Spell
of Shattering
Dark
Caster Series
Book
4
Anna
Abner
Genre: paranormal romance
Publisher: Mild Red Books
Date of Publication: June 20,
2015
ISBN 978-0-09914031-4-1
ASIN: B00XDBNURI
Number of pages: 275
Word Count: 70K
Cover Artist: Jaycee DeLorenzo
at Sweet & Spicy Designs
Book Description:
Dive
into the heart-pounding final chapter of the Dark Caster series!
If the Chaos Gate opens…
Demons will infest the world.
When the charismatic mayor of
Auburn hires junior agent Jessa McAvoy to acquire him a very specific property,
she hopes this is her big break. She’ll do anything to make her first real
estate client happy, but the one favor he asks of her is impossible—convince
her former friend Derek Walker to come out of hiding. Doing so will not only
bring her into the orbit of dangerous casters, but force her to confront
long-buried feelings for her missing friend.
After failing his tasks for the
Dark Caster, necromancer Derek Walker is hiding in Alaska from his humiliating
defeats as a card-carrying member of an evil dark cabal. But when his old boss
begins opening the Chaos Gate, there is nowhere on earth Derek can hide. With
no other options, he must return to the last place he wants to go—home.
When Derek Walker joins forces
with Jessa and the entire Raleigh coven, the dark cabal’s biggest
disappointment may be the only thing standing between earth and total
destruction.
Available at Amazon
Excerpt:
Spell of
Shattering (Dark Caster #4) by Anna Abner Excerpt
With a little
pressure, Derek Walker punched his boning knife through the throat of a dead
Silver Salmon. Working the knife like a saw, he removed the head and tossed it
into the trash, and then got to work gutting the unlucky creature. Bright fish
blood swirled in the lake below, creating an abstract waterscape.
Bo’s voice
carried over the sound of the lapping tide. "Ice is the strongest element
there is," he shouted at Stubby.
They were
certainly surrounded by the stuff. Bits of frost clumped in Bo’s scraggly
beard, heavy snow clung to drooping tree limbs, and gray clouds swept across
the sky ready to shower ice upon their heads at any moment. Derek hoped the
storm would hold off a little while longer, though, at least until the men
finished fishing.
"Bullshit."
Bo’s friend Stubby dug through the nearby cooler but came up empty. The
six-pack was long gone, and it wasn’t even ten a.m. Frustrated, Stubby spit
brown tobacco juice into the mud. "Fire's stronger than ice."
Derek shifted
weight from one foot to the other and skidded in the mud, catching himself on a
rock. It may be August in Alaska, but the wet ground around Bear Lake at first
light was cold and seeped through his sneakers.
"No it
ain't," Bo argued. "Glaciers carved up the earth, you dummy. A few
drops of frozen water will break boulders." He waved Stubby off. "You
don't know what you're talking about."
Stubby seemed to
take the argument personally. "Fire melts ice. End of story."
Derek prayed it
was, but of course, it wasn't. Bo and Stubby could argue for hours over the
most accurate brand of deer rifle, the stoutest superhero, or the most potent
tequila. The latest debate over nature’s most dangerous element could rage on
for days.
Derek sliced up
two beautiful fish fillets and wrapped them in paper for his boss’s dinner.
Most likely, Derek would sear them on the grill with some peppers and serve
them up tonight to a small house party of world-class belchers and bearded
survivalists on Bo’s deck.
It surprised
Derek he could even wield a knife or a BBQ grill in his condition. The memory
spell Holden Clark had hit him with four months ago had devastated his mind.
Literally. He may as well have dropped him headfirst from a forty-story
building onto broken glass and concrete. Holden had stolen every single memory,
skill, and instinct Derek possessed, leaving him alive but hollow.
Waking in a
hospital bed blank and vulnerable had been the most terrifying moment of his
life. He picked up the second fish and attacked it with the knife.
Generally, the
work he did as Bo’s assistant was exhausting, which suited Derek just fine. He
didn’t need the money. He needed the distraction.
Actually, it
wasn't that much different from the work he’d done in Auburn as Rebecca
Powell's assistant. Then, he’d redecorated houses, delivered paperwork,
sometimes picked up coffee and her dry cleaning, and most of the time surfed on
his computer or chatted with Jessa McAvoy, the adorable junior agent working as
Rebecca's protégé. Here, he bought groceries, cooked rudimentary meals, lugged
trash to the dump, and drove Bo home when he drank too much.
Whether it was
good living or not didn’t enter his mind. It was just living.
"All done,
boss," Derek said with effort, throwing the last of the slimy scraps into
the trash and tucking the fillets into the cooler. It was a constant struggle
to form words and transfer them to his tongue. He was getting better, but he
feared he would never be whole again.
"Anything
else?" Derek asked, rinsing his bloody hands in the icy lake.
"Yeah, run
into town and get another twelve pack, will ya'?" Bo asked.
"Sure."
He ambled for Bo’s pickup, jingling a ring of keys as he went.
“You’re putting
too much weight on your bobber again,” Stubby accused. “You’ll never catch
anything that way.”
“You don’t know
what you’re yammering about,” Bo shot back. “I’ve caught twice as many fish as
you have, and that’s just today!”
Derek climbed
into the truck before he caught Stubby’s reply.
He didn't care.
He didn't care about much anymore. Even after the memory-destroying spell had
been reversed, he still wasn't the same. Like tying shoelaces. He just couldn't
get it. No matter how many YouTube videos he watched, he couldn't make the
bunny go round the tree or the fox go in the hole or whatever nonsense he was
supposed to do with ease. It worried him how much he didn't remember. What else
was gone, never to return?
