by Guy Antibes
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE VAMPIRIC MENACE – ANORIA OF VALIR EXCERPT
AUTHOR’S NOTE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
GUY & HIS BOOKS
The Hand of Grethia
Copyright ©2015 Guy Antibes All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.
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This is a work of fiction. The locations used in the book, the people, the settings, the technology and specific places are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, locations, technologies or places are purely coincidental.
Published by CasiePress in Salt Lake City, UT, June, 2015.
www.casiepress.com
Cover & Book Design: Kenneth Cassell
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Print ISBN
ISBN-13: 978-1514357712
ISBN-10: 1514357712
AUTHOR’S NOTE
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Many years ago, the writing bug bit me. I didn’t know what to do. I had a very busy day job, so I took a pad of paper with me to church and while the speakers spoke, I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote for weeks on end and produced the first draft of a space opera novel—written entirely in my crabbed, illegible handwriting.
What you are currently perusing is a version of that august and hoary work. I published an early version on the Internet (in the late eighties), but this one has been worked over a number of times since. I hope I retained the old flavor with some updated writing.
In re-reading my ancient work, I realized that a few popular novels heavily influenced me at the time. The section that takes place on the planet of Rexalt II is more of a homage to Jack Vance than anything else. I can’t approach Vance’s drollness, so my version is merely an echo of his greatness.
So enjoy my version of a space opera,The Hand of Grethia.
— Guy Antibes
A BIT ABOUT GUY
With a lifelong passion for speculative fiction, Guy Antibes found that he rather enjoyed writing fantasy as well as reading it. So a career was born and Guy anxiously engaged in adding his own flavor of writing to the world. Guy lives in the western part of the United States and is happily married with enough children to meet or exceed the human replacement rate.
You can contact Guy at his website: www.guyantibes.com. Get on his email list and learn about his new releases!
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BOOKS BY GUY ANTIBES
ANORIA OF VALIR SERIES
In the late 1300s, a fugitive race of aliens fled to Earth. These aliens possessed the ability to extract blood from their victims, giving rise to the legends of vampires. A Recovery Team, members of a different race, the Valirians, pursued them to Earth. By the time they arrived the vampires had dispersed. Four hundred years later, the last of the vampire covens have been located and the Valirian Recovery Team has dwindled down to just a few members. SCIENCE FICTION - HISTORICAL PARANORMAL FANTASY THIRLLER
Book One:The Vampiric Menace
The year is 1905, and it’s up to Anoria Norgan to track the remaining vampire covens and destroy them. Amidst the troubles and turmoil of the turn of the 20th Century, Anoria must fight the vampires, battling with her own inner demons, while she seeks to finally end her centuries-long mission on Earth.
THE WARSTONE QUARTET
An ancient emperor creates four magical gems to take over and rule the entire world. The ancient empire crumbles and over millennia. Three stones are lost and one remains as an inert symbol for a single kingdom among many. The force that created the Warstones, now awakened, seeks to unite them all, bringing in a new reign of world domination—a rule of terror.
Four Warstones, four stories. The Warstone Quartet tells of heroism, magic, romance and war as the world must rise to fight the dark force that would enslave them all.
FANTASY - SWORD & SORCERY/EPIC
Book One:Moonstone | Magic That Binds
A jewel, found in the muck of a small village pond, transforms Lotto, the village fool, into an eager young man who is now linked to a princess through the Moonstone. The princess fights against the link while Lotto seeks to learn more about what happened to him. He finds a legacy and she finds the home in her father’s army that she has so desperately sought. As Lotto finds aptitude in magical and physical power, a dark force has risen from another land to sow the seeds of rebellion. It’s up to Lotto to save the princess and the kingdom amidst stunning betrayal fomented by the foreign enemy.
Book Two: Sunstone | Dishonor’s Bane
Shiro, a simple farmer, is discovered to possess stunning magical power and is involuntarily drafted into the Ropponi Sorcerer’s Guild. He attracts more enemies than friends and escapes with his life only to end up on a remote prison island. He flees with an enchanted sword containing the lost Sunstone. Trying to create a simple refuge for an outlawed band of women sorcerers, he is betrayed by the very women he has worked to save and exiled to a foreign land. There, he must battle for his freedom as he and his band become embroiled in a continent-wide conflict.
Book Three:Bloodstone | Power of Youth
When usurpers invade Foxhome Castle, Unca, the aging Court Wizard of the Red Kingdom, flees with the murdered king’s only daughter, taking the Bloodstone, an ancient amulet that is the symbol of Red Kingdom rule. Unca uses the Bloodstone to escape capture by an enemy and is transformed into a young man, but loses all of his wizardly powers. Unca must reinvent himself in order to return the princess to her throne. Along the way he falls in love with the young woman and must deal with the conflict between his duty and his heart, while keeping a terrible secret.
Book Four:Darkstone | An Evil Reborn
As the 22nd son of the Emperor of Dakkor, Vishan Daryaku grows from boy to man, learning that he must use his unique powers and prodigious knowledge to survive. He succeeds until his body is taken over by an evil power locked inside of the Darkstone. Now Emperor of Dakkor, Vishan is trapped inside, as the ancient force that rules his body devastates his homeland while attempting to recover all of the Warstones.
As the amulets are all exposed, the holders of the Moonstone, Sunstone, and Bloodstone combine to fight the Emperor’s relentless drive to reunite the Warstones and gain power over the entire world. The armies of Dakkor and the forces of those allied with the three other stones collide on a dead continent in the stunning conclusion of the Warstone Quartet.
