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Thought everyone would enjoy some kick-ass gargoyles in one of their favorite workouts.

As soon as Kefira stepped through the gate, a skeletal hand broke through the ground in a spray of dust and closed around her ankle.  Adrenaline flowed through her and she willed the iridescent fairy wings tattoo between her shoulder blades to change.  A sudden ripping sound tore a curse from her as the weight of her wings settled against her back.  “I’m definitely not dressed for this!”  Her favorite shirt sagged where it had ripped down the back to make way for her wings.  “Damn it, I’ve had that for two years.” She quickly adjusted her stance so the weight of her large leathery black wings didn’t topple her over. 
                The bone hand continued to constrict, digging painfully into her skin.  She concentrated, willing her foot and ankle to turn to stone—the familiar cold flowed over her skin causing goose bumps to pebble over the rest of her body.
                “Are you done playing with that thing?”  Odeda stood just outside the gate, her arms crossed over her generous cleavage.
                Ignoring her, Kefira kicked her leg forward, ripping the skeletal hand from whatever body it previously attached to underground.
                “Nice ankle bracelet,” Odeda observed as her own wings flowed into existence to billow around her.  “Notice I remembered to remove my jacket before bringing my wings out to play.  Why the hell do you think I have so many bustiers?”
                Kefira ignored her sister’s jibe and glanced down to see the stubborn bone hand still curled around her ankle and shrugged.  “It’s welcome to come along for the ride as long as it doesn’t get in my way.”
                The sisters walked toward the center of the gravestones as other skeletal body parts broke through the cracked ground all around them.  Kefira stood about eight feet away from her sister at an angle, so their wings didn’t tangle when they needed to maneuver and turned both arms to stone from the elbow down.  “Deda, why didn’t you tell me where we were going?  I would’ve brought Lileth.”
                “Because swords are for those who can’t handle hand to hand combat.” The familiar argument caused Kefira to grind her teeth, but Odeda continued as if she didn’t know she’d punched at Kefira’s defenses once again.  “And we’ve got skills to handle these guys in our sleep.”  Deda flashed a grin.  “Besides, tearing some skeleton apart with your bare hands will release more frustration than just merely chopping them up with a souped up kitchen knife.”
                “I like my souped up kitchen knife.” Kefira looked over at Odeda’s stone hands and raised her eyebrows in question.
                “Okay, with our bare stone hands,” Odeda amended.
                Now full skeletons crawled from their graves, some wearing the clothes they were buried in and others, nothing but pristine white bones—held together by necromancy.  They shuffled toward the sisters in an ever-tightening circle.
                Her mind calm and clear from the sudden surge of adrenaline, Kefira watched them, anticipation of the fight to come, sharp on her tongue.  This she could do without struggling with her emotions.  Killing skeletons or whatever other beastie happened to be in need of a quick death was straightforward and easy.  Why couldn’t things with Dagan be so simple? 
                The thought of the weakness she’d shown when Dagan passed out earlier washed through her, a tidal wave of embarrassment followed quickly by anger and she struck out at the nearest group of skeletons.  Her stone arm plowed through their ribcages, the sound of cracking bones filling the humid Texas air.
                More ripping and crunching sounded behind her assuring her Odeda was similarly engaged, but she knew from centuries of fights much more dangerous than this one, that Deda could more than hold her own.  She grabbed a fallen femur bone and used it like a baseball bat to decapitate an oncoming skeleton wearing a blonde poufy cocktail waitress wig.  The skull with perfectly coiffed hair still attached sailed out over the fence and disintegrated as soon as it left the magic confines of the graveyard.
                “Nice hit, giant cousin.”  Kefira glanced up to see Alonna the fairy, floating just overhead studying them with her large liquid lavender eyes.  Her flowing blonde hair barely covered her shapely nude form, while her tiny wings blurred from their effort to keep her aloft.  As always, she looked like a nude anatomically generous Barbie doll come to life.
                Bony hands closed around Kefira’s throat, jerking her attention back to the fight at hand.  She pried the hands from her neck and used the arms to beat back the rest of the body.
                Odeda’s voice came from behind her.  “Did you come to spy on us, Alonna?  Or were you just bored?”
                Alonna giggled, the sound like musical bells flowing over Kefira’s skin.
                “If I wanted to spy, I wouldn’t have materialized, now would I?”  She flew over to perch on top of the black bars that made up the ancient metal gate.  “I came to deliver some prophesy, but I can wait while you enjoy your combat.”
                Kefira executed a roundhouse kick, knocking back a new wave of skeletons and followed up with sweep of her stone arm to keep them down.  “I was hoping to get away from the prophesy, Alonna.  Can’t this wait?”
                “Isn’t that what I just said?”  She stamped her foot against the gate and shrugged, her arms held wide.  “You’re becoming as bad as the man-things.  I understand your frustration at the original man-thing, but this shouldn’t wait too long.  I deliver the prophesy with the timing that it keeps you informed for the coming battles ahead.  Without the knowledge I deliver, you could make choices you will regret.”
                Kefira snorted at Alonna’s comment as she whirled to attack the skeletons that had been trying to tear at her tough leathery wings.  I’ve regretted tons of my choices in the past that had nothing to do with the prophesy.
                “Exactly my point,” Alonna answered as Kefira’s temper sparked at the fairy reading her internal thoughts.  “If you don’t want me to know your thoughts, stop thinking them.”  She crossed her arms over her full but bare cleavage.  “I can’t help that I can hear them.”
                Kefira spun around to face the last standing skeleton at the same time Odeda did.  She grabbed one arm and leg and Deda grabbed the other and they pulled—a monster wishbone.  The skeleton’s body made a large popping sound as it broke apart and fell to the ground.  Then all sound around them suddenly ceased—almost loud in its silence.  The bones littering the graveyard disappeared, including her bone ankle bracelet, which suddenly turned to gray dust, coating the barren ground once again.
Tina Gerow
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Sexy, Snarky, Sensuous
www.tinagerow.com
Fire Maiden - Available Now at your local Book Store
Knights of the Magical Realm:  Warriors Gone Wild - Anthology coming October 2006 in Print & in eBook from Triskelion
Stone Maiden - Available Now in Print & in eBook at Triskelion Publishing
Take It Off - Available now at Triskelion Publishing
Into a Dangerous Mind - Available Now at Triskelion Publishing
 

