Goodreads Giveaway for Deliciously Dark Tales

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New Excerpt from Revelation

Even though it was a warm day, the water was icy as she waded across. A few feet from the far bank, she slipped on some moss covered rocks and stumbled forward onto the muddy incline, splashing up enough water to soak her clothes. She reached out her hand to keep from falling and ended up scraping her palm on an exposed tree root.

“Stupid dog,” she muttered.

Michelle tried to stand but slipped in the slimy mud, and her foot slid back into the water, twisting her ankle and becoming lodged between two large rocks. She struggled to free her foot without sliding off the rocks and tumbling into the water. Finally, she got loose by pulling her foot out of her shoe, then she reached into the water and worked the shoe loose from between the rocks. With shoe in hand, she crawled onto the far bank and clawed her way up until she reached dry dirt beyond the mud. There, on a fallen log, she collapsed.

While she caught her breath, she cursed Billy, his dog, the creek, the rocks, and her own stupidity.

Sometime during her floundering the barking stopped and Michelle lost her sense of direction. She could no longer tell from which way the barking had been coming. She was deeper in the forest than she had ever ventured, and she’d been so intent on following the stupid barking, she had neglected to keep track of which paths she had followed.

Her throat tightened and her mind raced. Her dad had warned her about hikers who get lost in the forest; “Sometimes they aren’t found for months after they’re dead.” He had meant to make her more cautious, but now it just added to her growing fear. No one knew she was in the forest. She didn’t have a cell phone. No food. Her parents wouldn’t know where to start looking for her, neither would the police. If she couldn’t find her way out...

“Calm down!” she ordered herself. Silencing her spasmodic thoughts, she forced herself to sit quietly and listen.

Overhead, the dry intertwined tree branches creaked and moaned in a light breeze. The water in the creek murmured softly as it flowed over the rocks and debris in its path. Insects buzzed. Birds flitted from tree to tree, moving a branch here, leaves there. Something skittered through the leaves on the forest floor, a mouse maybe. But no traffic or human sounds pointed her in the direction of home.

Her ankle hurt, her hand burned, and she ached all over.

“Just stop and think,” she told herself. “What do you do when you’re lost in the woods?” She examined the unfamiliar landscape. “If you can identify some landmark, or figure out how to get your bearings, then you’ll have some idea which way to go.”

Snap.

Something heavy stalked through the underbrush just beyond a small rise. It was getting closer. Michelle dared not move. She thought, Don’t be an idiot, it’s probably someone who can help. But cold fear made her cautious. It was moving unhurried through the thick underbrush, and didn’t sound like it was coming toward her.

Then it snarled.

-- Excerpt from Revelation, Book 1 in the Almost Human series

Excerpt from Deliciously Dark Tales

Thanks to my ring tone, Def Leppard jerked me out of a jasmine-scented dream where I’d been comfortable, lying next to my sweet departed wife Rainee, and into the lonely and harsh one a.m. tang of two-day-stale coffee that languished inches from my face in the half-empty cup I’d abandoned on the nightstand.

My tongue is thick with morning mouth, but I snatch up the phone and answer. “Maroon, here.”

“Captain Plunket here. We need your help locating a body. SR 12, three miles east from Telegraph.”

I would dearly rather return to my dream, but duty calls. I rise, dress, chug down a leftover cup of cold coffee sitting on the kitchen counter, and, as I head out the door, snatch my ‘Y’ shaped rosewood wand from the coat rack just inside the front door.

Outside the early morning is bitter with moist cold, it stings my face and hands during the short walk to the garage. Small patches of ice crunch between the concrete and my shoes, and mesquite smoke from wood stoves warming cold houses hangs thick in the air.

The skin of my left hand sticks to the shiny surface of the door handle like I’ve licked a metal fence post. The cold from the steering wheel wheedles its way into my bones.

