One man can’t stop him

A madman with invisibility armor. A girl clinging to life. Her brother will make any bargain to protect her.

Even mastering his own shapeshifting magic armor hasn’t let Colin defeat his deranged friend Eric. Now Colin’s sister lies in the hospital and Eric kills again and again to increase his power, and he’s coming to take Terri back.

And the police are hunting them both. When Lieutenant Hoyle begins to reveal his own agenda in tracking the killings, Colin risks everything by trusting him with the magic’s secrets.

But Eric has allies of his own, as he draws closer to the final secret that could make him invincible.

A monster at Colin’s front, and knives at his back. Which way can he turn?

*Weighing the Scales* is the second book of the thrilling *Dragonsigns* urban fantasy series. If you like pulse-pounding action, back-alley mystery, and Jim Butcher’s *Dresden Files*, this is the book to grab.

 

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Sample

Miss nothing. He could be anywhere.

Colin crept down the broad, bright corridor, searching the walls for that one faint mirage-blur in the fluorescent glow that could be Eric’s outline. If the bastard tried again, he had to spot him.

Colin’s sister was out of sight ahead. They’d wheeled Terri out of surgery, but he had to move softly and hang back or crouch down in hopes none of the doctors noticed the faint shape of him—all while keeping his concentration on controlling the “skein” that covered him.

Eric’s had more practice with invisibility, and everything else this magical substance does. And he was here trying to take Terri back just minutes ago.

Colin slowed his tired feet, stared through the gauzy haze over his eyes at the junction of corridors ahead. Two, no, three nurses stood talking with a doctor at some kind of station: “watch for any reaction—” “if those cops get in your way—”

And two uniformed police stood behind them. Of course they did, just when Colin felt the urge to reappear and simply talk to them, take his chances to work with someone again.

Bea wasn’t stationed among the cops. She wouldn’t be, any more.

Instead Colin edged around the intersection—his foot scraped on the floor once and he saw a cop glance up, but he froze and the cop looked away again. There was nothing but “a trick of the light” to see, if they had no idea his glimmer could be more.

Colin moved up the corridor to the side, away around the staff. The hospital’s mix of sounds and stillness in the night sounded almost peaceful, so there had to be a way to work around the crowds and catch up with Terri.

Make no sound. Keep in the corner of every eye that could notice me. Hold onto the concentration twist that makes light blur around me, and spot any outline that could be Eric… Bea had used skein to help her see their hidden enemy, but Colin could only search every pattern of light he saw.

The next intersection was clear, free to let him turn back toward where Terri had gone—

Something twitched at the intersection beyond it, at the edge of a corner. Colin blinked, started on the wider circuit toward that. It looked like simply a shadow, but he couldn’t ignore it.

And how many shadows and detours would it take? Did he have to check every inch on Terri’s floor, and then check it again, just because Eric could be here? Tiredness blurred at his vision.

A doctor stepped into view at the junction, then another. Colin pulled back, back toward the more direct way around. He had a sudden image of his sister lying alone in some room and Eric simply coming in through her window. The skein’s strength could tear right through glass, or iron bars.

Even the intersection he’d passed up had a nurse standing in it now. But she stood off at the corner staring at her tablet, easy for Colin to slip past her and her cart and on toward where Terri should be.

A foot scuffed on the floor behind him, where no person had been.

He whirled. A motion, a huge skein-bulked blur lunged at him.

He flung himself clear, far as the skein could let him leap. In midair came one thought: Eric should be faster, staying invisible was slowing him down too—

Colin slammed against the wall, glanced off it and crashed down against some clattering shape—the nurse’s cart.

And even that impact didn’t cover the crunch of Eric’s fist gouging into the wall.

Colin looked up, saw the nurse whirling toward him. Can’t let go, have to keep the skein hiding me from light.

Eric sidestepped her. That blur took a slow pace to move out of the nurse’s line of sight, and began stalking toward her.

