Read TODAY ... Free!

Introducing Hood and Fae

I’m both excited and nervous today. Why? ‘Cause today I’m releasing a novella that introduces my new Urban Fantasy series, Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood.

The first novel in the series, which won’t be out for a few more months, shows Roxy Hood, and her sister Bryn Hood, taking over their mother’s business. What’s on that menu for that book? One entrée of finding justice for the undead, with a side of hunting werewolves….

I couldn’t start telling the story Red Riding Hood’s descendants without tipping my hat to the original story of Little Red Riding Hood. At first I figured I’d start the first novel in the series that way, but it went a different direction. So how about a prequel? A glance at my writing schedule showed me I had exactly two weeks to write a completely new story. Okaaaaaay. A petite prequel! That’s how this novella was born.

To do a retelling, I found I had to first answer some basic questions: How did Roxy and Bryn inherit the “Clogyn,” the magical red hooded jacket? What powers does the red hood have? Who is Granny and why does she live in the woods? How can I sneak a sexy billionaire and a dragon into this story? How can any retelling of that story be true to the original story of a ditzy girl carrying pies to Granny and also showcase a kickass heroine? Did you know that in the original Grimm version, Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the Wolf?! WTF is up with that?

I hope you’ll read and find out!

Hood & Fae (Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood) is an Urban Fantasy novella that will be released April 15, 2014 in the special collection Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles. You can download the bundle from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

Roxy Hood is just trying to make ends meet, to pay her mom’s medical bills. Sure, Roxy takes on some jobs of, ahem, dubious integrity, like pretending that she can speak to the dead. But hey, that’s harmless. It’s not like a malevolent ghoul is going to attack her. Or a sexy billionaire will show up trying to buy her red jacket. Or a werewolf will attack Granny Rose. Because that would be whacked.

WARNING: This novel is only appropriate for older teens and adults, because it contains #$%*&@ words. Spelled out for real, though. Even that one that starts with “F.” Yeah, it’s in there, in a couple places. Also, “dumbkof,” but that’s in another language, so it won’t bother you.

Excerpt

My phone dropped from my hand but I was too stunned by the stranger standing on my front doorstep to notice. He locked his brilliant green eyes on mine and I couldn’t move, or even breathe.

If sexy caused earthquakes, he’d be a Magnitude Wow.

Maybe he was a movie star. That would explain the limo. Hollywood wasn’t far. All sorts of unlikely people showed up, even after six years, to consult my mother.

His suit whispered money. Black suit, black shirt, black tie, black on black, black as a black hole wrapped around his body, stealing light and capturing it into permanent orbit.  Underneath the CEO slick, though, he could have been a Navy Seal with that physique. He exuded so much Raw Male, he erased every man I’d ever met from my working memory; I couldn’t even picture last night’s one-hit-wonder any more. All I could see were those emerald eyes in that chiseled marble face. His skin was too pale—he sure didn’t work outside—during the day—but his tightly cropped bullion hair had a military flair. He smelled like all-night-sex on hot sand over a buried fire pit. Opaque heat radiated from him, as if he were a hidden sun in human form, scorching without illuminating, burning in the dark. I wrenched my eyes away from his intense gaze. I could feel my heart sprint like a deer fleeing an erupting volcano.

He didn’t look like the type who believed in ghosts.

Yet…there was an edge to his almost-smile that suggested he might be a man haunted by something.

“Roxy Hood.” He made my name sound dirty, in the most delicious way. He had an accent, antique and British, with something more dangerous and exotic folded inside the cultured cadence. “I believe you dropped this.”

For a short time only, Hood & Fae will be available for a special price of just $0.99 in the collection Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play. Email my assistant at katie@misquepress.com for a free PDF review copy of Hood and Fae.

Cover Reveal: Faery Realms

I’m excited to show you all the cover I designed for a new fantasy bundle coming out this week: Faery Realms.

Not only will this collection have lots of great stories from some top indie fantasy authors, but it will have a brand new novella to my upcoming urban fantasy series, The Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood.

Stay tuned for the final release day information and more on my new novella, Hood and Fae!

Shadow of the Moon by Connie Flynn

If you’re looking for some paranormal romance to start off your weekend, download Connie Flynn’s Shadow of the Moon.

A woman bent on saving a pack of wild wolves crashes during a deadly snowstorm.
A man tormented by a secret he dare not reveal desperately needs her to free him.
Only a ceremony grounded in love can save them both . . .
And it must happen during the SHADOW OF THE MOON.

Download Shadow of the Moon from Amazon.

Excerpt

Whomp. Thump. Thump. The right front wheel scaled the edge of the ditch, jolting the Ranger to a stop.

“Dammit!” Dana Gibbs pressed her lips together, slammed the gears in reverse, and floor-boarded the gas pedal. The wheels spun impotently and she released the gas.

Throwing open the door, she stomped through the mud, dug out a lantern from the rear, and went to inspect the damage. Her back tires sat on a sheet of ice. The front passenger wheel was mired in the ditch.

The lantern splashed light on the underbrush. Birds flapped their wings and flew from dark shadows. Various creatures scurried and squeaked on…the ground. Finding the normality of the sounds reassuring, Dana hurried toward a broken branch, confident she’d soon be out of her predicament.

A howl shattered her serenity. The night creatures instantly hushed and only an undulating echo broke the silence. Dana froze midstep. Her breath misted, creating a heavy fog and the light quivered in her trembling hand.

Battling an urge to dash for the Ranger, Dana made herself creep toward the branch, snatched it up, then raced back to the Ranger.

Wedging the bough beneath the mired wheel, she scrambled inside the cab and applied gentle pressure to the gas pedal. After several tries the Ranger still didn’t budge. As she steadied herself once more try, the terrible wail sounded again. So loud, so close, it seemed just outside the SUV, and in the perimeter of the headlights, a blurred shape moved with superhuman speed.

Dana slammed down on the gas pedal. The Ranger lurched, shuddered, broke loose, and careened back at drag racing speed.  She instinctively hit the brakes, all the while knowing it was the wrong thing to do. The Ranger zigzagged, then skidded. Behind, a wall of snow loomed larger and larger in the rear view mirror. Like a great white shark, the wall opened up and sucked in the four-by-four like a minnow until it jerked to a halt against the skeleton of solid earth. Dana flew out of her seat and into the windshield, then rebounded back and slumped like a rag doll.

Who will protect my wolves? Dana wondered as she passed into unconsciousness.

From the shadows of the forest, a pair of gold-green eyes witnessed her misfortune.

Beneath a towering pine stirred a man as huge and solid as the tree trunk that sheltered him. A long wool overcoat hung to his knees over heavy leggings that were tucked into bulky, serviceable boots, and his face was hidden in the abyss of a deep hood, allowing him to melt into the shadows.

What had possessed him to come this close to a major road so early in the evening? He knew better. But he’d heard the screams so often of late, could barely abide them, and a night such as this was made for death. They would be out, seeking lost travelers, and he somehow felt compelled to stop them.

He’d been observing the female, had seen her purposeful and confident movements become first alarmed, then panicked. Was she even now trying to claw her way free like a snared rabbit?Her vehicle had been so fully engulfed by the snowbank that only the hood and grille remained exposed. The night fell into deep stillness, save for the purr of the engine and the whap-whap-whap of the airborne tire. He strained to hear, anticipating what was to come. Soon a rustle arose from the underbrush. A soulful wail followed.

Why did those creatures howl so incessantly?

He calmly turned toward a tangle of brush and thickets. Within the dusky shadows, two sets of watchful eyes glinted red in the light from the woman’s abandoned lantern. He returned their gazes with a hard stare, but they held their ground. Slowly, his lip curled in threat.

“Back off,” he snarled.

The eyes retreated, leaving another squealing rodent in their wake.

He turned his back and sprinted to the road. With one leap, he scaled the ditch, landing nearly fifteen feet away beside the vehicle’s spinning wheel. Over a foot of snow covered the cab. The snow would act as insulation and undoubtedly would keep her warm, but the running engine would soon eat up her oxygen. She was still alive, though, very alive. He could smell her in there, the spicy scent of warm flesh, the tang of hot, rushing blood. Could hear the strong pulse in her veins.

He dug into the snow barehanded, heedless of the scratches he put in the paint, effortlessly deflecting the new chunks dislodged by his movements. When he’d cleared the snow off the driver’s side of the windshield, he leaned over and saw the slumped figure.

