The Fireborn Chronicles: Lamentation (Author's Edition Book 4)

By Mary Andrews

Psionic Sci Fi: the inevitable fusion of Man, Machine, the Paranormal, and now...the Supernatural.

A Vampire, an Archangel, and a psionic Dark Ops Agent walk into a bar on the Oracle Planet. What could possibly go wrong?

The loss of his lifemate has left Agent Ira Haze devastated, verging on insanity. But a psychic with a mind strong enough to save a world may be powerful enough to destroy it.

The Corporate Archangel Gabriel digs up an old acquaintance, Eric Barrows. Calling in an ancient debt,he tasks the vampire with saving Ira. Can Eric pull Ira from his spiral into madness? At what cost? And then there's that malevolent dark entity...

Book 4 of The Fireborn Chronicles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Andrews
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005612030

Mary Andrews

Mary is the eldest of seven children, the mother of three now scrapping young men, and the grandmother of four fine grandchildren--three boys & three girls.She has built the cabs of Cat graters and refitted the tails of Cobra helicopters. She's delivered messages to and from doctors, and done electronic assembly.She has been a relay operator for the deaf, a cell phone customer service rep, a puppet maker, a licensed airframe mechanic, the editor/founder of Gorbash (a now defunct magazine for aspiring artist and writers in the 80's), the fourth director of 25+year old Write Right Critique Group (WRCG) AND a Gypsy merchant...but all she's really ever wanted to do was write...and get published.She saw her dream come to fruition with the publication of her first science fiction novel, THE FIREBORN CHRONICLES by Swimming Kangaroo Publishers way back in 2007.Though the original version of FIREBORN FOUND is still available in print, Mary has opted to slightly tweak and republish an author's edition featuring the art of Kathleen Cavazos.So far Mary's published titles include:book 1: The Fireborn Chronicles: Fireborn Found(Authors Edition: republished in eBook and print)book 2: The Fireborn Chronicles: Resonances(Authors Edition: print & eBook)book 3: The Fireborn Chronicles: Revelations(Authors Edition: eBook & print)book 4: The Fireborn Chronicles: Lamentation(Authors Edition: print & eBook)book 5: The Fireborn Chronicles: Bat in the Moon*A Prequel* (Author's Edition: print & eBook)More of The Fireborn Chronicles series information and buy sites are available athttp://www.FirebornChronicles.comFireborn Chronicles series:https://www.Smashwords.com/books/search?query=MaryAndrews

Book preview

This book is dedicated to my sister, Kathy Cavazos. Her cover art and writing prowess have been invaluable.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks and much appreciation to Kathleen Cavazos, Catrinka Osborne, Joe Trent, Larraine Barnard, and especially Mathis Rogers for their steadfast advice and help.

And, to my husband, Jeff Andrews, who feeds and waters me so well while I write, that I keep forgetting to acknowledge all his invaluable research and science backup.

The Fireborn Chronicles: Lamentation Author’s Edition

© 2020 by Mary Andrews

Author's Smashwords Edition © 2020 by Mary Andrews

Smashwords Edition, License Notes: This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental. They are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Smashwords eBook 2020

ISBN:

First print book, Author’s Edition by Mary Andrews

March 2017

Cover art by Kathleen Cavazos

Format by Mary Andrews

ISBN: Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1539131946

ISBN-10: 1539131947

The Fireborn Chronicles:

Lamentation

.

By

Mary Andrews

...pp

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedications

Title Page

Quote

Chapter One

Chapter Five

Chapter Ten

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Twenty

About the Author

Excerpts

More Information

Chapter One

Ira Haze sat at the cliff’s edge mindlessly allowing his legs to dangle over the vast drop, jagged rocks, and thrashing patches of evergreens below. He’d saved this world, but then, in a flash, everything he loved was gone. She was gone.

Her slender face, with those sightless sea-green eyes, haunted him. He threw his head back and searched the cold, cloud-filled sky. Where could she have gone? At one point, they had linked with the living essence of this planet. He shifted his vision and sought her across the Ethereal Plain. Nobody could hide from him. Nobody. Still, he sensed no echo of resonance...no hope of error.

