A Rift in the Soul Tour Materials

Rift in the Soul Blog Tour Materials

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Echo Shea and Mindy Mymudes
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Quick Find:

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Publisher: https://tinyurl.com/RiftSoulRandHou (Note, they have links to BookShop.org, Walmart, and Target on this page.)

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A dead body on a vampire compound begins an investigation for Nell and her team that soon becomes deeply personal. Surviving it might be Nell's biggest feat yet.
https://mybook.to/RiftInSoul
#newrelease #newbook #romancebooks #urbanfantasy #paranormalmystery #BookTwitter #kindlebook

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Nell Ingram and her team face a dire, supernatural evil in this newest thrilling paranormal procedural in the New York Times bestselling Soulwood series.

Nell Ingram draws her powers from deep in the earth, and uses them to help Psy-LED, the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division, which solves paranormal crimes. When a local vampire calls to report a dead body on her compound, Nell knows she and her team have to be ready for anything.

But the dead body is just the beginning of a mystery that involves supernaturals of all kinds, including some of the most powerful vampires in the country. As Nell gets closer to the truth, she begins to understand that the perpetrator is tracking her too—and that there is something personal about this crime. Something with roots that go almost as deep as those in Soulwood.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BHD9SMF7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace (March 5, 2024)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 5, 2024
Print length ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
Buy link: https://mybook.to/RiftInSoul

#newrelease #newbook #romancebooks #urbanfantasy #paranormalmystery #BookTwitter #kindlebook

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Blog Post:

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BHD9SMF7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace (March 5, 2024)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 5, 2024
Print length ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
Buy links:
- Amazon/Apple/B&N: https://mybook.to/RiftinSoul
- Publisher: https://tinyurl.com/RiftSoulRandHou (Note, they have links to BookShop.org, Walmart, and Target on this page.)

Praise for Faith Hunter's Soulwood Series

"Hunter's brand of supernatural is equal parts exciting, engaging and entertaining...Filled with high-stakes tension, Hunter's storytelling is vivid and descriptive with edgy, sharp dialogue laced with humor."- RT Book Reviews

"Nell's coming into her own as an independent woman…Hunter's many fans will be delighted with her strong new heroine."- Publishers Weekly

“I love Nell and her PsyLED team and would happily read about their adventures for years.”- Vampire Book Club

Giveaway

Bookmarks for giveaway.

Rafflecopter Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9751c04284/?

About the Author:

About the Author:
Faith Hunter, urban fantasy writer, was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Hunter fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SciFi, fantasy, and gothic mystery. She decided to become a writer in high school, when a teacher told her she had talent. Now, she writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for RV travel, Japanese maples, orchids, white-water kayaking, and writing. She and her husband love to RV to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.
Author of series: Skinwalker (feat. Jane Yellowrock, urban fantasy), Rogue Mage (Thorn St. Croix, urban fantasy), Junkyard Cats (Shining Smith, dystopian-esque Scifi), and Soulwood (Nell Ingram, paranormal procedural where an escapee from a cult, a solitary woman with deadly magic of her own, is hired to help PsyLED: a paranormal division of Homeland Security; find a missing child. Find out more about the author here: www.FaithHunter.net

<img data-file-id="6668062" height="737" src="https://mcusercontent.com/db46d89a669bcc0564562defc/images/9f7a2fb3-9e93-f538-591c-3a0e01b3782c.png" style="border: 0px ; width: 800px; height: 737px; margin: 0px;" width="800" /> 
Nell Ingram and her team face a dire, supernatural evil in this newest thrilling paranormal procedural in the New York Times bestselling Soulwood series. 
 
Nell Ingram draws her powers from deep in the earth, and uses them to help Psy-LED, the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division, which solves paranormal crimes. When a local vampire calls to report a dead body on her compound, Nell knows she and her team have to be ready for anything. 
 
But the dead body is just the beginning of a mystery that involves supernaturals of all kinds, including some of the most powerful vampires in the country. As Nell gets closer to the truth, she begins to understand that the perpetrator is tracking her too—and that there is something personal about this crime. Something with roots that go almost as deep as those in Soulwood. 
 
