The first book in the next series to Legend of the Bai – what happened when Corbin made the jump through the dimensions to a new world?

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Biodomes and fire. A type that coats the DNA and comes out in a wash of blood and war. Joiner Petroleum made a hell of a muck up, and a pandemic triggered something buried in some of the population.

Lunam, co-leader to a gang in Biodome 3, is sent off on a regular mission – get some kids out of danger and collect a gang’s treasure from somewhere it shouldn’t be. But those kids remind of his days in the barracks, and that cognac colored treasure drags him back to the day he almost burned it all to the ground. Can he come to grips with his own self-loathing enough to keep a pair of gangs from taking his territory and threatening his family?

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Chapter 1

Ever taste copper? That cloying metal viscosity that tells you pain will soon follow? Or maybe that charcoal burn taste of ash on your food when you’ve grilled it? I despise that taste. I crave it. 

Chapter 2

The Chambers always made my skin crawl.  It was a converted cathedral.  The ceilings soared above me, and the main room that used to be the chapel echoed ominously.  The stone brickwork was the washed-out ashen colour of corpses.  The stained glass had been smashed out so long ago no one remembered.  The glittering jagged colours of what remained of the glass jutted out of the casements as monstrous teeth.

Chapter 3

We left the building late into the afternoon.  Maria Mater sighed heavily with disgust.  “I hate dealing with the heads,” she grumbled as she led Cortex and me to a shaded spot in the courtyard garden.

Chapter 4

“Requies?” I called as I walked into the main office. Browns and creams overwhelmed my vision. The heavy smell of lemon oil and dust was a strange nostalgia that nagged at the back of my head. Papers were neatly ordered in piles on every flat surface available. A thud and something hitting the floor in the room off to the back behind the counter drew my attention.

Chapter 5

Requies had provided me with the apartment number while I had mulled over my first introduction to his place of business. After a longer than necessary chat, I headed out his door and made for the west end steps. I had left Cortex and Tempestatis back at the warehouse to wait on orders. I had also left them with an order to obtain the pickled crabapples for me if they insisted on playing another round with the guys while they waited for my report back.

Chapter 6

“Medicus! Got your man here,” I greeted as we entered the secondary building on our compound.  It had been a concrete block office at some point in it’s past.  Now it proved to be our hospital and infirmary.  Two patients at a time was it’s capacity.  If we had an all out war and enough were injured, space was set up on the warehouse floor, which meant a grouchy Clavis.  I tried to keep danger to my men low so as not to piss off the one guy that could actually mend our gear and transport.  I swear.  I tried getting him to take on an apprentice.  The closest thing Tempestatis could come to with him was test driving the fleet.  Clavis didn’t have to waste time driving and it got Tempestatis out from under his feet.

Chapter 7

Dressed back into my trench, I directed Sanctus to the door.  “Thanks, Medicus.  I’ll drop by in the morning,” I said over my shoulder as I let us out of the clinic.

Chapter 8

My room was on the third floor of the north end of the old factory.  We kept guest rooms up on that floor for when we had Caeruleum visitors come in.  Rescues didn’t often get lodged in the factory until they had been vetted.  Maria Mater had made an exception for me with Sanctus.  Seeing as Requies’s had been compromised, I couldn’t safely lodge him where we usually placed take-ins.

Chapter 9

Morning graced my window, illuminating the room in soft orange cream.  I went to stretch and bumped into something.  I drew in a startled breath, only to remember that Sanctus had climbed into bed with me last night.  His breathing was soft, but told me he was on the verge of waking.  I eased up to look down on him.  He had somehow obtained more than half the small bed, and I had ended up wedged close to the wall.  He had also somehow ended up with the pillow.  I chuckled and breathed a sigh of relief at his comfort.

Chapter 10

“You knew him?” Medicus asked as he held pen to paper.  He didn’t sound surprised.  I had no idea what he was thinking, but man if I could have peeled Medicus’s brain open and got a dig at what was turning in it, I would have paid my right ball for the opportunity.

Chapter 11

The library was buried deep at the opposite end of the facility from my rooms.  The place used to be a documents library where blueprints and print media had been kept when the warehouse had functioned.  The stairs were dark, and a lamp was the best help we had down it.  We needed to get around to laying new wires and lights, but other things kept winning priority in the warehouse.

Chapter 12

“Better?” I asked as Sam and I left Forceps.  He nodded, running his hands through his hair happily.  “Wanna go get your sister and have lunch?” We walked down the hall and back out to the shop floor.

Chapter 13

Six weeks passed with few outstanding events. Sanctus’s back healed from the stitches, leaving behind itchy scabs that drove him up the wall. He went daily to see Medicus after we dropped Sam and Abby off at Argenti’s together. Within a week and a half of our conversation about his embroidery, he joined with Vestitor to produce clothing in the afternoons before picking up the Accendium if I had Caeruleum work that interfered. Vestitor had been eager to put Sanctus’s skills to work with the coming New Year celebration and The Feast of Hades overloading his regular schedule.

Chapter 14

Mater approached me on the dance floor, drawing me from Sanctus and the Accendium. “It’s time, Lunam.”

