It is Samantha Ketteman's release day of Glimpse of Destiny! *Woho! Happy dancing*
Let me tell you a bit about the book and give you an excerpt from it.
Also make sure you drop by her FB party: https://www.facebook.com/events/251215378399398/
Unfortunately for her, the Vampire Council's hitman and Xade's ex-lover shows up on her doorstep and Xade's life spins out of control. With her best friend Shauna on her side, and Deysyl wreaking havoc on her emotions, Xade must fight for her life as she traverses into Hell and back. Discovering her heritage, fighting feelings for Deysyl, and avoiding constant attempts on her life is just another day for Xade Daniels.
You can buy Glimpse of Destiny HERE
Chapter 1
She stood in the alley, allowing her enhanced Vampire vision to cut through the dark shadows that were trying to engulf her. The alley smelled like piss and desperation, trash littered either side and piled up against a fence that had definitely seen better days. It looked like Sally Shannon’s teeth in the fifth grade; that poor girl had more nicknames than she could remember. The damn incessant yapping from the obnoxious dog on the other side of the fence kept her ears ringing, which was more than just a little annoying and painful. She briefly considered delaying her current hunt just to shut the damn shit eater up.
Swiping her long black hair from her face, she readied herself. The wind was blowing from the north, bringing with it an icy chill and the stink of Were. She could see the top of his head peeking around the dumpster and smiled. “Here, wolfie, wolfie, wolfie. Mama’s got a treat for you,” she taunted. She could smell his sweat, a pungent, acrid odor that wormed its way into her nose and refused to leave. “Don’t you believe in baths? You know¬—soap and water, meet wolfie. Wolfie, meet soap and water.”
He growled and shot out from behind the dumpster, sending a spray of filth up from the alley floor. His eyes glowed, the change riding him like a tsunami coming in waves. She could see his bones beginning to break and reform themselves. No way was she letting him get any advantages. Unfair? Maybe. Either way, it was smarter. Just before the change had fully taken him, he growled, “We are coming for you.”
She swung her sword in an upward arc, wind whistling and katana glinting in the moonlight. Wolfie’s head fell from his shoulders, crimson spraying the sides of the alley and her clothes. Of course, the damn head just had to roll to her feet, dead eyes peering up at her, still in shock. She punted Fido’s new chew toy over the ragged fence. No one could say she wasn’t a giver.
Xade threw the remains of the Were in the dumpster, hefting his weight up and over the lip of the can lid before slamming it shut. He was easily a foot taller and twice her size, even without his head, but her half Vamp state helped her to accomplish disposing of him without much effort. It wasn’t the most inconspicuous way to hide a kill, and it was against the Vampire Council’s disposal regulations, but she didn’t give a shit.
If the Weres didn’t want humans finding their dead brethren, they should stop hunting her ass so she wouldn’t have to kill so many. If the humans decided to do an autopsy on one of her little messes, more power to them. She didn’t give a shit about the Weres being discovered, or experimented on. Xade worried about Xade, and that’s how she survived.
Wiping her katana on her duster, she commended herself for the forethought to wear black. She could just imagine the looks that she would get as she strolled down the street, dark red gore smeared on her jacket. Sighing, she slid her baby back into the scabbard strapped to her hip, and turned, whistling, back towards the mouth of the alley. She heard the sounds of the dog in the next yard ripping what was left of the headless wonder apart and smiled.
Rounding the corner, she shielded her sword magically, wiped down her face with the rag she kept in her pocket for just that sort of situation, and checked her duster to be sure it wasn’t screaming murderer. Satisfied, she took the corner and almost bumped into a homeless man collecting change.
“Excuse me,” she grumbled, just before the man reached out and grabbed her arm. Before she could yank it back and teach the homeless-man just who he was fucking with, his gray, blank eyes caught her in their hypnotic stare.
“They are coming for you, all of them. Your choices will either save you or doom you. Run, girl, run.”
“What the fuck was that!” she screamed as she shook off the supernatural grip his eyes had held over her. Damn near tearing his arm off, she yanked back. There was no answer. The homeless man just went back to smelling like a sewer full of the city’s putridity and looking at the ground.
