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Enjoy this exclusive sneak peek of Ascending Mage 2: Changeling Hunter. 

Did you skip Chapter 1? You might want to read that, first.

Chapter 2 – Had Enough Yet?

The Toyota Highlander turned west off Highway 83, climbing the asphalt road leading up a steep hill. Ember peered through the windshield of her rented SUV, noting the empty guard house that once was a shade of mustard, the sagging chain-link perimeter fence overgrown with weeds, the unpatched cracks in the paved streets, and the aging buildings with peeling, faded white paint.

“The whole place looks like a heap of tosh,” she thought aloud.

The Air Force Station was a Cold War relic, retired 31 years ago when its radar and communication facilities became obsolete. Equipment and personnel were transferred to the significantly larger Minot Air Force Base on the opposite side of the Magic City. The buildings that remained behind were mothballed and eventually sold to the highest bidder.

Houses which previously boarded officers and young families were now in the process of being renovated and rented out, mostly to young men who had arrived from out of state to work the oil patch. The boom in western North Dakota was in full swing, and while jobs were abundant, living quarters were scarce. Men earning six-figure salaries working twelve-hour days on fracking crews or driving tanker trucks had little choice but to sleep wherever they could find a landlord willing to rent them a room.

The west-facing windows of all the buildings still glistened with morning dew. The concrete block barracks with its rusting fire escape appeared to be empty. A small wooden building that once served as the station’s nondenominational church was being used for storage. The grey tin mechanics’ garages were locked up tight.

All except one, supposedly.

Ember idled the Highlander as she surveyed the semi-abandoned facilities until she found what she was looking for. Off by itself, set apart from all the other outbuildings was a rusted tin structure about 15 feet tall and 150 feet long. Five massive overhead doors faced the street, their panels chipped with blistering aquamarine paint. One of the doors had two panels missing, making it look like rectangular eyes on the face of a hulking robot whose existence had long outlived its function.

She brought a scrap of paper to the steering wheel so she could review it without taking her eyes off her surroundings. The handwritten note had been slipped under her apartment door sometime late last night:

Meet me here at 6 am. —D

A crude illustration was sketched on the reverse side. Ember had followed the directions to the letter, and they led her here, where a star was drawn on the paper.

She glanced at the clock embedded in the dash panel and confirmed that she wasn’t late. It also meant that she still had a couple of hours before she was expected at work in the embassy. A lot could happen between now and then.

Ember parked the Highlander on the cracked cement pad in front of a faded steel walk-in door. Before she got out, she gave the area a final 360-degree review to ensure she was alone. She would be stealthy in her approach. She was sure that the idling of the vehicle would mask her arrival. Satisfied that she was taking all the proper precautions, she popped open the driver’s side door. The door chime on the SUV happily pierced the still morning air. She cursed the vehicle’s trumpeting announcement. So much for being sneaky.

The walk-in door was made of reinforced steel but held a collection of dents. It was slightly ajar, its lock broken.

Against her better judgment, she pulled the door open the rest of the way and slipped inside the abandoned garage.

The light switch near the door was unresponsive when she tried toggling it. Electricity had been severed to the building years ago. The only illumination came from the morning sun, peering in from the broken overhead door panels—the giant robot’s eyes—and what light that could sneak past her silhouette in the doorway. She stepped in and aside to let her eyes adjust to the dim interior.

At one time, three decades ago, the garage would have smelled of oil and grease and diesel exhaust fumes. Tandem axle military trucks painted olive drab or woodland camouflage would be parked in the stalls, each being serviced by a crew of young enlisted Airmen in overalls. Rock and Roll might have played over the radio—music that now would be considered classic, but at the time were top hits.

Now, the building was populated by mice and barn swallows. The stench was unmistakable for both. As Ember’s eyes acclimated, she walked cautiously. Dried bird dung and feathers matted the floor, especially beneath the mud-and-grass nests they constructed along the rafters and below the trusses of the loft. Scrap metal and broken boards were strewn throughout the building, along with stacked cardboard boxes whose corners were gnawed through by mice. When she brushed up against a rolled-up carpet, fine dust scattered into the air. Ember somehow managed to resist sneezing.

She heard her attacker two seconds before the strike arrived.

Ember spun, the cloud of decaying carpet dust billowing around her. The attacker’s fist swung for her face, but she stepped back in time to avoid connecting with it. A kick followed the punch, landing just next to her hip. A heavy boot ruptured the rotting cardboard box, its mouse-nest contents bursting as if they were made of gunpowder.

