Hot Excerpt from The Color of Dusk, Dark Book 2, by Gail Roughton

In The Color of Seven, rising young attorney Ria Knight meets the man whose image haunts her house. He’s not exactly alive and well, but he’s not dead either, despite the epitaph on his mausoleum in Rose Arbor Cemetery. The Color of Dusk concludes the story of the epic battle that raged in 1888 between Cain, powerful Bokor of Black Magic, and Dr. Paul Devlin, the man who finally banished Cain to the dank cave out by Stone Creek Swamp. In The Color of Dusk, Ria offers Cain, now resurrected from that cave, his perfect revenge against Paul Devlin. The past, like evil, never dies. It just—waits.

"I am addicted to any book Gail Roughton writes but admittedly I was a little apprehensive (feared it was outside of my comfort zone) to read her first tale in this saga The Color of Seven but was totally blown away and had to know how the story would play out in The Color of Dusk. WOW! Did the story ever play out! I read the end of this one pacing the house and all revved up.
Dusk is a thriller and a very good one at that. Prejudices, good and evil exists in all walks of life and the results can be heartbreaking but rest assured that Dusk will take you on a wild, satisfying ride with a rich story line that is cleverly written to combine the past and the present to an amazing conclusion. You will feel every emotion there is to feel and this story will stay with me for a long time to come.

One of the best purchases I ever made was my Kindle and being introduced to the unique, original and always surprising stories by Gail Roughton." ~ 5 Stars, Long Time DF Fan, Amazon Reader and Verified Purchase

 

Excerpt:

 

Rose Arbor Cemetery, Macon, Georgia

Paul sat in silence. He’d talked himself out through the night, sharing that summer of 1888 with Ria. Reliving it. Something he hadn’t done in all the long years of his existence. Then again, no living human except Ria Knight had ever tracked him to his mausoleum, watched him rise, and demanded all the details. He savored the warmth of her body through her jacket as she sat with his arms around her. An empty wine bottle and his grandmother’s old crystal goblets stood beside them. From the look of the sky, he’d talked himself out none too soon.

Something wet dropped onto his hand. He raised it slightly, feeling the liquid run over the skin. He smiled and shifted her to one side to gain a view of her face.

“And what are these?” he asked, watching tears stream silently out of her eyes.

“You know very well what they are. God, how did you do it? And still stay sane?”

He shrugged. “Because I had to. Ria, it’s almost dawn. You said you barely slept last night and now you’ve been up all night again.”

“Won’t kill me. I’ve done it before.”

 “And you haven’t eaten a damn thing tonight, either.” He eased her out of his arms. “Wait here.”

“What—” she started. She stopped when she realized she was talking to thin air. She sat and watched the sky. How long till dawn? She watched the pre-dawn traffic speed north toward Atlanta and south towards Savannah. The cars and trucks seemed intrusive, out of place. She felt she’d been transported to 1888. And still hadn’t come completely back.

“Here.” Paul spoke quietly behind her and she started. Then she sniffed and smiled. Fresh coffee and fast food breakfast biscuits. She catapulted back into her own year.

“Sausage or steak?” Paul asked, digging into the bags.

She laughed.

“What?”

“You,” she said. “Voodoo and bokors and mambos. Tamara and Cain and Blood Drinkers. Sausage or steak.”

He grinned. “And you need to hurry up and decide, ‘cause darlin’, I’m goin’ have to excuse myself in a red-hot hurry in about—” he glanced up at the sky, “twenty minutes, now.”

“Steak.”

He handed her the wrapped biscuit and flipped the lid of his coffee cup, drinking quickly. She did the same and almost spewed the liquid back out.

“Damn! That’s hot!”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re drinkin’ it like water!”

“I told you, hot and cold don’t bother me too much.”

They sat and ate in silence for a few minutes.

“Good cover story, you gettin’ killed out west. The body shipped back home.”

“Papa. He did himself proud. I always thought so.”

“So he did recover?”

“He had a few more years.”

“And Joshua?” she asked, referring to Paul’s mulatto half-brother. After the death of Paul’s mother, Paul’s father shared an epic love story with his housekeeper Sadie spanning over twenty years, against all odds and all conventions of the 1800s. Joshua had fallen into Cain’s grasp that summer of 1888, at least until Paul pulled him out of it and paid for doing so with his life. In a manner of speaking.

“We sent him north that winter. Boarding school in Boston.”

“Why do you still use the mausoleum? I mean, wouldn’t a house or an apartment be more comfortable?”

“Too dangerous. Neighbors, you know, unless you’re way out in the country and even then, you have repair people, utility workers. Somebody, sometime, would notice they never saw me in the daytime. Not just seldom, but never. Besides, this is sort of home now.”

