The gnomes watched furtively while some strange biggers dug, sweated, swore and laboured at building a big pond. A pond with square sides and blue tiles. Late at night, when the garden folk had the place to themselves they strolled over to stare.

It was, as Big Sid declared, a fucking big hole.

But then it was finished and filled with water, and the household biggers jumped in and out squealing gleefully.

The party to christen the pool might have been less successful if the guests had seen a line of grinning gnomes pissing into the water in the moonlight.

©️jj 2019

He stares at me from round eyes that are the colour of amontillado sherry, or maybe the kind of amber that hides bugs in its heart. His pupils are coal black, and yet they hold a sparkle of light in their depths, a spark of understanding and a humour that defies differences.
When we are alone I talk to him as one equal to another, but when we are working it has to be different.
“Seek,” I say, and he is off, nose to the ground. Always in front but never going too fast for me to follow. This hunt is quick, and the crowd of rednecks and wowzers barely has time to get excited when he stops and sits bolt upright. He points to a tumbledown shack in a back garden.
I stand back and the sheriff’s men race to the door. It’s not locked or anything and they pull it back to reveal the lost kid asleep on a pile of sacks. It seems sticky, but unharmed, so we leave the folks to deal and head back to where our truck waits. Sherif Dean is leaning on the hood, but he straightens us when he sees us.
He holds out a big brown hand and we shake.
“Good job, you two.”
Jacob grins and hops into the passenger seat. He’s done his job and now he just wants to go home.
Dean doesn’t seem in a hurry to leave. He looks at me and his ears go a bit pink. I have never seen a bulky forty-year-old man so obviously embarrassed, but it isn’t funny. More kinda awkward. In the end he breaks the silence by clearing his throat.
“Martha, could you use some bear meat?”
I smile. Me and Jacob love bear meat. “Sure could.”
He slopes over to his cruiser and hefts a big esky box out of the back seat, he lifts it into the back of my old truck.
“There you go. You can let me have the cold box back sometime.”
I feel an odd compulsion to give something back.
“You like bear stew sheriff?”
“Sure do. And I’d admire for you to call me Cam.”
“You off duty tonight, Cam?”
“I can be.”
“Whyn’t you come along to the cabin round about suppertime?”
He smiles and tips his hat. “I’ll look forward to that.”
Jacob sits up in his seat and gives me a canine grin. I climb up into the driver’s seat and crank up the engine. Once we are rolling I look at my constant companion.
“Why’d I go and do that!”
Needless to say there is no answer, so I grumble and swear a bit more.
“Why didn’t I just take his bear meat and have done with it?”
Jacob’s tongue lolls out in his equivalent of laughter and I snort.
“It ain’t funny. Okay maybe it is. But why’d I go and do it. I don’t want a man in my life.”
Jacob grins some more and I snarl at him, then concentrate on my driving. After a stop at the store, we get home pretty quick. Jacob jumps out of the truck to find a patch of late morning sun and get in some serious sleeping. Me? I get on with the bear meat stew, with roots and herbs and a big bottle of bootleg beer. Then I pull the bread starter out of the larder and get kneading. By the time it’s afternoon I’m finished with cooking and I go looking for Jacob. When I find him I sit on the dusty grass beside him. He rolls over and I absentmindedly scratch his chest.
“What now Jakey?”
He sits bolt upright and looks at me with his head on one side.
“No Jacob, I ain’t doing that. I ain’t.”
He looks at me some more. That look where he don’t blink at all. I stick it for a while then get up and head for the creek. Jacob tags along in guard dog mode. I throw off my clothes and dive into the cool brown water.
Sundown and I’m sitting on the front porch with my hair down, and clean tight jeans on, and a blouse that leaves my shoulders bare. I hear a truck growling up the track. It parks up next to my beat-up Holden and Sherif Dean climbs out.
He has flowers in his hands, and when I look into his square dependable face, I figure Jacob was right again.

©jj 2019

When old Agnes died, the rest of her seven did what was necessary. They buried Agnes, gathered together her books, and burned her vardo. Young Mary was surprised when Agnes’ cat heaved his impressive ginger bulk onto the oldest wicca’s cart.

“He will stay with us until we find a human seventh. Without seven the magic would be weak.”

It was almost a year later when the seven found a young whore working in a backstreet stew. 

She was thin and fearful, but the magic filled her.

