Pierce Mostyn not only has Cthulhu to think about, he also has Valdis Damien van Dyne.
Sherlock Holmes had his Moriarty. Nero Wolfe had his Zeck. Nayland Smith had his Dr Fu Manchu. Hence, I think it only natural for Mostyn to have his van Dyne.
The Diabolical Mastermind trope has been around for a long time, and has served readers, moviegoers, and TV watchers quite well. The Diabolical Mastermind is the ultimate test for the hero.
A few readers have asked, “Why van Dyne, when you already have the ultimate evil in Cthulhu?” And that is a good question.
In part, I created van Dyne for a very human face to put on the evil in our world. I relish good cosmic horror. It is the ultimate expression of the objective meaninglessness of humanity. As such, cosmic horror shows us that our meaning and purpose is all inside. Who we are cannot be found out there. It can only be found within. We must discover who we are through introspection.
Nietzsche advises us to look to art for discovering who we are. What he meant was, just as the gods are all creators so are we humans creators. It is through the act of creating that we find ourselves and express who and what we are as individuals.
While cosmic horror pictures all of this for us, for many of us it is all too abstract. What does all that have to do with the day today evil I encounter?
The Diabolical Mastermind, in a way, puts a human face to the ultimate evil that causes the ultimate horror. It’s rather difficult to come to grips with Cthulhu or Azathoth. It’s much easier for us to understand a Moriarty, or a Fu Manchu, or a Valdis Damien van Dyne.
In Pierce Mostyn’s world, van Dyne is the human counterpart to Cthulhu. Both are evil. Both exert incredible and extensive influence in the affairs of the world. And both want to take over the world, caring little about the fate of the human inhabitants in the process.
If all goes well, Van Dyne’s Zuvembies will be published at the end of this month; when we will see another titanic struggle between the forces of good (Mostyn, Bardon, and the rest of the OUP gang), and the forces of evil — personified in Valdis Damien van Dyne. The fate of the world hangs in the balance!
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
Fear is one of our oldest emotions — if not the oldest. And fear of the unknown is one of our greatest fears.
I don’t know what I don’t know, and that lack of knowing scares us. It is primal, that fear of the unknown.
Fear, playing on our fears, is the stock in trade of the writer of the macabre. Those spinners of stories that parade our fears before us and scare us to death —and we love it.
For all of our façade of sophistication, biologically speaking we are no different than our ancestors from 300,000 years ago. We may no longer be afraid of thunder and lightning, and we may have outgrown our fear of what’s under our beds — we are, however, still controlled by our fears.
Just look at the nightly news. Listen to David Muir’s tone of voice. He’s playing into our fears. And how often do we say, “I’m afraid…” — no matter the context?
Is it any wonder that the tale of terror, the horror story, has never lost its appeal with readers?
Today, interest in the paranormal — our modern term for what used to be called the supernatural and the occult — is hot. Genre fiction has pretty much a paranormal version of every genre. Some of it’s silly, and some of it is pretty doggone scary.
Paranormal fiction has made quite a few of its writers a boatload of money. And while much of the paranormal genre fiction is formulaic trope-filled tripe, some of it is quite good.
When I conceived of my Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, I wanted something that moved in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos and also appealed to viewers of The X-Files.
From comments I’ve received and from the reviews of the books, I believe I’ve succeeded.
What’s more, since his introduction, Pierce Mostyn has been my top selling series. Therefore, it’s only natural to revisit the paranormal as I contemplate starting a new series.
However, I wanted something a bit different from the Cosmic Horror, Cthulhu Mythos, focus of Mostyn. And since my first love as a reader is detective fiction (ever since discovering Nero Wolfe in the early 80s), what would be more natural than to blend detective fiction with the paranormal?
Thank goodness I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The occult detective has a long and time-honored lineage and is alive and well today.
Therefore, my new series, which will most likely debut next year, will be a brother and sister team of occult detectives, or, in contemporary parlance, paranormal investigators.
Taking a page from the exploits of Flaxman Low, Thomas Carnacki, and Jules de Grandin, my investigators will explore those things that go bump in the night and scare the bejeebers out of people.
