Valerie recoiled as if Molly had asked her what her favorite sexual position was. “What do you mean?”
Great. She was going to play stupid. “All I’ve heard is that he was there. That you undid magic, stripping us of everything that made us who we were. But what no one tells me is what happened to him.”
Valerie’s face paled, and she licked her lips. “He’s dead, probably. Or human.”
“So you didn’t see what effect the spell had on him?”
“Well, no. But it was his magic.”
Molly raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “Okay, sure.” She blew out a sigh. “So you haven’t seen him?”
“No. Come inside. Let me call your aunt. I’m sure she’s looking for you.”
“She’s always looking for me,” Molly said.
Valerie nodded, reached out a hand and put it on Molly’s arm. That pissed her off. She didn’t tell Valerie she could touch her.
“Why don’t you come in, just for a minute,” she said coaxingly.
Molly chuckled and stepped back, just managing not to rip her arm free from Valerie’s grip. “No, I don’t belong in there. Not with you and your little family. Congratulations, Valerie Dearborn, I guess you got what you wanted. Be damned to the rest of us.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Molly turned and walked away, ignoring Valerie’s pleading calls. She had things to do and people to find.
Dear Reader,
If you enjoyed Love is Mortal, please consider leaving a review. If you do decide to leave a review, please email me and I will send you a copy of an exclusive scene from Love is Mortal that didn’t make it into the final version.
Although the main portion of this series is concluded with Love is Mortal, there are still a lot of characters whose stories are not finished. That book, set in the Valerie Dearborn world, will most likely be out in 2014 and will feature Jack, Rachel, Cer and undoubtedly Val and Lucas who will hopefully be living in connubial bliss.
If you would like to be added to my email list which will tell you about upcoming books, as well as contests, please email me at [email protected] of my two newest projects which will come out in 2013, as well as some information about authors whose books rock, are on the following pages. I hope you check them out!
P.S.- Yes! I know you want me to write a continuation of Bewitching the Werewolf and I must say, I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. My blog and Facebook page will hear about it first. The links are below.
P.P.S.- Thank you so much for not only reading this series, but for liking Val (and Lucas) just as much as I do. You guys are the best!
Big hug,
Caroline Hanson
Amber Lynn Natusch
CAGED (Book 1, The Caged Series)
www.amberlynnnatusch.com
"I stood in the middle of the room, unmoving – I barely breathed. My life had just become surreal, impossible, and one enormous lie. I needed to go, to run somewhere, anywhere to beat back the reality that was rapidly closing in around me. The image of him was burned into my retina, flashing over and over again like a warning. He was trapped somewhere between human and decidedly not, and I realized that was my new reality.
I was too."
After the death of her parents, Ruby awakens from a lifetime of shadows and finds herself alone, thrust into a world of lies, deceit, betrayal and the supernatural.
As her quest for truth continues to come up short, she realizes that maybe some questions really are best left unanswered.
When her true identity is finally unveiled, she is forced to choose between two of the mysterious men who continually seem to crop up in her life.
She chooses poorly.
Now abandoned, Ruby must learn to call on the darkness within to survive, or spend a hellish eternity imprisoned because of it.
Samantha Towle
First Bitten (The Alexandra Jones Series #1)
http://samanthatowle.blogspot.com/
A love story with bite ….
Walking home after a night out drowning her sorrows with her best friend, Carrie, Alexandra Jones stupidly takes a phone call from her cheating ex-boyfriend, Eddie, and in her anger hurls her phone into the forest before her.
But when Alex goes to retrieve her phone from the undergrowth, she and Carrie come face-to-face with a monster they never even knew existed, a Vârcolac (a nightmarish vampire-werewolf hybrid) and he's in search of fresh blood. The next thing Alex knows, she is staring at the impossibly handsome but mysterious Nathan who has helped bring her back to life, but not to the life she left.
To her horror, she discovers she has now become a blood-drinking Vârcolac herself and she is the only female of her kind, with the potential for breeding a whole new army of Vârcolacs if they can only track her down and press her into service.
