Genre: Historical Paranormal Romance
Fleeing for her life, Sybrina leaves behind everything to escape the
dark and ominous creature that killed her family.
It wants to finish what it started.
Sybrina stows away aboard a clipper ship and poses as her recently
murdered brother, Paul.
The year is 1866, an age in which science is a man’s game.
Can Sybrina solve the mystery of the creature that exsanguinates it
victims?
Buy Links: Amazon
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~Excerpt~
War.
It is a societal domination that never dies with the
progress of mankind. It crafts a vampiric buffet table, blood-soaked earth the
tablecloth. The meal encased in shiny metals forged to futilely protect its
fragile hosts. Hunting is easy and enshrouded in the mayhem, despair, and fear
that accompany battle. It disguises the vampires’ unnatural feast making us
undetectable. The remnants left behind are contorted in some bizarre repose.
The only indication of its death being of unnatural causes.
A fruitless meandering brought me to the Russo-Turkish
war. The plain lines of unremarkable uniforms jumbled against the ground piled
two to three deep was like walking through a meadow of flowers, crowded
together and all the same. My unhurried walk is slow for my kind. I have
nowhere in particular to be or wish to be, filling my deathless body my only
task.
A gloved hand rises, black and torn, changing the
terrain before me. I walk to it and bend down. I know not what draws me to the
dying Cossack but the hand beckons to me among the dead. The irony interests
me. I flip off the rubble that is charred limbs and body parts of his deceased
comrades. A young, clean, unlined face, chiseled as though made of marble,
stares back at me. Eyes not clouded with the shadows of death, but vibrantly
blue and warm with life.
In the cavalry’s haste, someone tasked with the
gruesome ordeal of clearing the dead has mistaken this wounded man as a corpse.
I shuffle more debris and expose the man’s legs. Beneath, they are attached
barely by sinew and fragments of broken bone. My original thought of this man’s
happenstance, being mistaken for dead, is quelled. The condition of his
injuries, blood loss, and damage make him a worthless endeavor for a surgeon.
Others in this situation would be pallid and unconscious, rapping on the door
of death. This man’s spirit is strong.
“Are you
death?” he asks me.
Contemplating his question, I stifle a sardonic chuckle.
In the truth of my existence, I can be either, take life or give it, eternally.
I take more time, as if I am drawn to this soldier, to examine him closely. His
body is ready to face the other side, but his mind is not.
“No.” I smile
weakly.
“What are you
then?”
“What do you
think I am?” I question back curiously.
“A wraith,” he
surmises, looking thoughtful.
A ghost would be too easy of a life, I think as I
laugh at his response. A phantom to walk among the living and not have to
partake of their company, but watch them with curiosity and indifference,
having no substance or feelings to interfere. I would welcome such an
existence.
“I am neither
wraith nor human.”
“Do you have a
soul, sir?”
“I do. A spirit
like any other man.”
A small breeze travels past our intimate meeting and
the Cossack’s blond hair dances around his face. He casts his eyes away from me
and peers up into the cerulean sky, thinking.
“Are you here
to save me?”
“What do you
need saving from? To be able to leave this world and pass on to another is the
gift of being human.”
“That path...
it doesn’t seem to be the right one.”
“I have seen a
great deal of death in my long days, and I know very few are ever ready for it
when it comes.”
The maimed soldier contemplates and answers
surprisingly again. “I would say very few are ready for love when it comes.”
My cheek lifts, forming a half grin in amusement. “I
believe that is true as well.”
“I feel nothing
from my waist down. Can you help me?”
“I can. But
what I have to offer comes with a heavy price.”
“Name it.”
“Eternal
existence in this world.”
~Giveaway~
Amy is giving away an ECopy of Mobster's Girl
For a chance to win please fill out the rafflecopter below.
~About the Author~
Amy Rachiele is a military spouse and brat who spent many years
volunteering and on staff for the Army National Guard and Department of Veteran
Affairs with Family Support, Family Readiness, as well as, Families of the
Fallen.
Amy devoted 10 years to teaching English to at-risk students in
the Providence School System. She holds a Master's degree from Rhode
Island College in English and Secondary Education. Amy published book one
in the Mobster Series, Mobster’s Girl, in 2012, and has continued to
self-publish since. Her novels have climbed to the bestseller lists
nationally and internationally on Amazon.com for romantic suspense and family
saga. She is an active member of New England Independent Writers and
has volunteered her time at her local library facilitating a writer’s group in
the hope of inspiring other writers.
Amy hosts a public access cable show called Book Talk.
Besides writing, she enjoys scrapbooking, sewing, and traveling. Amy
lives in Massachusetts with her son and husband.
Author Links:
Thank you for hosting.
ReplyDeleteHi Amy,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing your story with my readers today. :-)