Immortal and the Madman (The Immortal Chronicles Book 3) (10 page)
Read Immortal and the Madman (The Immortal Chronicles Book 3) Online
Authors: Gene Doucette
“I imagine that depends on how one feels on the subject of predestination,” she said.
“He could change the future. He told me so. But his own death appears to have been fixed.”
She nodded. “So that was John Corrigan’s dying secret. What is
yours?
”
I turned away from the window. Joanne was seated on the edge of the bed, still in her mourner’s clothing, only without a veil. She looked very small and sad just then.
“I have no dying secret.”
“You understand me.”
“I do. And that’s my answer. My secret is in not dying. I don’t grow old.”
She arched an eyebrow, a trace of her former mirth returning. “Really. That’s quite a trick. I just remembered I’m speaking to a self-professed lunatic.”
“Can we correspond?”
She laughed. “Reginald Bates, honestly!”
“Is that a yes or a no? I can’t tell.”
“Mr. Bates, if you asked for my hand, right now I might give it, because save for one important particular way, I believe I actually love you. But you will not, because when you leave here I
also
believe the name you are using might cease to exist. Knowing this, if you fail to write me letters and provide for me a way to respond, I swear by all that God has made that I will hunt you down, in this life or the next.”
“That’s a yes?”
“That is a damned yes, sir.”
“All right, then. Some time in the future, after we have corresponded for many a year and you have had the great adventures I hope for you, we’ll meet again. And when I still look as I do now, you can tell me how mad I truly am.”
“Perhaps by then
I
will have gone mad, and will not know the difference.”
“My hope is that never happens. Your wits are far too great to lose.”
“Now I shall be forced to blush.”
She stood, and we hugged, and kissed one another gently.
And then it was time for me to depart.
* * *
Joanne never did marry. Margritte evidently considered me the last, best hope to find her daughter a husband who could cure her of her sexual preference. After my departure—I’m told, as we did correspond regularly—Joanne and her mother reached a degree of acceptance that was far ahead of its time, socially speaking. And later, when an outbreak of dysentery in the city of London claimed the lives of her older sisters, Joanne suddenly found herself the eldest heir to Cornelius’s estate and guardian of her nieces and nephews.
When we met again, years later, she had become a formidable social and economic force, especially given her gender and the age in which she lived. The story of that meeting is one for another time.
It took me over six years to find John Corrigan’s son. The boy’s name was David, by then a grown to a man of twenty. Having never met John and not known why that was the case, David likely would have had nothing to do with me at all but for the gold I brought.
I told him everything I knew about his father, including the curse, and while he seemed very polite about the whole thing I got the sense that he took me for a madman. Maybe I was.
David didn’t have the curse, though. That much was obvious.
I left thinking John’s special abilities had died with him, and his family’s curse was over. I turned out to be wrong. The curse lived on in another Corrigan, but I wouldn’t discover this until many years later.
But that too is a story for another time.
Other works by Gene Doucette
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
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?
Buy
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.
* * *
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?
* * *
(as G Doucette)
Sapphire Blue
Has Mara lost control, or has it been taken from her?
Mara Cantor’s life is boring and uncomplicated, and she likes it that way. She has her internship at the museum—a job she shares with her roommate, Davis—and while it is low-paying and occasionally mind-numbing, it gives her all the free time she needs to finish her thesis. And that is just fine.
But when Argent Leeds, the internationally famous playboy and raconteur, visits Mara’s museum, he brings with him the most exciting archeological discovery in decades: the Pazuzu gemstones. Long assumed to be nothing more than a myth by most scholars, the gemstones are rumored to possess mystical powers.
Between Argent, his gemstones, and Davis, Mara’s boring life has suddenly gotten very complicated. Now she is caught up in a sexual adventure that is either the most exciting time of her life . . . or the most terrifying.
* * *
(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.
About the author
Gene Doucette is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, playwright, humorist, essayist, father, husband, cyclist, dog owner – and a few other things, too. He is, in other words, a writer. A graduate of Boston College, he lives in Cambridge, MA with his family.
His standalone novel
Fixer
and the books in his critically acclaimed
Immortal
series – which follows a sarcastic, alcoholic, 60,000 year old man named Adam – are his publisher’s top sellers, and have spent months at a time respectively on Amazon bestseller lists. The third installment in the
Immortal
series –
Immortal at the Edge of the World
– has just been released.