Just to reassure myself it is still there in the dark, I reach out and caress the wand on the seat next to me. The rosewood is smooth, and emanates the stored warmth from the house. The rough idling car spews exhaust that hangs in the enclosed garage like a cloud, and invades the passenger compartment with its stench. The door rolls up with a touch of the remote, and I back out, leaving the fumes trapped inside.

Headlights and streetlights illuminate a six foot thick icy fog suspended in the darkness at hood height. It swirls around the car as I plow through the morning.

The police call it a scene, as if the victim plays out the last moments of her life in some final movie act. But they don’t call me to judge or criticize their operation, they call me to help them find the lost. Victims mostly, and sometimes criminals. I am the Huntington Police Department’s official dowser.

I know the location of the crime scene because there are four marked police cars festooned with yellow, “Police Line Do Not Cross,” tape parked across the entrance to a dry riverbed. A wary officer stationed between the vehicles watches me as I approach. He nonchalantly moves his right hand to rest it on the butt of his holstered weapon, his fingers lightly curl around the hand grips. I’ve been involved with the department long enough not to be offended. Perpetrators often return to the scene of the crime.

“Devlin Maroon,” I mutter. The drive over hasn’t done much to make me more lucid. He extends the clipboard for my signature. After I sign in, he points to a point farther up the riverbed where a clump of three officers are huddled in a small clearing.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I say as I walk up.

All three turn and look at me. “Hi’ya, Mr. Maroon,” one of the older men responds. He looks too chipper for the time, place, and occasion of our meeting. But then, two in the morning is probably the middle of his workday, and he’s grown acquainted with such tragedy and accustomed to the hours.

“Why is it we’re waiting for this guy,” the youngest of the three pipes up as he jabs his finger my direction, “out here at o’dark-thirty?”

The older officer, Harris, nudges him with enough force the young man stumbles away from the group, his grunt of surprise sends a cloud of steam billowing from his mouth into the pine scented moonlight.

“So what? We’re out here for like, some kind of full-moon, witchy kind of thing?” he says, but now he’s far enough from his senior officer that he doesn’t receive another nudge, but Harris glares at him with enough force to shut his mouth.

“Not quite,” I say. “The combined negative thoughts of too many conscious people interfere with psychic vibrations. So this time of the morning, when fewer people are awake, means fewer negative vibes.”

-- Excerpt from The Dowser

 

Excerpt from REVELATION

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Was the creature standing over her waiting to…what? What did a Bigfoot do with the people it caught? The only stories she’d heard were about people seeing just a glimpse of it. Motionless, she held her breath and waited. Chest burning. Head throbbing, dizzy. She dared not open her eyes, but finally, she had to breathe. Michelle gulped the fresh air greedily, fully expecting it would be her last breath.

Nothing.

With her eyes opened to slits, she looked out through the bushes. The creature wasn’t anywhere in her narrow slice of vision.

What if it was standing just a few feet away behind her but hadn’t seen her yet?

  

Even though her mind screamed “Run,” her arms refused to push her body up, and her legs were like lead weights bolted to the ground.

    The creature could probably hear her ragged breathing. But it hadn’t snatched her up.Yet.

    Michelle closed her eyes and willed her mind, and her breathing, to quiet down. She listened. The wind moaned in the trees. A crow’s caw-caw bounced into the distance. The water cascaded down the creek bed. Cautiously, she opened her eyes again. This time, even though she still couldn’t bring herself to move, she dared to turn her head to look around.

When she looked over her shoulder, she glimpsed a massive brown hulk only a foot behind her. She squealed and scrambled away. With some distance between her and it, she spun around to face the beast, tripped, and fell backward into a blackberry bramble. Thorns tore through her shirt and dug into her back and shoulders. Tears fogged her vision. Stuck in the bramble, there was no further escape. She was as far away from the creature as she could get in the small clearing.

Michelle was cornered.

Survival instinct took over. She clenched her fists, braced her legs, and growled. The creature might take her down, but it would have a fight on its hands. 

She hadn’t yet dared to look directly at the creature. But now she raised her eyes and glared defiantly...     

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