Shifting Problems
Bloodline Awakened Supernatural Thriller Series, Book 1
Jason Paul Rice
Copyright 2017 by Jason Paul Rice
2nd Edition 2018
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All names are made up and used fictionally. Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental. Any resemblance to real events is only part of the author’s imagination.
Cover Art by Ljiljana Romanovic
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1 | Authors Note:
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Graveyard Uprisings: Bloodline Awakened Supernatural Thriller Series, Book 2 | Jason Paul Rice
Copyright 2017 by Jason Paul Rice | All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the author. | This is a work of fiction. All names are made up and used fictionally. Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental. Any resemblance to real events is only part of the author’s imagination. | Cover Art by Ljiljana Romanovic
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Modern Merlin | By Jason Paul Rice
Copyright 2017 by Jason Paul Rice | All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the author. | This is a work of fiction. All names are made up and used fictionally. Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental. Any resemblance to real events is only part of the author’s imagination.
Chapter 1 | Author’s Note:
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 | Emily
Chapter 3 | Prince’s Mountain
Chapter 4 | Mike
Chapter 5 | Emily
Chapter 6 | Prince’s Mountain
Chapter 7 | Mike
Chapter 8 | Emily
Chapter 9 | The Broken Amulet | Claude Escott | Originally published in the Pumpkin Pamphlet of 1836
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Dragon Horn | Bloodline Awakened Supernatural Thriller Series, Book 4 | Jason Paul Rice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Authors Note:
THESE BOOKS ARE IN order of release date. However, Book 3, Modern Merlin, is a prequel story. If you prefer to read in chronological order, you can skip ahead to Modern Merlin before reading Shifting Problems.
I’d never seen a demon in Pittsburgh until I peeked up at that weird security mirror in the alley. Four skipjos were poking at a bag of garbage beside a big blue dumpster in the early morning hours of a late October day. Skipjos were at the bottom of the demon totem pole in terms of strength and magic skills. They didn’t scare me.
So why did I freeze momentarily?
I shouldn’t have, being a wizard who’d taken an oath to protect the city in the name of the Celtic Gods. I rubbed the silver triskele amulet hanging from my hemp necklace to remind me of my duty, yet I still hesitated.
I’d never used magic in Pittsburgh before.
Even though I shared a bloodline with the Mighty Merlin, I feared the special powers would abandon me when I needed them most. They’d worked in my former town and the underground world where I’d trained, and I could feel the internal fire, giving me that kick of motivation to keep moving.
I put one Nike Air in front of the next, wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and hoodie, and shuffled nervously toward the blue dumpster. The sun climbed partially over the horizon, peeking through the city’s skyscrapers, illuminating a narrow alleyway with the rear-sides of buildings on both sides, two dumpsters and random litter scattered around. A funky odor of old garbage filled the air of the open-ended alley.
Not wanting to scare the demons or cause them to react wildly, I pulled a half-eaten granola bar out of my hoodie. After I finished the last few bites, I lifted the black dumpster lid, shoved the wrapper in and let it slam down.
I heard the demons whispering as I neared them. My heart jumped into my throat and I stopped.
A skipjo was a dark, reptilian-skinned demon with an oblong head like E.T. The scaly creatures stood about four feet tall, hunched over, with lanky arms hanging past their knees. No claws or fangs. They were comparable to common street thugs with low magic skills.
But was I ready for several of them?
With only two years of training under my belt, I pulled my magical arsenal from my internal reservoir and readied for battle.
Panic coursed through my system and turned my legs to rubber. Every ounce of common sense told me that my magic would work, but people had been abandoning me my entire life, so I’d be foolish not to expect it to run out when I needed it most.
I remember where it all stemmed from as if it was happening right in front of me. Not again. Not right now.
Ten months after my mother died, I heard a smashing sound in the living room, and went to ch
eck it out. I cut through the kitchen to get to the living room and discovered that my father had smashed open my Tootsie Roll piggy bank.
He stood there with my $61.45 in his hands, pouring the change into his pockets. It had taken me fourteen months to save that money, and most of it was given to me by my mom. She’d always let me keep the change. I’d planned to cherish it as a memory of my mother and never spend it.
He told me to go back to bed and said that he would see me in the morning. He disappeared for the next six years, leaving a busted bank and a broken, ten-year-old son behind. I’ve been trying to scrub the memory ever since to no avail, but I really need to forget about it right now.
