Author Spotlight! Mason Sabre - The Rise of the Phoenix

The Rise of the Phoenix: A Society Novella

Cast out by his own family after a wolf’s bite infects him, a young thirteen-year-old boy is forced to roam the streets and fend for himself. In a world of Humans and Others, he belongs to neither. No longer considered Human, but nor a purebred Other, a race of powerful supernatural beings, he will be unwanted and hunted by both.
Danger lurks at every turn. Young, vulnerable and afraid, he tries to come to terms with the physical changes taking place in him while at the same time trying to find a way to survive.
In a menacing world filled with threats and hate, is there any hope of salvation for this orphaned fledgling?

Phoenix

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Snippets from The Rise of the Phoenix

**The boy didn’t think. They were one now - boy and wolf. He was in a partially shifted form, hands deformed paws with claws. One snatched out, fast. It connected with cloth and flesh. Guttural screams pierced the air. The boy didn’t let go. He dug deeper, thrusting his hand up and out. He wrapped his clawed fingers around something soft, warm and wet, and then he pulled with everything he had in him. He let out a feral scream of his own. Blood spurted all over him, covering his face, going into his mouth and igniting the hunger that he had denied for so long.

The boy was beyond it now. The wolf had emerged fully. His nostrils flared as he rolled onto his side. Hunger so deep drove his mind to the brink of madness, and he brought his hand to his mouth and bit down onto what he was holding. Desperation made him force flesh and tissue into his mouth. Pushing each part in until he was almost choking. He pushed in more than he could ever dare to chew, but his mouth changed shape, the large teeth now forcing his mouth open. His bones pushed out, forming a wolf’s snout. He could hear screams and cries, but he could no longer feel the blows against him. He rose up - half boy, half wolf. His bag was on the ground and next to him lay Fat boy...his stomach torn open, his arms and legs twitching.

Almost retching, the boy snatched up his bag and ran.

** “You can do it?”

“Yes. You want to? Give me your arm and I’ll show you.” Robert grinned then and the boy watched as teeth elongated from the top of his gums, until they were like that of a small dog. His eyes had shifted, too. It made the boy excited, but a little afraid as well. “It won’t hurt, probably won’t even work,” Robert said, but with difficulty now, his teeth making it hard to talk. “Your arm?”

The boy chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment and stared at Robert’s eyes and then his teeth. Wouldn’t it be great to do it? “Okay, but I don’t want my mum to know,” he breathed. He slipped off his wet coat and then unbuttoned his shirt to allow it to slip from his shoulder. He offered his bare upper arm to Robert, his stomach twisting in excitement.

Robert stepped forward, opened his mouth and sunk his teeth into the boy’s young flesh.

** As he walked, he used games to pass time and keep his mind occupied. He counted steps as he walked, making himself walk one hundred steps and then one hundred more. He wondered how long it would take to get to a thousand. When he finally did, he aimed for another, and then another, until he reached ten thousand steps, then fifteen. He became so engrossed in his game that he stopped to get out a notebook and mark off every new hundred, challenging himself to just do one more set.

The notebook had been a gift from his mother. A reward, she had said, for doing well in his test at school. On the cover was a Phoenix. “It’s a bird,” she had told him with a smile. “They never die. Not properly. They rise from the ashes of their old lives and start a new one. Like a new chapter.” He had loved the idea of that. He had used the book to write his stories, lying on his bed, his pencil in hand and his imagination running faster than his hand could write.