Blurb:
When Samantha Black
shares her sandwich with a dog, his owner, Jon—a homeless man living in the Las
Vegas storm tunnels—gives her a poker chip worth a fortune from the exclusive
casino, Buried Pleasures. All Sam has to do is cash it in. Sam is in Vegas for
one reason only—to get her friend, Evie Holt, away from sinister magician,
Darian Fox, who holds her prisoner in an effort to force Sam to perform at his
club, Illusions. A neon circus tent of strange and mystical acts, Illusions is
one of the biggest draws in Vegas, and he’s hell-bent on including Sam in his
disturbing plans.
The shadowy Magda
Gardener will do anything to keep Sam from cashing in that chip. She knows that
Buried Pleasures is the gate to Hades and cashing in the chip is a one-way
ticket across the River Styx, which runs beneath the storm tunnels of Vegas.
Jon is really Jack Graves, owner of Buried Pleasures, and Graves is really the
god of death, himself, and if things aren’t already confusing enough, he and
Magda know what Sam doesn’t. Sam is the last siren. That her song can kill is
only the beginning of her story. Jon wants her safe on his side of the River,
protected from Fox’s hideous magic. But even Death fears Magda Gardener, who is
none other than Medusa, and the gorgon has her own agenda. If Sam is to
understand her heritage and win the battle against Darian Fox, not only will
she have to trust her heart to Death, but they’ll both have to work for the
gorgon, whose connection with Sam runs deeper than any of them could imagine.
Buy links:
*****
Rated PG
Excerpt:
Jon and Samantha: Salvation by Death
The mind-boggling project designed
to offer flood protection to a city built on bedrock and totally surrounded by
mountains had begun in the seventies. The individual segments reminded her of
giant hollow Lego blocks made of concrete. Originally there was to be over a
thousand miles of tunnels beneath Sin City. They were all designed to channel
the waters of any flash flood that threatened the financial heart of the city
into Lake Mead, some thirty miles away. The project was never finished, but there
were still an impressive two hundred miles of storm tunnels beneath the city,
and they now provided shelter for the homeless who didn’t mind playing the odds
that their meager belongings wouldn’t get washed away in the next deluge. They
also had provided a hiding place for murderers and thieves and who knew what
else?
And apparently God hung
out down here, too. Who could have guessed? Though she didn’t see any of the
dreaded scorpions she’d heard so much about, she imagined she could hear them
skittering across the floor in the dark. “Ever been stung by one? Scorpion, I
mean,” she asked absently.
“They don’t bother me
much,” came the reply.
She saw the graffiti on
the walls as well as if she’d been walking in the sunshine, and yet the
darkness around her was almost a physical thing, a thought that almost made her
laugh, since it was obvious she no longer had the physical capability for
feeling it.
Did the dead sleep? She
only wondered because it seemed that she slept or lost consciousness, or just
drifted off for a while. Maybe eventually she would lose consciousness
altogether and that would be the end of it. Maybe the whole recycling thing
just took a while to kick in. Strange, that thought didn’t disturb her either.
Still, Jon had said she was going to a very nice place. When she woke up, if
that’s what she did, she came to herself hearing the click, click, click of the dog’s toenails on the concrete.
To her surprise the
surroundings had changed. There was water – not just the constant water on the
floor of the storm tunnels, but more like a lake or a reservoir. A boat rocked
gently at the end of a stone dock in front of them. For a moment she thought
they had ended up at the Venetian with its canals and boats. But there were no
red and white striped poles, and the boat wasn’t right. It was broader, higher
prowed.
As she took in her
surroundings, she saw that they were still underground, and she remembered
reading somewhere that at one time the whole basin in which Las Vegas was built
had been a large inland sea, and that there was still a sea of water beneath
the bedrock. She’d heard that people who built homes outside the city and
drilled wells down through the bedrock had an endless supply of fresh water,
even in the dry desert.
They were walking toward
the boat, her body still safely carried in Jon’s arms with her consciousness
still floating above.
A man she assumed to be
the boatman stood waiting for them. He was dressed in a flowing dark cloak, his
face obscured completely beneath a deep hood. As he looked down at her body in
Jon’s arms, what little light there was caught the shine of his eyes just
enough to dispel the disturbing sense that the hood was empty.
After a long silence, he
looked up at Jon and shook his head. “I can’t take her,” he said, examining her
limp body. “You know the rules.” His voice was like the scratching of dry twigs
in a storm, and no matter how hard she listened, she heard no breath, no
heartbeat. For some reason that disturbed her far less than the fact that she
couldn’t see his face.
“Take me where? Where
are we going?”
The two men ignored her.
“Know the rules? I wrote the damned rules,” Jon said, and
once again she felt the vibration of his voice in spite of being separated from
her flesh.
“Then you know if she
hasn’t cashed in the chip, I can’t take her.”
“Take me where? Are you
coming too?” she asked Jon. Still she got no reply.
“What the hell do you
mean, she hasn’t cashed in her chip? Dancy delivered her right to the door to
do just that.”
