A Canticle For Leibowitz Novels & Stories

He must’ve felt that tiny stir within him the moment he had firstly laid eyes upon the girl. Damn it. "I don't know what you're talking about," He quickly blurted out, playing dumb. "Oh don't give me that ignorant crap you little asshole! You've felt something and you know it!" The demon roared, suddenly floating to stand right in front of the young male. "You've felt a little something-something tingling in your pants didn't you?" The malicious creature asked with a wicked grin as he pointed a sharp claw to the zipper of his dress pants.

He winked, turned around, and waved his arm, instructing the automatons to begin. I wondered how long it would be before Alkin made his move. What was he waiting for? I could not relax or enjoy the music, knowing the chaos that would soon erupt. Loretta was enraptured, and Mr. Pervis more so. At the balcony, the queen was grinning. Mr. Cillian stared suspiciously down at Alkin, eyes bulging out of his head. In the middle of the second piece, a false chord was struck. An automaton lifted its cello, aiming the bottom towards the queen. A small pair of doors opened at the bottom of the instrument, revealing two cannons.

He looked like a wire pulled too tight, vibrating with a force he couldn't control. Nikolai stepped inside, his gaze immediately darting from Ivan to me. He froze, his head tilting to the side in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn't the way a man looks at a woman; it was the way a scientist looks at a new specimen. “So”, Nikolai whispered, "This is the little American girl. The one who hides Kings in her kitchen.” “Stay back, Nikolai”, Ivan growled. The warning was clear, vibrating the floorboards.

"You're dead. I watched you die." Lila's laugh is a wind chime's shiver. "Death's a revolving door here. The Cantor keeps it spinning." She gestures to the city. "Come. She's been waiting." --- **The Cantor's Gambit** The Cantor's tower is a spiral of fused glass, its chambers filled with floating instruments that play themselves-violins of crystallized tears, drums stretched with shadow, flutes carved from fossilized breath. At the pinnacle, a woman floats above a pool of liquid gold, her body threaded with filaments of light. Her face shifts-young, old, familiar, alien-but her voice is a singular, suffocating force.