<ul>
<li>ASIN &rlm; : &lrm; B0BHD9SMF7</li>
<li>Publisher &rlm; : &lrm; Ace (March 5, 2024)</li>
<li>Publication date &rlm; : &lrm; March 5, 2024</li>
<li>Print length &rlm; : &lrm; 382 pages</li>
<li>Buy links: 
<ul>
<li>Amazon/Apple/B&N: https://mybook.to/RiftinSoul</li>
<li>Publisher: https://tinyurl.com/RiftSoulRandHou  (Note, they have links to BookShop.org, Walmart, and Target on this page.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

<h2>Praise for Faith Hunter's Soulwood Series</h2>
"Hunter's brand of supernatural is equal parts exciting, engaging and entertaining...Filled with high-stakes tension, Hunter's storytelling is vivid and descriptive with edgy, sharp dialogue laced with humor."- RT Book Reviews 
"Nell's coming into her own as an independent woman…Hunter's many fans will be delighted with her strong new heroine."- Publishers Weekly 
“I love Nell and her PsyLED team and would happily read about their adventures for years.”- Vampire Book Club
 
 
<a class="rcptr" href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9751c04284/" rel="nofollow" data-raflid="9751c04284" data-theme="classic" data-template="" id="rcwidget_ym6qn3xq">a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>
<script src="https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js"></script>
<h2>About the Author:</h2>
<img data-file-id="6668066" height="1174" src="https://mcusercontent.com/db46d89a669bcc0564562defc/images/6c60ef2a-68e4-5335-1d42-00fa747759dc.jpg" style="border: 0px ; width: 800px; height: 1174px; margin: 0px;" width="800" /> 
 
 
Faith Hunter, urban fantasy writer, was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Hunter fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SciFi, fantasy, and gothic mystery. She decided to become a writer in high school, when a teacher told her she had talent. Now, she writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for RV travel, Japanese maples, orchids, white-water kayaking, and writing. She and her husband love to RV to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast. 
Author of series: Skinwalker (feat. Jane Yellowrock, urban fantasy), Rogue Mage (Thorn St. Croix, urban fantasy), Junkyard Cats (Shining Smith, dystopian-esque Scifi), and Soulwood (Nell Ingram, paranormal procedural where an escapee from a cult, a solitary woman with deadly magic of her own, is hired to help PsyLED: a paranormal division of Homeland Security; find a missing child. Find out more about the author here: www.FaithHunter.net

Excerpt one
I stepped on the dirt by the driveway and sniffed the winter air. A cold snap had come through at dusk and the scent of the Tennessee River only yards away rode high and warm on the night, rising in a swirling mist that obscured much of the landscape. There wasn’t time for a deep read of the land, but I needed a feel for it, so I bent and touched the soil with a fingertip, sending my thoughts through the upper layers of dirt and lawn, skimming the surface.
The earth around me was unsettled, as property walked by the undead usually was, but there was no sense of danger. Nothing hurtled through the earth and grabbed me, no wild energies, no fear, no vines or roots, so that was good, but the soil felt different from the last time I had read it. The sense of death was stronger and there was a mixture of something disturbed, disquieted here, so I pushed a little deeper. I caught a hint of fire and excitement, of an unresolved exhilaration, as if the earth rode the brink of something wild. It felt the way it must feel to be at the top of a roller coaster, ready to plunge down. Though I had never been on a roller coaster and couldn’t imagine why I ever would want to.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt two

Regional Director Ayatas FireWind, the man I had taken to calling my boss-boss, gave me a small nod, telling me to go ahead. They had my back. Rick LaFleur, Special Agent in Charge of PsyLED Unit Eighteen, glanced at the house and back to me, his black eyes telling me to be careful. Even had there been no mention of a body, the two bosses would have come as my backup because, as Rick said when the call came in, “Weird shit is happening in the vamp world.”
I looked back at the potted tree strapped into the passenger seat of my newish car and contemplated bringing the tree with me. Instead, I closed the car door I had left open, shutting off the interior lights. Full dark fell on us. Ming’s property seemed ominous in the fog and darkness. Her people hadn’t turned on the security and landscape lights, which was a little odd. The mist from the river swirled higher and closer, more dense. I locked the car with the small fob.
I reseated my Glock 20, not that I expected to need it here. Ming had requested my presence, personally, to report a dead body, and when the new Master of the City of Knoxville wanted to report a crime, Unit Eighteen listened. Thanks to her, I was lead on this interview, and should Ming be bringing a case to the unit, and not vampire politics, it was possible that I would be lead on my very first case. Rick was betting it was vampire politics, but either way, anytime there were vampires, there was danger.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt three

