GUEST POST - ANN GIMPEL - BLOOD & MAGIC
By Ann Gimpel
Publisher: Taliesin
ISBN:
Release Date: 5/1/14
Genre: Dark Paranormal Romance
63,000 words
All Romance E-books Buy Link http://bit.ly/1mi1jDS
Can Luke conquer his past and claim the only woman he’s ever loved?
Can Luke conquer his past and claim the only woman he’s ever loved?
Blurb:
Magic
didn’t just find Luke Caulfield. It chased him down, bludgeoned him, and has
been dogging him ever since. Some lessons are harder than others. Luke survives
by embracing danger and upping the ante to give it one better. An enforcer for
the Coven, a large, established group of witches, his latest assignment is
playing bodyguard to the daughter of Coven leaders.
Abigail
Ruskin is chaperoning a spoiled twelve-year-old from New York to her parents’
home in Utah Territory when Luke gets on their stagecoach in Colorado. A
powerful witch herself, Abigail senses Luke’s magic, but he’s so overwhelmingly
male, she shies away from contact. Stuck between the petulant child and Luke’s
raw sexual energy, Abigail can’t wait for the trip to end.
Wraiths,
wolves, and humans with dark magick attack. Unpleasant truths surface about the
child and Abigail’s well-ordered world crashes around her. Luke’s so attracted
to Abigail, she’s almost all he can think about, but he’s leery too. In over his
head, he summons enforcer backup. Will they help him save the woman he’s
falling in love with, or demand her immediate execution?
Excerpt:
…It
wasn’t Luke but a long, drawn-out shriek that brought Abigail thumping back to
consciousness, her heart hammering triple time in her chest. Eyes wide and
staring against the darkness, she warded herself just in time. Strong magic
battered her. She tried to sense Luke, but that was the problem with wards.
They protected by forming an impenetrable barrier and corralled her magic
inside.
Whatever
was pummeling her seemed to have given up. She risked chinking enough of a hole
in her warding to send a tendril of magic outward because she needed
information. When it came, it terrified her so badly, her heart stuttered. Dark
things surrounded them: wraiths, mad wolves—those who’d been turned to serve
the other side—and humans who’d sold their immortal souls for forbidden
knowledge. Had the girl rallied them? How could she possibly be that powerful? Luke
didn’t seem to be anywhere. Abigail hoped he’d concealed himself out of harm’s
way, because the two of them couldn’t make the slightest dent in the dark horde
outside. The stagecoach rocked and she realized someone was climbing onto the
roof. Throat so dry she could barely breathe, she mended her warding.
The books. That’s what they want… Let them haul the
miserable things out of here. She knew she should
risk heaven and hell to keep such knowledge out of dark hands, but Abigail
didn’t see how throwing her life away would alter the outcome. She heard voices
speaking the Satanic tongue, and then dragging sounds as someone transferred
the trunk to the ground. Luke shouldn’t have bothered to put it back up
top, she thought grimly.
What
had the Girauds been doing with such arcane tomes in the first place? She
supposed there was the slightest chance they’d been protecting them from
falling into the wrong hands. Yes, by all
means, let’s give Coven members the benefit of the doubt. Except it was a
struggle, and she didn’t know who the hell to trust anymore.
She
waited until it was absolutely still outside, and a tentative scan told her the
dark host she’d sensed earlier had moved on, before loosing her wards. The
minute she did, she felt Luke’s energy. He pulled open one of the coach doors.
“I scared up a couple of horses from a nearby farm. We need to go after those
books—and the girl.”
She
fought down the protest that rose to her lips, but it slid out anyway. “There
aren’t enough of us.”
“Fixed
that problem too.” He smiled grimly. “I can ward you if you want to stay here,
but if you’re coming we need to get moving. Don’t want to let the trail get too
cold.” From the smirk in his voice, she knew he was being sarcastic.
She
sent her magic spiraling outward and felt the books pulsing with evil. No way that path would ever get cold. “Why
couldn’t I feel them this strongly before? I know the trunk had to have been
spelled, but still…”
“The trunk
was spelled, and by someone with magic to burn. It’s over in those trees. I guess
Carolyn’s minions were in a hurry and didn’t have a wagon.”
Abigail
felt like a rube. The book trunk had already been packed and sealed when she’d
picked Carolyn up in New York. She’d never even thought to examine it. “Did you
see Carolyn?”
“Yup.”
His upper lip curled into a sneer. “Caught a glimpse of her riding a mad wolf.”
“Do
you suppose there’s some way we could separate her from Goody Osborne?” Abigail
bit her lip nervously.
Luke
shook his head. “Even if we could—and I don’t think it’s possible—there are too
many unknowns. Her parents might have been turned. If that happened, the kid
could have embraced evil before it entered her body. By the time we sorted all
that out, the dark would have had one too many chances to kill us.”
Abigail
winced at the unvarnished truth in his words. Any residual doubts she held
about the necessity of destroying the girl melted away. “Yes,” she said through
clenched teeth. “I’m coming with you.”
