Sequel: Chiaroscuro
Status: Book I

Tenebrism

Hands grabbed my wrists and pinned me down to my bed, and I was too stunned and sick and dizzy to fight back. All I could see was this goddamn face looming over me, all pale eyes and sharp features set in a hard expression. There was a pattern around the face's left eye, like a really dark tattoo or maybe what your buddies would do to you if you passed out at a party and there were Sharpies around. Then the face leaned back, and I saw light sliding over plates of dark metal and reddish-black leather.

It was the statue. No, seriously, the fucking statue. The statue I’d kissed and then had imagined coming alive. But it was alive. It was in my room. Practically in my bed. Holding me down by the arms. And then, it
talked to me.

“Alan,” it said, in a calm voice that cut through the fog in my head and sent weird shivers down my back. “Come with me.”

When his friends drunkenly dare him to kiss a statue in a cemetery on Halloween night, average college student Alan Creer doesn't think it's any big deal. And when the statue suddenly comes to life under Alan's touch, he figures it was his imagination or all the alcohol; definitely not something real. But the armored warrior who shows up in his apartment the next morning sure is, and it's demanding his help. And pretty soon, Alan is dealing with two alien soldiers who have powerful magical abilities, and an equally powerful enemy that's close on their heels.

Not to mention that he's maybe getting some kind of crush on one of the aliens, or that he's got magical abilities of his own that he's not great at keeping in check, and there's the threat of an interplanetary war that may be coming to Earth. Suddenly Alan's life isn't so average anymore.

[contains m/m; rated mostly for language]