A family forged in battle.
Amora Medina-Jackyl knew one
thing well—vengeance. She’d inflicted pain without mercy to those who deserved
the punishment. She’d lived by one motto her entire existence-- family was to
be protected above all else. An ancient cult murdered her parents and siblings
when she was little more than a child. The Order of Angelus hadn’t understood
the Hell they’d brought down on themselves that one brutal night.
Amora was many things in her
four centuries. A daughter and a sister, a mother, yet she was best known as a
killer. When she finally meets her end, Amora will have hundreds, maybe
thousands of lives to answer for. Her only wish is to find one moment of peace.
She denies her need as much as she fights to protect it. When the one woman who
can bring her serenity comes into her life: can Amora destroy century old walls
to let her in?
Lies and conspiracies tear at
the fabric of sanity—of what’s right. Can truths come to light that change the
reality of a family who’s known only the taste of revenge and loss?
Author's Note: This is a
previously published title. It was released as a two-part novel, it has been
expanded and re-edited. This is a standalone novel.
BUY LINKS
Excerpt:
The deep bass pounded beneath the thick soles of
Amora's boots. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked around Club
Revenge with a sense of pride. She had been in New Orleans off and on for
several years, walked the streets every night before she decided to settle in.
Blues and jazz flowed from every open bar and club door. She’d lived countless
places in her four hundred years of existence, but this one was the only one
that called to the remaining vestiges of her soul.
Bodies moved on the dance floor, hands stroked
over exposed, silky flesh or along corded muscle. Lust tinged the air, everyone
in the room felt it and sensed the urgency. Any other night she would make her
way onto the crowded dance floor, become lost in the sea of bodies. She'd find
a warm body for the evening, draw the woman into her and get lost in the
sensory overload--the scent of sweet skin devoid of the cloying stench of
perfume, hear the breathlessness of her voice, and taste the salt of
heat-dampened skin. But not tonight.
A few nights had passed since she had a perfect
armful of female. Owning Revenge made it easy to find a lover for the night,
but she grew weary. Her reputation, the thrill of lying with a monster, and
they submitted easily. Sex was sex, too simple to get. Some lonely souls craved
contact, unconcerned with the temporary nature—a well-cultivated cover for what
they wanted. Amora shook her head and lifted her hand, whipped her towel from
its perch and wiped down the shiny bar.
Last call approached, she signaled her
performers, they wandered from the direction of the stage and dressing room.
Soon, Amora would lower the music and tell everyone it was time to go home then
she and her people would relax for the rest of the night. It was the only time
she had a moment’s peace, because when dawn made its inevitable arrival, the nightmares—or
more like day-mares—would come with the promise of strangling fear.
She tipped her driving cap lower over her eyes,
she went about setting up the customers at the bar with another round. Amora
joked where it was appropriate, flirted with the women in hopes she’d find a
distraction from what would come. Her lovers never stayed the day, she always
ushered them out before dawn, her pride, or as some would say, arrogance
wouldn't allow anyone to see the weakness of her fight against her demons. They
were real ones, not just the ones who sprang from the bowels of a mythological
Hell, but also flesh and blood ones. Witnesses to her every weakness—the
blubbered pleas for her life, for sustenance. They’d starved her, and turned
her into a weapon—they had stolen too many years.
Eighty-seven years locked in a cell, dying in
small measures of time, flesh became paper-thin. Gums receded, her body
emaciated from the withholding of blood she had needed to survive. She learned
the exact smell of her flesh as it burned, what it looked like falling as ash
to the dirt floor. The horrors she had faced, the acts she had perpetrated
haunted her, but she merely wanted to sleep, to find contentment and peace.
Her greatest regrets came to her in blaring
clarity, all her mistakes, the faces of all the innocents, and the not so
innocent, moved in a macabre play behind scratchy eyelids. Amora would feel the
wetness of tears trailing down from the corners of her eyes as she fought each
day to remain somewhat sane. Those tears failures she wouldn’t let anyone else
see.
Amora always woke to screams and hisses, lingered
pasts, realized the agony wasn’t hers not that of her mother. She would curl
upward, wrap her arms around her raised legs and rock, force the clinging
memories away. Amora didn’t know when or if she would find peace. With each
year, decade and century that passed, her doubts of some happiness faded or
shattered in the reality of her existence. All she had was an existence. She
survived and little more than that. She found bliss in warm bodies, in the
clasp of feminine legs and arms. An empty momentary sexual oblivion.
Genre: Lesbian Dark Fantasy Paranormal
Word Count: 59,000
