The Origin preview

Here's a small preview of the urban fantasy novel that I have been working on these past several months. Enjoy!

(warning: some strong language)

 

THE ORIGIN

PROLOGUE

The silence was absolute, a big exclamation mark over the football field.

Daniel didn’t notice the lack of noise at first as he palmed the pigskin above his head in jubilation, rejoicing in his third touchdown of the night. Eventually, the absence of cheering from the home crowd sank in. Even his teammates, who had been chest-bumping seconds before, were now all transfixed by the scene behind him.


With his euphoria fraying at the edges, Daniel held his breath and turned around.

Behind him lay a motionless Ray “Rap” Mathers, with people crowding around his prone body – coaches, teammates, medics – removing his helmet and checking his vitals.

Finally, after what seemed like a year, Ray opened his big brown eyes and looked around in confusion. A huge whoop of relief erupted all around, a sentiment that Daniel shared tenfold.

“He’ll be fine,” said Daniel’s coach, Mr. Grosse. “But damn boy, that was some tackle! I’m surprised you held onto the ball.”

But even as Mr. Grosse spoke, Ray began to cry out. “I can’t move, Coach! I can’t feel my legs!” His burly, dark hands flailed about, grasping at anything within reach for answers. “Why can’t I feel my legs?”

Still rooted to the spot, Daniel watched as they loaded the hysterical two hundred and thirty-pound linebacker onto a stretcher with some difficulty. His mind screamed at him to walk over and help, that his strength would be useful in lifting Ray off the field, but his muscles refused to move. What if they asked him how he had managed to hurt someone almost twice his size?

As six men carried the stretcher away, he felt a hand clap him on the shoulder, and Daniel spun around, a denial ready on his tongue.

“Damn, dude! What did you do to him?” his teammate said.

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was a boldfaced lie. If anybody ever found out his fantastic secret, he could be kicked off the team, go to jail, or the most unthinkable and inevitable of all, end up dissected in a research lab. For what else could happen to a kid who just learned that he was stronger and faster than anybody he’d ever known?

No, his was a secret Daniel could never tell.

-----

CHAPTER ONE
TEN YEARS PASS

New York City truly never slept. Even at fourteen minutes past midnight, long after most people had retired to the relative safety of their beds, the city was still vibrating with life. Trash cans moved with unknown visitors, air vents blew out puffs of smoke, car engines droned by, streetlights tick-tick-ticked. But of the entire nocturnal symphony, only one sound was of immediate concern to Daniel Johnson, and that was the ragged wheezing of the person cradled in his arms.

He avoided looking at the unconscious woman as he ran, afraid that he wouldn’t be fast enough to reach the hospital in time. He didn’t know who she was, avoided actually caring, but he had an obligation to get her medical care seeing as she was bleeding in several places and was not even conscious to realize it.

Daniel had been done for the night – had already thwarted a burglary and a mugging – when he’d seen a scraggy man in dirty clothes, straddling a woman who was sprawled on the concrete. Though her arms had been up, they hadn’t protected her face from the punching, slapping and clawing. It was only when Daniel got closer that he realized the man’s real intention: he meant to pry that woman’s mouth apart, and he didn’t care if he had to tear her jaw off, or even kill her completely, in order to achieve that goal.

Within moments, Daniel had pulled the frenzied man off the woman and had bound his ankles and wrists with zip ties. But the man was a hellcat and had still struggled on the ground, sweat-stained and screaming, “Give it to me, you fat slut bitch! I know you have it!”

Daniel had recognized the signs – the skeletal face, the dilated pupils – and had confirmed his theory a few moments later when he’d turned to the now-motionless woman and had found a tiny vial of crack cocaine in her mouth.

“That’s mine you masked asshole!” the man had screamed, floundering on the ground in hopes of reaching his precious drug. “Give it to me! That bitch stole it from me!”

“Who is she?” Daniel had said calmly, searching for a pulse on her neck through his thin leather gloves. Bingo.

“My fucking sister. Bitch stole my purple caps!”

Daniel had used a nearby phone booth to call the police, confident that Crack Guy would be found within a few minutes. And, with the revulsion stuck in his throat, he’d picked up the unconscious woman and had fled for the hospital as fast as his legs could move. But though his legs moved swiftly, they were not nearly fast enough for Daniel’s liking on nights like these.

As he laid the woman gently at the emergency room entrance, he looked her over, making sure he did not leave a single trace of himself. The police would be looking for any fibers or fingerprints and would interview all involved to try and find a clue on Daniel’s identity. But so far, the NYPD’s search for the black-clad vigilante had yielded nothing.

Later on, as Daniel lay alone in his bed, he busied his mind with thoughts of Victoria’s Secret models, of baseball, of the recession – anything to keep the nausea at bay – for if he allowed himself to absorb the evil that he bore witness to night after night, evidence of the horrors of the human soul, he would surely be overcome with emotion. And a small part of him knew that if he allowed that anger and grief to saturate his thoughts, he could possibly go mad with power and deem himself judge, jury and executioner for anyone he encountered. Taking lives could become so easy.

No, he could never allow himself to look at that victim’s face as she lay dying in his arms; never feel the pity and the hatred course like searing water through his veins. Emotions were a dangerous luxury, that even the tiniest amount could crumble his wall of restraint and self-preservation.

Had he known just how much emotions would come to rule his life, he might have opted to call in sick from work the next day.

-----

“Thank you, young man.” The elderly lady with hair like white cotton candy shuffled along as Daniel held the door open. “How are you doing today?”

“Fine, ma’am.” Daniel hated this aspect of his job, the forced interaction with strangers. He was a security guard at Chase Bank, for crying out loud, not a door greeter at some trashy grocery store.

He sat back down on his stool – his guard post as his goofy manager often referred to it – and swept a critical eye across the long and narrow bank lobby, looking out for any suspicious characters, even though they had not had any disturbances lately. At least not since the guy who had attempted a robbery and instead ended up eating the faux-marble floor a few minutes later, with Daniel’s boots squarely on his back. The poor guy had learned a very valuable lesson that day that Daniel hoped would fan out to other would-be marble floor eaters: that the Chase Bank on Frederick Douglass Boulevard was off-limits. Two incident-free months had passed since he first donned his blue sentry uniform; nobody dared step a toe out of line around the scowling Daniel Cael Johnson.

Daniel was pondering his lunch choices from the café across the street – chicken salad or roast beef sandwich? – when a gust of cold air announced the arrival of yet another Chase client. The woman, who had her back to him, was tall and lithe with sable hair that hung in waves down to her shoulder blades. She wore dark jeans that hugged her curves tucked into black leather boots and a red leather jacket that cinched at the waist. As with all the women he initially saw from behind, he bet that her front would not be able to cash the check that her back had written.

She approached the information desk clerk and immediately Stephen Sommers, the bank manager, scurried out of his office to greet her. From the way he was acting, Daniel wondered if she was a Rockefeller or someone else made of money.

He watched as Stephen ushered the woman off to his office, her long legs and nice ass moving gracefully, her hair swaying to the same rhythm as her hips, and Daniel found himself mildly hypnotized.

Perhaps she was Stephen’s new girlfriend that he’d been bragging about? The woman appeared to be way out of Stephen’s league, but that had never stopped the short, slightly overweight man before. Stephen had confidence to spare, and women responded favorably, surprisingly enough.

Daniel turned his attention back to the bank, keeping a close eye on a young man who approached a teller with a baseball cap. Three caps, one beanie, and one Stetson hat later, Stephen finally emerged from his office, and Daniel held his breath as the woman followed him out.

God, I seriously need a life, he thought right before she moved into his view and his initial theory was completely and utterly debunked.

The woman turned out to be all three on Daniel’s Chick Checklist. Beautiful: check. Pretty smile: check. Nice rack: check, maybe. What he saw of her breasts in her jacket weren’t particularly big or voluptuous but they seemed the right size for her thin frame. And for Daniel, who had no cause to be picky as he hadn’t touched a pair in years, they were perfect. Breasts were breasts, after all.

As she walked towards the exit, he couldn’t help but notice the way she carried herself, so graceful and almost regal in her posture. He had a sneaking suspicion that she was a dancer; in theaters, not strip clubs.

“Excuse me…”

He blinked twice, not realizing that she was looking directly at him. “Yeah?” He cleared his throat, recovering his wits. “May I help you, ma’am?”

“Daniel Johnson?” she said, her voice soft and husky. “From Westmoore High?”

He regarded the woman through narrowed eyes, with all of his earlier fantasies dying at the mention of his alma mater. If she knew him from Westmoore, then she had undoubtedly heard of the rumors that had circulated about him in his senior year.

“Sure.”

“I’m Olivia King,” she said with a warm smile, reaching for his hand and giving it a firm shake. “We went to high school together.”

“Um, great.” He extricated his hand from her grasp, hoping he hadn’t squeezed it too hard from anxiety, though he guessed she would have screamed in agony if he had.

She cocked her head and regarded him with interest. “You haven’t changed much since high school, I see,” she said with a smile. She looked at him for a long moment, before saying, “Would you like to go out to dinner?”

He avoided looking at the soft swell of her lips. He had spent years evading the past and now that it had found him, he wasn’t about to invite it to his doorstep, attractive though it were. “Thanks, but no.”

Olivia blinked up at him with her astonishing violet eyes and a small smile formed on her lips. “Déjà vu. You turned me down in high school too.”

Daniel’s eyebrow shot up. “I did?” He couldn’t imagine turning down a date with someone so attractive and sure of herself, unless, of course, she had been a troll back then. That or she had asked after the accident, in which case, he would have said no even if she’d been a supermodel.

“I’ll tell you about it over dinner,” she said in a confident tone that left him no room to negotiate. She handed him a round-edged calling card with her full name and phone number. “So it’s a date then. I’ll meet you at Sunday Sushi tonight at seven thirty.” The self-assurance in her husky voice was intoxicating and he found himself nodding along.

This is crazy, he thought as he watched her walk through the glass doors with a parting wave. He couldn’t figure out how she had managed to talk him into a date; women had tried but had been unsuccessful, as he had hung up his dating cap during his junior year in college. But somehow, this olive-skinned woman had managed to persuade him to wear it once more.

Just this one time. I just want to know what she has to say.

He shook his head in grudging admiration as he examined her card. Though it said “ballet dancer” on it, judging from the way she had just fast-talked him, Daniel decided that Olivia Mei King should definitely have been a lawyer.

-----

The time was six o’clock when Daniel got off work as the other guard to relieve him had called in due to a family emergency. Any other day, Daniel would have been more than happy to cover since his Fridays were not that exciting, at least, not in the traditional sense. But this particular Friday was different as he, Mr. Absolutely No Social Life, actually had a date. And that required a shower, or at the very least, a second swipe of deodorant.

He was still thumbing the raised lettering of Olivia’s calling card in his pocket, when he heard someone yelling, “Stop! Help!” A woman across the busy road was waving frantically, pointing to a man running down the street.

Daniel sprung into action. He launched himself into traffic, sidestepping and jumping over moving cars like an artful form of dodge ball. When he reached the sidewalk, he all but disappeared, becoming nearly invisible to the naked eye, as he gave swift chase. He wove through the crowd of pedestrians with swift finesse, as if time slowed for everyone but him. It had taken years of practice, but Daniel had finally mastered the art of not crashing into objects when he exercised tremendous speed.

The few people who tried running after the purse-snatcher gave up soon after, not having the stamina to maintain the chase. But Daniel’s cardiovascular endurance was not that of a normal human being’s. Nothing about him could be considered normal; he doubted he could even be considered a homo sapien anymore.

Seven seconds elapsed before Daniel caught up with the thief in a narrow alley. The man was pulling himself up on the bottom rung of an open fire escape when Daniel grabbed hold of his jacket and pulled him down onto the pavement, and he fell on his back with a loud grunt.

“Shit! That fucking hurts man!” He glared at Daniel, who grabbed the small purse from his hands before he could protest. “I think I have brain trauma. I’m gonna sue you for all you’re worth, motherfucker.”

“You’re not going to have much luck there. Sorry, bud,” Daniel said and, with a shrug, sprinted off towards the purse’s owner. He regretted leaving a criminal free, but he was fresh out of the zip ties that he always kept in his pockets. This guy lucked out; he would live to steal another day.

Once he handed the purse back, the grateful owner looked up at Daniel with teary eyes. “Thank you. You’re my hero,” she said so theatrically, she might as well have completed the performance with a swoon.

Daniel shook his head, fighting the urge to snicker. “No, I’m really not,” was all he said before he ran back to his apartment at a speed that a bystander would only perceive as a small rush of air.



As soon as he was behind his apartment door, he tore off his clothes and jumped into the shower, cursing a little when the tenants upstairs flushed their toilet. He might be an incredibly fast healer, but he still felt pain from scalding water.

After the shower, as he reached for his electric razor, he found himself wondering why the hell he was trying to impress someone he had no desire to date anyway. He was just going to hear her story, nothing else; he had no plans of seeing her beyond tonight. Leaving the razor in its charger, he dropped the towel on the floor and headed to the bedroom. Originally, he had thought of wearing slacks and a nice sweater, but decided against it. He didn’t want her getting the idea that he gave a flying hoot. Instead, he reached for his well-worn jeans, which lay crumpled on the floor, and pulled out a black AC/DC t-shirt. He pulled on a grey hooded sweatshirt and finished the look with his favorite green military jacket. He didn’t need the mirror to know that he looked like crap, and it was just as well. Maybe Olivia would lose interest if he arrived to dinner looking homeless.

At a leisurely pace, he pulled on his worn brown boots, scuffed from years of pounding pavement and catching bad guys, ran a hand through his short hair, and declared himself ready.