Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just a writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

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Last Excerpt Monday I baffled, weirded out, and possibly tantalized readers with the creepy prologue to one of my many novels-in-progress. A fantasy novel with romantic elements, this story is founded on ancient medallion magic and features a young heroine who is married to a foreign lord against her will and learns that her worst enemy may be the only man she can trust. (Or something like that. I’ve still not mastered the logline to this story.)

CHAPTER ONE

As the shamans chanted, Taria tried not to choke on the stench of burning flesh. The flames beckoned with a promise of warmth, but these fires offered no comfort against the cold. They were funeral pyres, so Taria shied away so the spirits of the Ticanee dead could escape to a better place. A much better place.

She watched her tribesmen sway in grief beneath the totem poles, closing their eyes against every gust of frigid wind. But Taria’s eyes remained open, her blue gaze following the pillar of soot up into the winter sky. Overhead, Republic pilots held their griffon mounts in tight military formation on the wind. From so far away, the wings of the great creatures looked tattered and frayed, and she could barely see the men that rode them. She could not imagine the courage it would take to climb upon such a beast’s back and take to the skies, especially since, in Taria’s experience, nothing good ever came from above.

There was little chance of another attack today, but these patrols were supposed to be reassuring in the aftermath of Shamibelian raids. Unfortunately, the spectacle of the giant screeching birds in the sky made Taria’s people feel like carrion left for vultures. To make matters worse, the funeral was nearly over and the Oshta still was not here.

If Taria wore the medallion, she would never let her people mourn alone. But the medallion was not hers. She was not the Oshta–not yet–so she said a silent prayer to the totems that her father would come see the dead rendered to ash. He had to come for the people, and he had to come for her too, because Taria had something to tell him and she wasn’t sure how much longer her courage would hold.

The shamans had finished their chanting over the pyres, and now All-Seeing Urtenia hobbled towards Taria with rattling bone beads in one hand and a walking stick in the other. The gnarled old woman was wrapped so tightly in wolf-pelts that only her three eyes were showing—the two she was born with, and the one tattooed in the middle of her forehead. “Daughter of my Oshta,” she said. “Trouble is coming in the shape of a boy.”

Taria followed the old woman’s gaze to where the dirty haffie boy crouched in the shadows of the snow-capped totem poles. He was crying and Taria knew he wept for his dead mother—a mother who had never openly acknowledged him for he was the get of a Shamibelian raider and horribly deformed.

With the boy’s orange-tinted skin and ghastly horns Samar was an outcast and, as such, banned from the tribal meeting grounds. Nonetheless, the boy’s eyes pleaded with Taria to let him approach his mother’s pyre.

“Keep him away,” Taria sighed. It wasn’t that her heart didn’t break for the boy. It wasn’t even because he was monstrous. It was because she was sure he would throw himself onto the pyre. He had the death-yearning look—a look Taria knew too well. It was in the downcast eyes of the demoralized warriors, the false smiles of the brothel girls, and the gaunt faces of starving children.

“One day, you’ll make them a brighter future,” the wind whispered.

Taria knew it was the medallion that spoke from afar, but she kept silent because the last time she admitted the wind whispered to her, her father had whipped her bloody. And as she remembered this, the longhouse door swung open.

Taria’s father emerged wearing his ceremonial loincloth, which left his legs bare to the cold. His flame-red hair stood in a topknot, secured with carved bones of creatures he’d killed. Around his neck hung the sacred clan medallion, which caught the light of the pyres, and sparkled with its ancient magic. Passed from generation to generation, the medallion held all the memories of her people. Taria worried that soon, it might be the only thing left of the Ticanee.

It was All-Seeing Urtenia who approached the Oshta first. The old woman was thick as an oak and her voice scratched like dried leaves. Everyone leaned in to hear. “Oshta, we thank you for seeing off the departing dead. The raiders stole some children, and one of our huntresses. But they came on griffon back. We couldn’t follow their trail.”

There were gaunt hollows under the Oshta’s far-away eyes and he only grunted in reply, so the old woman straightened, “Oshta, when will our Firan allies let us out of this stone cage? Our dried meat won’t last the winter.”

Taria’s father glanced at the stone wall, rock piled upon rock towards the sky, then spit in the snow. “The Firans say it’s too dangerous to leave the city walls until their soldiers drive off the raiders. In truth, they just don’t want us to hunt on their land. So much for citizenship in their precious Republic.”

