Short Stories

A defrocked Jesuit resolved eleven hybrids on the Church's word. The lodger at his kitchen table is the twelfth, the priest, or the assassin. A standalone theological-noir short story in The Covenant Files.

A Council Hunter alone at an Idaho safehouse opens a wooden box hand-delivered by a half-possessed stranger, and the last rite the dying network can still perform comes due before sunrise. A World on Fire short story.

A free Last Light short story to read this weekend — and Last Light in the Dark lands Monday, June 15. Pre-order's open.

A Graveyard of Empires short story. On a dead colony world sixty years after the bombardment, salvage captain Ria Velko finds something in the ruins that was never meant to be found — and something out in the deep places notices her.

A World of Shadows short story. Four years before the basement at Saint Joseph's, Father Niccolo Paladina stood in a shanty in Tondo with the wrong rite in his hands. He has never written the case file. He writes it now.

A side tale from The Ashen Kingdoms. The night before conscription, an old hedge witch reads the embers for the mothers of boys being marched off to war — and sees the mouths under the world.

A Forest Service ranger's Tuesday morning stop at a small Rocky Mountain town goes wrong. A side tale from the Raven's Peak era of the World on Fire trilogy.

A Last Light short story. Dr. Marisol Vega is alone on Listening Post Seven when a transmission comes in from a moon nobody pronounces out loud. She is the first to hear it. She will not be the last.

“You were crying.” The voice, expected yet still surprising, came from her right, and she couldn’t immediately see the person who spoke.