Haunted houses, demons, assorted monsters, arcane and occult magic. Twisted tales about two normal (well, mostly normal) young adults battling the ageless fears that underlie the veneer of our contemporary scientific sophistication.
As all good occult detectives have done, my hero and heroine will allay our fears of the unknown. Of course, such fears can never truly be put to rest. Can they?
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
One of the most lonely places on the planet is the Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter — that vast expanse of towering sand dunes that has an area greater in size than the country of France.
A few Bedouin tribes live on the edge of this immensely beautiful wasteland. Virtually nothing lives in the desert interior.
The Empty Quarter is part of the greater Arabian desert, which is the eastward continuation of the Sahara. And it is the setting for the newest Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation adventure.
For quite some time now I’ve been fascinated with the Empty Quarter. I’ve never been there, and at my age may never get there. But I have been to a place that will give you a little taste of the Rub’ al Khali. And that place is Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.
The dunes look like a great big pile of sand that some giant left behind. The sand covers about 30 square miles and are the tallest dunes in North America, towering upwards of 750 feet. They give one a hint as to what’s in store for them should they visit the Empty Quarter.
In writing Demons in the Dunes, I tried to give the reader a picture and feel for what it is like in the Empty Quarter. My main source book was Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed the area twice in the late 1940s.
Of course, Demons in the Dunes is fiction. A Lovecraftian-flavored adventure yarn that is perhaps closer to something Robert E Howard might have written than HPL. Regardless of influence, the story draws upon the legend and mystery of the lost city of Iram, adds a dollop of the Cthulhu Mythos, a bit of seasoning from The Mummy, and a whole lot of sauce from my overactive imagination.
You can get Demons in the Duneshere — and I truly hope you enjoy it. I’ve been told it’s the best Mostyn yet, and that makes me very happy.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
The Medusa Ritual (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 5) is available on Amazon. You can buy the book here.
Books 6, 7, and 8 in the series are written. I’m currently proofreading and line editing Book 6 and typing Book 7, doing an initial line edit while typing the handwritten manuscript.
The Pierce Mostyn series is loads of fun to write, and doing so has introduced me to the fascinating sub-genre of the occult detective.
The occult detective sub-genre has been around since the mid-1800s. Being largely a fusion of the detective story and the Gothic horror tale. It came into being as the form we recognize today through the Flaxman Low stories by E. & E. Heron. They were first published in Pearson’s Magazine in 1898 and 1899.
The most famous occult detectives are probably Thomas Carnacki, created by William Hope Hodgson, and Jules de Grandin, created by Seabury Quinn.
I very much like detective mysteries, and I very much like supernatural horror — which makes the occult detective pretty close to perfection.
For some time now, simmering on the back burner, has been a contemporary occult detective series of my own. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I’m getting there.
The series would be something of a companion piece for Pierce Mostyn — readers of one series crossing over and reading the other. At least I hope they will!
There will be more on this in the coming months, as I get additional details of this new fictional world established.
If you haven’t tried Pierce Mostyn, take a peek. The series is on Amazon. Mostyn won’t bite, but the monsters might!
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
Pierce Mostyn, that intrepid foe of the things that go bump in the night, last appeared in Van Dyne’s Vampires, published October of last year.
Next week he will appear in a new adventure, his fifth: The Medusa Ritual.
The germ of the idea for Mostyn’s latest adventure can be found in the Hazel Heald and Lovecraft collaboration “The Man of Stone”. Collaboration, though, is a generous term; for, according to ST Joshi, Heald seems to have contributed virtually no prose to the story — based on textual evidence.
Thus, Heald probably only provided a story idea for Lovecraft to run with. Which he did, and that story then provided me with the idea for The Medusa Ritual. So thank you Hazel for that original idea!
However, while “The Man of Stone” got the wheels turning for The Medusa Ritual, there is nothing of the earlier story in the later one other than people being turned to stone.
While Van Dyne’s Vampires focused on what is essentially a mad scientist and his monsters, in Mostyn’s new adventure we return to the world of cosmic horror. That world where the terror originates from the realization that in the big picture we are completely and totally insignificant. A realization that can easily drive us to despair, madness, or self-destruction.
Nietzsche’s answer to achieving this awareness and its accompanying despair, was for the person to become a creative individual. To become as a god, in other words, for gods create; and in creating, the individual can thereby bring meaning to his or her otherwise meaningless life.
