Descending: A Gina Harwood Novel (Book
#2 in the Gina Harwood Series) will be released on 2/28/2014
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Descending-Gina-Harwood-Indi-Martin-ebook/dp/B00IK5TY1I/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1394391901&sr=1-1&keywords=descending+indi+martin
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/descending-indi-martin/1118731392?ean=9781495201622
First
Chapter:
1
Gina
Harwood tried to calm her breathing, which was teetering on the edge
of hyperventilation. Her heartbeat pounded heavily in her ears, a
nonstop drumming flurry that caused her to clap her hands to her ears
and squeeze her eyes shut, counting in her head to quiet herself.
Experimentally, she cracked one eye open again and peered
across the room at the hole that had suddenly appeared in her wall.
Her strawberry hair was slick with fear-sweat, dangling limply in her
face and partially obscuring her vision, but not enough for her to
miss the hellish black void that didn’t belong. She peeled her
hands away from her ears and ran them roughly through her hair,
pulling the damp locks away from her face. Forcing her trembling
hands down to the recliner arms and her other eye fully open, she
glared at the blackness that stood beyond the peeling plaster. Anger
boiled inside her, shoving her fright aside, but re-quickening her
heart.
That
shouldn’t be there,
she thought, quite logically. It
wasn’t there before and it shouldn’t be there now.
She nodded. That seemed true.
Standing
at the edge of the hole, she looked back at her recliner, wondering
briefly why she didn’t remember padding across the hardwood floors.
Looking back into the abyss, she noticed a dull yellow glow emanating
from deep below her. As she watched, the light expanded slightly,
revealing edges that seemed to shimmer sickly, as though covered in
some viscous liquid. She realized she was peering down a staircase.
Startled
by the discovery, Gina took a few involuntary steps backward from the
precipice.
“This
is a dream,” she murmured weakly, wincing at the smallness of her
voice. Steeling herself, she cleared her throat. “This is a DREAM,”
she announced, clearly and strongly.
There
was no indication that her surroundings cared a whit about her
announcement. Her apartment still looked real and normal, except for
the unwelcome portal that looked as though it had erupted forcefully
from behind her wall. Unwilling to turn her back to it, she minced
sideways until she reached the kitchen bar. Reaching over, she
flipped the switch up. Cold white light immediately illuminated the
room, blinding her, so she turned it back off again. Gina was not a
total stranger to lucid dreaming, even lucid nightmares, and she
stared in surprise at the switch. Light switches usually did not
work, at least not as expected.
Frustrated,
she grabbed her cell phone off the counter. “This definitely won’t
work,” she whispered, glancing sidelong at the dull glow emanating
from the hole in her wall. At her touch, the screen flickered on,
reading 2:09am
on October 10th.
Gina’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and she brought the phone to
her ear, tapping the speed dial as she did so.
She
heard a faint click as the line went active.
A
thin spiderweb of grey cracks started pulsating out from the hole,
sending bits of drywall and paint flakes into the air.
She
heard the first familiar ring in her ear, frozen.
The
cracks accelerated across her walls and ceiling, seeming to burn her
scant pictures with invisible fire. Gina heard herself gasp as she
watched one curl up and blacken to ash in an instant.
A
second ring. Her hand gripped the phone to her head with such force
that it made her ear ache, but she was only dimly aware of the pain.
Her apartment tore itself apart around her. Deep, thunderous cracks
sounded as her hardwood floor panels split and burst up into the air.
“...Hello?”
Gina’s eyes widened as Snyder’s familiar but groggy voice
answered the phone. Fear was finally fully loosed from its bonds,
shooting ice water through her veins as the apartment destruction
suddenly quieted around her, as though mindful that she were on the
phone.
“Muh...
muh...” she stammered with lips that felt too thick, trying to
force her voice into a whisper, thoroughly unnerved by the sudden
silence.
“Harwood?
What the hell, it’s two in the morning, are you ok?”
“Morgan,”
she managed. “Help.” Her voice was still barely more than a
whisper, her tongue fighting against forming words.
An
animalistic keening sound erupted, loud and alien. Startled, Gina
dropped the phone with a loud clatter, watching helplessly as the
battery and backplate skidded across the floor and the comforting
screen light blinked out of existence. “SHIT,” she cried,
noticing with frustration that her voice had no issues being loud and
clear now. The cry sounded out again, a long whine following by an
inhuman click-hiss. Gina whipped her head around, scanning behind her
for the source of the noise, while her feet propelled her backwards
toward the hole.
BAM!
