Novels by DarkRom

Four days of quiet poison had turned the penthouse air thick enough to choke on.The radiator in the corner hissed a steady, damp steam that smelled of copper pipes and river sludge. On the low pine bench by the hearth, Toby sat with a heavy brass key in his small, grey-nailed fingers. He was dragging the serrated edge back and forth across the finished grain of Betony’s writing desk, digging deep, pale white gouges into the oiled oak.Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.Betony stood by the kitchen island, three yards away. Her knuckles were white where her fingers curled around the lip of the zinc washbasin. She didn't yell. She hadn't yelled since Tuesday. She just watched the curls of oak ribbon off the desk, falling into small piles on the rug like dried peelings."Zaid," she said. Her tone was flat, drained of any rise or fall, landing like a lead weight on the floorboards.Zaid didn't look up from his map table. He was unlacing hi

The wind high on the terrace carried the shrieks upward, whipping Eleanor’s cracked wails into thin, desperate shreds against the concrete spire.Zaid leaned his heavy forearms over the iron railing, his eyes squinted against the driving sleet as he looked down thirty stories. "You know them?"Betony didn't turn her head. Her face stayed completely still, framed by the cold fur collar of her coat, her blue eyes fixed on the three shivering shapes huddled against the perimeter turnstile."The old woman is Eleanor," Betony said. Her voice was flat, dry, devoid of inflection. "My mother. The girl beside her in the quilt is Saskia, my supposed best friend. They came up here before during the extreme heat, remember? The man holding the pole is James." She paused, a tiny, dark flicker touching the corner of her lips. "My ex-fiancé."Zaid’s hand tightened on the frozen rail, his brow furrowing as he looked down at her. "Your family?"

The tin bowl hit the pine floorboards with a heavy, hollow bang.Warm broth splashed across the worn leather rug, dripping onto Betony’s grey wool socks. The rest of the thin soup pooled around Toby’s bare heels, floating small bits of dried thyme and lard against the dark timber.Betony didn't move for three seconds. She stood by the low wooden table, her hands still extended in mid-air where she had set the bowl down.Toby sat on the sofa, his arms folded tight across his narrow chest, his chin tucked down into his collar. He didn't look at the mess on the floor. He stared directly at the hearth, his little jaw set in a hard, stubborn line."Toby," Betony said. She forced her voice to stay low, even, and smooth, swallowing the cold lump of disgust rising in her throat. She knelt down, her knee resting on the edge of the damp rug as she reached for the overturned tin. "You need to be careful. Food is hard to come by up here."T

The air in the seventeenth-floor hallway was stale, smelling of cold soot and damp wool.Betony was carrying an empty zinc water bucket back toward the service stairwell when the door to Apartment 17B unlatched. Susan stepped out into the corridor. Her eyes were bloodshot, her dark hair tangled in matted clumps against her forehead, her wool cardigan stretched loose at the elbows.She stopped dead when she saw Betony.Betony didn't alter her pace. She held the heavy zinc handle with two fingers, her face smooth, unbothered, as if she were stepping past a sack of spoiled flour left in the passage."You think you won, don't you?" Susan’s voice was dry, cracking on the consonants. She stepped sideways, blocking the narrow concrete walkway between the handrail and the wall. "You think because he locked the bolt on me, you get to keep him."Betony halted three paces away. She set the zinc bucket down on the cold floorboards. The met

The frost on the iron barrels didn't melt when the heavy machine guns fired; it turned to fine grey dust that blew back into the men's faces.Four hundred feet below the timber line, in the shadow of a sheer granite cliff known as the Devil’s Notch, twenty-two men in white canvas smocks hauled wooden crates of sixty-millimeter mortar shells up a forty-degree icefall. Their boots were wrapped in wire for traction. Every breath they dragged into their lungs came out as a thick, white plume that froze instantly into ice crystals against the collars of their heavy parkas.One young corporal slipped on the blue ice. His knees hit the frozen shale with a sound like dry firewood snapping, the wooden crate slipping from his numb fingers and sliding forty yards down the slope into the dark ravine below.A heavy leather boot slammed down on the boy’s collarbone before he could push himself off the ice.Major Marcus Selman stood over him. At fifty-

The comms handset in Apartment 17B dropped from Susan’s fingers, swinging on its coiled black cord against the plaster wall.Zaid took the stairs five at a time. He didn't wait for the cage elevator on thirty. He didn't put on his fleece vest or grab his sidearm. He ran down the unheated concrete stairwell in his wool shirt and trousers, his heavy boots making a rhythm like thunder against the steps.When he slammed through the timber door of 17B, the air in the narrow living room smelled sweet and heavy, thick with the scent of boiled lard and warm corn meal.Toby was sitting on the carpet by the low table. His small hands were pulled up to his throat, his face dark red, his lips already taking on a faint, terrifying shade of blue. Each breath came out as a thin, wet whistle, his chest heaving against his cotton shirt as his lungs starved for air."Zaid!" Susan wept, dropping to her knees beside the boy, her hands shaking violently as she hovered over him.