Posts Tagged ‘fairies’
Hey folks,
The Black Act Book 3: Witch Twins Cursed is now available at Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. Details, including an excerpt, and buy links are below. Don’t forget to grab Book 1: Witch Twins Born for free at all outlets, and Book 2: Witch Twins Secrets is now available for under a dollar. Links to those are also included below.
Have a great upcoming weekend!
The Black Act Book 3: Witch Twins Cursed
by Louise Bohmer
About: This is a serial fantasy novel that will be released in regular installments. Watch for Book 4: Witch Twins Rebellion coming soon.
The history of a curse is filled with bloody battles, bitter hatred, and dark secrets.
Through five generations, ghosts of war haunt the wise women. When the rebellion of Glenna ends, their curse sleeps bound in the Tunnels of the Dead, waiting for its chance to re-awaken the war between the wood people and Dalthwein clans. Claire, a wise woman born in the valley of the fae, unwittingly helps it escape imprisonment, while her twin sister Anna receives psychic glimpses of ancient secrets she must unravel. With her scribe teacher Rosalind, she also struggles to uncover the reasons behind Claire’s strange behavior, ever escalating since the death of their guild mother, Grianne.
The Age of the Wise Women will cease if the curse does not end with Anna and Claire. Perhaps inheriting the mistakes of their ancestors and learning the truths of their identities will bring great suffering for these witch twins.
In The Black Act Book 3: Witch Twins Cursed Anna learns more about the origins of the curse handed down through generations of her family, when Rosalind shares with her the story of Drea, the first wise woman, and how Drea’s crime against the wood people led to the creation of the wise women’s guild.
Excerpt: The wind is warm this morning. Anna knew it held an omen that the approaching Summer Quarter would be stiflingly hot and long. It’ll probably drag well into the Autumn Quarter this revolution.
She wouldn’t mind so much though. She preferred the Autumn Quarter, and a lengthened one meant she could enjoy the vibrant colors of final harvest time that much longer.
“Why is Claire not with you?”
Rosalind finally broke the silence as they walked to the guild’s orchard—a long, sweet smelling grove of apple trees. The fruit was sacred to wood people and Dalthwein alike, and served as a symbol of hardy abundance for harvest times.
“She was already gone this morning when I woke up.”
She heard Rosalind’s soft sigh of worry. She certainly shared this troubled state of mind with her.
They continued their walk, Anna carrying the small picnic basket. Though the birds sang and the day was lovely, in their collective thoughts Anna and Rosalind exchanged nothing but darker, troubled images.
Once they entered the orchard and settled on the grass beneath a leafy, fragrant apple tree, Anna decided to break the quiet.
“Last night, you said we come from the tainted line of Goddard.” She opened the basket. “That Claire and I are of the McCleod ancestry. I don’t understand. I thought the fae sent all of the McCleod tribe out of the Dalthwein lands. After the Rebellion of Glenna, when her connection to the McCleod bloodline was discovered, she and her sympathizers were exiled. Most went back to their nomadic roots. That’s what you elders taught us.”
Rosalind looked so weary, so old and frightened. Anna feared the toll all this was taking on her elder’s health.
Available On Kindle US
Availlable On Kindle CA
Available On Kindle UK
Available On Kobo
Available On Nook
Available on Smashwords
You can also grab Book 1 and Book 2 via the links below, or visit The Black Act page for more excerpts and other goodies.
FREE On Kindle US
FREE On Kindle CA
Available On Kindle UK
FREE On Kobo
Available On Nook
FREE on Smashwords
Available On Kindle US
Available On Kindle CA
Available On Kindle UK
Available On Kobo
Available On Nook
Available on Smashwords
Hey readers!
Just popped in to let you know The Black Act Book 1: Witch Twins Born is now free at Amazon. Click the highlighted text here or the book cover below to grab a copy now. Thank you bunches for helping me get the book free over there, folks. I’d hug you all if I could. It’s sitting at #37 in fairy tales. Whoop with me!
Keep watching for a sneak peek at the cover for Book 2: Witch Twins Secrets coming soon!