He allowed his vision to revert to normal, knowing he had but to return to the Corporate Overlord’s ship, Nemesis, to reconfirm her death. The Archangels had placed her body into a cryo-chamber in case he decided to have her cloned. Raphael had been sincere when he’d suggested it. We can recreate her, retrain her.

How could they think he would allow her to be blinded again to reawaken her paranormal abilities? Rage surged through him at the thought. That anyone had done so in the first place sickened him.

At first, he’d spent most of his time aboard the Nemesis, staring at her in that tube. The way her ebony hair pooled at her shoulders and haphazardly framed her face made her look so alive. At any moment, she could have opened her eyes and smiled at him. Ira’s breath caught at the remembrance. He’d longed to rip the case open and take her into his arms, shake her awake, hear her thoughts cascade across his mind again. But he knew he couldn’t handle the feel, and worse, the finality of her being cold to the touch.

He dropped his head into his hands, still oblivious of the treacherous gusts of wind—uncaring of his dangerous perch. Nothing felt real anymore, except for the unbearable solitude enshrouding him. From the moment he’d first felt her absence, all the warmth in his body had been sucked away.

All they shared now was the cold.

Ira lifted his head and stared at his bare hands. Catching strands of hair, he pulled them across and through his fingertips. In the aftermath of having guided an entire planet, moons and all, into this dimension, he had changed too. Beyond the overwhelming silence of her absence, he had become untethered, adrift no matter where he went.

He had no sense of time, and though normally besieged by the emotions of living beings around him, his empathy felt disconnected, shut down. Something, everything, was just not right. He knew he was alive because people looked at him when he ventured among them. He knew they were trying to help him but could not bear anyone’s presence for more than a few seconds before a churning rage kindled within him. All he wanted was to be left alone.

Alone.

How could she really be gone?

He dropped his hands and stared beyond whipping lengths of his raven hair. Nothing mattered anymore.

*

The thud of a car door from the nearby road startled Ira. It was night again. A frigid updraft set his waist-length tendrils of hair awhirl. It had been like this that fateful night when he’d braced himself, on this very precipice, to save a world.

She had wanted to stay with him on this ledge, despite the howling winds and raging storm, but he had insisted she remain safely with the others within the temple. He reached out for the warmth of her thoughts and her presence again, but she was gone.

He remained so deeply immersed in the echo of her death, he barely flinched at the Corporate Archangel’s anchoring hand upon his shoulder.

Raphael’s silken voice registered across his mind. "Ira, come away. It is time to leave."

The Wall Master offered no resistance and the Corporate Overlord’s Archangel helped him from his perch and to his feet before guiding him down the rocky path to a waiting vehicle.

During the drive down the mountain, Ira took no notice of the heavy coat the Archangel had draped around his shoulders.

Raphael had come to expect that the long ride back to the Nemesis would be devoid of interaction. For over a month, he’d kept vigil with Ira, silently watching, waiting, guiding him to safety from dangerous places or incoherent blackouts. When Ira began to move around—even haphazardly—it had given him hope that the Overlord’s Dark Team member might recover, but nothing more changed.

As a Psi-healer, Raphael found this particularly frustrating. His telepathy could not fully breech Ira’s mind. Nor could he soothe the young Wall Master’s inner discord. In over three hundred years, he had never felt so useless.

The Archangel telepathically reached out to his Overlord’s Nexus aboard the mothership in orbit above. "Gabriel, there has got to be someone somewhere who can help him. His obsession with this mountain ledge has become dangerous. Perhaps another Wall Master could pull him back to us?"

Gabriel’s soft tenor voice sounded in response. "The Overlord has already searched across all the known worlds and can find not so much as a whisper of anyone strong enough to take control of him. He believes there is not another like him—anywhere."

"Then I see no hope. Perhaps we should contain him."

"The Overlord wants him back whole. We are charged to find a way to do this."

Raphael sighed. "I will continue to watch him. Since he does not lash out at me, perhaps there will come a time when he will allow me to help. That he lets me lead him around must mean something."

"Laynald suggests you try taking him to a bar."

In mind-to-mind communication it was impossible to not exactly perceive the meaning of what was said, but Raphael still found himself confounded. "Giving alcohol to a man of his abilities does not sound wise. I cannot control him. It is too dangerous."