The two bosses had attended the coronation of the Emperor of Europe only a week past, and they had brought back tales of weird vampire actions and unusual personnel changes. They had even seen a vamp laughing with her fangs out, which they couldn’t explain. Vampires could not laugh—laughter was a human emotion—while in predator state. It wasn’t possible. Yet they had both seen her laughing.
Since LaFleur and FireWind had returned from New Orleans, vamp rumors of the wild and crazy kind had begun to circulate in Knoxville too. None of the reports were believable, and none had involved video evidence, but everyone wanted a look-see at the locals.
T. Laine, Unit Eighteen’s resident witch, had called it “wackadoodle stuff.”
“Comms check,” FireWind said.
“Ingram here.”
“LaFleur here.”
“Copy, FireWind, Ingram, LaFleur,” Jones said, back at HQ.
Rick and Aya positioned themselves in front and behind me and together we crossed the concrete drive to the front entrance. Ming didn’t live in a castle like Dracula, but she owned a megamansion and several acres on the edge of the Tennessee River. Prime real estate. An attached six-car garage, greenhouse, big barn, and outbuildings. I smelled manure and hay and that familiar scent of horse I remembered from my upbringing at the God’s Cloud of Glory Church. It brought a sense of peace that tried to replace the natural uneasiness of a law enforcement officer visiting a vampire lair after dark.
The men separated, leaving me in front. My bosses standing behind me, I knocked on the front door and rang the bell.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt four

Nothing happened. Minutes went by.
I knocked again. Aya checked his watch. He still wore a watch, and not just one of those wrist computers/cell phones. Checking it was ingrained. Rick stared at the security camera, his long white hair catching in the misty breeze. He tilted his head and said, “Someone’s coming.”
Rick LaFleur was a black wereleopard. There were indications he had sharper senses even in human form and they got sharper closer to the full moon. Were-creatures also got skittish at that time of the month and, while we waited, I counted ahead to the three days when the were-members of PsyLED Eighteen would go furry. I’d rather not have to deal with Rick’s big-cat on Ming’s property, and I was safe on that point.
The door opened. Standing inside should have been the butler. Instead it was Cai, Ming’s human primo, her number one blood-servant, but a vastly different Cai from the last time I saw him. Cai was slim, wiry, Asian, and skilled in several martial arts forms. He moved with that liquid grace of the well-trained fighter, and had all the charm of a steel blade. He did everything for Ming, from keeping her schedule to, supposedly, killing vampires who got out of line. That was hearsay, but had seemed likely. Until tonight.
Tonight he was grinning. A happy human grin, like, maybe a little drunk kind of grin. And there was blood on his cheek and the neckline of his white T-shirt. “Ming’s guests.” He threw his arms to the sides in welcome. “Come in come in come in,” he said, running the words together. “Ming is . . .” He gestured off into the darkness of the house, turned, and walked away, leaving the door open and three law enforcement agents standing there.
“Is that an invitation?” I asked.
“We assume so,” Aya said, stepping past me, moving right, his weapon suddenly in his hand.
“Though we don’t know what the invitation is for,” Rick finished for him, stepping inside, to the left, his weapon also drawn.
Right. It might be an invitation for me to be supper to the vampires.
“This is the same kind of behavior we saw in New Orleans among many of the blood-servants, and Ming’s people have no reason to still be celebrating so long after the coronation of the emperor,” Aya said softly.
I drew my weapon but didn’t chamber a round. I should. But I didn’t. Somehow this didn’t feel like an ambush. Which, of course, would make it a really good ambush. I pressed a light switch on the wall and the foyer brightened.
“I don’t see a DB,” I said, looking around. We’d been called to deal with a dead body. “No blood spatter on walls or floor. No stink of decay on the air. But Cai did have blood on his shirt.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt five

Patterns at my feet drew my eye. The foyer had been refloored in white marble. In the center, tiny pieces of gray marble, brass, and glistening steel had been inlaid and formed a pair of blades, the mosaic marble handles crossed. The single-edged blades themselves had been embedded in the floor; they appeared real but were strangely shaped. One blade looked as if an ax had been crossed with a machete and then a dragon had taken a bite out of the unsharp edge. I knew nothing about fighting with blades, but even I could tell the dragon-bitten section was for snagging an opponent’s blade out of their hand. The other blade was similar but without the snagging-dragon-bite, and a longer cutting edge. They were different but they were also clearly a pair of blades intended to be used together. The ends of the blades, where they should have attached to real handles—hilts?—were made of brass or gold and were shaped like dragon snouts, as if the steel was erupting from their mouths. Above and between the crossed blades was a green, faceted square.
“Ingram,” FireWind snapped. There was an edge of “pay attention” in the tone.
“What’s that?” I pointed at the floor.
“Ming’s new crest,” FireWind said, his tone still sharp. “Since she became MOC.”
As if my up-line boss hadn’t just snapped at me, I holstered my weapon and started taking pictures, sending them back to HQ. Aya grunted in approval. I was learning how to read him. I flipped on more lights and took shots of the parlor to the left and the hallways leading off into darkness. According to county records the clan home of the Master of the City was nearly twelve thousand square feet, so I wasn’t getting much of the house, but it was the first time I’d been in a position to film it.
As I worked, Rick explained to me, still a newbie, “It’s customary for the Master of the City, the most powerful Mithran in the territory, to have their crest inlaid in the entry floor of the city’s Council Chambers headquarters, to remind friends and visiting enemies alike who they would have to fight and conquer. Ming is both the MOC and head of the only vampire clan in Knoxville, so her home does double duty.”
Ming had been given MOC status by Jane Yellowrock. I remembered that. When I had taken photos of everything I could without wandering around, I pulled the psy-meter from my pocket and quickly took a reading of Ming’s foyer. The readings were all over the place.
At a warning signal from Rick, I slid the device away.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt six

