A Writers Vineyard Holiday Treat It’s Men In Black meets CSI:Miami in this steamy, suspenseful new novel from RITA award-winning author Linnea Sinclair. A dangerously sexy space commander and an irresistibly earthy Florida police detective pair up on a deadly mission to save the civilized galaxy… but for this mismatched pair of crime fighters, the most dangerous thing could be their own cosmic attraction.
Bahia Vista homicide detective Theo Petrakos thought he’d seen it all. Then a mummified corpse and a room full of futuristic hardware sends Guardian Force commander Jorie Mikkalah into his life. Before the night’s through, he’s become her unofficial partner—and official prisoner—in a race to save the Earth. And that’s only the start of his troubles.
Jorie s mission is to stop a deadly infestation of bio-mechanical organisms from using Earth as its breeding ground. If she succeeds, she could save a world and win a captaincy. But she’ll need Theo’s help, even if their unlikely partnership does threaten to set off an intergalactic incident.
Because if she fails, she’ll lose not just a planet and a promotion, but a man who’s become far more important than she cares to admit...
“So nice to see you got dressed up, Theophilus,” Aunt Tootie said in mock sternness as Theo opened the back door and stepped into her kitchen. Savory, mouthwatering aromas of meat juices and the yeasty tang of baking assaulted him immediately.
This was the house that he’d always thought of as home—a rambling pale yellow stucco Florida ranch with the ubiquitous barrel tile roof, on a corner lot filled with scrub palm, orange, and grapefruit trees. The house was within a few blocks of the bayou—a site of much boyhood mischief—but it was Aunt Tootie’s kitchen that held the most memories.
He swept the small, silver-haired woman into his arms, chuckling. Tootie was laughing too. She’d been a cop’s wife since she was twenty years old and was well used to her husband appearing in all manner of dress when he was working, and she believed Theo—in jeans and a black silk camp shirt that covered his gun on his hip—was working today.
Jorie’s outfit, however, was another matter. The shorts and long sweater would have been an immediate negative in Tootie’s eyes.
He kissed her cheek. “Kala Christouyenna,” he told her, wishing her a Merry Christmas.
Tootie stood on tiptoes to frame his face with her hands and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. “Kala Christouyenna! S’agapo.”
Theo watched dark brown eyes twinkle. “Love you too. Now…” and he turned her slightly. Here it comes. Tootie had hated Camille on sight. “Titania Petrakos, this is Jorie Mikkalah.”
“Jorie.” Tootie extended her hand, her face and tone completely unreadable. She would have made an excellent detective. “How nice to meet you. Welcome to our home.”
Jorie took her hand. “Thank you. Theo said”—she glanced up at him, and he saw an unexpected sadness in her eyes—“this is a family time for you. I’m honored that you permit me to share it.”
The first flicker of emotion crossed Tootie’s round face. A softening? Theo wasn’t sure. “It must be difficult for you to be away from your family. Theo said you’re from—”
“Up north,” Theo put in with a wave of one hand, delineating some distant place. Real distant. “Way up north.”
Tootie patted Jorie’s hand. “You’ll get to experience your first Greek Christmas, then.”
Thank God it was a Greek Christmas. Had it been one with a turkey and green beans on the table, there would have been a lot more explaining to do when Jorie didn’t know what those dishes were.
But hungry people eat instead of talk. Theo and Jorie ate, and ate well. Jorie’s fondness for peanut butter quickly extended to his aunt’s cooking, and the obvious delight on her face as she tasted each offered dish and treasured each morsel gave a whole new meaning to the word savoring.
Still, Theo could tell she was nervous. The small macramé tote bag with her scanner and G-1 was never of out her reach, and several times he saw her touch it, as if for reassurance. And he suspected her trips to the bathroom were more to check her scanner than to powder her nose.
At the end of the meal, Theo helped Tootie and Jorie clear the table and put back the traditional wooden bowl of water with the basil-wrapped cross. A Greek tradition to keep the evil Kalikantzri at bay. He hadn’t seen a zombie since this morning. Must be working.
Then he left the two women discussing Sophie Goldstein’s honey puffs and headed for the living room. He was a bit concerned leaving Jorie with his aunt but not overmuch. Jorie’s mastery of English was—except for her accent, which was something of a cross between French and British—damned near perfect now.
Besides, if she blew it, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t been so insistent on seeing his aunt and uncle only because it was Christmas. He was going to tell Stavros the truth.
In case he was killed. He hadn’t ruled out the possibility, because he knew Jorie was bound to try some wild scheme. And he knew he’d be there, right beside her.
