Jonathan_Maberry

From the prologue of TALES FROM THE FIRE ZONE by Jonathan Maberry (Bram Stoker Award-winning author of GHOST ROAD BLUES, DEAD MAN'S SONG and BAD MOON RISING).
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When kings are born or die the heavens rain down fire and lions are seen in the streets; but how does creation acknowledge the death and rebirth of the soul of an ordinary man? On the night that he stopped being Jim Smith and became Indigo Heart no comets ignited the sky, the dawn did not tremble as he opened his eyes. Instead, as he slept, the universe sent him dreams of the Fire Zone.
He’d dreamed of it before in bits and pieces but that night he spent every sleeping moment in the Zone. The dreams were complex and even when he was aware that he was dreaming he didn’t understand all of it. It was like stepping through Alice’s looking glass without having read the book.
And yet…
When he woke he had only a few broken moments of memory, and the awake Jim Smith and the dreaming Jim Smith shared just a flicker of understanding. It was like primitive man and future man both looking at a spark floating on the air and sharing an understanding of fire.
When he’d awakened that morning he’d risen to the top of his dreams and broke the surface tension like a swimmer fighting against an undertow. Sweating, breathing hard he sat on the edge of the bed, hating the morning and remembering only pieces of the dream.
He’d rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, not yet realizing that his trembling fingers were painted with magic.