Being that I’m not a complete prick, I’ll be happy to give credit where credit is due, and tell you which ones: Stephen King’s It, and The Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The latter is more of a techno-thriller than pure horror, but it’s pretty damn scary nevertheless.
If that’s the type of book you were looking for, then I shall apologize profusely. Please feel free to go pick up one of the above. It’s okay. I promise not to be jealous…much.
As for this book, it falls into one of my favorite sub-genres: the horror comedy. No, I’m not talking about dopey slapstick like Scary Movie, or its legion of increasingly unfunny sequels. I’m talking horror comedy of the type in which a terrifying situation is thrust upon main characters that just don’t give a fuck. We’re talking guys who are too busy spouting one-liners or hitting on the babes to notice that the world has literally gone to hell around them. Army of Darkness and Ghostbusters are, in my not so humble opinion, classic examples of this genre. Think about it. The coming of Gozer the Gozarian could easily be construed as a soul-crushing horrific fate for the people of the world, if not for one Dr. Peter Venkman, who just couldn’t be bothered to take it all that seriously.
This is that type of story. Hopefully you enjoyed the ride. And just remember: there may very well be creatures writhing in the darkness waiting for you, but sometimes the thing they expect least is to be met not with screams, but with attitude.
That being said, all that remains are my hopes that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Rick G.
About the Author
Rick Gualtieri lives alone in central New Jersey with only his wife, three kids, and countless pets to both keep him company and constantly plot against him. When he’s not busy monkey-clicking words, he can typically be found jealously guarding his collection of vintage Transformers from all who would seek to defile them.
Defilers beware!
Rick Gualtieri is the author of:
Bill the Vampire (The Tome of Bill – 1)
Scary Dead Things (The Tome of Bill – 2)
The Mourning Woods (The Tome of Bill – 3)
Holier Than Thou (The Tome of Bill – 4)
Sunset Strip: A Tale From The Tome Of Bill
Goddamned Freaky Monsters (The Tome of Bill – 5)
Half A Prayer (The Tome of Bill – 6)
The Wicked Dead (The Tome of Bill – 7)
The Tome of Bill: Volume One
Bigfoot Hunters
The Poptart Manifesto
To contact Rick (with either undying praise or rude comments) please visit:
Rick’s Website:
www.rickgualtieri.com
Facebook Page:
facebook.com/RickGualtieriAuthor
Twitter:
twitter.com/RickGualtieri
TOUCH A DARK WOLF
Jennifer St. Giles
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Jenni Leigh Grizzle
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
When I first wrote this story, I had to take out certain elements because the original publisher felt readers wouldn’t want them. One particular element was the reasoning behind people with “special” blood and what that might mean to the evil forces we all know exist both in this world and in the spirit world beyond. So, as I revamped this story to release on my own, I went in and added that element. What I had previously called Elan, those with special blood, I could go back to calling Chosen. I could now explain that the Chosen were the descendants of King Solomon and his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines from many nationalities that scattered to the ends of the earth upon his death. The bloodline from which King Solomon came had been blessed, so in the paranormal world I built I made that blood special and created an evil that craved the blessed blood for its power. I hope you enjoy the changes I made. To me it adds fullness to the story and comes so much closer to the tale I wanted to tell many years ago.
Reasons do matter.
Given the history of our world and delving into the events that are currently playing out on the world stage, there are some truths to be seen. Good and evil exist. Religions and ideologies play a huge part in everything that happens. And while there is power in money, if you go back through time, there is more power in blood. In creating the Shadowmen Series, I mixed those truths up a bit and had fun writing stories that I hope show the hearts of strong men and women who go against the odds to fight a growing evil that threatens to overtake the world.
Would that I had the resources and could do so in real life.
Finally, I mention in this story that time travel might not be a person going from one time period to another, but of a person’s heart, soul, and spirit transcending the “normal” time it takes for certain things to happen, to courageously leap forward and grasp what is most important.
When life and death are on the line, the normal barriers that keep people isolated from each other disappear as they rise to the occasion and fight for survival. This is even truer for a man and a woman whose hearts are willing to sacrifice all for another.
I hope you enjoy Erin and Jared’s love story. Their whirlwind tale is only the beginning with many more to follow.
Happy Reading!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616),
Hamlet. Act 1 scene 5
Chapter One
The mist filling the Tennessee mountain pass was either fates middle finger telling Erin Morgan she was screwed, or a beckoning finger from the grave letting her know that sooner or later she was a dead woman. Sooner, if the budding sixth sense twisting her gut proved itself true yet again. She’d been trying to shake the feeling, but couldn’t. It was more than just the Sno-Med billboards lining the road, advertising, “Let us enrich your life. We care for you.” Somehow Erin felt that Dr. Cinatas was tracing her escape from Manhattan into no-man’s-land, realizing she was after his jugular rather than hiding.
