Villains Pride (The Shadow Master Book 2) Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael K. Gibson

  Published by

  Amber Cove Publishing

  PO Box 9605

  Chesapeake, VA 23321

  Cover design by Raffaele Marinetti

  Visit his online gallery at http://www.raffaelemarinetti.it/

  Cover lettering by Michael K. Gibson

  Book design by Jim Bernheimer

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Visit the author’s website at www.mkgibson.com

  First Publication: November 2017

  Dedication and Acknowledgments

  I continue to be amazed and humbled that I get to live my dream by writing. A massive and heartfelt “Thank you” to the people who continue to read and support me. As always, I thank my wife and editor Valerie. Without her support and skills, my books would be nothing more than an incoherent string of jokes, off-topic narratives, and poorly constructed sentences. To my son Jack . . . man, you’re too young to be reading this. I love you, “Rabbit.” To my publisher, Jim Bernheimer, you continue to take chances on me. Thank you, brother.

  Now, I sadly must give equal time to the star of the Shadowmaster Series, Jackson Blackwell. You’ve been warned.

  - MK Gibson

  Greetings simpletons,

  You know what the best part about being me is? Well, not being you, for starters. Aside from that, having vast wealth, power, and influence are totes cool. I’d say you should try it, but come on . . . you’re you. Plus, as I am a fictional being, I get to say things Gibby can’t. So, I would like to dedicate my second recorded adventure to a few choice people out there. Ahem . . .

  - To the “Unknown Author” who called my first adventure “vulgar”: Thou shouldst fornicate with thyself. (See, I can be fuckin’ classy when I need to be.)

  - To “Daffy”: While I appreciate your attempt to read Book 1, to your trying to ignore a few grammar mistakes which have “become an overriding annoyance in today's writing” I say: Well lah-di-dah, look at you. I hope you get a nosebleed from your soapbox.

  - To “Jimmy Junior”: Man, aren’t you a hate-filled little goblin? I’d make fun of you, but apparently life already has. Sorry about your buyer’s remorse … but thanks for the money!

  - To “Uneven Effort”: Are . . . are you dense? Pointing out mistakes and then making them is why it’s funny. Almost as if I’m not as smart as I think I am? Almost, dare I say, as if I’m in a comedy book? Wocka wocka?

  - To “Daddy-O”: Far-fetched, you say? Poor characters, you say? Idiotic twists and turns? The story makes one want to shoot themselves in the head for listening to it?! Oh, “Daddy-O,” where did the bad man touch you? There’s this thing called Prozac. Look into it. Peace be with you.

  - To “Only Got Halfway Through”: Where’s your chutzpah? At least “Meh” had the sticktoitiveness to gut my tale out. Sure, he also gave me a two-star rating, but at least he finished. Slacker.

  - To “Imagination But Poorly Executed”: A unique character in a generic fantasy setting going through the cliché moments of the world was the point. Do you also say “Man, this water is wet, what gives?”

  - To “Not Publishable Material”: HA! Well, joke’s on you! No, seriously, I totally make fun of you during the prologue.

  And finally, to all the rest of you snarky would-be critics: I dare you to try to create something in your lives. Other than the abject failure and misery you already excrete.

  Shadowmaster . . . out!

  - JJ Blackwell

  Foreword

  Pre-Prologue

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Where I Counsel Cthulhu, Procrastinate, and Entertain the Thought of Killing Dr. Phil

  Chapter Two

  Where I Endure Couples Therapy, Pick the Wrong Time to Drink Scotch, and Further the Plot

  Chapter Three

  Where I Re-Introduce Myself, Suffer SUV Trauma, and Juggle a Three-Way Conversation

  Chapter Four

  Where I Scold A Faded Beauty and Ponder the Aerodynamic Impracticality of Giant Wieners and Big Boobs

  Chapter Four and a Half

  Where My Naming Application Hits a Slight Hiccup

  Chapter Five

  Where I Restate My Code, Announce My Presence to the World, and Kill a Few Heroes

  Chapter Five and a Half

  Where I Make An Impression

  Chapter Six

  Where I Set Up Shop, Vomit Forth Some Good-Natured Misogyny, and Make a Bet

  Chapter Seven

  Where I Fume About App Functionality, Pitch a TV Cancellation, and Meet a Man Named Wendell

  Chapter Eight

  Where I Make a Deal and Stand Aside for Proper Parenting Lessons

  Chapter Nine

  Where I Break in My New Assistant and Ponder the Repercussions for Black Coffee Drinkers

  Chapter Ten

  Where I Address Supervillains, Mock Higher Education, and Bring People Together

  Chapter Eleven

  Where I Reminisce About Childhood Lessons, Assemble a Ruling Body, and Drop the Mic