And while Alex gets to know Nathan and his shape-shifting family as they offer her the protection she so desperately needs, unbeknown to all of them, the Vârcolacs are getting closer…
Denise Grover Swank
Chosen (The Chosen #1)
http://www.denisegroverswank.com/
Everything Emma Thompson owns fits in a suitcase she moves from one roach infested motel to another. She and Jake, her five year old son who can see the future, are running from the men intent on taking him. Emma will do anything to protect him even when it means accepting the help of a stranger named Will. Jake insists she needs Will, but Emma's never needed help before. And even though she's learned to trust her son, it doesn't mean she trusts Will.
Mercenary Will Davenport lives in the moment. Hauling Emma to South Dakota should have been an easy job, but his employer neglected to tell him about Emma's freaky son and the gunmen hot on her trail. Instinct tells him this job is trouble, but nothing can prepare him for Jake's proclamation that Will is The Chosen One, who must protect Emma from the men hunting her power. A power she doesn't know she has.
Will protects Emma and Jake on a cross-country chase from the men pursuing them, while struggling with memories from his past, his apprehension of Jake, and his growing attraction to Emma. Will's overwhelming urge to protect Emma surprises him, especially since it has nothing to do with his paycheck and possibly everything to do with the tattoo Jake branded on his arm. Rich and powerful men are desperate to capture Emma, and Will must discover why before it's too late.
New from Caroline Hanson in 2013:
Incendia and A Lady Out of Time
Excerpt from A Lady Out of Time:
Her dog tags clinked against the china tea-cup and Helen blushed furiously. This was the stupidest damned thing the military had ever asked her to do. She felt like an idiot, sitting in her khaki’s, her service gun strapped to her waist and a knife in her boot as she poured tea and was told not to slouch.
Really? How had pouring tea and learning to Waltz suddenly become more important than preparing to invade Greenland and push back the Nazi’s? The bell rang and Helen stalked out of the classroom to find her friend Mary who would undoubtedly be grabbing a quick smoke break before the next class.
The smoking area was at the edge of the North Perimeter, the view consisting of some loading bays that were 300 yards of black asphalt and a barbed wire fence. Beyond that were rolling (but dried up) hills. They were in the middle of nowhere. Her gaze was pulled back to a line of camouflaged military trucks. Today they were loading.
Eight body bags were loaded up and she thought about asking Mary for a cigarette. She’d quit, but seeing the body bags every damned time she came out here made her think cancer was the least of her problems. A plume of smoke shaped vaguely like a dragon drifted in front of her, singing her nostrils.
“I asked you what your schedule was for the rest of the day?”
Helen frowned. “You did? I guess I spaced out.” She felt sick with dread so she stood up straighter, made her breathing calm and met Mary’s gaze. “I have to go to the lab.”
Mary’s black eyebrows rose as she to
ok another big drag. “Which lab: experimental, regional or medical?”
Helen looked down at the ground, knowing she wouldn’t be able to hide the fear on her face if she looked at Mary directly. In a bored tone she said, “How’s this for strange. I’m going to the Home lab.”
Another smoke shape wafted by her. “Home lab? What the hell do they want you for? Is it time for your weekly vivisection?” Mary said jokingly, but Helen could feel her sudden scrutiny. The Home lab was buried deep underground so that if the bombs dropped, it would survive. The people wouldn’t, but the government had their priorities and people were not it. Top secret experiments went on down there and the morbid joke was that once you went in, you didn’t come out.
“Don’t know. I think it has something to do with the blood work from last week.” Helen quickly changed the subject. “Don’t you wonder why we are taking this class?”
“My job is not to question, but to do or die.” Mary said, then dropped the cigarette, snuffing it out under her steel-toed combat boot. She cracked her knuckles and looked around, like she was on the prowl. Which was partly true, Mary was always on the prowl. Every shore leave she had some guy lined up.
“We’re soldiers, why are we studying British Peerage and learning the quadrille? It doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Helen mumbled.
“I’m pretty sure ladies don’t say fuck.”
“No shit?” Helen asked and Mary cackled.
“Why do you think you’re going to the Home lab because of your blood work?” Mary asked, not letting the subject drop. Helen saw it all again: going into a large metal box with ten other women, the loud mechanical whine that sounded like nails on a chalkboard and then a blinding white light. When it was over and she’d opened her eyes, most of the other recruits were unconscious. Some of them had blood streaming from their noses and eyes. Two women were put on gurneys and wheeled out. Maybe they were over there in those body bags right this moment. The women who could walk were given blood tests and then sent to a radiation detox chamber.
