The daughter of a Las Vegas hustler, Raven Sabatier grew up trusting nothing and no one—she doesn’t even trust herself to stay in one place for longer than a minute. When her quest to find out the secrets of her past leads her to the mountains of North Carolina, she’s set on a collision course with the one man she thought she’d never see again.
In Appalachia consulting on an archeological dig, Anthropologist Dr. Drew Deveraux comes face to face with the indomitable beauty who broke into his apartment a year ago, tilting his carefully cultivated world on its axis.
Engaged in a fight with their demons, both imagined and real, the last thing either of them expected to find was love. Together, they must unravel the mystery of Raven’s past and her connection with an ancient race of witches, in order to save their future—and all of the souls hanging in the balance.
Excerpt
Raven’s skin shivered like a racehorse at the gate, ready to bolt.
The air around them changed when the woman had shown herself. There was a
charge, and it was threatening to singe her.
Her fingers clawed into the rock behind her, and she wet her lips
nervously, having to clear her throat before she spoke. “Do I know you?”
The woman clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “I should hope so,
Poppet,” she said in a heavy British accent. “I’m your mother.”
Raven’s pulse ratcheted up a notch even as her blood ran cold. She’d
been anticipating this confrontation for nearly a year, but with the new
information they had from Ray about Azibel, she was thrown off guard.
Doing her best to mask her struggle, she curled her mouth into a
sneer and forced herself to step away from the safety of the rock. “So
you say.”
“Don’t test me, child. You’ve no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Try me. Azibel.”
The small woman raised a brow and narrowed her eyes at Raven. “I
gather you’ve spoken to Raymonde. That is unfortunate. I’ll have to have
a little chat with my associates when I return.” She said “chat” the
way normal folks would say “pulling teeth”.
“Good luck. They’re dead.”
Azibel shrugged a delicate shoulder and pouted. “Pity, that. Good
help is so hard to find these days. Ah, well,” she waved a dismissive
hand in the air, “c’est la vie, as they say.”
Raven was rapidly losing patience—a virtue she had blessed little of
to begin with—so she decided to cut to the chase. “What do you want from
me?”
Azibel stepped forward, then reached out and trailed a blood-red fingertip down a strand of Raven’s hair. “So pretty.”
Raven’s skin crawled with the need to back away, but she stood her ground, raised her face to meet her mother’s gaze.
Big mistake. Big. Huge. A thin but surprisingly strong hand snapped
out and grabbed her by the wrist. Raven was helpless but to look on in
horror as Azibel’s face began to change. Eyes that were once black
turned completely clear, with shadows swirling hypnotically inside them,
as if they were trying to reach out to her.
An image of a spider emerged on her forehead, and her canines
lengthened into lethal-looking fangs. Explains the overbite, Raven
thought. And it was the last thought of her own before Azibel firmly
rooted herself into Raven’s mind.
“What I want…,” she purred, “is to take my rightful place in this
world, with my daughter beside me. Imagine, Raven, joining together with
me to lower, no, to destroy the barrier that keeps my people confined
to the hell in which they are imprisoned.”
Raven tried to shake her head, to scream, but she couldn’t seem to
get her brain to send the signals to her body. She felt her mouth go
slack, and her breathing ease as she stared into those mesmerizing eyes.
“You can’t tell me you haven’t always felt…different. Like something
was missing. Like you weren’t meant for this menial existence. Can you?”
Obviously fully aware of Raven’s inability to answer, she plowed on.
“Of course, you can’t. You would be a goddess among my people. They
would revere and fear you—serve your every desire. Imagine it.”
And, with a nausea roiling in her belly, Raven did. She allowed
herself a moment to feel what it would be like to have a mother, to
really know who she was and where she came from, and be exalted for it.
Smiling a knowing smile as if she knew Raven’s thoughts, Azibel
cupped her cheek with her free hand. Her skin was icy cold and shocked
Raven a bit out of her stupor. “Say the word, pet. Everything I have is
yours if you join with me. In fact, you don’t even have to speak. Just
nod, my precious.”
While she fought the battle to stay conscious and regain control of
her own mind, Raven had the absurd image of Tolkien’s Gollum salivating
over a piece of jewelry like it could answer all the questions in the
universe.