Theo settled on the blue-and-yellow tropical print couch in front of the television—a nice wide-screen plasma. Couple years old but still had a good picture. A basketball game was on. He watched disinterestedly for a few minutes while Uncle Stavros brought back his second plate of syrup-covered melomakarana.
Stavros Petrakos—a bear of a man with a full head of thick gray-streaked dark hair and eyebrows to match—sat down with a grunt. “Want one?”
“No room.” Theo waved one hand. “Well, okay. One more.”
Stavros snorted. “Cops and doughnuts.”
“Pot calling the kettle…”
“How’s things on the job?”
“Job’s good.” It was. Theo couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than being a cop. “Got some budgetary wranglings coming up, but they’ve already approved the new MDTs.”
“How did we ever do the job without computers in the cars? Ha!” Stavros licked his fingers. “Pretty gal you got there. How old is she?”
Theo knew the answer to that one now. “Thirty-nine.”
“Doesn’t look a day over thirty—skata! You see that foul?” His uncle pointed to the television. “Illegal elbow if I ever saw one.” He paused. “She divorced?”
Theo was ready with the recitation. “Never been married, through she was engaged once. Broke it off because the guy cheated on her. No kids. Has a lot of responsibility in her job—she’s fairly high up the food chain. Well-liked, well-respected. Real team leader, you know? And, oh, she was in the marines.”
A melomakarana stopped in midair. “Marines?”
“Flew combat.”
“For Canada?”
“Multinational force, actually.”
“You’re pulling your old uncle’s leg, right?”
“Nope.” And it’s going to get worse. “Remember that UFO sighting out over the Gulf when I was a kid? I was out with you and Dad night fishing on the Tsavaris’s boat?”
Stavros shot him a narrow-eyed glance, but nodded.
“You told me later you’d seen others but said the stories would have to wait until I was older. Well, I’m older.” Like thirty years older. He wondered now—given his long-time dedication to sci-fi and things Star Trek-ish—why he’d never asked his uncle for the rest of the stories before.
Stavros was silent for a moment, chewing his melomakarana and darting glances between Theo and the game on television. Then: “This is because your gal’s a pilot, right? They see those things all the time. She saw one of those UFOs and no one believed her.”
“No.” Theo waited until Stavros swallowed the piece of cookie. “She is one of those UFOs.”
“Theophilus, you’re talking nonsense.”
Theo rubbed one hand through his hair. “This is not going to make sense. But I want you to know what’s going on, because I want you to understand if something… happens.”
“Something—look, the job’s stressful. No one knows that more than me. I did thirty years on the streets. But they have people who can help you.” Stavros laid his hand on Theo’s arm. “Counselors and such.”
Theo ignored him. “Jorie’s part of a group called the Guardian Force. They wouldn’t have bothered with our planet except that these monster guard-dog things they created—they call them zombies—ended up here. Looks like another nasty outer-space group, the Tresh, are messing with these zombies’ programming. But, unfortunately, these Tresh attacked Jorie’s ship, and now it’s just her and me and Zeke and maybe a few others to stop the bad guys.”
He glanced at Stavros. His uncle was wiping one hand over his broad face. “I’ll get you all the help you need,” his uncle said. “If it takes every dime I have. It doesn’t matter. You know Tootie and I love you.”
“I love you too,” Theo said, leaning forward and pulling his cell phone from his back pocket. He flipped it open and hit a number on speed dial. “Yassou, amigo. Listen, Uncle Stavros is about to Baker-Act me. Will you talk to him? Thanks.” He handed the cell phone to Stavros. “It’s Zeke.”
His uncle took the cell phone gingerly, as if it might bite him. “Zeke? What kind of skata is my boy…Okay.” Silence. Longer silence. “What?” he bellowed. “Mou espasas ta arheedia!”
Theo knew from experience that when he heard Stavros accuse someone of busting his balls, Stavros was not quite convinced but getting close.
Evidently, so did Tootie. “Stavros! Watch your language, please!” came from the kitchen.
Finally Stavros nodded, wished Zeke and Suzanne a Merry Christmas, and handed the phone back to Theo. “Tis Panagias ta matia!”
Now it was the Virgin Mary’s eyes being invoked. “Yeah, I know,” Theo said.
“If you’re playing a game on the old man—”
“I’m not. We’re not.” He filled his uncle in on the rest of the details, including the problem with Jorie’s lieutenant and the unknown status of the rest of her team and her ship. He could tell some of it simply didn’t register with the old man. He’d seen too many Signal 20s in his day. But there had been those UFO sightings he’d been tight-lipped about for decades. Theo asked about them again now.
