Edge Walkers

Edge Walkers

Shannon Donnelly

Cielito Lindo Press (2013)

Tags: Literature & Fiction, Romance, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Shannon Dee

Warning: This is an edgy SF/Paranormal Romance--meaning characters who curse (a lot), and sex.

On the other side of the Rift—the blackness that separates dimensional realities—a world exists, but just barely. Edge Walkers—things made of
energy that feed off electrical impulses—have feed too long off this world. Now they’re looking for new feeding grounds. New bodies to take over and animate into the walking dead. And scientist Carrie Brody accidentally opens a doorway to Earth.
Stuck on the wrong side of that door in a deadly world, Carrie’s only help is a man, Gideon Chant, who also slipped over to this world. But while Gideon is willing to help her to a point, he's also a man with his own agenda and the weight of a secret. He has given up on a future for himself to correct a mistake from his past.
Can Carrie fix her own mistakes and put the Walkers back into the Rift for god? Or will those fixes cost her Gideon—or perhaps even her life?

Review

"Full of mystery and action, this was one book I could not put down." -- Katie Cody, The Romance Reviews

From the Author

Edge Walkers is one of those books with a soundtrack -- I spent hours listening to Sarah Mclachlan, Nine Inch Nails, Adam Lambert, Evanescence, Coldplay and K.D. Lang (yeah, quite the mix). My trick with writing and songs is to play the song so often that it becomes white-noise. Somehow this shuts off the editor so you can get to a different place with the story.

Here's the play list for the book:

Building a Mystery,
Sarah Mclachlan
Answer
, Sarah Mclachlan
Hallelujah,
K.D. Lang
Breath No More
, Evanescence
Whisper
, Evanescence
Mad World
, Adam Lambert
The Day the World Went Away
, Nine Inch Nails
The Persistence of Loss
, Nine Inch Nails
Fix You
, Coldplay

Now I need to go build a play list for a historical romance--that's a whole lot harder to find.

EDGE WALKERS

Shannon Donnelly

@ 2013 Shannon Donnelly

My thanks to the members of RWA’s East Valley Authors—you gals are the best. Special thanks to Beth Yarnall and Deb Mullins for your notes, and to Sammy—you’re so patient with all those early morning writing sessions.

CHAPTER ONE

Electromagnetic fields—they get blamed for everything from brain cancer to bees dying. In truth, everything has a magnetic signature—cell phones, power lines, people. But what is just background noise—and when is a field strong enough to damage? And is that difference in energy the key to something incredible?— Excerpt Grant Proposal, Dr. Carrie Brody

Nothing could dampen the sweet rush of anticipation singing in her veins. Not the stale coffee burning her fingertips through the Styrofoam cup. Not the bagel bag she’d snagged from reception for her guys slowly ripping a leak. Not even the desperate need to put on a bright face after another all-nighter. It was that shiver before a kiss...or that last step off a cliff. Breakthroughs came that fast, and Carrie had been chasing this one long enough to know she was close to changing the world. She could smell it in the ozone in her lab.

But she really should have gotten some sleep last night—she’d worked far too late and it had left her with the buzz of a headache and caffeine jitters.

Swiping her ID card across the keypad, she waited for the green light, fingers tapping against the bag. She made a face at the security camera as she waited, impatient as usual with the overkill of too much security. That was the trouble with military facilities and the funding that came attached.

Her team had this level sublet and to themselves—EnraTech’s bid to move into private development. It still looked like every other lab in the building—gray walls, sparse, except for the computers, the cables snaking around and over steel tables and stools. She’d had mineral samples moved in against the far wall—purple fluorite, smoky quartz, jasper, and brilliant green malachite. The earthy slabs always seemed absurd to her against sterile gray, a decorator’s idea of bringing in the outside. And she still worried about the level of shielding they’d installed; TEMPEST certification, copper over fiberglass, should be enough to protect the computers. If this went right…the light flashed, and she punched her code and stepped in. And into interrupting David Kerrou, the department head, who stood amid a half dozen men in dress blues.

Carrie had the reaction she’d always had. Sweat slicked her palms and she was a kid again, staring up at her dad, eagles on his shoulders and ribbons on his chest and trouser creases sharp enough to cut. Even the family dog had been trained to sit when Dad came out in his class A’s. She still couldn’t get over that twitch in her shoulders, that drop in her stomach, that skin-shivering urge to knock something over because these men had the same damned distance in their eyes. She would never understand the mentality that left a man able to put that uniform before all else. But that was her problem, not theirs.

