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  Living on the edge of society isn’t the life for anyone. If the government has its way, Mitch Kessler and his enhanced friends won’t have any lives at all.

  Mitch Kessler, teenage high school dropout, jobless and mostly friendless, lives a life of solitude, but not by choice. Endowed with the ability to bring wings out of his body as well as claws, and transform himself into a fierce creature of the night, he’s picked up a nickname from the general public that he hates: gargoyle.

  However, that’s the least of his worries. His girlfriend, Callie, can’t keep her genders straight, his best friend is a spinning top, and his other acquaintance is made of rock. It’s obviously a government plot, but Mitch doesn’t know who’s behind it or why. Worse, various and sundry creations have now appeared out of the woodwork and are out to kill him.

  Aided by his friends, the four outcasts attempt to find out who’s running the show. They’re out to stop the forces of evil before they can do more damage. That is, if they survive.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Outcasts

  Copyright © 2018 J.S. Frankel

  ISBN: 978-1-4874-1607-2

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

  Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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  www.eXtasybooks.com or www.devinedestinies.com

  Outcasts

  By

  J.S. Frankel

  Dedication

  To my wife, Akiko, my sons Kai and Ray, and to my sister, Nancy, I thank you for having always supported me in my writing endeavors. Additionally, thanks to Eva, Lyra, Sara, Beth, Safa, Mirren, Lyra Shanti, Paula, and too many more people to name. I thank you all.

  Prologue

  One year ago, summertime, June 18th, Independence, Oregon

  At seventeen, life was like a river. Simply drift along and enjoy the ride. It was simple, predictable, almost boring, but hey, boring wasn’t bad. Here we were, just me and my best friend, Joe Chambers, tossing a football around at our school’s empty football field. It was the middle of summer vacation, a hot, sunny day, and no one was in the area but us.

  Ten feet away, Joe was already dancing on the balls of his feet. An anxious plea came from him. “Throw it already, will you?”

  As he waited anxiously for the signal to start running, I reflected on the passage of time. We’d been best friends since elementary school. Sports and movies, we had the same tastes, and he totally rocked as my best bud.

  On the small side, just over five-seven, blond, wiry and quick of movement, he barely sat still for a moment. Teachers said he had ADHD. No, he simply couldn’t stay in one place for too long. It had never stopped him from getting top marks in science and calculus, and there wasn’t any computer program he couldn’t master.

  Then there was me, six feet, a lean and rangy one-seventy, pale, dark-haired, and very average in terms of looks and scholastics. Put me in a crowd, and you wouldn’t be able to spot me from the next person. Anonymity sucked.

  However, sports made the public sit up and take notice, and I wanted people to notice me in the worst way. With a good, accurate arm to rely on, this would be my year. Team tryouts took place in early September, so first-string quarterback position, you’re mine... or so I thought.

  “C’mon, Mitch,” Joe urged, nervously wriggling his foot in the hard earth. “Time to practice.”

  Imagining the defense was homing in on me, I took a few steps back and got ready. “Go long!”

  Rearing back, though, things went south as my back suddenly spasmed and the ball dropped from my hands. Bending over at the waist, my breath came in short, rapid spurts. Joe turned around and called out, “What’s wrong, man?”

  “I got a cramp in my back.”

  Cramp wasn’t really the right word. Something had begun to twist around inside. Pulled muscles, maybe. But this was weird, a straining from deep down, almost like something wanted to come out. Aliens all over again—no thanks. First time for me to have this feeling, and it scared me. Young people didn’t get hurt. If they did, it wasn’t for long.

  After moving my shoulders around, the pain lessened somewhat. I straightened up, shook my arm out, and picked up the ball. “Okay, ready, go long!” Then I let fly.

  So much for being accurate. As soon as I tossed it, I knew I’d made a mistake and thrown it too hard. It went way beyond where I’d intended and smashed through a neighboring house’s window. Aw... crap.

  Joe had been tearing along the field, but then it was his turn to stumble. He hit the ground, wriggling like a fish tossed onto land. What, first me and now him? It looked that way with him practically convulsing, and I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. Upon reaching his position, he looked up, eyes clouded with confusion. “Joe, are you okay?”

  “I... I don’t know. It doesn’t hurt, but something’s—it’s just weird, man.”

  The shaking continued. Frightened by what was happening, I helped him up, calling out for help. A shout alerted me to one of the neighbors’ arrival. It was the person whose window I’d broken. Face red and temper through the proverbial roof, he grabbed me by the collar. “Who are you, kid?”

  “Mitch, Mitch Kessler.”

  It failed to make an impression on him. He twisted my collar, cutting off my air, with snorts coming from his mouth like an enraged bull. “Stupid kids, chucking balls around. Don’t you care about who lives here? Who’s paying for my damn window?”

