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Madeline Baker/Amanda Ashley
Home of Romance Author
Madeline Baker/Amanda Ashley
 The back cover copy for my untitled sequel to NIGHT'S MASTER says.... PASSION HAS A DARKER SIDE… DESIRE CASTS A DARK SPELL… Savanah Gentry’s life was so much simpler when she was a reporter for the local newspaper. That was before her father’s sudden death drew her into a mysterious new world she’s just beginning to understand. A Vampire hunter by birth, Savannah has been entrusted with a legacy that puts everyone she cares for in danger—including the seductive, sensual Vampire who unleashes her most primal desires… Rane Cordova has always been alone, half hating himself for his dark gift even as he relishes its extraordinary power. But one look at Savanah fills him with the need to take everything she has to give and bring her to heights of unimagined ecstasy. And though he never intended their relationship to go this far, now Savanah is in more danger than she knows—and facing a relentless enemy determined to eliminate Rane and all his kind… |
In The Works. . . . . WHAT I'M WORKING ON NOW.... Excerpt, Chapter 1 Daisy O’Donnell’s compass wasn’t much good for finding north or south; but then, she wasn’t lost or trying to navigate her way around the world. She was hunting vampires, and her little silver compass with its bright golden needle worked perfectly fine for that. Although it wasn’t really a compass. More like a GPS system for finding the resting places of the Undead. All she had to do was drive down the street and follow the needle, which turned red when she was within a few feet of a lair. There was no dearth of locations for vampires to hide in the greater Los Angeles area these days. She had found lairs inside shallow caves, dusty attics, cob-webby basements, ancient cemeteries, abandoned buildings, and foreclosed tract homes. Daisy felt a rush of satisfaction as the needle shimmered and quivered, telling her she was getting close to the day-time resting place of one of the Undead. The vampire she was currently hunting had made its lair inside an old wine cellar in an abandoned building. Daisy paused outside the lair, her nose wrinkling with distaste as she sprayed herself with Scent-B-Gone, a concoction guaranteed to mask her distinctive scent from all but the most powerful vampires. The spray itself evaporated within an hour or two, leaving nothing behind. The door to the wine cellar creaked like something out of an old Vincent Price movie as Daisy pried it open with a crowbar. Leaving the crowbar outside, she stepped through the doorway, then turned on her trusty four-cell flashlight, and cautiously made her way down the rickety wooden stairs. She swept the beam from right to left, uttered a soft sound of satisfaction as the light disclosed a pale pink casket in the far corner. Her feet made hardly a sound as she walked across the dusty cement floor and raised the lid. UP AND COMING.... MARA'S STORY (Last in the Night Series, maybe) (Tentative pub date 10/ Chapter 1 Mara stood on the balcony of her home in the mountains, staring out over her domain. In the silvery wash of the moon’s light, everything looked peaceful. The people who lived in the small town located in the valley below would all be sleeping now, dreaming their innocent mortal dreams, blissfully unaware that one of the Undead lived in the sprawling old house on the hill. After a time, she let her mind expand, homing in on the few people in the world that she cared for. Roshan DeLongpre and his witch wife, Brenna, were somewhere in Italy. Vince Cordova and his wife, Cara, were strolling the dark streets of their city. Their son, Raphael, and his bride, Kathy, were in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. Raphael’s twin brother, Rane, had finally made peace with what he was. He and his wife, Savanah, were sitting in the moonlight, trying to decide on names for their unborn daughter. Mara told herself she wasn’t jealous, that she didn’t envy any of them the love they had found, but she knew it for the lie it was. She was Mara, the oldest of her kind, and she was growing increasingly weary of her self-imposed lonely existence. She had taken mortal lovers from time to time, but she had loved none of them. Afraid to fully trust any man, mortal or Vampire, she had always withheld a part of herself, never letting any of the men she had known get too close or see too much. Until she met Eric Bowden. She had been in awe of his artistic talent, and she had fallen for him, as giddy as a school girl, charmed by his innate sweetness, by the sincerity and adoration in the depths of his deep gray eyes. She had given him her heart, something she had sworn she would never do, had trusted him with the truth of what she was, and seen the love in his eyes turn to revulsion She lifted her face to the sky, to the moon that had become her sun. Even though she could walk in the sun’s light if she was so inclined, she was most comfortable in the enveloping darkness she had inhabited for thousands of years. For the first time, she felt the weight of centuries