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Knights of the Magical Realm:Warriors Gone Wild…who wants to win an eBook?  The response has been so great, I want to thank everyone who’s participated.  We have a winner and if you stop by to say hello you can have a second chance to win…new drawing on Dec 1,

http://britblaise.com/blog/?p=25

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Today’s my blog day and I didn’t have a clue what to say until I read Samantha’s post.  So I decided to post a little from the first chapter of a piece I just finished and am now editing with the help of the butterscotch martini girls…
This piece is going to Triskelion, since they wanted me to do a cowboy shape shifter.  I struggled with it as a long manuscript, but as a short story, it flew out my computer. 
 

                                                         Chapter One

 Manacles?  Rachel stared in disbelief at the leather and metal shackles attached to a steel frame.  The dim light coming from the doorway made her squint for a better look.  Did she dare turn on a light?

“Do you see anything interesting?”  Ray Wilde stood in the doorway, which led into the stock compartment of the fifth-wheel horse-trailer. 

Rachel tensed.  She had no business in his tack room, especially no business seeing this contraption.  “I heard you like to control your women, but isn’t this excessive?”

She considered leaving and tamped down the urge to walk away without getting what she needed from him.  Maybe the cost for learning the truth would be more than she could physically or emotionally pay.  However, this might be her only chance to unearth answers about her missing sister from one of the two known sources.

“I can honestly say I’ve never had any complaints.”  He reached to the wall to touch the leather binding.

Rachel and her best friend, Pam, had plied him with alcohol all night in the hopes he’d invite Rachel to his trailer for some alone time.  Did she have the guts to see it through even if it meant sex?  Or had she just wanted an excuse to sleep with him?  She’d wanted him long before she discovered the truth about him and his complicity in Sarah’s disappearance.

“Why so quiet?  You want something from me…I know that much.  You and your friend weren’t exactly subtle.”  He leaned in nearer to her, but held back like a man who didn’t like to get too close to anyone.  Dark angles, dark hair and firm muscles invaded her space.  At least in the dim light of the trailer, his eyes weren’t the pale, almost colorless hazel that mesmerized her earlier in the bar.  The man turned heads, whether on the back of a rank bull or walking by his lonesome through a crowded room.  He wasn’t the handsomest man in the world, but he gave that distinct impression, and then some.

“Maybe I just want your bod.  It’s all about meeting someone new for me, the initial attraction.  I’m like a junkie and crave the delicious spark of getting together with someone I’ve never been with.  It makes for unforgettable sex.”  In this case, she could almost believe her ridiculous statement.  He was tall for a bull-rider, well over six feet and on the lean and lanky side.  The fact he went eight seconds more often than not, attested to his strength.

“That must make it hell on your boyfriends.”

“Having a boyfriend would be counter-productive. I only get the rush, the heart-pounding, palms-sweating, warm-all-over feeling when I’m with someone I’ve never been with before.”  Rachel told a half-truth.  She had all of that and more for bull-rider, Ray Wilde.  However, as a rule, she didn’t do one-night-stands.  Until tonight, that is.