Unconscious. This came as no surprise. He’d seen her strike the windshield, seen her forehead turn crimson, knew she probably had a concussion.

Without his help, the others would finish her off before dawn. A guttural protest escaped his lips.

He must walk away. The risk was too great. Yet it had been written. On such a night, a maiden would come.

With a resigned sigh he dug through the remaining snow and opened the door. Blood was clotting in her dark, curly hair and the beginnings of a bruise already stained her forehead, yet he still saw how striking she was. High, well-defined cheekbones. Smooth, golden skin. A slender, well-developed body. A dislodged comb hung in her hair, letting her curls fall forward, which gave her a tumbled, morning-after look.

His heartbeat quickened and he realized then how long it had been since he’d touched a mortal woman. Fingers trembling, he moved a hand toward her fragile throat.

The wound still bled, the fresh blood trickling slowly down her face in tiny streams. He inhaled the tart odor and instantly salivated.

He jerked his hand back.

Do no harm. The ingrained dictum sprang to his mind and lodged there. He tried to dismiss it. Surely it didn’t mean he also had to prevent harm. This wasn’t his doing. How could he be blamed, when the female had foolishly driven down an unmarked dead-end road and bogged her truck?

A trill of laughter traveled through the night. He glanced up, sniffed the air. Was he even now being mocked by his indecision? Watched, to see if he’d leave the unconscious female so they could fulfill their dark needs?

Or worse, far worse, use her to fulfill his own?

To read the rest, download Shadow of the Moon from Amazon.

Find more from Connie on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

Speakeasy Dead by Vicky Loebel

Take a peek inside Speakeasy Dead: A Roaring Twenties Historical Urban Fantasy by Vicky Loebel, a romantic zombie comedy.

Download Speakeasy Dead from Amazon or listen to it via Audible.

Excerpt

I: Follow the Swallow

Trust no one.
—The Boy’s Book of Boggarts

Bernard:

LOOKING BACK, it was the phrase “human sacrifice” that tipped me off something was rotten in the state of Falstaff, Arizona.

“Don’t you dare break a single one of those bottles,” my cousin Clara hissed over her shoulder. I tightened my grip, and the enormous black satchel I was carrying containing a couple of baby elephants and—apparently—glass bottles ceased its horrified clanking.

It wasn’t witchcraft, a word of passing acquaintance to any red-headed youth raised in our town. It wasn’t magic. In that age, everything was magic. Electricity was magic, telephones, biplanes lifting off the brown grass next to the county fairgrounds, jazz records blowing the crazy rhythms of the South up under the skirts of New York and Chicago were magic.

“Guard this”—Clara set her own satchel on the ground— “with your life.”

Cinema was magic and, of the many wizards of the silent screen, most magical of all was Beau Beauregard: war hero, vaudevillian, dancing heartthrob of Ali Baba’s Arabian Knights and the even more popular Blood of Ali Baba. Beau Beauregard who, as Clara and I crouched in the dark alley between a row of ash cans and the Falstaff Ninepin Fellowship building, lay writhing in agony across the street at the Hollywood Grand Hotel, suffering from an advanced case of peritonitis, close to death.

All very tragic, but I was still working on Clara’s “human sacrifice” remark.

“A human what?” I bumped against one of the ash cans.

“Quiet, dummy!” Clara sidled over to the Fellowship’s coal chute and turned a key in the padlock. We ducked again as an open jalopy coughed and sputtered up the gravel alley behind us.

The air was cool, the evening brilliant in that benign way Mother Nature sometimes has, starry bracelets glittering around the limpid wrists of Heaven. Across the street around the front of the building, lights blazed, cars blared, and people called excitedly to one another as the three-day gala opening of the Hollywood Grand Hotel got underway, while through the Ninepin Fellowship’s back door, a dance band could be heard playing an Al Jolson tune:

When your dreams fall apart
And despair fills your heart
Follow the swallows back home.

A catchy sentiment, but one I couldn’t entirely agree with, since home for the particular swallow I was following was, in fact, the building we were breaking into. And I suspected despair lay ahead.

“Did you say….” I glanced uncomfortably from the coal chute to the back door, left open for ventilation, to the coal chute again. “Human sacrifice?”

Clara produced a brass can and oiled the coal chute hinges. I was beginning to wonder why she’d instructed me to dress in the second-best high school baseball uniform I’d never outgrown. It was hardly the glad rags I’d expected to don for an evening of escorting surplus females around the Ninepin Fellowship’s dance floor.

Clara tilted the narrow chute open. “In you go.”

“Me?” I staggered aghast. Nevertheless, despite the fact that I was three years older than Miss Clara Woodsen, a returning senior at Falstaff University (Delta Kappa Kilta), and a member of the superior sex to boot, I wasn’t surprised to find myself, moments later, swallowing dust at the bottom of a very dark hole. Thus has it always been between myself and young C. She calls the shots. I take the lead in the chest.

“Ouch.” A lump of coal probably doesn’t mind the six foot drop into a cellar, but my backside was complaining. Fortunately, the space was empty, swept up neatly for summer by the Fellowship’s Hungarian janitor. I dusted my hands and caught the satchel Clara was lowering on a rope.

“Mind the bottles,” she admonished.

I untied the swag, received my cousin’s smaller, lighter bag, and then provided a clean, soft landing pad for Clara’s patent-leather Mary Janes.

There are females whose shoes I’d happily invite (girl attached) to drop six feet into my lap. There are others for whom, upon consideration, I’d chivalrously volunteer. Seventeen-year-old cousins belong to neither category, but since Clara leapt before I looked, my backside received another bump on the floor while my front endured a more painful indignity.

“Ow!” I curled into a ball like an electrocuted caterpillar.

“Bernard Benjamin” —Clara flicked a flashlight— “stop fooling around!” She’d dressed for the occasion cat-burglar-style in my best baseball uniform, waist-length rag curls tucked under a man’s cap, looking convincingly masculine except for the Mary Janes.

Clara picked up her bag and tiptoed toward the door.

“Hey!” I lifted my luggage and legged it, limping, behind.

The coal-room opened onto a dimly-lit mad alchemist’s laboratory, complete with gas jets, bubbling beakers, and six enormous stills topped with spiraling copper tubes. Sparks crackled along bent wires connecting a sequence of copper globes. Cabinets of herbs and powders surrounded a long wooden workbench cluttered with bowls, and stacks of crates and wooden barrels were lined up in rows against the walls. The smell of yeast and juniper berries scented the air.

Across the lab, facing away from us, a matronly woman in a severe brown ankle-length skirt was filling two jugs from a barrel of gin.

Hullo Priscilla—

Clara’s palm throttled my greeting and dragged me sideways into shadow. We waited, listening to muffled music from above, until Clara’s half-sister, Priscilla, finished filling and hustled her jugs out the laboratory’s secret door.

In case you’re wondering, let me present a few facts:

Fact A: The building we’d just broken into was the Falstaff Ninepin Fellowship, a combination witches’ coven, bowling alley, and saloon of limited local repute.

Fact B: Young Clara’s half-sisters (she has four, witches, wicked, all), while not exactly owning the coven, rule over it with fists of steel.

Fact C: The thumping music upstairs issued from a three-day dance contest Clara, herself, was staging to coincide with the elaborate opening of the Hollywood Grand Hotel.

Fact D: Men can be witches (a warlock is something else). And no, I wasn’t one myself.

So there you have it: the situation on that fated Thursday night as I trailed Clara past her family’s illegal distillery, through the secret door into the stairwell where jazz cascaded down a set of spiral steps—and thence into the witches’ coven that filled the other half of the basement.

To follow the rest of Clara’s story, download Speakeasy Dead from Amazon or listen to it via Audible.

To find more from Vicky, visit her website, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

The Seedbearing Prince: Part 1 by DaVaun Sanders

Discover the fantasy world of The Seedbearing Prince…

Dayn Ro’Halan is a farmer’s son sworn to a life of plowing on his homeworld, Shard. After finding a lost artifact called a Seed, he’s thrust into an ancient conflict between voidwalkers of the hated world Thar’Kur, and Defenders from a floating fortress called the Ring. Dayn must become a Seedbearer and learn to use the Seed’s power to shape worlds before the entire World Belt is lost.

