STRONGHOLD

A supernatural thriller

Contracts signed for a 2013 publication from Samhain

In Los Angeles, USA, Jack and Debra are a successful young couple – he a financier, she an actress and would be script writer.

            A serial killer attacks Debra prompting her to want to leave the city.

            Hayden and Jessica are the cops assigned to the case.

            On a remote island off the coast a new luxury complex is being built to house rich and successful people who want to live a better life safe from the fears of the city.

            This Safe Haven will be their stronghold against the worst dangers of modern life. Super advanced, everything is automated.

            During the construction of the complex the last remnants of an ancient breed of creatures that have been in long term hibernation are disturbed and take their revenge on the construction crew.

            The creatures came over from Europe before the first US settlers and have stayed on the island as their own stronghold for centuries. They were persecuted for being different and by the advance of technology.

            The complex opens and people begin to move in, including Jack and Debra.

            The creatures begin to attack the new residents.

            In LA Hayden and Jessica capture the killer and soon find they need the eye witness of Debra to proceed. They go across to the island where they discover the devastation.

            A small group of humans are left in the complex, battling the remaining creatures. Modern world attacked by the ancient.

STRONGHOLD

1

Henry Peterson took off his metal-framed glasses, wiped the lenses on a paper napkin and slipped them back into their case. As he folded his newspaper and laid it down on the bench seat next to him he checked his watch and looked out through the café window at the apartment building opposite.

            It was almost time.

He signaled to the waitress, a petite brunette with a low cleavage and too much mascara. ‘Check, please,’ he said in a voice tinged with an echo of the South.

‘Coming right up,’ the waitress closed the paperback romance she was reading and consulted her pad. Three coffees, black, no sugar, two cinnamon do-nuts; in three hours. Last of the big spenders! It’d been that kind of day.

            ‘I’d like to use the men’s room,’ he said as she laid the check face down on the table.

            ‘Sure. Out back, through that door. Second on the left.’ She jerked her thumb in the direction of an unlabelled, brown-painted door to the left of the counter.

            Peterson smiled a thank you and rose to his feet.

He was tall, six two, willow thin, with a face heavily tanned by the Californian sun. He looked younger than his sixty-three years, but his age was betrayed by the hair and eyebrows. Gunmetal gray, the hair clipped short, military style. He wore a dark blue business suit and a cream silk shirt, a dark red conservative tie with a matching handkerchief just visible above the edge of the breast pocket of his jacket. In long, elegant strides he walked to the door and hesitated. He shot a glance back at the waitress, who was wiping the Formica-topped table with a cloth, then stepped inside.

Once inside the men’s room, he selected a stall and closed the door behind him, sliding the bolt across until the engaged sign flipped over. Then he sat down and took the knife from his pocket. At the press of a button the blade flicked out from the handle, four inches of highly polished stainless steel, honed to razor sharpness. He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and used it to caress the blade, feeling the familiar throb of tension between his legs.

From his inside pocket he took out a photograph he’d looked at a hundred times before. The young woman in the photograph smiled back at him, dark hair caught back in a ponytail, white, perfect teeth, the hint of sadness behind the smile. He was so familiar with the photograph he could close his eyes and still see the details of it in his mind’s eye. So beautiful, he thought.

            He used the tip of the blade to outline the shape of the young woman’s face, then drew it gently across the sun-kissed throat, lightly scoring the glossy paper.

            He smiled to himself, a smile of anticipation and satisfaction.

            He glanced at his Piaget wristwatch.