Collision Course

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  A Totally Bound Publication

  Collision Course

  ISBN # 978-1-78430-001-2

  ©Copyright Helena Maeve 2014

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2014

  Edited by Sue Meadows

  Totally Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2014 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 2.

  COLLISION COURSE

  Helena Maeve

  Eve’s last night on the job turns complicated when former flame and part-time warlock Neil makes an explosive return—asking for her help.

  With apocalypse by asteroid due in a fortnight, the last thing Eve Karvan should be worrying about is her paycheck. Yet one last shift at the Natural History Museum is all that stands between her and being stuck in a high-risk area come A-Day. She’s convinced it will be a quiet one, until her equipment picks up activity in the perimeter and she comes face to face with none other than her former lover.

  Neil Riccard has one thing in common with Eve—he can’t afford to quit his job. Not because it would penalize him financially, but because the planet’s impending expiration date seems to have set the netherworld abuzz with excitement. All kinds of miscreants are creeping into our world and the newest rift has opened in the Natural History Museum. The last person he expects to run into when he goes to seal it is Eve, the shapeshifter who walked out on him ten years ago.

  Passions ignite as the pair are thrown together in a race against the clock, at the mercy of a man who bears a startling resemblance to Neil.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Mary Poppins: Buena Vista Distribution

  Swiss army knife: Victorinox AG

  Addams Family: MGM Television

  Formica: Formica Group

  Beretta: Fabbrica de Armi Pietro Beretta

  Wii: Nintendo

  Arby’s: Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc.

  The Ritz: The Ritz Hotel Limited

  Oz: L. Frank Baum

  Vicodin: Abbott Laboratories

  AK-47: Izhevsk Machine Factory

  Milky Way: Mars Incorporated

  Mars Bar: Mars Incorporated

  Waiting for Godot: Samuel Beckett

  Rebecca: Daphne Du Maurier/United Artists

  Ghostbusters: Columbia Pictures

  Casablanca: Warner Bros.

  Cheshire Cat: Lewis Carroll

  Taser: Taser International, Inc.

  Louboutin: Christian Louboutin, Ltd.

  Walmart: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

  Chapter One

  St. Louis, fourteen days before

  Off the top of her head, Eve could conjure sixteen distinct ways she would rather have spent her last two weeks on Earth. There were the usual suspects—lazing about in bed all day, taking hour-long baths, dyeing her hair pink—and the more adolescent fantasies of knocking over a liquor store or a jeweler’s and getting away like some iconic cat burglar. She even gave a passing consideration to digging up what was left of her itinerant blood-kin and renewing ties before the whole world went to hell.

  Anything would’ve been preferable to spending another night in a deserted museum, locked inside her tiny, blast-proof cubicle and further isolated from the remains of the city.

  She stretched out her legs, pinning each heel on the desk in blatant disregard of regulations. No one was left to complain, anyway. Rumor had it that management had fled for the Caymans on the first boat—more fool them, because the most recent calculations from NASA put the Caribbean in the path of the first shower. Of course, NASA had revised their predictions six times now, going from declaring the Pacific Northwest a safe zone to citing it among the ten likeliest places to be hit. So, really, trusting soothsayers and astrologers was just as realistic at this point.

  Maybe her runaway employers would survive A-Day after all. Eve certainly didn’t wish them harm. Seeing as she only ever worked the night shift, she had only met the people in HR twice—first when she was hired and again, later, when they wanted her to do an employee satisfaction survey. She had some idea that Mr Lowell, who had inherited the collection of bones and bricks and sundry other artifacts from his eccentric uncles was a big, portly guy with a Santa-like beard, but that might have been her imagination at work.

  It hardly mattered. Tomorrow morning at eight, this place would officially stop being her problem. Eve greeted the thought with a sip of Darjeeling tea so bitter it made her whole face crinkle like parchment. She had rummaged through cupboards in search of coffee, but none was left. Rationing had dried up about a week before, with the military overwhelmed by mass desertion and public despair. Six mass shootings later and no one in green and brown uniform was crazy enough to venture into the cities anymore.

  It was no use trying to get coffee from the grocery store down the road, either. Most shops had already been ransacked by optimists convinced that they’d survive long to make good use of their overflowing pantries.

  Eve didn’t share their conviction. Her instincts were telling her to run, to get out of St. Louis as fast as she could. NASA had designated them a high-risk zone and despite some flip-flopping on the west coast and Florida, they seemed pretty convinced that Missouri was going down.

