Catchall for all stories
The confluence of events seen in Volume 4 might seem random, but the lead-up is not quite over. But before the Descendants Universe plunges into Volume 5, there’s still the aftermath of Inexorable to worry about. One thing is certain: everything that came before was just the opening act.
Morganna’s Knight Inexorable is unleashed. His name means ‘unstoppable’ and it’s anything but a hollow boast. Can the Descendants and Occult come together to form an immovable object before someone loses their life? They might need a little help with this one.
Comic Book Heroes Part I
Descendants Appreciation Day draws near, and the residents of Freeland House aren’t the only psionics/descendants in Mayfield who are gearing up to observe it. Get to know the average, ordinary people of Mayfield who just happen to be possessed of superhuman abilities and find out what the event means to them.
Plus, Morganna’s plans come to fruition: the Knight Inexorable rises, and you won’t believe who he is. Part 1 of Comic Book Heroes.
In the interest of doing good business; the Mayfield Chamber of Commerce made it excessively easy for anyone who wanted to know anything about their city. Free information kiosks were on every bus and commuter pod as well as in every mall and included at every major attraction.
With a few taps of the screen, a person could find pretty much any store in the city (who paid the yearly fee for inclusion in the database), ordered by customer ratings, size, or distance from the kiosk. There were also segments on tourist attractions, apartment listings, and even an expansive trivia section.
It was the trivia section that told Maya, in no uncertain terms, that Mayfield’s design itself was working against her plans of finding safe shelter.
Apartments were packed into skyscrapers, with precious few smaller scale tenements that could become derelict and open to squatters. The underground was all new and fully operational; no lost or forgotten sections to hide in. Mayfield was also home to the central headquarters to Lending Hand, Inc; a non-profit specializing in providing clean, safe shelter for the homeless.
It was a godsend to most, but it was also the first place they’d look for … Continue reading
Between Dayspring College, Emerald University and UVA’s Mayfield campus, Mayfield was safely and comfortably withing the bounds of being a ‘college town’. This meant, among other things, that local businesses evolved slightly different approaches to priorities than they would in other places.
Delivery service was suddenly much more important, as were late hours and discounts for students. A relaxed, casual atmosphere helped, and being within walking distance of a campus was the crown jewel.
Not having the kind of money it took to rent floorspace in a prime location, Midnight Black’s owner, Lucy Black, had missed out on that crown jewel. Instead, she’d settled for being in a nice, visible spot on the edge of the Devonhurst business district. At time, she hadn’t paid any mind to the fact that she was three blocks down from the mothballed property that John T. Liedecker intended to become a school for psionics before he was spectacularly underbid by the Psionics Training and Application Academy.
Imagine her surprise when, as the result of the PTAA folding amid allegations of kidnapping and abuse, the formerly dead campus next door was suddenly reanimated as the John T. Liedecker Institute; not just as a high school … Continue reading
The Fayth Building, Beverly Hills, home to the Fayth Talent Agency.
Every day, Hollywood hopefuls passed through its doors hoping to get their one chance to show the world just what they were capable of and maybe, if they were very fortunate, take their first step on the path to fame and fortune.
What they and the vast majority of the agency’s fifty employees didn’t know was that there was a section of the top two floors that was inexpressible from any of the public floors. Nor did they know that the spacious underground parking garage had a second level that was more than a mere garage.
The Fayth Talent Agency had neighbors, building-mates, and they were none the wiser.
The elevator doors whispered open in a spacious sunken living room. It didn’t really matter that it whispered, though, because the elevator’s occupants were making enough noise to drown them out even if they had groaned like straining and rusty iron.
“–So badass!” Teen Machine was saying to Zephyrus as they stepped out of the confined space, followed shortly by Rebound and the Boarder. “You were like swish, swish, swish and that elephant thing just went flying! Josh, you have … Continue reading
One minute, downtown LA’s traffic had been a mess. Then there was a flash of green light, a whoosh of cold and rank air and… it was still a mess. Only now it wasn’t just a normal rush hour mess, but one with a giant mammoth in the middle of it.
‘Mammoth’ being a best fit term based on the casual glances of fleeing bystanders as they abandoned their cars and took to their heels. A second glance revealed it was also wrong. Many of them knew what a mammoth was. Some of them had even endured the drive to San Diego to see the cloned mammoths.
This was like them in the sense that it was covered with shaggy, brown hair, had tusks, a trunk and elephantine feet. That there were six of those feet was the first give away. And beyond that, the trunk was twice as long as an elephant’s, with two forked ‘fingers’ and an opposable ‘thumb’ at the end and it clacked its tusks together in a terrible din.
It seemed to be having fun ripping up signs and parking meters while stomping cars and had been at it happily for a good five minutes.
Wendell Leiter was no stranger to the finer places in Atlantic City. In his time, he’d trolled the high roller tables and VIP lounges; made deals in glitzy ballrooms and four star restaurants, and slept in top tier suites.
Finding himself in the Veracruz private dining room of the Twoflower was like a shark finding itself in saltwater. But this time, he was drawing no comfort from it.
It was the morning after his near-death experience and first meeting with Anansi. The stiflingly charismatic man hadn’t filled them in any further, only handed each of them his card and inviting them to breakfast at the Twoflower the next morning.
Presenting the card at the front desk got him swiftly escorted into an elevator and up to the private dining room, where a buffet style breakfast was laid out before a banks of windows offering a panoramic view of the city.
But when the valet left him, Wendell found himself alone with Susan Polanski, the woman who, less than twenty-four hours earlier, had been willing to kill him for one hundred grand.
She sat at the finely set table in the middle of the room, positioned so that she was facing … Continue reading
Terrell King was waiting in the Twoflower’s lounge when Anansi decided to make his appearance at eleven in the morning. From the three thoroughly rifled courtesy newspapers and two empty cups from the coffee machine at the end of the continental breakfast bar, he’d expected Anansi much earlier than this.
“I’m glad you took me up on my offer.” The Spider greeted him like an old friend.
“Just tell me where we’re going and what we’re doing.” Terrell said tersely.
Anansi ignored the open hostility and breezed past him to get a cup of coffee of his own. “We’ll be going across town to the Bridges Tower.” As he explained, he added two sugars and five creams. “As for what we’re doing? We’re stopping a murder.”
It was said with such a casual flippancy that Terrell almost missed it completely. And once he grasped what was just said, he wished he had missed it. He crossed the space between them with urgency and grasped the other man by the arm. “What the hell did you just say?”
Every calm, even as the jostling of his arm sent a spatter of boiling hot coffee across his arm, Anansi smiled wanly. “I … Continue reading
Two hours later and his waitress was staring.
Anansi looked up from his food laden table and smiled at her. She tried desperately to look as if she hadn’t been staring. He just took a sip of his ice water and tried to decide what to eat next.
It had taken ten trips, twelve plates, five soup bowls and an additional bowl made from a tortilla, but a proper sampling of all the food on the Twoflower hotel’s All You Can Eat Buffet lay in a spread before him.
All in all, it was a mixed bag. The salad limited the actual greens to lettuce that wasn’t nearly crisp enough, the white beans were in desperate need of salt, and the barbecue pork was unfortunately bland. On the other hand, the mashed potatoes were fluffy and buttery, the macaroni and cheese (three kinds!) were delicious, the sliced beef was juicy, and the chicken nuggets were a new and exciting take on poultry that he wished to investigate in depth.
For his fourth plate, he scooped some roasted potatoes on top of cooked spinach alongside an ear of corn, and a turkey leg. He also pulled the tortilla bowl, filled with … Continue reading
