From Coffin to Grave: The Heartstrike Chronicles

By C.E. Murphy

A country ravaged by the hunger.
A woman dying for a chance to live.
A man who cannot quite leave well enough alone.

Saoirse O'Cathain should have died on the coffin ship that took her from famine-torn Ireland to the dubious safety of the Canadian coast, but an ancient immortal--a man who claims he doesn't care--saved her by Awakening the Timeless immortality she harbored within. Perhaps it was a gift: Saoirse might have all of eternity to watch the world change, now...

...unless she has been Awakened only to travel from coffin to grave...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miz Kit Productions
• Release date: Jul 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386105770

C.E. Murphy

C.E. Murphy is the author of more than twenty books—along with a number of novellas and comics. Born in Alaska, currently living in Ireland, she does miss central heating, insulation and—sometimes–snow but through the wonders of the internet, her imagination and her close knit family, she’s never bored or lonely. While she does travel through time (sadly only forward, one second at a time) she can also be found online at www.cemurphy.net or @ce_murphy on Twitter

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From Coffin to Grave

Copyright © 2019 by C.E. Murphy 

All Rights Reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Artist: Tara O'Shea / Fringe-Element

Book Design: Miz Kit Productions

for Susan

From Coffin to Grave

a Heartstrike short

C.E. Murphy

Grosse Isle, Canada: 1847

They came by their hundreds and their thousands, fleeing starvation forced upon a land by wealthy lords who took the food as their own and by a blight on the single crop almost half the country depended on. They came in the belief that there would be someone to meet them, carrying the promise from now-distant landlords that there would be money, food, clothing, perhaps land, for those who made the terrible journey. Instead, coffin ships lined the harbors, discharging men and women and children ill with dysentery and typhus, until the quarantine centers were overwhelmed and the bodies were dropped into the river, fouling it irretrievably.

It wasn't so bad in America: Lorhen knew that, because he'd come from the States to help in Canada. Most American ships were required to limit the number of passengers, to carry enough food and water, to provide some degree of decent accommodations. From the outside it looked like good will toward incomers and protection for those emigrating from dire circumstances, but a harder truth lay beneath that mask. Sailing on an American ship cost three times the amount it did to take one of the British coffin ships, and the starving Irish had no money to begin with. The standards set to protect passengers kept out the most desperate, and Americans were happy to look the other way on that topic. So Lorhen, who had starved more than once, went to do what he could, which was little enough. Say prayers to a god he had no interest in over the brows of the dying; feed those who might survive a broth, and separate them from the lice-ridden masses, trying to keep illness from spreading. He had been a doctor a long time already, having studied western medicine with Islamic practitioners over a thousand years ago, and eastern medicine in China centuries before Marco Polo arrived. There had been dozens of other places of study as well, of course, but those were where he had begun, as much in search of answers for what his people were as anything else.

Homo aeternus, eternal man: Lorhen's own private scientific name for the Timeless. It amused him, at least, and at his age, anything amusing was worthwhile. It wasn't entirely accurate. The Timeless weren't eternal, not really, but then, homo sapiens weren't often all that wise, either. They hardly could be. Most of them didn't live long enough to learn anything, much less enough. Though enough