  And not a moment too soon, Eve mused, blowing on the surface of her cup to dispel the eddying steam. Twelve hours from now she’d have enough cash in her pocket to buy her way out of Dodge.

  It was lucky that her employers had fully automated the payroll system before the whole world went to shit or else she would’ve been forced to track them down to settle accounts. As it stood, a computer recorded her fingerprint and performed a retinal scan when she came in and scanned her out when the shift ended. Every minute was tallied and accounted for. No more unpaid overtime, no more runaway absenteeism.

  The task of finding a cash machine that hadn’t been bled dry would be slightly harder to accomplish, but Eve had her eye on a couple of potentials.

  She knew she shouldn’t have left it so late. Purse snatchers had gone pro and the price of losi
ng a wallet could well be on par with losing a life.

  At least she was safe in that regard. Had she been any less decent, she would’ve taken up the call of thievery herself. It seemed a profitable way to save one’s neck—morally bankrupt, sure, but also profitable. It was disheartening to think that the people who stood the best chance of pulling through the upcoming crucible were likely to be criminals and interlopers—not exactly the cream of the crop or the kinds of folks who could pull together to guarantee the survival of humankind in the aftermath of tragedy.

  If all works out, Eve thought, I’ll find me a nice deserted corner of a mountain somewhere and live on wild game and spring water. The Rockies appealed for exactly that reason.

  She glanced at the clock for the umpteenth time that morning. Only five minutes had elapsed since her last check. She still had seven hours and forty-two minutes to go. At this rate, they would feel like four hundred. The thought filled her with weariness. She had pulled through nine months on this job. She could handle another seven hours.

  The tea was too much, though.

  Eve slid back her chair and rose creakily to her feet. There was no movement on the monitors—there never was—and she didn’t think it a problem to step away for a few seconds to rinse out her cup. Technically, tidiness had no purpose in a world about to end, but Eve couldn’t give up the habit now. She needed the sense of stability, of continuity.

  If she started shedding her quirks and idiosyncrasies like snakeskin, she was sure to turn into one of those roving miscreants breaking into liquor stores and hoarding coffee just because they could. She was just a step away from turning feral on a good day.

  Besides, the washroom was barely ten feet away, in a nook with a metal toilet that hadn’t flushed properly in the nine months that Eve had been employed by the museum and a sink barely wide enough to wash one hand at the time. That it still had running water was pretty miraculous. Most of the mains had been shut down when the water company was beset by mass panic and rampant dereliction of duty—nothing unusual in that. Most big businesses had closed up shop when it became clear that there was no way to send a team of all-American Joes to nuke their way into martyrdom.

  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Eve told herself. Just enjoy the sponge baths and the comforts of modern plumbing. You won’t have them for long. And because karma worked in mysterious ways, no sooner was her back turned than the alarm shrilled awake with a foghorn-dull noise.

  Eve felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. One moment of inattention was all it took. The cup in her hands slipped and shattered into the sink, splinters of cheap porcelain cascading down to the floor like sleet.

  “God damn it!” Eve snarled, but there was no one she could direct her venom toward, only the slate-gray walls on either side of her and the blast-proof windows gleaming red as the alarm howled merrily away.

  Eve rushed to shut it off. She’d been forced to do it before—cats were just curious enough to venture into the perimeter uninvited and the rats that lived in the basement of the museum found prowling through the stacks far too appealing to let high-pitched buzzing get in their way. It was never anything important. Eve brought up the map of the perimeter and cross-checked it with the live feed from the motion detectors and CCTV. All the equipment was first-class. There was absolutely no way anyone could sneak in without tripping up at least one sensor.

  As far as she could tell, no one was trying to. Two red dots lit up her screen—one in the Paleolithic exhibit and another just outside the main gate. The security cameras in the former must have malfunctioned, because nothing of what was happening in Hall D was showing up on screen. The latter was easier to deal with. Eve brought up the live feed onto the main screen. She could just about make out a man fiddling with something in his backpack.

  The heat signature on the infrared sensors reported him as human and the device in his hand—the very same one he pressed onto the blast-proof door—as equally warm. No, warmer.

  A lot warmer.

  “What the…?” Eve watched as the figure sprinted away with almost girlish steps and took cover behind a parked van. She couldn’t say whether it was his or just another forgotten vehicle, its owners either lost to suicide or lucky enough to have skipped town through other means.

  An explosion shattered the main exit, shaking the camera. White smoke rose from the source of the blast, scattering chips of metal and wood splinters all across the front steps. It was horrific to witness—and also slightly impressive, in the way that all destruction is impressive.

