Rubicons

Brett Riley

Description

Finding themselves. Fighting together. Growing apart.
 
It’s junior year in Quapaw City, Arkansas. With it comes a new foe that even the Freaks cannot stop--adulthood. As they ponder what the future will be like with college and careers looming, they must contend with the ever-more-dangerous threat of the Team, the shadowy government agency determined to save the world from supernatural menaces. Even with the creepy Baltar Sterne acting as an advisor, our teenage heroes struggle with these tremendous pressures. At the same time, they must face their most dangerous threat yet, a creature of scales and wings that could threaten every life in town and beyond. New questions arise: can the Freaks achieve a common objective when they no longer agree on precisely what those goals should be? And what happens when they realize they might be the villains in someone else’s story?

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Epic Fantasy
• Univers ado
• Imaginaire
• Superheroes
• Alien Contact
• Science Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Superhéroe
• Epic
• Horror
• Hurlements 2
• Paranormal
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Imbrifex Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781945501951
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by Brett Riley
The Subtle Dance of Impulse and Light
Comanche
Lord of Order
Freaks
Travelers


IMBRIFEX BOOKS
8275 S. Eastern Avenue, Suite 200 Las Vegas, NV 89123 Imbrifex.com



RUBICONS: A Freaks Novel Copyright ©2023 by Brett Riley. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. IMBRIFEX® is a registered trademark of Flattop Productions, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Riley, Brett, 1970- author.
Title: Rubicons : a Freaks novel / Brett Riley.
Description: First edition. | Las Vegas, NV : Imbrifex Books, 2023. |
Series: Freaks ; book 3 | Summary: As junior year commences, the Freaks
must combat multiple foes--adulthood, The Team, a shadowy government
agency bent on saving the world from supernatural menaces, and their
most dangerous adversary yet, a dragon threatening every life in town.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022044852 (print) | LCCN 2022044853 (ebook) | ISBN
9781945501944 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781945501968 (paperback) | ISBN
9781945501951 (epub) | ISBN 9781945501975
Subjects: CYAC: Superheroes--Fiction. | Supernatural--Fiction. |
Dragons--Fiction. | Friendship--Fiction. | LCGFT: Superhero fiction. |
Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R5475 Ru 2023 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.R5475 (ebook)
| DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044852
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044853
Jacket design: Jason Heuer
Book design: John Hall Design Group
Author Photo: Benjamin Hager
Typeset in ITC Berkeley Oldstyle Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West First Edition: August 2023
Dedication
This book is for the Rolling Acres Crew: Steven, Angie, Mike, Leigh Anne, Rosie, Shawn, Wes, Sheryl, Stacy, Chris, Tonya, Ame, Donald, and all y’all that snuck out, hung out, and acted out. Our bonds will never break. God bless you all. To Jeff and Paul, we miss you, brothers. One day we’ll see you again.
And to Cookie—my God, how we miss you. Wait for us. We’ll be along someday.
Chapter One
N ot much shocked Kenneth Del Ray anymore, but his junior year of high school had brought two surprises he would never forget.
The first one happened in September. Kenneth was less than two years away from kissing Quapaw City High goodbye forever. Thank God , he’d think, until he remembered he would soon have to figure out the rest of his life. His old plans had been derailed during freshman year, when the interdimensional vampire Na’ul murdered Gavin Cloverleaf. Despite the hard feelings that had separated them in Gavin’s last days, Kenneth still sometimes caught himself trying to text his old buddy. Then the fact of the loss would strike him again, and he’d have to fight off tears. As early as fourth grade, he and Gavin and Brayden Sears had planned to find a place together once they graduated, or quit school, and get the best jobs they could find. But was that still the best plan? Or should Kenneth be thinking about college? Maybe he could commute to the University of Arkansas-Monticello or the University of Southeast Arkansas over in Parkview.
The thought of spending four more years in classrooms, listening to boring lectures and taking tests and writing papers, made his head hurt. Until the last year or so, college had never even looked like a possibility. Kenneth had always believed he was dumb, and school had seemed to confirm it. Now, though, other outcomes had presented themselves, and—God help him—he probably had the Freaks to thank for it. Since he had started hanging out with Jamie Entmann, his grades had improved, like being around smart and dedicated people could rub off. Or maybe he had moved from a C- GPA to a solid B because he had given up sports. If you asked the Freaks or Brayden, though, they probably would have said it was mostly because of Tyqueria Webb.
Ty had moved to Quapaw City in the first week of September. Mr. Hoon, the principal, had brought her to Mrs. Murray’s study hall, where Kenneth sat in the back row working an Algebra I problem. He barely glanced up when Hoon introduced Ty to the class, and what he saw didn’t impress him much—another Black girl among dozens, another kid he would probably never get to know well, another weird name he had no idea how to spell. Ty sat in the empty desk next to his, but he paid her no mind.
After class, Mrs. Murray stopped the two of them at the door. “Kenneth, please show Tyqueria to Mr. Singh’s classroom,” she said. Kenneth rolled his eyes. It proved how little some teachers knew their students. Kenneth should have been the last person recruited to chaperone a new kid, but he had learned that protesting when a teacher asked you to do something like this just drew everything out. Easier and quicker to get it over with. So he walked beside Ty in silence. When they reached Singh’s room, Kenneth gestured to the open door.
“Thanks,” said Ty.
Kenneth shrugged. As he walked away, she reached out and touched his arm. Eyebrows raised, he flinched. Then he looked her straight in the eye, really seeing her for the first time, and something about her knocked every conscious thought out of his head. Her smooth skin, her deep brown eyes, her full lips glistening with some kind of colorless gloss, the way her natural hair perfectly framed her face—he actually felt his mouth fall open, his words dry up. His legs weakened; his stomach seemed to rise into his throat. It didn’t feel like lust. Was this how love started, with a punch right to the heart? If so, why weren’t people falling in the streets, too stunned to stand or speak?
For the past few years, Kenneth had become increasingly, achingly aware of girls’ bodies, the shapes of their asses and the way their shirts hugged their breasts, but in that moment, he couldn’t stop looking into Ty’s perfect, gorgeous face and thinking of a word he had never spoken aloud: gentle . Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
“Thanks,” she said, bringing him back to the waking world. “I really appreciate it.”
Words still stuck in his throat, he nodded. She smiled like she understood. When she turned and stepped into Singh’s room, he watched her until she found a seat. Then, before she could catch him staring, he spun and hurried down the hall, his face burning.

