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Wayne Kyle Spitzer

The camera whipped back to focus on Dieter, behind whom the strange sky-lights moved, bleeding in and out of each other, like globs of wax in a lava lamp. “Alas, even our master race can, at times, produce … aberrations. A man or woman of perfect Aryan descent who, nonetheless … fails to display the proper traits.” He gestured with his hand as if to say, Bring him, quickly. “And such a man will be offered in homage today, my friends; to placate the beasts that are the sub-masters of this new world, and to introduce our new allies to how it is that we—the new Nephilim—do things.” He nodded slowly as a man was forced writhing and struggling up to the main gate. “How it is that we have survived, even thrived, amidst a world that has killed so many. And the level of cruelty we expect from any and all who would join us.”

Jesus, gods, he’s talking about a sacrifice, thought Charlotte, even as another movement caught the corner of her eye. She focused on where she’d noticed it and saw what appeared to be a tail—like a great, green dagger—before it disappeared behind a stand of cypress trees. So, too, did something move on the opposite side of the lot, causing the trees to sway. It’s like we’re being triangulated, she thought—even as the man was thrown to the muddy ground outside the fence and the gate swung quickly shut.

Hobb's End Books

Flashback Dawn (A Serialized Novel)

Flashback Dawn: "The Children's Reich"

Naaygi found them waiting for her—as she somehow knew they would be—as the cage doors opened, their forward-facing eyes glinting the same hue as the lights in the sky and their dark, storm-colored bodies held absolutely still (even as another animal joined them and brought their number to four). She even knew somehow what they were; that they were a breed of carnosaur the “evolved” humans had called nanotyrannosaurs, the “Pygmy Tyrants,” and that one of them, the one with the brand upon its tail, the leader, even had a name—Napoleon, for he had been bounced forward and back in time via another alien species well before the Flashback and still bore the scars of his sojourn among the humans. She didn’t know how she knew these things, no more than she knew just where, within herself, Naaygi ended—and they, the lights in the sky, began. She just did; just as she knew that the Nano-Ts represented a queer offshoot of the dinosaur population that was altogether fleeter and deadlier and cannier than anything that had come before it.

And thus she bowed to them, her avengers, her killers—their killers, the lights in the sky—the rain running in rivulets down her body as she dropped to her knees and touched her forehead to the pavement, a pavement which ran red with blood and was strewn with the dismembered, disemboweled corpses of at least fifty men and women.

And then she whispered to them in a language older than words, Follow me.

Flashback Dawn: "Throw Wide the Gates of Hell"

They were coming now, all of them, for Red could hear their excited breathing and rapid footfalls and the gnashing of their teeth—even as the power failed at last and everyone sighted their weapons. Again he looked at the new arrivals, finding it difficult to see them through the halos of their lights, thinking he saw a black man in what looked like a convenience store tunic as well as a man and a woman standing close together and a big woman brandishing what looked like a rocket launcher. So, too, was Lonny there, just as calm and disciplined as could be, as well as an older man wearing what appeared to be coveralls. “Easy, brother,” said the man in the tunic, his voice as resonant and confident and reassuring as any Red had ever heard. “We got your back.”