Extraordinary Book 3: Refuge at Clifftop

By K.L. Noone

A stormy night, and a mission gone wrong ...

The superhero team of Sundown, Holiday, and Beacon is planning a quiet night -- Ryan and his partners are all happily in love, and nothing’s threatening the world except John’s experiments with creative cake recipes. But Ryan’s worried. Because Holiday’s sorcerer’s powers keep growing stronger. Less controlled. More unpredictable. Maybe even more than human.

But when a sudden deadly mission threatens John’s life, Holiday’s new abilities might be the only way to save him ...

Contains superpowers, an earthquake machine, tea, hurt/comfort, and also comfort sex in a very large bed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646563272

K.L. Noone

K.L. Noone loves fantasy, romance, cats, far too sweet coffee, and happy endings! She is also the author of Port in a Storm and its upcoming sequel, available from Less Than Three Press, and numerous short romances with Ellora’s Cave and Circlet Press; her fantasy fiction has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. With her Professor Hat on, she teaches college students about Shakespeare and superhero comics, and has published academic articles and essays on Neil Gaiman’s adaptations of Beowulf, Welsh mythology in modern fantasy, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Book preview

Refuge at Clifftop

By K.L. Noone

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2020 K.L. Noone

ISBN 9781646563272

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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For Kells, who told me I wasn’t allowed to be too mean to Holiday. Happy endings always, I promise! Also for Awesome Husband, even though he thinks Chris Evans is too wholesome.

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Refuge at Clifftop

By K.L. Noone

Chapter 1

You don’t have to worry about the random magical surges, Ryan protested across the connection, I swear we’ve got it under control.

Captain Justice, on the other end of the holographic call, crossed muscular arms in the Guardian Tower and said, Hmph, with exactly the same inflection Ryan recalled from his days as Tim’s teenage sidekick.

He refused to cross his arms in turn. Or to scowl. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, and he even considered Tim a friend. Mostly. Some days. Really it was just the one time, and we’ve figured out why, and Holly has better shields in place now.

Holiday Jones, settled into the reading nook of one of Clifftop’s stone-hewn walls and big windows, looked up from an enormous academic study of Elizabethan witches and made an apologetic face at him, which was not an expression that the world generally expected from the last Sinister Sorcerer.

It wasn’t your fault, Ryan observed to him, ignoring Tim and the communications array for the moment. It was ours. John and I were distracting him, Tim, okay?

No. Captain Justice regarded Ryan, and by extension both Ryan’s partners and the whole secret base of Clifftop, with the well-meaning judgment of a heroic mentor. It’s not okay. If you’re going to be a team leader—

"We have to take it all seriously. I know. He did possess a moderate amount of guilt about the power-flare that’d lit up skies over Tokyo—but only moderate. Nobody’d been hurt, they’d been celebrating a successful and painless defeat of Mistress Nyx’s night demons, and he and John had been busy making sure that Holiday had been feeling excellent. In the aftermath. Atop a skyscraper. In the rain, full of exhilaration and cheerful ecstasy. We do. And it won’t happen again."

Half the sensitives in the city reported spontaneous—

I’m really very sorry! Holiday called over. With that luscious English-rose accent, hair pulled into an absentminded messy braid of waist-length night-black over one shoulder, he might’ve been an artist’s model, a painting, a vision of elegance framed by the window and the sunset. It’s all my fault, don’t listen to Ryan, I should’ve been keeping up better shields!

He’d had Ryan’s hand inside his Sorcerer’s robes and John’s mouth claiming his, at the time; Ryan hadn’t been at all surprised that their youngest partner had lost focus for a moment at the abrupt and glorious climactic peak.

The focus hadn’t even been the problem, or not exactly. Holly’s shields should’ve held.

They hadn’t. And the edge of worry prickled down Ryan’s spine like one of his own lightning-bolts.

Holly’s powers kept growing. Kept manifesting. Kept spilling over. Sometimes in unexpected ways. Nothing bad so far. But that was…well. So far.

Ryan’s parents, as their medical and research backup, possessed a vast amount of scientific giddiness about this development. Both Doctors Yamamoto adored Holly and John, and thought of their son’s chosen partners as family; Ryan knew they did. They’d said so. More than once. And both John Trent and Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones—who had different but painful family histories of their own—got quietly visibly happy when reminded that Ken and Betty considered them sons-in-law already.

Holly had thought he’d had the magical flare-ups under control. He’d known he’d been getting stronger—portals that would’ve taken effort two years before simply appeared when asked, and the energy-strings of the universe came readily to hand without searching—but he’d also thought he’d woven sufficient protections into one of the inherited family focus-rings.

That emerald had cracked. Shimmers of jade and sapphire and saffron had poured out into the night, overflowing with sensation. Ryan and John, a bit busy themselves, had laughed, kissed him more, been