Next week, the biggest Greystone adventure yet arrives! Legends and Legacies will change everything for the series. It’s the beginning of the end for Greystone and I can’t wait for you to see what it’s all been building toward.
Enjoy a sneak peek of the novel below:
Legends and Legacies Sneak Peek
Chapter One
Soriya Greystone fell.
Waves of time, ripples of the infinite, swirled around her drowning form. They were deep pools of green, vacant of anything concrete. No visions of past, present, or future inhabited the Bypass’ energies. There was only the fall.
How much time had passed remained a mystery to her. All that mattered was the mission—one Soriya needed to succeed.
This is a mistake.
Loren’s words echoed through the void. She tried to open her eyes, to visualize his scruffy face and rundown look, but emptiness consumed her. Their last conversation, though, drove her on.
It’s mine to make. I’m not whole, Loren. I can’t remember pieces of my past. What I’ve done? What I’ve failed to do? I don’t feel connected to this place.
In her rebirth, something had been taken from Soriya. There were cracks in the wall, holes in her mind, threatening to shatter her. Nothing made sense, not even the reason for her expulsion from the Bypass. Her memories were gone. Past victories vanished along with cherished relationships. A void remained in her heart and in her thoughts. That emptiness carried over to her city and her friends. The disconnect kept everyone at arm’s length. A burning rage replaced all sense of love and hope.
Soriya refused to live like that.
I have to find out why. I have to see what is still hidden.
Yet she found nothing waiting for her. The void consumed all. It took her away from the world the second she stepped into the Bypass. The glowing infinite swallowed her whole. She continued to fall through it all, lost to everything—including her own sense of self.
Soriya snapped her eyes shut. Her fingers balled up into fists, squeezing her anxiety away. “I won’t be lost.”
It had been Mentor’s fear. He had spoken of it often in the early days, when the Bypass was shiny and new to his young ward. Soriya wanted to know everything right from the start, but the mysteries were necessary, according to her teacher. They were for her protection. She had been meant to discover the truth in time, in her own way.
Mentor’s apprehension came from experience. He had lost his teacher to the Bypass. Looking too deeply, the man who trained Mentor had been ripped from the world.
Just as Soriya had become.
“No,” she whispered. Her eyes opened to the thick black void, so much darker than the Bypass appeared from the outside. Something was buried behind the light. She struggled through the shadows, yet found no clear direction and no path to follow.
“Focus,” Soriya said, her voice stronger now. Her right hand ran along her hip to the hand-sewn pouch tied to her belt. Soriya retrieved the Greystone inside and held it out before her. The mysterious artifact offered no warmth, only a reminder of her failures. She tried to push them aside, squeezing lightly along the edges of the stone. “Focus, Soriya.”
Nothing came. No hope beamed from the surface of the stone and no light showed her the way. The fall continued, drawing her deeper into the dark.
“Please!” she cried. “I can’t be lost! I can’t be—”
Soriya hit the ground with a thud. It surprised her so much she nearly dropped the Greystone at the impact. Tucking the stone away, Soriya felt the earth beneath her. Gravelly bits skittered between calloused fingers. Pavement extended to the right and left. She could see it, her eyes sparking to the dim light finally emanating within the infinite.
Standing, Soriya took in the world. It formed, brick by brick, as if years passed by in the span of a single breath. Buildings, sidewalks, roads, and cars took shape. Spires rose to new heights, blotting out the dark void.
The city formed and brought a smile to her face.
“Portents.”
Soriya reached out, wanting to touch everything to ensure its reality as much as her own. She ran from the parked cars—vacant of occupants—to the brick of the businesses that made up the block. Her travels took her from one side of the street to the other, journeying across the sprawling city. It wasn’t until she came to a five-point intersection that Soriya stopped in confusion.
“Where?”
She had never seen such a place in her city. Or so her memory told her at any rate, which had been less than dependable since her rebirth. Portents had become nothing more than a stranger to her. To not recognize something as unique as the five-point intersection shouldn’t have been surprising in the least.
