A sullen sun, tired and heavy, settled on the Locata mountain ridge. It lay there like a man dying, bleeding pastel oranges and pinks out across the cloud streaked sky and down the purple shadows below.

These last moments before night were the most beaut…

Fear is a man, which made things a lot more complicated.

Deuce was only half sure that he could beat the Lance Rigaud on the quick draw and he knew they were dead even on the ability to hit the intended target.

The guns of the era were not the most accu…

Overseeing the meeting was their old mentor and senpai, Shrarl Glorlushuprlahh, known as Pop. He raised his twin hands in blessing.

"Kill 'em!" he benedicted. "Wade hip deep in their blood!"

Defiant shouts from both sides echoed through the rafters and …

Right on time, too: 4:03 AM, according to the almanac. O Sumo Garcia-Murry, or OSGM for short. But nobody said that. That sounded stupid.

O was the perfect person to bind this team together. Even Con felt braver when she showed up, nodding to everyone unt…

Orange was in like a shot. It didn't matter what kind of shot. Orange was always looking for some action, which was what drew him to movie production in the first place. Right now he was working on a tracking shot, and had almost found his quarry. After t…

They agreed to five posse members per team, not counting Con and Tor, the leaders of the temporary pax. Tory thumbed her mobile phone and, after several months, assembled a cracked team of heisters: Turbo Lean (the speedster), Andreas Ut (the fireworks ex…

"What?" he demanded, sick of all the verbiage I've been spewing like someone spewing something.

"Sweetling," Tory signaled with her flags, "It's time for a resolution. We've been at it like frogs for too many years. We're both more than a hundred years ol…

Tory drew a line in the sand that covered the table. What a filthy restaurant. Don't go.

"It's like this, Connie," she began. And then she continued. "Like this." she went on, adding nothing to the sentence that had gone before. "Just listen to this," she…

"The time has come," Tory said, "to speak of manly things. First, I want to return the unicorn horn you left at my place back in '78. Here."

Connie took it graciously, smiling bitterly. "My point exactly," he intoned. "But what's yours, Tory?"

I'll have t…

As the music changed to The Bobs' "Zombie Jamboree," so too did the mood of the two ex-lovers change from one of tentative friendliness to one of more serious feeling. It was time for the vocalizations of turkeys; the time of refreshment was over.

"One mo…

After tipping his hat, the hat took their orders and went back to the kitchen. Pips let out a soft snort, shaking his head gently to and fro. "That hat's probably either your kid, or mine," he said nostalgically. "And here we all are here...at Scooper's. …

Tory was staring up at the slanted mirror hooked to the ceiling; Pips's gaze was fixed on the shattered remains of his mocha flagon, in twenty-three pieces on the floor. As the CD unit restarted with "You're my Everything," their eyes started in towards e…

Old Tory Adore may not seem like much now, but let me tell you, back in the day, Tory was a woman to reckon with. When she trod the streets of Fentriss, New Jersey, brother, you could hear people scurryin' away. Her frogskin boots jingled remorselessly as…