Excerpt from Feversong (Fever #9) by Karen Marie Moning

Expected publication: January 17th 2017 

 

My body doesn’t move as planned. It shudders, flops, and goes limp. “Stiff from being on the table so long,” I tell Jada, who watches me with narrowed eyes. I contract my abdomen, bend at the waist, stabilize my upper body, rotate my hips, shift my legs as a unit over the side of the gurney, and touch my feet to the floor.

I stand.

I AM.

Desire. Lust. Greed. And the path I choose to supremacy.

Master of adaptation and evolution, I slide more surely into my skin with each breath, enjoying the complex, albeit imperfect elegance of what I possess. I inhale long and slow, swelling first my abdomen then lungs with air. Breathing brings an assault of unfathomable stenches, but I will acclimate.

Every thought, every emotion MacKayla Lane experienced is filed in my meticulous mental vault, but during my incarceration in her body, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t smell.

I was—as she is now—trapped in a dark, silent prison, my only connection to the world an attachment I forged to her central nervous system through supremacy of will and relentless trial and failure. My existence was a smattering of complex electrical charges, intricate patterns without substance. Although I spied on her life as much as possible, I was able to seize and use her body, hands, and eyes only once, for brief duration. All else was diluted, second-hand perception absorbed from within, but for that overcast, rainy day I killed the Gray Woman and Mick O’Leary.

The power. The glory. That was the day I knew I would win. Those clumsy, debilitating hours I rode a body for the first time.

I require time to perfect control.

I. Require.

I draw myself up inside, gathering the enormity, the ancientness, the hunger and storm of my being and expand into the imperfect biological vessel I’ve claimed, saturating, possessing every atom. I fill my blood, my bones, my skin.

I turn the full force of my regard upon Jada, blink once, and reveal myself. My eyes, reflected in the stainless-steel door of a commercial freezer unit behind her, fill with obsidian until no white remains.

She changes color. Fear impacts the nerves that connect brain to heart, constricting circulation. The blood vanishes from her face, leaving freckles upon snow. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate and freeze. The scent of her body alters to one I find … intriguing.

I experience all of this with my own senses. It’s incomparable. My mere presence reprograms the anatomy of those around me.

Power.

I was made for it.

I would prefer to shred her flesh from bone, but several things prevent me. I smile with my new face.

“I would run if I were you,” I tell her softly.

 from https://www.facebook.com/KarenMarieMoningfan/?fref=nf

One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3): Chapter 5 Part 1 written by Ilona Andrews

You can read the next part of One Fell Sweep (written by Ilona Andrews) here:

http://innkeeper.ilona-andrews.com/2016/03/25/ofs-chapter-5-part-1/

Excerpts from "Shadow Rites" (Jane Yellowrock #10) by Faith Hunter

 Expected publication: April 5th 2016

Slaying vampires is child’s play for skinwalker Jane Yellowrock. But handling the complicated politics of New Orleans’ supernatural players is another story...

Jane is keeping the peace between visiting groups of witches and vamps in the city, but then trouble comes knocking on her doorstep. When her house is magically attacked, the wild chase to find her assailants unearths a mystery that has literally been buried deep.

A missing master vampire, presumed long deceased, is found chained in a pit...undead, raving mad, and in the company of two human bodies. Now it’s up to Jane to find out who kept the vampire hidden for so long and why, because the incident could tip already high supernatural tensions to an all-out arcane war.

Excerpt 

“Where do we stand on the ability to prevent a shooter across the street?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the windows there, and surreptitiously watching the limo pull out of the drive and down the street. All the upper windows in the two-story building were closed, thankfully. I had been shot at recently from that vantage point, and the local law hadn’t caught him. Or her.
Eli said, “Leo’s lawyers are still in negotiations with the owner and the property management company, but the offer Leo made was too good for them to pass up. They’ll take it. And if they don’t, we’ll manage something.”
“You will not blow it up.”
“Now who’s the spoilsport?” He flashed me a slice of a grin before we stepped into the glass cage at the front door.

As if reading my mind, Eli said, “This isn’t going down like attrition warfare, where success is quantified by enemy killed or disabled, weapons and infrastructure destroyed, and territory occupied. This is going down like a game. A video game.”
“Like the ones we found at the old house,” I said.
“Yeah. We’ve missed something. Our intel is bad.”
“Or… A game run by a cat,” I said. “Cat and mouse. Play with the mouse. Maybe hurt it a little. Let it go, let it think it was free. Then pounce again. Yeah. Got it.” I knew diddly squat about video games but I knew cats.

“That’s what all the old women say. They young ones want to bump bones.”
“Uncle Eli, what’s bump bones?” Angie Baby asked from the living room.
“Crap,” he whispered.
I stuffed a huge gobbet of beef into my mouth to keep my laughter hidden from my godchild. Eli swatted me with his dishrag, smacking my head without even aiming. “These are shish-kabobs, Angie,” he indicated a platter on the edge of the table as she walked up, “and when you remove them from the stick, and they bounce, that’s bumping bones.”
I nearly choked trying to swallow the beef half-chewed and not laugh at the same time.
“Uncle Eli,” Molly said from the living room, censure and glee in her tone.
“Sorry,” he said. “Best I could do on short notice. I’ll do better next time.”
“I suggest there be no next time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That would clearly be the best decision on my part.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” Molly said. 

from https://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter/?fref=nf 
from http://vampirebookclub.net/new-jane-yellowrock-excerpt-and-giveaway/ 
from http://www.faithhunter.net/