Greetings, readers!
Today I am featuring a chapter excerpt from “The Mighty Quinn” by Paula R. Stiles, published by Dark Continents Publishing.

Here’s the plot description (from Goodreads):

There’s a milk truck on the US/Canadian border with a detonated nuclear bomb that didn’t explode and a pile of mummy dust for a driver. Vermont Homeland Security Agent Nan Carreira is having quite the morning and she hasn’t even met her witness yet. Quinn Bolcan just got out of Vancouver, in a hurry and under a dark cloud. The last thing he was looking for in Vermont was trouble and that’s the first thing he found. Soon, he and Carreira will be neck-deep in black helicopters, low-rent necromancers, zombie suicide bombers, and vengeful were-bikers. And that’s just the beginning because Quinn is a wild card in a league all his own.

I’d passed forty before it occurred to me I might be taking a few wrong turns in life. I was running a grow-op on the East Side down on 14th Street, in the basement of a Vancouver Special that had seen better days, when this revelation struck me. I knew a guy in one of the gangs who wanted a favor and offered me a job. He was usually a good buddy and he knew I was calm and reliable. They had a guard dog. I liked dogs. When I met the dog, she liked me. So, I was hired. Then came the raid. It was around midnight that I woke up and came out in the dark to check on the plants.

The dog alerted me first. She was growling. Puzzled, I flicked on the light–to see a guy standing there in SWAT gear holding a rifle aimed at my head. Problem for him was that the dog’s teeth were about five centimeters from his crotch…and his foot was raised right over one of the metal plates that the grow-op owners had implanted as part of their security system. Step on that and he’d get fried.

Startled, I jumped and grabbed the live wire that led to the rest of the system. I got a jolt from it that woke me up like a cup of coffee and drained the rest of the house. Couldn’t have done that a month ago.

The dog yelped and there was a bit of a light show as stray electricity sparked and hissed. In the ringing silence, I heard, “Oh, fuck.”

My thoughts exactly, Officer Friendly.

I had to give the guy credit. Even with his foot this side of electrocution, a freaked-out guard dog ready to chew on his balls and a big-ass gun in his arms, the guy didn’t fire. I said the first thing that popped into my head: “Please don’t shoot the dog, okay? She’s a good dog, just a little upset, you know?”

I heard a sigh from the other end of the room. “Look, I tell you what. Call the dog off and get out and I’ll pretend you weren’t here.”

I thought briefly about how that was going to look to my nameless bosses, then how they’d probably throw me to the wolves if I did get arrested, and I decided that the Devil of a gang was probably better
than the Deep Blue Sea of law enforcement, law enforcement being the biggest gang on the block, after all. I called the dog to me and I got the hell out of there.

By morning, I’d decided it was time to get out of town for a while until things cooled down without my help.

About the Author:
Possessing a quixotic fondness for difficult careers, Paula Stiles has driven ambulances, taught fish farming for the Peace Corps in West Africa and earned a Scottish PhD in medieval history, studying Templars and non-Christians in Spain. She is the author of horror novel, “The Mighty Quinn,” co-written supernatural mystery novels, “Fraterfamilias” and the upcoming “Confraternitas,” and the non-fiction medieval history book, “Templar Convivencia: Templars and Their Associates in 12th and 13th Century Iberia.” She is Editor in Chief of the Lovecraft/Mythos ‘zine/micropress Innsmouth Free Press. You can find her online here.