About The Silver Sun of an Imaginary Day

by J. Rocci
27 pages / 7100 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

Lord John Blakeney has been living with the curse of the werewolf for almost a year and fears that he can no longer control the beast. Exhausting his search for a cure, he is determined to attempt one last antidote at the advice of a London alchemist. He needs transportation to a crag where the sun and the moon align in a lunar eclipse on All Hallow's Eve. When a pickpocket places a note in his pocket that leads him to a pub, he's approached by Donal Gambrill, air ship captain and a man he fell in love with years ago.

Gambrill is convinced to fly him to the crag on the Totentanz, his dirigible, and during the journey, Blakeney and Gambrill find that their former attraction is still burning bright. But if the cure works, they may have more time than Blakeney can imagine.

Sample

The Black Eagle Tap wasn't far from the Tower Bridge dock. Since the note hadn't specified a time, he went to the pub and secured a seat with his back to the wall, sitting at a long bench. The place was quiet, but starting to pick up its evening revelers. No one had seemed to take note of his arrival, but a man in an aviator's cap and jacket kept looking his way after John paid for and received his ale and the stew of the night.

John merely ate his meal and let the man come to him. It didn't take long.

"You the one lookin' for passage?" The aviator asked in a voice almost too low to hear over the background chatter of the pub as he settled on the bench to John's left.

"If the terms are right, aye," John replied, his voice rough, and kept his head down over his meal.

He could feel the man's skeptical gaze. John knew his current attire was hardly convincing, but the charade was necessary to save what little was left of his reputation and deflect attention from his family name. John's disguise, with his ill-fitting cap and tattered scarf around his neck, was spattered with fish and who knew what else, and he wore the ensemble poorly.

John knew the man was close enough to know that the clothes were borrowed and John's bristled face was smudged with coal from a fireplace, not the grime of a fish yard. The disguise was clever enough to pass at a glance on the street or a dimly lit pub, but not up close, as he impersonated the manservant of another rich toff of the Ton looking to cheat Her Majesty out of some hard won coin in the smugglers ring.

"Aye, that's me," John repeated and speared another piece of potato from his bowl with his knife.

"I hear you have a business proposition from your employer."

That was John's story he'd been spreading at the docks. He was just a manservant brokering an air ship on behalf of an unnamed person.

But the tone of the man's voice made John honestly look over at him. Those weren't the gruff words expected of an uneducated layman, and something about the exchange was beginning to alarm John.

The aviator's long-fingered hands were resting loosely on the table around a flagon of ale. His pilot's leathers were worn but well-cared for, and his pale blond hair was near white, but his eyes...