  Chapter Twelve

  Where I Defeat a Caped Crusader Via Paperwork and Have an Argument

  Chapter Thirteen

  Where I Confront Rich Heroes, Toast My Success, and Exploit the Help

  Chapter Fourteen

  Where I Compare Combat to Sex, Mock White Guilt, and Perform a Callback

  Chapter Fourteen and a Half

  Where I Do So Love Being Me

  Chapter Fifteen

  Where I Nakedly Resurrect Disco, Confront My Assistant, and Pass Out

  Chapter Sixteen

  Where I Awake in a New Land, Empower Women, and Gain a New Disciple

  Chapter Seventeen

  Where I Search for my Missing Minions, Find My Least Favorite, and Mock NASCAR

  Chapter Eighteen

  Where I Am Rebooted, Explain Pegging, and Get into a Pissing Match

  Chapter Nineteen

  Where I Turn Down an Advance, People Watch, Shit on the Last Sixty Years of American History, and Appreciate Fine Art

  Chapter Twenty

  Where I Talk, Smoke, and Let Blue Balls Get the Best of Me

  Chapter Twenty and a Half

  Where I Do Not Care for Your Judgy Eyes

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Where I Joyfully Wallow In Post-Coital Fluids, Chat with Lydia, and End the World

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Where I Snub Sophia, Interrupt Origins, and Scare an Elderly Couple

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Where I Am Exhausted, Discover a LARPer Among Us, and Plan for a War

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Where It Feels Like Deja Vu All Over Again

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Where I Bring Villains to Heel, Do Something I’ve Wanted To Do Since 2008, and Equate Psychosis with the Muppets

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Where I Serve Refreshments, Squash a Bug, Debate Architecture, and Throw Shade at Purple

  Chapter Twenty-Six and a Half

  Where the Joke’s on You

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Where I Teach You a Thing or Two

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Where I Anger a Djinn, Mock Counterculture, and Flick My Own Nutsack

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Where I Foil a Hit Squad, Reveal the Truth About James Bond, and J
ump off a Building

  Chapter Thirty

  Where I am Rescued, Escape, and Offer Boston Back to the British

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Where the War is about to Begin, The Teams Arrive, and I Play More Killer 70’s Music

  Chapter Thirty-One and a Half

  Where I Reveal My Real Powers and Explain the Facts of Life

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Where Reality Rules, Comedy Abounds, and Romance Blossoms

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Where I Take a Victory Lap, Build a Throne, and Get Arrested

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Where I Meet My Enemy and Things Do NOT Go My Way for Once

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Where Randolph Blackwell Rises as the New Shadow Master . . . WTF???

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Where I Am Alive and Well, Monologue to Randy, and Tell Him, Indirectly, to Eat a Dick

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Where I Discuss the Consequences of Gravity and an Ill-Timed Monologue

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Where I Reap the Rewards of Justice, Ponder the Reality that People May Not Like Me, and Receive a Message

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Where I Take the Plunge, Experience a Miracle, and Get Bamboozled

  Epilogue

  Where I Reveal Consequences and Surprises and Get My First Review

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Foreword

  Where I thank everyone for being faithful audiobook listeners

  Greetings, audiobook Listeners! I have had the pleasure of narrating these fantastic adventures that you are now listening to on your way home from work, walking the dog, or at the gym. And I want to thank you for--

  Wait. This isn’t the audiobook? And this foreword won’t even be in the audiobook? Well what the fuck?

  So not only did Gibson not offer to pay me anything for writing this, those who do pay for the version I narrate won’t even hear this? What kind of shit is that?

  Oh, I know what it is. It’s all you ebook readers. Those of you who carry your Kindle around and have 300 books that you are never going to read loaded onto it. And worse, you probably waited until the book was 99 cents or some bargain basement price because “why should I pay full price for an ebook when I don’t get a physical copy?” Yeah, genius, because the cost of the book is only about the paper it’s printed on. It has NOTHING to do with the time and resources it took to actually write and edit the book. And do you know how much a cover costs? A lot! Well, maybe not the cover for Villains Rule because that was the biggest What-The-Fuck-Am-I-Reading cover that the artist clearly phoned in. Maybe, just MAYBE, if you forked over more than .99 cents for a book, authors could afford better covers. Maybe skip that $5 calorie bomb Starbucks latte and support a writer?

  And if you tell me that you pirated this version, I swear to god, I’m going to punch a baby.

  Oh but maybe you’re reading this in paperback. Oh well goody for you, you archaic dinosaur. Kill a tree, much? Or is it because you like the smell? What a load. Who the hell buys a book for the smell? If you want to smell things that are old and musty, go to an 80s hair metal band and intercept some middle-aged person’s underwear that he or she attempted to fling on the stage. Take a big whiff. There’s some good old fashioned, vintage reminiscence for you.

  So thank you, audiobook listeners. You are the true readers (and yes, it *is* reading, fuckyouverymuch). The connoisseurs of a fine performance, the appreciators of the two mediums joined together in perfection. But since no audiobook listeners will actually hear this, then never mind.

  The rest of you can bite me.

  Jeffrey Kafer, Audiobook Narrator

  Pre-Prologue

  (A “pre-prologue,” you ask? Yes. In the last book I had two prologues and a few clods got mad. Tough. It’s a thing now. So stop groaning and embrace it. Embrace it as rich politicians embrace poor people to win elections.)

  I looked at the simple idiots sitting across from my expensive, glossy black desk. The fools before me were lower than low. Scum, really. Wretched, base creatures. Their only “gift,” if one could call it that, was their burning need to string together barely cogent thoughts.