Use your surroundings. Ember didn’t hesitate. She plunged her hand into the chewed-up paper and fibers, grabbed a fistful of the fine material, and flung it at her attacker’s head.

Her aim was true; the powdery material exploded in the target’s face. A cough, a gag, and a woman’s voice swore an obscenity.

Any of my hard parts are weapons. Any of their soft parts are targets. Ember followed up with an elbow to the woman’s solar plexus. It was a mistake.

Dust got in her own face then, and Ember was momentarily blinded. Worse, her hit wasn’t hard enough to bring the other woman down. Worse still, the woman replied by shoving Ember backward, hard.

Ember tripped over the stacked boxes, falling on one of the rolled up carpets. Spider webs and demolished mouse nest clung to her long hair. She gagged, coughed, and reached for something to help her back on her feet. Her hand found a wooden chair leg covered in the slime of fresh bird poop.

She got to her knees just as her attacker jumped through the debris. Ember brought the chair leg up as hard as she could, striking across the other woman’s leg.

The woman went down hard and yelled, “Fucking bitch!”

Continuous motion. Ember threw herself at the woman before she could get back up. They rolled over decades’ worth of mouse feces, swallow feathers, and bird dung. Birds squawked in alarm above, making for the only exits. Their fluttering wings knocked loose fine dust particles and created a whirlwind around the humans who invaded their sanctuary.

Ember was winning. The other woman outweighed her and was an impressively skilled fighter, but she also had a fistful of fine dust and mites in her eyes, nose, and throat. Taking a chair leg to the shin probably didn’t help.

“Had enough yet?” Ember spat the words triumphantly. She used the wooden chair leg to pin one of the woman’s arms. Ember kept her knee on the woman’s sternum so she couldn’t break free from the slimy concrete floor.

Dark eyes glared back at her, and the woman showed her teeth. Her incisors were sharp points, and her cuspids were growing longer. The woman’s face became broad and feral, her whiskered nose black above a toothy maw. Fur punched through her skin and clothes disappeared. Those dark eyes now reflected like a pair of angry mirrors.

The whole shift happened in less than a second.

Ember was thoroughly familiar with changelings, but she rarely met one who could fully shift in under a second. It took incredible discipline and years of practice to perfect such a transformation so quickly—while being pinned to the floor, no less.

She was tossed like a rag doll. Ember skidded on her butt along the uneven concrete floor, coming to rest against a rusted grate. The chair leg clattered uselessly into the shadows.

The 140-pound mountain lion stalked a wide circle around its prey. Its ears were flat against its buff-colored head, and its lips snarled to show the sharp canines that would soon crush Ember’s larynx if given a chance. Its claws clicked against the cold floor.

The walk-in door was fifty feet away, with no shortage of obstacles. She would never be able to outrun the cougar.

Ember struggled to her feet and looked for anything she could use to defend herself. If she could just stun the creature, or distract it long enough to get outside, maybe she could lock it in, somehow.

The changeling wasn’t going to give her the chance. The mountain lion opened its jaw and emitted a frightening scream. It pounced at its prey, claws extended.

If not for the cement block support column at her back, Ember would have crumpled to the floor against such a force. It wasn’t much of an improvement to be pinned against that column, especially as the recipient of the full brunt of a cougar’s lunge.

She brought her arm up to protect her throat and felt the lion’s jaws latch on. Teeth designed for tearing through animal hides closed in around her forearm. The lion’s claws raked across Ember’s other arm, shredding her skin like tissue paper.

Bloody hell, this was such a bad idea.

Want more? Check out Ascending Mage 2: Changeling Hunter

Enjoy this exclusive sneak peek of Ascending Mage 2: Changeling Hunter. 

Chapter 1 – Ruined With Rot

It had been such a perfect summer day, right up until someone shot him.

A brisk breeze was coming from the northwest, making the expressionless faces in the nearby sunflower field restless. Thin cirrus clouds raced as streaks high in the periwinkle sky above the Missouri Coteau.

It was Saturday morning and Evan and Brandon were tending their salsa garden, each on his hands and knees as they worked to finish the chore of pulling weeds while the day was still reasonably cool. Water seeped from black, rubber soaker hoses laid out in snake-like spirals around the plants in the garden, bubbling and hissing fine droplets of cold drink to turn the rich soil dark.