She’d never dreamed—make that nightmared—that Dr. Cinatas was a murderer. She’d worked for the devil for months and hadn’t had a clue until this morning. A sudden cold sweat made her shiver. How many people had she unknowingly helped kill during that time? How big a pawn had she been? What evil plan was Cinatas playing out and why? From what Erin had seen, four people had been murdered to bring one back from the edge of death. Multiply the number she’d help treat by four, and the death toll was . . .
Oh, God. She gripped the steering wheel tighter, her nails biting into the leather padding. A chill shuddered through her body and her stomach churned with a sickening dread she could hardly face.
Don’t think about it, she told herself, trying to force her mind away from the scene that had greeted her that morning, but she couldn’t escape the memory. She couldn’t stop seeing everything in vivid detail.
She could still smell the antiseptic and the scent of the blood lab at the Sno-Med Clinic in Manhattan. The beautifully pristine marble floors, snow-white walls, fluorescent lights, and gleaming state-of-the-art equipment were all blindingly bright in her eyes. Even now it was hard to imagine that the perfection of it all had been marred by death. But she could still see the bodies on the stretchers. A middle-aged man and woman, and two teenage girls, all dark-haired and wearing colorful clothing as if they’d dressed that morning with a celebration in mind. The girls had been wearing delicate gold jewelry, crosses at their ears, saints at their throats, and white rubber sports bands on their wrists. The older couple looked as i
f they’d spent many years toiling just to survive every day. They’d not had an easy life . . . nor death.
Even before she’d walked across the icy, off-limits lab, she’d known they were dead. Her sixth sense screamed it at her, and her clinical eye had quickly registered the unnatural paleness of their skin and the utter stillness of their bodies. Her panicked breath had frosted in the air and her gut had wrenched with dread as she’d touched them, checking for signs of life—first the young girls, then the middle-aged couple. They’d been strapped to stretchers and drained of their blood. The bags still hung on the hooks above them, tagged for the future recipient: the king of Kassim, Ashodan ben Shashur. Shashur, a close friend of the president’s, had been waiting upstairs for Erin to administer the first of four transfusions that were to take place over the Fourth of July weekend.
Kassim was the smallest but most oil-rich country in the Middle East. Shashur’s security team, a force equal to the president’s Secret Service, had arrived early that morning. They’d required the skeleton staff at the clinic—her, an aide, and a lab tech—to take a scary oath of secrecy. “Cross my heart and hope to die” didn’t even scratch the surface of what they’d said would happen to her if she told anyone about the king. If word of his cancer reached the wrong ears it would start a war nobody wanted.
But why murder for the blood? Surely there were plenty of donors willing to support Dr. Cinatas’s investigative treatment for cancer. She herself gave blood for the cause on a regular basis. She’d been hired by Dr. Cinatas to care for his “special patients,” so all the clients she’d transfused had been ultra-rich. Now she wondered if the diseased rich were feeding off the poor.
How many others had been lured to their deaths?
Don’t think about it.
She shut her eyes, her body rigid as her SUV barreled into the fog. She wished she could press the gas to the floor and meet her death at the bottom of a rocky ravine. It was no less than she deserved, but she’d see Dr. Cinatas in hell first. Suddenly an icy shiver ran down her spine. Something was very wrong—
Thunk. She opened her eyes at the hard slam against her windshield. The glass cracked from the center outward like a spider web forming right before her eyes. On the other side of the webbing was something huge and black on the hood of her car. She swerved wildly.
Pulse hammering with dread, she slammed on the brakes. The seat belt cut into her neck and her pounding chest. Her chin smacked into the steering wheel, ramming her teeth into her tongue. Pain slashed like a hot knife through her, dimming her vision and cutting off her breath. Something had hit her windshield but it was hard to see what, between the black of the night, the dark of her car, and the mists that hovered just above the ground like ghosts bound by short chains. What had she hit?
A person? No, she told herself as she strained to see through the splintered glass. The thing was too black all over and she didn’t see anything to denote clothing. An animal, then? A bear perhaps, but not a person.
Thank God. She sucked in a relieved breath and prayed she hadn’t seriously harmed the animal. Fog whirled so thickly she couldn’t tell if the thing was moving or even breathed. She didn’t have a weapon to protect herself so she beeped the horn several times to rouse it with no result.
Leaning closer to the glass she hunched over the steering wheel. Maybe she could drive to the nearest town with the animal on the hood and get help. Swiping her hand over the uncracked portion of the glass, she tried to see through the quickly fogging windshield.
The black form rose up and snarled at her. She screamed, jerking back as a pair of blood-red eyes with yellow centers stared from a jet-black face. Black hands and red, dagger-sharp nails splayed menacingly against the glass. She rammed back in her seat, pressing the door lock button.