Download The Seedbearing Prince for free on Amazon.

Excerpt

Prologue

The torrent shifted again, and a thousand shards of onyx flashed to fire as Corian swept through a roiling field of ice and stone. The sheath on his worn black armor held, but would not last much longer. The stream of rock in the space between the worlds drifted slower here, and boasted several floating mountains large enough to hold a layer of air. Green ferns covered the surface of the nearest, providing plenty of cover. Corian was tempted to stop and rest, but crater wolves likely roamed in such thick foliage. The entire World Belt hung on the message he bore to the Ring, and he could rest after his task was done.

A field of red granite stretched in the space above him like the bizarre clouds of some nightmare, the individual boulders careening off each other by the hundreds. Only the hardest minerals and metals endured the endless pounding of the rock flow, and only the most foolish men would brave such a swath of torrent. They were moving the direction he needed to go, into the flow where the rock moved fastest. In the torrent, speed kills, he reminded himself. He was the best courser among the Ring’s Guardians, but the rock never cared.

Corian deftly attached a new talon to what remained of his silver wingline, then heaved it. The metal hook took hold, his wingline snapped taut, and the boulder yanked Corian into the flow. He repeated the process, each time roping a boulder moving faster, until his last guide rock pulled him along at hundreds of spans a second. A layer of white frost appeared on his armor and mask in a blink. He reeled himself in and clung to the red surface, like a flea riding a river bison in the middle of a stampeding herd. He watched every direction at once from his perch, digging his gauntlets into the crumbling surface. The boulder was actually some ancient rusted metal, not granite as he first thought. The torrent here was so thick he could barely see the stars, and it filled his ears with a distant roar.

He sped along this way for some time, until he spied a pockmarked mass of stone and iron, large as a dwarf moon. A cleft right down the middle threatened to split the entire thing in half. A tower in the northern axis had seen more than its fair share of rust, but the light strobing from it pulsed regularly, illuminating the smaller rocks orbiting around it. As a whole, the wayfinder was ugly and old, but the mass of rock was the most blessed sight Corian could imagine after a week of surviving the torrent’s attempts to grind him to powder.

His next wingline took him closer. If the wayfinder was powered as well as he suspected, he could use the array inside it to find out where he was in the torrent, and see how close the Ring lay. He might even find food and water, if peace favored him. A fellow Guardian must stop here often for such an old wayfinder to be this well preserved, he thought.

Smaller debris pelted the wayfinder’s old crust, disintegrating in flashes of light. The surface shone with hundreds of impacts, large and small. Corian chose a crater near the old tower, perhaps seventy spans deep with high walls that would offer good angles to slow himself as he approached.

As he prepared to throw out another talon, dark shapes poured from the wayfinder’s cleft. He stared for a moment, incredulous. There could be no crater wolves on a wayfinder, with no game to hunt, unless they were marooned after striking some other erratic in the torrent. No, those shapes moved with a military precision, more lethal than the deadliest pack. He could see them clearly now, massive men covered in black. “No. Not here!” Corian barely recognized his own weary voice.

The voidwalkers had seen him. A pinprick of light shone on the wayfinder’s surface, brighter than the tower’s regular strobe. He eyed it mistrustfully as he searched for a place to throw his next wingline and change his momentum. He spotted a tumbling boulder half covered with ice, moving away from the wayfinder too fast.

The light near the voidwalkers flashed. A beam of energy rushed into Corian’s path, hot as molten steel. A lifetime of coursing experience kicked in, and he curled his legs up until his knees touched his ears, rolling forward. The strange fire passed underneath him by less than a span. He could feel the heat of it through his protective layer of sheath. The beam burned past, and slammed into a rock fifty spans away. The tumbling boulder barely even slowed in its course, but the spot where the weapon struck—for there was no question that is what it was—glowed red hot at the edges. The glistening center had cooled quick as glass.

Another pinprick of light. He twisted around in the weightlessness of the void to point his feet back toward the wayfinder and make himself a smaller target. It did no good. The beam rushed straight at him, and his world turned red with pain.

An impact jarred him awake. Another. Corian opened his eyes. I’m much too cold. The voidwalker weapon had burned away his sheath. Layers of his black armor were peeling away from the metal plates like paper curled in a fire. He had been caught in a tangle of purple-rooted vines intertwined in a mile long cluster of the floating rock, what Jendini coursers called a knotted forest. The roots were nearly hard as stone in places. Dusty old bones from animals Corian did not even recognize littered the tangles. Debris from the torrent stretched around the forest in every direction, and errant stones pelted the mass of vines, which he immediately recognized. Courser’s nap, the whole forest is covered with it.

Corian reached into a compartment on his armored belt and removed his last flask of sheath. He applied the clear liquid to his ruined armor in quick, smooth motions, not leaving one inch exposed. The sheath locked together in small patches of light, and his body’s heat immediately began to warm the interior of the invisible, protective barrier. Once the sheath was gone, his armor would not prevent the smallest pebble from killing him, if one struck him moving fast enough. For the first time, Corian considered that he may not survive.

This was to be his last circuit as a Guardian for the Ring, and he held the hope that he would look into his grandchildren’s eyes back on Jendini now that his service was finished. Yet his duty hung over him, heavier than ever. In the distance he could see the world of Shard, verdant and green just beyond the torrent’s chaos. His resolve hardened.

He slipped a speechcaster into his mouth and began to speak as he worked himself free of the tangled vines. The small wafer could hold his words in secret for a few days, should things go badly here.

“I am Corian Nightsong, a Guardian of the Ring. There are Thar’Kuri warriors on the world of Nemoc. The voidwalkers have built a device that allows them to…teleport themselves at will through the Belt. They are gathering in numbers, preparing for an attack. There are captives from all over the worlds imprisoned on Nemoc. The voidwalkers have weapons unlike anything known from the Ring. They use energy and can attack over great distances. They must have been made in the age before the Breach.

If you knew where to look for this message, you must deliver it with all haste to Force Lord Adazia on the Ring. The worlds all depend on you, for I have failed them.” The admission filled Corian with bitterness, but he forced a strength he no longer felt into his words. “My sons and daughters live in Denkstone, on Jendini. Tell them…their father served well.”

One of the vines tangled around his torso began to quiver. Corian looked down, fearing a leaf, but instead he saw a voidwalker, climbing toward him. Corian was tall, but the hulking brute easily overtopped him by a head. His glistening black armor looked as if it were melted to his frame, and covered him from head to toe save two dark slits for his eyes. The vines broke like dried mud in the voidwalker’s grasp.

Corian began to climb, scrambling further into the vines. He did not bother to draw his sword, the voidwalker would overpower him in moments if they were to fight.

“So afraid of an old courser?” Corian shouted. He pulled at every vine in his path as he fled, but most of them were stiff and gray. Living vines of the courser’s nap were purple and sticky, but the true danger lay with the leaves.

The voidwalker’s gravelly voice called to Corian, cold as an orphan’s gravestone. “Come to me, degenerate.”

Corian drew his sword, and began slashing his way through the vines. They sparked as his blade struck, but gave way. He leapt through an open space nearly ten spans across. The voidwalker followed without hesitation. So strong. Corian knew the brute meant to take him alive. He could not allow that.

He landed on a solid gray swath, fleshy beneath his feet. He rolled and lunged just as the leaf stirred. A row of spikes slipped out of the edges, thick as Corian’s leg and sharp enough to cleave a horse in two. Corian barely cleared them. The voidwalker was not so lucky. His momentum carried him right into the center of the carnivorous plant, which enveloped him with a twist of blue-veined leaf. Steam issued from the folds near the plant’s edges as it fed.

More pods of the courser’s nap were coming to life, enlivened by the voidwalker’s screams. Corian avoided the leaves wherever they stirred. He climbed and lunged and dived through the vines, soon pulling himself to the edge of the knotted forest. Pure torrent lay before him, an endless landscape of chaotic rock. There was no clear flow in any direction, the individual boulders in the skyscape crashed into each other in a hundred shattering impacts. I’ll leap blind and pray that my sheath holds.

Another voidwalker tore himself out of the vines a few spans away. Peace, but look at the size of him! The voidwalker’s armor looked as chewed up as the oldest rocks of the torrent, endless dents and scratches plastered the black surface.

