ericdontigney

Jericho Lott - Chapter 27

“Dead, Jericho. I said you should be dead.”

I waited for her to crack a smile or something else to show me that she was pulling my leg. Her steady, unblinking stare made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. I snorted at her.

“Well, obviously, I’m not.”

“That’s the part that has me worried,” she said and pushed herself off the bed.

She teetered on her feet for a moment before using a wall to steady her. She shook her head a few times like she meant to...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 26

“Ignore her, Jericho,” said Jessie, as she nudged herself up into a sitting position. “She thinks she’s being funny.”

That seemed to spark some real annoyance in Annie because she turned to Jessie. “For your information, I was always the funny one. You’re just mad because you didn’t make your move fast enough.”

Jessie snorted. The distraction had given me a moment to get my equilibrium. I figured there was a simple enough way to bring the whole game to an end. I ...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 25

Annie stared at me in blind shock. Gran looked like she was in physical pain. I felt a moment of nasty satisfaction that soon melted into guilt. I wasn’t built for that kind of vindictiveness. It cost too much to keep it going, and it hurt me as much as it hurt Gran. I looked away. Annie recovered her equilibrium first.

“Where’s my sister?”

“Follow me, child. I’ll take you to her.”

Gran stepped back from the door to let Annie inside. I vacillated on the porch f...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 24

It was a good thing nobody decided that was a good night to pick a fight with me. I wasn’t sure, but I had the instinct that I’d have beaten them to death. I just walked and walked, the city blurring around me like so much concrete visual noise. I was so angry that I didn’t have anywhere to put it. I’d trusted Gran and Uncle Bill. I’d put my faith in them. In recompense, they’d knowingly put me in potentially lethal danger by withholding information I could very well need. The fac...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 23

I got us to Gran’s before the magic I’d cast wore down. If he wanted to find us, Pierce Carter could do it now. Still, it felt better to be home. Carter would stand out like a mob of torch-wielding villagers in the neighborhood. People would talk if he came around asking questions. I carried Jessie in and put her on the bed I’d slept in for most of my life. Gran hadn’t asked any questions when I arrived, just held doors open and gave Jessie grave looks. Gran knew something about heali...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 22

I watched, dumbstruck for a moment before I realized whose body was plummeting toward a grisly death. I started running toward the front of the hotel. I wasn’t clear on just what I planned to do if I got there before Jessie hit, but I was taking things one step at a time. Even while I ran, I kept an eye turned up, which was how I saw something unfathomable. Even as she fell, Jessie was still at work, hurling death toward the broken window in the form of fire and lightning and black blobs I ...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 21

I sat in the front passenger seat of the car, bored, while I waited for Jessie to find Pierce Carter in the airport. The car was another rental, pitch black with tinted windows, and I tried not to think about how Gran was going to scowl at me when she got the credit card bill. She’d given it to me to do my job, which technically I was, but I doubted racking up charges for two rentals was going to make her happy. Then again, nothing about the situation made her happy, so worrying about the c...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 20

After traipsing through Denver International Airport and spending a second day scouting the exterior, I came to one, inevitable conclusion. Big airports were crappy places to try to find someone. Like most buildings designed to accommodate a large number of moving bodies, the airport had a lot of doors to let people out. Granted, most people were funneled to an exit where cabs, buses, and impatient family members were waiting, but it was still way more ground than two people could reasonably ...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 19

I’d assumed that Jessie would head home after meeting the Corrupted Oracle, but she announced that she was finding this a grand adventure and offered to go with me to Denver. In the end, I shrugged and said okay. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what Pierce Carter was capable of, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some backup along. After the wreckage she’d left in her wake saving me from the Raven’s Council, it wasn’t like I could say she didn’t know how to handle herself. In a moment...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 18

Of all the things I’d imagined he’d ask for, that one had never crossed my mind. I’d imagined him demanding money, or for me to steal some rare painting he wanted, or even a favor. Coming for what sounded like a sleepover, though? I couldn’t make sense of the request, let alone why he’d ever want such a thing. It had no obvious value. I was, at best, something of a natural antagonist to him. At worst, I was exactly the kind of person that would probably kill him one day, for some of...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 17