I simply referred to it as “the memory,” and it always seemed to rush into my head at the worst possible times. It taught me to trust people’s actions, not their words.
A fiery ripple buzzed in my chest, boosting my confidence and refocusing me. I came to the end of the dumpster and turned to my right. The demons had shapeshifted.
I hadn’t known they had the ability to shift into human form, so I decided I’d better be careful and not underestimate them.
One of the shapeshifters, who was now a man in a blue suit, tilted his derby hat down and said, “Top o’ the morning to you. You look like a nice blond, Irish fella. Just keep moving along now.” He was using an awful Irish accent, staring at me with icy blue eyes, and tapping his cane on the ground for intimidation.
I could have kept moving, and it would have been nice and easy, but I asked myself: What would make mom proud?
Running away so other people get hurt? Nah. Time to stand up and be the guardian of the city.
I shoved my fear aside. “What’s going on out here, gentlemen?”
The man in the pink suit answered in an angry Italian accent, “None of your fuckin’ business. Get outta here before you get hurt, kid.”
I could feel the fire running through my body, stoking my courage, and smirked. “I’m not a kid.”
The Italian man in the pink suit warned, “Not for long, you won’t be a kid if you don’t get your ass outta here, like I said.” He gestured with his thumb for me to hit the bricks.
I remained silent and mentally manipulated some of the air in front of me, removing and combining different elements to create a dense, super-heavy, invisible pocket. It seemed like it would work, but my heart still felt like a boxer was working it like a speed bag. I finally told them, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you fine gentlemen to step away from the dumpster.”
“So you want to do it the hard way?” the Italian skipjo said, rapping his cane against the dumpster and sending a ringing echo through the alley.
“Not a wise move, laddy.” The Irish imposter grabbed his cane with both hands and wielded it like a baseball bat as he approached.
I backed away, pulling my invisible force with me. Three of the men came after me. Perfect. I wheeled around so I was facing the skipjos with the wall of a brick building behind them. I mentally stretched the pocket of air so that it would hit all the skipjos.
As the demon shifters closed in on me, I mentally shoved the dense pocket at them. The invisible force (I could see the grid of prism-like colors) smashed into them, confusing the two-bit demons, and shoved them into the bricks. Their bodies contorted against the wall, faces wrinkling greatly under the pressure.
They shifted back into demon form, squirming to break free. As the pressure increased and reached a breaking point, the three skipjos imploded, turning into a boiling black liquid. Huh, I’d always thought that was a myth considering I’d never seen one die.
Three dark puddles evaporated into the crisp autumn air, leaving no trace that a demon had been there. I whirled toward the fourth demon in human form. The little Italian man in the pink suit was trying to drag a moving blanket away. (It wasn’t a garbage bag after all.)
I took the fiery blaze manifesting in my chest and transferred it to my shoulder. The heat rippled through my elbow and down my forearm, tingling my wrist and centering in my palm. A purple orb the size of a softball appeared in my hand, fiery particles streaking through it, colliding and racing off in different directions, but staying within the glowing mass.
I screamed, “Hey, stop right there.”
The skipjo in human form looked at me with horror in his eyes. He ditched the moving blanket and took off. He ran in a straight line down the alley, but I needed to be careful not to hurt innocent bystanders. The clock hadn’t struck seven in the morning, so the alley was empty, and nobody was passing by on the street that ran perpendicular to the alley.
The fool still ran in a straight line, and the pink suit gave me an easy target as I wound up for a fastball. I released the blazing orb and it hurtled straight for the target, building speed and energy along the way. The sparking amethyst ball crashed into the demon’s back, ripping through the pink suit, smashing through his rib cage and shredding his internal organs.
The demon imploded into a puddle of boiling black liquid, vanishing instantly as the purple orb, dripping in dark demon blood, dissipated in mid-air before it could hurt anyone else. I sighed, realizing my magic hadn’t let me and the people of Pittsburgh down. Due to my nervousness, I wasn’t even using my Latin phrases to activate it, which was a great sign that my powers were increasing.
I went to investigate the mystery blanket.
As I closed in on the brown cover, I saw that it was moving around, almost shaking. I kept my magic at the surface, ready for another attack from a demon or angry beast. I threw off the covering and jumped back.