Taria’s father always blamed the Firans for everything. Every time he did, it made Taria’s stomach twist because her mother was Firan; he had taken a Firan wife to cement the alliance he now condemned, so Taria knew that he condemned her too.

Without warning, the Oshta turned, and retreated back towards the longhouse from whence he’d come. Taria was startled; she thought he might offer some words of comfort, some wisdom for the Ticanee.

“Wait!” Taria fingered the beads on her dress like worry stones. Urtenia seemed to sense Taria’s unease and gave her a reassuring smile. The elders were always kind because they said her unnatural blue eyes were a mark of favor by the totems. Taria didn’t believe that, but she was grateful for their support now more than ever. “Father, I’ve something to tell you.”

The Oshta turned, glaring at Taria as she came forward. When angry, the Oshta swung the lash without mercy; Taria’s back was welted from a beating not two nights ago. But she feared some things more than she feared her father. Finding her nerve, Taria said, “Oshta, I’ve known seventeen winters and it’s time for my Rite of Passage. I’ve chosen my tattoo and vocation.”

His face was impassive. “And what have you chosen?”

“I want to join the city garrison.”

Taria hadn’t been expecting anyone to cheer her decision, but she was stunned by the silence. An elder wheezed, but no one spoke. Only the birds overhead cried. Snow began to fall.

And Taria’s heart pounded in her own ears.

Her father was angry; very angry. The scar on his neck crimsoned beneath the tattoos on his face. “You want to become a Republic Guard? A Firan soldier?”

Taria nodded. “Yes. And I want their insignia inked on me in our tradition.”

His face went hard, his mouth a mean gash. “I always knew your Firan blood would out. You’ll abandon your people for a shiny insignia and the coins that come with it.”

Taria steadied herself. “No. I’m only doing this because…since the war, our people have dwindled. I know. I’ve counted. We suffer, but in spite of facing the same enemy, the Firans prosper. We have to be more like them to survive. I’m the daughter of the Oshta. I should set the example.”

Taria knew her sentiments were deeply unpopular. The Firans, with their legions and stone cities, with their bigotry and complicated laws, were often thought more as oppressors than allies. So it was not surprising that the crowd grumbled at Taria’s words, and her father scowled. “You want to lend your spear to guarding this foreign city?”

Taria had practiced what she was going to say a hundred times, but it was so much harder now. “This is our city now too. And citizenship in the Firan Republic is a valuable thing. It gives us rights; if we make the most of it, it can give us power.”

Her father cut her off. “Firans sneer at us. They think we’re filthy refugees.”

“They do. That’s why I want to join the guard. If we fight along side of them, they’ll know we aren’t helpless beggars. When they think of us as partners, things will change for us.”

The Oshta waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing will change.”

She shouldn’t argue with her father, she knew. He was the Oshta and she was embarrassing him in front of the Ticanee, but if she didn’t speak up now, who would? “Things must change, Oshta. I want to protect our new home.”

“This is not our home!” her father shouted.

There was no avoiding confrontation now. “I’m a woman grown. You can’t keep denying me my Rite of Passage year after year.”

If the Oshta was angry before, now he was furious. He wanted to beat her, but the medallion was fighting him. She could sense it in the way he grasped the golden disc as if wrestling with it. Taria’s father was only ever truly tempered by the medallion. It was supposed to guide him and his rule, but somehow, Taria knew it protected her, so she pressed on. “So then, I ask you, Oshta, before all the people. Will you forbid me my chosen mark and vocation?”

She had him now as surely as if she’d laid a snare for a fox. He could not refuse her again with the shamans as witness—not without giving good cause why she must stay a child another year. And All-Seeing Urtenia seemed to know just the trap Taria had laid. “She’s a clever girl,” the old woman chuckled. “The wolf totem is strong in her.”

The Oshta gave Urtenia a poisonous glance and it was several moments before anyone dared to speak. “I won’t forbid it,” her father finally said. “But you need armor to join the guard.”

“I’ve saved enough for leather armor,” Taria said quickly. “If you loan me a few stenis, I’d have enough to buy bronze—”

“Not a single coin,” the Oshta interrupted.

Then he abruptly turned and slammed into the longhouse, leaving Taria standing in the snow. Recovering from the shock of it, Taria chased after him. She found the door bolted against her. “Let me in!”