Hey readers,
Thanks to encouragement from some wonderful writers and friends, The Black Act will soon return as a serial novel. (The form K.H. Koehler and I have been using for Anti-Heroes). This third edition of the book will be released in roughly seven parts, and I’ve been working on the editing and cover design when I can grab some spare time to do so. I’ll be releasing each part monthly, depending on my schedule. Part 1: Witch Twins Born will be released in June. Take a sneak peek at the first cover below.
With huge thanks to K.H. Koehler for the lovely font design she came up with. For more examples of our book cover work, you should visit The Job Octopus.
So watch for Book 1 coming in June! And don’t forget, Witch Wars: Anti-Heroes Book 6 is coming soon, too!
Hope May is treating you all great.
Today we have a wonderful visitor in the forest. S.P. Miskowski has dropped by to tell us about her new Omnium Gatherum Media release, Delphine Dodd. Please peruse the eerie excerpt below. But, first, a bit about S.P. Miskowski.
S.P.’s Bio (taken from her site): Author of the novel KNOCK KNOCK published by Omnium Gatherum Media and shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Three related novellas are forthcoming from Omnium Gatherum beginning with DELPHINE DODD in 2012. My short stories have been published by Supernatural Tales, Horror Bound Magazine, Identity Theory, Other Voices, The Absent Willow Review, and in the anthology DETRITUS. I am a member of the speculative fiction group Wily Writers. One of my scripts, “my new friends (are so much better than you)” was nominated for a Steinberg/ American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award and will be adapted as a Web video project in 2012. As an undergraduate I won two Swarthout prizes for short fiction and edited a quarterly small press magazine. I earned a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Washington and received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, for short fiction and drama.
Delphine Dodd book trailer
Delphine Dodd – an excerpt from the novella
by S.P. Miskowski
Our summer weather varied. We might have two weeks of sunny days and suddenly the rain would return, cold as early spring. On one of these unseasonable days it just so happened that I had to walk to the sanitarium by myself.
Olive lay in bed with a slightly elevated temperature, probably nothing but the change in barometric pressure, but you could never be sure. Eve Alice decided to stay home and keep an eye on her.
The mist had risen from the forest floor. A thin fog drifted across the stream and gently distorted its natural shape, making it tricky to follow by sight. My view of the ridge opposite was intermittent. Then the ridge faded altogether. I was careful to stick close to the path I knew, my shoes clicking on the pebbled shore.
About two thirds of the way, as I passed a cluster of exposed roots jutting from the bluff on my side of the stream, I had a feeling that someone was watching me. I glanced around but didn’t see any crows.
The woods and the ravine could be eerie at certain times of day. Once, early in the morning, Olive and I had seen a wolf drinking from the stream. It raised its head, gazed left and right with shocking gray-blue eyes, lowered its snout, and went on drinking. None of the animals we encountered ever showed an interest, and I never went anywhere without my leather pouch with the tiny jawbone inside. Olive had to be reminded.
“I’m not afraid of bears,” she would say. Or, “That wolf didn’t scare me.”
“It’s because of the witch finger,” I told her.
“How do you know?”
“Livvy, animals aren’t afraid of girls.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of me. I can roar.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Keep this pouch around your neck, even when you sleep. If you don’t, I’ll tell on you.”
“I’m not scared of wolves, or you,” she whined.
“If you don’t do as Eve Alice said, the lampreys will eat you,” I told her. That did the trick.
The morning I went alone to the sanitarium, there were no wolves or bears. I caught a glint of light from the water and turned, but no one was there.
I walked on. The sensation of being stalked grew with every step. I wanted to turn again, to assure myself that I was wrong, but I couldn’t make myself look.
People often told me I was a sensible girl. Olive was pretty, they said, and I was sensible. I drew on all of my good sense to shut out the uneasiness, but the further along I walked, the stronger it grew. Where I was felt too far from home and too far from my destination, to run. Without meaning to, I found myself staring down at the good luck charm around my neck and wishing I knew a prayer or a chant I could repeat.
