RELEASING THE DEMONS
BOOK BLURB:
Blaze Knight has been through hell and back, but the nightmares aren’t over yet.
Five years after Blaze was maimed by Cyrus Chimola, a powerful vampire with a penchant for torture, he’s still trying to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. As a genetically engineered mercenary with the ability to bend fire to his will and to see in infrared, Blaze’s mission is to protect what’s left of humanity. When Chimola and his crew return to the Bronx gunning for Blaze’s blood, Blaze is forced to face the demons of his past. Hell-bent on revenge, he seeks the help of Valerie Medeiros, an NYPD detective who manages to steal his heart and save his life in more ways than one.
Motivated by her sister’s gruesome death, Valerie has made it her life’s goal to bury every vampire in the ground where they belong. When she brings in Blaze Knight for suspected murder, she discovers he’s not only innocent, he isn’t a man at all—he’s a half-vampire hybrid working with a band of brothers for the U.S. military. Valerie has a hard time trusting anything with fangs, yet she quickly falls headlong into Blaze’s life, a life full of darkness and horror she can’t even begin to fathom. The bodies are stacking up, but Valerie can’t seem to let go of this hybrid, a beautiful monster filled with pain, rage, and passion unlike anything she’s ever known.
In a world where the line between good and evil is blurred, Blaze and Valerie will find danger at every turn, risking everything they’ve come to know and love, including one another.
BUY LINKS:
Amazon US: http://amzn.com/B013GVCC7I
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013GVCC7I
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26063603-releasing-the-demons
Hell-bent on revenge, Blaze is out to set the world on fire, and Valerie is the only one who can tame him. Will she pull him back from the brink or fall headlong into his dark past?
RELEASING THE DEMONS, a dark paranormal romance and the first novel in The Order of the Senary series.
Excerpt:
Warning: Explicit content.
A sudden crash nearly sent her through the roof, a gasp escaping her as she dropped the phone. She stilled, her adrenals shooting into overdrive, fighting to listen past her hammering heart.
Somebody, or something, was outside.
Her apartment was on the first floor. She’d taken it because no one else would, which made it exceptionally affordable. Sure, she had problems, but she knew how to handle them. She’d been trained to resist a vampire’s lure and she knew to never invite them in. So when a leech crawled outside in the dark, she was the first to know about it. And that was exactly how she wanted it.
Hell, depending on how many there were, sometimes she went out and disposed of them herself.
Another crash. It sounded like whatever was going on had started in the street and moved onto the property line of the complex. Valerie leapt off the treadmill and grabbed her Beretta from the TV stand. She checked the clip, found it full, slammed it home. She pointed the gun at the carpet and racked the slide, chambering the first silver round.
Keeping the gun aimed at the floor, she turned off all the lights and headed for the bay window. She’d replaced it eight times so far this year and she hoped this wouldn’t be number nine. She settled near the frame, pressing her back against the wall, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Slowly, carefully, with her heart thundering in her ears, she drew the curtain back enough to see.
And a huge fireball went soaring past it.
Valerie recoiled.
Blaze.
A screech tore through the air, like the sound of a dying alley cat. Pounding footsteps came closer, along with the voices of several men. Three, maybe four. Gunfire erupted—pop, pop, pop—so loud it sounded as if they were right in her living room. Another crash before three flashes of silver streaked past her window.
Her jaw slackened. Were those shuriken?
Forcing herself into action, she dove for the sliding doors in the kitchen, putting her in front of the firefight. She grabbed her Kevlar vest off the coat rack, yanked it on, and pushed two extra clips into the waistband of her track pants. She laid flat against the wall as she pulled back the vertical blinds, making sure the coast was clear. Then she unlatched the glass door and quietly slipped outside into the rising chaos.
Valerie crouched behind her recycle bin, daring a look into the walkway. A tree burned bright near the path, a beacon of destruction in the darkness. The fight had moved farther back, into the courtyard. Gunfire ensued, distant now, sending muzzle flashes into the night and revealing locations. She saw dark figures moving and they were moving fast.
With her pulse battering in her throat, Valerie eased out from behind the bin and lifted her gun. She slid along the building’s vinyl siding, heading for the courtyard. Barrels had been overturned, trash and recyclables spilt everywhere, benches and patio furniture shattered and mangled. She spotted the fallen body of a man, and as she came closer, she realized he wasn’t a man at all.
The right side of his face and his entire right arm had been roasted, the wounds still sizzling as he tried to crawl away from the burning tree. Two shuriken were embedded in his back, bloodied silver gleaming in the firelight. He let out a sick gurgle of agony, exposing long, bloodstained fangs. The familiar scent of campfire and burnt flesh pervaded the air as she came up behind him, aiming her gun at his head.
He looked back at her with soulless black eyes, reaching for her with a charred hand. He resembled a macabre version of Two-Face, except this villain had teeth. Bloody spittle fell from his mouth, hitting the walkway as he hissed at her. Wordlessly she planted two bullets in his head, splattering his brains all over the freshly cut lawn.
Nausea rose in the back of her throat, but she forced it down, turning away from the body. Focus, Val. The pool shed was directly ahead and she quickly cut across the path, jamming her shoulder against its wall. She waited, listening, sweat trickling down the sides of her face. She could hear the in-ground pool humming, the water swishing around softly from the filtration system. Silence had fallen, the charged kind of silence that signaled impending violence.
And violence it gave.
Something massive slammed into the other side of the pool shed, rocking the entire structure and threatening to level it. Valerie cringed against the blow as a low growl sliced through the air, turning her blood into ice. Then the sound of a fist smashing into flesh, bone cracking against bone. And a very familiar voice, like dark whiskey set aflame.
“You remember me, you motherfucker?” More muffled blows, a feral hiss, a guttural growl. “Where is he?”
Another male voice spat, “Fuck you, Knight.”
Blaze let out a roar.
The leech’s big body suddenly smacked onto the pool’s concrete wraparound, then tumbled into Valerie’s line of sight. Blaze leapt on top of him, straddling him as he drove his gloved fist into the vampire’s blond head again and again.
Valerie straightened, pushing off the shed as she raised her gun. Her hands shook as she aimed at the vampire, circling the two of them wide, sticking to the shadows. There were more out here—she could feel them, danger thickening the air. Her breath burst forth in shallow gasps and her heart threatened to tear its way out of her chest as Blaze beat the vampire into oblivion.
When he finally stopped, he yanked off his right glove, lifting his big bloody hand in the air. Like a bad car wreck, Valerie couldn’t look away as his palm began to glow. Light wavered around his fingers as he brought them down toward the vampire’s face.
Then he stopped in midair.
He took several deep breaths, drawing them into a chest covered in a black T-shirt and Kevlar vest. His nostrils flared as he looked up, leveling his hidden gaze at her. The ethereal glow from his hand died as he clenched it back into a fist.
His thunderous voice rumbled with an unmistakable note of menace. “Val, get out of here.”
BIO:
L.D. Rose is a neurotic physician by day, crazed writer by night, and all around wannabe superhero. She writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy, but she’s been known to delve into horror, sci-fi, and medical suspense on occasion. L.D. Rose is a member of the RWA, FF&P, NEC-RWA and CoLoNY. She currently lives in Rhode Island with her studly hubby, her hyperactive boxer, and her two devious cats
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