So, why did she think her summons to the deepest, darkest parts of the military base were related to that? Because it was the scariest thing she’d ever done. She was a fighter and expected to die fighting. Where it would happen fast and with her blood pounding through her veins. It’d be a contest she’d lose.
Dying by radiation poison, that was just…futile. I can’t fight that. She exhaled sharply. “I don’t know. It just seemed like the sort of thing that would come back to bite me on the ass.”
“Yeah, you should only let men do that.”
Excerpt from Incendia:
Alexander wished that the Russian prostitute would get her ass out of his face. There was a time and a place for everything, but this scrawny girl with her black market boob job was blocking his line of sight. He wasn’t there to get laid, he was there to kill Dmitri Kerschenko, head of this shithole town’s version of a Russian mafia, and someone Alexander had always considered to be a bit of a piss-ant.
The man’s first name really was Dmitri, the last thing was just a variation of names that the man had used over the last few centuries while he lived in Russia.
Leave it to Dmitri to finally get himself in charge of some girls, booze, and drug-running, only to have it be in some tiny town a thousand miles away from Moscow. He was an under-achiever by nature. Alexander caught a glimpse of Dmitri sitting at a corner table surrounded by a couple of beefy thugs as security. The hooker must’ve realized his inattention, for she whipped her hair across his face which irritated the crap out of him. He growled in response, pushing her out of the way with a firm hand on her bony shoulder.
In Russian, she proposed to do something with him that was so obscene he couldn’t help but look at her with a raised eyebrow. Her smile was closed lipped and he wondered if her teeth were rotten from meth. She somehow construed his expression as consent, and sank to her knees, rolling her face in his crotch.
It cleared his line of sight at least. Dmitri was smoking a cigar and laughing when the bomb in the bathroom went off. The explosion was loud, the building shaking as if they were in an earthquake. Dmitri waved his thugs towards the explosion and stood, patting his chest to make sure his gun was right where he wanted it to be. Alexander was unsurprised to see that the man had let himself get fat. It had been a long time since he had seen one of his men still making an effort to stay in fighting shape. They were rich and powerful, clearly felt themselves to be safe in this world. At least Dmitri was armed, but Alexander was willing to chalk that up to paranoia rather than a desire to stay vigilant and prepared.
As if that gun could do shit against him.
Patrons were screaming, the prostitute scrambling away from him as everyone began to panic, just wanting to escape. The smell of smoke filled his nostrils, competing with the scent of alcohol and cheap perfume. Alexander stood, pushing through people like a salmon swimming upstream as he made his way towards Dmitri’s retreating back.
As if he could feel Alexander’s eyes on him, Dmitri turned around and looked at him. At well over 6 feet and built like a gladiator, Alexander had a damn hard time blending in. Dmitri’s eyes widened in shock and he pulled out his gun, managing to get a shot off before Alexander reached him. The bullet slammed into his shoulder and Alexander snarled in rage.
That little shit.
It would take more than a bullet or five to take him down. It was one of the perks of being nearly immortal. But it was fucking irritating. He punched Dmitri in the face, his head snapping back against the concrete wall and eliciting a grunt of pain. With the orb in one hand and his knife in the other, Alexander slammed the blade right-handed into Dmitri’s heart, piercing the man’s expensive suit and feeling a powerful rush of energy as the man’s essence flooded along the blade of his knife, through Alexander’s body and into the orb.
Dmitri’s eyes were fixed open, his mouth slack as he stared at Alexander accusingly. He knew all the things that Dmitri would say—this is your fault, you failed me, you failed us, how dare you live on and pass judgment upon me?
Alexander pulled the blade from Dmitri’s chest, Dmitri’s body sliding to the floor. Oh yes, he knew everything Dmitri would’ve said to him if he had had the chance. It was part of the reason Alexander had killed him so fast: he was sick of fucking hearing it. If the pleas for mercy had not affected him the first hundred times he’d heard it, there was no way it would start now.
He dropped down to one knee, wiping the blade clean using Dmitri’s jacket, and then left out the back exit, ignoring the screams of the people around him and the shrieking sound of police cars closing in. He threw a leg over his Can-Am Spyder Motorcycle and drove off into the night, another piece of his past laid to rest.
Table of Contents
Title page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Amber Lynn Natusch
Samantha Towle
Denise Grover Swank
New from Caroline Hanson in 2013:
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Love Is Mortal Page 22