The ginger cat slowly faded until all that was left was his grin…

©️jj 2019

They were having a fine day out on the hills. Felix had mastered the rudiments of riding quickly and today he was managing to control his stubborn little mount so well that Caudinus had abandoned the leading rein. Having eaten the lunch Cookie packed for them, Felix was running around playing at being a legionary soldier whilst his father and Dai shared a half-bottle of local wine and the ponies chomped contentedly at the grass nearby.
The land here was bleak but beautiful, with ridges of rock, mantled in greenery, jutting into the sky and limiting the horizon from roughly rolling hills. A brisk breeze ruffled hair, lifting the heat of an unclouded sun and somewhere above them a bird keened as it traced an invisible circle overhead. Scant sign of human habitation disturbed Dai’s view, aside from the odd isolated dwelling, little more than drystone shacks with crude slating culled from local stone where crofter families lived. Their sheep, made small by distance were puffs of grey, like dandelion seed heads, against the scrub. This was the hinterland of Britannia, never one of the richer or more developed provinces, at its most primal.
“I’m sorry to spoil the day.” Caudinus voice broke into Dai’s thoughts. “But this wasn’t only about taking Felix for a riding lesson.”
Dai was not too surprised. He had caught the note of significance in the older man’s voice when he had called yesterday suggesting he brought his family over to Villa Papaverus and that the three of them should go for a ride.
“So what’s up?”
Caudinus shifted his position on the rough wool blanket they had thrown over the grass and thistles.
“I’m not sure it is anything, but it might be and I didn’t want to worry Cariad or Julia so this seemed the best way we could talk without either of them realising we had been.”
“I can see that,” Dai agreed. The last thing he would want for Julia, so close to her due date now, was anything to worry about. “What’s the problem?”
“I have had a couple of anonymous threats delivered to my admin staff in the last few days. Unpleasant things – one found their cat mutilated and a message attached to it saying they should tell me to back the right people. Then night before last another was jumped by two masked men and told to tell me that I shouldn’t get in the way of progress.” He broke off. “I might even have some idea who might be involved. A man called Aled Blaenau. He came to see me at the end of last month on behalf of some clients of his, he said. He was hinting heavily that he would be willing to bribe me to nod through a substantial transaction on some potentially contaminated land for his backers. He never actually came out and said so, of course, or I’d have nailed him for it and he denied that was what he meant when I threw it back in his face. I sent him away in no doubt that his efforts were more likely to be counter-productive than anything. At the time I thought he was just a lobbyist who had been over enthusiastic, but now…”
“You didn’t report any of this to Bryn?”
Caudinus shook his head. “I wanted to bring it to you rather than do anything official. As I said, I don’t want our families to become alarmed.”
The sunny day seemed to grow darker and Dai felt a cloud pass over his soul.
“Alright I’ll get on it soon as I’m back in work tomorrow. Nothing official until we have something solid to go on.”
Caudinus nodded and got to his feet.
“Thank you, I appreciate that. But now we’d best get these ponies back home.”
A few minutes later they began heading back to the farm. Their easiest way led through a small wood of stunted oaks and ash trees and that was when it happened. Dai vaguely recalled something stinging his neck and as he lifted a hand to swat it away, the world had turned upside down and slid out of sight into a dark tunnel.

An extract from Dying to be Fathers a Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Space is a vacuum, so what the smeg was the guy tapping on the window of my flitter even breathing. I was deeply rattled and that must have been why I opened communication with the hull.

“Who are you?”

“Adam.”

I laughed.

“My name is Eve.”

“You? Eve?”

“Yes.”

He put his hands on the airlock door and just pulled it open. He appeared on the bridge, threw me over his shoulder and walked out of the ship – into the unexpected.

This planetoid is called Eden, and all on it belongs to us save for the tree and the snake…