But the door stayed latched. There were no windows in the longhouse, so Taria could only listen to her parents argue. Inside she heard her father kicking things in his rage. Meanwhile, freezing needles pricked her skin and Taria pounded on the door. Icy water seeped into her boots, but she dared not complain because her people went barefoot and in rags except for the shamans and the girls who sold themselves at the brothels. “Oshta, it’s starting to rain ice!”

“Then you’d best find shelter,” her father shouted. “Because you won’t sleep here tonight.”

Fear made the hairs on the back of Taria’s neck bristle.

He couldn’t mean to leave her alone out here without even a blanket. Not even her father would do that, would he? Would the medallion let him? Taria counted five of her own heartbeats before she spoke. “You’re locking me outside?”

“A dose of hardship will make you remember what it means to be Ticanee. Maybe it’ll make you grateful for your bedroll, instead of longing for the soft beds of the Firan barracks.”

“Enough.” It was her mother’s voice. “She’ll freeze to death.”

“Let this be her Rite of Passage then,” her father thundered in reply. “If she survives the night, she can have her tattoo. She says she’s an adult now. So, let her prove it!”

The fiery blood of Taria’s Ticanee heritage rushed to her face. The uncontrolled emotions took her by surprise. Fury rushed past her ears like the screech of a bird and she slammed the butt of her spear against the door. “Gods and Totems, I’ll prove it then!”

Taria bounded into the snow and strode past the dying fires, unsure of where she was going. She couldn’t stay with the Ticanee; if they sheltered her, there would be retribution from her father. So Taria cut through a stand of snow-laced trees towards the gate that enclosed her people from the rest of the city, knowing she’d have to find refuge somewhere in the sprawling mass of brick and marble that made up the Firan capital. Meanwhile, her anger would have to keep her warm, and it burned like an inner fire. Hopefully it would light a path for her too, because even without the freezing rain, it was getting dark.

Behind her someone called through the sleet. “Taria!”

Taria turned to see her little brother. His topknot bounced from side to side as he splashed through the slush to catch up, and Taria was suddenly seized by guilt and fear. “Did the Oshta lock you out too?”

“No.” Vahlon took a moment to catch his breath. “Come back to the longhouse. Mother changed his mind.”

But Taria’s temper was too high. “I haven’t changed mine.”

“Come back before he kicks you out for good,” Vahlon said.

“Let him.” Taria clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. “I hate him.”

Vahlon’s eyes widened. “But you can’t hate him. He’s the Oshta.”

“He hates me, though, doesn’t he?” Taria began walking again. This fire that flowed through her veins was what made Ticanee warriors so brave. It also lured them to foolish mistakes like the one she was probably making now. Taria knew that, but couldn’t tamp it down.

“You shouldn’t have asked in front of the people,” Vahlon argued. “You forced him to consent!”

Taria pushed evergreen boughs out of her way as if the trees were enemy soldiers blocking her path. “I couldn’t let him refuse me again this year. We’re the last of the Ticanee and the people need to know that we don’t have to wait to die. We can do something, each of us, to change our lot.”

Vahlon shivered. “But father accepts our fate.”

“Well, I don’t accept it,” Taria said, walking faster.

Vahlon tried to keep up, but Taria’s legs were longer. “You’re really not coming back?”

Her brother sounded frightened to be alone in the longhouse with their father and Taria didn’t blame him. The Oshta might punish her brother to get back at her. That thought softened Taria’s resolve. And then of course, there was her certain knowledge that she could not willingly leave the medallion. “I won’t go back tonight, anyway. He said if I survived the night–”

“But-but,” Vahlon stuttered through chattering teeth. “It’s bitter cold. Where will you sleep? You aren’t…like the other girls.”

He meant that she was the Oshta’s daughter. She couldn’t trade her virtue for survival the way other girls did. “You’re right. I’m heir to the medallion and I can take care of myself.”

Proud talk, but the fact remained that she had nowhere to go. As her brother reluctantly left her standing there in the sleet, Taria told herself that she’d rather freeze to death than apologize to her father. Wouldn’t he be sorry when they found her lifeless body on the snow? That would show him!

She imagined the Oshta grieving beside her body on the pyre, telling her how much he regretted his unkindness…but that was the death yearning. Taria shook it off, and chastised herself for even thinking about dying from pride while her people died at the hands of enemy raiders, and from crueler killers, like hunger and sickness. Better to turn back; better to surrender her pride and ask her father’s forgiveness.

