Title: Hellsbane (Hellsbane, #1)
Author: Paige Cuccaro
Publisher: Entangled Select, 352 Pages (November 20th, 2012)
Add to: Goodreads
Synopsis: Twenty-three-year-old Emma Jane Hellsbane just found out she’s not human—or, at least, not only human. She’s half angel, too, and now Heaven’s got a job for her: round up all the Fallen angels and their red-skinned, horned devil-demon minions and boot their butts back into the abyss. Only problem? The demons and their Fallen masters fight back
and they don’t fight fair.
Luckily for Emma, she can put a stop to the constant threat of having her head hacked off if she figures out which Fallen angel is her father—and then kill him before he kills her. Of course, in the meantime, she’ll have to avoid accidentally seducing her angelic mentor, help an old friend conquer his own Fallen sperm donor, and basically save the world from a cataclysmic divine smack down.
No one said being Heaven’s bounty hunter would be easy. But with a name like Hellsbane, Emma Jane was born for the job.
CHAPTER ONE (part 4)
“It’s
just Emma now, and we were never really friends. What’s with the sword?” Years
of dirty limericks incorporating Emma Jane Hellsbane had long ago made me drop
the middle name.
He glanced at me as he walked into
the waiting room. “Sorry. I had a lot of issues in high school.”
Who
didn’t?
He smiled, but it was just a smile,
not the heart-melting one he’d always used. This was his natural smile, warm
and easy. It lit his eyes and just barely dimpled his cheeks. He was all the
more attractive for it.
“Forget it,” I said. It was ancient
history. “What about the sword?”
His free hand holding his side,
Tommy grimaced as he eased himself onto one of my gram’s old Victorian sofas,
using his sword—hand on the hilt, point stabbing my floor—to steady himself. He
settled back, sighing, and propped the long weapon against the front of the
couch. Something thick and black edged the blade and covered the lower half to
the tip. When he finally pulled his hand from his side, it was covered in blood
and more of the black goo.
“Ohmygod, what happened?” I rushed
over to him. I couldn’t believe I’d been so caught up in the surprise of seeing
him, in my own girly brain-freeze, that I hadn’t even noticed the blood on his
T-shirt and jeans.
“I, uh, had an accident.” He
laughed, clearly weak. “Mom always told me not to play with knives.”
But when I knelt beside him and
lifted his torn shirt, I doubted any sort of knife would do that kind of
damage. “You look like you’ve been clawed.”
“Yeah?” he said, tipping his head,
trying to see the wound better. “Weird. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any
holy water lying around, would you?”
“What?”
“Right. Dumb question. Peroxide,
then?”
I looked closer. Three long, jagged
wounds tore through skin and muscle and wrapped from his belly to his back.
Like something big had tried to grab him and he’d slipped away. There wasn’t as
much blood as I would have expected. It’d already begun to clot, but the black
goo was bubbling along the edges and there were meaty parts bulging out.
“God, Tommy, these are deep. You
need stitches. We have to get you to a hospital.” I pushed to my feet—I had
some peroxide in the kitchen. I’m not real graceful with knives myself, so I’d
learned it was best to keep the stuff handy.
He let his shirt fall back over the
wounds, hissing when the cloth brushed his
body. “No hospital. It’s not that bad. Trust me, I heal fast.”
“Whatever. Just sit still.” I ran to
the kitchen, grabbed the brand new bottle of peroxide, a bowl, and some gauze, and
came back as fast as I could.
“Those aren’t cat scratches, Tommy,”
I said, snagging a pair of scissors from Gram’s china cabinet. “You might need
surgery. At the very least, you should be worried about infection. What’s that
black stuff?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told
you.”
“Try me.”
“It’s...it’s brimstone.”
“Brimstone? Brimstone’s black and
gooey?” I dumped the medical supplies on the coffee table and sat beside him on
the couch, reaching for the sword to move it out of the way.
Tommy lunged, moving so fast he’d
grabbed it before I could blink. “Don’t touch that.”
“Okay, sheesh.”
He laid the sword, still dripping
goo, across the coffee table I’d personally refinished. But I gritted my teeth
and kept my mouth shut. He was a guest and he was oozing guts, or something, so
I could let it slide.
“It’s not just brimstone,” he said.
“But that’s what’s making it bubble and burn.”
About the author:
Writing was never a foregone conclusion for me. I once had dreams of being a psychologist, a pediatrician, a school teacher, a photojournalist, a bartender, and/or an EMT. And then I met my husband and my world came into focus. Being wife and mother are my highest priorities and greatest joy. But escaping to the fanciful, sexy worlds twirling through my mind is an absolute necessity. Putting those worlds, and the cornucopia of characters that people them, on paper is just plain fun.
Paige lives in Ohio, with her husband, three daughters, three dogs, three cats, a parakeet and a bearded dragon named Rexy, in an ever shrinking house. When she’s not writing she can be found doing the mom thing with a book in one hand and a notepad and pen in the other. Ideas come without warning and the best way to stimulate your imagination is to enjoy the imagination of someone else.
Find Paige Online:
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For a limited time order the Hellsbane Prequel - COMMENCEMENT online for your Kindle or Nook for FREE!!!
Title: Commencement
Author: Paige Cuccaro
Publisher: Entangled Flirt, 352 Pages (September 27th, 2012)
Add to: Goodreads
Synopsis: Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn for frat guys…
Emma Jane Hellsbane knows something evil is worming its way through her college campus—she can feel it. Literally. Her freakish ability to feel other people’s emotions as though they were her own has always been monumentally awkward, and it’s easier for her to just pretend it doesn’t exist. But this time her paranormal ability just might help her save lives.
Emma Jane’s fairly certain that whatever the hateful, egomaniacal, Godlike thing is, it’s set up shop inside her boyfriend, the frat boy/soccer star Justin. And if she doesn’t figure a way to get it out of him soon, Justin’s soul will be the appetizer to the main course—the whole student body. Problem is, the big baddy is granting sinister wishes, and with each one the risks grow higher and the phrase Be careful what you wish for becomes a real-life dire warning. Of course for Emma, what feels like it could be the end is in fact just the beginning…
Order Commencement Today!
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