Category / Previews

by laurenalder

NaNoWriMo 2018 Project: “Where Darkness Falls”, Take Three

Yep, you read that right: NaNo 2018 will be my THIRD kick at the “WDF” can.

I started the project during NaNo 2011, based (if I recall correctly) on a single potent mental image which came to me out of the blue a couple of months before NaNo that year. I’m a comic book colourist by trade, and what I saw in my mind’s eye was a splash page in the style of Charlie Adlerd’s “X-Files” work, painted all in muddy greys: a nightmarish figure, half-woman and half-crow, rising into the night out of a grove of November trees. The shot was taken from around chest level of the figures on the ground: a man and a woman, each carrying a slightly futuristic handgun. They were watching the crow-woman rise with anger, but without fear, while the policemen around them looked utterly terrified.

I knew that at their feet (out of the shot) lay the remains of a grisly human sacrificial victim, his heart torn out by the crow-woman’s beak. And that was the moment when “WDF” was born, although it took me a while to figure out who everybody in the shot actually was.

The woman turned out to be Tatiana Kavelin, a Manifester/Special Ops Agent with the Department of Paranormal Investigations (DPNI), Chicago Office, Wiccan Division. The man was Jeremy Anderson, a Manifester/Special Ops Agent with the DPNI, Chicago Office, Christian Division. The crow-woman was… well, I want to avoid spoilers, so let’s just say that she’s also a Manifester but definitely NOT dedicated to serving the public good.

What is a Manifester? Briefly stated, a Manifester is a human being who manifests supernatural abilities in line with their religious or spiritual beliefs. The earliest recorded tale of a Manifester dates back to the Babylonian Empire — a story not known (or at least not spoken of) among non-Manifester historians — when Hammurabi decreed that the strong should not overwhelm the weak, and established the Children of Marduk to protect those without special spiritual gifts. The Children of Marduk were tasked with hunting down and destroying any other Manifester who did not swear to nurture the rest of humankind. After the collapse of Babylon, and through all the millennia that followed, the Children of Marduk carried out their mission in secret, although the names and structures of their organizations changed to suit the times. And the predatory Gifted, who were persecuted by them, lived even deeper in the shadows, vowing that one day they would rule the world as was (to them) their birthright by virtue of their Powers.

Agent Kavelin and Agent Anderson, who must work together by order of their superiors but who loathe each other across the divide of their very different religions, find themselves the only ones guarding the safety of the vast majority of humankind — who have no idea that the DPNI exists, or that the Gifted are striving to bring about Armageddon. Thus the central question of the novel: Can they overcome their mutual antipathy in time to avert the end of civilization as they know it?

More about “WDF” in tomorrow’s post. For now, here are my “face claim” pictures for the two main characters.

Nick Tag as Jeremy Anderson:

nick-tag_as Jeremy Anderson

And Idina Menzel as Tatiana Kavelin:

idinaMenzel

by laurenalder

SPECIAL PREVIEW: The Prologue of “Where Darkness Falls”, My Next Novel-In-Progress!

The first draft of the Prologue, 673 words.

WDF COVER TINY

********************************

Overhead the full Moon rides at Her midnight zenith — commander of the tides, and what is blood but the iron-rich essence of the Sea? Roiling clouds surge howling around Her, threatening to annihilate the world, but the dust of Her feet are the hosts of Heaven and Her glory shines unabated, silver and serene.

Below, Her divine energy burns in the mortal form of Her devout worshipper: wildfire through grass, consuming the mind and heart of a female Manifester who is so submerged that she barely recall her own name. The female’s naked body strides forward, but it is the Goddess Whose feet tread the dirty concrete and sanctify it; the female’s pale arm reaches out, but it is the light of Isis that glows through her skin as she gently but firmly sweeps the butchered body of her slaughtered little one to the edge of the altar draped in white silk.

Woman and Goddess turn toward the nearby male whose body is ridden by its own Divinity: a Thing of Chaos, Lord of the Flies and Prince of All Calamities. The male — now Satan — is watching Her keenly, imperiously, half-wary and half in awe that She does not gaze upon Him with terror and loathing.

But She, who encompasses both light and darkness, only smiles and stretches out Her shining arms to him.

Lie with me, She sings, and like the moth to the flame He comes to her, His slouching bestial form burning smoking footprints into the shuddering earth. She lies back upon the altar, upon the spilled blood of the child of her heart, and She draws Him to Her in the embrace of the Sacred Marriage, though doubtless the male knows it not.

For it is ever thus, She whispers into His ear as He mounts her. From Me all things proceed, and unto Me they must return — even you… even darkness… even Death itself…

Holy radiance and shreds of the black abyss intermingle, twining and whipping round them. The concrete walls around them quake as He quakes. He tries to pull away — but She holds him fast against her, her voice merciless and sweet: For behold, I have been with you from the beginning…

Beyond His shoulders, a new figure steps into Her sight: a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, the purity of absolute righteousness made manifest. The eyes of the woman meet the eyes of a man she has known for less than a full cycle of the Moon —

— but oh, was this meeting not decreed in the Realms of the Timeless, written in the Book of Eternity from the first stirrings of universal life?

It is the profound misfortune of the misguided male in her arms that he, for all his cleverness and cunning, did not trouble himself to read so far into the Mysteries.

She pushes the male who would destroy the world back enough to look into his eyes — now pits of savage Infernal nuclear fire, but also oh, so full of confusion! — and she lets the voice of the Goddess flow through her in all its power: For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire…

Her ally, so long hated and in this moment fiercely exalted, raises his right arm — all the forearm flesh burned away to reveal a black skeleton of carbon fibre bones. The Wrath of his God fills his whole narrow face with searing hatred — but will that God, and the man who is His agent upon Earth, prove potent enough to overwhelm the embodied culmination of so many millennia of rage and grief and despair?

The woman closes her eyes.

She prays: O Goddess, let vengeance be Thine!

And the soul of living Nature breathes within her, breathes through her, fills her with pitiless knowledge: Vengeance is no concern of mine, Priestess — only the Balance.

The woman turns her face toward her murdered child — and she weeps.