Chaos Unbound
The Metis Files
Book Two
Brian S. Leon
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Date of Publication: 2/28/17
ISBN: 978-1-940215-83-9
ASIN: B06VSX4BKP
Number of pages: 356
Word Count: 122000
Cover Artist: Streetlight Graphics
Tagline: On the Run. On the Hunt.
Book Description:
The hunter becomes the hunted.
Framed for the murder of a high ranking member of the Unseelie Court of Fae, Steve Doreâalso known as Diomedes, Guardian and protector of mankindâgoes on the run. Heâs determined to uncover the real culprit and clear his name.
But the assassination may be the beginning of a more sinister plot that involves not just the Fae and Humankind, but all the races of the world. And what if the real assassin is a boogeyman even the Fae don't believe is real?
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/6EuijTcbjns
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
San Diego, September 2011
Selkies. Thirty-five miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean, and Iâm dodging freakinâ selkies in my fishing boat. Itâs like theyâre seagulls, and Iâm dropping French fries at the beach. Man do they screw up the fishing. Worse, when they appear, bad things tend to follow. And itâs just my luck. Of all fae to show up randomly, it had to be these shapeshiftersâthe kind that could transform into seals and even into sea lions, which scare the crap out of the fish. Every pile of floating kelp weâd fished around so far had one of these fairies under it. Every kelp except the paddy right in front of the boat.
âCaptain Dore, look! Another seal,â the woman said, reaching for her camera.
And that selkie made it a perfect five for five.
I couldnât help but hang my head. My clientsâa simple Midwestern family of Mom, Dad, and Teenage Sonâconsidered it endearing to see a seal poke its head up from inside the kelp, but I could see their true bulbous heads, seaweed-like hair, and pudgy gray-green humanoid forms. Their giant, shiny-black eyes fixed on me as if they knew exactly who I was.
The creepy shapeshifters were part of the Unseelie Courtâfairies that are decidedly unfriendly to humansâand the fact that we kept encountering them was starting to unnerve me. Encountering one in the Pacific was rare. In fact, I couldnât recall one off Southern California since an entire tribe of them showed up around Catalina Island in the 1980s. That appearance had led to a spate of unidentified submerged object and alien sightings, not to mention a few mysterious plane crashes around the island and a heap of sunken boats.
âHey whatâs that big fin?â the father asked, pointing at the rapidly approaching triangular object sticking out of the water and heading straight at the paddy from the opposite side.
âShark,â I said with a sudden smile. âDamn big one, too. Great white, from the looks of it. Rare for us down here in San Diego.â
âOh, swim, seal! Swim!â the mom said as all hell broke loose around the paddy.
âWow, really,â the kid said. âItâs like a real National Geographic moment.â He whipped out his phone to video the event.
I was the only one on the boat rooting for the shark. If theyâd known what that shark was really chasing, they probably would have thought it was more like a National Enquirer moment.
Knowing the selkie-shark conflict would ruin the fishing within a mile of that paddy, I pushed farther out, always on the lookout for signs of life other than selkies. As long as we could avoid them, we found lots of small football-sized yellowfin tuna while we trolled, and Iâd even managed to convince the anglers to release the little guys, in hopes of finding bigger ones. The small fish kept me blissfully busy until we made it back to the dock at around four in the afternoonâso busy, in fact, that I forgot about how screwy the presence of selkies was until I realized my buddy Ned was storming down the dock toward my boat as I pulled in.
As usual, Ned was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with colors usually reserved for Las Vegas neon. The fact that he resembled a derelict version of Santa Claus usually drew peopleâs attention. It was either that or the fact that he always smelled like beer-soaked seaweed washed up on a beach. It could be worse given that Ned was in fact the Titan God of the Sea, Nereus, in self-imposed exile.
As I secured the boat to the dock, my cellphone, stashed inside my captainâs bag within the console, chirped the unique ring my buddy Geek had helped me assign to Sarah Wright. I felt guilty for avoiding her over the past two weeks. Despite scrambling to reach the annoying device before the call went to voice mail, I wasnât quick enough. I tossed the phone on the console, thoroughly disgusted with my wishy-washy-ness regarding our relationshipâor whatever we had. I was pretty sure we both wanted to take things to the next level, but I was conflicted about what that would mean for both of us since my situation wasnât exactly normal.
