Excerpt: A Problem Of Priorities

BOOK ONE: ANGELS AND ATLANTEANS

I used to be a god but now, I’m just a working stiff.

It all started so long ago that even I have trouble remembering it but then again, I have plenty of reasons to forget. When one goes from being worshipped with sacrifices to standing in this accursed line at a ridiculously hot bookstore, one might have a bit of an attitude.

I have an attitude. In fact, right now, the thing most annoying me is this child in front of me. I’m trying to ignore him by staring out at the pink skirted sky nearing darkness outside the window. It has a curious tapestry-like quality because of an odd screen which, while translucent, almost seems to become an opening onto a different time, as if going out to one’s car, one might meet a caravan of ancient or medieval folk. Ah, nostalgia.

Oh, yes, back to the child.

He’s a monster. Nothing metaphorical about it. He’s quite actually and honestly a monster. Just that he’s cloaked in the body of a little boy who looks perfectly fine but seethes with evil and septic plans which brew in his not yet mature mind. Mama and Papa smiling while he cradles his little nighty-night book tightly to his putrid little chest are totally unaware. Sometimes the parents know. These do not.

This takes a certain amount of finesse.

I have to follow them and kill the little putrescence.

But I mustn’t get caught.

There’s the rub.

Wonderful days, I’d had back before the lovely paradise of Atlantis was lost to the sea. Lovely maidens and beautiful young men lithely dancing for my pleasure in the temple dedicated to me, began and ended each and every day. They called me Lord and Master and made love to my likenesses. They sang songs to me and begged for my intercession in their lives.

Now I am merely grateful to have work like this. Assassination of children.

Damned island sinking…

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Tenley Somerville stood over by the magazine rack, pretending to read but actually watching the tall blond man in the black leather trench coat. Why he got all the really shitty assignments he hadn’t been able to figure out so far. For most, nepotism meant really good things came to their lives; for him it just meant he had to constantly prove and re-prove himself.