“I’ve enjoyed hunting you, degenerate.”

Another courser’s leaf reared up behind the voidwalker as he lumbered toward Corian. The leaf lunged and took the voidwalker up, curling round and round as the folds of leaf tightened. Corian allowed himself a moment of elation, but it was short lived. A pale hand appeared on the side of the courser’s nap, and bright green fluid poured out. The leaf whipped back and forth, emitting a piercing shriek as the voidwalker pulled it apart piece by piece from the inside. Corian needed to see no more. He leaped, and prayed the torrent would show him mercy.

For the rest of the story, download The Seedbearing Prince for free on Amazon.

Find more from DaVaun on his blog, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Henrietta and the Dragon Stone by Beth Barany

Henrietta and the Dragon Stone is a new story of young adult epic fantasy adventure by award-winning author, Beth Barany. Book 2 in The Five Kingdoms series of the continuing adventures of Henrietta The Dragon Slayer. What if everyone you loved was threatened by a force you couldn’t see or fight? Henrietta the legendary dragon slayer wants to return to her village for a heroes’ welcome. But an unknown sorcerer rides after her and her Dragon Stone and aims to destroy everyone she cares about. Can she claim her newfound powers sparked by the Dragon Stone and keep her loved ones safe, or will the sorcerer destroy everyone and everything she loves?

Download Henrietta and the Dragon Stone at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and iTunes.

Excerpt

Chapter One: In His Grasp

The Dracontias, dra-con-ti-as, emphasis on the second syllable, is the most powerful gem in all the Five Kingdoms, and more powerful than all the other so-called Kingdom Stones. This one and only Dragon Stone unifies the kingdoms and empowers its user. But beware its one fatal flaw.

—from the Fire Wizards Compendium

Early Winter New Moon (Mitte Moon), Oro Islands, One of the Five Kingdoms

King Singfan sucked in a breath, stretched the crossbow, and held it steady, tracking the beast.

Time was of the essence. If he didn’t kill this dragon and obtain the Dragon Stone on the great dragon’s forehead, he’d have to start all over again. Unthinkable. Impossible.

He had to renew this king’s body during this night, while the stars were aligned just so, and the moon hung below the horizon.

The girl Dragon Slayer, that Henrietta, was performing exactly as he’d expected. She’d taken the proffered reward and given him the secret dragon lore, confirming what he needed to know. She crouched nearby, ready to do his bidding.

King Singfan breathed out, steadying his aim, and smiled.

Inside of him, Bjirn Eyvindir smiled, too, at Singfan’s glee. Hidden to everyone, Eyvindir had occupied the body of King Singfan for seventy-five years, a long king’s rule—longer than anyone on the Oro Islands could remember. If they did remember the length of King Singfan’s reign, Eyvindir by King Singfan’s hand had made sure they didn’t remember for long, and didn’t remember anything ever again.

King Singfan had given him free reign to run his magic through the man and control his every move. The man was his best and most perfect servant. Eyvindir wasn’t going to end the arrangement anytime soon. He’d planned this renewal too long for the moment to go awry.

The dragon hovered above the enormous cave floor about to settle, its scales flickering and iridescent in the torchlight. King Singfan held his breath, steadying his strong stance and perfect aim. He readied the powerful crossbow.

Before he could loose the arrow, Henrietta yelled “You can’t!” and shoved him to the hard-packed ground.

The dragon slayer pinned his arms against his torso with her legs, heavy on his chest. He struggled beneath her weight.

“How dare you!” he snarled. “We had an agreement.”

How had she slipped past his guard?

With every second that ticked by, he felt his power draining from him like water down the drain, no doubt shifting his appearance. But his voice held strong and loud. He gathered courage in that. There was still time to kill the dragon and obtain the Dragon Stone.

“I can’t let you!” she shouted, glaring down at him.

Suddenly, her friends appeared at her side.

“Who’s this?” the injured bard, Jaxter, asked.

“The king,” Henrietta growled.

Little did she know who she was truly up against.

“How dare you!” Eyvindir protested again.

But his voice sounded strange. Gurgles, high-pitched clicks and garbled words were all that he could manage.

How did the dragon slayer’s friends arrive at the cave? He’d left them under guard at the castle.

“Magics! I don’t trust my eyes. Franc?” the dragon slayer shouted, as if she were yelling right into his ear.

“I have not ever seen this old man before, but I have heard whispered tales,” Franc, the knight, said. “What is he saying?” The knight he’d sent to retrieve the dragon slayer, crossed his arms, and frowned down at him. The betrayer.

“I don’t know, but we have no time for tales.” Henrietta bound the king’s wrists and ankles together with a rough rope.

He wriggled, but to no avail. Something sharp stabbed his back.

“Don’t move!” Henrietta barked.

Eyvindir glared at her, through King Singfan’s eyes, furious and unable to move his body, his faculty for speech gone. How dare she! He’d miscalculated the girl slayer. He’d waited too long to act. Frantic, he reached in his mind for his power, but it was too late.

The moment when the moon was just so, right below the horizon, was gone. The shine of the rising moon grew brighter.

The dragon spun to settle, flapping its wings. He’d missed his moment. Torches lay on the ground where his cowardly men had fled. The dragon slayer’s friends had had a hand in that, no doubt, yet he’d dismissed them as weak. Another mistake. How could he have so miscalculated? He brushed the thought aside. He didn’t make mistakes. He drew strength from that knowledge.

“You won’t get away with this!” the king hissed and spat, his voice fully recovered. “The dragon must die, or the Five Kingdoms die. The Oro Islands Kingdom is the first kingdom and must be renewed!”

The dragon slayer frowned, confusion and panic written on her face. Good. He drew more strength from her fear and uncertainty. He may be still tied up, but that state couldn’t last long.

She turned to her friends. “Franc, Jaxter, is this true?”

“Whispers only,” the knight said.

“I don’t know,” the bard said. He leaned on his staff for support.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” the dragon slayer said and clenched her fists. Her heart revved up a notch.

Eyvindir chuckled.

Her panic rippled off her in delicious waves. Excellent.

“I didn’t ask for this responsibility! I don’t want this responsibility!” the dragon slayer cried.

The bard coughed and struggled for breath, leaning heavily on his staff. Most excellent.

Eyvindir pulled power from the skinny young bard’s weakness and from the dragon slayer’s doubts.

The weakened bard managed to speak. “It’s been so long, the story’s been told many different ways, but one of the legends says that the dragon must pass every peak of the wave, at the emptiness of the moon, in the year of the waning ruler, by the hand of a dual heart awakened, bounded on all four points.”

“But what does that mean?” the dragon slayer yelled over a loud hum, her panic at a near-fever pitch.

“I don’t know!” the bard shouted.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” the dragon slayer said, her voice high-pitched, frantic.

“You never asked,” the bard replied.

“But you knew who I was facing.”

“The legend doesn’t say the name of the dragon. I just realized who it meant.” The bard hung on to his staff.

“But still you should have told me! You know all the tales.”

The dragon slayer sounded at wits end. She was weakening. Perfect. He sucked in more of her fear as sustenance to rebuild his strength.

“You should have asked!” the bard said again. “Besides I thought you knew them as well as I did! What is wrong with you? This is what you do, save people and kingdoms from dragons!” Jaxter coughed.

Eyvindir reveled in the bard’s increasing weakness and in the argument brewing.

“Stop! We don’t have the time to argue!” the fire girl, Paulette, yelled. The sneak somehow saw through his facade back at the castle. She would not last a day under his new reign.

“What?” the dragon slayer said.

“The dragon is changing,” the knight said.

The beast’s crystal scales shifted through the primary color spectrum. A second dragon arose from the first, consisting only of a matrix of rainbow light.

Eyvindir would regain the upper hand. He drew ever more strength from everyone’s confusion and fear. Clarity blossomed anew. The moon wouldn’t rise for another hour. He still had time. The dragon slayer’s surprise betrayal would delay him no more.

“You have to kill it before it disappears for another millennia!” Eyvindir yelled, his strength growing from their pain. He could wriggle in the ropes. Soon his power would reawaken and then he would easily break his flimsy bonds. “You must! I command it!” But his last words were drowned out of his own hearing by a roar from the beast.

“Shut up!” the dragon slayer managed to shout over the din.