Roads converged on the location, one from the downtown spires, another from the Grove, with the others branching clearly from Grant Square, Riverside, and the Knoll. Every major district in the city flowed to this point. The buildings dotting the corners appeared innocuous enough. They carried storefront windows with signs and banners bolted to the edifice.
At least, four of the five did. One building, with cracked and weathered brick, offered no clear sign of its purpose. No windows illuminated the mystery for her. Even stranger was the absence of a door—like the building had been closed off to the world and forgotten.
“What is this place?”
“A crossroads,” a voice called out. Soriya spun on her heels. A shadow approached from the far side of the intersection in slow, staggered steps. “It is a gateway. One you should turn away from.”
“I can’t,” Soriya replied. Her feet carried her to the middle of the intersection, where she met the cloaked figure. A smirk settled across her lips. “You taught me better than that, Mentor.”
He removed the hood of his cloak. Gray eyes met hers. They were the only part she recognized of the old man. His neatly trimmed white beard was overgrown and mangy. Claw marks on his right cheek and scrapes across his chin joined the scar down his left temple to his ear. Blood caked to his exposed skin—his, more than anyone else’s, from the looks of it.
Mentor had clearly been through hell. Nothing, though, compared to the pain in his eyes as tears of anger and frustration filled them. “Why are you here, little one? You never should have come back.”
Chapter Two
At any given time during the day, millions of people flooded the streets of Portents. With over two million permanent residents in the massive metropolis, spread out across five boroughs, crowded didn’t do the city justice. Add to that the three million commuters traveling the RDJ, riding the six subway lines, or sneaking through the back roads from the northern coves, there were plenty of reasons to stay home during the day.
None did, of course.
There was too much to do. Shopping and working, sightseeing and merely wiling away the hours until something better came along: these were the trappings of daily life in Portents. Whether one was taking in the latest artistic display at the Matuse Gallery or checking out the new exhibit at the Portents History Museum, the downtown streets were a cavalcade of different people, some not even from this world.
Myths and legends lived among the populace. Some people barely noticed their presence any longer, especially those able to fit in with a baggy pair of pants to hide their chicken legs or a hood to cover their horns. Hiding became their avenue of survival, even if they did so in plain sight. A lack of attention helped, but acceptance remained a long way off.
Those were the distractions of the world. They pulled away from the joy on every innocent face as they witnessed another miracle in the city—be it the shining black tower at the heart of downtown, the beauty of Heaven’s Gate Park, or something as simple as a mouth-watering beef patty grilled to perfection.
“Oh, my God.”
Greg Loren sat in the corner of his booth. The smile on his face grew with each passing moment. It had become a permanent staple since the arrival of Gabe Jordan, who devoured another chunk of his burger with overwhelming zeal.
“Oh, my God!” the boy of seventeen repeated.
“I told you.”
Gabe held out the burger, swallowing hard on the oversized bite. “Holy crap. This is… this is…”
“Use your words.”
The kid threw Loren a glare. “Why the hell have we not eaten here before?”
“Well, I thought…”
Gabe didn’t wait for the response. The burger was back at his lips, and he opened wide to finish the meal. His appetite reminded Loren of a certain snake-creature he’d encountered once. His stomach churned at the image locked in his mind, and he shook it away.
“Slow down,” he said.
“Not a chance,” Gabe replied, small flecks of bun flying free with every word. He settled against the back of the booth, one hand on his satisfied gut and the other holding tight to a napkin to clean off his ketchup-and-mustard-stained face. A sigh of contentment escaped him. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“Enjoyed it?”
“You’ve been torturing me with so-called home-cooked meals all month when we could have been eating here?”
Loren scoffed. “They weren’t that bad. The pasta—”
“Rubbery.”
“The soup…”
Gabe’s eyes flared. “That was soup?”
A groan escaped Loren. After years of living off crackers and flat ginger ale, Loren knew he needed to change. Gabe made the attempt necessary; the kid’s metabolism was that of an Olympic athlete compared to his own. It might have come from chasing monsters in the dark as the Greystone, or Gabe simply enjoyed eating an entire bag of potato chips every day. The jury was still deliberating.