By afternoon, the temperature would be sweltering, but they would be on their way to the lake by then. The housemates had banked up, and were cashing in, two weeks’ vacation from the lignite mine where they worked. They would be spending that hard-earned downtime camping and fishing at Lake Sakakawea.

Evan had worried their flourishing garden would suffer in the unforgiving July sun while they were gone, but Brandon insisted that the plants would survive. They compromised by pledging to drive home every few days to turn on the hydrant and check their mail. It was only an hour’s drive from their rural property outside of Underwood, North Dakota to the cabin they rented near the south shore at the park district.

Evan’s iPhone rested at an angle atop a nearby fence post, the better to catch the weak Wi-Fi signal from the house. Pop music streamed from the tethered Bluetooth speaker, filling the air with last year’s big hit from The Black Eyed Peas. Honey bees hovered among the tomato blossoms, undeterred by the “boom-boom-boom” lyrics of the catchy song.

“Another one of the Sun Golds is ripe! Want this one?” Brandon was holding a deep orange cherry tomato between his thumb and forefinger, a bright grin reaching his eyes.

Evan looked up from the habanero plant he was kneeling by. “Did you get one yet?”

“Not today,” Brandon admitted. “But there’ll be more when we get back from Beulah Bay next week. You can have this one if you want it.” The willowy man stood up and stepped between the galvanized wire cages. When the chorus came on, he swiveled his narrow hips and snapped the fingers on his free hand to the beat.

Evan shook his head and admired the show. “You’re going to get stung by one of those bees if you keep that up.”

“No way! Them chickens won’t copy my swagger.” Brandon dropped the tiny fruit into Evan’s outstretched hand, then danced back to the tomato plants to resume weeding. “I’m so three-thousand-and-eight.”

“What does that even mean?”

The cherry tomato was not quite crimson, but this variety would never get fully red. Evan studied it only a moment before he popped the orb into his mouth. An explosion of sweet flavor burst across his taste buds when his teeth crushed into the juicy flesh. “Oh my god, that really is great, isn’t it? You really can’t buy tomatoes this sweet.”

The other man grinned at Evan and nodded, though he was too focused on lip-syncing to the song to voice an opinion.

Fergie had just started belting out her portion of the lyrics when the phone exploded. Tiny pieces of metal and plastic shrapnel scattered across the garden.

“What the fuck!” Evan spun around to see the top of the post splintered where the phone used to be. “I think my iPhone just overheated!”

“Woah. Do you think we left it out in the sun too long?” Brandon picked up a shattered remnant of the smartphone’s innards. He stood up and pulled out his own phone from the back pocket of his jeans—the phone was a twin to his friend’s—and held the two side by side. “Look how deformed it is!”

Without the music to mask its report, the second gunshot was unmistakable.

Brandon’s phone flew apart from his hand and shattered before it hit the ground. Blood sprayed at once from a wound that went clear through his palm, exposing splintered bones. He stared at his mauled hand, mouth agape as his mind struggled to compute what his stunned nerves prevented him from feeling.

Then he screamed.

Evan didn’t have time to think, only to react. He pulled his t-shirt off and wrapped it around his friend’s hand. Blood already began to soak through before he had a knot tied around Brandon’s wet, slippery wrist. “Keep pressure on it! I’ll get the car!” He started to run toward the house but stopped mid-stride.

A figure was approaching casually toward the garden, dressed from head to toe in hunting camouflage. A black AR-15 rifle was in the hunter’s hands, its muzzle pointed at them.

Confusion threatened to paralyze Evan as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The stranger’s face was veiled in a pattern matching the rest of his full-body camo. A strip of burlap was woven around the firearm, breaking up its unmistakable shape. Evan turned back to Brandon, who was clutching the cotton mitten around his right hand.

“Run!” Evan had to shout it three times, and even then, his friend stood like a beanpole until Evan grabbed the man’s forearm and pulled him away. They ducked behind the wooden fence at the edge of their property and ran into the neighbor’s sunflower field.

The sunflowers weren’t tall enough this early in the season to hide them, but there wasn’t any time to think of a plan, just to react. Someone was trying to kill them. Why anyone would want to murder them was beyond Evan’s comprehension.

“Why?” Brandon breathed the same thought aloud as they ran. “Why did someone shoot me?”

“Probably some junkies,” Evan guessed. “Some meth-heads trying to rob us. They probably didn’t think anybody was home.”