A shivering man in a full gray suit with a dark complexion, beard and mustache, looked up at me, horrified. He stammered in an incoherent fashion, “I’m sorry. I thought it was today. I just...I just...thought it was today. I’ll get rid of the box. I swear they will never find it. I swear. Just don’t kill me. Tell Harold I’m sorry.”
That’s a lot to unpack. Starting from the beginning, I asked, “Thought what was today?”
He tried to pull the blanket back over himself, but I wouldn’t let him, shaking his shoulder to get him to snap out of it. “What did you think was today? Who’s Harold? What box?” I demanded.
He just shook his head rapidly in frightened silence. A sudden whack on the side of my knee made me drop to both knees. Spinning around painfully, I noticed that another skipjo in demon form had arrived and was assaulting me with a cane.
Where’d he come from? The dumpster? Or are they shadow dancers too?
The much smaller demon wound up for a crushing blow to my head.
Reaching up at the last moment, I caught the hickory cane in my hand. Using my strength advantage, I pulled the demon in closer, but not too close. Skipjos supposedly had poisonous, razor-sharp needles on their flat, molar-style teeth.
Drawing him in with the cane, I sprang up from my knees and unleashed a wild uppercut, catching his reptilian chin with an unexpected blow. The crunch of bone, followed by several flat brown teeth hitting the pavement, sounded like sweet music to my ears. The demon dropped like a sack of rocks, unconscious.
I wasn’t a violent person, but I needed to keep the streets safe of demons. Using my throbbing right hand, I picked up his erstwhile cane and teed off on the demon’s elongated head until I heard his skull pop.
He turned into a black liquid and dissolved steamily into the chilly morning air. I went back to the kidnapped human to try to figure out what the demons were using him for. He’d covered back up, and I ripped away the blanket.
Oh shit.
The human had shifted into a demon.
Or a demon had shifted into a human and now reverted.
Chapter 2
I SENSED A GREAT DEAL of magic coming from the demon that I hadn’t when he was in human form. That didn’t make any sense.
The seven-foot-tall beast had obsidian, loose leathery skin, but his face was deep burgundy. He had an upturned pig’s nose and no lips to hide his brown, sharpened teeth. His giant pointed e
ars and the tiny silver spikes covering his entire head made for a nasty-looking creature. I needed to beware of his long, deadly claws, highlighted by the rising sun.
Not wasting time, I manipulated the elements in front of me into a super heavy pocket of air again. I whipped it at the oncoming demon. He didn’t detect it and the pocket crashed into him, launching him into the dumpster, ringing it like a bell.
The demon jumped up as if nothing had happened and took off down the alley. He had a small, stumpy tail that flapped wildly as his thunderous steps carried the enormous body toward a group of people at the end of the alley. His awkward running style allowed me to catch up quickly. I dove in the air, slammed my chest into his back, wrapped my arms around the demon’s torso and toppled to the ground along with him.
The shifter rolled around, trying to get back to his feet. Acting fast, I used my knee to move the huge demon onto his back and started choking him. I dug my fingers and thumbs in as far as I could and wouldn’t relent. Maneuvering into a crouched stance, I used my feet to hold down the demon’s arms and avoid his long claws.
Surprisingly, the demon didn’t have much strength and just flopped around, wheezing and coughing.
Wait, was this a human being taken over by a demonic spirit? Perhaps a spiritual infestation? I can’t kill innocent humans per the rules of my duties. I was torn on what to do as I stared into the desperate, burning orange eyes of the demon.
No. I couldn’t let something like this roam the streets, wreaking havoc.
Keeping a firm grip, I watched as life slowly ebbed from the demon, his spastic movements grinding to a halt. Just as his eyes were about to roll back in his head, something or someone landed on my back and bit my shoulder. Hard.
“Motherfu...” I screamed.
I relinquished my death grip on the huge demon and turned my attention to the skipjo on my back. I reached behind me and ripped the smaller demon down. He fell onto his back, and before he could wriggle away, I jammed the sole of my left shoe into his long, skinny neck.
The skipjo struggled, scratching at my jeans and shoe, attempting to make it stop. His jaw snapped wildly, trying to get at my ankle. I shifted my weight to the left to end this nonsense.
About ten seconds later, the demon went limp and turned into a puddle of dark liquid. I jumped back, not knowing if that mist could be dangerous. I dug my left hand into my hoodie, rubbed my shoulder and pulled it out.