The cooking, though, had been little more than aggravation—for both of them, it seemed. Gabe had been patient through the effort, but the entire task was unnatural to Loren. He had never been the family man. Beth had always done the cooking when she’d been alive, taking his meager offerings and turning them into fine dining. Cooking was only one shortcoming Loren had failed to consider when adopting Gabe. The entire experience had opened the floodgates on Loren’s terrible habits.
Gabe, though, took them in stride—resilient to a fault. He slid to the end of the bench and stood. “I’m getting another burger.”
“Another?”
He was two steps away before he spun around on his heels. His hand opened in front of Loren. “Want one?”
Loren sighed. He retrieved his wallet and set it in the kid’s palm. “To go.”
Gabe weaved through the lunch crowd for the counter to place his order. Loren’s smile remained. Days sometimes passed when all he did was watch his new ward’s every action. The muffled laugh that came with watching some stupid video on the internet or the disgruntled breathing that emanated when forced to research some threat that had cropped up in the city.
He reminded Loren so much of Soriya.
Another sigh escaped him. It had been a month since she’d entered the Bypass. He’d stayed away, the protection in place as she’d requested, but his thoughts continued to linger on her. In all that time, there had not been one sign of her return, one blip on his Greystone-radar to her presence.
Part of that came from the guilt at his failure to follow through on his promise. A shadow had escaped from the Bypass when Soriya had come back to him during the knight affair. She’d sensed their arrival—feared it, in fact—yet Loren found no trace of what it could have been or what it meant for their future. He hated the idea of letting Soriya down, of not rising to the challenge of protecting the city when she needed him to.
Today, though, was for Gabe. A random Monday holiday (did they even have Superintendent Conference Days when he was in school?) had given Loren and Gabe the opportunity to shuck off responsibility for some much-needed relaxation. While he could have done without the critique of his cooking ability, he was happy to spend every second he could with the kid.
With a fresh carryout bag in hand, Gabe returned to the table. He set the bag down to put on his coat, a wary eye on Loren the entire time. Lifting it back up, Gabe jammed some fries into his mouth.
“Thinking about Soriya again?”
Loren’s brow furrowed.
“Yeah, that’s the look you give when you’re thinking about her,” Gabe continued.
“I don’t have a look.”
“You absolutely do,” the kid said. He leaned along the table, bag locked in his grasp. “You never said what happened to her. Where she went or—”
“She needs time, Gabe,” Loren answered. He stood, his coat over his arm. “After everything she’s been through, she deserves that, doesn’t she?”
“But when you went with her to the Bypass—”
Loren’s stare stopped Gabe’s sentence cold. “You were supposed to be sleeping.”
“I was,” Gabe said. “And then I wasn’t. So, I thought I would, you know, follow you a little bit?”
“She’s finding herself, Gabe,” Loren said. “Like we are.”
Gabe offered a nod of acceptance.
Loren took the lead, pointing to the door. “All set?”
As they reached the exit, held open by a mother of four with weary eyes and a backpack of supplies that made her appear to be attempting a ten-mile hike instead of a lunch excursion, Gabe stopped at a posted sign. He tapped it lightly and grinned.
“They have a room for rent upstairs.”
Loren thanked the woman for holding the door, then rolled his eyes. “Ditching me already?”
Gabe squeezed the top of his carryout bag. “For deliciousness like this? In a heartbeat.”
Loren shook his head. “I’ll work on the cooking.”
“And the driving.”
“And the driving,” Loren grumbled. “Anything else?”
“Well…”
Loren stopped. His hands fell to his hips.
Gabe laughed. “I’m kidding.”
“You better be.”
“I am.”
The winter wind whipped up the lane. Loren slipped his coat on and zipped it up to his chin. Digging his hands deep into his pockets, he peered up and down the Knoll. “Where to now? Movies or shopping?”
“What’s playing?”
Loren retrieved his phone. He scrolled through the search results. “Let’s see,” he muttered. “Superhero movie, superhero movie, animated film, animated superhero film… Are there no comedies anymore?”
A hand lowered the screen from his face. “Shopping it is,” Gabe said. “You could use a new wardrobe.”
“What’s wrong with my wardrobe?”
Gabe cocked his eyebrow. “You can’t wear Superman shirts every day.”