For all the plainness of the exterior, the interior of the building was extravagant to the point of self-parody. The floors alternated between deep pile carpets, expensive hardwood, and strategically placed Persian rugs that I suspected were the real thing. The walls were lined with artwork. Most of it was unknown to me, but I stopped in front of one piece that I thought I recognized from an art history class I’d taken. Jessie came over and looked it over.  She glanced from it to me wi...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 16

We stepped out the front door and I walked a few steps before glancing back. I stumbled to a halt, my brain refusing to accept the evidence of my eyes. I knew that Jessie’s house was enormous beyond reason. Yet, what confronted me was little more than a cabin. It was one story and maybe big enough for a bedroom, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a closet-sized living room. I shook my head, looked again, and it was still just a cabin painted a dark blue. Jessie stepped up next to me, grinning ...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 15

I slept a ridiculous amount that week. That would have been great if not for all the nightmares. I did my best to shrug them off, but marrow-freezing terror has a way of keeping you awake at night. They might not have bothered me so much, but I suspected that those were going to be a fixture in my life for the foreseeable future. If I hadn’t been so hurt and utterly exhausted by pain, I wonder if I’d have gotten any sleep. On the bright side, I did a monumental amount of eating. Sven seem...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 14

Jessie informed me that, per Annie’s orders, I wasn’t to travel for at least a week. I asked why, but Jessie just shrugged off the question with a vague statement about Annie knowing her business. I discovered a few things that week. The first thing I discovered was that Jessie lived in some kind of mansion. The place was huge, with a seemingly endless number of rooms that ranged from a full-blown, mahogany-paneled study to a huge library that stretched three stories into the air and came...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 13

Things got patchy for a while. I have some vague recollection of Jessie talking on the phone, telling someone she had the kid and not to come yet because he wasn’t stable enough to travel any distance. I remember someone coaxing me from the back seat and what felt like a long, agonizing marathon before I was allowed to collapse onto something soft. At one point, I heard two women talking.

“It’s a wonder he survived at all,” said an unfamiliar voice.

“He must be tougher t...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 12

The frame tried to contain my magic and turn it back on me, but it just hadn’t been designed to handle the volume of magic I’d thrown all at once. I didn’t know if that was because the makers had underestimated, or if they’d just been sloppy, and I didn’t care. Every rune on the frame snapped with a sound like gunfire and the whole contraption just came apart at the seams. Unfortunately for me, I was still attached to it. So, when it tore itself apart, it nearly tore me in half befo...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 11

They spent the first hour or three beating me. Sometimes they used their fists. Sometimes they used what looked like police batons. They worked me over one at a time, spelling each other so I never had time to rest or recover. The blonde woman, or was her hair white, I kept going back and forth, oversaw the evening’s entertainment from a distance. She bestowed a wide, pleased smile on her underlings. The pain was incredible. I’d been hurt before. I’d broken my arm once, had my nose brok...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 10

My return to consciousness was as brutal as my loss of consciousness had been. One second, I was lost in blissful darkness. The next, I heard thunder, and pain tore a jagged arc across the side of my head. My eyes snapped open and all I could taste was copper. I shook my head a few times and the ache in my face hid the ache in my shoulders for a few moments. I focused on what was right in front of me. It was the grinning face of an older man. He seemed familiar. Then the memories came back in...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 9

I found myself in Chicago’s River North District, not too far from the House of Blues, staring up at an unassuming loft office space. As I considered my approach to the situation amid a throng of annoyed Chicagoans who had to step around me, I wondered if I should go down the Riverwalk afterward. Considering Gran’s distress at my coming to see the Raven’s Council at all, I wondered if thinking there was going to be an afterward was overly optimistic on my part. I shrugged that thought o...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 8

It was late when I got back to Gran’s, but her lights were still on. I sat in the rental car for a long time, just staring at that little house. I’d done most of my growing up inside it. I still spent more time there than at my tiny apartment. It hurt to think of it as a place of deception when it had always been a place of safety. I made myself get out of the car and walk up the narrow strip of concrete that bisected the postage stamp lawn. I tried the door and found it open. Gran was wa...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 7