“I guess so.”

“I did toy with the idea of getting rid of the coffin, getting a regular bed or at least a mattress, but somehow I never got around to it.”

Ria laughed. “It’s a perverted sense of humor, and you know it!”

“Well, yes. Yes, it is.”

They sat in silence again, both of them watching the sky.

“Paul? What now? You’re not goin’ to just disappear, are you? Never see me again?”

“I should.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Don’t you? You’ve known me for two days and you’ve lost two nights’ sleep already. Real normal lifestyle there. Very healthy.”

 “There’s a reason I saw you, your past in the Orange Street house. So I’d know you when I did see you. I was meant to, Paul.”

“C’mon. I’ll walk you to your car. I don’t have long.” He stood and offered his hand. They moved back up the hill, through the old markers.

Paul stopped at the short wall and spotted her car, parked down a steep hill outside the cemetery walls and gates, the least observable place Ria could think of to park.

“Dangerous place to park all night, don’t you think?”

“Didn’t want to leave it in the cemetery grounds. I don’t think any patrol cars tour through it at night but I wasn’t sure.”

Ria started to jump up on the ledge and Paul stopped her.

“Wait.”

He lifted her up easily and sat her on her perch.

“Now hold on.” He disappeared and reappeared almost instantaneously on the outside of the wall and held his hands up to her.

“I got to admit, that does take some getting used to.”

Paul smiled.

“Now, get on home,” he said. “I have to get back. Maybe five minute to sunrise.”

“Paul, wait! You never answered me. Will you come? Tonight? My house? I mean your house? “

“Ria, you’ve got to sleep.”

“I’ll take a nap this afternoon, I don’t have much on the calendar today. And I’ll sleep some tonight. I promise. You’d have called me again if I hadn’t found you, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Knowing I shouldn’t, I’d have called you. But then I was a man passing through town who’d be leaving in a month or so. There’s no point in even trying to pretend tonight hasn’t changed things and you know it.”

“Don’t kid yourself, buddy. If I’d never known Paul Devlin existed, Paul Everett would never have been a casual thing for me, not after the first sentence or two in that book store. And you know it. You felt the click, too, I know you did. Now, will you come?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Oh! That thing about having to be invited—”

“Is pretty much a crock, actually. I can go anywhere. As long as I know where I’m going. I can’t just decide to show up somewhere if I have no idea how to get there.”

“Then you shouldn’t have any problems. It’s your house, after all.”

“I’ll think about it.”

That was the best she was going to get, and she knew it. This might be the last time she’d see him. She moved into his arms and raised her face. He kissed her forehead.

She pulled his head down and gently grazed his lips with her own.

“No, don’t.”

He was afraid to kiss, frightened of the sharpness of his incisors.

“You won’t hurt me, Paul. You know you won’t.” She raised her face again and he did kiss her, gently at first and then, gaining confidence, more deeply.

The old legends raced through her mind. The wicked incisors, the fetid odor of the vampire’s mouth. He tasted of new coffee and fresh biscuits, the hot, sage spice of sausage. The trace smell-taste reminded her of sunup, country mornings, open pastures. Paul hadn’t seen sunrise in over a hundred years. He’d never see it again. And the sun was close.

 “Go,” she said. “Tonight. Please.”

“No promises.”

“There’d be lots of fringe benefits. I’d let you use my shower and you wouldn’t have to borrow empty hotel rooms anymore,” she offered.

He laughed at the reference to the night before when he’d proclaimed showers the single greatest convenience of the twentieth century. “That is an advantage I hadn’t considered,” he said thoughtfully. Then he grinned and disappeared.

Copyright (C) 2012 Gail Roughton

~ Available here

~ Also available as a complete set, Dark books 1 and 2 together!

Hot Excerpt from The Color of Seven, Dark, Book 1 by Gail Roughton

The Color of Seven
Dark, Book 1

Deep in the woods that slide off into Stone Creek Swamp, teenage drug dealers retrieve their stash and receive an unexpected dividend—the unwitting resurrection of Cain, powerful Bokor of Black Magic.  Atop Coleman Hill, two young attorneys renovate a decrepit relic for their home and office.  A house with a past it wants to share, gifting rising young attorney Ria Knight with tantalizing scenes of its original owner.  The past, like evil, never dies.  It just—waits.  

