Sensing the Storm: Storms of Future Past

By Kari Kilgore

The Storm Rises

Dr. Sandy Hughes faces several more hours of an endless shift in a Chicago emergency room.

Wrangling baby docs, residents, and med students.

All doing their best to help people yanked out of ordinary life and thrust into medical nightmares.

Then a mysterious boy yanks Sandy out of her own ordinary life. Forever.

Can Sandy figure out his warning before it's too late?

A Prequel to the Storms of Future Past Series

An excerpt from Sensing the Storm:

"It's you," Ricky said to Dr. Tahara, his high voice rough and breaking. "You're the one who can help me."

Ricky blinked again. His eyes still had that jumpy movement, but his face and his vitals remained calm.

When his gaze met Sandy's, she felt a jolt of recognition that made no sense to her at all.

"You know, too," Ricky said, raising his head toward Sandy.

"Okay, Ricky," Sandy said. "I'm Dr. Hughes, and I've known Dr. Tahara for years. How can we help you?"

Ricky closed his eyes, long, curling lashes overlapping before he blinked them open again.

"You can't help me. I have to help you."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393950158

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Sensing the Storm

For my grandmother, Gladys Steffey

---

Who always had extra room around her table.

---

And who raised five rowdy boys

and made sure every last one of them

knew how to cook.

Sensing the Storm

A Storms of Future Past Story

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Chapter 1

Sandy Hughes stared into the steaming, dark amber liquid in her blue porcelain mug as if she could extract nine hours of sleep from it. Aroma from the peppermint tea she’d optimistically tucked in with two English Breakfast bags attempted to make it through her sinuses to her brain.

But all Sandy got was the odd sensation of disconnection between her slow-moving body and her nearly comatose mind.

Turned out these twenty-four hour shifts in the ER truly were a game for the young. Or at least a game for the much younger than her.

She sipped the tea, pleased she’d let it cool to exactly the right temperature even when she was groggy. Her tongue and mouth sent an invigorating heat warning out along the Nervous System Express, but no signs of lasting damage. Hopefully the caffeine molecules would follow the same pathway so she could manage to get up from her desk and head back out.

The (hopefully empty) halls of the finest teaching hospital in Chicago awaited, along with what sometimes seemed like a seething horde of medical residents. Even at nearly the halfway mark of the twenty-first century, nothing could quite replace hands-on training with experienced supervision.

Sandy took another long sip, then forced her tired eyes to move, to focus on her surroundings.

Old-fashioned wooden desk, pale oak scarred from at least three generations of docs. She suspected it was still there because no one was motivated enough to cart