Pushing her shoulders back, she swapped a long look with Kerrou. What the hell was this visit about? They still needed to jump the accuracy of the readouts above the ninety-five percent mark before anything was presented. That would give them that better mouse-trap—well, EM field trap—they needed to secure private funding. So why had Kerrou brought in what looked like Pentagon brass?

With his narrow face and dark suit, Kerrou came off more accountant than scientist, but he’d once had a good reputation for his papers. He avoided her stare, flashed a vague smile that didn’t settle on anyone. Was this something he had to do to satisfy the board that EnraTech had met their core obligations to the Pentagon? Or was he selling her team out?

Kerrou had been making introductions of her team—Thompson who wasn’t thirty yet, but he had a kid on the way, thinning brown hair, and with that damn scowl he looked dead reliable. Chand didn’t. He needed twenty pounds more to stop giving credibility to the geek archetype. With glasses perched in a riot of dark curls, he also didn’t look old enough to be out of high school, let alone to have a double doctorate.

Carrie let out a breath that was almost a sigh because it’d been a long time since she’d looked that fresh out of school. A splash of water only did so much for the dark circles these days, and while she kept her hair short and stylish, she was also starting to look like a lab rat.

She was sorry when glances slid past Chand. It went the same for Zeigler, who had a ponytail and intellectual arrogance that never went over well. She had to fight for him every review because while he could be a jerk, he was a brilliant one. And she was going to have a long talk with Kerrou about all of this. Kerrou just kept talking as if this was his project.

“This technology could be called the next step beyond ground-penetrating radar. But the comparison isn’t quite accurate.” He offered a quick smile and asked, “What if you could fire a magnetic pulse into the ground and bounce back images of hidden enemy bunkers?”

Heads lifted, eyes lit. Behind her, Thompson offered a muffled snort—he might work for the military-industrial complex but he’d never gotten over his college anarchy years. Carrie had. She stuffed her right hand into her lab coat, fisted a mechanical pencil tight, and shot Kerrou a warning glare. It would be years before they could turn out practical applications of this work, and he knew it. He met her stare, held it for two seconds before he introduced her. Tugging the dark blue of his coat sleeve straighter, he finally faded back a step.

Carrie stepped forward—without any idea what she should say.

She put down the bag of bagels and her coffee, made a joke about how this wasn’t playing with magnets but it was close. A few mouths twitched, so she went for her ‘EM for Dummies’ speech.

“Geological mapping by measuring magnetic fields is in use today. But every mineral has a different level of conductivity—to get the best picture, we need to get past false reads. That’s what we’re doing. We’re revolutionizing accuracy with amplified EM bursts.” She was simplifying, she also cut it short, offering, “Why don’t we give you a demonstration?”

Glancing at the minerals, she wished they were working with visible fields. The naked eye would see rocks and a lab, dishes to direct the electromagnetic fields and computers to monitor results. And the shielding only did so much—if something went drastically wrong…well, they’d fry the electronics here and at least three levels up.

She glanced at the group, but Kerrou was looking at his watch. He reminded everyone of the tight schedule, started talking about the next project and shuffled his tour out the door.

Frowning, she grabbed Kerrou’s arm before he could leave, irritation simmering under her confusion. “David, I thought this work was going private. That’s why you had the board’s backing to stick us down here in lower Siberia.”

Pulling out of her grip, he glanced out the half open doors. “It’s complicated. And nothing’s set.”

“Meaning? This was what? A test? A threat?”

His mouth twitched down and she knew she’d hit home. But there was another possibility to consider. Dropping her voice, she asked, “Is this about…?” she let the words fade, waved between them, because she’d vowed never to mention that disaster at work.

She’d known it was a mistake, those late-night dinners and that one weekend away. She’d been hoping something would spark after hours as it had at work. It hadn’t, and she’d been the one to end it. He hadn’t taken it well.

He grimaced now and shook his head. “Look, you’re not the only one who needs to put work first. This facility has overrun budgets by two million, and in case you hadn’t noticed, private sector’s not funding anything these days unless they can put it into production. If you want that funding that’s not military, get me some damn results I can market. Now, excuse me, I have people waiting.”

“David—Dr. Kerrou!”

He turned and she stopped the step forward she’d been about to make to follow him. She fisted the pencil in her pocket again, had the steel clip on the side cut into her palm. David held up his hand, cut her off before she could say anything more.

“Don’t…just…you’re too smart for this. Hell, you’re brilliant or I wouldn’t have hired you. But maybe you’ve been in the lab too long. Maybe that’s why you can’t see the obvious. I’m not asking you to compromise your standards. But I need something more than another revised schedule. And I need it by end of day—or that tour is going to be more than a few people taking a glance. If they bring their money to the table, you know they’re going to bring in their people in as well.”