on her shoulders. There was little that surprised her any more, little that she hadn’t seen or done. Perhaps it was time to end her existence, to find out what, if anything, waited on the other side. It would be a new adventure, she mused, something she had never tried before. Was there another life, another existence, after this one? She had seen no evidence of an After Life. If one did exist, would her soul find rest in some heavenly paradise, or eternal damnation in the bowels of a cruel and unforgiving Hell? She closed her eyes as thoughts of her past emerged from the depths of her memory. She had been raised as a slave in Pharaoh’s house in Egypt in 990 B.C. Perhaps that was Hell enough… She had been a month shy of her fifteenth birthday when Pharaoh presented her to one of his trusted advisors as a reward for a service well done. Mara had not taken kindly to being a slave in Shakir’s household. He had been a cold and cruel man, one who demanded instant obedience, one who did not hesitate to wield the lash at the slightest provocation. Shakir had allowed only female slaves under his roof. Many in Pharaoh’s household mocked him, saying it was unseemly for a man of Shakir’s position to have women working in his stables, caring for his armor, preparing his meals, acting as his butler, but Shakir had ignored their taunts. He refused to share his quarters with male servants. There were no eunuchs in his household staff, no stallions in his stable. Shakir claimed to love women. Old and young and in between, he professed to love all the female slaves in his household. And he bedded them all, willing or not, eager to prove his manhood by the number of children he sired. His touch had made Mara’s flesh crawl. Sensing her distaste, she had soon become Shakir’s favorite. He had found her loathing amusing, her temper tantrums entertaining. Desperate to escape his bed and his whip, she had run off many times in the next five years until, finally wearying of her constant attempts to leave him, Shakir had put her in chains. Mara had thought her life a hell before, but now it was much, much worse. Shakir kept her in chained in a small cell in the bowels of his residence. Food was delivered once each day, unless old Xx forgot. Shakir refused her the ease of a pallet, the warmth of a blanket, the comfort of a light. He even denied her the opportunity to bathe except on those nights when she was brought, still in chains, to his bedchamber. Once she was bathed and powdered and perfumed, he chained her to his bed and used her as he saw fit. She had begged the other slaves in his household to kill her, or to bring her a knife that she might take her own life, but the other women feared their master’s wrath too much to help her. And then one night, when she was huddled in a corner of her cell, sobbing in despair, the candle outside her cell sprang to life and a man appeared beside her. One minute she was alone in the dark, the next he was there, a man of medium height with wavy brown hair and eyes that glowed in the darkness with some inner fire. “Who are you?” she had asked, scrambling as far away from him as her chains would allow. “How did you get in here?” “I go where I wish,” he replied. “No one can keep me in, or out.” He took a step toward her. “Are you happy here?” “Of course not.” She recoiled when his hand brushed her cheek. “Leave me alone!” “And if I don’t, what will you do? Cry for help? Who is going to hear you down here, I wonder?” “Who are you?” “I am Dendar, master of the night.” He moved closer. She could see little in the near darkness of her cell. And yet she could see his eyes, red and glowing, like Hell’s own light. When he put his arms around her, she struggled a moment, and then went still. She had prayed for death, and Death had come for her. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and waited. Soon, her misery would be over. Soon, she would discover the Great Mystery that awaited everyone. There was a moment of pain, and then there was pleasure beyond anything she had ever known. She felt weightless, as though she had left her body and her spirit was floating in the air. She had no fears, no worries. There was only sensual pleasure she hoped would last forever. And then he was gone, and she was alone in her cell, confused by what had happened. Had she imagined him? Had it all been a dream? She lifted a hand to her neck, shivered with revulsion when she found the two tiny wounds. Near dawn, pain unlike anything she had ever known engulfed her body. She writhed in agony on the cold stone floor until she pitched headlong into a chasm deeper and blacker than anything she had ever known. Her last conscious thought was that, at last, death had found her. When next she opened her eyes, she was lying naked on a slab, about to be mummified, no doubt to be put into Shakir’s burial chamber where, upon his death, she would serve him through all eternity. She didn’t know who was more surprised to find that she was alive, herself or the handful of men who ran screaming out of the chamber when she sat up, her whole body aching, hungry in a way she had never been hungry before. She hadn’t known what she wanted until, in his haste, one of the fleeing men tripped and cut his hand on a sharp stone. The warm, coppery scent of fresh blood filled the air, sweet, tantalizing. She had pounced on him before he had time to scream. It had taken her fifty years to hunt down the Vampire who had turned her against her will. But she had found Dendar, and she had destroyed him. Mara smiled faintly at the memory. She had prayed for death and the Fates had granted it to her, only not quite in the way she had imagined. “Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured to the man in the moon, “lest you get it.” ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SHADOWS THROUGH TIME HISTORICAL TIME TRAVEL Coming from Cerridwen Press. Chapter 1 Kelsey St. James had always hated vacations. She hated the last minute rush at work to get everything in order so she could take four weeks off, she hated trying to decide where to go, she hated packing, she hated coming home and unpacking and getting ready for work again. But she didn’t hate anything as much as she hated scraping old wallpaper off walls, which was how she was spending her vacation. After several years of indecision, her great grandmother, Nana Mary, had decided to redecorate the old place with the idea of perhaps renting it out in the summer since no one in the family had used it much in last few years. So, here she was, on a beautiful day in mid-April doing what she hated the most. With a sigh, Kelsey brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and regarded the wall in front of her. The first layer of paper, put up in the last couple of years, had come off with ease. The layer underneath, which was a faded red-and-gold stripe that must have been a knock-out in its day, had been hung sometime in the late 1800’s and seemed determined to stay on the wall for another century or two. Shaking her head, Kelsey reached for the spray bottle wondering, for perhaps the twentieth time that day, why she had ever agreed to do this. She could have hired someone to do it for her, but somehow that just didn’t seem right, not when Nana Mary had asked Kelsey to do it. The sly old dear. Nana Mary knew full well that Kelsey would do anything she asked. Nana usually had an ulterior motive whenever she asked Kelsey for a favor, knowing that Kelsey would never refuse, but if her great grandmother had some hidden agenda this time, Kelsey was at a loss to figure out what it might be. “After all,” Nana Mary had said cheerfully, “your father’s right. If we don’t fix it up, it’s going to fall down before I can rent it out.” Kelsey had to agree with that. The old house was just a summer place located on an acre and a half of land just outside of Rapid City. She had to admit it was in pretty bad shape. Kelsey had spent her vacations here with her great grandparents when she was a little girl. She remembered sitting in front of the fireplace, roasting marshmallows, while her great grandfather told her stories about the Old West, exciting tales of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Frank and Jesse James, the Dalton gang, George Armstrong Custer and his ill-fated battle against the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Big Horn. Of course, Papa Joe had idolized all the old cowboy stars like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue, and Red Ryder, Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid. His especial favorites had been The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and The Rifleman. Papa Joe’s favorite western movies had been the ones directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Ward Bond. Papa Joe had been quite a history buff, too. He liked nothing better than to talk about the Old West. He often declared he had been born in the wrong time, that he should have been born back in the early 1800’s, when men were men. He had loved telling stories about the old days. He described places like the Custer battlefield and Deadwood Gulch so vividly, it was almost as if he had actually lived there when the Indians roamed the land and Wild Bill Hickock played cards at Saloon No. 10. Wild Bill had been one of Papa Joe’s favorite characters. Papa Joe had told Kelsey so much about Wild Bill she sometimes felt as if she had known Hickock personally. During his life, Hickock had been a Deputy Marshal at Fort Riley and a scout for Custer. He’d been a sheriff in Ellis County, Kansas, a marshal in Abilene, and he’d spent a year with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. But the thing most people remembered about Wild Bill was that he had been shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall while he was playing poker. Hickock had been holding an ace of spades, an ace of clubs, the eight of spades and the eight of clubs, and the jack of diamonds, a hand that was known forever after as a dead man’s hand. Over the years, Papa Joe had collected stacks of books, both fiction and non-fiction, about lawmen and gunfighters and men like Wyatt Earp who had worked on both sides of the law. Papa