How was she able to do that when he couldn’t even hear himself? He yanked the ropes.

“He’s right, or something like it has to happen every millennia so the dragon can come back,” the bard said.

“I can’t,” the dragon slayer said, her voice hoarse.

“What do you mean ‘you can’t’?” the bard asked. “You are the Dragon Slayer!”

“I can’t.” The dragon slayer’s cheeks were wet. Splendid! Her life force was depleting.

Any moment now he’d be renewed and free. He used all his years of experience to yank her life force from her. She had to obey him. All his plans rested on her demise, now that he’d taken what he needed from her.

The dragon nudged the dragon slayer with its large head. The dragon slayer stumbled back. She was weakening. The beast nodded slowly, its Dragon Stone glowing green then red on its forehead.

Was the beast communicating with the dragon slayer? Couldn’t be. The beast was for him only. Power flooded through him hot and molten, anger strengthening him.

“Dragon slayer, you must kill it,” Eyvindir shouted. “The fate of the island is in your hands. The fate of the whole Five Kingdoms!”

“Jaxter?” the dragon slayer turned to the bard as if to confirm his words.

“He may be right. Do you trust me?”

“What kind of question is that?” the dragon slayer asked.

“A question that demands an answer,” the bard said in a voice so soft Eyvindir wasn’t sure he heard correctly.

He glared at the stupid dragon slayer. How could he have miscalculated? He’d planned for every contingency. Nowhere had he predicted that the dragon slayer would be strengthened by the new web of connections around her, her pesky friends. She was a loner. That was to be her downfall. He’d made sure of it.

“What do I need to do?” the dragon slayer asked. Her friends must have answered because after a pause she said, “I need your help.”

Damn the old gods and all the lore of his people.

The dragon slayer barked an order cutting through his curse. “Paulette, get to the dragon’s tail. You’re fire. On my mark!”

“What?” The fire girl shouted too close. She hovered over him. “And leave him?”

“He can’t do anything. Go! Time fades, and so does he,” the dragon slayer ordered.

“You must not! The Dragon Stone is mine!” But his words croaked out in sputter. He felt more than saw the new moon rising and his life-force, his prana, ebbing out of this body.

The King Singfan identity, his soul, had been quiet, letting him take command. Eyvindir rallied King Singfan’s soul to lend him strength.

The dragon’s hum deepened and filled the cavern with a low vibrato. It flapped higher and brightened, both the dragon of light and the real dragon. Its scales shot sparks, which exploded against the cavern walls. Two dragons melded into light, too bright to peer at directly. Fire and wind swirled into a funnel and exploded into a white light and blinding bang.

“No!” He shouted, but he couldn’t hear his own voice.

“Don’t stop!” the dragon slayer yelled above the storm.

From all directions, explosions like a fireworks hammered him. Bound as he was, he managed to bend double to guard against the pain, but his efforts were useless. His skin crawled as if ants wriggled under his skin. Pain pierced all layers of his being—both the body and the magics layers.

“Stop!” Eyvindir tried to yell, but it came out like a series of croaks. No, it couldn’t be. He couldn’t move his body.

Then in breath, he lost all sense of feeling. Impossible.

He was able to sense his life force being jettisoned out of his body and into the night sky, on its way back to where his actual body rested inert in his fortress far to the north and east. Through his cloud of shock, from his vantage point in the sky far above, he spied his body, actually the body of King Singfan who had ruled the Oro Islands for over seventy-five years, burst into flames. He felt nothing. He was frozen in shock. The male body that had been the Oro king’s was now cinders, a miniscule pile of ash.

Panic almost scattered his prana into a million trillion irretrievable bits. Only his mighty skill as the oldest living sorcerer saved him. He’d heard rumors of such things. But no, he could not die. Unacceptable. He mustered his focus. His actual ancient body existed within reach.

He focused on his prana, a faint thread of light, a line leading in a northeasterly direction, through the clouds, across the sea, to his obsidian mountain enclave. He didn’t follow the thread to nestle in his sleeping form in that cold room. Not just yet. To do that would admit defeat. He would not let an upstart dragon slayer ruin his plans.

But she had. He had wits enough to admit that.

For a moment he burned white hot with rage and felt an unbearable pain sear his energy body. His anger, intricate and quite useful, connected to his identity, his soul. But now his anger was burning his life force, his prana connection, to the only body he now had.

He brought his attention back to the island city of Plumaria and hovered over it. He quickly allowed dirty white cloud particulates to drench his rage. He had to focus. He had to retrieve the remnants of power from that flimsy old pile of dust that had been the Oro king. He had to find another body to use and fast. Before she got away with the Dracontias, the precious one and only Dragon Stone.

The search for and habitation of a suitable body only took him an entire day, but he finally accomplished his task. Withdrawing his powers from the dust pile, he spied the body he needed in the Plumaria castle’s sick room. His low simmering fury and tenacity built up over three centuries of scheming had made him strong. With his powerful focus, he propped up the dying soul, revived it, and pushed his will and identity into the young man’s heart.

In a breath, he healed the youngling’s body to temporary vibrancy. The body wouldn’t last, so he had to hurry. There was not the time to pick a more robust body. That took preparation, study, and careful calculations. He didn’t have the time for that. He had to get back what was rightfully his.

Once more in control of a vibrant body and pliable identity, he followed the rumors of the slayer’s departure all the way to the piers. That she-slayer was supposed to do his bidding. Failure hadn’t been an option. Perhaps seventy-five years in the Oro king’s body had made him sloppy and dulled his normally exceptionally high acuity and brilliance.

His complacency must have been how she had tricked him, how she’d deceived and betrayed him. He hadn’t been blindsided by a female since his sister had stolen the royal crown from him over a century ago.

Never mind the mistakes of the past. This dragon slayer, this Henrietta, had destroyed his ambition to rule over the Oro Islands for the next one hundred years and beyond. In that time he had planned to seize control of the other four kingdoms using the might of the Dragon Stone, combined with the other four kingdom’s crystals and stones he’d meticulously collected over the centuries. His life’s calling entailed ruling over all the Five Kingdoms. No one was going to come between him and his destiny again.

She would pay for ruining his plans.

He’d end this before she ever left the city of Plumaria. The child-woman, Henri Etta, was no match for him. He couldn’t be destroyed that easily.

He directed his new body through the marketplace, causing havoc. Then he rushed up the pier and delighted in the feel of youth in his limbs. A crazy thought flitted through his mind—that of the faraway and long ago carefree youth he once was who’d loved the freedom of birds and spent hours watching them in flight.

Then he saw her, waving and nodding to the peons who thought she’d liberated them. He swatted away memories of his flimsy faraway past. His pace quickened. She could not take his dream away. No one could, especially no woman. He was to have complete control of all the Five Kingdoms.

Once he had the last object of power, his plans would click into place.

She’d taken the most powerful gem in all the Five Kingdoms from him, and she would pay. With her life.

To keep reading, download Henrietta and the Dragon Stone at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and iTunes.

Find more from Beth on her website, Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.

The Threshold Child by Callie Kanno

For some exciting reading, download Callie Kanno’s first novel in The Threshold Trilogy, The Threshold Child.

Adesina has been trained from childhood to serve her nation as a warrior and a spy. When she is selected to combat a group of seditious magic users, she must summon all of her abilities to defeat her enemies—including talents that have been buried in the deepest part of her.

Download The Threshold Child from Amazon.

Excerpt

Chapter One: The Bird of Prey

No one ever looked up.

For this reason, a black clothed figure was crouched in the gnarled arms of an ancient tree. In the sparse moonlight she was invisible against the background, waiting patiently for her prey. Her metallic purple eyes, the only visible feature, scanned the ground searching the darkness for every possible detail.

The minutes ticked by slowly.

The whisper of the breeze was chilled by the promise of winter, but she ignored the dropping temperature. Her intense focus even overshadowed the slight ache in her muscles from maintaining her position for an extended period of time.

Every rustle in the underbrush, every stirring of the leaves, brought her sharp eyes around in search for some sign of her quarry.

Finally, a similarly garbed figure passed beneath her tree, slinking from shadow to shadow. She felt a surge of satisfaction as she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet in preparation for the attack.

She dropped down from the branches and brought her prey to its knees before there was any time for her victim to react. She removed the hood and scarf of her opponent, revealing the pale, narrow face of a young woman with short sandy hair. Her features were harsh but blunt, giving her the brutish appearance of one who delights in violence.

