SECRET OF THE FIRST IMMORTALS

David L. Cox

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2000

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Acknowledgements

I had to wait several years to regain the rights to this novel after the publisher who had it under contract collapsed in bankruptcy. I am grateful however, to Adventure Books Publishing of Calgary, Canada for their encouragement and support of a first-time writer. I am also grateful to Robyn Roberts-Cox, for her tireless editing of the many revisions to the manuscript.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Friedrich Nietzche

Chapter 1

James Leigh stretched his lanky body in the cramped fighting chair and looked back toward the Mexican shoreline from the fantail of the fishing boat he had chartered for the day from Mike’s Flota Faro in Mazatlan, the "Pacific Pearl" of Mexico. The sun was just peeking over the rugged hills east of the city, fading the glorious canopy of stars overhead, announcing another day of humid heat over the Bahia del Puerto Viejo. The miles of ocean between the slowly moving vessel and the twinkling city lights were a rumpled carpet of dark rolling waves, and tendrils of mist streaked with the color of dawn rose like wispy ghosts above the surface, dispersing in the freshening breeze.