“Ming demanded to see me,” I said to Cai. “She said she had a body for me. Get her. Please.”
“Oh. Sure. Sit sit sit sit.” He waved to the sitting room. Then he said, “No. Wait. Tea. I should make tea. Come come come come. This way.”
I looked at FireWind, who had a faint smile on his face and gestured I should take point. Cai led the way to the kitchen, which was decorated in black and white with emerald touches here and there. Two six-burner stoves, each with three ovens, and the commercial refrigerator and commercial freezer made my heart thump hard with envy. This was a bakers-canners-chefs’ paradise. It would make the Nicholson mamas at God’s Cloud of Glory Church turn green.
Cai put on a kettle and got out a fancy tea tin and six cups with saucers. He started humming, something that sounded like a dirge, then suddenly he was whistling what sounded like the music for the old Gilligan’s Island TV series.
I looked at the bosses. Both were trying not to appear amused but not doing a good job of it. I wasn’t amused. Things felt wrong here. As the water heated, Cai wandered along the counter and out the door at the far end.
“What in God’s good heaven is happening?” I asked, my voice soft.
No one replied, but Rick and Aya began to open cabinet doors and drawers and I realized they were conducting a search. For which we didn’t have a warrant. Aya pulled a bottle from a small refrigerator and spun it slowly. “Nineteen forty-seven Cheval Blanc. A bottle sold at auction for over three hundred thousand dollars recently.”
A bottle of wine? That bottle was worth more than I owned altogether in the whole world.
Rick opened the commercial refrigerator and said, “The blood-servants are eating well. Whole suckling pig, baby potatoes, and asparagus.” He shut the door.
Feeling emboldened, I checked out the stoves and the ovens. They were not just functional, they were works of art, and I ran my hands across the decorative steel corners. The stoves had to cost a fortune, but vampires were often quite rich.
I turned off the kettle, which was steaming, but I didn’t make tea. I wanted to read this place, which meant I needed something made of wood that had been here a long time. The floors were marble tile; the cabinets looked new and were painted black inside and out.
Aya closed a second wine fridge and opened a huge pantry. Now I had pantry envy. And it had wood floors.
I held up a hand to let him know I was about to go to work. Walking past him, I slipped off one shoe, and placed my bare foot on the wood floor.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt seven

Cold and ice met my questing energies. I pushed through, to the underside of the wood planks of Ming of Glass’s kitchen pantry, and then to the wood supports beneath. Wood, unless petrified, always had a form of power that I could read. Here there was nothing. The wood that constructed this house was truly dead. It no longer had energy, no longer had a . . . a soul, for lack of a better word. I slid my shoe on, stepped back into the main kitchen, and made hard eye contact with each man, trying to communicate, Problem. Magical problem.
It wasn’t like we had ESP or anything, but they had hunted on my land. There was a bond between us. Rick, who had holstered his weapon, redrew it.
Ming of Glass entered.
I took a step back.
Ming’s hair was down, a long straight sheen of hair, blacker than night, falling to midthigh. She was dressed in a purple fuzzy robe tied at the waist. She was barefoot, wore no makeup, her eyes closed. Her fingernails and toenails were painted, each a different color, with flower appliqués like a hippie or a townie teenager. She carried no weapons, not that vampires needed to. They were weapons.
And the Master of the City was dancing, moving to music only she could hear.
The Ming of Glass I knew would never have appeared looking like this. I had a feeling she slept perfectly coiffed, with a dozen blades on the bed beside her. She was dangerous and dignified and scary. Not fuzzy robed. Not barefooted. Never. As she spun in a slow circle I spotted earbuds.
She whirled again, her robe flapping open to reveal naked legs, which shocked me. Thanks to my upbringing, even partial nudity sometimes made me uncomfortable.
Ming started singing, something that sounded as if it came from Bollywood, the notes not Western, and the rhythm different from the jazzy and bluesy stuff Rick LaFleur listened to and different also from the music FireWind liked.
She opened her eyes. And saw me.
“Maggoty Girl! You came!”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt eight