"I agree, but the Overlord trusts the Dark Team’s healer who, for some reason, believes the environment and something called Drambuie might help calm his mind, dull his pain. The Overlord has located a place nearby for you to attempt to implement this human remedy. Do be careful."

Raphael changed the vehicle’s direction and set out to take the man whose mind was so powerful, he could pull a planet from one dimension to another...to a bar. The Overlord had commanded it.

* * * *

The Seraphim was a huge vessel. Mothership and command center of the Corporate Overlord, it had become a secondary beating heart to the Universal Government. Though the Universal Government kept peace in the space between planets, it was the Corporate Overlord who ran the all-important Hive planet which, in turn, served as a distant prison for the criminal elements of Gov member worlds.

Mariska Romanov had boarded the Seraphim a month ago, and still she felt uncomfortable there. Everything, corridors, doors, walls, even the ceilings were so bright—all white or polished silver. Sure, there were colors within rooms, and all the common areas were exquisitely decorated, but nothing felt comfortable. Even the ceilings were oppressively low to her—except in the docking bays.

Her Roma nature longed for color, sights, the sounds of living creatures...and space. She laughed at the thought. Here she was totally separated from her people—surrounded by nothing but space. She dropped, drew her knees to her chest and leaned back against a vine-covered wall. The Seraphim’s gardens had become her main source of sanity. Each deck had four of them and it had taken her a while to find and peruse them all—even with Laynald’s help.

A warm smile spread across her lips. The very thought of him evoked it, and this still confused her. Had their engagement, a month ago, really been a sham meant to appease the elders of her tribe, or was this something too real to deny? Having reached fifty-six standard years of age, she had pretty much given up on the idea of marriage. Then, he appeared, all gruff and annoying and full of himself. He was such a perplexing man, in service to probably the most powerful man in the universe—the Corporate Overlord.

She relaxed a bit. The ship’s gardens soothed and reminded her of home. Back aboard the Shukar Krranga, the air would probably still be tinged with excitement. The miracle of the Mother World’s return would never grow old to them. The Roma knew how to appreciate such things. She wondered if many of them would return to New Earth, or if they would continue to roam the starways, plying their trades from planet to planet as they had done since the original Earth’s destruction centuries ago.

She longed for Shukar Krranga’s high ceilings, the smell and sounds of animals and children. She missed her people.

Across the room, the door slid open. From the barely audible approaching footfall, she suspected it to be one of the Archangels. Everything about them was quiet and controlled. The Overlord’s private guard, all seven of them, were truly amazing.

Whoever it was appeared to be wandering with a purpose. Mariska tracked the sounds of his movement from alcove to alcove.

He had to be looking for her. At least he had resisted using telepathy. The thought made her shiver. To have someone’s voice erupt out of nowhere in such a way was terrifying. She’d practically jumped out of her skin the first time and Laynald had gone ballistic in her defense. That poor Archangel really took a tongue-lashing that day. The memory of it still made her smile.

She shook her head. If the Overlord’s personal bodyguards were suppose to be so fearsome—despite their unbelievably beautiful appearances—what did that make Laynald? Did she really know him or was this all just some game to him? He did like games.

Her seeker sounded closer, barely beyond where she sat. Long, slender fingers pulled aside the flowering vines concealing her alcove. It was Gabriel, the Overlord’s personal adjunct. So far, he was the only one of the Archangels she could identify. He was slenderer, a little less physically buff. Though his features were perfect, his silken, waist-length hair, every bit as platinum as the others’, he was the only one she felt truly comfortable around.

Gabriel spoke in a soft, calming voice. My apologies. Laynald asked me to find and invite you to dinner with the Overlord.

That snapped her out of it. Why didn’t he ask me himself? she blurted.

With his smile, Mariska experienced a wave of calm. She slapped the ground and glared up at the beautiful man standing over her. Stop that! I’ll have none of your magic in my head! I’ll not be charmed by you or anyone else. Tell Laynald, I’m not hungry.

The Archangel flinched. My apologies. As an empath, it is second nature for me to maintain a positive emotional environment. You were stressed. I did not mean to intrude, or in any way control you. I am very sorry.

Mariska flushed. She felt like a beast for having snapped at him. Gabriel was the most inoffensive person on the whole Mothership. She heaved a big sigh and started to get up.

Gabriel extended a hand to