Kissing, for
one. Surely, he must have kissed a woman at some point—he was a grown man—but
he couldn't recall specifics. Or even gather the desire to try it again. It
seemed silly to him. That and sex. Bizarre, pointless endeavors when he had
other much more important stuff to worry about.
Like how he was…
"…A huge
fucking disappointment," the spirit spat at him. "A total waste of
good space. You think you deserve a second chance? What have you ever
done…"
A grizzly of a
dead man with a full beard and hunters cap hovered beside Bo’s truck, a gleeful
smile on his pudgy face. For the past four months, the ghost had been his
unwanted but constant companion.
Derek tuned out
the ranting. It was getting a little easier. Night was the hardest. Trying to
sleep while a nasty ghost screamed obscenities and curse words at him from the
ceiling was challenging. Ear plugs only muffled the noise. They didn’t erase it
completely.
The irony was,
Derek was especially good at shield spells. With a spirit’s assistance, he
could produce an invisible barrier impenetrable to both magic and spirit
chatter. With a spirit of his own, Derek could cast banishing spells on all the
ghosts the Dark Caster sent to torment his every waking moment. But Derek
didn't have a spirit companion anymore. Robert had been destroyed back in
Auburn, North Carolina in the magical fiasco that had stolen Derek's memories.
And a necromancer without a spirit was just a man.
Almost the way a
stray, foul-mouthed ghost couldn’t do any real damage without a necromancer to
channel his spirit power.
He and the
taunting soul were in the same boat—stuck with each other and frustrated.
It didn’t make
listening to his insults any easier.
“Go away,” Derek
murmured.
“What’s that,
you miserable piece of crap?”
Clenching his
jaw, Derek glared through the mud-streaked windshield at his new boss reclining
in his favorite camp chair.
“Lost your
voice?” the spirit taunted. “Loser,” he chanted. “Imbecile. Idiot.”
Alaska seemed
far enough away to be safe.
So far, the
worst the Dark Caster had managed since Derek’s escape was the big-mouthed
ghost clinging to the inside of the truck.
Derek cranked
the engine and steered away from the lake at a leisurely five miles an hour.
Driving was something he had only re-learned since he’d been in Alaska. With
the way Bo drank, it was a necessity.
Derek drove
slow. Probably too slow. He remembered, vaguely, driving his former sports car
fast on long, lonely stretches of highway, taking turns at warp speed and
weaving recklessly through freeway traffic. Not anymore. Now, he was worse than
an old woman. He didn't drive the speed limit. He drove under it. When Bo
teased him about it, which Bo loved to do at all times about all things, Derek
blamed it on the rain and snow, but it honestly had little to do with weather
conditions.
Just one more
thing Holden Clark had stolen from him.
He parked in
front of the town's shopping center, bypassing a hardware store, a smoke-filled
tavern, and the post office to pull open the heavy glass doors of a grocery
store. Derek selected a twelve-pack of cheap, cold beer from the refrigerator
case in the rear of the shop, and when he spun around, he came face-to-face
with the eighteen-year-old checkout girl.
"Hi,
Derek," she said, grinning brightly.
It was too cold,
too quiet, and too depressing to be so happy.
"Hello,"
he returned, veering around her.
"Going
fishing again?" she asked, trailing him down the baked-goods aisle.
"Bo
is." Derek didn't fish. He’d never learned and didn’t see the point.
"I love to
fish," she exclaimed, scampering behind the register as he set the beer on
the counter. "I'll teach you how. I mean, if you don't know how. Do you
know how?"
While he
rearranged possible responses in his mind, he studied the girl. Lea, read her
nametag. She was young and dewy, and he envied the ease with which she spit out
words, but something was missing. There was no light in her. An overabundance
of enthusiasm, but no inner glow.
The thought of
touching her in any way, let alone kissing her, made him slightly queasy.
Definitely uncomfortable. And not in a good way.
"No,
thanks," he said, the same as every other time Lea had invited him
somewhere.
Her face fell.
"Oh. Yeah. Some other time."
He paid for the
beer with Bo's credit card and turned to leave.
"You're
gay, right?" Lea called after him. "That's it. You only like
boys?"
He lowered his
eyes and exited fast, tossing the beer in the cab of the pick-up.
Derek had been
called worse in his life. It hardly bothered him anymore. He knew what kind of
person attracted him. At least, he used to know. Since Holden's spell, it was
hard to say what turned him on anymore because nothing did.
He just wasn't interested
in being tangled up in someone else's life. Or worse, someone tangling up in
his. Because his was a twisted disaster of epic proportions.
To prove it, as
if Derek held any doubts, his least favorite ghost appeared in the seat beside
him.
“Worthless,” he
repeated, making his voice purposefully ominous.
“Worthless…worthless…worthless…”
Arriving at the
lake a bit distracted, Derek stomped around thick-trunked trees toward Bo and
Stubby's camp chairs and silently arranged the twelve-pack in their cooler.
"Thanks, my
friend," Bo exclaimed. "Come pick us up later."
"I
will." Until then, Derek would be working on his cabin. Struggling, he
finally spit out, "Text me if you need anything."
Once Bo and
Stubby started drinking, though, they’d be arguing good-naturedly and downing
cold beers for hours. Derek would have the rest of the day to himself.
“…just kill
yourself already…you spineless worm…” The Dark Caster’s spirit trailed him
toward the truck. “…cut your own throat, and I’ll laugh while you die…”
Or maybe not.
About
the Author:
Anna Abner lived in a haunted
house for three years and grew up talking to imaginary friends. In her
professional life, she has been a Realtor, a childcare provider, and a teacher.
Now, she writes edge-of-your-seat paranormal romances and blogs from her home
in coastal North Carolina about ghosts and magic. You can connect with her
online at AnnaAbner.com.
@AnnaAbner
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