Pediatric trauma surgeon Chloe grew up over centuries hiding that she was the only magical person on Earth and failing to find any hint of her origins. When a patient she personally knows dies, she screams her loneliness and despair to the void of space. To her shock, a group of magical humans appear and drag her through a portal to another planet in the future. However, their portal goes wrong, she’s marooned on the planet, attacked by monsters, and saved by a man as magical as she is.
As she joins the magically powerful elite of a galactic society, she discovers she was conceived for a political purpose and that her exile to the past was orchestrated by the fascist leaders of one of the ruling political parties. Now that she’s back, they want her to fulfill the role she was born for, hinging on the emergence within her of a new type of magic wrapped up in sex and mind control. Though her enigmatic rescuer wants to help her, he is limited by law, customs, and his belief in the effectiveness of his society’s democratic institutions. With her freedom on the line, Chloe must decide if she trusts herself enough to fulfill her magical potential and if she’s brave enough to open her heart to the man learning he’ll break every taboo to keep her safe.
THE SUNKILLERS (complete at 116,500 words) is a genre-blending romantasy. The book will appeal to fans of futuristic cultural exploration in the style of Arkady Martine (A Memory Called Empire), political intrigue in the style of Devney Perry (Shield of Sparrows), character exploration in the style of V.E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue), and banter in the style of Callie Hart (Quicksilver). The Sunkillers is the first in a planned duology.
Slow burn, yearning, FMC has anxiety and panic attacks, explores consent and power, wings!, futuristic space fantasy in a galaxy with democracies threatened by fascists
Read more at: https://readerful.com/story/the-sunkillers-KKqeU5nR
Chapter 1
Nurses murmured and machines beeped softly in the ER while I spun around in my chair behind the intake desk. I picked at the barely formed scab of my grief with the grim pleasure of peeling open a new pint of ice cream.
Tommy’s scruffy blond face still came easily to mind, an amber streak of paint obscuring a portion of one of the lenses of his oversized glasses. The shape of his nose was a little fuzzy and I couldn’t remember if his earring was in his right ear or his left.
I imagined his hands sketching the blue curve of a curtain dividing triage beds. Tommy made life more real by painting it, like the world was just an idea until he colored it in. The bright lights in the pit now made me squint, enhancing my constant feeling that I was watching reality through glass.
My attending appeared in front of me, rubbing a hand over his bloodshot eyes and through his mussed grey hair. “I’m going to get a coffee before we jump into this one,” he told me. I nodded along, watching light reflect off his ID badge.
Reality snapped back into focus as a gurney with a tiny dark-haired girl bleeding all over the place came rushing through the ambulance bay doors. The heart rate monitor beeped frantically.
“Five-year-old female in high-speed motor vehicle accident,” reported one of the paramedics in just below a shout. “Blunt force trauma to abdomen and head, metal impalement on leg.”
They wheeled the girl to a room as the paramedics finished their report. They had intubated her. Someone held their hands inside the girl’s abdomen. A piece of metal extruded from one of her legs, appearing to have impaled the femoral artery. A tourniquet was tied around her upper thigh.
I caught my breath. I recognized her. She lived in the same apartment building I did. She’d smiled at me once when walking out of our building wearing her new rainbow butterfly backpack.
The bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling reflected off the metal and shone on the streaks of blood that had started dripping to the floor.
The ER attending was late.
“We need blood,” I instructed the three trauma nurses crowding the room. “Activate massive transfusion protocol, stat!”
They ignored me. They must have been new because I didn’t recognize any of them.
“Type and crossmatch!” I spoke louder this time.
The one with a few blond strands of hair peaking out of her bouffant turned to squint at the name tag on my white coat. To be fair, I hardly look twenty-five. Short and small-boned, I do not project an aesthetic of accumulated knowledge and authority.
The ER attending hurried in and action resumed. My nose twitched with the copper tang of blood and the antiseptic smell of my mask.