“What the hell?”
The creature smiled, its lips pulling back to reveal an even row of teeth shaped like ice picks. Evil, as palpable and throbbing as her pulse, hit her. Another scream rose deep inside her.
She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t move. It was as if icy death had frozen everything but her mind. The creature’s eyes flamed like an ocean of fire, but its gaze centered a cold burn inside her making her feel as if she’d never be warm again.
Clunk. Something from behind the creature had flattened it against the windshield. It screamed with rage and struggled against the glass. The claw of a glittering silver wolf seemed to glow against the dark creature, raking across its face and snapping its head to the side.
Suddenly Erin could move; as if released from a spell the black creature had somehow placed on her. Every fiber of her being shouted at her to get the hell out of there, to escape the wild creatures fighting on the hood.
Erin stomped on the gas lurching the Tahoe forward and slamming the creatures against the glass so hard she thought they would break through into the car.
Through the cracked glass she saw the wolf-like thing had the black creature by the throat. It turned to her. Slivers of moonlight reflected off its metallic coat and made its eyes glow eerily. Its gaze a bright, clear blue like the hottest part of a flame, met hers, burning itself into her mind, making a connection she couldn’t even begin to describe. An otherworldly feel with a primal edge seeped deep inside her, as if a greater spirit resided within the animal but one just as deadly as the evil creature. She shivered.
The black creature reared up and sank its teeth into the wolf’s chest. The wolf shuddered and howled, its scream chilling her soul.
Looking her way again the wolf opened its fanged mouth. LEAVE NOW!
Erin heard the words as clearly as if a man had shouted in her ear. She put the SUV in reverse, pressed the gas pedal to the floor and flew backward, bouncing the tangle of black and silver from her car hood. She shifted into drive and plunged forward, determined to leave what she’d seen behind.
It’s not real. It’s not real, she told herself. Her hands and body shook so violently she had to fight to drive. She careened wildly across the road, barely able to see through the fog and cracked windshield. Her sweat-slick palms slipped along the leather steering wheel leaving only her embedded nails to help her grip. Her stomach whirled with nauseating fear that seemed to worsen rather than ease as she escaped the creatures.
Then she hit a wall of thick fog, one that blinded her. Suddenly, the road disappeared and she went flying into a black void.
Chapter Two
A wave of grief tore through the Shadowmen as Jared’s howl reverberated into the spirit world, piercing the souls of those fighting for Logos. One of their brethren, one of their valued warriors, had fallen prey to the bite of a Tsara, a spiritual assassin from the damned. Worse than death itself, the rabid infection would spread evil throughout the host, taking control of his mind and rooting into his heart. It was fatal and irreversible. In the wolf’s howl they could hear the echoing horror of the one who’d been damned.
It was just a matter of time.
As the Blood Hunters, elite warriors of the Shadowmen, crossed into the mortal realm a stormy wind swirled, whipping down through the atmosphere. Whenever in the mortal realm the Blood Hunters appeared in their mortal forms; warriors of muscle, might, and substance with the ability to shape-shift into their wolf-like Blood Hunter cloaks at will. Inside the remote Tennessee mountain cave the warriors gathered around a fire, silent as it flared hotly then flickered feebly, casting deeper shadows on faces already darkened by sorrow. The cold mortal ground was a filthy place for so great a warrior to have fallen.
Sven had brought Jared’s fallen body to the mountain cave not far from where Jared had killed the Tsara before falling unconscious from the pain of the assassin’s evil poison. Grieving, he’d waited on his knees beside Jared as the other Blood Hunters arrived.
Aragon, leader of all Blood Hunters, stormed about the cave stirring a whirl of dirt to cloud the air. He stopped and gazed at Jared’s fallen form, agony tearing through him. “You should have executed Jared the moment you reach
ed him. Maybe his soul could have been spared.” His harsh voice sliced through the silence. “It’s too late to save his soul now. I already feel the poison in his heart. By Logos’s justice, what were you thinking, Sven? The millennium of Jared’s sacrifices will now end in ruin.”
Groaning, Sven shut his eyes but forced himself to his feet ready to bear Aragon’s wrath. “I couldn’t kill him. I’d hoped the legend was true.”
“Hoped! That is your excuse for cowardice? We decided after Pathos was poisoned that we’d rather die than stake our souls upon a legend!” Aragon shouted.
“Kill him now,” Navarre said. “I cannot bear to watch what will come when he wakes.”
Aragon lifted his sword, yet rather than slicing through the unconscious body of his brother he hesitated, recalling the many years he and Jared had walked through time fighting Heldon’s forces. How many sacrifices had Jared suffered, saving them all from the deadly consequences of their mistakes? Aragon’s stomach turned and a cold chill ran through him. Resolved to save Jared from Pathos’s fate he let his sword fall.
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