EXCERPT A Terrible Tryst of Fate
Amelia Bainbridge has a great job, good friends, and a place of her own. But
what she lacks is love, and she’ll only settle for true love.
After attending her best friend’s wedding she is attacked by a terrible
creature that means to dine upon her flesh. Amelia is saved by a handsome
silver-haired man known as Hunter. It is love at first sight for both. Who is
Hunter and why is he so evasive about his past?
Amelia watches as his body heals more rapidly than any human being’s could. She
discovers he’s one of the Fallen. Once a member of the Grigori who watched over
humans at God’s command, he fell from Grace after conceiving a child with a
human woman centuries ago. Hunter’s current employer is a Demon Prince who is
seeking to halt the Second Coming by foiling Lucifer’s plots.
Amelia’s love for Hunter places her in the path of this demon’s machinations.
Into the mix comes Erzsébet, who is Hunter’s occasional lover. She becomes
jealous of Amelia with a hatred as deep as the Pit of Hell she’s been cast into.
Can Amelia and Hunter survive to explore their love while the legions of Heaven
and Hell gather forces for the End of Times?
Excerpt
Amelia let out another enraged scream as she dropped to the asphalt, soaking
the knees of her pantyhose, to retrieve the scattered remnants of her sundered
handbag. As she groped in the faint light she remembered her key ring. She
frantically went through what was nearby, only to find her keys missing. Her
heart sank as she remembered that there was a one gigabyte thumb drive attached
to her set of keys. “So much for all the data on that,” she snarled as she
crawled to the front of her Chevy Malibu, searching for missing things.
As she scrambled around to the front of the car she was taken aback when she
discovered a pair of men’s shoes on either side of the puddle in which her
keychain was soaking. She looked up, only to realize she was crotch level with
the stranger. She jumped to her feet as quickly as she could in order to remove
herself from such a suggestive position.
He was a short, stocky man dressed in a long black overcoat, dark trousers, and
a wide brimmed hat. As she stood up she noted he was very short, barely over
five feet in height. Due to the darkness and the brim of his hat, she could only
see the bottom portion of his face. He did have flabby jowls that hung off his
face like a bulldog’s. A set of thick, wet lips spread in a smile as she cleared
her throat.
“Ah, good evening,” she muttered; her face turned beet red from embarrassment.
“Good evening,” he said in a deep voice. “Did you lose something?”
“Yes, I did. My car keys are right there between…I mean, you’re nearly standing
on them.”
“Ah, so I am,” he remarked as he tipped his gaze towards his feet. He then
raised his face to hers, unfolding and stretching out the tube-like double chins
under his unusual mouth. He smiled and Amelia’s blood ran cold.
His flesh was white, corpse-like and as clammy as the weather. His hair stuck
out from under the hat in a haphazard manner, as if it grew in patches from his
scalp. His head was wide and short, almost frog-like in appearance. But what
really caught and held Amelia’s eyes was that all of the teeth he displayed were
small and pointed, like some horrible cannibal’s. His fleshy lips trembled as
she moved her gaze up to his eyes. Sunken deep into folds of whitish flesh,
those eyes were black and beady. They glittered like some beetle’s carapace in
the parking lot lights as he spoke once more.
“I’d reach down to retrieve them,” he chuckled in a wet, horrid voice. “But you
really won’t be needing them anymore.”
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