Ming of Glass popped across the counter faster than I could see and threw her arms around me, hugging me. I went stiff and still and forgot to breathe until she unwrapped from me and opened the wine fridge.
“You requested my presence,” I said, my voice breathy, not the firm tone I wanted. “About a dead body.”
She flapped her hand at me, pulled out a different bottle from the one Aya had touched, and opened it with vampiric speed using a steel corkscrew I hadn’t seen her pick up. She tilted up the bottle and drank. When she lowered the bottle, she focused on the two men. “Put them away.” She pointed the bottle at their weapons. “You two. Go to the front room. Maggoty Girl. You will come with me.” Ming tottered away and pushed through two doors that swung closed behind her, like doors in an old-fashioned western.
“Ingram,” FireWind said softly. “Video. Now.”
“Oh. Right.” Ming was acting strange. Everyone would want to see and hear. I turned my cell to record and tucked the cell into my upper jacket pocket, giving the camera a good view. We had already checked comms, so we had an audio recording and now video backup.
After a last glance at the bosses, I pushed open the doors, following our hostess, revealing a different small parlor from the one I had seen before. Ming was sitting in a puffy chair in front of a gas fire, the flames turned down low but putting off heat. She tilted the bottle up again and drank. I walked into the room. The doors swung closed behind me.
Ming of Glass pointed at the chair to her side and I sat gingerly, on the edge. There was a thick rug beneath my chair and the chair had no exterior wooden parts, nothing I could draw power from.
“Maggoty Girl. What have you done to my scions. They are walking into the sun. Three burned at dawn today. Two the day before.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said carefully, remembering the circles on the river side of the property. Walking into the sun was a term vampires used when they killed themselves at dawn, letting the sun burn them to death. “No one in PsyLED knows what’s happening, only that there have been reports of Mithrans across the country acting—” I stopped. Not crazy. Not as if they were all in the midst of mental breakdowns. Either might get my head ripped off. “Acting unlike their usual selves. I did nothing at all, not to anyone.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt nine

“Our blood-servants are . . .” Ming waved the half-empty bottle in the air. “Volatile. At first they were happy. Now many are leaving us. We have had to negotiate new contracts with them. It is costing us much money.”
“That sounds . . . difficult,” I lied. “You said there was a dead body?”
Ming turned her black eyes to me. She was vamping out, her pupils already dilated, the white of her sclera bleeding scarlet. Her fangs snapped down on the little hinges. My breath hitched and stopped. Ming was in full hunting mode. I started to call for the guys. My fingers twitched for my weapon.
Ming smiled behind her fangs.
I froze as she leaned closer. She could hear my heart racing. She could smell my sweat-fear. I didn’t know much about vampires, but I knew I was in danger. If called for help, Ming could rip out my throat before my bosses could react. Before I got out more than a squeak. And I was taking too long to reply. I had to deal with this.
Possibilities flitted through my mind. I forced out my breath. Inhaled.
“Ming of Glass,” I managed. “Master of the City of Knoxville. I see you are . . . disturbed.” That should let Rick and Aya know there were problems. “PsyLED Eighteen has been called here about a dead body. How may we assist?”
I always carried some of the life of my land within me, but I hadn’t had time to go to the roof of HQ and sit in my garden spot, a raised bed full of Soulwood soil. I hadn’t replenished myself.
“Yoooou,” Ming said. “Maggoty Girl. You brought life to the undead Mithrans. And because of you, my city is cursed.”
“I didn’t do anything. What could I have done to cause you, the . . . the illustrious Ming of Glass, discomfort?”
Ming leaned in a hair closer and breathed in the air I exhaled. I clamped down on the desire to run. Vampires were fast, and running would mark me as prey. I’d not make one step before I triggered her predator instincts.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt ten

I wasn’t on Soulwood. I wasn’t even standing on the ground or on wood that came from local trees. But Soulwood wasn’t that far away. I began to gather the power of Soulwood to me. The land, as always, hungered. It wanted sacrifice. If I had to fight the master of the city--
Ming shifted. Raised the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle and pointed her index finger at me. She touched my forehead with her fingertip. It was icy, cold as a dead body. I didn’t pull away, but it was a close thing.
The vampire pressed her finger harder into my flesh, feeling my life force, my own magic. It rose fast against her. But I held it tightly. Her single touch was different from what vampires usually felt like. It wasn’t nearly so maggoty, not the sensation of a rotting opossum corpse (from which I got the name Maggot) or the feel of icy death. It was different. Ming wasn’t just emotionally different. Something about the vampire was magically and physically different. Just like the impressions of her land.
The swinging doors behind her opened slowly. Rick stood there, a gun aimed at the back of Ming’s head in a two-hand grip. I reined in my relief, holding it just as tight as I did my fear and my power.
“I feel the life of the earth in you,” Ming said. “I wonder if there is a similar life in your sisters, in the children born on your land, land you call Soulwood.” Ming drew back her finger and stared at its tip. Licked it. “Dogs and leaves. You taste of nothing but dogs and leaves. All of your kind should be exterminated.”
Whether she meant those words for a threat against my family or not, I took it that way. Instantly my own hunger rose. I wanted to feed my land with her. To drain the undead life out of her. Far off, my land woke from its winter slumber, alerted by my fear-defense-attack mode. The power of my land stretched toward me, searching. I reached toward it and the tendril of power wrapped into me. Calm flooded through me from that single coil.
Within my land, the Green Knight of the vampire tree came to attention. But I had left its rooted sapling in the car. The tree would have a difficult time reaching me. Reaching Ming.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt eleven

