Together or not at
all.
Exile
The Price of Talent Book 5
by AK Nevermore
Genre: Spicy Dystopian Romance
Together or not at all.
On an
alternate earth, a cataclysm has altered a subset of the population. Talents
are persecuted for their psychic and physical mutations, giving rise to two
conflicting societies based upon maintaining genetic purity. And the Source, a
shadowy corporate entity dependent upon the exploitation of captive Talents, is
hunting them…
Flynn
Scot is spiraling.
After a
cataclysmic chain of events and devastating loss, Flynn’s grasp on reality is
slipping. Backed into a corner by the Assembly and his sanity called into
question, the threat of exile and having his talent stripped endangers not only
him, but any chance he might have of getting his family back…if they’re not
already past saving.
Deep
in stasis, Kara’s fate is uncertain.
Stolen
away and in the clutches of a madman, Kara’s future depends solely upon Titus’s
sufferance. With unfettered access to her genome, his attention is fixated upon
the next iteration of Talents—especially after events in the North change her
status from prize to bait.
Because Flynn is coming
for her, and he’s not coming alone.
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Cal grimaced and climbed to his feet as Glynfyls stopped shaking. He
clutched his breast, groping for the ward Miriam had set some thirty-odd years
ago that tied Flynn back to him. Please, God… Cal exhaled, his knees buckling in relief. Still there. Felt
different, but the boy wasn’t dead.
Not yet at least.
His gaze slid from the calamity outside the window to the blood
spattered across the wall and the gore-soaked carpet. In the unlikely event
House Scot survived the next seventy-two hours, the whole damned room would
have to be gutted. He dropped the last of his cigarette and ground it out beside Cordelia
Kerns’s corpse.
And if they didn’t survive, screw the resale value. What a goddamned mess.
“Here’s a spot, there’s a spot…” he muttered to himself, bastardizing lines from his brief stint in
community theater. Seemed appropriate. He couldn’t clearly remember his last wife’s smile or the faces of any of the children he’d buried, but every goddamned line from that play, every goddamned
moment he’d spent with her, was seared into his memory in high goddamned definition.
Her. Elize. Lizzy. His Lilith.
Cal ran a shaking hand down his face. Squatted. Knees cracking, he leaned forward to lower Kerns’s lids and cover the look of surprise in her grayed-over baby blues, his gaze locking on the imprint of a
bloody crescent between her brows—
A flash of memory—the same mark on his second wife—hit him hard.
He stumbled into a chair and pulled out his pouch of tobacco, cursing
the tremor in his hands. Fingers fumbling, he threw aside the botched attempt.
Deep breath. Rolled another. It was passible, barely. He lit it. Blew out a
frenetic puff of smoke and spat tobacco from his lip.
His gaze drifted back to Kerns’s corpse. Another woman with her throat slit. Wasn’t related to Julia’s earlier demise, but that wouldn’t stop Crandall and the city’s rumor mill from having a goddamned field day with it.
Christ. Between that and Flynn’s tantrum destroying everything as far as the eye could see, House Scot was on
borrowed time.
And when the press caught wind of Kara’s abduction, it would be worse.
What a clusterfuck. If there’d been any place to go, Cal would’ve started packing his bags, but this time, there wasn’t. Jane—Mother—had made sure of that.
He blew out a ragged stream of smoke and glanced at the couch as he
brought the sad excuse for a cigarette to his lips again. Kara’s cat glared back. Miserable animal was wrapped around Fitz’s throat with its green eyes narrowed. Cal frowned at the rise and fall
of the boy’s chest. Looked like taking pity on fuck ups was still part of Elize’s MO.
Not that the boy was losing any sleep over his brush with death. He was
sawing wood like he didn’t have a care in the world thanks to Nora’s induced coma. Must be nice.
Cal took another drag, cursing himself and the lingering scent of Elize’s perfume. The barest hint of bergamot dragging his mind back to that
first summer they’d met. To the stolen kisses during rehearsals. To the way the lighting had hit the curve of
her cheek and the look she’d throw over her shoulder as she sauntered into the wings. Christ, that
still got his dick hard.
Too bad her seduction had been as much of a role as the one she’d played on stage.
He’d hauled sets around the whole damned summer for that shit, podunk
production to be close to her. Senator Dashell’s daughter. What she’d seen in the son of a pig farmer—Christ. In retrospect, he knew exactly what she’d seen. Or rather, what her father had. Man hadn’t blinked twice at pimping her out for twelve hundred acres just
outside of town where the Corporation could build their research facility.
And damn them, but they’d gotten it.
Why her and her brother had stuck around after, slumming with the five
of them—
Cal shook his head, staring at the blood pooling beneath Kerns. What
was done, was done, and his hands had never been clean. No. He’d been up to his goddamned elbows in this shit from the get-go, but
this right here? This was gonna sink him and everything he’d worked for since.
As intended.
He fished the slip of paper Elize had left on Kara’s pillow from his breast pocket, his fingers shying from the braid
coiled beside it. Entwined E’s on the letterhead and beneath the monogram, a set of coordinates with
four damning words.
40°49’26.99” N-73°55’20.99” W
Queen takes pawn.
Check.
Elize…Enoch…the twins were just pieces, not who he’d been playing against. Cal stroked a heavy hand over his mustache.
Knowing the message for the invitation it was.
Jane had made her move, and now it was his. For better or worse, the
endgame had begun.
**Don’t miss the rest of the series!**
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AK Nevermore enjoys
operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent
every year. A Jane-of-all-trades, she’s a certified chef, restores antiques,
and dabbles in beekeeping when she’s not reading voraciously or running down
the dream in her beat-up camo Chucks.
Unable to ignore the
voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes Science
Fiction and Fantasy full time.
She pays the bills
editing, wielding a wicked hot pink pen and writing a column on SFF. She also
belongs to the Authors Guild, is a chapter treasurer for the RWA, teaches
creative writing, and on the rare occasion, sleeps.
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Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree 