Please welcome AD Starrling to the Mystique.
Soul Meaning
Seventeen
Series Book One
AD Starrling
Genre:
Supernatural thriller
ISBN:
978-0957282605
ASIN:
B008L8IU8C
Number of
pages: 420
Word Count:
108,187
Cover
Artist: Streetlight Graphics
Book
Description:
A half breed
immortal. An international manhunt. A race against time to stop a terrifying
plot that threatens to kill millions. The gripping, action-packed debut novel
by AD Starrling and the first in the supernatural thriller series Seventeen.
‘My name is
Lucas Soul.
Today, I
died again.
This is my
fifteenth death in the last four hundred and fifty years.’
The Crovirs
and the Bastians. Two races of immortals who have lived side by side with
humans for millennia and been engaged in a bloody war since the very dawn of
their existence. With the capacity to survive up to sixteen deaths, it was not
until the late fourteenth century that they reached an uneasy truce, following
a deadly plague that wiped out more than half of their numbers and made the
majority of survivors infertile.
Soul is an
outcast of both immortal societies. Born of a Bastian mother and a Crovir
father, a half breed whose very existence is abhorred by the two races, he
spends the first three hundred and fifty years of his life being chased and
killed by the Hunters.
One fall night
in Boston, the Hunt starts again, resulting in Soul’s fifteenth death and
triggering a chain of events that sends him on the run with Reid Hasley, a
former US Marine and his human business partner of ten years. When a lead takes
them to Washington DC and a biotechnology company with affiliations to the
Crovirs, they cross the Atlantic to Europe, on the trail of a French scientist
whose research seems intrinsically linked to the reason why the Hunters are
after Soul again.
From Paris
to Prague, their search for answers will lead them deep into the immortal
societies and bring them face to face with someone from Soul’s past. Shocking
secrets are uncovered and fresh allies come to the fore as they attempt to put
a stop to a new and terrifying threat to both immortals and humans.
Time is
running out for Soul. Can he get to the truth before his seventeenth death,
protect the ones he loves and prevent another immortal war?
Excerpt
I
woke up in a dark alley behind a building.
Autumn
rain plummeted from an angry sky, washing the narrow, walled corridor I lay in
with shades of grey. It dripped from the metal rungs of the fire escape above
my head and slithered down dirty, barren walls, forming uneven puddles under
the garbage dumpsters by my feet. It gurgled in the gutters and storm drains
off the main avenue behind me.
It
also cleansed away the blood beneath my body.
For
once, I was grateful for the downpour: I did not want any evidence left of my
recent demise.
I
blinked at the drops that struck my face and slowly climbed to my feet.
Unbidden, my fingers rose to trace the deep cut in my chest: the blade had
missed the unusual birthmark on my skin by less than an inch. I turned and
stared at the tower behind me.
I
was not sure what I was expecting to see. A face peering over the parapet of
the glass and brick structure. An avenging figure drifting down in the
rainfall, a bloodied sword in its hands and a crazy smile in its eyes. A flock
of silent crows, come to take my unearthly body to its final resting place.
Bar
the heavenly deluge, the skyline was fortunately empty.
I
pulled my cell phone out of the rear pocket of my jeans and stared at it. It
was smashed to pieces. I could hardly blame the makers of the device: they had
probably never tested it from the rooftop of a twelve-storey building. As for
me, the bruises would start to fade by tomorrow.
It
would take another day for the wound in my chest to heal completely.
I
glanced at the sky again before walking out of the alley. I found a phone booth
at the next intersection, closed the rickety door behind me and dialled a
number. Steam rapidly fogged up the glass wall before me. There was a soft
click after the fifth ring.
‘Yo,’
said a tired voice.
‘Yo
yourself,’ I said.
A
barely suppressed yawn travelled down the line. ‘What’s up?’
‘I
need a ride,’ I replied. ‘And a new phone.’
There
was a short silence. ‘It’s four o’clock in the morning.’ The voice had gone
blank, devoid of all traces of emotion.
‘I
know,’ I muttered in the same neutral tone.
The
sigh at the other end was audible above the pounding of the rain. ‘Where are
you?’
‘Corner
of Cambridge and Staniford.’
Fifteen
minutes later, a battered tan Chevrolet Monte Carlo pulled up next to the phone
booth. ‘Get in,’ said the figure behind the wheel. I opened the door and
climbed into the passenger seat. Water dripped onto the leather cover and
formed a puddle by my feet. There was a disgruntled mutter from my left. I
glanced at the man beside me.
Reid
Hasley was my business partner and friend. Together, we were co-owners of the
Hasley and Soul Agency. We were private investigators, of sorts. Reid certainly
qualified as one, being a former Marine and cop. I, on the other hand, had been
neither.
‘You
look like hell,’ said Reid as he manoeuvred the car into almost nonexistent
traffic. He took something from his raincoat and tossed it across to me. It was
a new cell.
I
raised my eyebrows slightly. ‘That was fast.’
He
grunted indistinct words and struck a match. ‘What happened?’ The orange glow
of a cigarette flared into life, casting shadows under his brow and across his
crooked nose.
I
transferred the data card from the broken phone into the new one and frowned
faintly at the bands of smoke drifting towards me. ‘That’s going to kill you
one day.’
‘Just
answer the question,’ he said testily.
I
looked away from his probing gaze and stared blindly at the dark tower at the
end of the avenue. ‘I met up with our new client,’ I muttered.
Reid
looked at me expectantly. ‘And?’
‘He
wasn’t happy to see me.’
Something
in my voice made him frown. ‘How unhappy are we talking here?’ he said
guardedly.
I
sighed. ‘Well, he stuck a sword through my heart and pushed me off the top of
the Cramer building. I would say he was pretty unhappy.’
Silence
followed my words. ‘That’s not good,’ said Reid finally.
‘No.’
‘It
means we’re not gonna get the money,’ he added, clearly heartbroken by the news
of my recent passing.
‘I’m
fine by the way. Thanks for asking,’ I said wryly.
He
shot a hard glance at me. ‘We need the cash.’
Unpalatable
as the statement was, it was regrettably true. Small PI firms like our own had
just about managed before the recession. Nowadays, people had more things to
worry about than what their cheating spouses were up to. On the other hand,
embezzlement cases were up by a third; unfortunately, the victims of such scams
were usually too hard up to afford the services of a good detective agency. As
a result, the rent on our office space was overdue by a month.
Mrs
Trelawney, our landlady, was not happy about this: at five foot two and
weighing just over two hundred pounds, the woman had the ability to make us
quake in our boots. This had less to do with her size than with the fact that
she made the best angel cakes in the city. She gave these out to her tenants
when they paid the rent on time. A month without angel cakes was making us
twitchy.
‘I
think we might still get the goods if you flash your eyes at her,’ said my
partner thoughtfully after a while.
I
stared at him. ‘Are you pimping me out?’
‘No.
You’d be a tough sell,’ he grunted as the car splashed along the empty streets
of the city. He glanced my way. ‘This makes it what, your fourteenth death?’
‘Fifteenth.’
Further
silence followed. ‘Huh. So, two more to go,’ he murmured.
I
nodded mutely. In many ways, I was glad Hasley had entered my somewhat
unnatural life, despite the fact that it happened in such a dramatic fashion.
It was ten years ago this summer.
Hasley
was a detective in the Boston PD Homicide Unit at the time. One hot Friday
afternoon in August, he and his partner of three years found themselves on the
trail of a murder suspect, a Latino man called Burt Suarez. Suarez, who worked
the toll bridge north-east of the city, had never had so much as a speeding
ticket to his name before: he was later described by his neighbours and friends
as a gentle giant who cherished his wife and was kind to children and animals.
That day, the giant snapped and went on a killing spree after walking in on his
wife and his brother in the marital bed. He shot Hasley’s partner, two
uniformed cops and the neighbour’s dog, before fleeing towards the river.
Unfortunately,
I got in his way.
In
my defence, I had not been myself for most of that month, having recently lost
someone who had been a friend for more than a hundred years. In short, I was
drunk.
On
that scorching summer’s day, Burt Suarez achieved something no other human, or
non human for that matter, had managed before or since.
He
shot me in the head.
Sadly,
he did not get to savour this feat as he died minutes after he fired a round
through my skull. Hasley still swore to this day that Suarez’s death had more
to do with seeing me rise to my feet Lazarus-like again than with the gunshot
wound he himself inflicted on the man with his Glock 19.
That
had been my fourteenth death. Shortly after witnessing my unnatural
resurrection, Hasley quit his job as a detective and became my business
partner.
Over
the last decade we have trailed unfaithful spouses, tracked down missing
persons, performed checks on employees in high profile investment banks, took
on surveillance work for attorneys and insurance companies, served process to
disgruntled defendants, and even rescued the odd kidnapped pet. Hasley knew
more about me than anyone else in the city.
He
still carried the Glock.
‘Why
did he kill you?’ said Reid. The car had stopped before a set of red lights.
‘Did you do something to piss him off?’ There was a trace of suspicion in his
tone.
I
grimaced and scratched my head. ‘Broadly speaking, he seemed opposed to my
existence,’ I murmured. The rhythmic swishing of the windscreen wipers and the
dull hiss of rubber rolling across wet asphalt were the only sounds that broke
the ensuing lull. ‘He called me an abomination that should be sent straight to
Hell and beyond,’ I added drily and paused. ‘Frankly, I thought that was a bit
ironic coming from someone who’s probably not that much older than me.’
Reid
crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and stared at me with narrowed eyes.
‘You mean, he’s one of you?’
I
hesitated before nodding briefly. ‘Yes.’
Over
the years, as I came to know and trust him, I had told Reid a little bit about
my origins.
I
was born in Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Renaissance
was at its peak. My father came from a line of beings known as the Crovirs,
while my mother was a descendent of a group called the Bastians. They are the
only races of immortals on Earth.
Throughout
most of the history of man, the Crovirs and the Bastians have waged a bitter
and brutal war against one another. Although enough blood has been shed over
the millennia to fill a respectable portion of the Caspian Sea, this unholy
battle between immortals has, for the most, remained a well kept secret from
the eyes of ordinary humans, despite the fact that the latter have been used as
pawns in some of its most epic chapters.
The
conflict suffered a severe and unprecedented setback in the fourteenth century,
when the numbers of both races dwindled rapidly and dramatically; while the
Black Death scourged Europe and Asia, killing millions of humans, the lesser
known Red Death shortened the lives of countless immortals. It was several
decades before the full extent of the devastation was realised, for the plague
had brought with it an unexpected and horrifying complication.
The
greater part of those who survived had become infertile.
This
struck another blow to both sides and, henceforth, an uneasy truce was
established. Although the odd incident still occurs between embittered members
of each race, the fragile peace has, surprisingly, lasted to this day. From
that time on, the arrival of an immortal child into the world became an event
that was celebrated at the highest levels of each society.
My
birth was a notable exception. The union between a Crovir and a Bastian was
considered an unforgivable sin and was strictly forbidden by both races:
ancient and immutable, it was a fact enshrined into the very doctrines and
origins of our species. Any offspring of such a coupling was thus deemed an
abomination unto all and sentenced to death from the very moment they were
conceived. I was not the first born half-breed, both races having secretly
mated with each other in the past. However, the two immortal societies wanted
me to be the last. Fearing for my existence, my parents fled and took me into
hiding.
For
a while, life was good. We were far from rich and dwelled in a remote cabin
deep in the forest, where we lived off the land, hunting, fishing, and even
growing our own food. Twice a year, my father would venture down the mountain
to the nearest village, where he traded fur for oil and other rare goods. We
were happy and I never wanted for anything.
It
was another decade before the Hunters finally tracked us down. That was when I
learned one of the most important lessons about immortals.
We
can only survive up to sixteen deaths.
Having
perished seven times before, my father died after ten deaths: he fought until
the very last breath left his body. I watched them kill my mother seventeen
times.
I
should have died that day. I did, in fact, suffer my very first death. Moments
after the act, I awoke on the snow-covered ground, tears frozen on my face and
my blood steaming as it stained the whiteness around me. Fingers clenching
convulsively around the wooden sword that my father had given me, I waited
helplessly for a blade to sink into my heart once more. Minutes passed before I
realised that I was alone in that crimson-coloured clearing, high up in the
Carpathian Mountains.
The
crows came next, silent flocks that descended from the grey winter skies and
covered the bloodied bodies next to me. When the birds left, the remains of my
parents had disappeared as well. All that was left was ash.
It
was much later that another immortal imparted to me the theory behind the
seventeen deaths. Each one apparently took away a piece of our soul. Unlike our
bodies, our souls could not regenerate after a death. Thus, Death as an
ultimate end was unavoidable. And then the crows come for most of us.
No
one was really clear as to where the birds took our unearthly remains.
‘What
if you lived alone, on a desert island or something, and never met anyone? You
could presumably never die,’ Reid had argued with his customary logic when I
told him this.
‘True.
However, death by boredom is greatly underestimated,’ I replied. ‘Besides,’ I
added drily after a pause, ‘someone like you is bound to kill himself after a
day without a smoke.’
‘So,
the meeting was a trap?’ said Reid.
His
voice jolted me back to the present. The car had pulled up in front of my
apartment block. The road ahead was deserted.
‘Yes.’
Rain pounded the roof of the Monte Carlo. The sound reminded me of the
ricochets of machine guns. Unpleasant memories rose to the surface of my mind.
I suppressed them firmly.
‘Will
he try to kill you again?’ said Reid. I remained silent. He stared at me. ‘What
are you gonna do?’
I
finally shifted on the leather seat and reached for the door handle. ‘Well,
seeing as you’re likely to drag me back from Hell if I leave you high and dry,
I should probably kill him first,’ I said wryly.
I
exited the car, crossed the sidewalk and entered the lobby of the building. I
turned to watch the tail lights of the Chevrolet disappear in the downpour
before getting into the lift. Under normal circumstances, I would have taken
the stairs to the tenth floor: dying, I felt, was a justifiable reason to take
things easy for the rest of the night.
My
apartment was blessedly cool and devoid of immortals hellbent on carving
another hole in my heart. I took a shower, dressed the wound in my chest, and
went to bed.
About the Author:
AD Starrling
was born on the small island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and came
to the UK at the age of twenty to study medicine. After five years of hard
graft earning her MD and another five years working all of God’s hours as a
Paediatrician, she decided it was time for a change and returned to her first
love, writing.
Soul Meaning
is her debut novel and the first in a supernatural thriller series entitled
Seventeen. She currently lives in Warwickshire in the West Midlands, where she
is busy writing the second novel in the series while drinking gallons of tea.
She still
practises medicine. AD Starrling is her pen name.
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