Immortal Stories: Eve (11 page)

“Your great conspiracy, Rick,” she said.  “It may be true. You can come with me.  We can find out together.”

He shook his head. “How?”

“I can teach you how to travel as I do.  You’ve already seen…”

She couldn’t even finish the sentence.  The answer was already in his eyes.  It had been since she returned.

“Look…” His voice was faltering with emotion, as he looked for more words.  “I can’t.  I really can’t.”

He tried a smile, but it didn’t work.

“I’m sorry.  I don’t… Eve, I don’t want to hurt you, but.... But I don’t know another way to say this.  I’m a little terrified of you.”

“You don’t have to be.  I would never hurt you.”

“I appreciate that.  But after what I saw… I can’t
stop
seeing that.  It keeps playing in my head and it won’t stop.  I think it’s going to be there whenever I look at you. I can’t make go away.”

She wanted to argue, even though it would do no good.

“Yes,” she said quietly.  “Yes of course, I understand.”

“I thought about it all night.  I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” she smiled.  She hoped it looked like a smile.  “I… Well.  I should
leave
you, then.  I have so much… to do and you have your life to get to and…”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Thank you.  So am I,” she said, getting to her feet.

He stood as well, and held open his arms for an embrace she was ashamed to admit she needed at all. 

I am the destroyer god,
she thought. 
I do not need a hug.

But she did, and he gave it to her, and she didn’t want it to end. 

It lasted no more than a second or two.  Time on Earth may move slower than she was accustomed, but not slowly enough.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.  He was crying a little, which seemed odd since he was the one asking her to leave.  “That’s the most ridiculous question I could ask, but…”

“I will be fine, Rick.”

He wiped moisture from her face, and that was how she knew she was crying as well.

“Where will you go?” he asked.  “To solve your mystery, I mean.”

“I don’t know.  I have many questions and can only think of one man to ask them to.  Perhaps I will.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter…Goodbye.  Take care of Dee.”

She stepped into the veil.

He was going to continue talking and it was becoming less pleasant and more difficult with each word.  He was full of pity and fear and she couldn’t take it, and she hated him and the fact that she couldn’t seem to stop weeping like a child.

The last she saw of Rick was a long, sad sigh and a return to his couch.  Then she stepped through his door and down to the street and thought about all the people she’d said goodbye to in her life, and how this one, this time, hurt just a little bit more than the last ones.  Perhaps it was because it was the freshest, or she’d just forgotten what it felt like.

She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, and thought about dead pixies and elves and demons, and not Rick.  Then she thought about where she would go next, and realized she wasn’t at all certain.

Adam would know,
she thought.  If something were rotten in this world, he would know how to find it.  It was one of the things he did well.

“Now I only have to figure out where you are,” she said aloud, her voice echoing in the veil and heard by nobody.

Her mind made up, she put Rick behind her and began traveling deeper into the veil, to commence a search for the only immortal man on Earth.

And then, inexplicably, she sneezed.

Other works by Gene Doucette

The Immortal Chronicles
is an ongoing series of novellas written by Adam, the immortal narrator of
Immortal,
Hellenic Immortal
and
Immortal at the Edge of the World
.

The Immortal Chronicles: Immortal At Sea (volume 1)

Adam's adventures on the high seas have taken him from the Mediterranean to the Barbary Coast, and if there's one thing he learned, it's that maybe the sea is trying to tell him to stay on dry land.

The Immortal Chronicles: Hard-Boiled Immortal (volume 2)

The year was 1942, there was a war on, and Adam was having a lot of trouble avoiding the attention of some important people. The kind of people with guns, and ways to make a fella disappear. He was caught somewhere between the mob and the government, and the only way out involved a red-haired dame he was pretty sure he couldn't trust.

The Immortal Chronicles: Immortal and the Madman (volume 3)

On a nice quiet trip to the English countryside to cope with the likelihood that he has gone a little insane, Adam meets a man who definitely has.  The madman’s name is John Corrigan, and he is convinced he’s going to die soon.

He could be right.  Because there’s trouble coming, and unless Adam can get his own head together in time, they may die together.

The Immortal Chronicles: Yuletide Immortal (volume 4)

When he’s in a funk, Adam the immortal man mostly just wants a place to drink and the occasional drinking buddy. When that buddy turns out to be Santa Claus, Adam is forced to face one of the biggest challenges of extremely long life: Christmas cheer. Will Santa break him out of his bad mood? Or will he be responsible for depressing the most positive man on the planet?

The Immortal Chronicles: Regency Immortal (volume 5)

Adam has accidentally stumbled upon an important period in history: Vienna in 1814. Mostly, he'd just like to continue to enjoy the local pubs, but that becomes impossible when he meets Anna, an intriguing woman with an unreasonable number of secrets and sharp objects.

Anna is hunting down a man who isn't exactly a man, and if Adam doesn't help her, all of Europe will suffer. If Adam
does
help, the cost may be his own life. It's not a fantastic set of options. Also, he's probably fallen in love with her, which just complicates everything.

