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    Firemaggot
    Firemaggot
    Firemaggot
    Ebook64 pages1 hour

    Firemaggot

    By Barbara Hambly

    4.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Sequel to Hambly's Windrose Series. Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his partner, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, discover that a trans-dimensional monster is hiding somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles. They track it down to the now-deserted luxury “ranch” of a deceased 1970s glam-rock star known as The Daemon (real name Harold Nedwick), only to discover that the creature has been there much longer than anyone suspected, hidden in the maze at the center of the property – and that it is about to spawn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarbara Hambly
    Release dateJun 28, 2015
    ISBN9781311857941
    Firemaggot
    Author

    Barbara Hambly

    Since her first published fantasy in 1982 - The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction. She has written mysteries, horror, mainstream historicals, graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, romances, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. Born and raised in Southern California, she attended the University of California, Riverside, and spent one year at the University of Bordeaux, France. She married science fiction author George Alec Effinger, and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years. In her work as a novelist, she currently concentrates on horror (the Don Simon Ysidro vampire series) and historical whodunnits, the well-reviewed Benjamin January novels, though she has also written another historical whodunnit series under the name of Barbara Hamilton.Professor Hambly also teaches History part-time, paints, dances, and trains in martial arts. Follow her on Facebook, and on her blog at livejournal.com.Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.

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      Book preview

      Firemaggot - Barbara Hambly

      FIREMAGGOT

      by

      Barbara Hambly

      Published by Barbara Hambly at Smashwords

      Copyright 2009 Barbara Hambly

      Cover art by Eric Baldwin

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please include this license and copyright page. If you did not download this ebook yourself, consider going to Smashwords.com and doing so; authors love knowing when people are seeking out their material. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author!

      Table of Contents

      Firemaggot

      About The Author

      The Further Adventures

      FIREMAGGOT

      by

      Barbara Hambly

      Is that it? The dry autumn moon was halfway to full; Joanna Sheraton could just make out a sprawl of buildings below the hillside where she stood. The plans in the Ventura County Assessor’s office indicated a complex of stables, garages, outdoor and indoor tennis courts, a disused generator-house and what had once been a formal garden.

      Not a light shone. She wondered what it would look like by day.

      Moonlight flashed across her companion’s round spectacle-lense, touched the long beak of his nose as he moved his head. I can’t imagine there’d be two of them.

      Are you kidding? There’s hundreds of these ‘ranches’ between here and Pismo Beach. It’s where rich people come so they can see for miles if someone’s coming after them.

      He said, Hmmn, and took a silver-foil pinwheel from his pocket, and held it out in the direction of the house. No wind stirred the coarse scrub of the hills behind them: this far from Highway 33 the silence was absolute. Yet after a moment, the pinwheel began to turn, first slowly, then quicker, until its gleaming surface flickered in the cobalt darkness.

      Joanna whispered, What does that mean?

      Her companion whispered back, I haven’t the slightest idea. He replaced the Abomination Detector in his jacket pocket. Let’s get closer.

      Great.

      If anyone lived there, the grounds would be lighted, she pointed out, as he helped her down-slope with a grip that, though immensely strong, was as light as a cat’s. Can you see the maze?

      I think so. Even pitched low, his voice had the quality of brown velvet, extravagant as a third-rate actor’s. It’s tremendously overgrown, but the shape of the power-circles is still there.

      To Joanna, everything looked like darkness within darkness. But though the man beside her had often said that magic would not work in this world to which he had been exiled, Joanna had noticed that, like the wizards in his own world, he could see in the dark like a cat. Either that - she could not keep herself from speculating - or he had some form of a) internal echolocation b) psychic aura-detection of both organic and non-organic matter or c) hyperacute awareness of absorbed-heat radiation. Her experiments over the past ten months had proved inconclusive. She was just glad he could do it. They’d hiked a good two miles from the car and she hadn’t the faintest idea how to get back, with or without a flesh-sucking monster in pursuit.

      They had almost reached the fence – eight feet of chain-link topped with a savage coil of barbed wire – when he added, almost as an afterthought, However, if I say ‘Run,’ I want you to run – without question, without hesitation, and without looking back. Promise me.

      I promise, Antryg.

      How far, was another matter. If the thing she’d seen three weeks ago was any indication of what might be waiting for them on the other side of that fence, it wasn’t anything she wanted anyone she cared for to be facing alone.

      Antryg produced another device from his pocket – a hand-drawn thaumatrope – and, hooking the strings around his long, crooked fingers, spun it deftly. In the versions of this toy that Joanna had known in childhood, there had always been a bird printed on one side of the cardboard disk, which, with the speed of the spin imparted by the strings, would appear to be in the cage on the other side.

      The thaumatrope that Antryg had made had a cage on one side, and nothing on the other.

      Joanna wondered what he saw in the cage as it spun.

      A far-off noise – a whiffle of breeze through the electrical wires? – made her jerk around, cold with terror and shock…

      But listening, she heard nothing.

      There couldn’t be more of them. You asked and asked over every bulletin-board on the ARPANet, every server on FidoNet, GEnie, Delphi…

      Only two other people had ever seen them…

      But both of those, were within twenty-five miles of this place.

      She edged closer to her companion, and from where it was slung

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