Quest of the Wizardess
Quest of the Wizardess chronicles the travels and travails of young Bellia. After her wizard family is assassinated when she is fourteen, Bellia seeks anonymity as a blacksmith’s helper. When that doesn’t work out as expected, she flees to the army.
Her extraordinary physical and magical skills bring unwanted attention and she must escape again. After finding a too-placid refuge, she takes the opportunity to seek out her family’s killers. Revenge becomes her quest that takes her to a lost temple, unexpected alliances and a harrowing confrontation with her enemies.
FANTASY - EPIC/NEW ADULT-COLLEGE/COMING OF A
GE
The Power Bearer
How Norra obtained the power and the extraordinary lengths she went through to rid herself of it.
What’s a girl to do when all of the wizards in her world are after her? She runs. But this girl runs towards the source of her power, not away from it. Along the way she picks up, among others, a wizard, a ghost, a highwaywoman and a sentient cloud. Through thick and thin, they help Norra towards her goal of finding a solution in a far off land that no one in her world has even heard of.
YOUNG ADULT EPIC FANTASY
Panix: Magician Spy
Panix has life by the tail. A new wife, a new job in a new land that has few magicians and none of his caliber. His ideal life takes some unexpected downturns and Panix finds himself employed as a spy. He has no training, but must make things up as he goes if he is to survive the politics, betrayal, war and, at the end, his own behavior.
FANTASY - ADVENTURE
THE WORLD OF THE SWORD OF SPELLS
Warrior Mage
The gods gave Brull a Sword of Spells and proclaimed him as the world’s only Warrior Mage. One big problem, there aren’t any wars. What’s a guy to do? Brull becomes a magician bounty hunter until the big day when he learns he not only has to fight a war with the magicians of his world, but fight the god that the magicians are all working to bring into being. He finds out if he has what it takes in Warrior Mage.
EPIC FANTASY
Sword of Spells
Read about Brull’s beginnings and earlier adventures as a bounty hunter of magicians in the Sword of Spells anthology.
EPIC FANTASY
THE SARA FEATHERWOOD ADVENTURES
Set in Shattuk Downs, a reclusive land in the kingdom of Parthy. Sara Featherwood could be a Jane Austen heroine with a sword in her hand. There are no magicians, wizards, dragons, elves or dwarves in Shattuk Downs, but there is intrigue, nobility, hidden secrets, plenty of adventure and romance with a bit of magic.
FANTASY ~ YOUNG ADULT/COLLEGE
FICTION ~ WOMEN’S ADVENTURE
Knife & Flame
When Sara Featherwood’s mother dies, her sixteen-year-old life is thrown into turmoil at Brightlings Manor in a remote district of Shattuk Downs. Life becomes worse when her father, the Squire, sets his roving eye on her best friend. Dreading her new life, Sara escapes to the Obridge Women’s School. Seeking solace in education doesn’t work as her world becomes embroiled with spies, revolution, and to top it all off, her best friend becomes her worst enemy.
Sword & Flame
If you were a young woman who had just saved the family’s estate from ruin, you’d think your father would be proud, wouldn’t you? Sara Featherwood is thrown out of her childhood home and now faces life on her own terms at age seventeen. She returns to the Tarrey Abbey Women’s School and is drafted to help with the establishment of the first Women’s College in the kingdom of Parthy. Now in the King’s capital of Parth, life confronts Sara as she learns about family secrets, which threaten to disrupt her life and about resurgent political turmoil back home that turns her scholarly pursuits upside down as she must take action and use her magic to save her family and her beloved Shattuk Downs.
Guns & Flame
At nineteen, Sara Featherwood has done all she can to help establish the first Women’s College in the kingdom of Parthy. That includes a pact with the kingdom’s Interior Minister, to go on a student exchange program as payment for eliminating opposition to the college. Little does Sara know that her trip to a rival country is not what it seems and as the secrets of the true purpose of her trip unravel, she utilizes her magic to escape through hostile territory with vital secrets, but as she does, she finds herself drawn back to Shattuk Downs and must confront awful truths about those close to her.
THE GUY ANTIBES 2014 ANTHOLOGIES
The Alien Hand
An ancient artifact changes a young woman’s life forever. A glutton gladiator is marooned in a hostile desert. An investigator searches for magic on a ravaged world and finds something quite unexpected. A boy yearns for a special toy. A recent graduate has invented a unique tool for espionage. A member of a survey team must work with his ex-girlfriend in extremely dangerous circumstances. A doctor is exiled among the worst creatures he can imagine.
SCIENCE FICTION
The Purple Flames
A reject from a Magical Academy finds purpose. A detective works on a reservation in New Mexico, except the reservation is for ghouls, demons, ghosts, zombies, and the paranormal. A succubus hunts out the last known nest of vampires on earth. The grisly story about the origins of Tonsil Tommy. In a post-apocalyptic world, two mutants find out about themselves when their lives are in imminent peril.
STEAMPUNK & PARANORMAL FANTASY with a tinge of HORROR
Angel in Bronze
A statue comes to life and must come to terms with her sudden humanity. A wizard attempts to destroy a seven-hundred-year-old curse. A boy is appalled by the truth of his parents’ midnight disappearances. A captain’s coat is much more than it seems. A healer must decide if the maxim that he has held to his entire career is still valid. A fisherman must deal with the aftermath of the destruction of his village.
FANTASY
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Guy Antibes books are available at book retailers in print and e-book formats.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The Vampiric Menace – Anoria of Valir excerpt
Author’s Note