She had heard of prophets like him, and they scared the hell out of her. Prophets were entities that could possess any person, human or supernatural, and she found them fucking creepy. Unfortunately, they were also never wrong. Goose bumps appeared on her arms and a shudder wracked her body. Facing the numbing wind and gathering her gore-soaked duster around her, she knew she had to be more careful. Hoping none of the humans noticed that she moved faster than humanly possible, she sped down the road, past shops and other various landmarks blurring.
Humans, she thought with more than a little disdain, so delicate, so brittle, pathetic and useless.
Thinking about the humans made her hungry, and her stomach let out an audible growl. She decided to brave the cold and noise a little longer as she followed the rather enticing thoughts of a would-be rapist. Would-be, because she intended to play the victim right before she ripped his damn throat out for the perverted and demented notions in his mind.
“Oh, damnit, I think I took a wrong turn”, she said with a little more volume just to be sure the piece of shit rapist’s ears could hear her. She turned into the alley, where his disgusting fantasies about the things he couldn’t wait to do screamed at her as if he were using a bullhorn.
As she purposely stepped deeper into the shadows, he appeared and began stalking her. “Well, aren’t you purty,” he said. “I’m gonna do things to you that you’ll never forget”.
She laughed until her stomach hurt before she spun around and blasted him with a sonic wave. The burst of sound would leave him deafened for, well, who really cared? He would be dead before it mattered. Flashing fangs, while balancing a bright green globe of light surrounded by fire in her palm, she watched his eyes bulge. She imagined them popping out and rolling to her feet. That reminded her of Fido’s chew toy, and she grinned again, white teeth gleaming between her blood red lips.
“Oh, but I think that I might be able to teach you a thing or two, don’t you?” she asked. Attempting to scoot away, he slipped in the muck, and who knows what other fluids, that coated the ground.
“St-st-stay away!” He stammered and screamed.
She threw the bright green ball at him, exploding and forming a barrier of green fire around him that only she could see. “Scream all you want little piggy, you sick bastard, no one can hear you. I’ll be doing society a favor by sucking down your miserable excuse of a life. Remember all of the women you tortured as I do the same to you, and pray to a god that wouldn’t even piss on you if you were on fire.”
Stalking towards him, she was unable to hear him scream and blubber until she entered the ring of fire that would never burn its bearer. Xade grabbed him by the balls and squeezed as hard as she could. When she heard a satisfying ‘pop’, she finally let go. The deviant tried to scream but only managed to let out a strangled gurgle. She could only imagine the unbearable pain he must have been feeling and reveled in that knowledge. Her fangs showed as she smiled, glowing green in the firelight, she felt the satisfaction that came before every kill.
“Does that feel good, baby?” she sneered. Reaching behind her, she released the spell that shielded her katana so that he could see the blade in all of its pure beauty. “I wonder what we could do with this?” she asked him, watching the piss soak the front of his pants. Of course, she wasn’t going to waste a good meal. She was simply having fun with a man who had made a hobby of raping women and inflicting pain.
“You know, I think I’ll just get right to it then,” she could hear the sirens in the distance and felt her adrenaline kick into high gear. Damn it! She realized that someone must have heard the rapist’s screams before she shielded him. She struck as fast as a snake, gulping down the putrid taste of his tainted blood. By the time she was done, the sirens were closing in, and the rapist’s dead heart lay still in his cold chest.
She gathered the man’s body, slicing his neck to cover her bite marks, and heaped him against the alley wall. The headlines splashed across the city’s newspapers indicated that the human authorities were on the hunt for the serial killer loose in the streets. She doubted that it would take the proper authorities to find the body. Again, she should probably care, but it wasn’t as if they would ever catch her.
Wiping her mouth, she stood and jumped to the top of a three-story brick building. Bounding from one to the other was much faster, and she didn’t have to worry about the humans as she moved quicker than the eye could track.
She is working on The Forgotten series, as well as the Destiny Discovered series, the Reluctant Reaper series, as well as various other short stories for anthologies.
You can find Samantha here: Goodreads ~ Amazon Author Page ~ Facebook
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