Storm Chaser: A Novel of The Black Pages Read online

  Storm Chaser

  The Black Pages Book Four

  By Danny Bell

  Copyright © 2021 Danny Bell

  First edition – July 2021

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Whitton, Bonnie, and Cynthia

  If only three people ever read anything I wrote ever again,

  it wouldn’t be so bad if it were you.

  You bring out the best in me,

  and you’re all proof that goodness can win.

  Titles within The Black Pages Series

  Book One

  Empty Threat

  Book Two

  Warning Call

  Book Three

  Playing Dead

  Book Four

  Storm Chaser

  Book Five

  Last Shot

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Greetings Reader,

  My friend Danny asked me to write a forward to this book: “You’re like family to me, you know more about mythology than anyone I know, and I think it would be really nice to have you in the book.” He said it could be anything I wanted (pancake recipe even), which is good because I’ve never written one of these before.

  This book series is incredibly fun and thought provoking, the sort of thing every bibliophile has imagined, tossed in with big ethical quandaries, and some great reference humour. When Danny first told me about his idea for this series, I mentioned that I’d had a similar idea of living in interconnected book worlds but never got past the initial outline. He said half the people he’d told about it had basically the same reaction. Something we’ve all clearly wanted and Danny actually made it happen!

  A decent portion of our friendship is discussing mythology. It’s a specialty of mine; I have a Masters in Classical Archaeology, so I enjoy getting into the weeds of it. I remember after he gave me a copy of the first book, I made an offhand comment about a character and Danny blew up with excitement. Apparently, I’d guessed a big reveal that would happen a few books later (who knows, maybe this one). The groundwork and references were all there. That’s the great thing about Danny’s works: he knows the reference material thoroughly enough to drop hints to people like me and a decent portion of the humour comes from that as well.

  I find the characters very relatable, after all one of them, Olivia, is loosely inspired by me. But based on how close I am with Danny and my inherent bookish awkwardness, apparently a number of mutual friends have asked if Elana was based on me. I’ll give you a little series related example as to why: When the second book was released, Danny was invited to do a reading and signing at The Last Bookstore. Friends were gathered after while he signed copies, catching up and chatting about how cool it was he was doing a signing there. Someone mentioned they were hungry and I said, “Oh, would you like some of my purse cheese?” There’re a few other bits of me sprinkled through these books. Not just references and jokes made with me in mind, but also, I swear I helped! One time, Danny texted me to ask what I’d wear if I wanted to hide my elven nature in public but also had to be ready to do battle. I texted back a string of suggestions with probably too many addendums for varied situations and when the next book came out, I realized I was reading the scenario I described. That was fun and surreal. For a more coincidental surreal moment: once, I was reading one of Danny’s new books; I sat down to read it, cup of tea in hand and cat on lap, and the goddess Freyja appeared. You see Reader, my cat’s name is Freyja.

  Danny’s series is so much fun (and I’m not just saying that because he’s practically family). Mythological references abound, from the obscure to the obvious, and they are played within the world in such a way that brings them to life and makes you wonder about the source material in a whole new context. I cannot wait to read this new instalment and I am incredibly honoured to have been asked to write this forward.

  Thank you, Danny.

  Enjoy, Reader!

  Post Script: If you’re making crepes, I must recommend fig as a filling. I fell in love with fig Палачинки while working on an archaeological dig in Bulgaria and cannot recommend them highly enough.

  Post Post Script: If you’re making fluffy Japanese pancakes, I’d recommend cutting parchment paper rings first. Then they’ll be ready when your batter is done. And make sure to beat your egg whites stiff.

  –Cynthia Egan.

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t think it’s exactly a big secret that the reason I’ve chosen Los Angeles as the primary setting for this series is that I’m from here. Now, if I’d just been born here and never left, that would be pretty boring, so thankfully that’s not the case. Over the course of my life, I’ve journeyed across this country, visiting the continental forty-eight states and I’ve seen just about every corner of California. Yet, something keeps me in Los Angeles, something magical. It’s not an easy place to live, and somehow, I’m pretty sure I’m going to die here. It’s a town that I’ve watched changed over and over again over the years, and not always for the better. It’s also a town that my editor insists isn’t a town, but that’s just what someone who wasn’t from LA would say, but I digress. It’s a town with its own magic, its own limitless supply of interesting people. Sometimes it brings out the worst in those people, and we have that reputation, but more often than not it brings o
ut their best.