“He’s right,” Sam
agreed, though she was no longer sure the men could even hear her. How long had
she been dead now? Would Jon cease to be aware of her at all after she’d been
dead for a while? He wouldn’t if he were God, she reasoned. “Some woman named
Magda Gardener told me I should wait till tomorrow. I shouldn’t have listened
to her,” she added. “I wouldn’t be dead now if I had gone ahead and cashed in
the chip like I wanted to.”
But the two men still
didn’t respond. She was beginning to suspect that being dead was going to be a
major pain in the ass.
Jon carefully laid her
down on the cool mosaic floor. She only now realized that it was mosaic,
something with an astrological motif, she thought, her cheek pressed against
the dark bicep of the Sagittarian archer. Her attention was drawn away from the
mosaic when Jon slid his hand into her pocket and pulled out the chip. It
glowed golden in his hand as he turned it over and over again. She didn’t
remember it doing that when she held it. Probably just a trick with the lights.
“Should have cashed it
in when I had the chance,” she said. “You can have it back if you want. It
won’t help me now, will it?”
He simply stuck it back
in her pocket and cursed under his breath. Then he stood and paced back and forth
in front of the boatman. “Well that’s a damned inconvenience, isn’t it?”
The boatman nodded
beneath his hood. “Sure as hell is. I was expecting her. She had reservations.
Had everything ready for her, just like you said. Looks like I made the trip
for nothing.” He shrugged, and the cape rustled as it settled back around his
body. “Not like I have anything else to do, I guess.”
For a moment the two men
stood in silence, looking down at Sam’s body resting against the mosaic of the
archer. Then the boatman heaved a hard-put-upon sigh and asked, “What will you
do now?”
“Take her back,” Jon
replied, and the dog whined softly and plopped down next to her. “I have to,
don’t I? She would have been happier here, and safe,” he added as an
afterthought.
“Pity,” the boatman
said. “Gonna be a rough ride for her now. You know I’d take her if I could.” He
nodded across the expanse of water, and for the first time, Sam realized she
couldn’t see the other shore.
“Oh, I don’t blame you,
Chuck,” Jon said. “You’re just doing your job.” The dog offered a soft woof of
agreement.
“You think that bitch,
Magda, had anything to do with the mix-up?” the boatman asked.
“Oh, I have no doubt.”
Jon ran a warm hand along Sam’s cheek and she was surprised that she could
still feel it. “Well, nothing for it now. Can I borrow your cloak? She’ll be
cold when she returns, and it’s a long way back.”
“Of course.” The man
shed his cloak in a sharp snap that sounded like the canvas of a sail slapping
in the wind and, in that instant, the world went black and Sam could no longer
see the tunnel around them. For a moment she had that feeling of falling, the
kind of falling that jerks you awake from the dream world to find that no, you’re
still safe and sound on your bed. Only it was more of a rough and tumble, as
though she were struggling with the fall, somehow being tossed about, riding
first a rollercoaster, then bouncing high on a trampoline, then being dragged
feet-first down steep stairs, her head banging on each step.
She yelped and reached
out desperately to feel Gus’s soft fur close to her body and, as she groped in
the darkness, her hand came to rest first on Jon’s chest and then on his
stubbled face. And there was substance—her hand, flesh and bone, touching flesh
and bone. His breath was warm against her cheek, and the smell of ozone and
deep forest peaked as he whispered, “It’ll be all right, Samantha. Don’t be
frightened. It’ll be all right. I have you now. You’re with me.”
Then his lips brushed
hers and she wrapped her arms around his neck with the urgency of one who was
afraid of falling. His breath! She tasted his breath, she needed his breath.
She had none of her own, and the rising panic felt as though it would smother
her with its weight. “Shh, Samantha, shh! I have you now. You’ll be all right.”
He spoke softly against her lips. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
She clawed at him,
desperate to hang on, desperate to breathe, fighting claustrophobic dizziness
that felt as though she were being sucked down a drainpipe.
She might have screamed
or she might have only imagined it, but Jon kept up a soothing, soft chatter
that she struggled to understand above the ringing in her ears. Then she felt
like she was being shoved back in her body, down her own throat and up under
her ribcage, a suitcase being hastily stuffed over-full, as though somehow she
had expanded in her time outside herself. In the beginning, she was certain she
was being suffocated, but when she gasped the first blessed breath of air, it
was accompanied by a bright flash of searing pain, and the lights went out with
her clutched in the arms of the homeless man, the dog whining softly at her
side.
*****
Author Bio:
Voted ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, K D
Grace believes Freud was right. It really IS all about sex—sex and love—and
that is an absolute writer’s playground.
When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening
or walking. Her creativity is directly proportional to how quickly she wears
out a pair of walking boots. She loves mythology, which inspires many of her
stories. She enjoys time in the gym, where she’s having a mad affair with a
pair of kettle bells. Her first love is writing, but she loves reading and watching
birds. She adores anything that gets her outdoors.
K D’s novels and other works are published
by Totally Bound, SourceBooks, Accent Press, Harper Collins Mischief Books,
Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, and others. She also writes romance under the
name Grace Marshall.
Find K D Here:
