Honestly, its not looking good for making the goal of 200 preorders for Psalms and orders for Christmas books. Theres still time, though. And here, a teaser of the beginning of chapter 1 of Crusade. For those who enjoy vampires, war stories, World War II history, werewolves, etc. Its a World War III series patterned off of WWII if Nazis were instead vampires and had won the war with only small pockets of freedom fighters left around the world. It has an international cast of characters, strong religious overtones, love, betrayal, a bit of everything. For thousands of years the Cursed Ones hid in the shadows, fooling mankind into thinking they didn’t exist. Then one day they just… stopped. Skeptics turned into believers one fateful dawn. And no one was ever safe again. No one knows why they made themselves known. Why they chose a Valentine’s Day in the early twenty-first century to reveal their presence. Some say it had something to do with the end of the world. Others, that they simply grew tired of hiding. I was twelve when Solomon, the leader of the vampires, first appeared on TV and lied through his fangs to all of us. Thirteen when the war broke out. Fifteen when the United State declared a truce…when, in reality, we surrendered, and the nightmare really began. Even after that, many of us couldn’t bring ourselves to actually say the word “vampire.” It was as if once we admitted it, then we’d have to believe in extraterrestrials or government conspiracies, too. Or in witches and werewolves…in anything and everything that could destroy us. Because we could be destroyed. We lost something so precious—our faith that eventually everything would be all right. Because it wasn’t all right…and few believed it ever would be again. So among those of us left who swore not to abandon all hope, vampires came to be called the Cursed Ones. We learned that it was the name given to them long ago by those few groups who knew of their existence, but never shared the knowledge. But the vampires weren’t the cursed ones – we were. They had seduced us with their hypnotic smiles and talk of peaceful coexistence and immortality even as they had mounted a war against us. Then they sought to turn us into their slaves, and drink from rivers of our blood. I’m nearly eighteen now, and I have learned something about myself I might never have known, if I’d been able to live an ordinary life. But there is nothing ordinary about my life. Nothing. Including me. -- From the Diary of Jenn Leitner, discovered in the ashes Spain, the village of Cuevas Team Salamanca: Jenn and Antonio, Skye and Holgar, & Eriko and Jamie Barely sunset, and death exploded all around Jenn Leitner. It was a trap, she thought. The sky crackled with flames; oily smoke choked the air and burned her lungs. Jenn struggled not to cough, fearing that the sound would expose her. On her elbows and knees, her dark auburn hair loose and falling into her eyes, she crawled from beneath the red-tiled roof of the medieval church as it collapsed in a crash of orange sparks. Fragments of tile, stone, and burning wood ricocheted toward the blood-colored moon, plummeting back down to the earth like bombs. She dug in her elbows and pushed forward hard with the toes of her boots, grunting as a large, fiery chunk of wood landed on her back with a sizzle. She fought to stay silent as the pain seared through her. She bit her lip hard and tasted coppery blood as she rolled to extinguish the flames. Next to her, Antonio de la Cruz hissed a warning. The scent of her blood would fill the night air, attracting the vampires they’d been sent to hunt—but who were hunting them instead. When Jenn was little, her grandmother had told her that sharks could smell a drop of blood in the water half a mile away. She hadnt gone in the ocean since. Cursed Ones could smell blood more than a mile away. With sharks you could choose to stay out of the water. With Cursed Ones it was different. You couldnt leave the planet. You were trapped. Like we are now. Antonio studied her with his deep-set Spanish eyes. She gave her head a shake to let him know she was all right; she could keep going. She had no time to search through her jacket for the garlic infused salve that would block the odor of her blood. She prayed that the stench of the burning buildings--and burning humans--would cloak the scent long enough to allow them to escape. Past the church grounds, the oak trees were on fire, acorns popping, leaves igniting like tattered tissue paper. Smoke filled the inky night sky smothering the faint glow of the moon, but the hellish light from the fires illuminated Jenn’s and Antonio’s every move. Combine that with her bleeding lip, and they were two very easy targets for the savage monsters bent on massacring the village. Antonio stopped suddenly and held up a warning hand. She watched him closely. Wisps of his wild, black hair escaped from his black knitted cap, his full eyebrows were raised slightly and his jaw was clenched. Like her, he was dressed all in black--black sweater, black cargo pants, black knee protectors, and black leather boots–and now coated with ash. She could see the small ruby-studded cross that he wore in his left ear. A gift, he had said when she’d asked about it. His face had darkened when he’d answered her, and she knew there was more to that story. So much of Antonio was a mystery to her, as intriguing as the sharp planes and hollows of his face. He was focused, listening. All Jenn could hear were the flames and the terrorized, outraged cries of the villagers from the surrounding houses and buildings, which grew weaker by the minute. Her world became Antonio’s face and Antonio’s hand, blotched with soot, and she tensed her muscles so shed be ready to move again when his hand dropped. She wished she could stop shaking. Wished she would stop bleeding and hurting. Wished someone else could do the rescuing, instead of them. But somewhere in the darkness, the Cursed Ones were watching. She imagined them staring at her, and could almost hear their cruel laughter dancing in the acrid air. Three vampires and six hunters stalked each other through the steamy inferno. If the other hunters are still alive. If they escaped the burning church. Don’t think about that now. Don’t think at all. Wait. Watch. Cuevas, a small, Spanish town a couple of hours from their home, had been terrorized by a group of vampires for weeks, and their mayor had begged for help. Jenn was one of a group of trained vampire hunters called the Salamancans, graduates of the Academia Sagrado Corazón Contra los Malditos –Sacred Heart Academy against the Cursed Ones--at the centuries-old University of Salamanca. Father Juan, their Master, had sent them to Cuevas to rid it of the Cursed Ones. Instead, the vampires were hunting the hunters, as if they had known they were coming, as if they had lured them there. Jenn wondered how they’d known. Father Juan always sent them out covertly. Was there a spy at the university? Had someone in Cuevas betrayed them? To order the series as a Christmas present for you or someone you know head over to my website. debbieviguie/give-signed-books-for-the-holidays/
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 13:55:51 +0000
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