STORM
Bernard Lee DeLeo
(Independently published, Aug. 30, 2019)
The FBI blackmailed Storm Crandall; but only after Storm hacked their database. At sixteen, she’s under cover at a high school, looking for clues involving five missing girls. Besides computer skills, Storm has game in the magic department. A sect of the Temple of Set soon finds out power comes in many guises. With two FBI agents posing as her parents in the city of Warren, Ohio, Storm finds love, allies, and tragedy in her hunt for answers. By fulfilling her end of the bargain, Storm can buy her way out of spending the days until her eighteenth birthday in a juvenile detention facility.The FBI agents discover their young charge can do more than type fast. Their first encounter with the creature behind the disappearances shows the agents they need Storm for far more than information gathering as a high school spy. With Storm’s FBI handlers shadowing her every movement and conversation, small breakthroughs in the case come to light. Three girls from the high school visit Perkins Park at night where the disappearances had happened, playing a dangerous game of dare. Two of the girls, Nancy Alverson and Chris Vasquez, leave their friend Carol Wangden alone in the park after an argument. They walk to the local Burger King only blocks away, hoping for a ride from Logan Stanfield. Finding Storm there with Tracy Washington, they explain the game they had been playing. Logan drives to the park with Storm and Tracy to find Carol. Agents Dixon and Holloway, listening in, head for the park too. Logan holds off the monster they find chasing down Carol long enough for Storm to cast an impromptu invocation which disperses the demon in front her companions.Teaming up with the enigmatic Logan, Storm begins unraveling a horror no one anticipated. When the case morphs from serial kidnapping into a supernatural witch hunt, Storm and her friends, under the guidance of the FBI agents, scramble to stay alive while tracking down monsters both human and inhuman.