Nietzsche’s answer was essentially an existential one. We are in command of our fate. Counter the meaninglessness of existence by creating your own meaning.
Lovecraft, on the other hand, retreated into antiquarianism, and racial and cultural identity. The old days are good. The old ways are known and comfortable. My own kind are known to me. The foreigner is unknown, a mystery, and therefore suspect.
In Lovecraft’s fiction we see his philosophy play out in his vision of our world having been invaded by alien monster beings who have no regard for us. In strange, swarthy, and dark foreigners who do the bidding of these monsters. And in the insignificance of us Westerners and our science in the face of these ancient beings and their magical rituals. HPL’s conclusion is that it’s best if we don’t know too much of what is really out there, or know any of it at all.
When I come away from reading Lovecraft, I have the feeling that ignorance is bliss. In being ignorant, I can live my life in the delusion that this is a world of meaning and purpose. That I have essential meaning and purpose.
In “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, the narrator comes face to face with the horror of the curtain being pulled aside to reveal what truly is. He has looked into the abyss. In the end, when he realizes that he too will eventually join those monstrous denizens of the deep, rather than end his life, he resigns himself to his fate. For Lovecraft, once we know the truth, we either surrender to it, or go mad, or destroy ourselves. There is no Nietzschian optimism in Lovecraft.
Pierce Mostyn, knowing the truth, doesn’t go mad or destroy himself, but he is weighed down by the understanding that in the end all of his actions are futile. He resorts to duty to keep on going. Much like the ancient Roman Stoics. Duty gives him purpose and meaning in what is an otherwise meaningless and chaotic universe.
Now all of the above is a heck of a lot of philosophy. But don’t worry. It’s all in the background. The Medusa Ritual is not a philosophical treatise. It’s a tale of cosmic horror with plenty of action, adventure, monsters, and daring do. Just what we want to read. Right?
And it will be available, Amazon willing, on July 29th for your reading pleasure.
Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!
Every now and then one encounters an extraordinary author. A writer who’s a magician with his or her pen. Last year, I was very fortunate to find several such authors.
This year, with the fourth of the year over, I’ve discovered one: Brian Fatah Steele.
The first story I read by Steele was “Delicate Spaces”. The story that starts off Your Arms Around Entropy. I was immediately struck by his imagination. Building on the foundation of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, Steele bends the sub-genre into a shape that is uniquely his.
Sometime ago I was at an art fair in Elk River, Minnesota. I looked at what the artists were selling. There were glass artisans, potters, painters, woodworkers, the whole gamut. Out of all those artists, one jumped out at me: a potter.
His work captivated me. The miniatures were subtle in their coloration. The shapes were not exotic, but just a bit off the norm to make them unique. I bought several pieces.
It’s the same with Steele’s storytelling. It’s captivating.
Your Arms Around Entropy is a collection of a dozen stories, four appearing for the first time in the book.
A lot of people don’t like short stories. I happen to love them. The main criticism I see is that they are lacking. Lacking in story. Lacking in characterization. My response is, yes, the bad or mediocre ones are. The good ones are fabulous stories, with characters we love, or hate, or love and hate.
Steele draws superbly lifelike characters, who tell us, show us, their lives, and therein lies the tale.
Your Arms Around Entropy contains a little bit of everything. Some cosmic horror, a bit of the surreal, some straight up supernatural horror, a bit of humor. And plenty of trips to places perhaps even you can’t imagine.
My favorite story in the collection was “Bleak Mathematics”. It is a story I will probably re-read — and I don’t usually re-read books or stories. The tale is replete with interesting characters, suspenseful storytelling, Steele’s unique spin on cosmic horror, a touch of mystery, and an ending that takes a moment or two to sink in before it slaps you in the face with the horror of real reality.
I was so impressed by Your Arms Around Entropy — I bought all of Steele’s books. He really is that good.
You can read my Amazon review before you buy. Or you can just plunk down 99¢ and take twelve trips to where The Twilight Zone didn’t dare to go.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
I’ve had a love affair with Antarctica since I was around 11 or 12. Someone gave my mom a number of National Geographic magazines and one of them contained a map of Antarctica. I devoured the information on that map. And before that Shackleton had become something of a hero for me.