I couldn’t run for fear of spilling the broth Eve Alice had prepared. I didn’t see how I could tell her I just got scared and ran away. That would cost us the day’s wages. So I said to myself, again and again, the words I recalled from an old book Mama had given us when we were little:
“Over the river and through the woods… Over the river and through the woods… Over the river and through the woods…”
I must have said this a hundred times, faster and faster as the fear rose up and I felt the cold mist sweep against my back. I huffed and puffed all the way up the crisscrossing terraces, stomping with every step to make sure of my footing, feeling against my chest the pouch with the charm inside, and clutching the jug with both hands. Up the final steps, out of breath, still chanting the words, I climbed until the garden was almost at eye level. With a final hop I was standing at the edge of the garden, and there I stopped dead.
Amid the drifting fog and the ruins of untended rose bushes a gray-white figure emerged. Its shroud clung to jutting bones, and tangled in a mass at the ankles. Stark feet stuck out below the shroud. The figure hung there for a second then started to rotate, so slowly I had time to feel the hairs rising on my arms. Once it faced me I could see its mouth hung open, silent, with long strands of spit on either side.
I dropped the clay jug, spilling all of its contents. The warm liquid hit the ground and steam rose from the spot.
I stood frozen, staring. The figure gave a little jerk of its head and seemed to notice me. It headed in my direction with one shoulder thrust forward and the shroud catching at its ankles with every step. Without a thought in my head I screamed.
Published by Omnium Gatherum Media, Delphine Dodd is available in paperback and ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Delphine-Dodd-ebook/dp/B009GT0ILW
From S.P.: “Delphine Dodd is the first in a three-novella series set in the same world as Knock Knock. The books share characters and themes and may be read in any order. Together they connect in ways I hope the reader will find interesting.”
Click the book cover or link above to order a copy!
This free read is fresh meat. An early version of today’s free read once made honorable mention in a long ago Apex Magazine Halloween contest. However, since then this free read has been nipped and tweaked. It’s a PG-13 free read. I say that only because I’m paranoid of irate parents emailing me. Anyway, on with the shiny new fiction.
Midsummer Nightmare
by Louise Bohmer
Before Holloway ripped his lover’s eyes out and feasted on her essence, he wanted to give her a night to remember. Her last memory before death should be pleasant–a token to carry her over to the other side, something to comfort her during the transition.
Her murder would be as quick and painless as possible. Sure, he didn’t care for humans, but Holloway didn’t wish to make them suffer needlessly. He was smart enough to recognize the glorified homo-erectus was a necessary evil in the grander scheme of the universe.
He lit two cigarettes and passed her one. “What do you picture when I say ‘extraterrestrial’? Little grey men with wraparound eyes and egg-shaped heads?”
They’d been going at it hot and heavy, but before Holloway fucked this one to death he craved some philosophical talk. Soon enough, he’d bring her to climax as he ripped off the mask and showed her his true countenance. A face that would make her heart explode as she came. The combination of pure terror and pleasure would boil her essence to the surface, where it would bleed through her porcelain skin.
Holloway would lap it up from her cheeks, using it to steal her form, absorb her being, for cover in tonight’s scheduled mischief making. He had a date set for some genetic manipulation that was long overdue, and absorbing a human mask would save him the wasted time and effort of constant shapeshifting. He needed all the extra time he could get.
The plum-haired goth shrugged. “Never thought much about aliens.”
Holloway leaned in close to her. “Those little grey bastards get all the credit, but there are thousands of other inter-dimensional and extraterrestrial life forms mixing and mating with you humans on a regular basis.” He rolled his eyes at her. “You have no idea.”
Her intense stare burned into him with electric-blue fire, and in the dim light of their cheap motel room he could see fear beginning its dance inside her. Holloway grew hard with desire and his mask–this one stolen from a pedophile who posed as the pillar of his community–slipped just a bit, his true face eager to burst through its seams.
Guilt filled him too. The thick scent of her fear, heavy and meaty, was intoxicating. While part of him nursed remorse for her slaughter, so much of him basked in the primal rush to follow.