The young woman looked up at the strange metallic eyes that were flecked with gold. She clenched her fists, immediately prepared to lash out, and her face contorted in an expression of pure loathing. “Adesina,” she spat.

Adesina didn’t need to ask how she had been recognized. She knew her eyes made her easily identifiable. “I hoped I would be the one to mark you, Basha.”

“I had hoped to kill you.”

Adesina didn’t doubt it. The two young women were part of a class of students training for an elite and selective military group, commonly known as the Shimat. The competition was fierce, and “accidents” happened.

Basha was an unremarkable student, but she was vindictive and unrelenting, which some teachers mistook for determination and strength of character. From the moment she had laid eyes on Adesina, some ten years ago, Basha had hated her. That hate only grew as Adesina excelled among her peers.

Adesina was unusually gifted, even for a Shimat. She had the uncanny ability to sense her surroundings and knew how to use that to her advantage. She was exceptionally agile and her endurance levels were far above normal. These traits, among others, were the reason why she had begun her training five years earlier than any other student.

Adesina reciprocated Basha’s intense dislike. Not only that, but she was aware of her own gifts and Basha’s shortcomings. It rankled Adesina’s pride to see Basha gain distinction through the misconceptions of certain instructors.

A number of sarcastic retorts rose in Adesina’s fifteen-year-old mind, but she ignored them. Basha saw the scornful quirk to Adesina’s eyebrows, and her own eyes gleamed with the desire for violent revenge.

Instead of voicing her thoughts, Adesina drew the dagger from the belt around her waist. “I have unveiled you, Shi Basha. Yield or be disgraced.”

Basha’s expression twisted as she debated whether it was worth the disgrace to defy the person she despised more than anything in the world. When she spoke, it was between clenched teeth.

“I yield.”

Adesina stepped forward so she was facing Basha’s kneeling figure and placed the edge of her blade against her enemy’s cheek.

“I mark you, so that all may know of your first failure.”

Her stroke was perhaps harder than it needed to be. Basha swore, but let it bleed freely. Adesina took a small square of white cloth from a pouch on her belt and stained it with some of Basha’s blood. She held it carefully in her hand and returned Basha’s hood and scarf to her.

Basha took them and got to her feet. “A day will come when I will make you pay for this mark. You will rue the day you came into this world.”

Adesina rolled her eyes. Basha had always tended to be melodramatic. “Come on. We have to return to the school.”

Adesina began to turn, but her eyes caught the movement of a sleek shadow several yards away. It was hard to imagine that there was anything more black than the woods at night, but something darker crouched just out of sight. Two golden orbs gleamed momentarily but then seemed to disappear altogether. When she looked closer she could see only trees.

It must have been some sort of animal, for Adesina seemed to be the only human with odd colored eyes. Given the size of the spheres, it must have been an enormous creature. There had never been any beast so large this close to the fortress.

She considered investigating further, but an impatient movement from Basha brought her head around sharply. Adesina’s learned suspicion of Basha overrode her present curiosity. Frowning to herself, Adesina continued on her way.

The autumn leaves lay thick on the ground, but the footsteps of the two young women were muted by the damp soil. They were merely two silhouettes slipping through the darkness, hidden among the crooked trees that surrounded them.

As they walked, Adesina’s mind turned back over the events of the night. It had been a surprise to be shaken from sleep and told that tonight would be the final test for their year of training. If they passed they would be eligible to advance to the next year. If not, they would be put through a remedial course of training.

They had been individually led to different parts of the forest northwest of the school and told that their one objective was to find and unveil one of their classmates. Those unveiled were to be marked by the victor.

Now Adesina and Basha emerged from the forest and approached a small camp. It consisted of two small tents set up on the hill overlooking the forest. The three instructors of Adesina’s group of students stood waiting, robed in black. In the darkness they took on the spectral appearance of the harbingers of death, and the young student felt a chill run down her spine at the sight. Beside the instructors stood a spidery device similar to a brazier, but with flames instead of coals.

Adesina looked at the faces of the men that had taught and trained her since she was five years old. They regarded her gravely as the two young women approached. She greeted them respectfully in order of seniority, bowing to each. “Shar Breyen. Shar Jareb. Shar Per.”

They bowed back. “Shi Adesina.”

Basha went through the same ceremony, but did not receive any acknowledgment in return. Her pale blue eyes smoldered even though she kept them lowered.

Breyen indicated toward the brazier. Adesina took the stained square of cloth she was holding in her hand and gently laid it on the fire. The flames licked at the corners of the cloth, blackening them and curling them as if it were contorting in agony. Adesina watched it dispassionately and wafted the smoke onto her face before stepping back again.

This was a symbolic ritual of the Shimat. The stained cloth represented the victory won, and all that the victory had cost. The sacrifice, the skill, the lessons learned. By breathing in the smoke, it all became part of you. The ritual was also a way to honor those who made you stronger.

Per nodded approvingly. “Shi Adesina, take your prisoner to the medical wing and then you may retire.”

Both students bowed again before walking past their instructors.

The hill leveled out to become flat ground after a few steps. The grass was greyish-green in color and coarse in texture. In the meager moonlight it took on a sickly appearance. This, in addition to the thin mist swirling over the ground, gave a ghostly feeling to the fortress that served as the school and training facility.

The fortress was set on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the ocean. The great outer wall looked harsh and forbidding at night, but during the day it gave a strange sort of comfort in its solitary strength. There were no other cities or villages near the fortress; no other buildings that might call themselves neighbors. The fortress stood alone for many leagues, and it seemed to take power in that seclusion.

The massive gates stood open, which was quite unusual, but several Shimat guards compensated for the lapse of security. Three stood along the wall directly above the gates, and two more stood on the ground on either side. The others were positioned at even intervals along the wall like dark columns, upright and unmoving.

All of them wore the black uniform that Adesina and her peers had been privileged to wear for the night’s activities. Black clothing, knee-high boots, gloves, a high-collared black leather vest, and a hood and scarf that only left the eyes visible. These glittering spheres watched the two young women closely, but the guards remained otherwise still and silent.

Basha fumed inaudibly as they walked. Her burning glare was fixed on the ground and her fists were clenched at her side. When they passed through the gates, she turned to Adesina and said venomously, “I can go to the medical wing by myself.”

Adesina shrugged and walked away. Less time spent in Basha’s presence was always a good thing, and she wanted to get what rest she could before dawn.

Basha took the corridor to the left and Adesina turned right, back to their sleeping quarters.

Each of the rooms that served as sleeping quarters held ten to fifteen students. There were two or three metal washstands per room, and one large mirror on the wall in which they could thoroughly inspect the neatness of their personal appearance.

Every Shi, or student, was instilled with a strict sense of order, which carried over into every aspect of their lives. The uniform had to be meticulous, the hair combed back from the face, proper hygiene attended to, and so forth. All such rules for personal care and general cleanliness were set down in what was casually called “the code.”

Keeping this in mind, Adesina resisted the urge to simply plop into bed fully dressed in spite of her fatigue. She took off the Shimat uniform she had been given for her assignment, folded it carefully, and placed it on the small chest located at the foot of her cot.

Under normal circumstances, a student wasn’t allowed to touch such a uniform. They were only worn by full Shimat, and had to be earned. For certain tests, however, that rule was waived.

Adesina put on her sleeping uniform, unpinned her hair from its tightly braided knot, and climbed carefully into bed. With a weary expression on her face, she settled down for some much needed sleep.

To keep reading, download The Threshold Child from Amazon.

You can find more from Callie on her blog and Facebook.

Gethyon by Pippa Jay

Check out this adventure-filled science fiction novel from Pippa Jay: Gethyon.

Abandoned by his mother after his father’s death, Gethyon Rees feels at odds with his world and longs to travel the stars. But discovering he has the power to do so leaves him scarred for life. Worse, it alerts the Siah-dhu—a dark entity that seeks his kind for their special abilities—to his existence, and sets a bounty hunter on his tail.

When those same alien powers lead Gethyon to commit a terrible act, they also aid his escape. Marooned on the sea-world of Ulto Marinos, Gethyon and his twin sister must work off their debt to the Seagrafter captain who rescued them while Gethyon puzzles over their transportation. How has he done this? And what more is he capable of?