She heard the sound and saw the bedroom door reverberate from the
force of whatever hit it. BAM! Turning her head, she saw her front
door also straining against something trying to force its way in. Her
body hit the wall with a soft thud and her fingers ran their way
along the portal’s nearest ragged edges. The air beyond the wall
was neither warm nor cold, nor thick as she’d expected from the
impenetrable blackness. It felt like nothing at all.
The
creatures outside her living room threw themselves against the doors
in a strangely syncopated rhythm. She heard herself shriek as the
handle of the front door was ripped out by something awful and
nameless, some sickly oozing thing with claws and suckers that moved
in twitches and undulations. Unthinking, Gina leapt through the hole,
surprised to be standing on something that seemed solid enough. She
could barely make out the faint edges of the black staircase, but
threw caution to the wind as she bounded down the steps toward the
yellow glow. Keening cries of anguish followed her descent, floating
eerily down through the hole and seeming to dissipate in the
darkness.
Gina
slowed a bit as she could see the staircase’s end, a torchlit
platform with two ornately carved, massive stone doors. Two
cloaked figures stood guard in front of the gate, heads down under
ponderous, heavy cloaks whose stitching seemed to dance at the edges
of her vision.
“Gina...”
She
stopped in her tracks, confused.
“Morgan?”
she called out tentatively, though she knew neither man was her
partner. The two figures raised their heads to reveal ancient-looking
men with long, braided beards and clouded white eyes. Their faces
were etched with age, but their expressions were blank. She shivered.
“Harwood,
wake up.”
She
awoke with a start, eyes flying open, to see Morgan Snyder squatting
in front of her. He was gently shaking her arm. Gina shook her head
and looked around, fighting off an intense feeling of wrongness. She
was sitting on her recliner. There was no hole in her wall. Her
pictures still hung, safe and sound, and not charred to ashes. She
shook her head again. “What the hell?” she whispered slowly.
Snyder
sighed and stood up. Gina saw that he was wearing only boxers under a
long brown coat and grinned, some of the shock and confusion floating
away as reality reasserted itself. “That’s what I’d love to
know,” he muttered, following her gaze and whipping his coat shut.
Gina noticed he was slightly flushed in the soft lamplight. “You
call me in the middle of the night sounding scared off your head and
when I get here, you’re dead asleep.”
Startled,
Gina noticed her phone sitting on the end table next to her. Swiping
her finger across the screen, she viewed her call log, frowning.
“Huh,” she said. “I did call you.” She looked back up at the
current time. “Damn, you got here fast.”
“Oh?
Even after the long drive and the stop for donuts?” he retorted,
faintly mocking. Since inclusion with the Unit, they’d been
provided their own cushy living quarters on “base.” It had taken
some getting used to for her, as she’d been living independently
since she was sixteen. Now she knew virtually all of her neighbors
and saw them nearly every day, unless she or they were on assignment
somewhere. His run over had taken him three minutes, according to the
logs. Even so close, he’d have had to be moving like lightning.
“It’s not exactly far,” he finished, tiredly, eyeing the door.
“No,
I uh... I guess not,” she stammered, feeling suddenly exhausted as
the adrenaline started to wear off.
“If
you’re okay...?”
Gina
nodded, eyes down and embarrassed.
“Good.
I’m going to try to rescue what’s left of my sleep then. You can
tell me what this was all about in the morning.” Belting his coat
up, Snyder strode across the room to the open door.
“Morgan,
please stay,” the words escaped Gina’s lips before she knew what
she was doing and her mind fumbled around for something to undo the
sentiment. “...safe,” she finished lamely, clamping her mouth
shut to prevent any more damage. ‘What
am I doing?’
she thought, confused.
He
cocked an eyebrow at her. “I think I’ll be alright in the next
five minutes, and then I’ll be in bed,” he replied without much
edge to his voice. He took a half-step back towards her. “Are you
sure you’re okay? I could...”
“No,
I’m fine,” she chuckled mirthlessly, scrambling for words. “I’m
sorry I woke you. I don’t really remember doing it.” This was a
blatant lie. She remembered the dream as clearly as any she’d ever
had. In fact, it felt more real to her than Morgan Snyder standing in
her door with only his underwear on, offering to... ‘stay?
Was he going to offer to stay?’
she mused foggily. An ache started in her belly and worked its way up
through her body and she observed it clinically. Did she want him to?
“Okay.”
His face hardened back into the all-business visage she was so used
to seeing on her partner’s face, and she winced. She opened her
mouth to call after him, but he’d already walked out the door and
was closing it behind him. “Lock up,” he ordered gruffly, and
then he was gone.
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Frederick Lee Brooke launched the Annie Ogden Mystery Series in 2011 with Doing Max Vinyl and following with Zombie Candy in 2012, a book that is neither about zombies nor sweets. The third mystery in the series, Collateral Damage, appeared in 2013.
