Arthur And The Invisibles Novels & Stories

"Sorry to disappoint you!" Wilbur turned and kicked Clark. Clark landed and grabbed his chest in pain. He looked at Wilbur coldly. Then, he vanished again. Wilbur smirked when he saw that. He said, "It's useless. Your invisibility spell is too amateur. You can't fool me, so you better show yourself." Wilbur made a fist with his right hand and punched toward his left. With an audible thump, the invisible Clark appeared once more, knocked back by Wilbur's powerful punch.

Conversations dip just slightly, attention tilts without people realizing it. Arthur doesn’t make a scene when he enters. He doesn’t need to. He just walks in like the place belongs to him, like everything eventually does. I straighten a little in my chair, eyes tracking him without being obvious about it. Wrong place. Wrong time. Nina is still busy with Toby, completely unaware. He’s trying to convince her that he needs another cookie, and she’s pretending to consider it like it’s a high-level negotiation. I glance back at Arthur.

"Alright!" *** Arthur, having received reports from his men, extended his patrol late into the night. The night wind was bone-chilling, and the moonlight was nowhere to be seen. As Arthur drove through a desolate neighborhood in his patrol car, he suddenly braked at the sight of something unfolding ahead. A fight had broken out—but it wasn't a clash between vampires and humans. It was vampire against vampire. It appeared that Joe Blavatnik’s men, the pro-human faction, had already made their move. They were fighting tooth and nail, and Arthur could only watch from a distance.

The border bells woke me at dawn. I stood at the balcony, wrapped in midnight silk, my pelt gleaming with the wild rose vitality of the Pearlcoast Pack. Below, Shawn stood at the checkpoint, his ceremonial leathers disheveled, his posture diminished by the ancient stone framing him like prey. Marga clung to his arm, her jasmine scent cutting aggressively through the morning mist. Behind them, Kurt wore the armor I had forged, and Lydia huddled small, her face pale. They had come uninvited. Unwelcome.

"If we strike Marcus now, he will hide behind his lawyers and corporate shields. “We need more evidence. We wait for the Vance-Whales press conference. We let Chloe, Julian, and Marcus think they have won." A dark, rare smile touched the corners of Arthur’s mouth. He wrapped his broad arm around her waist, pulling her close against his broad chest. "You want to tear down the entire foundation at once," Arthur noted softly against her hair. "I want them to fall so hard," Evelyn murmured, leaning her head against his shoulder, "that no amount of money in this world can ever put them back together."

PROJECT ZERO REDIRECTED TO SECONDARY SITE: THE GLASS HOUSE. ​"It’s not over," Arthur said, appearing at the edge of the woods. "They’re going back to where it started. They're going to burn the evidence with you in it."

I took a breath, the scent of her—faint vanilla underlying the sharp smell of gun oil—anchoring me to the mission. ​"Two blocks," I rasped, forcing my focus back to the HUD. "The entrance is through an old silk press. If Arthur is still alive, he’ll be in the sub-basement." ​Arthur was a relic of a different era. He was a man who had once been the lead cryptographer for the Architects, a genius who had helped build the very foundations of the "Argus" AI—the global surveillance net that now hunted us. When the Architects tried to "retire" him with a bullet to the back of the head, he had vanished into the London underground, becoming a ghost-broker for anyone with enough gold to pay his price

"He tried to put me in the tanks! Please... don't let him touch me again!" Dante was tackled into the knee-deep water, his face slammed into the chemical sludge. He didn't fight. He laughed as the zip-ties bit into his wrists, the sound echoing through the lab like a funeral bell. Arthur was lowered into the room by a winch. He rushed to Ivy, wrapping a thermal blanket around her, pulling her away from the 'ghosts' in the water. "It's okay, darling," Arthur whispered into her ear, his voice trembling with a triumph he couldn't quite hide. "You're safe now. The world knows the truth. He’s going away forever."

Was it Mom and Dad? Had they finally realized I was missing and come back for me? The door creaked open, but the one who walked in was a stranger in a thick down coat. The light in my eyes dimmed at once, and a faint, self-mocking smile tugged at my lips. I had overthought it again. When the man saw me, he froze in surprise.

It was a laboratory filled with glass tubes, brass humming-coils, and a massive, lead-shielded sphere that vibrated with a sound like a dying star. Arthur, the Eighth Brother, was waiting for us. He looked older, his hair completely white, his eyes sunken from a thousand sleepless nights of calculation. He didn't look like a king; he looked like a man who had seen the end of the world and was trying to out-math it.