The breeze was stiff on their faces as they ran, hunched low. The main road was up ahead a quarter mile, and they would follow it until they got to the Gappert’s place. Richard and Darlene Gappert were their nearest neighbors, about three-quarters of a mile down the road.

The collective daisy-like faces of the plants shunned the intruders. The sunflowers were only interested in following their illuminating god as it chased across the southern sky. Despite their apathy, one of the plants managed to trip Evan as he ran bare-chested through the bristly leaves.

A bee stung his exposed shoulder and some part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Only minutes ago, he had been chiding his best friend about upsetting the bees, and now he was the one who attracted the stinger. After they got to the Gappert’s and called the McLean County Sheriff, he knew Brandon would get a laugh out of that little irony.

When they got to the ditch along the road, they were both sucking air. The makeshift bandage around Brandon’s hand was seeping with a steady flow of blood. His own shirt and jeans were splattered with dark streaks. He had been exerting himself, increasing the blood flow when he should have been trying to keep his heart rate in check.

Evan thought back to the safety training they received at the Falkirk Mine. “We need to keep your hand elevated. Keep applying pressure. And we have to slow down your heart rate.”

“Kinda hard,” Brandon wheezed, “when we’re running.”

“Okay, then sit here in the ditch. I’ll run over to Dick and Darlene’s and come back for you.”

A rusting, corrugated culvert jutted from an approach between the road and the section line trail that bordered the sunflower field. Brandon parked himself on a patch of curlycup gumweed, using the steel cylinder as a backrest. He laid his arm on the culvert and placed his uninjured hand over the blood-soaked knot of cotton. His face was pale and sweaty, and he was breathing hard.

Evan glanced back across the sunflower field to their house in the distance. Not more than a couple hundred yards away, a camouflaged figure stalked the trail they had cut through the flat field.

He dropped down and began to crawl over to Brandon. Evan felt sweat drip down his arm and when he placed weight on his right hand, a wave of pain burned from his shoulder. Only then, did he realize that it was blood and not sweat that trickled from a wound in his shoulder. Some part of his mind remembered stumbling minutes ago and feeling a bee sting.

“You’ve been shot too!” Brandon groaned.

Among the flat prairie fields, there weren’t many options for concealment, and they would never outrun the shooter.

“He’s following us,” Evan hissed. “We need to hide! Can you shift?”

“It’s been a while,” Brandon admitted. “But I think so. Think we can both fit in the culvert?”

“You will for sure. Do it.”

Evan watched as his friend grimaced. After a moment of concentration, his lean body began to shrink, and his face became narrow and flared. Brandon’s ears migrated to the top of his head as they became triangular. Hair and skin and clothes were replaced with short, ruddy fur across his backside, white fur along his front. The stylish skinny-jeans that minutes ago had been shaking to hip-hop were now a bushy tail. The blood-soaked bandage melted away, and his damaged hand was replaced with a paw to match the other three, though this one was bleeding.

They hadn’t considered the injury, and Evan had already donated his shirt to form the bandage. He would need to kick off his shoes and use a sock to aide his friend. He picked up the fox to help him into the culvert where he would be safe. In his fox form, his friend weighed maybe 25 pounds and was easy to slide backward into the rusty cylinder.

Brandon looked past Evan toward the sunflowers and his fox-eyes grew wide with alarm. A half-second later, a hole appeared between his eyes and his body went first rigid, then limp. Black matter and red fur splattered the yellow gumweed growing along the embankment.

Evan dropped his best friend’s body and fell backward. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he looked up at the silhouette leering above him.

The hunter’s Mossy Oak head cover concealed everything but a pair of rage-filled eyes. A hint of gun smoke escaped the muzzle brake of the rifle before the wind stole it away. The barrel was pointed at him.

Evan squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the trigger to be pulled. When he closed his eyes, he saw Brandon’s face. He opened them and blinked up at the killer. “Why are you doing this to us?”

The hunter said a word, but the head cover and wind conspired to muffle his voice. When the killer took his hand off his rifle’s foregrip to pull down the mask, Evan seized his chance to escape.

He launched himself at the stranger, catching him by surprise. The man fell backward, swinging his rifle like a club and barely missing Evan’s head. The hunter fell into the sunflower field. Evan ran up and over the road to the ditch on the opposite side.

As he ran, Evan focused his thoughts on shifting. He and his best friend didn’t practice their abilities as changelings often, choosing to live their lives full-time as regular humans. Their families never understood their lifestyle choices, but he and Brandon understood one another. They had that, at least.

