Book 1

Cross Faded

by Merethe Walther

Published 31 October 2020

The last thing Ezra Ashford expects to see in his apartment after waking up from a four-day bender is a woman in armor hunting a scarab the size of a Great Dane. But being an addict can do terrible things to the brain. And while he’s no stranger to hallucinations, this seems a little too real to be just in his head.

Ezra’s once tepid existence is quickly overwhelmed by monsters. From the siren in his local bar to the fly-faced man packing fish at his day job, he can’t stop seeing these creatures everywhere. Ezra can’t tell if he’s burned out or if he’s going crazy like his mother did years before. And doing what comes naturally to him—getting high to forget it all—isn’t working either. Ezra finds himself caught in a turf war between rival drug dealers that lands him in police crosshairs.

The harder Ezra tries to ignore his problems, the more abysmal things become, leaving him powerless to stop his downward spiral. Lost in a world he feels rejected him, and plagued by monsters that may or may not be in his head, Ezra must try to find out what’s happening before it’s too late and his personal demons end up consuming him completely.