Exclusive cover reveal and excerpt: ‘Of Flame and Fate’ by Cecy Robson
PC Book Reviews unveils the cover and an excerpt from paranormal romance Of Flame and Fate (A Weird Girls novel) by Cecy Robson, arriving Sept. 26.
About the book:
Taran Wird, who commands the power to wield fire and lightning, is an oddity in the supernatural world. But neither Taran nor her unique sisters compare to the bizarre entity known as Destiny. And Taran is assigned to protect her.
Born of two witches, Destiny is revered among the supernatural elite for her acute ability to predict the future. Her biggest prophecy involves Taran’s sister, Celia, whom Destiny decreed will bear children strong enough to take on the evil that’s rising. Yet Destiny is not alone in her predictions, or individuality.
When Johnny Fate, a rock star among humans and a male version of Destiny is discovered, his powers and Destiny’s clash, triggering the start of Destiny’s demise and altering the fate of Celia’s unborn children.
Taran, her werewolf lover Gemini, and their allies must determine if it’s Fate who will decide what will become of Celia’s children, or if their lives and the world will perish with Destiny.
EXCERPT (from chapter one)
I’m shoved into the cold room, the band of bloodsucking beasts tearing off my clothes without mercy, their long sharp claws grazing my skin as their master watches, his cold gray eyes glinting with malice.
“Damn it,” I say, smacking Edith Anne’s hand away when she cops a feel. “The demon’s in my leg, not my breast!”
There’s something you don’t say every day, but then that’s why humans are safe in the world and weird gals like me are stuck with demons burrowing under their skin.
“Just making sure,” she adds with a wink.
I’m ready to punch her in the face, but I’m too busy cringing at the thing crawling the length of my shin, its spindly insectoid appendages stretching the skin as it curls up and over my knee cap.
“Get this thing out of me!” I screech, growing nauseous with each numbing tug beneath the underlying tissue it causes.
“We’re trying,” Agnes Concepcion snaps, like I’m somehow inconveniencing her by having an evil being claw its way through me.
Her tiny plaid skirt smacks against my hip as she shoves me into a massive glass and tile shower. Three other vamps dressed like naughty Catholic schoolgirls (don’t get me started) follow us in, bottles of champagne tight in their grips.
“What the hell?” I ask, kicking as if I can somehow shake this thing loose and certain the booze is to celebrate my grisly death.
Bottles of champagne open with a pop, the naughty Catholics pouring the bubbly over my breasts, back, and ass. This isn’t real. This is something out of a bad porno and somehow I’m the star.
But as the fluid reaches my thigh the lump with the creepy legs bounces, pulling at the muscle it’s crawling over, squirming to the left then right, trying to find its way around the torrent of liquid they’re pelting me with.
“Don’t let it reach her heart,” Master Vampire Misha Aleksandr orders from the opposite side of the damn bathroom.
“What’s it going to do to my heart?” My head whips back and forth when none of the vamps answer. “It’s going to eat my freaking heart isn’t it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Agnes mutters, adjusting her tiny librarian glasses as she angles the bottle she’s holding.
“Okay …” I begin.
“It needs your heart to nest and lay its eggs,” she explains.
“What?”
“But yeah, then the hatchlings will munch on your heart like raw steak,” Edith adds. She reels me around when more vamps swoop in with cases of wine, drenching my chest with more alcohol.
She seems to be having fun. I’m mostly trying not to hurl wondering how the hell this happens to me.
Agnes is more focused. She drips the wine just above the demon, forcing it back down my leg. “Quiesco,” she says, her tone as sharp and commanding. “Quiesco.”
My body shudders as the demon scurries downward. Its movement doesn’t hurt, surprising since I think it has pincers, but the yanking motion is unnerving, like getting stitches while under anesthesia. My head flops forward and my vision starts to swim.
“I don’t feel good,” I mumble.
Agnes slaps me, the sting of the strike causing my eyes to whip open. “Don’t fall asleep.” She slaps me again, when my lids start to close. “Taran, if you give into its poison it will take you and the alcohol won’t work.”
Again, her palm whips across my face. “Stay awake so we can cut this thing out of you.”
I slap her back, knocking her glasses askew. “I’m awake, damn it.”
She smirks because she hits harder and maybe because she likes it, too. She returns to my leg, when the vamp behind her hands her another bottle of champagne. “Quiesco,” she whispers against my leg, her breath hot against my cooling skin.
My head falls forward as I start to go under. This time, Edith smacks me.
“Crap,” I hiss, my right arm quaking and threatening to release my flame.
“I was just taking my turn,” she replies defensively. Her gaze locks on my arm. She eases away as a spark of blue and white escapes from my fingertips, giving me and my power ample space as the surrounding vamps continue to shower me with alcohol.
“Master,” Agnes says, ignoring us both as she concentrates on my thigh. “It’s settling. I need the knife.”
“The wolves are bringing it,” he answers her.
“The wolves?” I ask. Okay. Now I’m wide awake.
The doors crash open as a pack of weres in human form stomp in, the exception an immense midnight black wolf with a white left pawl who leads them. His lips peel back, exposing a row of pointy fangs as he growls at the vampires surrounding me. But it’s the man storming forward with dark almond eyes, and a six-inch dagger in his hand that gives me pause.
“Hi, honey,” I tell him, giving him a little wave.
Funny thing, he doesn’t wave back. His gaze swoops over my naked body. “Hold her,” he snarls, ramming the knife into my thigh.
Reality shoves aside the shock of having the man I love stab me in the leg. I expect pain, scorching white-hot pain. But like the creepy crawly beneath my skin, I just feel that wretched pulling and grabbing, even as I watch Gemini’s hand disappear under my skin.
The vamps on either side of me are the only thing keeping me vertical, but when my focus latches onto the hilt of the dagger, and I realize it’s a femur—a freaking femur!—my body slumps. But that’s not the worst part.
The tangle of bodies, limbs, and faces, carved into the hilt twitch as if seizing only to break free of what’s holding them and slither around the diameter. Oh, and it gets better. The mouths open, singing one messed-up version of O Fortuna.
Find out more at cecyrobson.com.