"From the unexpected beginning, Gail Roughton weaves a tale set in the past and present, horror and romance deftly interweaving to set the stage for an inevitable showdown between good and evil where not everyone will get out alive. Suspenseful and poignant, The Color of Seven will grip you in Ms. Roughton's novel, not letting you go until the last page is turned." ~5 Stars, Writer Stuart West

Excerpt:

 

Chapter One

Twin dirt bikes tore through the night, shattering the stillness of the woods. The riders couldn’t ride fast enough to escape the vision chasing them. The vision of the skeleton sprawled across the cave floor, the rotting stake lying against its rib bones. Or of the resurrection begun when they’d pulled the stake from its resting place.

Back in the cave, that resurrection accelerated. Arms and legs rippled with muscle. The rib cage re-fleshed itself as the face re-formed. The skeleton moved its arms and worked its mouth. A croak issued from newly formed vocal cords. A shout split the dark.

“I’m alive!”

The echoes bounced off the cave walls as the figure inched forward and stood. The man, a coal black giant with shaved skull and massive shoulders, tore off the rags clinging to his new flesh and stood naked in the night. His new body raged with thirst. He sniffed the air and caught the scent of prey.

The man didn’t know where he was, though he knew where he’d been. He knew who’d drained his body of life-sustaining blood and buried him in the cave. He didn’t know how much time had passed but it didn’t matter. If he was alive again, then his nemesis, that interfering highfaluting white doctor, the recipient of the dark powers he himself had unleashed—he was somewhere near as well. And by all the dark gods, he would find him. But first, he must have blood. He sniffed the air. He didn’t care if the prey was animal or human. He must hunt. He must stalk and capture, bite and tear. And drink. And drink. And drink.

He stood, naked under the moonglow, and reveled in his rebirth.

“I’m aliiiiiiiiive!” he shouted again. His laughter rushed out over the woods and moved on further, filling the deepest reaches of the swamp. Night fishermen, tending their lines along Stone Creek, stopped dead in their tracks and shivered. The night noises of the frogs and crickets ceased. No hoot-owl or whippoorwill sent forth its distinctive calls. Even the swamp snakes ceased to slither. The heartbeat of the woods and swamp stopped. It took a remarkably long time for it to resume.

* * *

The house on Orange Street sat and waited.

While it waited, it remembered the glory of its early years. It felt unloved and unwanted as it sulked within the narrow boundaries of its city lot, pouting in the humid haze of the July heat.

The gracious two-story brick had been such a happy house. In its past life, its rooms were open and airy, painted in light colors, with golden woodwork and scrolled mantles over the fireplaces. A fitting haven for the golden couple who laughed within its walls.

The succession of owners hadn’t been kind to the house. They’d partitioned its interior into apartments and later into offices, allowing it to slide into shabby disrepair. Its spacious rooms were now small and dark, the glowing woodwork raped by paint. The hardwood floors lay hidden beneath cheap carpet. The ceilings looked down on the walls and floors and sighed.

Still, the house hoped. Perhaps it had absorbed into its bricks and boards the optimism and vitality of the young doctor who’d been its first master.

A ‘For Sale’ sign stood in the front yard. Maybe someone special would walk through its front door and see it not as it was, but as it had been, as it could be again. Maybe even today.

And as the house sat lonely under the blazing sun, a car pulled up and parked at its curb. A young man got out of the car and slapped another notice over the ‘For Sale’ sign. He stepped back to survey his handiwork.

‘Sold.’

* * *

Sunset streaked in lines of purple and crimson over the horizon. It faded into streamers of rose and mauve before dying away into full dark.

Deep in the woods near Stone Creek, the giant emerged from the cave in the side of the hill. He stood, tall and still naked, and sniffed the air. His bare chest and upper arms were roadmaps of dried blood from the prior night’s frenzied feeding, his hand reddish-brown. His animal intelligence knew there were things he must investigate. He didn’t know exactly where he was. He assumed he was still near Macon, Georgia, the city he’d chosen for his last and greatest victory. He didn’t know what amount of time had passed since the hated white man snatched triumph from his waiting grasp.

He felt stirrings of the dark powers he’d first explored the prior night when he’d cast himself out in the night, disincorporating into a whirlwind of swirling molecules, coming together again into solid form by the power of his thoughts. Now, removed from the red mist of his urgent hunt for blood, he remembered the night of his defeat, his enemy’s strength, the relentless attacks, no moment spared for the actual act of moving from one point to another. Now he understood.

He stood, upraised nostrils quivering to catch the scent of blood. He gave his body a mental push and disappeared into the thick trees. Every living wood creature went on high alert, fully aware of the new predator who appeared and disappeared silently with no warning.

The hours of the hunt flew by. He looked up at the moon, then back at the body of the wild dog he was holding in his hands. He tossed the carcass casually into the pile of fur that only an hour before had roamed through the undergrowth in a large pack.

