Immortal Fire
Immortal Fire (Anthology)
ISBN: 978-1-60054-372-2
Format: paperback (individual stories available separately as ebooks)
Cover art: Nix Winter
Length: 340 pages
Published by: loveyoudivine alterotica (2009)
What would you do with an infinite stretch of days? With immortality? Among the pages of this book, immortals of all stripes must decide what to do with the endless years before them. Some want to live forever, some will to give it all up in the blink of an eye if it will end their loneliness or save a lover. Some earned their immortality, and some had it thrust upon them. A few don’t even know they have it. Some are human, some are not. But they all have one thing in common.
They don’t want to go it alone.
Six authors weave tales of love on an eternal scale, between men who have learned that nothing is impossible, and dreams can come true if you just want it badly enough. And have enough time to work at it. Forever is a long time.
Available from Amazon.com (international shipping available: or order direct from your favourite book shop using the ISBN number!)
A FREE EBOOK CONTAINING EXCERPTS OF ALL THE STORIES IS ALSO AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD FROM LOVEYOUDIVINE
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Stories included in this anthology:
Dawn of The Seraphs – Adrianne Brennan
In a future where psychics called Seraphs belong to the ANGEL institute, Tamar must team up with Kir, an old rival, to save ANGEL from destructive forces. Can the two Seraphs find love and passion in a dark, bureaucratic world which seeks to manipulate and destroy their kind?
Timeless – Nix Winter
Different worlds, different expectations, but when a Captain saves a Prince, it may be the Prince’s love that saves the Captain.
Almost Human – M. King
In a world where everything has changed, two immortals flee for sanctuary. A violent, pitiless order pursues them, but why? When Kalyan and Lazarus made the mistake of stealing from the Agisci monks, their theft revealed a dark truth. Now they must expose it, or let it claim them.
Black Roses – Jaime Samms
Nothing grows in captivity, except maybe lust and the desire for freedom.
Death and The Immortal – Bryn Colvin
William returns home to find a beautiful stranger collapsed on his doorstep. An ancient yew tree has been felled, its dryad is in peril and the world is a far stranger place than this gentle curator had ever imagined.
Out of Time – Clare London
Two vampires; immortal life; an anguished courtship. Ambrus, ancient and hedonistic, revels in his powers. But Edward is shocked and bitter when he’s turned against his will. Irresistibly drawn to each other, it may take a century for them to reach the love Ambrus wants – and that Edward needs.
Windblown – Jaime Samms
With immortality, Triann and Garith expected lifetimes to love one another, not the windy, empty landscape of broken hearts, and one mortal man could bring them back together, or tear them apart.
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Excerpt (from Almost Human)
© M. King 2009
Last Moon marked the beginning of the end; the final harvest of the year, and a last statement of defiance in the face of the oncoming winter. As such, there were always celebrations, no matter the size of the town or village. Whole communities in outlying regions would uproot and travel to the nearest fair to take part in the delights of hog roasts, candied apples, and a general refusal to bow before the snow. Thanks would be given for the year, and the three harvests of grape, grain and meat. Usually some traveling order would tout a relic of mystery and supposed power before the faithful. At the point between the light and dark, where the world’s veil grew thin and minds turned to the questions of survival over the cold months, a small window existed where the Changed found themselves, if not welcomed, then tolerated among humans. It was possible to the walk through the streets without attracting so much as a second glance, or near enough.
When he was a boy, Kalyan loved the annual masquerades of the city. Two weeks of Carnival, with rules suspended, morés broken, and the pretences of civilization put away. People roamed as Nature had made them: proud, free beasts, ripe with passion and fuelled by hunger. The one time of year his clan left the shadows, the abandoned factories and the slums to walk openly in the whiskey-drenched sunlight. His first time, just fourteen, his powers almost fully emerged, and older boys of the mother clan had treated him like a mascot, a puppy or new-found toy. They encouraged him to jump off things, brand himself with hot irons, slice his skin with knives and razors, just to watch him heal. He’d done it all, endured each agony like a badge for their amusement, their acceptance. His clan master—the man who, in a less austere tribe, he might have called ‘Father’—put a stop to it after the older boys hit Kalyan with bricks and sticks, then pushed him out into the middle of the Carnival parade, streaming with blood and screaming, to heal before the horrified crowd. He remembered the flash of sequins, blinding torchlight and contorted faces all around him, the tremulous gasps and squeals of women and the revulsion of men.
Healing hurt, every single time.
The incident caused something of a scene. “It is not”, his clan master said between each stroke of the beating he administered, “Something to ever be repeated. Not on any account.”