A bruise blossomed across the girl’s temple. She was deeply unconscious.
Four hours later in the operating room she was hypothermic and going into acidosis. Despite our efforts to support her, she had lost so much blood that her kidneys were shutting down. Her tachycardia was worsening. My boss’ shoulders were set and his voice tight as he issued orders. He shook his head slightly, seemingly unaware of the motion.
I exhaled a steady breath. I could try to save her. I was fairly certain I had enough control to at least make an attempt. I had never used magic to heal someone to this extent before, let alone in the presence of other people. However, I had been diligently practicing minor repairs for decades.
“Come on sweetie,” my boss muttered. “Pull it together.”
I knew he was giving up when he started talking to the patients. When he felt there was something he could do, he was nothing but concentration and action.
I reached out carefully with my magic and felt through the girl’s body. It was a mess. It could all fall apart at any moment.
I needed to be careful. One slip of attention or application of too much magic and I would just as easily burn her to a pile of ashes as help her survive. My magic’s natural state was destruction. I constantly practiced battling it into different forms of order.
I bit my lip. If I messed this up and killed her in a way not explainable by natural processes, I would have to quickly disappear. Building a new identity and returning to surgical instruction would take a decade.
I looked toward the girl’s tiny face. It was barely visible beneath the intubation tube and other equipment. I thought I was skilled enough to save her.
I steadied my hands and the instruments I was holding while I sent most of my attention elsewhere. Carefully, arduously, I forced a minuscule amount of magic into tiny tendrils that followed the arteries and veins of the girl’s body. The vast ocean of my magic resisted me taking just a tablespoon and shaping it. It thrashed in my grip. I clamped down on it with an iron will and allowed none to leave unless it was in the form I desired.
Once I had embodied a map of the girl’s circulatory system, I found clots and lackadaisical blood flow. Excruciatingly gently, holding my breath lest I apply too much pressure, I pushed oxygenated blood to move more freely through her muscles and organs. Holding my magic still, I turned my attention to her kidneys. With a whisper of a touch, I fed them the tiniest jolt of magic I could manage, just enough to stir the cells to greater action. Even so, it cauterized part of one of the kidneys and they gave a visible jerk.
I was shaking from holding my magic in such a delicate form. I pulled it back inside of myself and stilled my hands before they caused damage. I had closed my eyes in my efforts. I snapped them open and leaned closer to see if what I had done made any difference.
The girl’s heart rate began to stabilize. The supportive things we were doing began to work. A few minutes later her blood pH had risen, and the anesthesiologist exclaimed in surprise.
“I don’t know what the hell happened, but I’ll take it!” my boss said gleefully. I allowed myself a grin behind my mask and and bent back to my work.
Several hours later the girl was resting in the ICU while her family kept vigil. I finished charting and went to change out of my scrubs, smiling to myself.
In the locker room, a resident a year behind me was changing into street clothes as well. “Good shift Chloe?” she asked me.
“Yeah, actually. I really like it when the kids keep on living,” I replied. The little girl’s parent’s faces had collapsed in relief when we told them there was hope their child would live and recover.
“Hey, that’s one of my favorites too,” she laughed. “Want to come out with me and the guys? We’re going to that new taco bar that has live music on Wednesdays.”
I waffled for a moment, imagining befriending the buoyant woman.
“You have to celebrate the good days,” she wheedled. “Build yourself up so the bad days don’t drown you.”
She wasn’t wrong. “I was raised by baroque Catholics,” I answered. “Self celebration without guilt has been an issue for me.”
“That,” she said, as if I was joking, “is a super lame excuse.”
It was, but I wasn’t ready to match the vibrant enthusiasm of twenty-somethings.
I might never be again
I slammed my locker shut on creeping sorrow. “Thanks for the invite,” I said, “but I’m going home.”
She’d been surprisingly persistent in her overtures of friendship. Years into this residency and she was still trying.
