Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
And now here he is, hiding out in a student’s apartment, having angered one of the most powerful families in Mondirra, while the dead threaten to outnumber the living.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Berend and Isabel seek sanctuary and find it in an unlikely place in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door. You can read this chapter right now by subscribing to my Patreon, or you can wait until next week when it’ll be available for free here.
Warning
The young man stands slowly, rolling his shoulders, as though the somber temple of Ondir is a country park and he’s contemplating concluding his picnic and heading home. He walks unhurried to the end of the row and starts up the center aisle, his hands in the pockets of his fine trousers and his polished riding boots sending a slow rhythm to echo against the dome.
Berend stands, dragging Isabel up with him. His free hand goes first to his pistol—it’s empty, Isabel remembers, because he shot the animated corpse in the morgue and hasn’t had a chance to reload—and then to the hilt of his sword. His cloak hangs over his elbow, hiding the weapons from view.
She twists her wrist out of Berend’s grasp. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispers.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seventeen”“Bessa Kyne’s ghost showed me your face,” Berend says. “She wanted someone to know what you’d done.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
The newest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door is now available on Patreon! It includes a confrontation with a villain and, at last, a means of escape.
Also, as a side note, Part Two will be twenty-six or twenty-seven chapters, twenty-five of which are finished as of today. I’m looking forward to sharing them with you!
Friends
Berend marches Isabel out of Father Pereth’s office. His grip on her arm is immovable as a rusted iron hinge. Isabel struggles, twisting her elbow and pulling against him, but it’s no use. Fear restricts her vision to the end of the hall, where the dome allows in a few thin beams of sunlight. She expects the chapel will be filled with constables, but she might still be able to get away, to disappear into the back corridors and out into the graveyard—if she could only get herself free of Berend.
She trusted him. She’d thought he cared enough about the state of the world, about protecting the people of Mondirra, that he would help her. He saw the same terrible vision in the nether that she did. She’d even thought he supported her against the high priest’s accusations, until he’d smiled and acquiesced and grabbed her by the elbow.
“I’m not going to the temple of Isra,” she snarls through her teeth. She doesn’t want to hurt him, but if she has to, she’ll drive the heel of her boot straight into the soft leather instep of his. It’ll have to be quick, and then she’ll have to run. He’s still injured. That will slow him down.
Instead, Berend lets go. He holds both hands out, spreading his fingers to show they’re empty. “I know.”
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Sixteen”“Do go on, mercenary,” he says. “I’ll expect a recitation of your own sins, after. You can start with how you shot me in the chest.”
The Book of the New Moon Door
The dead aren’t staying down, and Berend and Isabel can’t catch a break, in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, now available on Patreon! You can subscribe to read this chapter right now, or wait a week for its appearance here on the blog.
Journey to the Water will update here tomorrow!
Affliction
The body breathes in dry, rattling sobs, forcing air through collapsed lungs and a desiccated throat. It lurches forward blindly, rather like a garden slug, the sheet tangling its legs and covering its sightless face. The one free arm gropes its way forward, long, bruised fingers grasping at nothing.
Berend draws his pistol, levels the barrel at where he’s pretty sure the back of the corpse’s skull pushes against its shroud, pulls back the hammer, and fires.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fifteen”What are you doing, Horst? Trying to prove you’re still useful, even though the world’s falling apart? You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to get Isabel killed.
The Book of the New Moon Door
The newest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door is now available on Patreon! Things are not going well for our protagonists, and they struggle with convincing the authorities that they haven’t just made up the events of the past few days.
You can read this chapter right now on Patreon, or wait until next week, when it will make its appearance here on the blog.
Trouble
Dawn breaks over the city by the time they reach the gates. Berend is usually good at keeping track of time, always waking right before his watch is due to start, but the night seems to have passed by in just a few hours. He doesn’t like it.
Isabel is half a step ahead of him. Though she stops once more at the gate to make sure he’s following, she says nothing. She may have been weeping, silent and stone-faced, but it’s too dark still for Berend to tell.
We are in trouble.
Berend doesn’t want to have to be the reasonable one between the pair of them. His hands still itch as he pictures wrapping them around Arden Geray’s ghostly neck. It feels satisfying in his imagination, even though he’s aware that dead spirits don’t work that way. Failing that, he wants to go straight to the university hospital and shake Lucian Warder awake, his injuries be damned. Isabel is supposed to be preventing him from doing that, at least until she’s explained how best to not get himself killed in the process.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fourteen”He has a growing feeling that if Isabel breaks down, so will he. One of them needs to keep their wits about them.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Hello there! Things are bad and getting worse for Berend and Isabel in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, now available on Patreon. You can catch up on all previous chapters under the Stories tab above (in the Menu if you’re on mobile).
Fracture
Berend stands under a sky filled with blinking, staring eyes, surrounded on all sides by the restless dead. A red star shoots overhead like a firework, disappearing below a distant horizon in a blaze of ruby light. The world shakes with a terrible shriek, and Berend falls into it, the sound tearing him apart from within, his vision turning black at the edges and a burning pain spreading from his heart to his fingertips.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Thirteen”
Space Whales Press 