He laughed. His bloodlust lingered as a dull echo. He sensed that echo would never fully die away, no matter how much blood he guzzled. But for tonight, he’d had enough, which was as good as a feast. There were matters to be tended to, things to be considered.

He sent his swirling essence into the air and returned to his lair, where he sat in cogitation for some half-hour. The woodlife, sensing the cessation of the active hunt, gradually resumed some measure of normality.

First, he needed to be sure he was still where he thought he was, somewhere on the fringes of the city. Then he needed to check how much time had passed in dark limbo. A very long time, he was sure. During the course of his hunt strange noises off in the distance reminded him of the rushing sound of a locomotive, but he knew that wasn’t it, exactly.

He needed an acolyte. Someone to introduce him to this new world. An acolyte to follow him blindly and serve him devotedly, do all things needful and necessary to be done to ensure his continued well-being.

Struck by a sudden idea, he got up and paced off the clearing in measured strides. Someone else had been here last night. Someone had uncovered the cave and pulled the rotting wood from his rib cage. He sniffed and came to point.

Two. There’d been two. One of the scents, though faint, still gave off the pleasing aroma of terror. The other scent, much stronger, was the scent of another predator leaving its spoor. Its strong smell of fear mingled with something else, something broadcasting simultaneous strength and weakness, flavored with a hint of madness. He smiled. Even a human should be able to track this spoor. And he was anything but. 

(C) Copyright 2012 Gail Roughton

~ Available here

Now Available: The Color of Dusk by Gail Roughton

In The Color of Seven, rising young attorney Ria Knight meets the man whose image haunts her house. He’s not exactly alive and well, but he’s not dead either, despite the epitaph on his mausoleum in Rose Arbor Cemetery.

The Color of Dusk concludes the story of the epic battle that raged in 1888 between Cain, powerful Bokor of Black Magic, and Dr. Paul Devlin, the man who finally banished Cain to the dank cave out by Stone Creek Swamp. In The Color of Dusk, Ria offers Cain, now resurrected from that cave, his perfect revenge against Paul Devlin. The past, like evil, never dies. It just—waits.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009RTVEJ6

B&N:http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-color-of-dusk-books-we-love-dark-fantasy-romance-gail-roughton/1113509825?ean=2940015516302

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/245803

ARe:https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thecolorofdusk-975686-139.html

Great New Review for The Raven's Curse by Jamieson Wolf

"The Raven's Curse is a fast paced novel, which thrills, surprises and shocks. Just when you feel you know where the story is going, Wolf pulls the rug from under your feet and leaves you breathless. There are moments of genuine horror as well underlying tales of friendship and romance. The Raven's Curse will stay with you long after you read the last sentence. . ." ~ 4 Stars, NE Reader, Amazon Reader


The Raven's Curse by Jamieson Wolf

Susan Halliway is desperate to change her life. But something is desperate to hunt her...

A serial killer begins to leave increasingly frightening notes for Susan after he kills each of his victims, little girls with blond hair and bright eyes. She receives details of the killings days before the bodies are found with no knowledge of how to find them or stop the killer.

The trouble is, the killings match a storyline on the soap opera "Hope Falls". The storyline where Susan's old character was the final victim.

Turning to Erin Edwards, the script writer who wrote the "Hope Falls" storyline, they both try to solve the puzzle of who is killing little girls and why they've targeted Susan. When Erin and Susan both receive curses, the bodies of dead ravens found nearby, they know that this is no ordinary killer.

Meanwhile, Derrick Madison, Susan's old flame comes back into her life.

Will Derrick's flame for Susan get in the way of his police investigation? Or will Susan's lust for Derrick blind her to powerful secrets that Derrick may be withholding from her.

They will need all their cunning, all their daring, if they are to reach the end of this hunt alive...


"A unique premise executed with humor, suspense and a touch of the macabre. You'll enjoy the surprising blend that Wolf brings to the world of soap operas." ~ Caridad Pineiro, New York Times Best Selling Author of 'The Calling Series' and 'Sins of the Flesh'

"True to soap opera form, Jamieson Wolf throws in enough twists and turns in the wild plot that will have readers on the edge of their seats for an incredible ride. They also make the reader check under the bed and leave the lights on at night. Wolf knows how to tear at the reader's heart strings one minute, and then creep you out with a truly frightening homage to the horror film industry the next. For anyone looking for a fast read that entertains as a thriller, a humor story, a mystery, and a horror novel, this is it." ~ Sandy Lender, Author of the Best Selling 'Choices Meant for Gods' and 'Choices Meant for Kings'

~ Find this title here