  It took Eve a moment to realize that she was expected to intervene. Not much good being a security guard otherwise.

  She grabbed her stun gun and radio off the desk in a flurry of motion. The pages of glossy magazines and the paperwork she would now never get through fluttered in the sudden breeze, overlapping toothpaste-ad smiles and HR-printed checklists. She wasn’t going to need the radio—there was no backup left this side of hell—but training had been drilled into her that she had to maintain the possibility to call for help.

  It was a short journey from her post to the main door, but Eve slowed her steps, proceeding with caution. She wasn’t afraid for herself, but she didn’t want to shoot anyone by accident. Or any other way.

  “Stop right there!” she shouted when the arsonist came into view. Was he still an arsonist if he set his fires with explosives? Eve swallowed in a dry throat. “This is private property, bub. You come any closer and I will shoot you.”

  The man didn’t even jump at the sight of her. He was dressed all in black, though his hoodie seemed somewhat faded from too many turns in the washing machine. He was wearing jeans—a totally nondescript pair with no logos or tears. He looked as though he’d dressed to be forgettable. And Eve might’ve done just that, if it weren’t for the detonation that had cleaved through her perfectly quiet evening.

  “I’m unarmed,” the man called out, slowly holding up his hands.

  “After that pyrotechnics show, I find that hard to believe,” Eve shot back. She didn’t lower her stun gun as she advanced toward him with slow steps. “We may be a step away from total annihilation, but you’re still trespassing, kid. I suggest you—”

  “Kid?” The man barked an incredulous guffaw. “Okay, first of all—ouch. That’s just cruel. Second of all…” He canted his head with an owlish tilt. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  Eve flexed her hands around the stun gun. “Save the pick-up lines for someone who cares. This is your last warning. Leave. Now.”

  “Or else what?” The man smirked. He had a wide mouth and a squarish jaw. His cheeks were slightly sunken, whether out of starvation or genetic misfortune, giving the half of his face that Eve could see a slightly feminine quality. The rest of it was hidden behind black, bulbous night goggles.

  Or at least it had been, before the guy reached for the mask and pushed it up his forehead into sandy-brown hair. His eyes were very blue, lashes long and feathery over jutting cheekbones. They were also very, very familiar.

  Eve balked, her gun arm trembling. “Neil?”

  “I know this is shaping up to be one of those of all the gin joints moments, but I’m actually here to work, Evey. So if it’s not too much to ask,” he said, “get out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”

  For a guy who had once communicated through brooding silence, he had certainly grown up lippy.

  “What…?” Eve cut herself off. She didn’t want to know what he was doing in St. Louis.

  The last she’d heard—and it must’ve been a couple of years back, upon returning to the city—Neil had left to apprentice overseas. Word had it he’d taken off not long after she had made for the Briars. Eve had always assumed he’d stayed there. The potion-stirring community was well represented in London and Paris, and there were far fewer initiatives on the books to get warlocks to register like sex offenders.

  There was nothing to make Neil return to the States. Nothing at all. “I me
ant it when I said you’re trespassing,” Eve said, steeling herself against the urge to drop her gun.

  Neil pursed his lips and sighed. “You’re going to give me shit about private property? You?”

  “People change,” Eve countered. “We can’t all take up burglarizing.” Not that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

  “You don’t honestly believe I’m here to steal human skulls, do you?”

  In truth, she didn’t know what to think. Once upon a time, his family had gone to great lengths to obtain powders made from the bones of rhinoceros. Neil had done his best to distance himself from their eccentric practices, but he was a Riccard. Eccentricity ran in his blood.

  “Look,” Neil said, “you’ve got an elephant in your china shop—except it’s not so much an elephant as it is a very angry poltergeist and the china shop is actually this whole goddamn town. If you don’t let me pass, that thing will tear this place apart and then go on to do the same to the rest of the city. I’m not chasing it all over town. They’re very good at hide-and-seek.” He sucked in a breath. “Either you let me pass or you shoot me, but better make up your mind fast because I think your Paleolithic exhibit is going up in smoke as we speak.”

  “How do you know it’s the—? Oh, shit.” Eve put up the stun gun. “The cameras went haywire. I thought it was a malfunction…”

  Neil rolled his eyes and took off down the hall, toward the ticket booths and the swiveling barriers that led the way into the heart of the exhibit. He was fast for a kid who had always looked a bit too much like a scarecrow, but it wasn’t until Eve saw him vault over the chrome push barriers like an athlete in a steeple race that she realized just how much he’d changed.

  What could she do? She started after him.