“What are you talking about?” She backed away from him, her tiny feet skittering and slipping on the sheets.
“Did you like mythology, folklore, when you were a child?” He kissed her forehead, as his arms split open at the wrists and tore a ragged seam up to his shoulders. He grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the headboard. Birch-bark pale biceps, near thick as tree trunks and of wooden flesh, ruined the businessman mask as they ripped through.
She managed shaky words between sobs. “What do you mean? Like Greek gods?”
“Not exactly, love.” His fingers of root and bone trailed up her thighs. His tongue of moss slipped down her throat. She struggled weakly beneath his eight foot frame, as he entered her and pumped hard. Holloway felt a pang of pity for the goth, deep in his heartcore. When she climaxed, his jagged fangs clamped through her tongue, cleaving it clean off its root. The first sweet nectar of her essence flooded his mouth, and he groaned.
He worked his magicks on her to make her death satisfying, but still shocking enough to the psyche to give him what he needed. Alien witchcraft, Holloway liked to call it. Adrenaline was a marvelous and curious thing, and it worked to his advantage when it came to the necessary combination of titillation and terror. Endorphins worked in conjunction with his whispered sex incantations to bring the essence of his lover-prey within reach. He could smell more of her spirit flowing strong, crawling up from her belly. Boiling just behind the eye sockets, where it was easiest to pluck out by the roots and let flow free.
“We helped create your race. We’re partly responsible for the thing you call a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, and you don’t even know it.” He smoothed a hand over her sweaty brow as she thrashed and screamed silent screams. For a moment, he regretted robbing her the comfort of her shrieks. Everyone deserved release.
Holloway yanked her baby blues from their sockets and her essence–the same color as that piercing sapphire gaze she wore in life–gushed out and down her cheeks. He clamped his furry mouth over one seeping hole in her face. His tongue burrowed deep into her brain, sucking in this biological coating she would no longer need. He groaned in satisfaction.
* * * *
Holloway checked his new female form in the cracked mirror taped to the wall beside the closet. He examined his lush curves and creamy skin. He tweaked his nipples through the sheer, black shirt and smiled. Nice boobs.
Lifting his nose as he opened the door, he sniffed the night air for the scent of the Mother of Evolution. She’d just returned to her motel room, three doors down from his. It was time to move, take care of the task he’d been sent here to complete.
Together, he and Gaia would birth the rebels: offspring who would help bring this mixed up human race to the next step in their evolution. He and the Mother would have to save humanity’s sorry mortal asses before it was too late, thus saving their own dimensions a shitload of natural and political disaster.
Humans had a way of messing with space and time when they didn’t know enough about it to be playing around, and it was creating havoc with the natural equilibrium of other worlds. All their messing with nuclear bombs and the hadron collider wasn’t just causing blips in Earth’s space-time continuum. It was messing up harmony throughout existence.
The fae and snake people, part of a coalition of beings who created the human ‘spirit,’ were suffering the brunt of the Inter-Dimensional Diplomacy Senate’s wrath for conducting the experiment of boosting the ape-creature’s psyche, with just a small injection of their combined bio-ethers, so many millennia ago.
“This is your mess, Holloway, and you and that runaway bitch can clean it up. Concordia Discord, son. Chaos in one realm causes a ripple of turmoil throughout realities.” The Highest Elder’s shrill scream pierced his third eye, and Holloway almost fell on his ass as he tried to maneuver the six inch platforms the goth had been wearing.
He reflected over recent instructions from the Highest Elder:
“You need to be covert. I don’t want Gaia to remember who she is before you can corner her. She mustn’t recognize you. She’s buried deep within the human mask, our sources tell us. Don’t spook her or she may bolt.
“Go in wearing the mask of a woman. A small, vulnerable woman preferably. That will let her guard down.”
He fished a cigarette out of the goth’s purse and lit it, mumbling a reply to the Highest Elder around the filter. “How the hell do I impregnate her while I’m in the skin of a woman, smart guy?”
“Don’t worry about the details of inseminating the human mask. Just get in there, you idiot.”