No! Colin sprang up and advanced on his enemy. Eric hadn’t lunged yet, she wasn’t his real target…

Footsteps raced up in the corridor. A woman charged into view, short blonde hair and watchful eyes and no fear at rushing into the scene. Bea wasn’t really a cop any more, and she’d lost her skein, but she was still here.

Two uniforms pounded up behind her, and a doctor at their heels. Colin froze, watching Eric—the blurred shape was already crouching down, letting their gazes pass over him.

“Ma’am? You alright?” one cop said the nurse.

“That son of a bitch trying to get to his sister?” the other growled.

They still think it could be me… oh. These two were the same cops that had walked into Colin’s last fight with Eric, the ones he’d attacked in the confusion…

They all looked right past them both now, staring around and missing the two mirage-shapes. All except Bea looking in Eric’s direction, no doubt watching his every move.

Eric edged back, away. Colin let out a hushed breath; of course Eric wouldn’t risk so many witnesses seeing the not-quite-hidden outlines they ought to be watching for. And Bea let him go.

A motion up the other way caught his eye. Another uniform stepped out from a doorway, with Colin’s mother behind him.

If Zara—always Zara, to everyone—had just been in that room, then Colin had found Terri. He moved toward them.

“So you just knocked the damn cart over?” one cop was saying behind him.

“No! I wasn’t anywhere near it—”

Colin edged away, smooth and silent as he could move. One officer up ahead walked a few steps towards him but never glanced over as he slipped by.

Zara stayed at the doorway. Colin heard his foot scrape on the floor now, and she blinked and stared at the approaching shape.

“It’s just me.” Somehow his whisper was enough to distinguish his blur from Eric’s, and the hardness that had been tightening on her face eased away.

He slipped into the room.

The space was small, too small. But it had room for the unconscious Terri da Costa.

His sister looked odder than ever, as pale and wasted away as when he’d found her, but now surrounded by medical tubes and wires instead of the skein she’d been encased in. She’d survived the Rayo Hill Earthquake, and Eric had kept her prisoner for three years with the skein to keep her alive… and then he’d ripped the stuff away when Colin rescued her.

And he still wants her back. To take her away, or prove he’s right, or something.

“The guy’s long gone.” Words from one of the cops drifted up from outside. “We all going to stay here all night?”

“Eric Rowe has already killed four cops,” Bea said. “Any time you want to look away, you keep that in mind.”

“I get it. But look, you shouldn’t even be here, Miss Simms.”

Colin shook his head. If the police did pull out, if he had to keep watch for Eric all alone—and they forced Bea away too…

He looked at Terri again, so still. Hours ago she could barely crawl, even when she was coated in skein, and then Eric had taken that and she’d still defied him. The doctors must have stabilized her, but they’d just gotten her back.

Soft feet behind him showed Zara stepping into the room. Her gaze went right to him; his control over the skein must have slipped, but she didn’t even blink at the silver-green-sheathed figure of her son.

Instead he stepped into her hug.

One warm, sheltering moment after so many hours chasing Eric and trying to keep Terri—and Zara herself—out of his claws… For one moment Colin wondered how she’d talked the hospital into letting her stay this late with her long-lost daughter. But then, saying no to the heart of the Hillside community had never been easy.

“They say they’ve sewed her all up,” Zara said. “As best they understand all her half-healed injuries. They think she’s good. Or, alive.”

Zara was doing it again. Refusing to show her fears for her children’s sake, and almost succeeding.

But Terri had a whole church collapse on her…

“Don’t forget, she spent years wrapped up in what has to be the perfect bandage.” Colin forced a smile, though Zara couldn’t see it. “And I’ve got plenty of skein to give her—but wait, it’s no good until she wakes up to control it.”

And she had to wake up. This was just the anesthetic, not some sign that she’d bled out the last of her strength. It had to be.

The door moved.

He’d forgotten the police out there. Now he had one instant to clutch at the skein’s power and step out of Zara’s hug, before the cop looked in.