  Cynthia Egan is one of those people who brings out my best. As she wrote in her forward, I did in fact, ask her to write a little something. What I didn’t tell her was that I was going to write about her as well. We’re practically family, just like she said, so I can get away with it.

  I think when most people I know think of Cynthia, two things come to mind. First, she’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. She’s probably the smartest person than anyone you’ve ever met too. And she’s just so genuinely interested in everything the world has to offer, so it’s impossible not to realize it. For god’s sake, she’s an archeologist, she’s a polyglot, she’s traveled the world and seen its bones and can tell you about it the way you and I can talk about Game of Thrones. And by the way, she knows more than us about that too. And the second thing is that she’s just impossibly likable. It would actually make more sense that she was a fae creature charming us all rather than just being that naturally charming, and yet here we are, stuck in the boring real world.

  And these are easy things to think about when you think of her, but they don’t get at the heart of who she is. It’s hard to say for sure when I think we realized we were secret siblings. When I first met her, it was a number of years ago I can now only refer to as a lot of years. I’d met her at some convention with mutual friends, we all spent a few hours walking around Downtown Disney in Anaheim, and as everyone peeled away one by one to find their cars and go home, Cynthia was just kind of there. I asked where she’d parked, and she hadn’t. No car, no one on the way to get her. If you’d like a clue how long ago this was, ridesharing wasn’t a thing yet. I asked how she was getting home, and with the most reassuring smile you could imagine, she said, “I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet.” I was floored in the same sort of way when a friend casually tells you at five in the afternoon that they haven’t eaten that day, but they’re on their fourth energy drink. Now, for the record, I believe that she in fact, would have figured it out. We were forty miles from home, it was close to midnight, but she would have figured it out. All the same, I offered a ride anyway, and if we weren’t friends before we left, we for damn sure were when we arrived.

  Even as I write this letter to her and this anecdote, I also know that doesn’t get at the heart of who she is. It gets at a small part of who she is, but not the important part. And neither do the countless other little stories I could tell, the memories of being around her and doing absolutely nothing that I cherish. Road trips, shared drinks, our D&D and board game nights, falling asleep on the couch while watching a dumb show. They’re all fractals. But they make up an important point I want to clarify. A lot of the characters I write are largely inspired on people I’ve known, and perhaps the biggest chunks are there person to person, but if you were to take the love of learning from Elana, the social ease of Olivia, and the unbridled nerdiness of Ann, you’d get Cynthia, no question. But the part of Olivia that I say is based on Cynthia, is the feeling of having a sister who might not share your parents, but is nonetheless family. I wish for everyone to have their own Cynthia in their lives.

  Cynthia Egan is my weird-ass impossibly wonderful cheese-in-the-purse goat owning sister, and one day I’m going to have to bail her out of jail when she tries to steal a van full of antiquities because they “Belong in a museum.”

  I love you, Cynthia.

  –Danny Bell

  P.S. A high caliber Smith and Wesson handgun and a bullwhip are not standard to the archeologist’s field kit, nor are they acceptable.

  Chapter One

  I would have considered the springtime sky over Central Park to be a perfect and highly unlikely shade of blue if I wasn’t inside of a comic book. It was an effect of the idealized version of the park as it was drawn in the comic book scene I had chosen as my entry point into this story. I was assuming this to be the case; I’d never been to New York in my world. Heck, in my world it wasn’t even springtime, it was summer. In my day-to-day life, I could barely buy gas for my car most of the time, and a plane ticket seemed excessive and unnecessary when I could go just about anywhere if I didn’t mind traveling alone. Except this time, I wasn’t alone. I brought a friend.

  In the couple of years I’d been doing this whole thing where I throw around magic, travel to exciting new worlds, and you know, do my best not to break anything? You could argue that I’ve gotten better or worse at everything, depending on your point of view. I’ve gotten a whole lot better at the sorts of magic I can throw around, not to mention the amount. A natural side effect of that was that I’d managed to break some pretty big and important things in the process. I could say something about omelets and the eggs they imply here, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. Maybe the most important of those three categories, though, might be my ability to travel.

  I was strong enough now, and practiced enough, to reliably take someone with me when I traveled directly into a story. Just the one specific someone so far, my best friend, Olivia Moore—if there was a silver lining to be found in that minimal number—but I was thankful for the company. I’d love the option of taking whomever I wanted, but so far Olivia was the only one whose magic lightened the load enough for me, so to speak. Trying with anyone else right now, even Ann, would be too dangerous. I could still take the slow road through the Knowing with whomever I wanted, but that was dangerous in its own right. Jumping straight into the story was easier on the legs. And if I was being honest with myself, I needed all the help I could get these days.