Joe’s intense fascination with Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was the reason he had bought the old house in the first place. Somewhere along the way, Papa Joe had gotten hold of the notion that Wyatt had once lived in the house. Whether that was fact or fiction didn’t matter. Papa Joe had bought the house for a song back in 1949; now the land alone was worth a small fortune. At the moment, she was sorry she hadn’t suggested they level the house and sell the land! Kelsey muttered a mild oath as she scraped her knuckles against the wall. She hated tedious work like this. She ripped off another strip of stubborn red and gold paper and tossed it into the large cardboard box sitting in the middle of the floor. The box was almost full. Next time she took a break, she would have to empty it or bring in another one. She squirted more water on the wall, wondering, as she did so, what was going on at Russell, Russell and Raglan. She loved her job to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, which was a good thing, because it was her job that had kept her going when she filed for divorce five years ago. She shook her head. Had it been that long already? For a moment, she let herself remember the past. She had married Nick right out of high school. She had never been popular and she had married the first man who had asked her, certain that if she didn't accept, no one else would ever ask her. Some girls were young and foolish; she had been young and stupid. Nick had encouraged her to go to work and once she was working steadily, he had conveniently lost his job, and although he was always out looking for another one, he never seemed to look very hard. To her dismay, he seemed perfectly content to stay at home and watch TV. She couldn’t remember when he started drinking. First it had been beer and an occasional drink after dinner. Then an occasional drink became two and then three. She had tried to get him to go to AA, she had pleaded with him to stop drinking, she had nagged him, she had ignored him. Nothing had worked. Not knowing what else she could do to help him, she had immersed herself in her work. She had started working at Russell, Russell and Raglan’s as a lowly clerk typist and worked her way up the corporate ladder. Five years later, she had a management position with a secretary of her own. Two years after that, she had been promoted to Vice President in Charge of Sales. She would never forget that night. Nick had been killed in a car accident on his way to a company party to celebrate her promotion. That had been almost three years ago. Sometimes she felt guilty because she had never loved him. Sometimes she felt relieved that he was gone, which only made her feel more guilty. A year after his death, she had started using her maiden name again. With a shake of her head, she banished her memories into the past where they belonged. She pulled another strip of paper off the wall. It was a little depressing, tearing down a part of something that her great grandfather had loved so much. She had never truly shared her great grandfather’s fascination with the Old West. It had been a rough, untamed time in the history of the United States. Had she lived back in those days, she would have stayed in the east, safe from Indian attacks and flash floods and the myriad other catastrophes that had assailed the pioneers who had been adventurous enough to go traipsing off across the plains. She couldn’t imagine anything that would have dragged her from the security and comfort of life in the East for the wild, untamed frontier. Not for her the rigors of moving westward, traveling by covered wagon, fighting the elements and the dust and the wild terrain, sleeping outside in all kinds of weather, praying that no one would get sick or break a leg or need a dentist, hoping that your food and water would last from one stop to the next. Not to mention the ever-present threat of attack from Indians and outlaws and other unscrupulous characters who had populated the Old West. No doubt about it, she would have made a lousy pioneer. But she would have given anything to hear one of her great grandfather’s stories again. Her great grandfather’s disappearance was a mystery. Nana Mary declared she had no idea where he’d gone. One day he had been there, she had said with a shrug that seemed completely out of character considering the gravity of the situation, and the next he had been gone. That had been over a year ago, and no further explanation had been forthcoming. It was most peculiar. At his age, it was unlikely that he had run off with another woman, though anything was possible. Kelsey secretly feared he had been the victim of foul play, though she never voiced her opinion aloud because Nana Mary was convinced that Papa Joe would return. Kelsey blew out a sigh as she yanked the last strip from one wall. She had moved all the furniture out of this room except for a tall, narrow bookcase. Taking hold of the bookcase, she rocked it back and forth until it was in the center of the room. Turning back toward the wall, Kelsey frowned at the door that