Ray picked up the leather manacle dangling from a heavy chain.  “And you’re interest in becoming my love-slave for the night.”

Rachel could tell by the sarcasm in his voice, he didn’t believe her.  Did she have the courage to agree?   She held an arm toward him.  Hell, yes!

He sucked for air as if she’d punched him.  “Before you go too far, take a closer look around.  These walls are steel reinforced too.  What if I chained you and didn’t let you go?”

He flipped a switch on the ceiling. The small light receptacle didn’t offer much illumination, but enough.  Not only were the walls made of steel, there were a second set of manacles on the floor for her ankles.  He’d told the truth.  Once he put them on her, she’d never get out of them on her own.   She dropped her arm.

Ray chuckled and gave her backbone a nudge.  Rachel raised her hand a second time.

“I may’ve had too much to drink.  I think I’m hallucinating.  I didn’t figure you for the kind of woman who’d summit so easily.”

“Trust me, I’m not.”

“All the better,” he said.

Why did those words and the inflection in his voice worry her so much?

Ray reached up to flip the light off.  Only the light from the door leading into the tiny bathroom kept them from complete darkness.  The living-quarters in Ray’s horse-trailer would be far more comfortable than the tack room, but she’d already seen it and it was nothing like this. If Ray was into bondage and domination, Rachel needed to know how far he’d take the game.  Could that have been what happened to her sister?

“What if I scream?  Could someone hear me?”

He paused to give her a dark look.  “If they were close enough to the trailer…maybe.  Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

“I thought dom’s get off making their submissives fear them?”

“So you’re saying you want me to scare you?  Lady, be careful for what you wish.  This time, you just might get it, in spades.”  He took her hand in his.  The thick calluses on his palms gave her goosebumps.  He had strong hands, the kind she liked on a man…the kind she liked touching her naked body. 

Instead of binding her right away, he ran his other hand up her other arm and stopped to circle her neck.  “Are you sure you want this?”

With his thumb at the front of her throat, he more than likely knew she’d gulped at his question.  “Yes, I want it.”

When he brought his other hand up to her throat, she nearly pulled away.  Then he began to undo her scarf.  Strange place to start undressing her. 

“I’m using this to blindfold you.”  He removed her scarf and tied it around her head to cover her eyes. 

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Each time I write a post the font goes askew!  I’ll save it three times and it looks good. I go back becasue I see something I need to edit and then everything is screwed up again.  The words blur into the side…grrrr

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My brain is mush. I just got my newest story Shadow Vision done. I have been up late writing every night. Where has my brain gone? No idea. And until I get back at least partial brain function I figured the easiest thing to do was paste in an excerpt. So here is an excerpt of Shadow Vision for you to scope out.

Shadow Vision 

Unedited Excerpt 

I tried to open my eyes, but nothing happened. The world around me had gone pitch black. And with that realization panic set in.

“You’ve been burned. Here, sit up and take a sip of this.” A strong arm lifted my upper body and cradled my head as cool liquid spilt onto my lips.

I drank deeply. “Where am I?” I asked between gulps of water.  

“The basement of an apartment building on 42nd and Winston. My apartment to be exact.”  

“Basement! Where the hell is Harry!”   

“Keep your voice down. It’s still hunting for you outside.

“Where’s Harry?” I asked again suddenly afraid to hear the answer.

“Your friend is dead.” I was lowered back onto the ground and something warm, but slightly scratchy, was pulled over my body. Gentle hands tucked the material around my feet and up under my chin.

The shock of Harry transitioning from a live pain in the ass to a dead brother in arms was almost too much for me. I didn’t want to think of the family that would mourn him, or the man he could have been, if he had lived long enough to grow into himself.  

I cleared my throat trying unsuccessfully to swallow the fear that was rising from the pit of my stomach. “The demon is still out there?”

“Is that what that is? A demon?”

“What did you think it was?”

“No idea. Just knew I didn’t want to be around when it came to its senses.”

It was a little surprising that he could see a demon at all, most people just saw a dark shadow that they didn’t want to focus on. It was extremely rare to find someone who could see a demon without training, and unheard of to see it as more than an evil looking human. And even stranger, he didn’t even seem to be that surprised that it was a demon.
“But I missed.”

“With the knife? Yeah, but when all its attention was focused on you I picked it up and stabbed it in the back. I didn’t stay around to see if I killed it, but it seemed dazed and confused.”

Suddenly something was in my hand. My fingers slid down the cool, smooth surface of the blade and across the slightly raised protection symbols that had been carefully forged into the metal. It was comforting to have it back in my hands. For a moment I felt less vulnerable. But what good was a dagger when you couldn’t see?

“Who are you?” 

“A good Samaritan.”