My pager buzzed a code blue. I was going off shift, so I was under no obligation to respond, but I rushed back to the girl’s room. I was just in time to watch my boss call time of death. The girl’s mother wept in the corner. Her husband had his arms wrapped around her. He lifted his ragged wet face and met my eyes, then glanced away. They hadn’t recognized me as their neighbor.
My boss blinked back tears. Tomorrow he’ll pin a new drawing from his granddaughter on his office wall and it’ll make him smile.
What is the fucking point
My intense interest in medicine for the last two decades seemed meaningless. All the kids I put so much time and meticulous effort into saving would die long before me anyway.
Come on I chided myself. Death comes for everyone. Probably even you someday. You fight for joyful years to live and what could be more meaningful?
I’d had this argument with myself countless times.
Go ahead and be petulant, but don’t pretend you aren’t doing something good
The girl’s mother slid to the floor. I pulled out my phone and typed an email to the hospital HR.
<I quit.>
I collected my things from my locker and left. The cold winter sunshine numbed my cheeks and seeped into my ribs. I threw my jacket on the passenger seat and rolled the windows down in my car.
I went to my house out an hour west of Philly instead of my apartment a couple blocks from the hospital. The house was modest; a little stone three-bedroom farmhouse built in the early nineteen hundreds and updated piece by piece since then. It was surrounded by fifty acres of woods and fallowed farmland separating it from adjacent mansions on smaller acreage. I stepped out of my car at the end of the long gravel driveway and breathed in the icy quiet.
The skies were empty of critters this time of year, save for the silent shadow of an owl near the trees.
Hello witch creature I called with my mind.
Of course there was no answer. I have never encountered magic that did not emanate from myself. A century ago, I searched with single-minded obsession, sure that there must be someone else like me.
Given the number of stories humans tell about supernatural creatures, I would have thought there would be at least one other something that defied the laws of physics as otherwise obeyed. But in my centuries of life, I haven’t found evidence of magical humans or creatures of any kind, other than myself. My earliest memories are of my adoptive mother.
I cracked open the front door of my house and inhaled the books-and-firewood scent of the interior. Sunlight filtered in through the windows and danced on dust motes in the air. I hadn’t been out in a while, deep in a hole of dedicated work and learning.
I kicked off my shoes and padded on old area rugs to the kitchen, trying to remember if I left anything in the freezer last time I was here. When I opened the door, an awful stench greeted my nose, and I smacked it shut. Upon examination, I found that the fridge wasn’t humming and appeared to be mechanically broken.
“Dang it, I just replaced that,” I muttered. “Didn’t I?”
Thinking back, I realized that was fifteen years ago, after I replaced the water heater when it flooded the basement.
Argh
I shrugged and turned to order food delivery on my phone, then lit the pile of logs in the fireplace with a thought. I didn’t bother adjusting the thermostat but used my magic to warm the air around me. When my ramen arrived, I sat on the lamb wool rug in front of the fireplace to pick at it.
I followed the food with red wine while I stared into the flames. The flickering light made the painting of amber wings above the hearth seem alive.
I thought that medicine would hold my interest for longer than it did this time. Trying to right the injustices of chance seemed a more worthwhile pursuit than battling the vagaries of human cruelty.
I had enough destructive power to threaten to annihilate cities in the event of noncompliance with … whatever I wanted. And what would anyone do to me in return?
I didn’t age on a human timescale. I never got sick. I could probably be killed if something happened to my physical body, but I instinctually stopped any threatening collision with my magic before it happened. I would disarm a nuclear bomb before it could touch me. A shock wave would be stopped by a magical shield. I could kill anyone who tried to touch me with half a thought.
I killed Tommy. I should have power over no one
I retrieved two bottles of wine from the basement and took them out to the porch. I sliced the top off one with a brush of magic and took a long swig. The cut glass pricked my lip.
I have felt hopeless before I reminded myself.