  Their unquenchable desire to express stilted ideas in passable prose should have been beaten out of them by parents who didn’t make a huge production about every minor accomplishment.

  These fools should have been told that their ideas were as dumb as they themselves were unlovable. Yet on they went, scribbling down their dumb ideas. They were little better than the fans who read their miserable dreck.

  They, dear readers, were authors.

  Well, let’s call them “writers,” shall we? “Authors” denotes a sense of class, and let’s be frank, they don’t have any.

  Gods above and below, it pained me to look at the sad, bespectacled bastards with their notebooks, their crumpled papers, their wasted hours of world building, and the stink of those desperate for acceptance.

  And as much as it pained me to admit, I needed their help.

  I cleared my throat and addressed the idea-monkeys.

  “I need ideas for a sequel,” I explained.

  “Why?” one of the writers asked. “Your first recorded adventure wasn’t that good.”

  I leveled my gaze at the writer, Pips or Flips—I didn’t really know his name, or care enough to remember it. Writers aren’t really people worth knowing. They’re like prostitutes with laptops, begging for your digital pleasure. They’ll write whatever you want to hear, provided you pay them.

  Ignoring Blips, I continued. “For some reason, ‘people’—and I use that term in the loosest sense—are requesting a continuation of the Shadow Master’s tale.”

  “Well, what kind of sequel? Perhaps a gritty reboot?” another writer asked.

  Don’t bother asking his name. Time won’t remember him, so neither will I. Indie writers are all the same. Stamping two initials and a last name on a Deviant Art-designed cover does not compel history to remember them. Nor the niche bullshit they try and peddle.

  But at least it wasn’t the bland drudge the Big 5 kept pumping out.

  “I need a theme,” I said, standing from my desk. I walked about my office, examining the strange and exotic objects I’d collected from across the known realms and dimensions. “Something which is a suitable follow-up to my last adventure. Not some bullshit gritty reboot.”

  “More of the same, then?” asked one of the writers.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “Most sequels are just inflated versions of the first. The same plot, but with more antagonists. Basically more of the same, but bigger. You should just do that.”

  She had blue hair, with half her head shaved, and thick black glasses. Of course she did. There was a time in my youth when, if you met someone with that look, you asked what cool punk band they liked. Now the look has been co-opted by those people. You know, the people who get mad when you call Rey from The Force Awakens a “Mary Sue.”

  She was. Deal with it.

  “I don’t want ‘the same but bigger,’ I told her. “This needs to be something special. Something to prove the first book wasn’t a fluke.”

  “Your previous recorded adventure did mostly well with the markets,” she said, scrolling through her phone. “Well, except from this one guy . . . ‘Cal’? He only rated it one star and called it ‘unpublishable.’ Huh, that’s not even a word. And this ‘unknown author’ gave you two stars, calling your story ‘vulgar’. This other guy called you ‘boring’.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was many things, but boring was not one of them.

  “Cal is most likely a Harry Potter forum troll. I’d like to see him destroyed, but life itself has already punished poor, pathetic ‘Cal’ and his Dark Potter posts.”

  “And the unknown author who called you vulgar?” she asked.

  “Fuck the repressed bastard.” I smiled. “More and more sci
ence points to higher intelligence in those who profane.”

  “What about time travel?” asked another writer. “You could do a time-travel story! You know, helping villains throughout time. That’d be cool.”

  I pulled a Colt 1911 from my hip, the one gifted to me by a yellow-eyed demon, and shot the writer through his stupid horn-rimmed glasses. The rest of the writers all screamed as blood and brains sprayed across my office floor. As I turned to face them, they all dove for cover.

  “Time travel?!” I yelled to the cowering little worms. “Time travel ruins everything! Paradoxes, inconsistency, and bullshit alternate timelines—and that’s just the Star Trek reboots. Once introduced into almost every series, time travel is the kiss of death. ‘Hold the door,’ what ridiculous crap.”

  “What about—”

  I spun and aimed the gun at the writer who spoke. “I DARE you to say Back to the Future. Go on, I dare you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That being said, helping villains throughout time is interesting. Someone jot that down as a possible spin-off. Hmm . . . Villains Academy,” I said, pondering the idea. “You know, that could work. But for another time. For now, think of something people may want to read for this adventure.”

  “B-but, you killed Gary!” a writer pleaded.

  “I don’t want to do another fantasy realm experience,” I said, ignoring the ruckus. Picking up one of my black cigarettes with silver tips, I lit it off a burning copy of my two-book contract.

  “I need to explore. Stretch my legs as a master villain. Do you plebes understand that? Obviously you can just slap ‘villain’ on pretty much any title and the moronic populace will buy it. Tell a joke or two while tossing out pop-culture references and you’ll get four-star ratings galore, regardless of the book’s actual literary value.”

  “Gary,” the blue-haired writer whispered. “Despite being part of the patriarchy, you deserved better.”

  “Oh, will you sorry-excuse-for-would-be-novelists please shut up?! I’m trying to plan a strong follow-up.”