Iâll call her back as soon as I can. I sighed, watching my three clients stumble off the boat, trying to adjust to sea legs on land after a full day on the water. They chatted excitedly about sharks and sea lions as they went. Ned stood down the dock, waiting, staring intently at me with his hands on his hips and one flip-flop-clad foot tapping away. The trio barely managed to get past him before he charged the boat.
âDiomedes, dude, glad to see you made it back okay.â Nedâs shoulders dropped a bit as he exhaled heavily. âNow get yer ass off the damn boat and back onto land.â He dipped his head slightly and glared over his sunglasses at me, his brow deeply furrowed.
I stopped taking rods out of the rod racks under the gunwales and stared back at him. Something had him on edge, and that was saying something. Normally, he made people on Prozac appear edgy. In over a thousand years, Iâd never seen him like this before.
âNow, dude. Now!â he said, raising his voice and gesticulating wildly.
The myriad of seagulls and pelicans gathered around the boat awaiting leftover bait and fish carcasses took off in a sudden deafening and chaotic commotion.
âWhoa. Relax, Ned. Whatâs got your panties in a bunch?â I said, getting back to my after-charter chores. âSheesh. Besides, I think the dad left a few beers if you want them.â
Normally, Nedâs first question to me would have involved the possible presence of abandoned beer. Instead, he fixed me with a withering stare. His hands were back on his hips, and his foot again tapped on the dock. When weâd first met a few thousand years before, heâd naturally emanated an aura of power. Though heâd since willingly given up most of his other-dimensional essence, the preternatural blue glow was now visible.
âDude, which part of ânowâ ainât you understandinâ?â He spoke through a clenched jaw and pointed at the dock forcefully, like a parent demanding a childâs immediate presence. Over his sunglasses, his eyes darted everywhere, keeping watch around us.
âOkay, okay,â I said, eyeing my fish-slimed gear and all the sardine scales and scuff marks marring the deck. âWhoâs gonna clean all this up? You know if I let it sit, itâll be even harder to clean later.â
âIâll take care of it,â Ned replied. âJust get yer ass off the water. Right. Now.â
âFine.â I kicked at my rods like a petulant child. âLet me get my damn gear bag, and Iâll leave.â
I grabbed my captainâs bag and stormed down the dock in a huff, glaring at Ned. I didnât even bother to take off my grungy gray rubber fishing bibs. He avoided making eye contact as I passed him, which only pissed me off more. Instead, his eyes continued to dart around the marina. Whatever.
I got to my truck, threw my gear bag in the bed, then stripped off the rubber bibs. While hopping around on one leg like an idiot, trying to get the bibs off over my deck boots, I worked myself up from a huff to a tizzy. Who the hell did he think he was ordering me around like that? Athena? Throwing my bibs into the bed with the rest, I glanced over my shoulder, toward the dock.
Just as I was about to get into my truck, a more pressing question hit me: Why? Ned actually yelled at me. In over two millennia, I had never even witnessed him raise his voice. Whatâd I do to him?
I instantly felt like I owed him an apology, without even knowing what Iâd done. I headed back down to the dock.
As I approached the top of the gangway, Ned was in a heated discussion with something in the water on the other side of the dock from my boat. I couldnât get a clear view of who or what Ned was talking with, or hear what was being said. The only things evident were the loud and freakish sea lion-like barks and Nedâs wild and very uncharacteristic gesticulations. Instinctively, I searched for something to use as a weaponâa boat hook was leaning against the fence next to the gate down to the dock.
Then a putty-colored round female head covered in thick yellow-green hair popped up just above the dock and peered directly at me. Ned noticed me, as well, and all at once, the creature disappeared below the waterâs surface creating a wake that tossed the floating dock and rocked the boats tied up nearby. She was definitely one of the selkies I had encountered earlier offshore.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Ned shook his head and stomped toward me, which couldnât have been easy in flip-flops. His eyes were ablazeâliterally. His awakened aura pulsed from white to blue like a lightning storm.