Before he can learn any answers, the Wardens arrive to arrest him for his crime. Can his powers save him now? And where will he end up next?

You can download Gethyon from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

Excerpt

“Tell me about the angels.” The plea in Gethyon’s voice forced him to put aside the issue for now. Time enough for that later.

“Not angels,” Embar said thoughtfully. “Something not of our world, perhaps.”

“Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know, exactly. They called themselves the Rion, and I assumed they were your mother’s people. They were carrying you and Callon. She was asleep, a little pink face with her red hair in curls. You were crying.” Embar gazed towards the window. “I didn’t hear any vehicle come up to the house. They were just there, at my door. The man carrying you had a long, silver staff etched with symbols. They came into the house and sat with me, and then told me my son was dead.” Embar swallowed hard, a knot of grief lodging painfully in his throat as he said the words. “He’d tried to stop a cataclysmic explosion that would have destroyed an entire planet. He managed to contain it, reduce the force of it, but it killed him.”

“And my mother?” Gethyon asked hesitantly.

“Well, they never told me and I never asked,” Embar admitted. “She must have survived the explosion because they said Solar had died before you were born. All that concerned me was Solar’s fate, not hers. And you and your sister, of course.” It had been quite a shock to learn of Solar’s death and inherit two grandchildren in the same instant.

“She might still be alive, then.”

“Perhaps.”

Gethyon’s face glowed with hope, the brightest Embar had ever seen it. The contrast to his own feelings about their mother was stark. He’d never wish ill on anyone, but he hoped they would never see her again.

“What was her name?”

“Quin.”

“Quin what?”

“I don’t know.” Embar rose, bringing any further talk to an end, tired of reliving such painful memories. He saw the barriers close in once more as the boy retreated into his private darkness. “I must finish my thesis. I have a lecture to present next week.” He gazed down at the boy, sensing his disappointment. “Gethyon, we can talk about this again another time, if you wish.”

For the first time Embar could remember, a faint smile grew on the child’s face as he stared up at his grandfather. “When?”

“After my presentation.” He patted Gethyon on the shoulder, and noted with shock the red lines that crisscrossed the boy’s arms. “You should ask Keisha to clean those for you. They must sting.”

Gethyon nodded, but remained seated on his bed as the old man left.

~ * ~

As the door closed behind his grandfather, Gethyon rose and went to the table. A large, clear octagonal crystal lay nestled in a protective bed of fabric, glittering faintly in the slivers of light that trickled beneath the edges of the black curtains. An Χ—the company emblem of the ancient Greek letter chi taken from the acronym for Crystalline Holographic Imager—was carved into one facet of the device. Gethyon traced the emblem, a rare smile touching his face. This was his one treasure, the one sure thing he had. Lifting it from its box, Gethyon clutched the CHI in his hands and activated it. A representation of the galaxy filled his room with a translucent blackness. Stars glittered and planets glowed before his eyes.

Take me away from here. He stared deep into the image, his longing to be out there burning in his chest. Take me far away.

Something within him stirred, forcing him to focus deep inside the image. Warmth flowed from his chest, through his arms and into the crystal. Suddenly, the image opened and surrounded him; the room transformed into the dark void of open space, the stars orbiting him in slow rotation, a supernova within the grasp of his free hand.

Gethyon gasped in shock and dropped the CHI device; the illusion vanished, leaving the inactive crystal gleaming at his feet. He stared at it, expecting the images to leap from the crystal again and surround him. Tentatively, he reached down for the gem and his fingers closed around it. He lifted it to his face, gazing intently into the faceted prism, turning it this way and that as if it would suddenly reveal its secret. When nothing happened, he held it at arm’s length and activated it a second time. Again, the picture rose from the CHI device and hovered above it, nothing more than a simple hologram. Not understanding the strange sensation that seemed to spill from him into the heart of the imager, he allowed it to happen again. The view expanded and enfolded him in deepest, blackest space and sparkling stars. A cloud of infinitesimal space debris drifted across his eyes like wisps of cloud, and he pushed the fingers of his free hand into it, watching as the particles dispersed around his fingers.

Marveling at the sudden magic that had brought the galaxy’s image to life, he permitted more of the energy to surge into the CHI device, forcing it when it threatened to trickle to a halt. The image expanded farther, beyond the confines of his room and out into the landscape. Something within him seemed to unlock, and glittering threads of crystal fire shot through space, a long twisting corridor stretching out to infinity. Gethyon stood gasping on the threshold, dizzy with power and exhilaration, waiting to fall into the passageway.

Sudden alarm shot through him in an icy stream; he turned, fear stinging his nerves and fiery agony pulsing in his mind. From behind him darkness deeper than space, an antithesis of light, life and warmth, billowed into his vision, swamping and consuming all before it. He tried to scream, but the sound locked in his throat, leaving him silent and helpless. He tried to release the CHI device, to banish the image and the darkness back into the gem, but a paralysis claimed him. The blackness swelled. Amorphous fingers reached for him across the millennia, seeking to claim him. Power bled from him as the darkness drained his energy, sucked the life from him.

Pain exploded in his hand to the sound of splintering, and the vision shattered. Gethyon stood frozen. Shards of the CHI device fell from a hand dripping in crimson. He screamed as the darkness swallowed him.

To follow the rest of Gethyon’s journey, visit Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

To find more from Pippa Jay, visit her website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Zoo by Tara Elizabeth

With nearly 100 reviews averaging over 4 stars, Tara Elizabeth’s Zoo is definitely worth a read.

A chronicle of my time living in a zoo . . . I’m not really sure where to start, and you may have trouble believing me even as I tell you my story. My family did. They laughed the first time I told them, so now I just say it was all a crazy dream. You see, I died in a totally preventable car accident . . . or so I thought. When I opened my eyes, I was shocked to discover that I had been resurrected into the year 2282 and, just as unbelievably, was locked up in a zoo! A HUMAN ZOO! Oh wait, I mean the People’s Past Anthropological Center.

The Global Government created the Centers because all of the different cultures of the world had, over centuries of time, slowly absorbed into one uniform culture. Everything and everybody felt the same, and the world didn’t like it. So, to help the people of 2282 find cultures they thought worthy to live their lives by, they used time travel to zap the people of the past into the future. They created enclosures to house their live human exhibits. And that’s what happened to me. I became a research project, a source of entertainment. I was a prisoner who was over two hundred years away from my family and friends.

Most of my time in the enclosure was spent trying to escape. I also made friends, lost friends, fell in love, was betrayed, was held captive within captivity, and lots of other fun stuff. There were some shocking moments and some devastating moments . . . It’s a lot to recount, but I’ll try my best to tell you all about my time travel . . . PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE.

I’m Emma, by the way.

You can download Zoo from Amazon.

Excerpt

DAY ONE – THE ENCLOSURE

When I woke up, I saw green, lots and lots of green. There were green plants, green trees, and green moss covered rocks. Underneath me was a cushion of green grass. I heard rushing water coming from somewhere nearby, but the pounding in my head dulled the pleasant sound. They drugged me, and my body did not like whatever they gave me. I stayed stretched out on the soft carpet of grass, trying to adjust to my surroundings.

“Hi there! About time you woke up,” a breezy, female voice chirped.

I slowly rolled my head in the direction of the voice. A girl about my age was sitting on a boulder staring at me. Her blonde hair was wild, like she took the time to tease it but used a twig to do it. Her eyes were a cool blue like a clear sky. Her dress was plain. It was made from what looked like burlap or some other horrible fabric (if you could even call it fabric). It looked completely out of place on her.

I was thinking about how awful it would be to wear something like that while I was scratching at my own skin. And sure enough, I had the same horrible fabric on. I was so mortified. I was wearing a brown sack that came to about mid-thigh, and when I checked, I discovered that I also had on tiny, bikini-cut panties. I was more of a boy short kind of girl.

“Where am I?” I asked the blonde girl.

“Didn’t they show you the film?”

“Yeah, but . . . ”

“Well, you’re in your new home.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and I almost expected her to start smacking on some gum.

I sat up and looked around. There was a small jungle toward the back of the enclosure with the rest of the area being flat land. The jungle was thick with ferns and trees. I could see a hint of a waterfall over some low hanging vines. At the front of the enclosure, on the flat land, I could see a small vegetable garden, a fruit tree, and a cow tied to a post. Half of the space was surrounded by a rock-wall, and the rest was encased by a glass-dome.