“Looks like it’s nothing, ma’am—‘Zara,’ sorry.” The man looked at her, frowned, but made no real reaction to whatever faint silhouette he saw behind her. “And… when we find your son, we’ll try not to hurt him. We just need his whole story on how he found your daughter, and all the rest of it.”

You mean lock me up while you bury me in questions, Colin thought. He held his breath until the cop had stepped outside again. And I let my guard down, stupid!

The door was closing, but it halted and Bea stepped in.

When she’d shut it fully behind her, he let himself reappear.

She didn’t even blink at that. She only said “I’m sorry, Zara. I keep telling them Eric’s still a threat. I suppose it’s hard to believe.”

Colin slipped forward a step to her, enough to keep his voice from the cops outside. “And you’re so sure you can’t tell them what they’re up against.”

Bea only looked back at him. That same controlled face, really almost as young as his, that he’d been just learning to get a smile from… She’d taught him to hunt Eric, tracked down Terri beside him, but she’d always been so certain they had to hide the skein from her superiors.

And now Terri was here, helpless, and the police still had no idea what they were guarding her from. Was it really a surprise they were talking about reducing her protection, or ready to suspect Colin himself?

He glanced at Zara. His mother stood so quiet now, when it should be her fire and insight pushing them and making every step ahead clear. That she kept still meant that they’d reached a point with little left to say—or no choices at all.

But we survived. He looked between Zara and Terri again, both alive. Except Eric could be stalking back toward them right now, or else watching for some time tomorrow or later, simply waiting for the police to let their guard down. A few of those voices rattled out in the corridor, dry, scattered sounds that felt as restless as drumming fingertips.

While Eric was… something cold slid up Colin’s spine. Eric was far enough gone to lash out at anything, and now they knew the price for making even more skein was simply human flesh. Did Eric even have limits now, to how far he could build up his strength or what lives he could toss to it?

He was our friend. But he blames the family and the whole town and its history for Terri and more—

Colin looked down to see his hands trembling, shaking with rage and just too tired to hold it in.

Bea broke the silence, with a sudden, confident “I’ll stop him. The whole department’s looking for him now, and I can still use that. It has to be done.”

“I hope you’re right.” Zara barely stirred as she spoke.

“And while you’re searching?” Colin said. If the police let their guard down watching Terri…

A voice pushed through the sounds outside. Calm, soft, and stilling the fragmented noises from the police: “What happened here?”

“False alarm, sir,” one of them said.

That voice. Colin whispered to Bea, “Who’s that cop there?”

“Lieutenant Hoyle. He’s running this now.”

“He spotted me when I first got to the hospital, and he let me go. And we need someone to get how serious this is.”

“ ‘Get’ what?” Bea’s voice dropped lower, and fiercer. “Invisibility, bulletproofing, and now using that ‘protection spell’ to make more skein by feeding people to it? —Oh yes, Zara told me what Eric tried doing to her,” she added. “You know once you tell them about the skein, this’ll never be about protecting you, or stopping Eric.”

It can’t mean you have to shoot someone when they’re helpless, or risk your badge over it. Even Eric.

Colin stepped past her, toward the door.

“Wait!” Zara snapped. “You heard how the police spoke about you. It’s not safe.”

“It’s not getting any safer.” Not for Terri, trapped by her injuries and waiting for Eric to come after her again, with Colin afraid to sleep at all. They needed that police protection, or Eric would always find a way in.

Colin reached up to the crown of his head. His fingers dragged the skein back, and a thought magnified the motion to make the stuff split and peel away, down his head and on down his body.

Zara’s breath caught when his face appeared. He’d only had a glimpse himself, of the raw scars on his face and arms, from trying to control what the spell did to the skein. Now just pulling the stuff away from the gashes stung worse than any bandage—

He kept his eyes looking past her, and kept his features steady as he flattened the skein to slide in under his shirt. At least she didn’t have to see his pain too.

It’s either keeping a full police watch here, or Eric wins.

He opened the door.

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