Novels by A_D

We packed the steel lockbox before the mountain sun cleared the trees. Frost covered the gravel yard in thin white needles. Two heavy utility trucks sat idling near the fuel pumps with their grilles turned south. Their diesel engines thrummed through the soles of my work boots. I checked the heavy brass lock on the iron case. Inside lay the railway manifests from Milepost 84. Thirty sheets of purple accounting paper sat under the ledgers. Each sheet showed the forged customs stamps of the royal border guards. Those stamps recorded three years of secret freight runs. My handwriting from the old depot marked the margins in clean black ink. I set the Moon Assembly rejection slip on top of the pile. Then I locked the thick iron lid with a loud click.Ashley Parker walked across the motor yard from the radio shed. Her coat collar was turned up against the cold morning wind. She carried a yellow clipboard filled with overnight wire notes. The palace radio towers in Crown City had stayed ac

The cold mountain gravel moved under my work boots as I took my stance. Dusk had taken the last copper light from the peaks above. The wide training yard was quiet and smelled of frozen pine needles. Eric stood three paces away in his dark wool sweater. His arms rested easily at his sides as his amber eyes watched my knees. He told me that a royal guard never starts with a loud roar or sharp teeth. A real fighter shifts his weight to his back heel first. Then he angles his lead shoulder forward by three inches. He closes the gap before his target even knows a fight has begun.Eric showed me the basic move at half speed. He glided over the dark stones without making the gravel crunch. When his chest reached my shoulder line, my first instinct was to push back. I wanted to shove against his collarbone with both open hands. Raymond had spent ten years teaching me that foolish habit. Pushing two hundred pounds of solid muscle only gives a big fighter an anchor to grab. Eric did not strik

The basement of Black Ridge headquarters did not look like a council chamber or an executive boardroom.It smelled like damp concrete, hot copper wire, and stale chicory coffee. Long fluorescent tubes hummed in steel cages overhead, casting a clean white glare over banks of radio consoles and map tables. On the northern wall, three digital monitors displayed low-frequency seismic sensors embedded along the mountain passes, their green line tracings trembling whenever a coal train crossed the state line.Daniel Reed had cleared the long oak plotting table before I walked in at seven that morning.He had arranged the paperwork into four neat piles, weighted down with empty brass shell casings to keep the draft from the ventilation ducts from scattering them. Beside the piles rested a thermal printer chattering out freight manifests in thin paper ribbons."You have full terminal access," Daniel said, pointing a scarred thumb toward a workstation in the corner. "The keyboard is clunky, bu

At two in the morning, the basement operations room was as cold as a meat locker.The only warmth came from the vacuum tubes in the long-range radio racks and the two ceramic mugs of chicory coffee Daniel had set beside the track map. On the northern monitor, the green seismic line for Gray Hollow was drawing a flat, steady horizon. It looked like an electrocardiogram for a sleeping mountain."Freight 414 just cleared the south junction," Daniel said, keeping his voice low enough that it barely carried past the plotting table. "Four minutes behind schedule. That means the engineer had to slow down for the curve at Milepost 81.""He slowed down because the track ballast was loose," I said, tapping the margin of the maintenance log with my pen. "Three tons of crushed granite dumped on the outer rail yesterday afternoon. The regional dispatcher marked it as routine bed settling, but the delivery slip came from a private quarry in Crown territory."Daniel leaned closer, the glow from the

Dawn broke over the pine ridges in thin streaks of gray and slate.I had not slept more than three hours. The deadbolt on the front door had stayed locked all night, but every time the dry autumn wind rattled the windowpane, my hand had drifted toward the pocket holding my brass keys. My wolf had spent the night pacing behind my ribs, restless and snarling at the lingering phantom scent of royal cedar and pine that Tyler had left on the pavement below.By six in the morning, I had already brewed a pot of bitter black coffee on the electric stove.I poured two ceramic mugs, walked down the narrow wooden stairs, and pushed the outside entrance door open with my shoulder. A cold mist hung over the damp street, clinging to the brick walls of the empty grocery store across the way.Miller was still sitting on the front stoop, her gray jacket zipped up to her throat. She had swapped her coffee thermos for a small handheld telemetry terminal that rested flat across her knees. When she heard

The front door key felt heavier than any piece of brass had a right to feel.It was an ordinary deadbolt key on a plain wire ring, not a stamped pass card with a pack crest. When I turned it in the lock of the second-floor apartment, the bolt slid home with a solid, dry click. No armed guard checked my paperwork at the threshold. No electronic terminal beeped to log my heartbeat.The apartment smelled like lemon soap and fresh drywall. It was small—one square living area, a kitchenette with an electric stove, and a bedroom that overlooked the street lamp on the corner. Two streets to the north, the brick chimney of the Black Ridge medical relay wing rose above the tree line. If I stood by the kitchen window, I could see the glow of the ground-floor clinic lights through the autumn maple branches.I walked to the small pine dining table and set my belongings down in the center.The heavy parchment bearing Eric's signet lay on the left, its crimson wax seal pressed deep and clean into t