“Titchenell and Carter hold nothing back in this solid sequel that thrills and expands on its predecessor. Aided by swift writing, relatable characters and unexpected scares, Shards is a chill-inducing delight.” —David Powers King, co-author of Woven.
Published: June 20th, 2017
When autumn descends on Prospero, California, Ben hopes the normality of the new school year may offer a reprieve from the town’s paranormal horrors. Mina knows all too well that there are no reprieves and no normality to be had in Prospero, but even she can’t prepare for what the coming year holds.
On top of the vivid hallucinations that have plagued Mina since the attack on the Warehouse, and the brewing Splinter civil war that threatens all of humanity, inside the walls of Prospero High, Ben, Mina, and their expanding Network face a vicious campaign to destroy their friendship, and a mysterious assassin picking off human rebels – an assassin with powers like no Splinter they’ve fought before.
Ben and Mina’s one hope rests with a mysterious old man hiding in the woods outside of town; a living legend who may be able to teach them how to fight this dangerous new breed of Splinter. That is, assuming he doesn’t kill the pair of them himself.
“Maintaining the same level of popcorn-munching fun, Titchenell and Carter are taking The Prospero Chronicles in a promising direction.” —Joe Dell'Erb, Washington Independent Review of Books.
EXCERPT
Mina
Marian Kelly died in a one-car accident near
her home in Turtle Lake, Montana, on August twentieth, at the age of forty-two.
Marian is predeceased by her parents, Rand and
Millicent “Millie” Kelly, and her brother, Christopher.
Marian was born in Prospero, California, and
studied Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. She held
black belts in multiple martial arts and was an accomplished member of the
Turtle Lake Hunting Club.
I
skipped the details of Marian’s perfunctory funeral service, put the newspaper
clipping back in the plain, unstamped envelope it had arrived in, and filed it
out of sight; not that this did anything to clear the smudged print from my
vision. Alone, it was unsettling. In a stack of six other recent obituaries of
other Splinter hunters, in six other anonymous envelopes with my name stamped
on the front, it sent a very clear message.
I’m
no stranger to death threats. At the time of Marian’s death, it had been less
than a month since the Splinter posing as my father told me to my face that if
Ben or I fought back again, if we even tried to run, the humans would be wiped
out of my infested little town of Prospero completely.
I’d
fact-checked each obituary as it came in.
Every
one of the hunters had died under circumstances that looked very much like
suicide. Most of the obituaries didn’t say so, exactly, but after the few that
did, omissions of the cause of death and euphemisms like “one-car accident” and
“chemical overdose” were easy enough to decipher. Sometimes, when the deaths
had been a little more bizarre or had occurred on slow news days, there were
more details to be found when I looked up the rest of the news sources in the
area.
These
weren’t suicidal people. They weren’t quitters. Wondering how someone could
possibly have made it appear as if Drake Tymon had slit his wrists and throat
alone in an industrial freezer that was later found barricaded from the inside
was filling my head quite effectively with distractingly disturbing scenarios.
But
the thing bothering me most about the obituaries was the fact that all seven of
their subjects were currently loitering around my bedroom.
Sometimes,
if I stared directly at them for long enough, they seemed to remember that they
were supposed to be dead and vanish accordingly, albeit temporarily. Otherwise
I could see them, silently and blankly watching me work, as clearly as I could
see my bookshelves, my bed, and the stark beige walls and end tables that,
until recently, had held my very large and very useless anti-Splinter amulet
collection.
Nightmares
are no more new to me than death threats. That’s not what these were. A hunter
would die and join the rest of the hallucinations in my room the day after the
obituary arrived, and then another one would die and join him without fail. If
things carried on this way, my room was going to become unmanageably crowded
quite soon.
It
wasn’t even as if I were going to miss
the hunters. A few of them, like Drake, I’d known pretty well years ago, but
I’d stopped assuming they were still alive—never mind still human—long before
they’d turned up dead. Others, like Marian, I only knew by reputation in the
first place.
Not
knowing them well only made it stranger that they were here, after everything
I’d lived through and lost without having suffered from any sensory distortions
before.
Ready? The
text scrolled across my phone’s screen after Ben’s name.
Almost, I
texted back.
I
wasn’t looking forward to conducting the upcoming meeting for my entire
Network, a roomful of people who had nothing in common other than their
knowledge of Splinters and their confidence in my judgment and clarity of perception. Ben had insisted, though. A
lot had changed, and people needed to be brought up to speed.
Billy
was gone, lost to the Splinters, if we had ever even had him. Whatever had been
passing for my absentminded ally had been manipulating us to breach the peace,
such as it was, for no one knew how long.
Ben
hadn’t even met some of the others yet. Our discovery of portals to other parts
of the world in the Splinter Warehouse had put an end to the Effectively
Certain Non-Splinters list, or had reduced it to a uselessly small number of
people. The only people in town I could really be effectively certain of
anymore were myself and Haley, since we’d both recently been ripped directly
out of replication pods. That wasn’t enough to work with, so I’d had to
downgrade my entire Network to Extremely Probable Non-Splinters and start
training myself to live with that, because the alternative was not getting
anything done at all.
Ben
was stubbornly under the impression that Haley’s presence on the list alone qualified
her as a Network member. I disagreed.
Most
important, we now knew more terms of the Splinter-Human treaty and exactly how
precarious our position was. Two human-on-humanoid Splinter kills by the same
human would mean all-out war, and Ben and I each had one strike already. And no
matter how careful we were, Billy and any like-minded Splinters would find a
way to incite that war sooner or later. We were counting on an unforeseen
miracle to make the human side a significant power before then.
As
someone who doesn’t believe in miracles, this wasn’t news I would enjoy
delivering, even on my best day.
I
finished up some new touches on the map over my desk—the new world map I’d
posted under the map of Prospero to track probable Splinter activity at the other
portals—and blinked hard, hoping the illusion of the hunters would fade out at
the usual time. Their faces were already getting blurry around the edges, right
on schedule.
That
was something, at least. I was going to be able to function for another day. If
my Network, the few humans invested in finding or building that miracle, found
out what was happening to me, it would probably be the end of what hope we had.
They would give up on the one thing they all agreed on, my reliability, and
maybe they’d be right to do it. I’d probably do the same in their position.
But
even if I couldn’t see a difference
between the walls and furniture that constituted my room and the dead people
that my brain had decided to superimpose in front of them, at least I still knew the difference. I still knew what
was rational and what wasn’t. Before the first hunter had appeared, the
evidence of my senses had been the basis for almost everything I thought and
did. It was going to be difficult to get used their new fallibility, just like
the fallibility of the ECNS list. But as long as the inner workings of my mind
were in working order, it was worth at least trying to do my job.
Or
that’s what I told myself, for the thirty-seventh time, when I recognized Ben’s
knock on the front door above.
The Splinters ebook (book #1) is on sale for only $0.99 now through July 6th!
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About the authors:
F.J.R. TITCHENELL is an author of young adult, sci-fi, and horror fiction, including Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of). She graduated from Cal State University Los Angeles with a B. A. in English in 2009 at the age of twenty. She currently lives in San Gabriel, California, with her husband, coauthor, and amazing partner in all things, Matt Carter, and their pet king snake, Mica.
MATT CARTER is an author of horror, sci-fi, and yes, even a little bit of young adult fiction. He earned his degree in history from Cal State University Los Angeles, and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, California, with his wife, best friend, and awesome co-writer, F.J.R. Titchenell. Check out his first solo novel, Almost Infamous, or connect with him on:
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