Chapter 15

I yawned. The morning was way too early, and everything was stiff. I hadn’t moved in hours. I stretched, wary of Sanctus, only to find space around me. I blinked. My bed was empty. That was a first. His palette was empty. Not that I had woken to him in it in the morning yet in the six weeks since he took up sleeping in my room. I regularly woke up to being used like a space heater, pressed up against the wall and trying to bring myself back to some chaste plane of existence before he noticed. I turned to my clock, realizing my room was completely devoid of a pair of cognac eyes. Sanctus had probably already headed to his appointment with Medicus before festivities for the Feast day. 

Chapter 16

“What do you mean you will become Pluto?” Sanctus asked in confusion. I despised this aspect of being a co-leader. Mater was to be Proserpina. I was to be Pluto. It was the positions we held within Caeruleum. Hades and Persephone – the givers, the protectors. Pluto and Proserpina – the takers, the grievers. There were days when it extended from the conference table and the running of the people. There were days when we both had to face down a hole in the ground and say goodbye to one of our own.

Chapter 17

“You sure about this?” I tossed my pillow onto my bed with a thunk. It had fallen on the floor sometime in the night. My room was dark and crowded with Sanctus’s palette taking up most of the floor. I was in a rush to get dressed before we met with the rest of the group downstairs. He pulled himself free of the blanket he had cocooned himself in on my bed. It had taken some convincing, if he felt it necessary to slip into my bed in the middle of the night, to get him to stop crowding me into the wall and take that spot instead. I had to be able to get up and fast in case of an emergency.

Chapter 18

Six months passed. Summer took over the dome, and the newly acquired grain fields and orchards came into their own. Ambulatio and Praetemptura took on the responsibility of outfitting an overseer for what had been Aurantiaco territory. There were the loyalists to Mercurius that were exiled from Urbs Aquarum. They were dumped out in the Stagnum ignis where they could form their own band or whatever their hearts desired with the forewarning of death if they entered the Urbs.

Chapter 19

A pasty cream-coloured world slowly came into focus, along with a raging headache. More like Medicus’s sick yellow cement walls. I studied the lines between brick and mortar in apathetic indifference for a time. I kept my breathing shallow. It felt better that way. I had to wonder. I had been in my great-grandmother’s apartment. We had been talking. I had been holding onto my lion. Why was I here? It was too bright. I was warm but cold. A clicking sound grated at my nerves. Willing myself to focus on something other than the wall was like telling me to look into the sun. It hurt. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to play today. Let me go back to sleep.

Chapter 20

I dug around in the pile of storage boxes I had sequestered into the weird alcove corner a support beam in my room provided me. One box looked promising. I hadn’t gotten into it from five years ago. I shifted some papers and random shirts off the top and found the black fabric I was after.

Chapter 21

Sanctus’s trench coat slipped on my left shoulder as I pushed the massive carved doors open to the Rubrum meeting chamber. It cracked with an ominous thud as the hinges protested. Ash piled up behind me. Clouds of grey and silver sifted the setting sun coming in from the high windows. I had used what power I could from Paul and Aurelia on my path of destruction if only to keep me civil in my approach to Gemma’s throne room. I had a short amount of time before people would turn into pulsing stars. A swamping mix of scents threatened a headache. 

Chapter 22

“Lunam? You’ll be okay, won’t you?” Sanctus searched my eyes as he dragged me through a door behind Gemma’s throne into an antichamber. My base. My antichamber. Wiping out the whole of her council and her in one fell swoop was making me reel. “Lunam?” he tried to get me to answer.

Chapter 23

I thought we would calm down, maybe gain a level head, on our way back to the warehouse. I was so very wrong. We were both on edge, and the distance was taking too long. I kept flicking glances Sanctus’s way, and he kept me sliding along that fine line. My fangs were becoming a fixation as I ground my molars. I was making everyone around me nervous at the same time. Black eyes and fangs. It’s a thing.

Chapter 24

“Damn it, Lunam! You were supposed to come directly to me when you returned from getting him!” Medicus bellowed. We were in the clinic, me on the gurney, Sanctus letting me lean on him. It was late into the evening. I had let Sanctus pull me in when he wouldn’t stop fretting about the fever. How he could tell it was a fever and not my fire, I had no idea. Must have been a Providentia thing. It felt pretty good to sleep on the gurney for the last five hours, though. Sometime while I was gone to the world, Sanctus found himself a pair of spare pants and a shirt that Medicus kept around for patients.

Chapter 25

I rolled over to the sky suggesting light at the edges of the tree line. The biodome panels radiated with shimmering greens and purples, creating murky swaths of smudged stars.  The dome was cooling with autumn’s approach. The birds were whispering in the quiet. I pulled together my best clothes and trench coat. With some goading, I convinced Sanctus to emerge with me for an early morning walk.

Chapter 26 – Finale

The end of the hallway in the warehouse was too far and yet too close. In the shadowed alcove outside what was our now temporary housing, Sanctus pushed me to the wall, demanding a kiss. I obliged if only to feel his body against mine. The temperature was going up under my skin as I let him go. He smiled slyly and turned to our room. I engulfed him, reaching around to unlock the bolt. “Your eyes are going black,” he cautioned.