The second surprise occurred in February, on a Friday at approximately 8:38 p.m. central standard time, when thick clouds dumped an inch of snow onto Southeast Arkansas. Neither the meteorologists on the local news nor the weather app on Kenneth’s phone had even hinted that snow might be possible, but as he pushed the dust mop up and down the aisles of Larry’s Grocery, he glanced out the front window, and there it was: snowfall on Quapaw City’s Main Street, most of the flakes small enough to look like misting rain, some nearly as big as potato chips. Would it stick? In his sixteen-plus years, Kenneth could remember playing in snow only twice. The last time had been in, what, fifth grade? He stood in the aisle and remembered, the dust mop forgotten in his right hand, until Roy the night manager spotted him and moved him along.
But Kenneth couldn’t concentrate on work. Instead, he kept thinking about the hunt he and Dad had planned for the next day. Muzzleloader and modern-gun seasons were over, but you could still bow hunt. Tomorrow was the earliest day Dad could get to the deer woods. An inch shouldn’t affect anything, but if any more stuck, Dad probably wouldn’t chance the drive. Southern folks don’t tend to go anywhere in winter conditions. Not that Kenneth didn’t like snow. Didn’t people usually long for what they had never had?
Del Ray men had hunted together for generations. Kenneth loved riding into the woods before sunrise, breathing the fresh air, climbing his stand, sitting with his back against the tree, and waiting for a deer to slip into his field of fire or to hear his father’s shot. Dad never missed. After he bagged an eight-point in early December, they had eaten venison steaks and chili at least once a week. If they could get another buck, they could fill their freezer.
As it happened, the snow didn’t really stick. When Kenneth and his dad woke up at four thirty the next morning, the precipitation had stopped. A thin layer clung to roofs and hoods of neighborhood cars, and there were small patches on the ground here and there, but it was melting even before sunrise. The Del Rays drove to their lease, unloaded their four-wheeler, and rode out to their stands, Dad with a thermos of coffee, Kenneth carrying a plastic-wrapped bacon-and-egg sandwich in his pocket.
Three hours later, though, Kenneth had seen nothing. No signal from Dad, either. Apparently, all the deer in Southeast Arkansas had decided to spend the day somewhere else. After another half hour, a steady, low crackling suggested Dad had given up. Kenneth climbed down and waited at the foot of the ladder, his bow slung over one shoulder, quiver strapped to his back. Dad walked along the game trail that wound in front of the stand, not trying to move quietly.
“Ready to call it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Kenneth. “Nothing happening around here. I—”
From deeper in the woods—a bit northeast of their position, Kenneth thought—something