He grunted as his bones creaked and slid. Coarse fur sprouted from his skin as his body morphed from its human form. He was on the north shoulder of the gravel road when he dropped to all fours. Evan would be able to run fast, to get away then. His senses became sharper, his eyesight just a little better, his nose more focused, his hearing more acute. He knew that even in human form, changelings had elevated senses when compared to NonDruws, but in his animal form everything was more primal, more instinct-driven.

If only he would have practiced his shifting, he might have been fast enough to get into his coyote form and run away. He was too slow, though, and no sooner was he transformed into a coyote did he smell the hunter. He heard the rifle’s action and a deafening crack.

The bullet crashed through his rib cage and dropped him. Evan rolled twice down the ditch and came to rest as a crumpled heap, his neck twisted beneath his body. It hurt to breathe. A strange texture confused him. It felt like a fire was alive in his chest.

The growing haze of pain made it hard to make sense of the human who approached from downwind. Before Evan inhaled his final breath, he thought of his salsa garden and how they had left the water on. Those sweet tomatoes would be ruined with rot.

Want more? Check out Ascending Mage 2: Changeling Hunter

It’s been an amazing week.

The product of two years of writing, rewriting, and countless edits, our second novel was at last released for sale on Amazon, on Sunday, March 17^th.

Ascending Mage 1: Changeling Justice is the first book in our Ascending Mage series. It’s a modern fantasy thriller set in North Dakota, featuring a kick-ass heroine who just so happens to be a uniquely powerful mage. She’s got a lot to learn, however, and there are plenty of bad guys who will stop at nothing to control her.

RaeLea and I invested a lot of time and energy into this series, and we really believe in the characters and story. Our Alpha Team of test readers gave us fantastic feedback which we incorporated to fine tune the pacing and ensure the prose is rich without being confusing.

This is the second novel we’ve written; the first is Fog Over Mandaree, which is available for free, exclusively via our website ( https://FRhurt.com  ). We learned a lot from crafting that story, which serves as a prequel to the Ascending Mage series.

I’ve never given birth, but I have to imagine that writing a novel is kind of similar in some ways. The gestation period might be a bit less predictable, but ultimately you’re creating something new to introduce to the world.

So it’s kind of like a baby, but one that gets judged. Not just in the form of hushed whispers or empty platitudes: “oh she has a tail, how…um…cute!” No, the assessment of our “baby” will be quite public for all to see, in the form of reviews.

The first bad rating of 2 stars arrived on Goodreads from a guy who I suspect hadn’t even bothered to read our story (I say this because his rating history shows that he rates over a dozen books every single day, with an average rating of 2.16 stars). He can’t possibly know how much that stings for a new author who relies on early ratings as social proof for prospective readers. Or maybe he does, and he gets a sense of empowerment by leaving negative ratings.

But for every troll, there are at least ten times’ as many new fans sprouting up. A few five-star ratings and a couple early reviews tell us that we might just be onto something with this modern fantasy adventure. We’ve even had a few folks pre-order the next two sequels, even though we’ve not advertised them yet. That’s a pretty strong testament to the world we’re creating.

We didn’t know what to expect for sales figures. We’re brand new names with a brand new title in a wide, wide market. There are over 7 million book titles available for sale on Amazon right now. We knew we would have to invest in promotion if we wanted to be seen in such a crowd. We’ve purchased ads on Amazon and a couple other websites focused on fiction readers. An author friend of ours was extremely kind and surprised us by mentioning our debut novel to his readers.

One week later, and we’re pretty pleased with initial results.

Out of 7 million titles, Ascending Mage 1: Changeling Justice managed to gradually climb up out of the depths of obscurity, to crest at #1,503 in the Amazon Kindle Store. That was enough to earn us #95 in the highly-coveted Top 100 Urban Fantasy category, and Top 10 in three other Fantasy-related subcategories.

Needless to say, we’re pretty excited!

As much as we would like to celebrate, we know this is just the beginning of our efforts. We have barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible for this series, with the next four books mapped out and in various stages of assembly.

The sequel, Ascending Mage 2: Changeling Hunter, is an even better story than its predecessor, with faster pacing and higher stakes. It’s available on preorder and will be releasing on March 31. To give you a taste, we’ll be posting a few chapters on our site in the days to come.

We’re embarking on a pretty surreal adventure, and you’re invited to join us!