But as Taria contemplated humbling herself, she heard the fading screech of a griffon overhead—half-cat, half-bird. A giant feather floated down and landed sodden at her feet. Suddenly she knew exactly where to go. Ticanee totems lived outside, carved on ancient poles, but her mother was a priestess of the Firan bird goddess. And that goddess had a temple with a fire.

If she could find her way to the Temple, she might yet keep both her pride and her life this cold night.

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Links to other Excerpt Monday writers
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just a writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

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Rites of Passage is a work in progress.

PROLOGUE

It wasn’t wrong to want her, even though we were gold and she was flesh. She belonged to us, after all. When we were forged, the ancestors sprinkled their ashes into the molten metal. They opened their veins over the boiling cauldron to mix their sacred red ichor with ours.

Like the ancestors, she was blood of our blood. Bone of our bone.

In truth, Taria belonged to us from the moment she slipped from between her mother’s thighs and took her first ragged breath. The shaman laid the ruddy infant on the longhouse floor at the feet of the Oshta. Even then, from the chain around his neck, we swung above the baby girl like a sparkling pendulum, setting the rhythm of her life. We heard her first lusty cry and saw her open her bright blue eyes. Those little eyes fastened first–with all their intensity–on our glittering face.

She was only a squalling baby with a lock of red hair, miniature features screwed up in outrage at being so rudely thrust into a world of war and starvation.

The first time she reached for us, she was only a toddler, just a mop of red curls and milk-soft skin. She was sitting by the fire upon the Oshta’s lap and grasped hold with her fat little fingers. Her skin touched ours, so warm and alive against our gold, and we knew her at once. She was our child and our mother. She was our sister and our brother. She was our slave and our lover.

We didn’t give her a memory that first time; she wouldn’t have understood. Even so, she held us tight, shrieking as the Oshta pried us away from her. But he couldn’t keep us apart. She was ours. Ours.

As a girl, she came to us in the mornings, when the ashes in the fire were low and smoky and everyone else in the longhouse was still asleep. Sometimes we called to her, urging her to crawl out from beneath the furs to where we hung by the fire.

She never tried to put us around her neck, and we wouldn’t have allowed it if she had. She was too young for such intimacies. But we let her press her cheek to our stones. We let her stroke her fingers over our symbols, an erotic caress. And when she did, we whispered to her of all our faded glories.

We taught her about the plains we once ruled, though she’d never seen them for herself. We showed her the rustling grasses that spread out in a verdant expanse beyond the horizon. And we told her the Ticanee had once been as numerous as the stars.

Through our memories, we let her smell the perfume of the wildflowers that bloomed on the open prarie. We let her feel the prickle of electricity before lightning struck the land, and we let her smell the sweat on horses as they galloped wild and free. We could have shown her our fallen heroes; we could have shown her the horrors we’d seen too. But she was still so young. We didn’t want to break her.

But she isn’t a girl anymore. Soon she’ll burn with the fevered need to mate. As she sleeps fitfully in her bedroll, just a few feet from us, we sometimes catch glimpses of her slim legs, pale and creamy in the firelight. She’s grown into a lithe huntress, the embodiment of grace. Yet she isn’t dainty—her back is marked by the Oshta’s lash, scars of a childhood from which we couldn’t protect her.

You see, the Oshta wants to keep her small. He wants to keep her young. He wants to keep her from us. But he won’t succeed.

She wants us too, and soon we will take her. She’s our betrothed, and we’re her loving bridegroom. She must know it, the way she pulls her thick auburn braid over her shoulder and creeps to us. She presses us against her heart and our rune stones caress the silky skin of her breast.

It makes her sigh.

“There was another raid in the night,” she whispers, tears in her eyes. “The people were butchered in their tents.”

We aren’t surprised to see her tears, but beneath her tender nature, we know there is an older and wizened soul. She grieves not for the dead, but for her people as a whole, and we take her sorrow inside us and let it meld with the rest.

But this small comfort isn’t enough for Taria. She always wants more. “Take it all from me,” she whispers.

“But you need the pain,” we tell her. “Endure it. Learn to love sacrifice.”

“How can I learn to love it?”

“You will. Then you must take the Oshta’s place.”

In answer, she runs her fingers over our chain, tremulous fingers that betray her innocent maiden’s yearning. She thinks only of the pleasure of wearing us. Only of the release. She has ached for us as much as we ache for her, but she is still a budding flower, a beauty not quite fully bloomed.

We will have to wait, for in us, resides our people’s memories, but in her resides their hope.