©️jj 2019

By daylight, with sunshine streaming in through the high, narrow, windows, the room looked like something from the set of an exotic fantasy vidcast drama.
The bed itself, dominating most of one side with its intricately embroidered thick felt curtains and broad wooden pillars reaching up to a canopy above. The wide-mouthed hearth, edged round in coloured bricks and painted tiles, and the floor of polished boards, scattered over with thick, fleecy, rugs here and there. In one corner there was a carved screen, inlaid with parquetry and coloured stones and against the wall opposite the fireplace, was a magnificent shelving unit, carved and decorated. In the middle of the room, near enough to the fireplace to benefit from the heat, were two comfortable chairs.
There were incongruous touches though – as if someone tried to slip in reminders of the high-tech reality that lay out there beyond the sky. One of the chairs was a regular, cheap, office style recliner and the shelves held a diverse selection of odd items which were so out of place it was hard not to laugh. There was a broken vidcast device sitting proudly displayed next to the remains of some food packaging, which had been encased in a clear-sided display box to preserve it. Half of a remote link visor nestled beside the innards falling out of some hard screen unit. There was even a three-fingered prosthetic hand gripping the kind of disposable cup you’d get from any drink dispenser.
More demanding of her attention was the figure sitting in the recliner, holding a book and looking at her.
“Morning, Sweetpea. Blondie had to get up and see to some things with our host.”
“What is that?” She had to ask. The sight of Jaz with a book was the most incongruous thing in the room. Jaz held up the book and looked surprised as if he’d never seen it before.
“This, Sweetpea, is called a book. It’s a bit like a handheld fixed screen only the text isn’t interactive.”
Charis felt herself colour.
“Yes, I know that. I mean what book? Why are you -?”
Jaz swung the recliner upright.
“It’s one of a set of classics.” He gestured to the shelving unit where there were two shelves devoted to an odd assortment of books. “I think it’s a set called ‘Great classics of literature no one ever made into a vidcast because they were just too long and too dull’.”
She found it impossible not to smile at that.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in those.”
Jaz gave a slight shrug and closed the book. “Not sure I am. But there is not a lot else to do so I think I’ll likely be really well educated in classic literature by the time we leave here. Guess at least I’ll be able to impress people with all the quotes.”
“Except no one else will have read them so they won’t know what the quotes are from.”
Jaz gave a brief laugh. “That’s too right.”

From A Walking Shadow the final volume in Haruspex Trilogy of Fortune’s Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

At Christmas, Dad played a trick on the cat. He fed her a chocolate with mustard in the middle. She was very sick. Mom was cross. “Never piss off a cat,” she said.

Dad laughed.

August, and we were packing for a family trip to Florida. Dad was in a good mood, fooling around with my baby sister and kissing Mom on the mouth. Then he tripped over the cat. Broke his hip and his knee. We left him in hospital and got on the plane.

Mom looked at me and winked.

“Never piss off a cat. They don’t forget.”

©️jj 2019

Death is for the Living by JC Steel is an adventure of Tropics, yachts and vampire hunters.

By day, Cristina Batista is a deck girl on a Caribbean charter yacht, with all the sun, smiles, and steel drum music that entails. By night, she and her crew hunt the monsters that prey in the dark: the powerful vampire clans of the New World.
Unfortunately, Cristina’s past is hunting her in turn – and it’s catching up. Without her partner, sometime pirate, sometime lordling and ex-vampire, Jean Vignaud, Cristina wouldn’t simply be dead. She’d be something she fears far more.
Cristina and Jean are experienced, motivated, and resourceful. One faction wants them despite it. The other wants them because of it…

At night, it was all too easy for the hunters to become the hunted. 
Cristina Batista, her feet slipping in the sand, hauled the dinghy down to the water in a near-silent, scraping rush. With even the mosquitoes whining around her seeming inordinately loud, it sounded more like an avalanche.
Something fingered her leg, and she jumped violently, cursing under her breath as she recognised the touch of bottom-growing weed. The night had begun to wear at her nerves several hours ago, but the scent of the sea was a welcome change, clearing the stench of expensive perfumes, fear, and blood from her nostrils.
Another figure, heavily burdened and struggling with it, broke free of the shadows of the trees, dressed much as she was in black trousers and a long-sleeved, off-black shirt. Cristina judged her partner’s balance and leant on the gunwale, steadying the boat against the sudden weight of the limp body he decanted into it.
Seawards, the horizon was defined by the line where the blazing stars ended, and the bay’s headlands bulked dark against the sky. Unlike the luxury motor yacht moored to the dock on the far side of the bay, a towering white slab in the night, the eighty-five-foot schooner she was looking for was invisible, carefully anchored to take advantage of the darkness.
Her partner straightened from the side of the dinghy, still gasping for breath. “Let’s get out of here.” The murmur of his voice barely carried over the soft sounds of sand and sea as the dinghy floated free of the beach.
Cristina slotted the oars into place and headed just inland of the tip of the northern headland, rowing as quietly as rowlocks and wooden oars permitted. With the breeze audible in the trees fringing the beach and the repetitive, arrhythmic swishing of the wavelets on the sand, it was unlikely that the faint noise of her oars would attract attention, even from the inhumanly sensitive ears that could be on their trail. It was why they used oars, not outboards, on these trips.
Her feet bumped against the man her partner had been carrying, and she jerked away, her heart knocking against her ribs. He was sprawled in the bottom of the boat in the kind of boneless collapse that only the dead and the truly unconscious achieved, but the rational knowledge that he was unconscious and bound was very little reassurance for her imagination.
“Is he still out?”
Sean leant forwards, a pencil beam playing over knots in the darkness. The boat swayed a little under her with his movement, and she compensated automatically. The glow rested momentarily on the bound vampire’s face, and for an instant, present and the past collided, stopping her breath. Harsh shadows along lips and bones drew similarities where there surely were none, summoning memories from their pit.
“Looks like it.” Sean paused, oblivious to her reaction, and squinted at the view over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, he has my—nearly—undivided attention.” Her partner’s habitual American drawl sounded a slightly strained. “Remind me just one more time: why did we rescue him?”
Every stroke of the oars taking them further from the dangerous shore, Cristina managed to laugh. It sounded a little forced, even to her ears. “Because you and I both wanted to know why vampires would kill another vampire.”