Kalyan’s flesh couldn’t scar, but each blow of the master’s staff had seared itself into the tissue of his memory. He found it hard to remember that Lazarus never had such a harsh induction to their way of life. He was Changed, yes, but he’d come to his tribe late, coddled with all the gentleness of the human world; all those assumptions, those pompous, ignorant declarations of rights, the demands and expectations of security and comfort. Pipe dreams and arrogance, all of it. A stupid idealism founded on an unworkable vision of a distant, improbable Utopia…and yet they still believed in it. Lazarus still believed.
Kalyan struggled with that, aware his unease didn’t change facts. That night, back in Deadriver, he foolishly hoped he could change things. He realized now how wrong he’d been. The Agisci Order had come to town under a cloak of suspicion, loaded with riches and supercilious smiles, and not at all what the inhabitants were used to seeing. Deadriver was a town where the Changed were almost as good as normal; traveling monks, even those with sumptuous robes and cedar wood chests, would be unlikely to be met with open arms. Yet the Agisci waltzed straight in like they owned the place, spewing forth their poison. Kalyan recognized it for that almost at once. Words, bitter as gall, honeyed with hope and promise. Parables of trust, of innocence and unity, yet all the while tainted with circumspection. The brothers claimed to be preparing for Last Moon—some sacred rite for the benediction of the gods during the harsh winter ahead—and said they planned to wait out the hardest months among the townsfolk. Not a fortnight after they arrived, attitudes to the Changed began to alter. Tolerance made way for distrust, and blind eyes turned to snooping.
It worried Kalyan. He thought of leaving then, stealing away in the night before it all turned sour, as he’d seen it do once before. Somewhere else. Only Lazarus had stopped him. They were bonded for life and beyond it, Kalyan felt sure, but he recognized that something needed to be done. The Agisci presented a test that he must see Lazarus face. It came to him in a dream, the garbled way that such visions often did, and he woke in a cold sweat.
He’d known Lazarus wouldn’t understand, and why should he? What had he ever seen of humanity’s darker side? Lazarus looked no further into the fire than the depth of the flames. It might, Kalyan supposed, be one of his most attractive qualities. He looked over at where his lover lay, slumbering beneath the tattered blankets, his clothes and inhibitions long since discarded.
Deadriver had changed him, maybe. Knocked out some of the hesitancy and insecurity he’d had when they first met. Kalyan remembered telling him during the first week they were together—amid the heat and want, in the depths of that burnished crucible—how he must never again be diffident, ashamed, be anything less than proud.
We are more than all of them, for we are eternal.
Yet Lazarus had shaken his head, his touch cooling Kalyan’s fevered skin.
Not more. Just different.
Kalyan had laughed, though now he saw Lazarus’ point. Immortality was one thing—and a great, burning brand of thing, at that—but without the finality of death, the intricacies of loss, defeat and waning, did existence not blur at it edges, let some vital meaning ebb from it? Fear, that gnawing thing which had haunted the breaches of Kalyan’s years, urged him to cling still tighter to life, just as he clung to Lazarus…fiercely, and blindly.
Yes. More. Brighter, and greater, and filled to the brim with it.
Lazarus had reproached Kalyan when he mocked the Agisci, telling him he should learn tolerance if he expected it in others. He’d never believed they were truly dangerous. Perhaps that—more than love—was why he’d crept, close to Kalyan’s side, into the shadowed chamber in which the monks slept, above Deadriver’s only inn. Eight brothers piled into one room, not at all unlike the one he and Lazarus shared now. And a chest, full of riches. That was different.
It had been about proving a point, demonstrating that Lazarus would follow him anywhere. A dare, a challenge… a dream. How well Lazarus had fulfilled it! They would teach the Agisci a lesson, remind them not to meddle with those who had no need of their bile and fear, and in so doing, cement the bond between them. Lazarus had probably never stolen so much as a glance before, yet he’d grasped the concept quickly, following in Kalyan’s footsteps and loving every minute of it.
Kalyan had to admit it had been exhilarating. He even felt a rush he’d not experienced in far too long—both from the wanton misbehavior, and the equally wanton effect it had on Lazarus once they were alone. Perhaps they might have overstepped the mark. Stealing from monks was one thing…but the stone talisman they found at the bottom of the cedar wood chest did not fit among the tithe monies and fancy jewels. Now, Kalyan crossed to where their packs stood and nudged the bundles with a wary foot. Whatever it was, the Agisci Order wanted it back. That much was clear. No sooner had they run, giggling like children, back to the safety of Kalyan’s room behind the adjacent saddler, than he had the first inkling of a mistake.
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