The utter ridiculousness of it, of Azibel for what she was asking,
and of Raven for even allowing herself to consider it, snapped her right
out of it. Without hesitating further, she summoned her power over
space to swirl the air around Azibel, creating an invisible noose around
her neck.
Azibel’s eyes widened in disbelief as she released Raven to claw at
her own neck, and she scored bloody gashes into her delicate skin. She
coughed and gasped for breath, then stumbled back. Somehow, she summoned
enough power to send out a blast of energy to dislodge Raven’s hold.
“You bitch! I would have given you everything, but now? Now you’ll
bleed like the rest of those insipid humans when I burn this world down
around your ears!”
Before Raven even had time to process those threats, she felt herself
being lifted bodily off the ground and hoisted into the pool behind
her, though Azibel never moved an inch.
The first thing she registered was the mind-numbing cold of the
water. In an Appalachian mountain pool in the fall, one could freeze to
death in minutes. God, the cold. Like nothing she’d ever felt, it seeped
into her skin and made her bones ache.
Survival instinct kicked in and she tried to struggle to the surface,
but she was pushed back down and held by invisible hands. Then she was
held by very real hands. More hands than she could count.
The hands came up from the dark depths of the pool. They groped and
pulled, and grappled with her as if trying to climb their way to
freedom. Opening her eyes, she could see them. Bodies in the water. With
their gaping mouths and vacant, black eyes, they loomed in the murky
pool. They reached for her, whether to pull her down or pull themselves
up, she didn’t know.
Finally, her body registered the lack of air, the need to breathe.
And everything whittled down to that one simple, life-giving function.
Allowing her body to go still, she stopped her struggles and tried to
conserve what little oxygen she had left.
As she calmed, an insidious voice floated through her mind. “You see
what happens to those who defy me, Raven? I don’t just kill them, I
torture them for eternity. I’ll destroy you for spurning me,” the voice
said with an eerie calm, “you, and everything—everyone—you love.”
Spots began floating in her vision, and Raven knew the end was close.
She sent out a desperate message and hoped to the gods that Isla or
Brynna would somehow sense her distress.
The need to breathe became the center of her universe. Once again,
she tried to claw her way to the surface, but it was useless. Invisible
bands of steel encircled her, weighing her down, squeezing the life out
of her. Her body began to convulse, and she involuntarily let go the
breath she’d been holding.
Her vision dimmed, and her head pounded, her fight or flight response
screaming in her ear. With the very last reserve of her strength, she
pushed out against the water, against the very oxygen in its makeup.
Water exploded around her, and, just as suddenly, all the hands that
held her down released. At the same time, two pairs of blessedly real
hands latched onto her arms and pulled upward. She shot out of the
water, flailing and gasping, and landed on two warm bodies.
Small but strong arms cradled her as she coughed and retched, until
all the dreaded water had leeched out of her lungs. More hands smacked
her back to help her expel what was left. She rolled onto her back on
the cool stone, stared up at the sky and breathed in great heaves of
air. Damn, she loved air. It was way underrated.
A shadow blocked out the sun as Isla leaned over her. “Raven? Sweeting, can you hear me?”
Raven tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled croak, so she gave up and simply nodded.
Another shadow joined the first, except this one had a flaming red
halo backlit by the sun. “What th’ bloody divil was that?” she squeaked,
her brogue so thickened, she was almost unintelligible.
“Did you see her?” Raven managed to rasp the question out before dissolving in another fit of coughing.
“See who?”
“Azibel,” she ground out before promptly passing out.
J.K. Hogan has been telling stories for as long as she can remember, beginning with writing cast lists and storylines for her toys growing up. When she finally decided to put pen to paper, magic happened. She is greatly inspired by all kinds of music and often creates a “soundtrack” for her stories as she writes them.
J.K. resides in North Carolina, where she was born and raised. A true southern girl at heart, she lives on a farm with her husband and young son, a cat, and two champion agility dogs. If she isn’t on the agility field, J.K. can often be found chasing waterfalls in the mountains with her husband, or down in front at a blues concert. In addition to writing, she enjoys training and competing in dog sports, spending time with her large southern family, camping, boating and, of course, reading!
J.K. Hogan is a member of The Romance Writers of America.
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