  A surge of fear ran through me. This man was around forty, big and powerfully built. From the narrowed eyes and specks of foam at the corner of his mouth along with his clenched fists, it looked as though he wanted to deal out an ass-kicking. My initial fear, though, soon gave way to anger. “Hey, back off. My friend needs help!”

  In an abrupt turn of events, fear flooded the man’s face. He let go, saying, “Whatever you want, kid,” before spinning around on his heel and taking off.

  By now, Joe had stopped shaking and stared at me. Whether it was from awe or terror, I couldn’t tell. “What is it?” I finally asked. “Are you okay?”

  Voice small, he raised a trembling forefinger. “Yeah, fine. It’s not me, Mitch, it’s your face.”

  “What about my face?”

  “When that dude grabbed you, you changed. You... I don’t know. You didn’t look like you.”

  Now it was my turn to feel confused. “What did I look like then?”

  “I—”

  “Just tell me!”

  “Some kind of monster.”

  Holy crap. Walking over to a nearby house, I nervously stole a look at my reflection in the window, and then breathed a sigh of relief. Still me, but Joe’s words—he wasn’t a liar.

  Screw getting the football back. We trudged on home. Joe lived ten minutes away from me, very convenient f
or hanging out with each other. Fact was, we visited each other’s houses on an almost daily occurrence, either playing sports after school or fooling around with video games.

  Our parents—that is, my mother and his father—worked in Portland, about an hour away by car. Joe’s father worked as an accountant at a chemical plant, while my mother worked for a shipping company.

  Along the way, Joe said, “Man, I’ve never been so freaked out. What’s going on with us?”

  How to answer him? No clue, but just as I was about to say something, the appearance of Paul Sampson and Truk Oliver stopped it. Truk—that was his real name and who in their right mind would name a kid Truk—was, in one word, big.

  At six-two and around two-thirty, he had a round face dominated by dull hooded eyes and a constant sneer. He’d gone to our high school and had failed twelfth grade twice. Talk about dumb, he’d failed everything save lunch. At the age of twenty, he was going nowhere fast.

  His buddy, Paul, was my age, a little shorter and thinner, but he packed the same sneer and rotten ‘tude. Both of them liked picking on other kids and had a rep as bullies, but this was one time when I didn’t want things to escalate.

  Too bad they never got the memo. “Where you going, punks?” Paul asked in a high, whiny voice. As if to underscore his badness, he stood in our way, sneer working overtime, trying mightily to appear tough and failing massively.

  “Home,” Joe said. “‘Scuse us.”

  “What if we don’t want to?”

  Paul’s sneer deepened, and Truk let out a snuffle, something like a cross between a pig’s snort and a fart. He never spoke much, preferring to hit people instead.

  And I’d had enough. My back had started to hurt again, and Joe still didn’t look too good in spite of him saying so. We tried to move off, and then Truk stepped over to block us. “You can’t get past me. I’m like a truck. That’s what my name says.”

  Oh boy, the stupid was strong with this one. “It’s spelled t-r-u-c-k, moron,” I said, spelling it out for his benefit. “No wonder you failed two grades.”

  Snuffle time from Truk as the gears slowly turned in the empty windmills of his mind. “It was just one, smart guy. I took summer school to make up for it, okay?”

  At least he’d learned how to count. However, telling him that would have caused his brain to implode. So, taking the discretionary route, I moved around him—or tried to. His meaty hand clamped down on my shoulder, and a shaft of pain went through me. “You go when I say so, squirt.”

  In less than a second, anger overrode the fear and the pain. “Let go.” A guttural tone reverberated from somewhere deep in my chest. What is happening? The tone then worked its way up my throat and out. “Let go!”

  Command given, I grabbed his hand and was shocked to see claws instead of fingers. Oh man, what’s happening?

  Truk screamed, Paul screamed louder, and it was my turn to bring the heat. My claws sank deeply into his hand, and I slowly twisted it away from my shoulder. “Now listen closely, density cubed and squared. Leave me alone. Leave Joe alone.”

  While Paul started to cry out of sheer terror, Truk sank to his knees, begging for his life. Even Joe had shrunk back in shock, but I chose to focus my attention on the pathetic slob at my feet. “Come near me again, and you won’t be going home. You understand that, right?”

  “Yeah.” He choked out his answer. “Yeah... I got it.”

  “Good.”

  I released him then, and he fell to the ground, clutching his hand. The front of Paul’s pants was wet, and he shivered, unable to speak. Joe touched me on the arm. When he spoke, his voice was low and full of awe. “Man, it’s time to go.”

  Anger curiously gone now, I nodded and noted that my claws had disappeared, although my hand had blood all over it. None of it was mine. Joe and I parted ways at my house, neither of us spoke about what had happened, and I ran inside to clean up. For the rest of the day, I stayed in my room, staring at my hands as if expecting them to change, but nothing happened.

  The next morning, Joe called me at nine and said to meet him at a field situated at the end of town. Hardly anyone ever went there. He didn’t give me a reason outside of saying, “Just go there, man!” Curiosity peaked, so I went.