CONTINUED

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Links to other Excerpt Monday writers

Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

 

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

It’s a new month and that means two things. The first, is that I’m running a new contest in which you could win an Amazon gift certificate and a free copy of C.E.Murphy’s HANDS OF FLAME just for signing up for my extremely infrequent newsletter.

The second thing I have going on in September is participation in this month’s Excerpt Monday! 

For your viewing pleasure, I present the first chapter of MIDNIGHT MEDUSA, my first Silhouette Nocturne Bite. It’s a full chapter, so stay tuned till the end, where I list more authors offering free excerpts of their own! 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Renata forced the cutting edge of her blade against the war criminal’s cheek, just below his eye. The man didn’t tremble with fear the way she wished he would–not the way she still trembled when she remembered the explosion. Neither did his cruel mouth quiver the way hers did when she remembered being engulfed in flames. No, the war criminal’s expression didn’t change.

Even though she held his fate in her hands, he wasn’t afraid of her. He was cold, stony and remote even as she brought her hammer down and drove the sharp chisel into his face; for he was made of marble and knew this was as close to him as the sculptress would ever dare to come.

In the quiet of her studio, Renata slowly came back to herself. She realized that it was dark; she had been carving with nothing to guide her fingers but moonlight and her own depthless rage. And now her dust-covered hands were shaking. Her mind reeled with memories of the war that had killed her father and little brother. Her throat swelled with grief like it had when her mother was abducted by an enemy soldier. Tears burned beneath Renata’s lashes and she knew she had to stop working, if only for a moment. She wiped her eyes with the back of an aching forearm, smearing her cheeks with grit and reminding herself that the war was long over.

It was one of those notoriously hot summer nights in New York City and Renata’s unruly tresses were already coiled with perspiration, wet against her neck. Her cotton tank top clung damply to the small of her slender back, perspiration tickling the scars along her spine. It was sweltering.

Renata considered turning on the air conditioner, but she hoped the heat might bring her pet snake from its hiding place. The snake could be anywhere amidst the boxes, stone chips and art magazines that littered Renata’s studio, and she sighed knowing that her foster family would scold her for letting Scylla escape her cage and slither off. Then again, they had never liked her pet snake. True, Scylla wasn’t cuddly like a cat or a dog, but Renata knew that just because a snake—or a person—didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve didn’t mean she didn’t have one.

It was already midnight though; Renata had no time to search for runaway serpents. She had to put her obsessive final touches on The War Criminal in time for the art exhibit tomorrow.

Steeling her courage, Renata took a deep breath and lifted her tools to work again, but as she did so, she heard rustling in the draperies over her window. “Is that where you’ve been hiding, Scylla?” she asked, but before she could turn around, she felt a cool breeze lift the downy hairs at the nape of her neck.

Was she imagining she heard someone lifting the sash? Had the emotion that always gripped her while working on this sculpture finally driven her mad? Even over the thumping of her heartbeat, she heard a small tearing sound, like fabric being snagged on a latch. Someone was breaking in!

Renata’s mind reeled with disbelief and fear. She was alone; she had deliberately rented a studio off the beaten path. It had seemed like a good idea because she prized her solitude, but now she wondered if anyone would even hear her if she called for help.

In the stillness of her studio, Renata gripped her wooden mallet in one hand and the chisel in the other, her knuckles going white. Her instinct was not to make any sudden movements, so she turned slowly and glimpsed a dark figure shadowed under the sweep of the drapes. A large lumbering man was silhouetted against the moonlight and Renata forgot to breathe. She saw a gun in his hand and her heart forgot to beat. She was too afraid even to scream.

The last time someone had pointed a gun at her, she was just a little girl in war-ravaged Bosnia, but the man aiming the cruel barrel of his weapon at her now didn’t look like a soldier. “I won’t hurt you if you come with me,” he said, his voice thick with some accent that Renata didn’t immediately recognize.

At his words, Renata went weak all over, terror rushing through her veins like a hot, withering poison. Who was he? What could the hulking stranger possibly want with her? And why should she believe that he wouldn’t hurt her when he was pointing a gun at her?

Since she was a little girl, she had been a victim, as her sculptures attested. But Renata wasn’t a little girl anymore and this wasn’t Bosnia. Something inside Renata snapped–like the angry strike of a cobra–and she decided then and there that unlike her mother, she wouldn’t be taken. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

With nothing but anger to direct her hand, Renata launched her hammer through the air towards her assailant. In slow motion, Renata watched the tool hurtle towards the intruder, cartwheeling end over end.