“I can and I will.”
Gabe shook his head. He started north toward the Galleria. “Work will love that.”
“Work hasn’t said a word about it.”
“To you, maybe.”
Loren held him up. “Wait. What have you heard?”
“Well, Myers might have mentioned—”
A plume of flame shot up in the sky before them. The ground rumbled beneath their feet, shaking every edifice for blocks. Windows shattered. Alarms blared from the massive tremor. With the cacophony, a blistering shockwave passed through the pair, sending Loren and Gabe to the ground, along with every other pedestrian in the area.
Screams arose. Cries followed. Panic filled every eye, passing along to the next and then to the next, from street to store and back again in a perpetual chain of confusion.
Loren fought to stand before rushing over to offer Gabe a hand. The kid hesitated a moment until he found the carryout bag. He snatched it close before taking Loren’s waiting hand.
“You all right?”
Gabe nodded. “What was that?”
The flames flickered against the haze of the afternoon sun, like fading fireworks. Thick, black smoke trailed their path.
“An explosion,” Loren said.
Gabe moved toward the door of the burger joint. He tossed the carryout bag in the trash. His steps widened, his pace increased, until he started to run toward the flames.
“What are you doing?” Loren called after him.
“What do you think I’m doing?” The stone was in the kid’s hand as he waved Loren ahead. “Come on already!”
Chapter Three
Loren and Gabe rushed up the Knoll. They pushed their way through frantic pedestrians and a few wayward fairies, who held phones to their ears, murmuring prayers to loved ones and checking in on those not at their side. Gabe cut across the intersection at Denmar and King’s Lane to the business area of the district.
Chaos took on a whole new meaning at the explosion site. A sign near the entry steps listed the address and the name WHISTLER in dark, bold letters. Only one tenant was noted on the sign—PSI Telecom.
The building in question appeared innocuous enough—a six-story stone edifice, or at least it had been. The devastating blast had sheared off most of the front of the building along the top three floors. Papers sailed into the sky, some still flickering with flame from the bombing. Desks were collapsed, some of which rested on the street outside. The upper levels of the building had fallen into the rest of the structure, caving in on the lower floors.
Bodies littered the debris. Workers rested atop their stations or hung from the side of the building. Their eyes were glassed over, surprise permanently fused to their faces. They never saw it coming. Few did in the end.
Loren and Gabe looked on with fresh horror etched in their eyes. Alarms rang out in all directions. They came from vehicles parked along the block, some buried beneath rubble, others shattered beyond repair, but able to whine a little longer before their batteries finally gave way. Sirens joined the chorus, police and emergency crews close in proximity, but thanks to the distraught citizenry blocking every path, too far away to be of any use.
“We need to clear the road,” Loren said. “Emergency crews won’t be able to get here.”
“We have a larger concern,” Gabe said. “Look.”
Hands extended through cracked and warped window frames along the first floor of the building. Screams of terror escaped the thin hatch. Cries for help were drowned out by tears. The collapsed upper floors had trapped those working below.
“Gabe…”
“They need help.”
Loren agreed. His hesitation, though, centered on Gabe himself. For as much as he’d grown to trust in Gabe’s abilities, ever since becoming the boy’s guardian, Loren had felt a renewed sense of concern. He was responsible for Gabe’s safety now—no one else.
“We can’t just—”
“We have to.”
No concern entered into matters for Gabe, at least, none for his own well-being. He started toward the building.
Loren’s hand shot out, catching hold of Gabe’s shoulder. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I have to help.” He raced for the entrance.
“Gabe!”
The kid was already at the door. A brief glance back and then he was gone, into the black smoke and the still-shifting devastation.
Loren huffed. His hand remained in mid-air, the feeling of Gabe’s jacket still coursing through his fingertips. Loren feared these situations more and more. Before, there had been a degree of separation, knowing his friends—Curtis and Nicole Dunlop, Gabe’s previous wards—were in charge of the boy’s day-to-day activities. They would have steered Gabe in the right direction. They would have kept him safe.
Loren only placed him in danger and that notion sat in his gut like a gigantic weight threatening to burst through with one big heave. The kid’s every action left Loren with no choice but to follow and hope for the best.