The lady orchids were blooming under the apple-green beech trees. I skipped about collecting the fleshy flower stalks until my hands could hardly hold the profusion of purple blossoms. I walked along the three-hundred-foot chalk cliffs, looking for my friends. I found three of them further inland, closer to their village.
“Hej,” I sang in Danish. “Are you playing fairies?”
“Ja,” said Anna, and beckoned me into the game.
Anna’s twelve-year-old brother appeared an hour later. I shrank back behind a bush, hoping he wouldn’t notice me. I wasn’t around this area of the isle when he was younger, so he didn’t know me as an enigmatic but harmless playmate.
“Mor said to come back to the house.”
“But why? It’s not even noon.”
“I don’t know,” he said, shifting on his feet and beckoning at her. “I’m supposed to be helping Far mend nets.”
“Ad, fine,” she groaned, throwing down the half-complete flower crown she’d been weaving.
The boy’s attention suddenly focused on me. “Who’s she?” he asked the group.
“Our alfr friend,” said Ingrid absently, still seated on the forest floor working on her crown.
“I thought she was pretend,” he said uneasily.
There was a tipping point when my friends would start thinking like grownups. Anna’s brother was far past that point. Grownups didn’t like me because I was different and had magic and it scared them. They were likely to think I was a demon, particularly with my red hair. As long as I didn’t hurt my friends, I didn’t think whatever I was mattered.
“Well,” said Anna as she stomped out of the clearing in the direction of the village, “she’s not.”
Her brother followed her with a final glance back toward me. The next day when I found them to play, Anna’s mother was sitting with them in the woods. I stepped back into the shadows of the trees before they saw me, then ran for the cliffs. I sat dangling my legs over the edge and let the salty breeze sweep away my tears.
It had been over a hundred years since I had a family. I resented the reminder of what my friends had. The slow drip of solitude was easier to ignore when I was pretending to be a lost fairy stranded from her kingdom and doomed to play amongst the human children.
A cool summer rain followed the wind in from the sea. I let my magic free to play with the water, heating portions to mist and watching rainbows flicker through the air. I’d been letting it out to use for more than essential survival recently. I tested the boundaries of my control a little at a time, slowly trusting myself to not set things around me on fire.
The sun came back an hour later. I watched the air refill with gulls and skarvs, swooping and diving for fish. I wished I could join them. Why couldn’t I be born a bird?
I looked over the edge of the cliff. If I scooted forward just a bit … what would happen when I hit the ground?
My magic twirled through the air after the looping patterns of the birds. As I watched, my back began to tingle. I rolled my shoulders and pressed my palms into the rock I was sitting on. There was a sensation of intense pressure and a flare of my magic. Then, large, amber-feathered wings unfolded out of my middle back.
I almost fell off the cliff.
Gasping, I scrambled backwards, my new wings flapping wildly. I stood up and turned myself in a circle trying to look at them. Were those there this whole time? Could I fly?
I lifted the wings and flapped them awkwardly. I fell over backwards as they caught the air. Giggles burst out of me. I leapt back up and lifted my eyes up to the screech of a sparrowhawk passing overhead. I was going to join that bird.
The owl that lived in the pines hooted and I blinked.
Flying might make me feel better. Over the centuries it always has. I just couldn’t find the motivation within myself to open my wings.
Why bother I took another swig of wine. This is as good a use of my time as any other
I put the bottle on the porch and sank onto the icy porch swing.
Why am I here?
The question echoed in a million permutations from centuries of asking. It died away unanswered.
I let my magic swell under my skin. It seeped out of me, charging the air with static. I directed it toward myself. It felt like pushing my palms together. I pressed harder. Small fires ignited in the air. I gritted my teeth together and pushed more.
Please I wailed in my mind to the dark sky.
I didn’t know what I begged for, or who I was asking. I gasped and let my magic subside as my heart pounded. I picked the wine back up. By the time the moon came out I was quite drunk. And then the void answered.