I shrugged and raised my eyebrows as his gaze fell on me. The temperature began to drop, and the water around the dock changed from a drab green to black and turned rough, as if it were about to boil. The disturbance bounced the moored boats against their bumpers and the dock, and the rigging on the sailboats began to clang. Even the remaining birds evacuatedâonly noiselessly.
âBoy, who did you piss off this time?â he said at me more than to me in a voice that reverberated through my skull. It wasnât loud, but it was insistent in its tone.
âI⦠um⦠I, ah⦠what?â I asked, vapor trailing from my mouth in the cool air.
I couldnât recall having done anything to anybody since chasing down that witch, Medea, a few months back, and as far as I knew, everyone I could have pissed off doing that was dead.
Ned continued up the ramp from the dock toward me, somehow appearing larger than normal. His face, especially his eyes, darkened. âDonât play games with me. You got selkies chasinâ yer ass all over the Pacific, and they had to travel around the world to get here to do it. Nytrocyon herself is here to find you.â He pointed back down toward my boat. âShe says Mab wants you. Says you killed Lord Indronivay.â
âNytrocyon, ruler of the selkies? Seriously?â My teeth started to chatter, and my jaw muscles clenched in the frigid air. âWait⦠she said I killed who? Lord Indronivay, Mabâs warmaster? Are you kidding me? Why the hell would I have killed that uptight belligerent asshole?â
Iâd never even met him, but his reputation as a jerk was legendary. Even as a Guardian and protector of humanity, I knew him only through stories that suggested he was a giant at nearly eight feet tall and was about as friendly as a shark with a toothache. All I really knew about him was that he personally ran every major war and military campaign Queen Mab of the Unseelie Court had waged for tens of thousands of years. Hell, the guy might have charged into battle against Queen Titania of the Seelie Court on the back of a triceratops.
âYouâre sayinâ Nytrocyon is lying?â Nedâs voice boomed through my head, shaking me back to attention.
I shrugged again. âNow why the hell would I do something like that? Honestly?â
Nedâs shoulders dropped slightly, and his pulsing aura faded. Though his face brightened and his bushy beard and mustache split, revealing his white teeth in a broad smile, the rest of him remained rigid. âGood. I didnât think you were dumb enough to attack a member of one of the fairy royal courts. Thatâd be grounds for war. Only problem is then, dudeââhe slowly slipped back into his normal relaxed and carefree personaââyou gotta ask yerself one question: why does she think you did?â
About the Author:
Brian S. Leon is truly a jack of all trades and a master of none. He writes just to do something with all the useless degrees and skills heâs accumulated over the years. Most of them have no practical application in civilized society, anyway. His interests include mythology and fishing, in pursuit of which he has explored jungles and museums, oceans and seas all over the world.
His credentials include an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and a masterâs degree from San Diego State University, plus extensive postgraduate work in evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied animals most people arenât even aware exist and theories no one really cares about anyway.
Over his varied career, Brianâs articles have been published in academic journals and popular magazines that most normal people would never read. They can be found in The American Society of Primatologists, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Proceedings of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the like.
His more mainstream work came as an editor for Marlin and FlyFishing in Salt Waters magazines, where he published articles about fishing and fishing techniques around the world. He won a Charlie Award in 2004 from the Florida Magazine Association for Best Editorial, and several of his photographs have appeared on a number of magazine coversâalmost an achievement of note, if they werenât all fishing magazines.
Always a picky reader, Mr. Leon enjoys stories by classical masters like Homer and Jules Verne as well as modern writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, David Morrell and Jim Butcher. These books, in combination with an inordinate amount of free time, inspired him to come up with tales of his own.
Brian currently resides in San Diego, California.
Website: www.briansleon.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/themetisfiles
Twitter: @bslauthor
1 Comment
3/21/2017 07:58:59 am
Thanks for hosting me today! Hope your readers like Chaos Unbound!
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