Kindle Edition
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Inspired Industries
Copyright: February 19, 2014
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
A reporter discovers an ancient mother goddess cult and is immediately caught up in a fight between the modern word and the ancient, particularly when he discovers the strange past connected to the woman he has come to love.
An investigative reporter working for a London newspaper is sent on a mission to Spain to investigate the dissaperiance of a series of young men. While in Spain he encounters evidence of an ancient society that has existed in the hidden corners of Europe since the Stone Age.
The society is a mother goddess cult where the standard social roles are reversed. Women are in charge and men are kept in “their place”. Ron barely escapes Spain with his life. Once back in London he tries to return to his normal life even striking up a love affair with a woman who works for the paper. Then he learns of a boy’s disappearance, which mirrors identically the disappearances that happened in Spain and were caused by the cult.
He goes to rescue the boy but is also caught by the cult and marked for death. Impossibly the woman reporter saves both Ron and the boy. Secretly in her youth she had been an important member of that cult. In the process of escaping the woman reporter is forced to kill the woman who had begun the ancient rite of blood sacrifice.
This done no more boys will disappear and the cult will vanish into the shadows where it has lived for centuries. They have escaped the world of shadows but the shadows still exist.
Excerpt
The daily Sun Journal was located in a building just off London's famed Fleet Street. The big old building had been erected five years after the Second World War for the smallest possible amount of money, and on gray and grimy early spring days it reflected every moment of its over-fifty years in existence.
It was a functional old building that performed a practical purpose. Inside its occasionally melancholy shell the structure housed everything necessary for the production of a newspaper: from presses and writers, to advertising and sales force. Each department had its separate offices, and agendas, but they all had the same goal - sell papers.
Ron Jeffries, a reporter who had traveled extensively in search of news, had moved here from his home in Toronto, Canada, tempted by the chance to experience the intense competition of London's Fleet Street. He had not been disappointed by the experience. In the time he had been here he had collected a long string of headlines next to his byline and photograph, which tended to annoy some of his fellow staff writers, most of whom had lived here all their lives.
Because of this largely good-natured jealousy, as he entered the city room this morning and walked to his desk in the center of a maze of partially enclosed cubicles, Ron was not surprised to see several sets of amused eyes following his every move. There was definitely something up and his associates clearly had a good idea where that something was about to land. Stepping into his own small space he saw the reason for their collective amusement.
A note was stuck in the middle of his computer screen. Ron pulled the note off the screen.
"Office now."
He crumpled the note up and dropped it in his wastebasket.
"That's a dandy way to start the day," he muttered.
"Some cocky lad is in trouble I think."
Ron looked around for the source of this observation and found Sharon James, a slender, attractive, sharp-eyed woman who wrote for the business section of the paper. She was looking over the wall that divided their cubicles.
"Trouble is my middle name madam it helps me get results. When you get results piddling little problems tend to fall by the wayside," he said, hoping he was right.
Sharon laughed at this bravado and sunk back behind the divider. Letting the smile on his face fade Ron thought for a moment trying to reason out the motive behind this note, a standard summons by the paper’s editor. He couldn't remember if he'd overcharged anything on his last expense account, the most common reason for sudden monosyllabic summonses. He had not even been on assignment out of town in over a month.
The editor's ideas about what was necessary for a traveling reporter and Ron's often resembled each other not at all. As Ron's results frequently surpassed what was wanted however, the disagreements were usually a matter of formality.
That last trip had been a colorful assignment. Much of it had been front-page material surrounding a series of bloody murders of young prostitutes. That case had ended weeks ago. Coincidentally the killer had been found in his own hometown of Toronto.
The murderer had been killed trying to run across a highway while evading police. Two cars and a transport truck had saved the justice systems of Canada and Great Britain a great deal of expensive paperwork.
Reluctantly, Ron trailed his six foot-two frame along the rows of desks to the editor's office on the far side of the room. He wasn't worried, just curious. This had to be something new.
"If he does sack you, Ron, may I have your desk? Your computer's newer than mine."
Ron looked back at Sharon and made a comically disgusted face, which sent the business reporter into torrents of laughter. Sharon was a very attractive woman but she also had the hard shell of a newspaper reporter. It was a shell no one he knew had ever gotten past.
"That's what I love about this place, the atmosphere of mutual support," he answered.
She blew him a kiss in response, then returned her full attention to the screen in front of her.
On the other side of the room three sports reporters, whose names Ron could never remember, looked up from a huddle at one desk and began humming a death march. Ron reached the end of the long room where the editor's closed door stood waiting. He turned to the room and found a sea of eager eyes all pointed toward him.
"Is there no one in this room more interested in their own lives than mine?" he pronounced theatrically.
A very junior editor, with thick glasses and a mild bookish face, looked up from his computer screen. He smiled with the confidence of someone who knew he was never going to be the center of attention and who honestly did not mind one bit. For a second Ron envied him.
"If one is going to lead an interesting life, one is going to have to deal with the consequences."
"Thank you, Confucius, that was very helpful," Ron said dryly.
He tapped a knuckle on the editor's door.
"Drop by anytime," the young man said. "You know where I'll be."
Waiting for permission to enter, Ron stared at the young editor, vaguely distracted by the man's solid confident rootedness. Something in the man's sense of permanence seemed just a little out of place in this rat race profession.
"Come in."
Ron shook off the effect of the unexpected distraction and entered. He closed the door, then stood at ease in front of the editor's large desk and prepared himself to face whatever was wrong. The man behind the desk was in his late fifties, stout, balding, and slightly flushed. As usual, he wore a suit with a matching vest, always completely buttoned. To this he had added a small bow tie of an electric red. The ties changed daily. The button down look never did. His name was Franklin Smith-Jones, called, behind his back, Franklinstein. It was a nickname he knew and secretly enjoyed.
The majority stockholder in this paper, and several others, he looked like the sort of man who spent a good deal of his time communicating at the top of his lungs. In truth, Franklin Smith-Jones never raised his voice. He didn't have to. He got results instead.
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