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Sunday, 1 January 2012

No Angel - Excerpt and Links

Futuristic urban fantasy short

EXCERPT:
Copyright 2014, Pippa Jay
All rights reserved, Breathless Press

A new burning consumed his body. He wanted to reach out and hold her. Wrap his arms around her, and drown in her kiss. But even as he took one shaky step toward her, the light and goodness within her scorched him and he staggered back a step, one arm thrown up to shield himself.

"Lucien." Her voice washed over him like a sweetly scented summer breeze. He dared to drop his arm and look at her again.

"Miranda." Her name came out as a growl, and he cursed himself for it.

Her frown deepened. "Lucien, what's happened to you?" She took a step closer and he shied away. No matter how she'd come to him, welcomed him, her angelic powers could still be deadly. "Oh, my love, what have you become?"

My love. The words cut him as deeply as the priest's forgiveness. The pain stirred his resentment. She had been the cause of his fall. The reason for his torment. And now she was scolding him for it?

"What I am is what you helped turn me in to." He raised his head, glared at her. "What I am is because of you."

She shook her head. "Is that really what you think? That it's all my fault?" Tears glimmered in her eyes. "I've watched you for a long time now. Waiting for the right time to come to you. I've seen how your existence has come to trouble you more in the last decades. How the tasks set to you have crushed what remains of your soul."

Lucien snorted. "My soul? I lost that with my heart. And my wings."

"No. You didn't. You hate what you do. You sealed your heart in stone to protect yourself, but you can't bring yourself to fully give into the darkness, no matter what."

Lucien shuddered. "You're wrong."

"You know I'm not." She took another step toward him, and though he tried to back away he found himself trapped against the brick wall. She put up her hand, palm outward, as if to touch him. His breath stalled in his chest and his whole body might just as well have become stone. He couldn't move.

AVAILABLE IN ALL DIGITAL FORMATS
BUY LINKS:
Breathless Press
All Romance eBooks
Smashwords
Bookstrand
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

ADD IT TO YOUR GOODREADS SHELF HERE

Praise for No Angel

"...deliciously dangerous incubus quick read..."

4* Sofia Grey at The Gemini Girls

"The layered characterization that Pippa slowly peels back to show us the love story at the core of these characters is wonderfully done."

Kate Corcino, author of Spark Rising

"Superficially, this is a funny, quirky story, but as always Pippa Jay’s stories have more depth that will keep you thinking about them long after the story ends."
5* Liza O'Connor, author of A Long Road to Love series

Meet Lucien de la Vae

Restless In Peaceville - Excerpt and Links

A YA Paranormal Novella

EXCERPT:
Copyright 2014, Pippa Jay
All rights reserved, Lycaon Press

I suppose I should count myself lucky they hadn't started carving me up, and that I'd gone for an overdose rather than throwing myself in front of a truck or out of a window. I'm in damn good condition...for a corpse. Still in one piece as far as I can ascertain, and that ain't easy to determine, let me tell you. You know how an arm or a leg goes after you've sat on it for a while, cutting off the circulation? But before the blood flow starts again and you get pins and needles? That numb heaviness? My whole body is like that. Like every part of me is full of lead.

Also, the not breathing is weird. I take a couple of breaths out of habit, for the familiar feeling of air moving in and out of my chest. After that I don't bother. It takes too much concentration and there are other things I need to focus on. Like, what do I do next, for instance?

So, what, I'm just gonna lie here?

It's an option, but I'd probably give the next person who opens up my drawer a heart attack. I don't want another death on my conscience. Not when I already have my own.

I put my hands up against the metal above me, and leave dents in it. Whoa. Gonna have to watch that. Clearly, I don't need a lot of muscle or effort as a zombie, which is good because I never had the first and never gave the second. I try again, but more hesitantly, and push myself outward. The drawer slams open so fast, wheels screeching, that it reaches its full extent hard enough to slam my skull into the drawer front, and then rebounds until it's almost closed again. That should've hurt, but it didn't. I touch my skull, half expecting it to be cracked in two, but there's nothing. Not even a dent...or a lump for that matter. But when I twist my head to look, the drawer front looks like it got beat by a baseball bat. That's gonna be one hell of a giveaway.

I reach up and use just one finger to push the drawer wider. This time I roll out until my upper half is free of the drawer. That should do. Careful not to squeeze too tight, I grip the sides of the slab I'm lying on. I'm not sure about sitting up, because clearly I don't know my own strength any more, and the weird all-over numbness means I can't sense what I'm doing, or how much pressure I'm using. There's no pain to tell me when I might be damaging myself, if that's possible.

Okay, this is it. I push myself upright easily enough, but can't stop myself slumping forward. Everything feels heavy. My head too heavy for my neck, my shoulders too heavy for my torso. Still holding the sides, I drag one leg up until my knee touches my chin, and then the other. I shuffle 'round until both feet drop to the floor, pulling my legs with them. I have plenty of strength but pretty damn poor coordination. It's kind of hard to synchronize your moves when it's like someone has attached weights to every bit of you.Won't this be fun?

So I've got my feet on the ground. I stare at them and wiggle my toes. Back in the afterlife, they moved easily and in sequence. Now they just jerk. There are bruises and needle marks in both my arms, probably from them trying to pump a ton of drugs into me to bring me back. My skin is pale, only one shade away from stark white, with a bluish tint. Oxygen deprivation, I'd guess. I thought I'd be gray. Maybe that happens later. For now, I can probably pass for just being sick, if I can get my coordination together and get out of here.

With that objective in mind, I lurch to my feet and fall flat on my face, luckily with one arm preventing my nose from getting smashed. Not that it hurts, but I really don't need to make myself look any worse. I push back onto my hands and knees, grab the edge of the table beside me, and then pull myself up slow and easy. At least I'm standing, even if I am swaying like I'm still getting hit by the alcohol. For the first time, I get a good look of where I'm at.

The morgue. I've seen enough cop shows to recognize it. Never expected to be in one, least not and be aware I was. The table I'm hanging onto is one of those where they lay a body, clean it, and slice it up to figure out who or what killed you. I guess I should be grateful they hadn't got to that stage with me. Trying to stitch myself up with zombie fingers and with all my innards falling out would have been tricky.

AVAILABLE IN ALL DIGITAL FORMATS
BUY LINKS:
Lycaon Press
Omnilit
Smashwords
Bookstrand
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

ADD IT TO YOUR GOODREADS SHELF HERE

Gethyon - Excerpt and Links

A YA Science Fiction Novel

He couldn’t move. His feet seemed pinned to the floor, his muscles locked into rigid immobility. The Siah-dhu howled at him, their voice leeching all will and all power from him. Despite the sparks of power within him, the darkness writhed through his gut, gnawing with jagged teeth as it twisted though his mind. It was hunger magnified a thousand times, as if the vacuum of space had opened up inside him. He fell to his knees.

Gethyon. Not quite a voice, not quite any sound he had ever heard, the Siah-dhu called his name. The roiling mass drew closer. A chill gale blasted over him and snatched all the breath and warmth from him, sucking the life out of him.

“No.” The single word snatched him back from the edge. He hadn’t come so far or lost so much to surrender. As the Siah-dhu pulsed toward him intent on his consumption, he forced himself up again and turned his back on the shadows. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, to resist that pull into oblivion. The edges of the black cloud twined around him, incorporeal fingers striving to grasp him, seething forward to swallow him…

The world disappeared.