One of them needed to be in human skin for this fertilization to work. But would the mask survive? Would Gaia let it? Inter-dimensional kinds had long ago left behind the need for crude reproductive methods.
Holloway knocked at her door, and checked the parking lot over. Deserted. He was just about to kick at the door with his monster shoes when the entrance opened a crack.
A woman, shorter than the waif mask he wore, peered out at him. Her hair was as dark as the room engulfing her and it was bobbed beneath a tiny, pointed chin that made her look like a china doll. All she needed was a pink bow clipped at each temple.
Gaia’s mask looked nothing like the forceful beast within. The one he remembered so well. There wasn’t a trace of sleek scales or her ancient lizard eyes. Holloway winced at her façade of fragility, and at his own. They looked so like frightened children, searching for their mothers on a playground, rather than the great, inter-dimensional beings they were, who’d mastered arts far beyond homo sapien’s comprehension.
“H-hello there?” The mask frowned at him, and then gave a rapid barely-there smile. “Can I help you?”
“Ummm, yes. I mean, I hope so.” Holloway swallowed, and cursed himself for not thinking up an excuse for all this sooner. “See, my boyfriend kicked me out of our motel room.” He faked a few tears. “Asshole. Could I come in and call for a ride home?”
Gaia back up and looked like she was going to close the door.
“You can totally search my purse,” Holloway added desperately. “If you’re still afraid I’m carrying anything or whatever,” this he said seductively, leaning against the concrete wall to show off his stunning breasts, “you can search me.”
Gaia’s mask blushed, and Holloway wondered if the show of bashfulness was a ruse. Or was Gaia buried so deep within the skin she truly didn’t smell his inter-dimensional heat coming through his stolen flesh? He wouldn’t let his guard down.
Smiling, but dropping her wide-eyed gaze to the worn carpet, Gaia opened the door and gestured for him to enter. “Would you like a drink while you wait for your ride?”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes, smudging his mascara down his cheeks. It was time to get this over with. He’d have to do this quick if he wanted the mask to survive the insemination. There was still a chance Gaia would try to sabotage the pregnancy by destroying the mask. Really, Holloway couldn’t blame her. What higher level being wanted to find itself stuck in the skin of a hairless monkey for nine months, carrying around a half-human brat? The idea made him shudder.
He walked up behind her, stealthy and silent, while his true self broke through the dainty female form he wore. He wrapped his long fingers around the mask’s waist as he whispered frantic incantations and threw out psychic, sealing glamours, trying to trap Gaia in the human shell before she could set herself free.
“Don’t struggle, love. I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me. You know why I’m here, and what we must do. Do you remember? I know you do.”
He heard the ripping of soft tissue, and Holloway smelled the perfume of inner meat and blood. He was too late. The dying mask twitched in his grasp as Gaia broke free from within. Holloway had failed.
The shredded mask fell to the carpet and the Mother of Evolution rose, like a phoenix, from the remains. “Oh yes, I remember all of it Holloway. Indeed, I remember, but do you? Obviously you don’t. The Highest Elder lied to get you here.
“Why do you think I’ve been running for so long, protecting you for all these centuries? I can run no longer. You’ve had your time to adjust. Our time has come.”
Oily black writhed and turned to forest green. Holloway watched her scales plump and take on a solid yet fluid shape. His heartcore did a strange flutter-beat.
Supple reptile fingers wrapped around his cock. “Come into me, love. Come into me.”
He couldn’t hold back the moan at her slippery touch. Visions, aeons gone, wafted into empty rooms in his mind.
* * * *
“You want me to what?”
“I’m sorry, Holloway, but I have the better temperament for taking lead in this mission. You’re more maternal, I’m more feral. You know that, even if you won’t admit it.”
“Not more feral,” he narrowed his eyes at her, and crossed thick arms over his wooden chest, “just crueler.”
She bit her serpentine lips, and shook her head at him. “That’s not fair.”