“Great.” Loren tucked his head deeper into his coat, hiding his mouth and nose from the smoke as much as possible. His eyes were another matter, and he struggled to see five feet in front of him upon entering the building.
A hall widened in front of him. Shadows shifted, but Loren couldn’t tell what was merely smoke and what held form within the thick fog.
Snaps filled the air. Cracking plaster and shattered stone shifted with each step. A wall groaned in surrender to the mass crashing down upon it from the upper floor. It would only be a matter of time before the top floors consumed the bottom level of the Whistler Building.
“Gabe?”
“This way,” a voice called from the right. Loren worked through the gloom, aided by a beam of light rising in the distance. Gabe held the Greystone high over him, the rune clear on the surface, to shine a path for Loren. He met up with the kid in front of a blocked doorway.
“Help!” Fingers stretched through the debris. A few at first, but at their arrival, more poked through and the cries repeated. “Please help!”
Loren pulled at the shattered debris. He shoved aside crumbling stone and warped plaster, digging his way to the door. Gabe joined the efforts, but a large beam angled across the collapsing door frame stymied them.
“We can’t get through!” a voice cried within. Blood trickled from the man’s forehead. His arm hung limply at his side. “I tried, but the wall…”
It must have happened quickly. The man had been lucky. Two more bodies lay beneath the surface, only a few appendages visible, and Loren did his best to block Gabe’s view of them.
“Gabe…”
The kid stepped forward, hands beneath the beam. He heaved with all his might.
“Gabe, we can’t—”
He refused to hear Loren’s plea. Ripping off his jacket, Gabe took a covered breath and stepped forward once more. The stone was back in his hands. “Give me some room.”
Loren nodded. “Back up, folks. We’ll have you out of there in a second.”
“How?”
Gabe smirked at the question. No verbal answer was necessary. They witnessed it with their own eyes as the Greystone lit up.
Every ounce of willpower poured through Gabe into the stone. The light grew brighter in intensity. The cracking and shifting no longer brought a sense of doom for the trapped innocents in the building. It was their salvation as the beam suddenly lifted back into place. The door frame, while not at its necessary height, was still usable and Loren held out a hand to the bleeding man at the front of the line.
“Come on.”
The man took his hand. His eyes, though, were lost on Gabe, who continued to use the stone to hold the beam in place. “How did he—”
“Save the questions.” Loren pushed the man ahead, then grabbed the woman behind him. “Let’s move, people.”
He prodded them through the frame one by one. Dozens took their turn; all the while, Gabe kept the beam afloat. The strain was evident on his face, but his will never wavered.
Loren’s certainly did. He wanted to race from the building and never look back, but he stood his ground to help those in need. He ignored the call of the newfound parent in him, but it continued to rise in his every thought.
When the last trapped soul was released from the first floor, Loren helped them across the lobby for the exit. Loud coughs echoed through the space. A woman struggled to keep her feet because of smoke inhalation. Loren propped her up at his side, then shuffled her to the exit where he passed her along to others.
Loren held his coat to his lips. “Gabe?”
“I thought… I thought I saw something…” The kid’s words were strained from the burden. Rather than let it rest, Gabe doubled down, screaming as the stone’s power heaved the beam away from the door frame. It crashed across the lobby, smashing desks and chairs as it careened to the far side of the room.
“It was smoke, Gabe,” Loren said. “Everyone is safe.”
Gabe shook his head. He ducked below the door frame to enter the office. “There might be others.”
“Ever think about us?”
“People could be trapped.”
The building groaned in response. Light fixtures crashed from above, joining a rain of tiles on the floor. The entire ceiling shifted slightly, angling closer and closer to the ground. “So could we.”
Gabe rounded the room hastily. He ducked under shattered frames and around sputtering electrical lines. His travels took him to the back wall of the complex, where he sighed. “All right. Let’s—”
The floor gave way beneath him. Gabe’s eyes went wide, fear filling them. His hands shot up for help, but Loren was too far away.
He was gone—falling into the darkness below.
“Gabe!”
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Paperbacks and hardcovers will be available on the March 4th release date.