Stavros shook his head. “The one with your father and you wasn’t the first, not by any means. But I’d stopped talking to anyone about them by that point. No one believes you, and you get a reputation—I had Tootie to think about. And you.”
“You ever get taken on board, like I was?”
“Skata, it was enough just seeing these things zipping around the sky at night. If one grabbed me, I’d probably start shooting.”
“That was my initial reaction too. But then you start thinking about where you are and who could get hurt, all the while telling yourself this is not really happening.”
“But it did.” His uncle studied him. He wasn’t one hundred percent convinced. But Theo was family. “What do you need me to do?” Stavros asked.
Stavros Petrakos had been one damned fine shot in his day, but he was seventy-eight now. A robust seventy-eight who mowed his own lawn and trimmed his own fruit trees, but seventy-eight. “We’re putting a task force together. But this is strictly under the radar. If anything should…happen, what the news media gets and what actually went down might be two different things. I just wanted you to know the truth.”
Stavros’s gaze didn’t waver. “I still hope this is some kind of a joke.”
“Wish it was too.”
“When?”
“By New Year’s, I’m thinking.”
Stavros nodded. “The chief knows?”
“I’m trying to keep the brass and the news reporters out of it right now. I don’t think they’ll be able to move quickly enough. And I don’t want to make a media spectacle out of Jorie.”
“Poor kid. She’s basically all alone in this.”
Theo patted his uncle on the shoulder, then stood. “She’s not alone. She has me.”
He wandered back into the kitchen, which was empty, then, hearing a familiar tinkling sound, followed that to the spare bedroom in the back of the house where his aunt kept her music-box collection. A thoroughly enthralled Jorie was holding a miniature palm tree in her hand as it played a tinny rendition of the Beach Boys’ tune, “Kokomo.”
Yeah, that’s what he needed to do. Run away with her to the Keys and a little place called Kokomo.
“Bliss!” she said when he stepped into the room.
He smiled. “Time to go.”
“So soon?” Tootie plucked a music box in the shape of two intertwined cats from one of the shelves that ringed the small room. “Jorie’s never seen these before. I guess there’s not a lot of use for them in those Eskimo villages.” She shook her head.
Theo took the palm tree from Jorie and put it back on the shelf where it belonged. He knew where each one belonged. He’d helped his uncle build the shelves as his aunt’s collection grew over the years. “You know I’m working, Thia.”
“I know, I know. But if I didn’t make a fuss, I wouldn’t be a good aunt.” She shooed him and Jorie toward the living room, where Stavros was waiting. “Maybe around New Year’s or after, you’ll come for dinner, yes?”
His uncle’s face didn’t betray a thing. Man was a damned good cop.
“Sure.” He hugged his uncle, then his aunt.
“She’s a nice girl,” Tootie whispered in his ear.
He bussed her cheek. “Told you so.”
Stavros was holding Jorie’s hand and patting it. Tootie pulled her away and gave her a hug, then put a bag of leftovers in Jorie’s hand as they went through the kitchen. “Something to nibble on later,” Tootie said.
Nothing like homemade Greek cooking to fuel a fight against zombies.
This has been an excerpt from The Down Home Zombie Blues
Winner of the prestigious national book award, the RITA, science fiction romance author Linnea Sinclair has become a name synonymous for high-action, emotionally intense, character-driven novels. Reviewers note that Sinclair’s novels “have the wow-factor in spades,” earning her accolades from both the science fiction and romance communities. Sinclair’s current releases are GAMES OF COMMAND (PEARL Award winner and RITA finalist) and THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES (PEARL Award Honorable Mention), and SHADES OF DARK, with HOPE’S FOLLY on the shelves in late February 2009.
"Linnea Sinclair invades Earth with a rip-roaring, genre-bending, edge-of-your-seat read that has it all: crackling action, monsters, double-crossers, unlikely heroes, and a fully realized love story. I loved it!" ~Susan Grant, New York Times bestselling author of How to Lose an Extraterrestrial in 10 Days
A former news reporter and retired private detective, Sinclair resides in Naples, Florida (winters) and Columbus, Ohio (summers) along with her husband, Robert Bernadino, and their two thoroughly spoiled cats. Readers can find her perched on the third barstool from the left in her Intergalactic Bar and Grille at www.linneasinclair.com.
Please visit her website at:
http://www.linneasinclair.com
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