“You left a message for me at PsyLED Unit Eighteen,” I said to Ming, “that there is a dead body here. You asked for me specifically to pick it up. Tell me about the body.”
I added. “Is it a human or an undead?”
“Undead?” Ming asked. “What is undead? How can the undead have a soul? What can the undead doooo with a soul?” She held her hand up in the air, studying her fingers with the colorful, childlike nail polish on it. “How did my soul return to me? Where was it kept for so many centuries? There are those who say otherwise, but I know it was you.” She dropped her hand and scratched a single long cut across her chest between the robe’s lapels. A line of blood appeared in the trail of the fingernail. She had ripped her own skin.
There was something seriously wrong with Ming of Glass.
I fought to keep my breathing slow and deep, my heart rate steady and calm. I was in the presence of a predator, one not herself. Like a rabid dog. Or a bull with mad cow disease.
I clenched my fists and pulled on Soulwood, preparing my earth magic, keeping that slow trickle of blood in my line of sight. I might have to fight her and I had left my best weapon in the passenger seat of the car. But if I needed to kill her, to drain her to death, all I had to do was to touch that trickle of blood. The hunger of the land grew inside me.
“Did you force my soul into me?” Her eyes moved to my face. “Your life force is not human. Are you the danger to me? Should I drink you down?”
That was a threat. Even though she was nuttier than a candy bar, Ming could rip me apart with her bare hands.
That thought triggered my brain out of paralysis, into action.
“You owe me two boons,” I said, clutching at that memory, not knowing what it really meant in terms of a balance of power against her threat, but willing to use what I had. “You will not violate your own blood word.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt twelve

“There are strange trees growing on your land.” Ming touched her chest and scratched at the dying blood, freshening her wound in a line of bright scarlet. She licked her fingertip. “They bleed. Charlainn tasted the tree and she . . . she felt joy. And now she is dead by the dawn.”
I had no idea who Charlainn was or when or why the vampire woman had tasted the vampire tree. The tree was a poorly kept secret that grew on church land and my land and had a mind of its own, sentient and self-aware, and had taken to calling itself the Green Knight. I hoped to control the tree enough to keep it from killing people for its dinner. I even had a dream of monetizing it for lumber. Maybe. Someday. “Go on,” I said.
“You are a people eater. I have heard you are purple, but I see you are not.”
There was nothing amusing about this bizarre conversation, but laughter welled up in me, nervous, half panicked. Soulwood filled me. Steadying me. I felt the Green Knight in the distance, alert.
“What happened to you?” I asked her softly.
“I found my soul. We all found our souls.” Bitterly she said, “Every Mithran everywhere has our souls and we cannot . . .” Ming turned her head halfway around to see Rick’s gun aimed at her. It was one of those not-human movements vampires can make, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. As if the weapon didn’t matter, she swiveled her head back to me. “We cannot make them go away. Souls are destroying us. When your sister’s babies were born, did they bring back our souls? Did your tree bring back our souls?”
Vampires didn’t have souls. Everyone knew that. Ming thought vampires now had souls? She had always been unstable, but this was a new take on vampire psychological instability.
“No baby did anything. Have you called J—” I stopped just in time. “Have you called the Dark Queen? She might know something. Have you contacted her?”
“Cai called. It went to voice mail. So he called again. And her lady-in-waiting took a message.”
Jane Yellowrock had a lady-in-waiting? She was more likely to need an armorer than someone to paint her nails.
“When her secundo, the one called Eli Younger, called me back, he wove a tale of angels and demons, but I know . . .” Ming stopped and drank deeply again and tossed the empty wine bottle across the room. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor. I managed not to flinch.
When Rick and Ayatas returned from New Orleans and the coronation, they had referred to the vampires being a very different sort of strangeness from their usual eccentricity, as if very drunk. They had been right.
Cai opened the door to my side, looked at the gun aimed at the back of his mistress’ head, and walked casually across the room to Ming. He held out his wrist to Ming and she took it, embedded her fangs in his wrist, and drank. Cai laughed and stroked her hair. It was unexpectedly personal and suggestive, the way he touched her.
When she withdrew her fangs, she licked his wrist to clot the blood and close the wound. “Thank you. You will take the foolish nonhumans in the kitchen doorway into the front parlor. Keep them there.”
My spine went straight. I did not want to be alone with a crazy Ming of Glass.
“Have the boy’s body taken to the driveway so they may remove the filth.”
“Yes, my mistress,” Cai said.
“And call Yvonne. Have her bring the cards.”
Ming pulled her lapels together and looked at me. Some of her old imperiousness seeped back into her eyes. “Forgive me. I have been remiss. Would you care for tea?”
“Thank you?” I said, not certain how to respond.
Cai walked to the swinging doors. In a single lunge, he swiped out with both hands and grabbed Rick and Aya by the throat. Fast. Faster than any para. Nearly vampire-fast.
“Put them away,” Cai said of their weapons, his voice as nonchalant as if they were standing at a bar having friendly drinks. “You’d be dead by the time you fired.”
Cai shoved and pushed both men back through the kitchen. I could hear their shoes sliding on the floor. We had known for a long time that Cai was far more than human. Cai’s strength, against two other paranormals who also had greater than human strength, was proof of that.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt thirteen