Holloway hadn’t experienced pain in quite some time, so when it ripped him apart and sucked him into Gaia’s bio-ether, smashing his own dense bio-ether to bits like a sledgehammer taken in the teeth, the odd sensation pleased him greatly. He remembered what it was to feel again.
He saw Gaia’s hypnotic green eyes in a dream, and it was then he recalled the fine print on that Treaty of Inter-Dimensional Diplomacy they’d signed so long ago. She talked him into it, with those bewitching lizard eyes and promises of great sex. Without much argument, he’d agreed to work as a melded partnership, on this millennia long mission. They’d play the role as one, rather than two, and he’d take the backseat. He’d be the mother, this time, and she’d be the protector.
* * * *
Gaia woke up with her face mashed into the soiled carpet, drenched in sweat and the afterbirth of her transformative mating with Holloway.
She moved to the full-length mirror hanging by the closet. The mixture of Holloway’s fae essence and her reptilian features made for a striking contrast in this temporary human-looking mask they’d created. Beautiful in an odd way, with exaggerated green eyes and a too-small nose.
Shapeshifting was necessary at this point, but before they went out to find themselves a sturdy, 100 percent human male mate, they’d need to find some sex kitten mask to steal for the insemination. They had to be in a human body for the pregnancy to take. And, they needed a pure human mate.
“Where should we start looking for a suitable mask, Holloway? We’re running out of daylight, and time.” She looked at the weak sunlight pouring in the curtains. They might have to send time back six months, a year or two, even though it was frowned on by the Elder Council and the Inter-Dimensional Senate. But, if they were going to complete this mission, it might mean breaking a few rules. They’d already wasted a handful of years.
Holloway found a comfortable place in the back of Gaia’s mind and settled there. “I still don’t see why we have to share a body on this one, or why I have to bare the brunt of these pregnancies.” He pouted.
She chuckled at her reflection and grabbed their purse off the nightstand. Then, she cooed soft words to him, trying to soothe his broken ego. “We’ve discussed it all before. If someone needs to separate, defend or go out and hunt, I’ve the hunter instincts. Let’s face it, you’re more nurturing, babe. You’re the brains, I’m the brawn.”
Holloway snorted, and it tickled her brain something fierce. She knew he was disgruntled about the combination of their bio-ethers, and the fact that her essence was taking the helm in this mission. But they needed a stronger female bio-ether mixed with just the right combination of male bio-ether, to combine with pure human DNA–nothing too diluted with offworld bio-ethers would do–for this conception to take. And for the children born to successfully receive the next genetic code that would give human’s another step up. Worlds within worlds were demanding the chaos infecting their existences be settled, and she and her partner only had 485 years left to finish the job.
“Don’t be sore, sweetheart.” She slid into the seat of their Corvette. “Aren’t you just happy to be back with me? I did try to save you from this for as long as I possibly could. That’s why I ran. I knew you weren’t happy with the Treaty conditions, and I was worried how it would affect our results. You needed time to forget, to adjust, to soften to the idea.”
“I’m sorry I snapped, hon.” Holloway sounded genuine. “I’ll keep my third eye peeled for a man-killer mask in thigh high boots, while you grab me a pack of smokes in that club over there.”
Gaia chuckled and sighed. “You won’t be able to smoke once we’re knocked up.”
Holloway grumbled something she couldn’t quite make out.
Acquiescing to his request, she guided the Corvette toward the club he’d pointed out.
Copyright © 2011 Louise Bohmer. All rights reserved. No part of this short story may be distributed, shared, or posted online without the author’s written permission.
Want more horrifying Louise fiction? Why not check out Old School? Fourteen short tales offered by David Dunwoody, Jackie Gamber, R. Scott McCoy,Natalie L. Sin, Horace James, Gregory L. Hall, and Louise Bohmer, all tied together by selected poems from Zombie Zak – Old School reminds one of terrors best not forgotten.
Within these pages, evil children terrorize, witches gather the teeth of the young, cosmic blobs eat the world, while creepy crawlies ruin a man’s life and a headless ghost seeks revenge. Wander down this spooky path with poems and stories that revive our nightmares about golems, harpies, and other creatures.
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