As my body warmed under the blanket my mind started slowly functioning again. “Do you normally go around saving damsels in distress?”

“Only the attractive ones.”

A sudden noise set him in motion. His steps echoed as he moved across the room.
“What’s wrong?”

“Do you want the good news or bad news?”

“Good news.”

His body was beside mine again. Warm fingers brushed hair from my forehead. “You don’t look like death warmed over anymore. There’s some color in your cheeks and those burns around your eyes, don’t look as bad as they did at first.”

“And the bad news?” I asked trying to ignore the little shocks of tingling pain where his skin touched mine.

“Reinforcements just showed up.”

“How many?”

“I count three, maybe four. Two heading in the direction of this building. It’s time we made a graceful exit.”

I forced my body up and every muscle screamed in protest.

“How are your legs?” He asked.

“Better than my eyes.”

Hands steadied me as I got to my feet.“Where are we heading?”

He began guiding me forward. “There are two ways out of the building, the front and back door. The back has been chained shut.”

“Isn’t that a fire code violation?”

“You can send the landlord a letter of complaint later.”

“So where to?”

“The roof.”

“You’re joking!”

His hand placed mine against a smooth wood surface.  “Afraid not. Use the banister. Come on, get a move on. It’s seven stories straight up.”

We walked in silence until a hand on my shoulder motioned me to stop. A body pushed past and the sound of male grunting and swearing filled the space around me. Metal screeched against metal. A cool breeze suddenly caressed my skin. Strong fingers wrapped around my arm pulling me slowly forward. I stumbled along using my other hand to balance against his.

He suddenly stopped. “Wow!”

“Wow what?”

“A couple of blocks away there is a huge building on fire, it’s really going, the flames must be fifty feet in the air.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Which direction?”

“South. It looks like some kind of a warehouse.”

I knew what building was on fire. A training night was one of the few times you could find the entire cell for my part of the city in one place. If the demons torched the warehouse and setup a perimeter to catch anyone who escaped, they would in one stroke cripple our defenses. I had never heard of any demon attacks with that level of planning or organization. Something was dreadfully wrong, and there wasn’t much one blind and inexperienced DK could do about it. For now I just had to get out of the snare, keep my ass alive, and see if there was anyone left to report to.

“Now what?” I demanded.

“Across to the other building.”

I couldn’t keep the amusement from my voice. “How? Fly?”

“I don’t know. Can you? I saw you slam that thing into a lamp post.”

“No, I can’t fly.”

“But you did something to it?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“With my mind.”

“Are there many like you walking around?”

“A few.”

“And how many are there of those creatures?”

“You don’t want to know.”

His hands left my body. I tried not to panic at the suddenly loss of human contact. Blinded, standing on the roof of an unknown building, I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. It didn’t help. My heart was pounding frantically inside my chest.

I almost cried out with joy when he spoke again.   “Okay, I found some boards. I can stretch a couple across to the roof of the next building.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, I can’t see.”

“I’m open to other suggestions. Have any?”

“No.”
The man was insane. There was no way I was going to try a balancing act across rooftops. Not even with my sight and a net.

Two hands came to rest on either side of my shoulders. “One foot in front of the other. Take it slow. I’ll guide you from behind. And whatever you do don’t look down.”

“Very funny.”

It wasn’t like he was giving me much choice. His body was forcing me forward. I took one step and then another. I tried to relax, but every part of my body was screaming to retreat, to go back.

I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. Another step and then another. I slowly made my way across the makeshift bridge. With each step I could feel the boards flex and bounce.

And then it happened. I stepped down and felt nothing.

Missed the board. The words screamed in my head as my arms reached out desperate for something to steady myself. He might have been able to keep me from falling if I hadn’t panicked. My body lurched forward. I was suddenly completely off the board and free falling to my death.

Fingers dug into my wrist. The weight of my body coming to a sudden halt forced my shoulder out of its socket. The immense pain stilled the scream on my lips. My mind was filled with nothing but pain. A hot, white pain that shot up my arm and through my head, forcing the air from my lungs.

“Shit… Stop struggling…,” His voice came out in gasps.

“Don’t let go,” someone begged. I realized it was me.

…..okay that’s all for now….I will give a shout out when I know it’s coming out. Until then Murder, Mayhem and Misletoe is coming next month in December. I don’t have a firm date, but will shout that out when I know for sure Hope you had a great weekend. And hope your monday is full of much coffee and chocolate
Samantha Storm - http://www.samanthastorm.com/
Eye of the Storm - Available Now!  http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/eyeofthestorm.htm
Murder, Mayhem & Mistletoe - coming Dec. ‘06 NCP
Butterscotch Martini Girls Blog- http://www.butterscotchmartinigirls.com/
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