“When you ate the witches and the enemy Naturaleza, did you find their souls and give them back?” Ming asked.
Very few people knew I had helped the earth itself destroy a group of vampires responsible for terrorizing the city of Knoxville with dark magic and a cursed deck of cards called the Blood Tarot. Just how much did Ming, with her vampiric, blood-sucking technique of “bleeding and reading” victims, know about that case?
“I don’t have anything to do with souls,” I said, still choosing my words carefully.
“I think you are more than you are aware.”
The door behind me opened and Yummy walked in.
Yvonne?
Yummy had a real name. Occam had dated her before me. He had to have known her name. Her name had to be in the records. I had never looked.
Yummy was blond with a swimmer’s shoulders. Or a boxer’s. Broad and strong while still being lean and hard. We were friends of a sort. She was smiling a weird smile and if the hair on the back of my neck could stand up any higher it would have poked into the ceiling.
In Yummy’s hands was an antique painted metal box sealed with two narrow leather straps.
Sit,” Ming commanded her. “Watch,” she demanded of me.
Yummy pulled a small table between us and placed the tin box on top. It was about five inches by three by two, and was well-preserved beneath the thin straps, painted with a strange combination of coins, cups, daggers, a horse, pyramids, the Sphinx, and in the background, a tower. Yummy pulled a small stool to the table and sat at its corner, removed the straps, opened the box, and lifted the lid to reveal a deck of cards.
The cards were old, the paper thick and heavy, the inks deep and dark on one side with a faint brown stain on one corner of each card. The pattern on the back was of a sword crossed with a stick, a cup to one side, and a coin to the other.
My eyes flew to Yummy’s and her smile widened, making her look more human than I had ever seen her. Tarot.
Was this a Blood Tarot? One of three left in existence in the entire world?
Unit Eighteen of the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security had been looking for the Blood Tarot deck that had gone missing since the case Ming had mentioned. Well, I had been. It was my assignment, when I wasn’t on an active case, to find the one deck we had lost in the midst of fighting off a black magic working.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt fourteen

Rick LaFleur had a tattoo spell inked into his body with a Blood Tarot. His life and magic were bound up in it and by it.
“Yes, we found the Blood Tarot that you and your unit lost,” Yummy said, through that strange smile. “No, I didn’t tell you. Yes, Ming thinks it’s at the center of what’s about to happen to us. No, I don’t know anything else.”
About to happen? Prophecy? There was no such thing as prophecy. Thought the woman who grows leaves . . . I shoved that all away and asked Yummy, “You’re a mind reader now?”
“Turns out I might be a lot of things,” she said, sounding both enigmatic and wry. Yummy’s hair was different, long blond streaks in it, and though she wasn’t dressed as oddly as Ming, she was wearing peculiar clothes—green and pink plaid flannel pajama bottoms, red and white striped socks with Santa’s face on the outer ankles, and her shirt a fashionably torn, oversized sweatshirt in a hideous shade of sunshine gold. Visible through the holes in the sweatshirt was a tight, stretchy, bloodstained T-shirt, some of the blood, fresh.
“Shuffle the cards,” Ming ordered, pulling the edges of the purple fluffy robe over her knees. She had regained her imperiousness since drinking from Cai, but the robe, the wildly painted fingernails, and the long hair kept me on my toes.
Yummy shuffled the cards thoroughly and placed them in the center of the table. “Cut the deck,” she said to me.
“Ummm. No?”
Yummy’s eyes flew to mine, going wide with warning.
“The chur—” I stopped. The polygamist church where I was raised believed tarot cards were evil. And while I didn’t subscribe to a lot of the superstitions I’d been brought up believing, I knew this deck was different.
It had been created with spells and blood and death. The Blood Tarot decks were shrouded in mystery, with origins far older than the commonly accepted history. They were blood magic.
But I wasn’t a churchwoman.
I looked into Ming’s eyes and quickly away. Every cell in my body screamed for me to get away from her and from the deck of cards. I had no idea why the cards brought out such a strong reaction in me, but fear reactions, while triggered by the body’s survival system, were seldom logical. I forced my breathing to slow, but my hands were sweating, the churchwoman welling up in me.
“It . . . It may be dangerous,” I said.
“It is dangerous,” Ming agreed. Her words lashed out. “Cut the deck.” It wasn’t a request. The command was filled with compulsion.
I squeezed my fists together in my lap, fighting her demand. I had no backup. If I ran, I was likely to be killed, despite the reminder of the boons Ming owed me. If I refused, I would likely be dismissed and I’d never know what was going on.
Churchwoman.
I wasn’t. Not anymore. I was more. So much more. I was a special agent with PsyLED. I was an investigator, which meant I had to look at things of the world in ways different from the church’s fear and loathing. And I was a plant-woman with power of my own.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt fifteen

