Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

more terrible happened. The shimmering river of magic turned from mist to solid crystal. It froze. The heart of the world stopped beating and every magical creature felt the change.”

I could taste bile in my mouth.

“Dragons plummeted from the sky. Elves aged centuries in seconds. Werewolves’ bodies became unstable and left them deformed. The magic drained from the creatures of the world. From all of us. And it has stayed that way ever since.”

In the darkness, I saw heads turn. Tiny little bodies examined themselves, then turned to inspect their neighbors. Their entire world was now covered in a sadness that the rest of us had been seeing for the last six years.

“You may still bear the greatness of what you once were. Wings, fangs, claws and tails are your gifts from the great river. They herald back to your ancestors and are nothing to be ashamed of.”

I bit down on the Clayfield too hard and it snapped in half. Somewhere in the crowd, a kid was crying.

“Remember, you may not be magic, but you are still… special.”

The film ripped off the projector and spun around the wheel, wildly clicking a dozen times before finally coming to a stop. Burbage flicked on the lights but the children stayed silent as stone.

“Thank you for your attention. If you have any questions about your body, your species or life before the Coda, your parents and teachers will be happy to talk them through with you.”

As Burbage wrapped up the presentation, I tried my best to sink into the wall behind me. A stream of sweat had settled on my brow and I dabbed at it with an old handkerchief. When I looked up, an inquisitive pair of eyes were examining me.

They were foggy green with tiny pinprick pupils: Elvish. Young. The face was old, though. Elvish skin has no elasticity. Not anymore. The bags under the boy’s eyes were worthy of a decade without sleep, but he couldn’t have been more than five. His hair was white and lifeless and his tiny frame was all crooked. He wore no real expression, just looked right into my soul.

And I swear,

He knew.

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EYE OF THE SH*T STORM

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TRACER

Book One of Outer Earth

by

Rob Boffard

Imagine The Bourne Identity meets Gravity and you’ll get Tracer, the most exciting thriller set in space you’ll ever read.

A huge space station orbits the Earth, holding the last of humanity. It’s broken, rusted, falling apart. We’ve wrecked our planet, and now we have to live with the consequences: a new home that’s dirty, overcrowded, and inescapable.

What’s more, there’s a madman hiding on the station. He’s about to unleash chaos. And when he does, there’ll be nowhere left to run.

In space, every second counts. Who said nobody could hear you scream?

Seven years ago

The ship is breaking up around them.

The hull is twisting and creaking, like it’s trying to tear away from the heat of re-entry. The outer panels are snapping off, hurtling past the cockpit viewports, black blurs against a dull orange glow.

The ship’s second-in-command, Singh, is tearing at her seat straps, as if getting loose will be enough to save her. She’s yelling at the captain, seated beside her, but he pays her no attention. The flight deck below them is a sea of flashing red, the crew spinning in their chairs, hunting for something, anything they can use.

They have checklists for these situations. But there’s no checklist for when a ship, plunging belly-down through Earth’s atmosphere to maximise the drag, gets flipped over by an explosion deep in the guts of the engine, sending it first into a spin and then into a screaming nosedive. Now it’s spearing through the atmosphere, the friction tearing it to pieces.

The captain doesn’t raise his voice. “We have to eject the rear module,” he says.

Singh’s eyes go wide. “Captain—”

He ignores her, reaching up to touch the communicator in his ear. “Officer Yamamoto,” he says, speaking as clearly as he can. “Cut the rear module loose.”

Koji Yamamoto stares up at him. His eyes are huge, his mouth slightly open. He’s the youngest crew member, barely eighteen. The captain has to say his name again before he turns and hammers on the touch-screens.

The loudest bang of all shudders through the ship as its entire rear third explodes away. Now the ship and its crew are tumbling end over end, the movement forcing them back in their seats. The captain’s stomach feels like it’s broken free of its moorings. He waits for the tumbling to stop, for the ship to right itself. Three seconds. Five.

He sees his wife’s face, his daughter’s. No, don’t think about them. Think about the ship.

“Guidance systems are gone,” McCallister shouts, her voice distorting over the comms. “The core’s down. I got nothing.”

“Command’s heard our mayday,” Dominguez says. “They—”

McCallister’s straps snap. She’s hurled out of her chair, thudding off the control panel, leaving a dark red spatter of blood across a screen. Yamamoto reaches for her, forgetting that he’s still strapped in. Singh is screaming.

“Dominguez,” says the captain. “Patch me through.”

Dominguez tears his eyes away from the injured McCallister. A second later, his hands are flying across the controls. A burst of static sounds in the captain’s comms unit, followed by two quick beeps.

He doesn’t bother with radio protocol. “Ship is on a collision path. We’re going to try to crash-land. If we—”

“John.”

Foster doesn’t have to identify himself. His voice is etched into the captain’s memory from dozens of flight briefings and planning sessions and quiet conversations in the pilots’ bar.

The captain doesn’t know if the rest of flight command are listening in, and he doesn’t care. “Marshall,” he says. “I think I can bring the ship down. We’ll activate our emergency beacon; sit tight until you can get to us.”

“I’m sorry, John. There’s nothing I can do.”

“What are you talking about?”

There’s another bang, and then a roar, as if the ship is caught in the jaws of an enormous beast. The