Immortal

“I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.”
--Adam the Immortal
Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century, Adam confronts new dangers—someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide. Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.
Immortal is a first person confessional penned by a man who is immortal, but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, and humor, IMMORTAL introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other “magical” creatures, yet a world without actual magic.
At the center of the book is Adam.
“I have been in quite a few tight situations in my long life. One of the first things I learned was if there is going to be a mob panic, don’t be standing between the mob and wherever it is they all want to go. The second thing I learned was, don’t try to run through fire.”
--Adam the Immortal
Adam is a sixty thousand year old man. (Approximately.) He doesn’t age or get sick, but is otherwise entirely capable of being killed. His survival has hinged on an innate ability to adapt, his wits, and a fairly large dollop of luck. He makes for an excellent guide through history . . . when he’s sober.
Immortal is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and fantasy enthusiasts alike.

Buy
Immortal

*   *   *

Hellenic Immortal

“Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record. Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important. But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.”
--Adam the Immortal
An oracle has predicted the sojourner’s end, which is a problem for Adam insofar as he has never encountered an oracular prediction that didn’t come true . . . and he is the sojourner. To survive, he’s going to have to figure out what a beautiful ex-government analyst, an eco-terrorist, a rogue FBI agent, and the world’s oldest religious cult all want with him, and fast.
And all he wanted when he came to Vegas was to forget about a girl. And maybe have a drink or two.
“I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what. For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.”
--Adam the Immortal
The second book in the Immortal series, Hellenic Immortal follows the continuing adventures of Adam, a sixty-thousand-year-old man with a wry sense of humor, a flair for storytelling, and a knack for staying alive. Hellenic Immortal is a clever blend of history, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery and romance. A little something, in other words, for every reader.

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Hellenic Immortal

*   *   *

Immortal at the Edge of the World

“What I was currently doing with my time and money . . . didn’t really deserve anyone else’s attention. If I was feeling romantic about it, I’d call it a quest, but all I was really doing was trying to answer a question I’d been ignoring for a thousand years.”
In his very long life, Adam had encountered only one person who appeared to share his longevity: the mysterious red-haired woman. She appeared throughout history, usually from a distance, nearly always vanishing before he could speak to her.
In his last encounter, she actually did vanish—into thin air, right in front of him. The question was how did she do it? To answer, Adam will have to complete a quest he gave up on a thousand years earlier, for an object that may no longer exist.
If he can find it, he might be able to do what the red-haired woman did, and if he can do that, maybe he can find her again and ask her who she is . . . and why she seems to hate him.
“You are being watched. Move your loved ones to safety . . . trust nobody.”
But Adam isn’t the only one who wants the red-haired woman. There are other forces at work, and after a warning from one of the few men he trusts, Adam realizes how much danger everyone is in. To save his friends and finish his quest he may be forced to bankrupt himself, call in every favor he can, and ultimately trade the one thing he’d never been able to give up before: his life.
From the author of Immortal and Hellenic Immortal comes Immortal at the Edge of the World, the breathtaking conclusion to the best-selling trilogy. Will Adam survive?
 

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Immortal at the Edge of the World

*   *   *

Fixer

What would you do if you could see into the future?
As a child, he dreamed of being a superhero. Most people never get to realize their childhood dreams, but Corrigan Bain has come close. He is a fixer. His job is to prevent accidents—to see the future and “fix” things before people get hurt. But the ability to see into the future, however limited, isn’t always so simple. Sometimes not everyone can be saved.
“Don’t let them know you can see them.”
Graduate students from a local university are dying, and former lover and FBI agent Maggie Trent is the only person who believes their deaths aren’t as accidental as they appear. But the truth can only be found in something from Corrigan Bain’s past, and he’s not interested in sharing that past, not even with Maggie.
To stop the deaths, Corrigan will have to face up to some old horrors, confront the possibility that he may be going mad, and find a way to stop a killer no one can see.
Corrigan Bain is going insane
. . . or is he?
Because there’s something in the future that doesn’t want to be seen. It isn’t human. It’s got a taste for mayhem. And it is very, very angry.

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Fixer

*   *   *

Surviving Hector (a short story)

“You can call me Hector. Nobody else does, and I only thought of it three seconds ago, so you will not find anything about me by knowing this. It’s better than
you with the gun,
however
.”
Before leaving work for the weekend, Anita’s boss gave her a file for safekeeping. Now the killer sitting in her bedroom wants the file, and is willing to kill Anita and her wounded, unconscious husband if he doesn’t get it. But if she hands it over, he might kill them anyway.
Alone, unarmed and dressed for bed, can Anita save her husband and herself? Can she survive Hector?

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Surviving Hector

*   *   *

(as G Doucette)

Club Himeros

Himeros: one of the Greek Erotes, Himeros is the primordial god of erotic lust.
“It seemed at first as if there were only maybe a dozen people in the room. They all had their own masks on, and while the lighting was not fantastic, it seemed like each mask was a distinct color. Beyond that, everything looked as normal as it could be in a party where everyone has a matching mask.
"But as her vision improved she became aware of some of the happenings on the edges. Just off to the side of where people were sitting and talking quietly over what looked like bottles of water, there was activity that was so discordant she wasn’t positive it was actually happening…”
As the adage went, when one door in Lindy’s life closed another door certainly did open, but she never expected anything like Club Himeros to be on the other side of that door.
It was a strange time in her life. Lindy’s relationship had just fallen apart—for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint—her friends were asking questions she couldn’t answer, and now a secret club was asking her to wear a mask and attend. Alone, into a private world full of mystery an danger. It wasn’t the sort of risk Lindy normally took.
Once there she could hardly believe what she was seeing. Soon, she couldn’t believe what she was doing. Then she discovered all she’d been missing.

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Club Himeros