Title: Sin Eaters
Series: Apocrypha, Book One
Author: Kathryne Lentes
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 05/27/2025
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 52700
Genre: Urban Fantasy, sci-fi/fantasy, action, urban fantasy, bisexual, lesbian, mercenary, hacker, Fae, undead, vampire, Ireland, Chicago
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Description
Apocrypha is a Sin Eater, a mercenary who does all the jobs the corporations do not want anybody to know about that need to get done. She is an experienced operative who thought she had seen it all, but this time, she is up against cyborgs, elves, and the undead, all the while trying to break in a new partner. The stakes have never been higher, because if she doesn’t complete the mission, her father will pay the ultimate price.Excerpt
Sin Eaters
Kathryne Lentes © 2025
All Rights Reserved
The young woman looked at the growing crowd of children; they had come back every day and brought more friends each time. Some liked her stories, some just wanted to be part of the group, and a select few listened and were getting close to understanding. Not too close, she hoped; she knew what came from complete understanding and wanted to let them enjoy their youth more than she had.
“Any questions before we start today?”
“What’s your name?”
“How did you get in here?”
“Why is your hair so many colors?”
“Will you go out with me?” That one was new; she must have started attracting an older audience without noticing it.
She thought about the questions. She had not given a name at these events yet and hesitated. She had gone by many names, some inappropriate in this setting. Crossroads thought about using the name she had been given by her parents, but she couldn’t; that was all she had left from them, and she could not share it. She thought about where her life had begun and said, “Crossroads.”
“Crossroads—that’s a stupid name.”
She glared at the child in the front row, and he closed his mouth. She continued, “My stage name is Crossroads; you know, like a band has a name they perform under. How I got here… Well, there are not many places I can’t go if I put my mind to it. As to the hair, well, that is a long story, and I am not dating anyone now, no matter how cute they are.” She finished with a wink toward the teenager in the back row. That should give him some points with his classmates for a day or two. “I have come here to tell you a story. The story is of this world and how it got to be the way it is.”
“We know that story. Our teachers taught us that.” Another look at the kid in the front row; she was starting to think he was going to be trouble.
“And what did they tell you?”
“The aliens came and destroyed the world, and only the people who were safe in the biospheres survived. That’s us; everybody else is dead or has turned into a monster.”
“That is an interesting story, and I am sure they would not lie to you, but let me tell you a different story. If you don’t believe me, then just remember it as a fantasy to think about when you are daydreaming.”
She put down the guitar she had been idly tuning while she spoke and stood up. She was tall for a woman at five-ten, and many years of performing had taught her to have a commanding presence, and the children quieted down as they approached the center of the makeshift stage. She pulled back her long rainbow-tinted hair and twirled it into a bun with a pencil, a trick she had learned from her mother, who had been a librarian of sorts.
“The world has not always been as it is. That statement is true of almost any age, as Dickens said.” This time, she froze the child in the front row before he could ask who Dickens was. “But times do not usually change as quickly as they did in the last ten years. Your parents created this place before the time of change. They thought the world was going to hell and wanted to divorce themselves from the outside. Then came the visitors, the aliens as you call them, and as they say, all bets were off. The war was terrible and cost more lives than most people can count. It also made a shift in the very laws that people thought regulated the world. The visitors had highly advanced technology and weapons that seemed to be more powerful than imagined. They rained destruction on the world, took thousands of people hostage, and performed experiments on them to see the range of our genetic code. They were amazed at what potential we had within us; just as it is almost impossible to see that a wolf and a poodle are cousins, so you could not look at many of these people and recognize them as human. This was the first mistake they made because many of these Cybreds, as they were to be called, broke free and fought the invaders with their newfound abilities.
“Your parents were not the only ones who fled the cities. There was a mass exodus to places of worship and sanctuary; the Vatican, Stonehenge, Cahokia Mounds, and the Masjid al-Haram all were soon surrounded by teeming masses seeking solace in the old ways to save them. The visitors thought these were military enclaves and sent fire from the sky to consume them. Then a strange thing happened; there were some deaths but not as many as there should have been. The holy places seemed to take in the energy, and the ley lines erupted.” She made no face at the kid in front; she wanted him to ask the question.
“There’s no such thing as a ley line. You made that up?”
“Have your teachers taught you about latitude and longitude, lines drawn around the world that sailors of old used to navigate the globe? Ley lines are the lines of power surrounding the earth, but they hold the life force of that planet; they hold its magic. The power of the weapons filled the lines, and they erupted, spilling out the magic they held and creating the Manna Sphere. A source of energy that the strong-willed and skilled could manipulate…”
A host of children started to open their mouths at this but stopped as a glowing nimbus of energy appeared over her outstretched palm. It widened and opened to seemingly become a hole in the air, a hole that appeared to lead to somewhere…elsewhere.
“The power does not just exist in an active state. It also affects things passively. Changelings have started to appear, babies born to normal parents whose appearance and abilities match those of races thought extinct or just a product of myth and legend. It also had an effect on diseases, creating new ones that rob a person of all semblances of life save the hunger for flesh. These diseases have consumed the country of Australia and there the world is just as your teachers describe it. But there are other places such as England, which has become a new home for all changelings and where magic has transformed it.”
The children listened intently, and their eyes were fixated on the sphere, which showed scenes corresponding to the vistas she told them of.
“Not all people are so accepting of the new things. Europe has banned either changelings or Cybreds from having any form of citizenship. America is a divided place; some people live in biospheres like you do, cutting themselves off from any outside contact, while others embrace the new frontiers we have been shown. Some parts of America have even greatly benefited from the Manna Sphere, such as the Alliance of Tribes, who have taken back parts of the lands they once lived on. The other people who have gained are the criminal element who were swift to bring those with dark gifts into their organization. Now they truly deserve the name the underworld.”
Some of the children had begun to back up as the visions in the sphere turned dark.
“The world is not all safe and quiet. I would be a fool to tell you it is, but I am letting you know that you have a choice between what you have and what you could have.”
The portal winked out of existence and the children snapped out of their reverie. A moment later, a terrible shouting came from the back of the crowd. Five men in long gray dusters that marked them as Pilgrims, the law enforcement arm of the biosphere corporation, yelled at the children to disperse as they moved toward Crossroads.
“Took you long enough, guys. Minneapolis found me in three days, and it took you guys a whole week.”
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Meet the Author
Kathryne Lentes has been writing stories as long as she could hold a pen in her hand. She is a transwoman who, when not working on her own projects, operates Paper Phoenix Ink, a blog showcasing queer creators. She is currently living in Saint Louis with her wife, two cats, and a pile of science fiction and fantasy books.Website | Facebook | Twitter
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