The hammer struck him square in the forehead.

It was only a wooden hammer–not one of the metal ones she sometimes used–but it made an audible and satisfying crack against the intruder’s skull. Shocked, the man staggered back, his arms tangling with the curtains. Only then did Renata cry out, but it was the intruder who screamed the loudest.

A gyrating tangle of scales and fangs had slipped from the draperies and coiled around the man’s shoulders. Scylla had been hiding there after all, and–as hostile to intruders as its owner–Renata’s pet python constricted around the assailant’s neck. Perhaps scenting the man’s fear on the air, the python pulled into strike position. “Get it off!” the intruder shrieked, fumbling with his gun.

Renata could see that the man was genuinely terrified, but her survival instinct was stronger than her compassion so, seizing the opportunity, she turned for the door and ran.

#

Only after the detective showed her his NYPD badge for the third time did Renata accompany him inside her studio. Even then she crossed her arms over herself and tucked her fingers under so that he wouldn’t see her tremble.

There was no sign of the intruder or the snake.

Dark, swarthy, and clad in a black leather jacket, the detective took a brief look around the studio. “This is the scene of the crime?”

Renata merely nodded; even under the best of circumstances, she was guarded with strangers, and these were not the best of circumstances. Still, there was something familiar about the detective’s shadowed eyes. He’d introduced himself several times, but she found that she just couldn’t remember his name. Maybe it was because she was in shock, or perhaps it was because she couldn’t stop staring at his startlingly handsome face.

Renata had nearly been kidnapped, so now was not the time to notice a handsome man, but as a sculptress, she revered chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw lines like his.

“Let’s go over this one more time,” the detective said.

“I’ve already told you everything,” Renata snapped, fixing her cool grey eyes on him. With practice, she had perfected that classic New York City bitchy-but-beautiful stare that drove most men to take a step back, but the detective didn’t seem cowed.

“With repetition, sometimes an extra detail or memory comes to mind,” the detective said, insistently. So they sat together on her old beat-up college futon with the denim cover, now as threadbare as her calm. He wrote Renata Rukavina at the top of a page and took careful notes as she told him what happened all over again.

When she finished telling her story, she noticed that the detective was sitting too close to her and when he leaned forward she worried, for a startled instant, he might try to kiss her. But instead, he exhaled a great breath, and fleetingly, she smelled the aroma of freshly baked bread.

It was the middle of the night–no one was baking–but the scent somehow relaxed Renata enough to let the detective take her hand.

There was a strange tugging sensation as her skin came into contact with his. She wondered that she allowed it; with friends and lovers—even with her foster family—there was always a struggle between her need for intimacy and her fear of it. Yet she was letting this stranger hold her hand.

“You just had a scare, but you’re okay now,” he added.

And somehow, she was.

“You’re sure you don’t know the guy who tried to break in here?” the detective asked, his mop of dark hair softening the intensity of his gaze. “You’ve no idea why anyone would break into your studio this hour of night?”

Renata shook her head again. If she’d testified before the war tribunals, someone might have had cause to try to shut her up, but that’s why Renata hadn’t testified. Why she would never testify.

The detective finally went to the windowsill to dust for fingerprints. Meanwhile, Renata searched for her pet python. As she checked all of Scylla’s usual hiding spots, she realized the detective was examining her work. “These are some powerful pieces,” he said of the statuary adorning her studio.

“Thank you,” Renata said politely. “They’re not to everyone’s taste. One of my critics said they were nightmares brought to life.”

The detective circled a black marble sculpture of a man with a gun strapped over his shoulder, his clenched fist pulled back to brutalize an unseen victim. “Not a nice guy, I’m guessing.”

“He was charged with crimes against humanity,” Renata said, feeling a well of rage rising as she remembered his deeds. “He died before they could convict him, though.” What she did not tell the detective was that the soldier had died the very night Renata finished his sculpture, and thus joined her collection of ghosts.

When she was a fledgling artist, Renata carved the faces of children felled by sniper fire outside Sarajevo. Even now, after years of experience, the only living person in her art collection was The War Criminal, so she watched warily as the detective approached that almost-finished statue and ran his hand over the stone. “This is the guy on trial at The Hague right now isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Renata replied, impressed. It seemed unlikely that an ordinary police detective would know anything about it; in Renata’s experience most people chose to forget the war that had destroyed her childhood. That he seemed to care made Renata willing to talk. “The War Criminal was going to be the centerpiece of my exhibit at the gallery tomorrow to coincide with the expected verdict against him, but now I’m afraid I won’t finish in time.”