A Bite of... JC Steel

Q1: How much of your writing is autobiographical?

Usually I can look innocent and say almost none; the majority of my books are military sci-fi, so if they were autobiographical, I’d probably be having this conversation through a necromancer. Death is for the Living, on the other hand, contains a lot of material drawn from my childhood aboard a sea-going yacht in the Caribbean (obviously not the vampires part… um). But the day-to-day of life aboard a yacht all comes from personal experience. I wrote the first draft years ago, when I was penned up in a boarding school in North Yorkshire, and, not very surprisingly, very homesick for the yacht, the freedom to go outside alone, and, by far not least, sunshine.

Q2: What is worse, ignorance or stupidity?

I’d have to say ignorance. You’re born with a certain IQ level, there isn’t much you can do to change it. Ignorance, on the other hand, is absolutely in your power to change. Read. Research. Apply a healthy dose of scepticism. Travel. Talk to people. Ignorance, unlike stupidity, is a choice, and it’s one the world can’t afford for much longer.

Q3: How much of what you write could be classed as therapy?

Hah. Great question. Most of it. I have a fairly high-stress day job, and coming home to a sci-fi or urban fantasy adventure is a great mental break to mark the end of the day and also fantastic escapism. I get to follow a career mercenary through space battles, hunt vampires, explore new planets, and, when I stay up too late researching, accidentally type things like ‘coronal mass ejaculation’ into my search bar (don’t do that at home).

Born in Gibraltar and raised on a yacht around the coasts of the Atlantic, I’m an author, martial artist, and introvert. In between the necessary making of money to allow the writing of more books, I can usually be found stowing away on a spaceship, halfway to the further galaxy.
Science-fiction and urban fantasy are my favourite genres to write in. I grew up on a rich diet of Anne McCaffrey, Tolkien, Dorothy Dunnett, and Jack Higgins, and finally started to write my own books aged fourteen. I can’t point the finger at any one book or author that set me in my current direction, but I blame my tendency to write characters who favour drastically practical solutions on some mix of those. If I can toss in a bit of gender- and genre-bending, so much the better. Status quo is boring.

You can find JC Steel on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram and her own website. You can purchase the book from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes&Noble, Scribd, Kobo and iTunes.

Madam Zorosa sat behind a rickety table with a sullenly uncooperative crystal ball between her fingers, while giggling teenage girls held hands and wanted to know about their love lives.

Suddenly, the crystal awoke to a sulphurous glow, and displayed the face of that we all dread, smiling his cadaverous smile and holding his scythe aloft.

Zorosa was sure it foretold imminent death for one of the children before her and felt a little pity, but she spun them the bright fairytales they craved and sent them away happy.

The pain in her breast was sharp.

Death chuckled. “Wrong conclusion.“

©️jj 2019

The boys were on their second slices of cake when Sam and Anna appeared. For a minute Anna looked a bit shy, but Charlie got up from the table and put his arms around her waist. She smiled down at him.
“Don’t be blushing,” he said, “we’re family.”
“I guess you are. Did you eat all the cake?”
“No. Mum wouldn’t let us. And she also wouldn’t let anybody touch the coffee machine.” He grinned up at Sam. “I really like that frothy cappuccino.”
Sam ruffled his hair.
“Okay. I reckon I can do something about that for you.”
He looked at the crowd around the table.
“Anyone else for beverages?”
Of course everyone wanted a drink, so Sam and Anna got busy, while Patsy found another cake.

