Today my main blog is at SExPressions...but I didn't want you to be left hanging with nothing here...so I am also posting an excerpt that portrays the newest character added to the Chronicles of Surrender series: Daniel, Thomas's twin brother, also an undercover agent, and seriously more twisted and evil that Lord Fyre ever thought about being. The Question is, can he be saved?
There are even more questions and answers, and another excerpt, at
SExPressions...so click over after you read Daniel's excerpt:
(excerpt starts here)
In the hallway, Henri waits with two guards. I am handcuffed before I realize what is happening.
“Am I not going back to The States, then?” I try to keep a grip on my voice to not allow the panic in my chest to show.
“In due time, Thomas,” Henri answers before nodding at the guards. Their signal to take me to wherever they plan to take me, which to my surprise is a Physician’s Conference Room two floors higher.
I’d considered breaking free while in the elevator, actually my best bet of an escape, but my curiosity got the best of me. When I am forced into the room and find myself with a conference table being all that stands between me and my brother, I wish I had escaped when I’d had the chance. I fight the guards, seeing red, wanting to inflict the same pain on Nikkos that he inflicted on Eva.
The guards hold tight, though conference chairs end up turned on their sides and I end up a little black and blue for my efforts.
“I’m going to kill you!” I promise him.
“Boys, boys,” Nikkos says in our native tongue. “Would you cut off your own right arm just so your brother would feel the pain for a lifetime?” he challenges me in a strong firm voice, a voice from a time long ago. He recites the chastisement our uncle used so many times as we were growing up, each of us always trying to cause the other great harm. “You are each other’s blood forever; no one will ever love you or know you as well as your other.”
That is what Uncle called us…Other. He was mine and I was his other. The times when we rolled around as children in the tall grasses behind our house seems so far away, so remote, but there is still truth in our uncle’s words. Though that truth brings both gladness and pain.
I shrug off two of the guards, facing him squarely. “Would you have killed her?”
“I had no idea she was the one you loved. I promise you that.” He walks around the table, coming closer to me. “You know as well as I do that I could not have blown almost a decade’s work by this agency to save one operative.” He pauses when he gets near enough to put one hand on each of my shoulders. “But if I had known that she was yours, I would have made sure she lived. I’m sorry.”
It is then that I notice his eyes reflect the truth of every word. He also thinks she is dead.
“Cobra didn’t kill her. She lives,” I tell him and am surprised when he grabs me, squeezing me hard, saying, “Thank God, then.” He pulls back from me, searching my eyes, “But still your heart breaks?”
“Whether we have a future together or not remains uncertain.”
“You have many who love you,” he states.
I smile, answering, “I was always more loved than you.” I don’t doubt that several of the people in the room, if not all, can make out most of what we are saying to each other, but still, it seems important that we use Greek.
“I have lovers,” he quarrels.
“But I have love.”
“Enough love to heal you of the pain she causes you?”
I don’t answer, I shrug, the lump of uncertainty forming in my throat too painful, her almost death still too recent, her prognosis too unsure.
Henri makes tsking noises as he personally frees my hands. I am shocked into silence; my brother so transformed from the last time I saw him. My mirror image now barely even shares a resemblance.
When I last saw him, we both sported ponytails and goatees. He no longer sports a beard, having trimmed it down to a small patch of thick fur just beneath his lower lip. Each of his cheek dimples sport a pointed silver stud piercing, making his face even more intriguing, and he wears not one set of small silver hoops in his earlobes, but four. He also pierced his tongue, my quick glimpse reveals a wide metal spider. My mind falls into the gutter, curious as to what other piercings his body hides.
“I’ve changed a bit.” Smiling, laughing, he turns in a circle, giving me the whole show, since I have obviously been struck dumb by his new appearance. His head is shaved with a Japanese-inspired tattoo beginning on the back of his skull extending down the back of his neck before disappearing under the edge of his shirt. Through the sheer fabric, I can tell his entire back and a large section of his chest have been inked, as have his arms down to his wrists.
“That’s an understatement, brother.” Free of the handcuffs, I hug my brother tight. He is much thinner than the last time I saw him. The hug reveals that the six years have taken their toll on his body. His ribs and pelvic bones protrude prominently, and because of the thinness, his muscles seem longer and leaner, a fact not easily missed by his choice of clothing, a black microfiber long-sleeved T-shirt that clings to his solid pecs and six-pack abs. The changes make Nikkos look ten to fifteen years younger than me. Yes, he could easily pass for twenty-eight; however, a second glance reveals his age deeply ingrained in his eyes, the windows to his soul revealing he has paid a very high price.
(excerpt ends here)
Want more Chronicles of Surrender?
Buy books I-III here.