  Once I’d arrived, he said, “Check this out. Then he began spinning like a top, faster than the eye could follow. He abruptly stopped, not even breathing hard. “It started last night. I just thought about doing it, and I did. Spinning, man, check—it—out!”

  To prove his point, he quickly spun down the length of the field and back again. “That’s something, right? I’m not even dizzy.”

  Talk about blinding speed! I slowly pushed my jaw back into place. “Yeah, it is.”

  As for me, I tried bringing out the claws again, but nothing happened. Frustrated, I kicked the side of a nearby tree, and the pain made me cry out. “Damn it!”

  Joe’s eyes widened, and he whispered, “Mitch, look at your hands.”

  Doing as he said, sure enough, the claws had emerged again. It hit me then. Anger made all things possible. After thinking about it, if I focused on something that pissed me off, like Truk picking on me...

  My back spasmed, and the sound of my shirt tearing open made me twist my neck around. I felt something wriggle out from under my skin, and couldn’t believe it.

  Joe said, his voice barely above a whisper, “Oh man, you got wings.”

  Sneaking a look behind me, they weren’t fluffy angel’s wings, but bat’s wings. Large, dark and leathery, they flared out. A mind-muscle connection occurred, and instinctively I started to flap them. Slowly, I rose into the air, hovered... and then scared at what had just transpired, stopped flapping and dropped to the ground again.

  Confused and stunned by the change, I sat down. Joe sat next to me and asked, “Man, what’s happening to us?”

  “I don’t know.” Things were happening too fast, and we couldn’t tell anyone. I thought about folding my wings in upon my body and felt them doing so.

  “Hey, your wings are gone,” Joe said, his eyes widening.

  My voice shook with relief. “Glad to hear it.”

  Silently, we walked home, me hoping no one would notice the torn shirt barely hanging onto my body. As we reached my house, my mother stood on the front walk talking to a tall, middle-aged man with a nondescript face, so plain that vanilla pudding would have appeared exotic. While his expression didn’t change, hers did to one of shock, and her immediate question was, “What happened to your shirt?”

  “Had a little accident.”

  Then it was time to clam up, as saying anything else would have made this already weird situation even more surreal. A second later, though, she stepped over and whispered, “That man, his name is Mr. Lucas. He’s with the government and wants to talk to us...”

  Chapter One: The here and now

  Independence, Oregon, July 17th, present day. Twelve-thirty noon and counting...

  I walked into my room carrying a heaping pile of sandwiches on a tray. Joe had come over shortly after nine, right after my mother had left for work, and immediately monopolized my kitchen, slashing at the bread at light speed and piling the goodies on top. “Half for me and half for you,” he’d said.

  At least he’d brought over the groceries. With the amount of food he ate, it was enough to feed three families for a month. Being the good host that I was, when lunch rolled around, I brought up the food.

  He sat at my study desk and stared out the window at the backyard. It didn’t have a great view, just a medium-sized yard and a lone elm tree near the flower bed. Beyond that lay a forest, a place where I used to play all the time when I was little. A room with a view was fine, but why was Joe so fixated on my backyard?

  The computer hummed, and what had he been searching for this time? If it wasn’t something related to science or technological breakthroughs, then it had to be movies or sports. His mind, like his body, never kept stil
l, yet this sudden inertia on his part was unnerving. “What’s going on?”

  “Mitch,” he answered, not looking at me and keeping his gaze focused on the backyard. “Did you ever think of getting the gang back together?”

  Good ol’ Joe, he always got right to the point. No BS, he merely laid things out as they were. Once finished making our eats, he’d gone straight upstairs and started working on my computer. He’d hardly moved in three hours, practically putting down roots.

  “Joe, you don’t live here,” I’d said, half-amused and half-pissed that he couldn’t use his own computer in his own house. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

  “No.”

  Succinct answer, succinctly given. Now he was asking if I wanted to put our old group back together. “Well,” he said again. “Haven’t you thought about it?”

  I put the tray down on the desk. While I pulled up the only spare chair in the room, he eyed the sandwiches with a look of hunger that said, I haven’t eaten in a week. The sandwiches were ham-and-cheese for me, and peanut butter, avocado, and mustard for him. God, his concept of food combos sucked. “You really know how to turn someone’s stomach with this stuff.”

  “Dude, a guy has to eat.”

  “We’re talking edible food, Joe, not alien concoctions.”

  A huff came from him as if to say I had no idea about correct protein-carb ratios. He could keep his ratios. I wanted to keep the contents of my stomach where they were. “You didn’t answer my question, man,” he said while snatching a sandwich from the pile and stuffing it in his mouth.

  Fine, answer the question. “No, I haven’t. And we never had a group. We never had a team. We didn’t even have a catchphrase. All we had was a training period for two weeks.”