Here is a brief excerpt from the new novel in my technohorror vampire series Eternal Vigilance entitled The Death of Illusions. This second installment was released this week by Immanion Press and is now available online via sites such as Amazon.com, as well as your local book retailers. For more information about this novel visit the Book Two page of this website…


Purchase THE DEATH OF ILLUSIONS on the Eternal Vigilance website! (these copies will be signed)


Purchase THE DEATH OF ILLUSIONS on Amazon!


***


The fortress watched me.


From the moment I set foot across the threshold of the Tyst compound, the Chronous had sensed me like a king cobra scenting the air with its forked tongue. I confused it; its sensors raced to understand the anomaly that flew through its halls with a speed that the mortals it tracked mindlessly day in and day out were incapable of. Invisible tentacles of the machine’s cold sharp surveillance snaked from every surface, reaching out to me, through me, as it silently stroked my soul for a way to isolate and disarm the threat. In my mind, its voice rippled each time I came to a new access panel to an interior ring, a metallic choir of impressions that leaked through the very structure of the building like a fine perspiration. My fingers flew instinctively across the alien screen in order to override the scanner that searched for the chip that should have been embedded within me if I were a member of the Tyst. As I did so, I reached deep with my own mind into the heart of the Chronous and past the constantly evolving language that programmed the physical interface, managing miraculously to always to stay one step ahead of the machine.


I could sense it becoming irate, in an abstract definition of the emotion, the symbols and numbers woven together as if they were blood beneath the pulsing skin of its reality, mutating and warping angrily as I forced it to bend to my will. Pushing through each barrier was a sensation like leaning against glass with one’s full weight and then feeling it shatter, falling forward with an exhilarating fear and wonder at what lay beyond and the wounds that might have been inflicted, which I was not aware of yet.


The rush was addictive and I began to believe that perhaps the Phuree had been correct in their predictions of my powers; perhaps I was indeed more powerful than the Chronous itself! Egged on by my own enthrallment of the chase, I forced myself to my limits, feeling my body and mind begin to heat up as I pushed both to the extremities of movement and thought, the cells of my physical aspect barely able to keep up with the light speed of my mental processes. I knew, remotely, that I had to stop soon or I would destroy myself entirely, but I did not want too. It was the closest feeling to freedom I had experienced in centuries and I wanted to savor each and every second.


As I reached the innermost, less populated rings of the fortress. I knew it would not be long before the Chronous decided to call on its human army to take care of the entity it had yet to isolate and eradicate. The flesh and blood denizens of the fortress remained completely oblivious to my presence as I flew past them with such speed that I barely disturbed the air itself. Their inability to sense the finer subtleties of the universe was always a blessing. I found it far too easy to move amongst them, weaving in and out of existences in a way that made me feel removed from the physical plane. How easy it would be to become drunk on the sensation of being beyond the grit and soot of the mortal realm; silently I prayed that I would be able to cling to the last threads of my humanity.


It was close at my heels now, a press of heavy black intention against the base of my skull as it tried to bore its way beyond my psychic guard. As I interfaced with the access panel before me, I drew a deep breath and stopped the insanity of my flight, slowing my heartbeat, focusing the energy within my adrenaline filled body, as Nahalo had taught me, in order to maximize my ability to override the code needed to gain entrance. I gathered the essence of my aura tight against my being to shield me from the world around me as I worked. As the door to the corridor slid open, eerie pale blue light spilling over me from somewhere beyond, I felt the Chronous race past me as it lost me entirely for a moment. I slipped over the threshold, the door hissing shut behind me.


Pressing back into the thick shadows near the chamber entrance, beyond the reach of the strange artificial glow, I continued to breathe slowly, attempting to maintain enough calm to ensure my invisibility to the Chronous. I realized suddenly with a flash of panic that, somewhere in the madness of my race through the fortress, I had taken a wrong turn. The room that lay before me was not the Queen’s inner circle, but was the central energy core Loden had described to me. On the maps I had studied, it lay on the southern side of the compound, fifteen degrees from where I had intended to arrive. It was a minor setback, but one that would cost me valuable seconds. I began to turn back towards the doorway, but as I touched the door’s surface with my fingertips, a strange sensation rippled across me like an icy wind.


Tyyyyyyynnnnaaannnnnnnnnn…


I shivered at the reptilian hiss of my name in my mind and spun around, not sure if I had truly heard the sound at all. My eyes darted about the room and I pressed back into the shadows near the door wondering if I had been mistaken in believing I was alone in the chamber.


An echoing black vault devoid of any human life, the room was the home of the twin pillars of bioplasma energy that controlled the heart and brain of the Chronous world. Flowing back and forth from the ceiling to the floor between circular platforms of black metal, the substance was self-suspended without any visible containment, plastic, glass or otherwise. I refocused my eyes, allowing my preternatural senses to peer past the ethereal distortion of the glow to the true state of the matter that generated the light. The liquid swirled as it traveled within its pillars, turning in upon itself in countless clusters of microscopic galaxies, each pulling to its center a grain of information so minute as to be nearly devoid of purpose on its own. Yet, in the company of trillions and trillions of interconnecting ideas, brilliant flashes of artificial thought, these grains hummed a perfect synergy of existences nearly as divine as that of Nature itself.


Mesmerized, I found myself stepping forward out of the shadows, my awareness and care for my concealment faltering in my desire to know the power that could spawn such a universe. Here, so close to the center, I could feel its pull, more beautiful than I had ever dared to imagine. Beyond the siren call of the Chronous I had listened to within the amagin, a sweetly electrifying whine of power, the Chronous voice became the crush of the black ocean upon my temples at ten thousand feet. I could feel myself beginning to tremble as I struggled to maintain the shield of invisibility I had wrapped about myself. I continued to walk forward into the soft blue haze, stepping silently on the concrete floor like a panther rounding its prey.


As my psychic shield began to fracture, I sensed the Chronous becoming aware of my presence: the liquid appeared to tense for a fraction of a second. It changed direction and then reorientated itself instantly as it continued its eternal flow so as not to disrupt the whole of the matrix it supplied. Within each pillar, I could feel a portion of the bioplasma separating itself from the stream, holding still so that it could survey me, rearing up and fanning out like a cobra as it tasted the air around me. I confused it more than ever; I had surpassed its most intricate security and suddenly appeared before it. Its anger anchored me to reality, snapping me out of the trance I had fallen into. It was too late to bother trying to re-conceal myself; I instinctively understood somehow that it had already dissected and digested that part of my ability and would be able to track me, visible or not. With a shuddering twitch, darkness flickered in the center of the pillars, a flash of inky nothingness against the blinding glow of energy; I squinted believing my eyes to be playing tricks upon me.


It is you…


I felt my heart freeze in my chest…

Tags: book, cybergoth, Eternal Vigilance, Gabrielle Faust, gothic, Horror, new book release, Science Fiction, technohorror, vampire novel, vampires

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