So it’s only natural that I found myself drawn to Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness. And recently reread the novel for background information as I researched my eighth Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation, which takes Mostyn and friends to the bottom of the world.
Of course today we know there are no massive mountain ranges as Lovecraft described in his book, and there’s no sacred city of the Elder Things nestled in the foothills and valley of the smaller of those great ranges.
That is the stuff of fiction. When an unexplored continent provided plenty of room for the imagination to take flight.
However, one aspect of Lovecraft’s tale is at least partially true: there are indeed freshwater lakes beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Whether or not they are inhabited by Elder Things and shoggoths remains to be seen.
Of interest, ironically so, the coordinates Lovecraft gave for the Mountains of Madness are not far off from the location of the great sub-glacial Gamburtsev Mountain range, also known as the Ghost Mountains.
The mountain range, however, is not visible. It is entirely below the surface of the ice. Exploration is being carried out by modern technology. What a wonderful world in which we live where we can go where no one has gone before without actually going there!
The Gamburtsev Mountains are the real Mountains of Madness. But will we find the caves and strange cube-like structures that Lovecraft described on the mountains? Will we find on the eastern side, nestled in the foothills, an enormous metropolis preserved by the ice as Pompeii and Herculaneum were preserved by Vesuvius? Will we find a tunnel leading to the sub-glacial lakes, occupied by those blasphemously hideous agglutinations of protoplasmic bubbles?
Who knows? Perhaps Lovecraft was right after all. Dr Rafe Bardon, Director of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, has his own ideas, and the Russian drilling into and possible contamination of Lake Vostok might have greater consequences of dire import than we could ever imagine, or Lovecraft either, for that matter.
What I do know is that Pierce Mostyn… Wait a minute. Is that a knocking at my door I hear? Let me see who it is. I won’t be long.
As Mr Hawes hasn’t returned, I, his VA, will end the post as he usually does. Hopefully he’ll be back in time for next week’s post.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time (if there is a next time), happy reading!
Nietzsche and Lovecraft. Supposedly both were nihilists. But were they? Let’s take a brief look at both, in the light of cosmic horror.
Cosmic Horror
What do we mean by cosmic horror? Cosmic horror is the horror subgenre that focuses on the fear we feel when we are confronted by phenomena that is beyond our ability to comprehend.
Lovecraft wrote that the only thing saving us from death or insanity was our inability to correlate all known facts into a cohesive and understandable whole.
Nietzsche wrote about being nauseated by the truth after peering into the abyss.
Cosmic horror chills us, at least good cosmic horror does, when the story forces us to come to grips with our insignificance in the universe. Cosmic horror is the abyss which nauseates us with the truth. Cosmic horror is the bringing together of knowledge that should drive us insane.
Lovecraft
HP Lovecraft was 10 years old when Friedrich Nietzsche died at the age of 55, and as far as we know he did not read Nietzsche.
Lovecraft was not a philosopher, per se. Although he did spend much time thinking about realities, science, and religion. Through his fiction he worked out a philosophy of sorts, which is embodied in his creation of cosmic horror as presented in his Cthulhu Mythos.
For Lovecraft, the species homo sapiens is not at the apex of anything. In a very real sense, human beings are merely a form of advanced simian on a tiny planet, orbiting a pretty insignificant star in one of many thousands of galaxies in the vast universe.
Compared to the cosmos we are nothing.
Lovecraft would undoubtedly have agreed with Silenus’s answer to Midas’s question. What is the best thing for humankind? To not to be born. And once born, the best for us is to die soon.
For Lovecraft, at least as seen in his fiction, there is no real hope for us. We are, as it were, going into battle armed with pea shooters, when our enemy has machine guns and rocket launchers.
We are hopelessly outclassed by the universe. And the universe will ultimately win. I think that is the message of “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
I think Lovecraft was essentially a nihilist. Life is meaningless and we have no intrinsic purpose.
Nietzsche
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche lays the ground work of his philosophy, which all of his subsequent books build on and expand.
