal, and he wasn't likely to make age thirty-five, but the pay was better. Only things had become more complicated lately. The potentials were degenerating more quickly and he'd lost an alarming number of associates to the flesh beasts that most potentials turned into when they finally lost control.

His current mission should be a piece of cake, a simple snatch and grab that would give him a chance to get nominally out from under the psych types constantly watching for signs he needed put down like a rabid dog. Manpower was stretched too thin for them to send along backup but he'd always preferred to work alone. He didn't count on what was about to happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Firshan Publishing
• Release date: Mar 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458109217

Dean Murray

Dean started reading seriously in the second grade due to a competition and has spent most of the subsequent three decades lost in other people's worlds. After reading several local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he started spending more time wandering around worlds of his own creation to avoid the boredom of the 'real' world.Things worsened, or improved depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean has a wonderful wife and daughter to keep him rather more grounded, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.

Book preview

Darkness & Light

A Short Story collection

by Dean Murray

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Dean Murray

Author's Note:

First, I'd like to thank you for choosing to read Darkness and Light. If you'd asked me two years ago if I ever planned on writing any more short stories, I would have told you no. I'm incredibly glad that I was wrong. All but Absence tie back into a novel I've either already written, or one that's currently on the drawing board. I'm thrilled to have a chance to expose readers to three of the four worlds I've spent so much time in over the last few years. I've written a short forward to each story, explaining how it fits into the rest of my work, and some of the ways in which each is special to me.

Scent of Tears, the first presented in Darkness and Light, came into being almost by accident, and the credit goes entirely to my wife. At the time I was finishing up the rough draft of Torn, she was teaching an elementary class. Most Friday's she'd have a 'mystery reader' come into her classroom. It was always someone tangentially related to the class, a parent usually, and partway through the year her students started guessing that the mystery reader each week was 'Mr. Murray'.

I finally managed to find a Friday where I could steal away to the school during my lunch and read a few pages of Despereaux to her class. It was quite enjoyable-the kids had all kinds of good questions about my job, and about my writing.

They were pretty disappointed when I told them I couldn't read them any of my work because it was for older kids. When Katie and I both got home that night she told me they hadn't stopped talking about the visit and badgering her for some of my work to read.

With a reception like that, I couldn't help but start playing with ideas that might work for a class of second graders. Scent of Tears was the evolution of those ideas, and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that Shawn stepped forward to take center stage. Back in those days, my few beta readers could have been excused for not even remembering Shawn. He makes only the briefest appearance in Torn, and as Splintered is currently written, doesn't really get decent face time there either. That being said, I'd pretty much decided that Shawn was going to be right in the thick of things for the climax of book three (I consider Broken and Torn more or less one book).

I knew Shawn needed to play a pivotal role, but hadn't really figured out how he was going to do that. It wasn't until I really got buried in Scent of Tears that all of those little hooks that had always been meant to fit together started clicking into place.

Ultimately, he went from being a minor placeholder that was only ever going to drop in when it was convenient, to someone that I can't wait to spend more time with. Not just in the Broken & Torn storyline either. Shawn really shines the most when you look at his life from the dual lenses of the 'regular world' and Dark Reflections. In some ways, Shawn and Alec are slightly distorted reflections of each other. I really hope that Shawn is well received, both in Scent of Tears, and in the full novels he'll appear in. For me, he and Alec are a bit of a package deal. I can't see writing one without eventually writing the other.

If you enjoy this slice of Shawn's story, you'll love Broken and Torn. I currently expect to have both out sometime in 2011 either as separate novels, or as an omnibus edition.

Scent of Tears

Shawn shifted around restlessly in the SUV's passenger seat. The flight in from Chicago had landed early that morning and he and his nanny Sarah had been on the road ever since. It was bad enough for normal kids to sit for hours. For a shape shifter like Shawn, it was almost torture; especially in his person shape. He spent almost as much time as a wolf as he did on two legs, the form he was wearing now. In fact, if his dad hadn’t been so strict about his homework, he probably would've spent every hour he wasn't in school running around on four legs. Shawn checked the clock one last time before turning to Sarah.

Are we almost there? I waited thirty minutes like you told me to.

Sarah slid a few strands of wispy gray hair back behind her ear and nodded. You're right. I did say you could ask again. We're actually just about to turn into the lane.

Shawn sat up straighter in his seat, straining to see the large gate signifying the start of the family's country estate. True to Sarah's word, a few moments later they were driving down the one mile lane to the house. As soon as the car rolled to a stop Shawn jumped out and raced around to help Sarah out of the car.

It wasn't his favorite thing to do, but at her age if he didn't help it would take three times as long. The sooner she was settled in the house the sooner he could shift forms and go out exploring. They hadn't been out to the estate in nearly a year, and last time he hadn't been allowed out from under Sarah's watchful gaze. This year his father had agreed he could go out on his own for a couple hours at a time as long as he stayed on their property.

Sarah seemed to take hours to get her small bag out of the back of the vehicle, and then days to walk up the stairs. Shawn raced back and forth between the car and the house several times before she finally unlocked the door.

He shot up the stairs, put his toothbrush in the bathroom, his clothes in the dresser and then knelt so he could melt into his wolf form.

He looked himself over as he padded past the mirror on the bathroom door.

Black and brown fur, check. Sharp pointy teeth, check. Big ears that could hear Sarah's heartbeat all the way downstairs? Check. A wonderfully sensitive nose that was busy sampling a hundred times more smells than he'd been able to register just minutes before? Check.

The nose was almost the best part of being a shape shifter. The only thing better was how strong and fast he was. Out in the forest he could run for hours and nothing but another shape shifter could catch him.

Unfortunately, inside was a different matter.