The Defenseless

 Most events and things start small, like butterflies flapping their wings eventually growing to a storm.

 Ted Cousin hardly ever felt special during childhood. There was stuff that he, in hindsight should have paid attention to, but he didn't really do that. And he felt small, very small.

 He is growing up with his brother Mike and his sister Linda in the city of Denver, Colorado in the Sixties, a time of upheaval and unrest unlike any other. Ted observes the vast and exciting changes, but he doesn't really feel touched by them. His dire personal problems take center stage, and they stay there. He imagines he can see a better future, for himself, for his sister Linda and the world.

 But most of the time it's nothing but mud.

 He is different, somehow. It isn't just his despair, the vast desolation surrounding him speaking, he knows that, or desperately hopes he does. There is something there, on the edge of the eye, something he can't quite grasp, a spark, one that can change everything.

 The fire stirs within, both burning and warming him. The shadow is both a source of comfort and fear. He reaches for it, for everything that might not be there. In one brutal turn of events, he gets his answers, or at least their modest beginnings. The spark is struck, and the fire explodes, and terror rises with it, making everything he has experienced to that point look like a pale ghost in comparison.

 The giant bird of fire and shadow is flapping its wings and creates a storm, one that might eventually rock and change the world.

  The first book in the Janus Clan series - twelve stories about the wild man in the modern world.