Nietzsche, by means of the myth of Midas and Silenus, posits the essential meaninglessness of the human species. He goes on to tell us that when we actually comprehend Silenus’s message, when we look into the abyss, have our dark night of the soul, we come away nauseated — nauseated because we’ve believed a lie and now know the truth.
However, he does not leave us in despair. He reminds us that we are creators and it is through art — our creativity — that we find meaning in life. We are our saviors. The god out there is dead. What is alive and well is the god within us. Or perhaps better stated, the god that we are — because gods are creators, and we are creators.
What we see in Nietzsche is proto-existentialism. Nietzsche was not a nihilist. His is not a philosophy of despair. It is a philosophy of hope and life for modern humans.
Conclusion
Cosmic horror would never have come from the pen of Friedrich Nietzsche. Because for him there was always hope.
The closest Lovecraft comes to a sense of hope is in the conclusion of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” where the narrator embraces his future as one of the monstrous denizens of the deep.
For Lovecraft, our only hope is to join that which will destroy us. And that is true horror.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
Thousands of books are published every day. Fiction and nonfiction books are flooding the ebook stores, brick and mortar bookstores, and even sites like Wattpad.
We live in an era where there is more reading material available than there has ever been in the history of the world.
The question begs to be asked, How do you find the good stuff? And further we must ask, How do you define “good stuff”? Because beauty, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder.
As for the first question, I’ve found social media to be a good source of reading material. In particular, Twitter has been a fabulous resource for connecting with writers and their books.
Concerning the second question, that one is more difficult to answer. Because what I like you may not.
IMO, most books and stories are not memorable. They are as disposable as cheap ballpoint pens. They serve the purpose of providing us with a bit of diversion. That’s all.
However, every now and again I run across a true craftsman. A writer who is a true artist with the written word. Recently, on Twitter, I discovered such a find. That writer is Brian Fatah Steele.
Steele writes weird fiction that is heavily scented with Lovecraft, yet is not a pastiche in the hack manner of Derleth and the others who attempt to be Lovecraftian.
Recently, I finished Your Arms Around Entropy and other stories. Every single story Collection was imaginative, original, and awesome. Each story was thought-provoking and powerful. I’m currently reading Steele’s novel There is Darkness in Every Room. Thus far the book is deliciously weird, with well-drawn characters and loads macabre atmosphere, plus being incredibly imaginative.
What I’ve read thus far has made such an impression on me, I bought all of Steele’s books. He is an incredible find. Take a look at his Amazon page.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
Pierce Mostyn fighting inter-dimensional beings. Photo from a secret OUP file.
HP Lovecraft never made his living by writing. For one, he simply didn’t write enough. And for two, he had issues with writing for money. Consequently, a number of his stories were published in essentially fanzines, the amateur press, for which he didn’t get paid.
For all of his adult life Lovecraft lived in, as he called it, “genteel poverty”. Towards the end of his life, however, he offered his services to hopeful author in order to make a few bucks. He would edit other writer’s stories, or ghostwrite stories for them.
“The Mound” was a story that Lovecraft wrote for Zealia Bishop from an idea she gave him. It is most assuredly not one of his better efforts, but it certainly doesn’t qualify as trash either.
I like how Lovecraft turned Bishop’s rather ho-hum ghost story idea into a Cthulhu Mythos tale. And by setting the story in a subterranean world he really hooked me, because I’m a sucker for subterranean world stories.
Lovecraft’s story became the inspiration for the second Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation: Stairway to Hell, which will hit the virtual bookstores in late February.
In preparation for Stairway to Hell’s launch, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek.
Pierce Mostyn and his team are investigating an ancient tunnel, with strangely grotesque carvings and mysterious hieroglyphs. And then… Well, read on!
Jones started to speak and Mostyn held his hand up to silence him. After a moment, he asked, “You hear that?”
“Yeah, it sounds like the slapping of bare feet on stone.”
“I think company’s coming. C’mon!”
Mostyn ran back to the chamber, Jones following. He burst into the room. “Everyone, back into the tunnel! Company’s coming!”
In a mad scramble, soldiers and scientists rushed back the way they’d come. Mostyn called out, “Gibson, Tanner, Michelson, Ellis, you have the firepower. You’ll be in the mouth of the tunnel. Jones and I will be behind you. Pettigrew and Grundseth, you’re the rear guard. Listen up! If they attack and we can’t hold them, the rest of you retreat. Get the hell out of here and back to the surface. Tell Obermaier to seal the stairway. Now get down, everyone!”