“This isn’t anything like where I came from,” I said aloud to myself and to the girl.

“Yeah, me neither. All I can figure is that they want to experiment by putting us in different environments and then seeing what happens.” The girl shrugged her shoulders. “So, what’s your name?”

“Emma David. You?”

The girl spewed a ton of information at me all at once. “Janice Hall. Grew up in Manhattan. Got into partying young. Overdosed on cocaine in a nightclub. Been in here alone for about a month. It’s good to have some company. I started talking to the cow a few days ago. Can you believe that? They could have at least put me in one of these things with some good neighbors or something.”

She completely overwhelmed me, and I didn’t know what to say in response. The thing that stuck out the most about her little speech was that she said she had overdosed. She looked too young to have had an overdose. “How old are you?” I finally asked her.

“Sixteen,” she answered nonchalantly, while inspecting her cuticles. Then she dropped down next to me and grabbed my hand to have a look at my nails. She was behaving like a monkey. I could recall watching them at a regular zoo. They would sit and pick at each other, searching for bugs or whatever nasty things inhabited their fur. It made me uncomfortable, but I was so focused on figuring her out, that I let her continue for a while longer.

Janice was so young and beautiful, and she was probably wealthy if she grew up in Manhattan. I’ve seen plenty of famous socialites on cable TV hit rock bottom before they hit 18. What a waste. Drugs were one thing that I never messed with, and she was a prime example of why.

“What year are you from?” I could tell she wasn’t from my time, even though we were dressed the same. There was something about her that was different, besides the New York accent.

She continued to look over my cuticles. I let her because it seemed to calm her down, which also helped my own nervous energy. She answered, “I was born in 1962. They ‘saved’ me in 1978.” She made air quotes with her fingers as she said the word “saved.” Then she asked me, “What about you?”

The time travel crap was starting to weird me out. I felt like my head was going to explode, but I held myself together long enough to answer her. “Um, I’m 17. I was born in 1995 and they ‘saved’ me in 2013 . . . This is crazy!” Nope. I couldn’t keep it together after all. Why was I sitting there making small talk with a strange girl? I needed to get the hell out of my new prison.

I ran over to the rock wall, searching for a door. Nothing. After I reached the glass front of our enclosure, where the public would be observing us from the other side, I beat my fists against the hard surface. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

Then, I screamed some more.

“Tried that already. It’s no use. Besides, the park’s not even open. Nobody’s here, silly,” Janice told me. She stood behind me, next to the cow, with her hand on her hip. I noticed she had fashionably tied some kind of vine around her waist to accentuate her curves under the hideous sack dress.

I didn’t care what she said, so I ignored her and kept beating the glass wall from one side all the way to the other. I went on that way until I reached a point where I could see into the enclosure next door. What I saw was unexpected.

To read the rest, download Zoo from Amazon.

Find more from Tara on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk

Blood and Iron, the first book in the epic fantasy series The Book of the Black Earth, is like a sword-and-sorcery Spartacus set in a richly-imagined world.

It starts with a shipwreck following a magical storm at sea. Horace, a soldier from the west, had joined the Great Crusade against the heathens of Akeshia after the deaths of his wife and son from plague. When he washes ashore, he finds himself at the mercy of the very people he was sent to kill, who speak a language and have a culture and customs he doesn’t even begin to understand.

Not long after, Horace is pressed into service as a house slave. But this doesn’t last. The Akeshians discover that Horace was a latent sorcerer, and he is catapulted from the chains of a slave to the halls of power in the queen’s court. Together with Jirom, an ex-mercenary and gladiator, and Alyra, a spy in the court, he will seek a path to free himself and the empire’s caste of slaves from a system where every man and woman must pay the price of blood or iron. Before the end, Horace will have paid dearly in both.

Download Blood and Iron from Amazon.

Excerpt

Jirom reeled back with blood pouring into his right eye. He blinked it away as he retreated. He blocked a hard jab and grimaced as the iron spikes protruding from his opponent’s gloves gouged long furrows down his forearm.

Boos rained down from the stands where workaday freemen of the empire stomped and swilled from clay mugs. Their betters sat in shaded wooden boxes along the top of the tiny arena, fanned by slaves and served wine from silver chalices. Jirom would’ve killed for a flagon of beer right now.

A blow to the ribs knocked the air from his lungs and left stinging gashes along his side. Jirom covered up and circled away, and the crowd continued to make its displeasure known. His opponent was called the Lion. He was ferocious, young, and as strong as his namesake. With his light complexion and proud, hawkish nose, he could have passed for a member of the upper caste except for his iron collar and the sigil—three diamonds joined in a triangular pattern—branded on the right side of his face which marked him as a permanent slave, unable to ever regain his freedom again. It was possible his family had sold him into slavery as a child, or he’d insulted the wrong person. There were many ways to end up a slave in Akeshia, as Jirom well knew. Most gladiator bouts—whether fought with sword, spear, or bare-handed—didn’t last long because the fighters were criminals or slaves who had sinned against their masters. They usually died their first time out, fed to the more experienced gladiators. But the Lion was a different breed. Jirom didn’t know his story, save that he’d been brought down from Chiresh for these games. That meant money had been invested in him—a lot of it.

Jirom blocked a right hook which would have caved in his head, and more blood poured down his arms. As he stepped back from a straight-armed jab, his shoulders hit the rough boards of the arena’s eight-foot-high partition. A hard punch to the gut nearly forced him to drop his guard, but he saw the follow-up to the head and slipped away. Something wet and sticky struck his back. Rotten pomegranates and oranges landed around him, making pulpy divots in the sand. Jirom looked into the stands. In one of the private boxes, a portly, middle-aged man with deep brown skin was talking to an equally portly, slightly older patrician. The first man was Jirom’s owner, Thraxes, so engrossed in conversation that he wasn’t even watching the bout.

A grunt warned Jirom in time to cover up before a powerful clout smashed against his temple. He staggered, his vision fading into black and white spots, before righting himself. Through the speckled haze, he saw the Lion drawing back for another blow. Jirom slipped past a punch aimed at his chin and pushed off to make some space between them. More jeers rocked the arena.

“Come on, you dog!” someone in the stands taunted. “Fight!”

Jirom slapped away another punch and continued his slow retreat around the pit. The familiar twinge in his lower back from an old injury climbed up his spine, making every movement that much more painful. He glanced up to the private boxes at the wrong moment, and his opponent charged with a hoarse bellow. Jirom covered his face as he backpedalled, but a couple punches got through, drawing more blood. His feet got tangled up and he fell hard on his backside. A kick to the back as he rolled over sent jangling shocks of pain down his legs. His opponent stood over him with arms raised to the crowd, and the onlookers showered him with adoration. Thraxes was still engrossed in his discussion.

Jirom crawled to his knees as the Lion paraded around the arena. His opponent didn’t give him time to fully recover before charging at him again. Jirom circled away to his left, always the left, and more boos came down from the stands. The people wanted to see death.

His or mine, it doesn’t matter whose.

Another hard blow almost knocked Jirom down again, but he kept his footing. The Lion came after him, relentless and seemingly inexhaustible. If anything, his attacks were getting stronger and more confident. Jirom glanced up. Thraxes was now standing in front of his seat. With a bored expression, the slave owner yawned and scratched his ample belly. That was the signal.

About time, you fat bastard.

The Lion unleashed another straight punch with a growl. His eyes widened as Jirom caught the fist with an open hand. Air exploded from the Lion’s mouth as Jirom drove his other fist into the younger man’s ribs. A punch to the back of the ear dropped the Lion to his knees, and the next one laid him out flat with blood trickling down his branded cheek.

Jirom felt the rage churning inside him like an ill wind. Breathing through his mouth because his nose was clogged with blood, he knelt down and wrapped both arms around the Lion’s neck. With a heave, he twisted until he heard the spine snap with a sharp pop. The crowd roared with approval.

Cheers and a few copper coins fell from the audience as Jirom walked to the gate, but he ignored them. As he traveled down the dark tunnel to the slave cells, scores of feet pounded on the boards above his head.

To discover what happens next, download Blood and Iron from Amazon.

Find more from Jon on his website, Twitter and Facebook.