Ex-Heroes, Peter Clines [reading like a writer txt] 📗

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Peter Clines

Excerpt from The Fold copyright © 2015 by Peter Clines

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, B D W Y, are trademarks of Random House LLC.

Originally published in paperback in the United States, in slightly different form, by Permuted Press, in 2010.

This book contains an excerpt from The Fold by Peter Clines. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition from the Crown Publishing Group.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8041-3657-0

eISBN 978-1-934861-38-7

Cover design: Christopher Brand

Cover illustration: Jonathan Bartlett

v3.1_r4_c1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue: Now

Enter the Dragon: Then

Two: Now

Three: Now

Seeing the Big Picture: Then

Five: Now

Six: Now

Power to the People: Then

Eight: Now

Nine: Now

Subtle Beauty: Then

Eleven: Now

Twelve: Now

The Luckiest Girl in the World: Then

Fourteen: Now

Fifteen: Now

It’s What’s Inside That Counts: Then

Seventeen: Now

Eighteen: Now

Pick a Card. Any Card: Then

Twenty: Now

Twenty-One: Now

Twenty-Two: Now

How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?: Then

Twenty-Four: Now

Twenty-Five: Now

Twenty-Six: Now

St. George Kills the Mighty Dragon: Then

Epilogue: Now

Acknowledgments

About the Author

An Excerpt from The Fold

KATIE HAD BEEN on the walls of the Mount for two hours, leaning against the Earth, when St. George dropped out of the sky wearing a leather flight jacket.

She held out a fist without looking up and he rapped his knuckles against hers. They didn’t speak for six minutes, and she used the time to finish cleaning her rifle. Half the reason she volunteered for the walls was so she didn’t have to talk to people, and he knew it. She finished with the weapon, reloaded it, and adjusted her sunglasses. The rifle settled against her shoulder as she finally looked up at him.

St. George was in his midthirties, a solid six feet tall with pale eyes behind tinted lenses. Like a lot of people in the Mount, he was lean, with a body more used to surviving than being well fed. Unlike most people, he had thick brown hair that stretched down past his shoulders. It took way too much effort to cut it, she knew, and it wasn’t like it put him at extra risk.

“You’re early,” she said at last.

He shrugged. “Slow day. I’m doing the rounds in reverse.”

“She won’t like that. That’s the kind of thing’s going to get you in trouble.”

“Maybe.”

She tossed a pebble over the edge and tried to pick out the rap it made on the pavement from the chattering below. “You still going out tomorrow?”

A single nod from him. “We’re going to head north again. Try hitting some of the apartments and smaller shops toward Los Feliz.” He looked down at the exes milling on the streets and sidewalk below. “Nice crowd today.”

“You should’ve been at the Van Ness gate yesterday. Almost twice as many.”

“Any problems?”

She shook her head. “Stealth authorized ten rounds. Only one miss.”

“One’s enough to piss her off.”

“Yes it was.” Katie glanced at the moving figures on the street. She counted two dozen exes below on Gower. Nine male, fifteen female. Just the other night she’d gotten in a heated, after-sex discussion with Derek about whether exes even had genders.

“They don’t mate,” Derek had said. “They don’t use the parts for anything, so calling them male or female is pointless. They’re all just ‘its.’ ”

“So if you don’t have sex, you’re an it?”

“Well, not if you’re choosing not to have sex, no. But rocks don’t fuck. Neither do chairs or blankets or exes. So they’re its.”

Katie wondered if St. George was fucking anyone, or chose not to. Or if he was an it. The heroes still tended to keep to themselves, even the friendly ones. Still, she was guessing he’d be pretty awesome.

“Anything else?”

She handed her binoculars to him. “Look up at the sign.” She pointed up Gower to the hills, where the most famous real estate sign in the world still stood.

He took a long look. Near the “H” was a small oval of darkness, maybe six feet across and ten high. It was like a dead spot on the lens, and it made the white, weather-beaten letter look more like a backward four.

“Midknight?” Katie asked.

“Yeah,” said the hero. He sighed and smoke curled from his nostrils. “That’s him all right.”

“What d’you want to do?”

He handed her the binoculars. “Track him. He’s not dangerous up there in the hills, but if he gets down into the city he could play hell with our night defenses.”

“Why don’t you just go take care of him now?”

“Hardly worth the effort, don’t you think?”

It was her turn to shrug. “A dead ex is one less ex.”

St. George took a long, slow breath. “Like I said, he’s no danger to us up there. If he gets into the city, we’ll get rid of him. It’s a waste of time and ammo to do anything else.”

“Sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”

The air hissed out of his nose as more smoke. “Only met him two or three times. But he was a decent guy.”

“Don’t get soft. Stealth’ll have your head.”

His lips twisted into a wry grin. “She’s tried.”

Katie snorted and looked back down to the street. Right below her one of the male exes, a guy in a gore-covered casual suit, was banging its face against the wall of the Mount, trying to walk through the concrete. “You heading over to Melrose next?”

“Yeah,” said the hero. “Message for Derek?”

“Just tell him he’s an idiot and he’s still wrong.”

“I was going to tell him that anyway, but sure.”

She gave him a weak salute. St. George took a few running steps along the rubbery tar paper and hurled himself back into