“But you must finish it,” the police detective insisted, a ripple of anger passing across his shoulders beneath his leather jacket. His sudden vehemence startled Renata and, seeing this, he measured his tone. “I’m just saying that you can’t let anything stand in your way. An art exhibit is a huge deal, isn’t it? You’ve worked hard for it, haven’t you? You can’t let someone scare you from finishing important work like this.”

Renata was flattered that he thought her work was important, but she was terribly unsettled. She wished he would tell her that they had her would-be kidnapper in custody. She just wanted to feel safe, but then, hadn’t she always? Renata shrugged apologetically. “I can’t do the delicate finishing touches with shaking hands.”

“Look,” the detective said. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep my squad car parked right outside tonight and make sure nobody bothers you. Meanwhile, you should just take your fear from tonight, turn it to anger, and finish your sculpture.”

Renata tilted her head at the curious phrasing he used. “I don’t think you should be encouraging that. My therapist thinks I have anger issues.”

He gave a mirthless smile, a gleam of savagery in his eye. “No doubt. Sounds like you clocked the perp. Did you throw the hammer because you were scared or angry?”

“Both,” Renata admitted.

“Then it seems to me that your anger is what kept you from being kidnapped tonight and it’ll help with your art too.”

Renata couldn’t help thinking, yet again, that this was no ordinary police detective. Once again, he took her hands in his. She felt something tug at her emotions and she realized she was no longer shaking from fear.

Only rage.

Someone had broken into her apartment. Someone had pointed a gun at her and tried to take her. Someone had come into her world, uninvited, and tried to rip apart her life just like the invading soldiers had done all those years ago. And someone should have to pay for that.

Anger roiled and coiled inside her, twisting upon itself with venomous purpose. It was past midnight.

Renata picked up her tools and began to sculpt.

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MIDNIGHT MEDUSA is available for sale now at eharlequin.com. (Also available for the kindle at Amazon.com!)

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Links to other Excerpt Monday writers
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

 

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Today I’m participating in Excerpt Monday! Check out this excerpt from WILD, TETHERED, BOUND, then get sneak peaks from other authors below:

AJ O’Donovan, Poetry (PG13)
Heather S.Ingemar, Dark Fantasy/Poetry (PG13)
Babette James, Fantasy Romance (PG 13)
Cynthia Justlin, Romantic Suspense (PG 13)
Kaige, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Julia Knight, Fantasy Romance (PG13)
Ansha Kotyk, Middle Grade Adventure (PG13)
Adelle Laudan, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Jeannie Lin, Historical Romance (PG 13)
RF Long, YA Paranormal (PG13)
Caitlynn Lowe, Epic Fantasy (PG13)
Shawntelle Madison, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)
Crista McHugh, Contemporary Erotic Romance (PG 13)
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)
Leigh Royals, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Megan S., Paranormal (PG13)
Dara Sorensen, Historical Paranormal (PG 13)
Bethanne Strasser, Historical Romance (PG13)

Melissa Aires, Futuristic Romance (R)
Melissa Blue, Contemporary Romance (R)
Jax Cassidy, Contemporary (R)
Christina DeLorenzo, Furturistic Sci-Fi (R)
Maya Doyle, Parnormal Romance (R)
Ginny Glass, Paranormal (R)
Amber Green, Romantic Suspense (R)
Cate Hart, Paranormal YA (R)
Kinsey W. Holley, Erotic Romance (R)
Ali Katz, Erotic Paranormal Romance (R)
Aislinn Kerry, Fantasy (R)
Inez Kelly, Fantasy Romance (R)
Cherrie Lynn, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)
Mel/Alexia Reed, Urban Fantasy (R)
Rebecca Savage, Romantic Suspense (R)
Fae Sutherland, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)

Stephanie Adkins, Paranormal Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Evie Byrne, Erotic Historical Romance (NC17)
Ella Drake, Erotic Contemporary (NC17)
Dawn Montgomery, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17)
Lauren Murphy, Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Kim Knox, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17)
Emily Ryan-Davis, Historical Western Romance (NC17)
Kirsten Saell, Erotic Fantasy Romance (NC 17)
Jeanne St. James, Contemporary Romance (NC 17)