<< Spotlight >>
It’s the end of the world as we know it, so forget about feeling fine. Things are going out with a bang and a lot of whimpering in these thirteen tales of the end of days. Where can we turn for help? Gods and goddesses, wizards and warlocks, the fey folk, heroes, assassins, federal agents or even outer space? No, we turn to International best-selling author Keith DeCandido, award winning authors Patrick Thomas, John French, KT Pinto and those visionary masters of the craft – Roy Mauritsen, Edward J. McFadden, Hildy Silverman, David Summers, Robert Waters – as they stand side by side with newcomers Samantha Mills, Matt Schianti, Briana Vandenbroek, Jordan Pettit and lead the charge into the final battles to prevent total annihilation and save us all.
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>> Excerpt <<
“Ragnarok and Roll” by Keith R.A. DeCandido
I added, “It’s like someone cast a spell over the whole damn island.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe someone has.”
Just after she said that, I felt something brush across my nose. Looking up, I saw white flakes start to fall from the sky.
Okay, I’m from Southern California, and I live on Key West. It took me few minutes to recognize snow. Ditto most of the folks around me, since snow is just about the last thing anyone expected to find in South Florida in springtime.
Within a few minutes, the snow was really starting to pour down. And it was getting cold.
“I gotta go,” I said. Besides the fact that listening to Jötunheim suck while standing on a street being snowed on was pretty low on my list of ways I wanted to spend my Thursday night, I had a feeling that things were gonna be bad at the B&B.
After navigating the throngs of very confused people on Duval, I got to the Bottroff House. I arrived just in time for Debbie to beg me to drive to the storage unit down on Virginia Street, since I was the only person she knew who owned a vehicle that could handle snowy roads.
Two and a half hours later, and after using the heat in Rocinante for the first time since I left San Diego, I stumbled into the snow-covered garden, my feet like ice cubes from walking through snow on flip-flops. Just getting to the storage unit and back, all of a mile from the B&B, took ninety of those minutes. The rest of the time was spent distributing heaters, extra blankets, and other stuff I liberated from the unit and tossed into the back of Rocinante.
By the time I got to my cottage, the final space heater in hand for my own room, my bones were cold. I’d never been this chilled in my life.
Bolverk was sitting on the steps.
“Shouldn’t you be in your room hiding from the weather?” I asked tiredly.
He rose to his feet. “I was waiting for you, Castor Lisbeth Zukav. We must speak.”
I winced at his use of my full name. My twin brother was named Pollux. Yes, really. Talk to my parents. We went by “Cassie” and “Paul” for a reason.
“Can’t it wait till morning?” I asked plaintively. “I have a bed that desperately needs to have me sleeping in it.” After all this running around, I doubted I’d have trouble sleeping this much before my bedtime. “No, it cannot. Fimbulvetr is upon us, which means that Loki’s plan to bring about Ragnarok has started to come to fruition.”
I blinked. “Okay, basically none of that made any kind of sense.”
“The man you know as Gunnar Rikardsen is, in fact, the trickster Loki. He is my blood-brother. I am Odin, the Allfather of the Aesir. And we do not have much time.”
I remembered some of what I saw online when I was doing my search on Jötunheim’s name. “Hang on—Loki, Odin—you’re a Norse god?”
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