Rise of the Transgenics by
JS Frankel
(Catnip #2)
Published 15th of March 2015
by Devine Destinies
224 pages
YA paranormal fantasy action
romance
”I told you, don’t call me
Miss Kitty.” Harry Goldman, young genius, DNA researcher and still a nerd, is
back, and this time he’s working for the law. At the end of Catnip, his
girlfriend, Anastasia, devolved into a cat. He manages to bring her back to her
half-human form, but no sooner does he do so than a new problem surfaces. Two
other transgenics emerge, and they are out for blood. Harry and Anastasia have
to face off against Lyudmila, another cat-girl, and Piotr, a half-rhino,
half-boar monstrosity that lives to kill. And if that isn’t bad enough, the
police, lynch mobs, and underground dwellers are after Harry and his girlfriend
as well. With time running out, they embark on a treacherous journey to the Ukraine
in order to solve the riddle of Anastasia’s DNA, a journey that could also cost
both of them their lives.
LINKS
Excerpt
January
sixteenth, night, an alleyway in Manhattan
Nick Winter shook the snow
off his tattered overcoat and zipped his jeans up after taking a leak in the
corner of the alley. He shivered as he breathed in the cold January night air.
Checking out his environment, the narrow place filled with trash, boxes,
discarded bottles and more that served as his home, he saw no one and no
shadows. Nothing indicated that any trouble was coming his way.
However, this was New York
City—a back alley in downtown Manhattan—so anything could happen, and he needed
to stay alert.
Another shiver ran through
him, and he cursed the New Year’s weather.
He also cursed the fact that
his coat was not nearly thick enough to keep out the icy fingers that
threatened to freeze him on the spot. Good thing in a way that it was cold, as
it kept him alert, although he figured drinking some wine wouldn’t be a bad
idea. It would ward off the night chill.
He looked up at the moon. It
had to be around two in the morning, but he had no spare money. Since no one
was going to drop in and deposit a bottle of Thunderbird in his lap, he decided
to curl up in his box shelter and wait it out until he could forage for
something later in the morning. It would be a little warmer then.
Wintertime was a bane to the
homeless. He had nowhere to go, as the shelters were often filled to the brim.
On top of that, even if you did get a place to flop, they were dangerous
places. He figured he was better off staying just where he was. If danger
didn’t factor into the equation, there simply weren’t enough places to go
around, so what was a homeless person expected to do, ask for a reservation?
Nick knew he stood a good
six-two and weighed in the neighborhood of a muscular two-twenty, not bad for
being forty-two. However, a person never knew what kind of nutballs would be
there. No one except the truly brave or foolhardy would mess with junkies,
crack-heads, and all-around losers. They could be carrying knives or brass
knuckles. He’d even heard of one guy who carried around a bottle of acid and
liked tossing it at his victims. A snort of disgust erupted from his nostrils
at that last point. No thanks, he’d take his chances in the open.
Unconsciously, his right
hand strayed to his ripped jeans pocket. The heft of his switchblade gave him a
measure of comfort. Taking it from his pocket, he depressed the trigger and the
blade sprang out. Ka-ching. He’d found it during his trash-bin travels,
probably tossed away by someone on the run, and made it his own. Examining the
blade in the moonlight, he marveled at its cleanliness, heft, sharpness, and
the fact that it could slice through anything.
While he could handle
himself well enough hand-to-hand, this was his insurance. It was five inches of
lethal steel, all at the touch of his fingertips. If anyone tried something,
something bad, they’d get it. A guy had to protect himself these days. It
wasn’t a question of being able to fight. He knew how and had fought off anyone
and everyone in the past. His turf was his turf and he was prepared to go to
war in order to defend it. He had defended it on numerous occasions and always
won, too, but these days it paid to be prepared.
Confident in his abilities,
he said to himself, “You’re the man. You’ve taken on the best and beat
everyone.”
A second later, though, a
thought intruded to dash his false sense of invincibility and he muttered, “No,
not everyone.”
With another slight shiver
at the memory, he folded the knife up and stowed it in his pocket. Hunkered
down inside his triple-layered box home, he thought about the night—that
night—the night when his perspective on what reality really meant had changed
forever. There were tough men and women out there, but this person hadn’t been
a person.
She was a cat-girl. Six
months back, he’d been in the same alley during the summer, sharing the space
with his friend, George. She’d dropped in—literally. That was impossible, as no
one could move so silently and quickly. Yet she had, and she’d whacked him
around but good. She did the same with his alley mate, and he stood around
six-six and weighed two-eighty, so it wasn’t as if it had been an unfair fight.
It had been an unfair fight,
though. This girl—cat-girl—moved faster than anything he’d ever seen. She was
also very strong, easily twice as strong as he was. While she could have easily
sliced both of them up—she did George’s arms, sliced them up like deli meat—in
the end, she just knocked the large man out. “I just want to find something to
eat,” she’d told him.
Then off she’d gone to
forage in a nearby dumpster like any cat would...but she was no cat, and he
knew it.
Others
in the series
Catnip
About the Author
J.S. Frankel was born in
Toronto, Ontario, many years ago, and managed to scrape through university,
earning his degree in English Literature.
In 1988, he moved to Japan
to begin his career of teaching English conversation to anyone brave enough to
step into his classroom. In 1997, he married the charming Akiko Koike, and
their union produced two sons, Kai and Ray. Frankel and family make their home in
Osaka,, where he teaches English conversation by day and writes until the wee
hours of the morning. He is the author of Catnip, Catnip 2: Rise of the
Transgenics, Death Bytes, Twisted, and the Lindsay/Jo Trilogy. Next to his
family, writing remains his greatest love.
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