The team was in position in the tunnel and waited for whoever it was that was coming. They didn’t have long to wait. Shambling into the chamber was a horde of beings, for human would be too generous a term for them.
Perhaps they’d once been human, but no human has two heads, or three legs, or five arms, or seven eyes. And no human has no head or the body of a four-legged animal. What was also apparent, was that they were ready for combat. In their hands were an array of spears, bows and arrows, swords, and maces.
Slezak screamed and panicked, thrashing about in an attempt to flee. It took both Zink and Baker to get her under control.
Mostyn, in a quiet voice said, “Tanner, get ready. Those, I’m guessing, are y’m-bhi. Think of them as being like zombies.”
“Got it, sir,” Tanner answered, and got his flamethrower ready.
To the group of beings in the chamber, Mostyn called out, “We mean no harm. I would like to speak to your leader.”
There was no initial response, then after a few moments up came a bow with an arrow nocked to the string. Mostyn yelled, “Tanner, now!”
There was a click and then a stream of fire shot out of the barrel of the flamethrower, cutting through the zombie-like creatures, and hitting the opposite wall. PFC Tanner swung the barrel and, in the ten seconds that the igniter cartridge was burning, he’d reduced the living dead to a pile of smoking and charred flesh. He emptied the burnt out cartridge and put in a fresh one.
In a matter of moments, another hoard of the zombie-like creatures poured into the chamber and Tanner’s flamethrower spewed out another wall of fire that reduced the ambulatory dead to a pile of smoldering flesh and bones.
“How many more of those things are there?” Corporal Ellis muttered.
Tanner looked back. “I don’t know, Corporal, but I’m almost out of fuel.”
“The spirits! The spirits!” Beames yelled.
“Fire, Gibson! Fire!” Mostyn ordered.
“Where? I don’t see anything.” Gibson’s voice was shaking.
“Arc it!” Mostyn yelled.
She flipped the switch, the sonic disruptor powered up, and she pulled the trigger as fast as she could, swinging the big weapon in an arc across the chamber.
“Beames! Did she get them?” Mostyn asked.
“They’re gone,” Beames replied.
“Okay, people, let’s get out of here,” Mostyn commanded. “Back the way we came. And double-time it.”
Thirteen people took off running back up the corridor. Suddenly Private First Class Pettigrew screamed, “They’re here!” And both she and PFC Grundseth opened fire.
Mostyn pushed his way to what was now the front of the column. Seven bodies lay in the tunnel.
“They just appeared out of nowhere,” Grundseth said.
Mostyn heard behind him the whine of the sonic disruptor and the crack of a pistol. In front of him a half-dozen figures materialized and in a second they were cut down by Pettigrew and Grundseth.
From the back of the column, came the whoosh of the flamethrower and then the whine of the disruptor.
More figures materialized in front of the column and they were quickly cut down by Pettigrew and Grundseth.
“Come on! Let’s move it!” Mostyn yelled, and took off at a run up the tunnel with Pettigrew, Grundseth, and the rest of his team following.
Pistol and rifle fire came from behind and up ahead a large group suddenly materialized. Pettigrew and Grundseth emptied their magazines and still more people materialized in front of Mostyn’s team, blocking their retreat.
Ellis shouted, “The flamethrower’s empty, there’s no more charge for the disruptor, and we have ghosts up our ass. Dozens of them!”
Mostyn looked back and saw the partially de-materialized beings. They were clearly visible, but there was a filmy translucent quality about them. He turned around and saw the very large group of very physical men in front of him and then they were yelling and screaming as they charged.
Grundseth and Pettigrew got their rifles reloaded, but not before the attackers were on them and they were quickly overpowered. Mostyn threw a punch and caught one of the attackers before he could use his club. He put his head down and barreled into a man, who went down. Mostyn was on top of him and grabbed his club, using it to block a slash from a sword.
Suddenly there was only Mostyn, with half a dozen sword points mere inches from his chest.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into the next Pierce Mostyn adventure. Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