Luke
boosted her onto one of the horses. She pulled her skirts out of the way. It
was a normal saddle and this was scarcely a time for modesty. Luke vaulted onto
his horse, kneeing it, and they took off up the Overland Stage Road at close to
a full gallop. “We’re making too much
noise,” she sent.
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll expect us to come after
them.”
She
clung to the horse with her legs, enjoying the feel of not having to ride
sidesaddle. Luke’s horse was larger, faster, and soon pulled so far ahead she
could barely see him. She kneed her horse, urging it to greater speed, but the
animal shied, and then reared. Abigail struggled for balance and called magic
to calm the spooked animal. Something sprang at her and knocked her to the
ground. She sent killing magic to stop its heart, before realizing what it was.
Panting, she crawled out from under a black and gray mad wolf with blood
dribbling from its nostrils, and glanced warily about. Were there more of them?
Carolyn
stepped from the shadows. It looked as if she was alone, but Abigail suspected
otherwise. “What do you want?”
“Simple
enough. I plan to use you to get rid of Breana Giraud—and others.” A sneer
twisted the girl’s features into something unpleasant. “You think people don’t
know you’re part of Coven government?”
Abigail
set her mouth in a hard line. “Fine. So the other side knows about me. Question
is, who are you really?”
“Don’t
you recognize me?” Carolyn stepped closer and turned her face from side to side
as if posing for a photographer. “I gave you my name, but I am far more than
that.”
She’s arrogant. Perhaps I can use that in some way. Abigail spread her hands in a placating gesture. “Because I’m used
to seeing you as Carolyn Giraud, I’m not certain who you are.” She paused for
emphasis. “I’d like you to tell me.”
“Certainly.”
A feral grin made the child look like something out of a nightmare. “It is
always better to know who your adversary is.” Her voice became soft and silky.
“I have access to magic you would kill for. You may not know it, but you’d like
to work for us.” She laughed, but it sounded more like broken glass shattering
against itself, than a twelve-year-old girl’s mirth. “We have real power, not
that paltry tripe the Coven settles for.”
Abigail
waited. When Carolyn didn’t say anything else, she said, “I’m listening…and
considering your offer. Life is always better than the alternative.”
“Ha!
They said you couldn’t be turned, but I told them they were wrong. I am The
Promised, resurrected out of legend. Goody Osborne was but a start, and this
little girl is merely a convenience.” Something like an outraged squawk followed
the words, but Goody silenced Carolyn almost immediately. “What I really want
is you, Abigail Ruskin.”
Shit! She couldn’t be The Promised… “You mean the Dark Messiah?” Abigail scrunched up her face and held
her breath, hoping against hope she’d gotten it wrong.
“The
same.” A supercilious expression etched into the girl’s features. “At least the
other side has heard of me. Warms my black, black heart.”
“The
books—?” Abigail hunted for a connection while she rode herd on terror that
threatened to immobilize her, and clouded her judgment. If ever she needed a
clear head, it was now, but her mind raced feverishly.
“They
weren’t doing the girl’s parents any good moldering away in that underground
chamber. I’d actually been searching for them for years.” She flashed a sly
smile. “They used to be mine…”
Blood & Magic Trailer
http://youtu.be/I-eauodEiOo
Blood & Magic Trailer
http://youtu.be/I-eauodEiOo
@AnnGimpel (for Twitter)
Short Bio:
Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian
bent. Avocations include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness
photography and, of course, writing. A lifelong aficionado of the
unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her
short fiction has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Her longer
books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. She’s published over
20 books to date, with several more contracted for 2014.
Ann Gimpel is a mountaineer at heart.
Recently retired from a long career as a psychologist, she remembers many
hours at her desk where her body may have been stuck inside four walls, but her
soul was planning yet one more trip to the backcountry. Around the turn of the
last century (that would be 2000, not 1900!), she managed to
finagle moving to the Eastern Sierra, a mecca for those in love with the
mountains. It was during long backcountry treks that Ann’s writing evolved.
Unlike some who see the backcountry as an excuse to drag friends and relatives
along, Ann prefers solitude. Stories always ran around in her head on those
journeys, sometimes as a hedge against abject terror when challenging
conditions made her fear for her life, sometimes for company. Eventually, she
returned from a trip and sat down at the computer. Three months later, a five
hundred page novel emerged. Oh, it wasn’t very good, but it was a beginning.
And, she learned a lot between writing that novel and its sequel.
Around that time, a friend of hers
suggested she try her hand at short stories. It didn’t take long before that
first story found its way into print and they’ve been accepted pretty regularly
since then. One of Ann’s passions has always been ecology, so her tales often
have a green twist.
In addition to writing, Ann enjoys
wilderness photography. She lugs pounds of camera equipment in her backpack to
distant locales every year. A standing joke is that over ten percent of her
pack weight is camera gear which means someone else has to carry the food! That
someone is her husband. They’ve shared a life together for a very long time.
Children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out their family.
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Thanks so much for hosting me, Diane! It's a pleasure to be here and I just love your blog. The red roses are mesmerizing. Luke and Abigail are stoked to be here too. They're just poking their noses out into the world.
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