There is a church in a small town in Germany which contains a relic, a small phial, in which there are said to be a few drops of the blood of Christ. Who knows if it is true? Does it really matter, anyway? Well, maybe it does now, for in this century, so far from the one when the phial first appeared, we are able to clone creatures from just tiny fragments of skin, hair, or, yes, blood. Scientists have cloned a woolly mammoth from fragments found under the frozen tundra. To make a human baby from a drop of ancient blood would be against all the ethical rules of science, but it could be done. Of course, it would take someone fairly crazy to attempt this. To create a person who might, if the stories are true, be a clone of Jesus Christ, would be, frankly, asking for trouble, to say the least. Still, some people are crazy, and some of those are rich too. At which point, let me introduce the characters in this story:
Gabriel - a wealthy recluse for whom the bizarre is a way of making life interesting, and for whom other people's rules are just irritating details. Jane - a somewhat self-destructive young journalist. She has quite some strength of character, and plenty of talent, but she struggles to put the pieces of her life together. All she really needs though is a little direction. Teresa - the elegant Italian playgirl and thief with whom Jane is destined to fall unexpectedly in love. Cool, controlled, and addicted to risks. She tries to keep a professional distance from everything and everyone, but that will be difficult this time. Giuseppe - a policeman, approaching retirement, mildly disillusioned, and generally preferring books to action. He will find a little more adventure than he had expected in his last years of work, but also a chance of redemption. The others you will meet in due course.....
Stories for several comps/collabs, amalgamated into one collection.
Two of them actually placed in their respective sections (yay!):
-Mysterious Ways - 1st place, @PsychologicalNovel's "Wake Up In the Morning" comp (June 2020)
-The Listeners - 1st place, Last Summer 2020 collab in the @WarriorGoddess section (July/August 2020)
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-'The Flower Hunter'. Loosely based on the folklore of seductive water sprites, particularly the Vila (a Central European version of Rusalka). Written for @AfterDark's "Mirror, Mirror" contest (Mar 2020)
-'Mysterious Ways'. A young woman wakes in the wrong version of her bedroom. Or is it so wrong after all? ('You wake in a strange place, possibly as someone else.')
-'The Listeners'. Morial and her fellow Spirit Listeners work hard to maintain the balance between nature and mortals; until, one Summer, Morial is accused of upsetting that balance herself. ("I know what you did last summer". The prompt features as paragraph nine in my story.)
-'Between the (Spread)Sheets'. An accountant and a trader play cat-and-mouse in a City firm. (@Crime's 'Deceptive Detective' Aug 2020: one criminal goes undercover to expose or be exposed by another.)
-'The Unexpected Message'. A missed phone call proves momentous for a young art historian. (@AmbassadorsUK/@Fanatsy/@WattpadFairytales's 'Underground Tales' contest Nov 2020: pick a Tube station - King's Cross/Angel/Seven Sisters/Knightsbridge - and imagine what lies below which is connected with the name. I chose Angel.) The only real thing in this story is the Museum of London (which has an excellent Roman gallery, btw); any coincidence with real heritage experts - or indeed the unrealistic probability of such a find - is my fault.
-'Cyclopean Arches'. In the year 3542, an advance exploration party finds some interesting ruins. (Nov 2020. 'Underground Tales' (again): King's Cross.)