Tall, Dark & Apocalyptic Read Free Page A

roots.
    He understood why the elders would choose an unsettled time for its headquarters. The chaos and distrust of the time made it much easier for them to stay apart, a secret organization whose tasks would be frowned upon if they were known.
    But knowing the rationale didn’t make Audie like it any better.
    He stood on the rocky shoreline, staring off into the horizon where the black, rugged outline of the prison appeared to the uneducated eye as a ridge of barren mountaintops. A yard below his feet the water rushed in and crashed against the rocks, flinging salty mist into the air to moisten his skin and hair.
    The wind flung the moisture-laden strands of his hair around his face and sent the tails of his black, leather jacket flying behind him.
    High above him, a magically-generated bank of steel-gray clouds masked the sky, making it impossible for any spy craft to view the Authority without dropping low enough to be in danger of being shot down. It wasn’t unusual for the elders to order a craft to be shot out of the air. They had no compunction and laws that would forbid the action had long ago ceased to exist.
    Like the clouds, the natural repulsiveness of the place had been augmented by the Authority’s repelling magics, which made it nearly impossible for an unsuspecting dupe to just stumble across the organization by mistake.
    He pulled breath into his lungs and lifted his hand to call his guide magics. The air above his palm swirled blue, the color thickening as blue sparks of magic spun toward him from the objects in the surrounding area.
    When the sparkling, blue energy swirled upward, into a narrow funnel that gained speed with every glistening spark of power, Audie pictured the distant island and closed his fist, feeling the punch of the re-ordered magic in a burst of power that slammed up his arm and skimmed through his belly.
    He felt its power along his nerve endings, gathering it into a spiral in his gut as the world started to shimmer and pulse around him. Then he closed his eyes before the movement could make him dizzy and held his breath as the salt-drenched wind buffeted him.
    Audie was jerked off his feet and flung into a crack between the layers of the physical world.
    When he stopped moving he was standing in the courtyard of the Authority Headquarters, staring into the silver-blue gaze of the Ingress Sentinel. The eight foot tall black man stood unnaturally straight, a lethal trident clutched in one enormous fist. The man was deadly accurate with the trident and was rumored to be able to hit a fleeing sparrow in a high wind, from two hundred feet. In the dark.
    Audie wasn’t sure how much of that rumor was urban legend and how much was real. He hoped he never had to discover the truth firsthand.
    The Ingress Sentinel had been one of the last of the inhabitants of Atlantis, and had barely survived as the walls of the great kingdom had folded inward and sunk into the sand at the bottom of the ocean.
    The experience had left him justifiably angry and inexplicably arrogant. Wearing a skin-tight suit the color of his eyes, the Atlantan stared down at Audie from his great height, the close-set silver gaze focused on him with open hostility. “You were told to remain at large until you’d killed the creature Yeira Ruth.”
    Audie held his ground, his jaw tightening with anger. “That’s right.”
    The man’s wide, black face showed his surprise, the silver gaze widening slightly. “Does this mean you have exterminated the creature?”
    Audie didn’t answer the Sentinel’s question. “I need to speak to the Huntsman.” The Huntsman was the leader of the Sorceri Bounty Hunters, a very powerful mage in his own right.
    The Sentinel held his gaze a moment longer, his expression implacable. “That is impossible. Remove yourself from the courtyard, Hunter. Go and complete your mission.”
    “I can’t complete my mission until I speak with the Huntsman.”
    As the big Sentinel shook his enormous