One interminable drive, and eight 24 oz coffees later, I was standing in a clearing in the middle of nowhere Arkansas. According to the map I was looking at, I was in the Ozarks. That knowledge didn’t do anything for my sense of ease. The nearest civilization was a place called Mountain View and that was a good 30 minutes away. I don’t have anything against nature, per se, and Uncle Bill had made sure I knew my woodcraft, but I was an urban creature by nature. I liked the certainty of pav...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 6

I had my misgivings about having Gabriella in the diner as a waitress. A lot of what Gran did, although not precisely secret, required a certain degree of discretion. Gran trusted in mine because I’d demonstrated it so very often. She knew Larry would be discrete because I built it into his binding. Gabriella, however, was a free agent. She wasn’t bound by loyalty or magic to keep quiet about who came to Gran or any information she might overhear. Beyond that, she was a teenager, and no c...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 5

Over the next few weeks, I made a lot of surprise inspections on Gabriella’s problem, who went by the name of Big George. I showed up at the house at dinner time and invited myself to stay. George objected the first time. He was still a little scared of me, but his memory of my original attack was apparently partially obscured in the alcohol haze. He’d stormed up and put his hand on my chest as if he’d push me out the door. I did something ugly to his wrist and pulled him outside. I kic...

Jericho Lott - Chapter 4

I went out behind the diner to a rather unusual addition that Gran had installed at my request. It was basically a free-standing, two-car garage. One side held Gran’s Passat. The other side was filled with a tarp-covered shape. I allowed myself a mercenary little grin at the fate waiting for the poor fool who tried to break into that building. I’d been very creative when I set the traps around the place. I went inside and pulled the tarp off a vintage Porsche 911 with a paint job so dark ...

Jericho Lott, Chapter 3

“Gran, this is Gabriella. Gabriella, this is Gran,” I said, back behind the counter.

Gran sat on a stool next to the Gabriella and bestowed a huge, maternal smile on the girl. “It’s very nice to meet you, Gabriella. Did you enjoy the pie?”

The girl stared at the counter and whispered, “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Oh, hush you now with that ma’am nonsense. You just call me Gran, everyone does.”

“Yes, Gran,” said the girl, even more quietly, if that were poss...

Jericho Lott, Chapter 2

We came through the door of Gran’s, and I breathed a little easier as the familiar noises of the place washed over me. The clink of utensils on plates, the sizzle of burgers on the grill in the kitchen, and Gran’s raucous laughter over one joke or another were the sounds of home. The bell over the door alerted her to our entrance and she glanced over. She gave me a big smile and then gave Gabriella a thoughtful look. I walked Gabriella over to the counter and put her on a stool. Gran look...

Jericho Lott, Chapter 1

I stepped out of the cab, slung the small duffel bag I traveled with over my shoulder, and handed the nervous driver some money. I duked him an extra-large tip for bravery. He grabbed the money, didn’t count it, and drove off as fast as he dared. I smirked after the fast-disappearing cab before I turned to look at Gran’s diner. It was a small place and nothing all that special to look it. One story with white siding that had faded to gray beneath the urban onslaught of dust and road grime...

Jericho Lott - Prologue

I'm currently working on an urban fantasy. My goal is to complete the first draft by Christmas, so I thought I'd give you all a first draft, sneak peak at the prologue. Enjoy! 

Prologue

I looked down into the smoking hole that used to be a house. Severed pipes spewed water sporadically, where they hadn’t been fused shut in wake of the violent exorcism I’d been forced to conduct. The water was slowly turning the sandy earth into mud. I shivered, partly from remnant fear, p...

I Really Am Writing

I’m haven’t been doing a very good job of posting on Patreon lately. It’s not that I’m not writing blog posts. It’s just that they’ve been getting posted elsewhere. So, in the name of fair play, here’s some links to things I’ve been writing recently.

Punch Them in the Feels – I discuss what I see as the root sources of the current crop of hy...

Coming Soon

It's taken longer than I expected to get this one into shape, but new fiction is imminent. I'm expecting to have this wrapped up and edited into something like final shape within a week or so.