  Olivia relaxed on the ground beside me, using her denim jacket as a makeshift pillow. In a pink floral summer dress and sunglasses, she was the very Getty Images royalty-free picture of someone enjoying their day in the park. I, on the other hand, could’ve learned something from her, as my thick, black wool long coat made me look like someone who was hiding counterfeit watches to be sold in Times Square. As a bonus, it was cooking me alive. I’d opened it up to get a bit of the breeze in, savoring the slight chill I got from the fresh air instantly drying some of sweat on my body. Even this was a minor indulgence, as being shot at, bitten, and thrown out of buildings had started to make me a bit paranoid that even a day in the park might lead to a fight for my life. A magic long coat that absorbs impact made for one heck of a crutch.

  The park wasn’t terribly crowded, something I suspected wouldn’t mirror its real-life counterpart. The world we had entered, an issue of Kinetic from Always Comics, was home to some of my favorite superheroes. People like Maverick, Pendragon, The Cicada, and The Wanderer were all cool, but my favorite was Kinetic, or Dana Livingston to anyone who knew her secret identity. Which includes me, I supposed, but I wasn’t talking. The sight of Granite earlier, a guy who was made entirely of his namesake, casually getting a hot dog from a cart, reminded me of the first time I’d ever changed a story while wearing pajamas with his face on them, amongst others, and I suddenly felt appropriately dressed by comparison.

  Olivia had been quiet for a few minutes now. The background noise of the bustling city with its trains, construction, and distant traffic barely seemed to reach us on our grassy hill.

  “Is this the place?” Olivia asked absently.

  She was referring to the spot in the comic where I saw the subterranean humanoid creature that we’d recently heard about in LA. People were getting glimpses of it in sewer grates, one person claimed it started throwing rocks at them in a parking lot, but it still hadn’t hurt anyone yet. Making noise was bad enough, though, so it was up to us to investigate. Normally this would be Gardener territory, but ever since I ran them out of town, my job has gotten a lot harder. It turns out that if a goddess asks you a question as broad as what you consider home, maybe the correct answer is the four walls and roof that surround you, and not the entirety of Los Angeles. Because now it’s my responsibility, and those jerks had a lot on their plate.

  “Yeah, Central Park, I guess.” I shrugged. It really was a guess, since it was the only spot in the comic that I could remember seeing them.r />
  “What’s on your mind?” she asked, not turning to look at me.

  “Remember when we were kids and we used to just spend our afternoons at the park? During the summer, I swear it was just like this.” I felt a twang of nostalgia for a moment. More often than not, I wasted all of my free time alone, but I’d made many memories with my friend, always thankful that we’d never had to watch our friendship dissolve like so many childhood friendships do.

  “I remember,” Olivia replied lazily. “I remember the carrom boards and chasing the ice cream truck down the street, you always insisted on those Sponge Bob or Sonic bars that were deformed looking, with that stale bubblegum for eyes. Jesus, those were gross. I remember thinking middle school sucked and not appreciating it enough before high school, which, to be fair, actually did kind of suck. But we’re not kids anymore, and that’s not what’s on your mind.”

  “How do you know that I have anything on my mind at all?” It was a weak bluff; I can’t recall the last time I didn’t have something on my mind.

  Olivia took off her sunglasses and regarded me with a look of annoyance. “Come on. I know you better than anyone; I can tell when you’re bothered and, right now, you’re all hell of bothered.”

  “You can just say hella like a regular human person,” I quipped.

  “And besides, after what that bitch did to Logan, I know you wouldn’t intentionally remind me of Lucia.”

  My heart sank hearing that and, judging by Olivia’s reaction, it showed. It wasn’t what Lucia did so much as what she didn’t do.

  When we were kids, Lucia was our friend and perpetual third musketeer during those endless summers; she was more my friend than Olivia’s, admittedly. Lucia grew up to be some sort of cosmic chosen one. It was a long story, but the punchline was, after Olivia’s boyfriend, Logan, had risked his life to save Lucia, Lucia hadn’t felt inclined to return the favor. I’d made a deal with Freyja, the honest-to-goodness real Freyja, for Logan’s life in exchange for my service. Logan was taken somewhere far away and still hadn’t come back. Olivia took it better some days than others. After all, Freyja promised Olivia she’d see him again. She clung to that promise, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it.