had been hidden behind the bookcase. Why would anyone put a piece of furniture in front of a door? And where did that door lead to? A room that held only sad memories, perhaps? She thought of all the times she had stayed in this house, both as a child and as an adult. Nana Mary had ever mentioned a hidden room. What was through that door? A sudden shiver ran down Kelsey’s spine as her imagination sprang to life. If she opened the door, what would she find? A long forgotten fortune? A room full of cast-off clothing and old furniture? A dead body? She shook off her morbid thoughts. Maybe it just led into a closet, though she couldn’t imagine anyone blocking a closet. No one ever had enough closet space. Maybe it just led out into the side yard. Curious now, Kelsey wiped her hands on her jeans and turned the old glass knob. She had expected some resistance from a door that hadn’t been opened in who knew how long, but it opened without a hitch. None of the things she had imagined lay on the other side. Instead, she looked out on a narrow dirt road that separated two tall wooden buildings. But that was impossible. There were no other buildings this close to the house. In the distance, she heard the mournful howling of a dog and what sounded like a car backfiring. Feeling a little like Alice in Wonderland, Kelsey stepped through the doorway. Chapter 2 T. K. Reese sat back in his chair, his hat pulled low while he regarded the cards in his hand. He had three queens and a pair of deuces - a full house. He tossed five dollars into the pot, then glanced around the saloon, thinking he had stayed in this one horse town long enough. It was time to move on, before someone recognized him, before a wanted poster wearing his name and description showed up on the bulletin board outside the sheriff’s office. Reese glanced at the two other men at the table. Ed Booth raised Reese’s bet. Old man Neff folded, and Reese raked in the pot. “That’s it for me, gents,” Reese said. Pushing away from the table, he scooped up the greenbacks and shoved them in his pocket. Going to the bar, he ordered a whiskey. He knocked it back in a single swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and left the saloon. Outside, he glanced up and down the street. It was near dark, and quiet save for the notes of a tinny piano coming from a saloon across the street. He stood there a moment, enjoying the quiet, a quiet that was suddenly punctuated by a gunshot and the mournful howling of a dog somewhere in the distance. Reese shook his head. No doubt some of the cowboys from the neighboring ranches were letting off a little steam. Shoving his hands in his pockets, Reese strolled down the street. Except for Saturday nights, Grant’s Crossing was a peaceful town. No one knew him here, no one cared about where he came from, or where he was going. The chances of being recognized were pretty slim. Maybe he would stick around for another couple of days. He was headed for the hotel at the end of the street when he heard a woman scream, followed by a strangled cry for help. Running toward the sound, Reese darted around the corner of the hotel and almost slammed into a man and a woman who were locked in a violent struggle. The woman screamed again, then scrambled backward as Reese grabbed the man by the arm, spun him around, and drove his fist into his face. The man dropped like a pole-axed mule. The woman stared up at him, her eyes wide and wary. Reese lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I don’t mean you any harm. Do you know this hombre?” The woman glanced at her attacker. “No.” Kelsey stared at the man who had come to her rescue. He was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular but not beefy. And good-looking, though that didn’t begin to describe him. With his long black hair, dark brown eyes, and dusky skin, he reminded her of the way Antonio Bandaras had looked in the movie, Desperado. Tall, dark, and dangerous, she thought. But it was his clothing more than his good looks that held her attention. He wore a long-sleeved gray shirt, black trousers, and a black cowboy hat. There was a black kerchief knotted at his throat. And a big gun holstered on his right hip. She shook her head. Men didn’t walk around with guns strapped to their hips, not in the twenty-first century. A noise at the mouth of the alley drew her attention. Looking past the man who had come to her rescue, she watched a heavy-set man mounted on a dark horse trot by. “You all right, miss?” Antonio’s double asked. Kelsey looked at him and slowly shook her head. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t think so.” Reese swore softly. Unless he missed his guess, the woman staring back at him was about to faint. The thought had no sooner crossed his mind when thought became fact. Darting forward, he scooped her into his arms before she hit the ground. She was a pretty little thing, he mused, with her long dark hair and pretty green eyes. But what the hell was he going to do with her now? All text on this page Copyright Madeline Baker 2006/ |
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