Everyone got his or her drink and piece of cake and sat around the table. The twins shuffled their feet a bit then Matt spoke up.
“Sam,” he said, “that bout with Uncle Rod was something to see. We’ve watched a few training bouts, and Uncle Rod usually creams people but you kept up. We was amazed.”
“Yeah, well it would’ve been different if it was a real fight. I’d probably be dead.”
“Not so sure about that,” Rod broke in. “You really are a good kick boxer. Nice balance. Fast. Strong. It’d be nip and tuck I think.”
“We’ve had this argument before. You are bigger than me, and faster. I’d get creamed.”
Jim laughed.
“Can we just agree that it was something to see. There’s another thing we need to talk about.”
“Is there?” Sam looked a bit puzzled.
“Yes. Rod gave us a bit of information. Do you remember a kid that got knocked down by a hit and run driver just before last Christmas?”
Sam scratched his head then grinned.
“Wasn’t his name Andrew? Fifteen-year-old promising footballer?”
Jim nodded.
“Yeah. We did good work there. He’s back playing and is reportedly as good as ever. But why do we have to talk about that?”
“Because he’s a Cracksman.”
“Ain’t. I don’t remember his surname, but I’m sure it wasn’t Cracksman.”
“No. It isn’t. But his mum was a Cracksman before she was married.”
Sam screwed up his face in thought.
“That fits. I’m just calling the family to mind. As I recall, his dad is a little bloke – looks a bit like a jockey. Mum, on the other hand is built like a brick shithouse. She glowered at me a lot until  it became clear that Andrew was mending properly. Then she cried on my shoulder. And so?”
“So the Cracksman family is in your debt…”
Sam stood up and actually banged his fist on the table.
“Oh no. I’m not having that. Nobody is in anybody’s debt. I am a surgeon. Part of a team. We did what we do. Mending broken people is what we do. End of.”
Patsy got up and came to kiss his cheek.
“You do, do you you? Okay Jim, leave it. Sam’s right. Just be glad he’s our friend.”
Little Charlie put up a hand.
“Can I say something?”
“You can, little man,” his mum said.
“Isn’t Sam family? Anna’s family, and he’s her husband. So don’t that make him family too?”
“It does.” Bill put in firmly. “Plus. Even if some people have forgotten what he done for me, I haven’t.’
Sam came around the table and put one hand on Charlie’s shoulder and one hand on Bill’s.
“I’d be honoured to count you two as family,” he said.
“Us too,” Cy spoke for the twins.
“And me,” Jamie said a bit shyly.
“And us grown ups,” Jim, Patsy and Rod spoke in unison.
Sam’s face crumpled. Anna got up and put her arms around him. He buried his face in her hair for a moment before sniffing loudly.
“Sorry about that, but it’s a bit overwhelming suddenly getting a whole new family. Until recently I’ve been pretty lonely…”
Bill got up and threw his arms around Sam’s legs.
“Well you shan’t be lonely any more. We won’t let you.”
“Thanks, Billy boy.”

After that somewhat emotionally charged exchange, Jim looked across the table at Anna.
“You’d better take Sam somewhere quiet and point out the disadvantages attached to becoming an honorary Cracksman.”
“I will. Sometime. But I think it’s already too late. He’s in, and he’s the sort that sticks.”
‘Well in that case welcome to the Cracksman clan you poor deluded fool.”
“Woss wrong with the Cracksman clan?” Cy asked indignantly.
“Apart from you and your brother being part of it?” Rod grinned at the two identically scowling faces.

Before the twins could push their luck with Rod by retorting, their father’s phone bleeped. He picked it up and looked at it, then he frowned.
“Sorry. I gotta take this.”
He strode out into the garden and Patsy stared after him.
“That seems ominous.”
“I expect he’ll tell us,” Anna spoke quietly.
Bill and Charlie went to their mother’s side and put their arms around her.
“Don’t worry Mum,” Charlie stretched his eyes and smiled winningly.
“It’s okay men,” Patsy patted them affectionately.

The silence was tense, and it stretched out for quite some time. Jim came back looking grim.
“Boys. Out,” he said firmly.
Nobody with any sense argued with Jim when he used that particular tone of voice.
“Where?” Jamie asked.
Sam led them across the hallway to the sitting room and gave Jamie the remote for the TV.

He went straight back into the kitchen. Jim was standing by the open back door staring unseeingly into the garden with his shoulders absolutely rigid. Sam went over to his side.
“Spill it Jimbo.”
Jim came back from wherever he had been with a jolt.
“We have a problem.”
“So I gathered,” Rod’s voice was a dull, dangerous rumble.

Jane Jago

The Sunday Serial is taking a short break but will return soon.