Ming still had a wound on her chest.
The energies of Soulwood, the pure magic of the Earth herself, pushed into me.
“Maaaggoooty . . .” There was threat in Ming’s voice.
Reaching out, I touched the deck of cards with a fingertip, exactly the way I would read unfamiliar or dangerous land. Nothing happened. I traced my finger across the card, analyzing. It was room temperature, the paper slightly fuzzy, and each of the deep pigments of the inks ingrained in the paper had a slightly different feel. The gold felt metallic—real gold, then. As I stroked the top card, I felt the magic in it. A tingle of power, a sensation of energy. It was vaguely the way one of T. Laine’s amulets felt, as if the power was restrained within, created for one use, one intent. But this felt even more. Perhaps . . . purposeful? Biding its time?
I drew in a breath. Sentient? Possessed?
I wanted to pull the small portable psy-meter out of my pocket and read the cards, but I figured that would be considered rude and I didn’t want to get eviscerated.
I lifted a third of the deck and placed it on the table. The back of the card I revealed was different from the first, the inks different, as if it was even more aged. I covered the top third with the bottom portion.
“Ask a question,” Ming demanded.
“What’s going on?”
Yummy removed the top card and placed it face down in the center of the table, her hand hovering over it a moment, as if in indecision. Quickly she placed twelve other cards around it in a circle, making a pattern, like a clock face.
She turned the center card over. It was a skeleton with a sickle standing in a pile of bones, some partially wrapped like mummies. Three white pyramids were in the background, a gold triangle on top of the largest. A sphinx was visible, though faded.
Yummy said, “No matter how we shuffle, no matter if we use only the Major Arcana or mix in the Minor Arcana, Death is revealed in the prime position.”
“That’s Death?”
“Yes.” She gathered the cards and inserted them randomly into the deck, then shuffled seven times. She placed the deck on the tabletop. I asked the same question, cut the deck, and she placed the cards into a cross shape, with three cards in the center in a fan, all face down. She touched the top card and said, “Celtic Cross spread. The third card is the one on top, and is the best course of action; the second card is the problem; and the card on the bottom is the person asking the question. You.”
She flipped the top card. Death was revealed, upside down. “As always,” she said, sounding grim, “but this time as potential rebirth.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt sixteen
Yummy flipped the middle tarot card over. “The second card is eight of wands, suggesting that death and rebirth are moving fast.”
She flipped the bottom card. “The Empress. In this case that’s you.”
The Empress card was of a woman sitting in a gold chair, wearing Egyptian clothing, a gold scepter in one hand, a spotted big-cat to one side. Behind her was flat land with grain crops and winding streams and the same pyramid in the distance. Like Death, it was an older card, older than the card in the middle.
Yummy flipped the other cards over, glancing at each one, but appeared uninterested. She gathered the cards and repeated the shuffling process, shuffling six times before saying, “Ask a different question.”
“But first we will have tea,” Ming said.
Even as she spoke, Cai pushed through the swinging doors from the kitchen, this time carrying a tray over his head. The fragrance was familiar, delicate and aromatic—a very expensive, loose-leaf oolong called Tieguanyin tea. The best varieties sold on the market for three thousand dollars per kilo and was named in honor of Guan Yin. Guan Yin was the Buddhist goddess known as the goddess of mercy. I knew this because Ming had sent me a small tin and I had tried it a time or two. I’d never tell her, but I liked my own decoctions better than the fancy tea.
But because vampires did nothing by chance, this tea was probably a reminder that the vampire Master of the City had somehow figured out that I was responsible for killing her vampire enemies.
But the two boons? That put me firmly in the lead. The hunger of the land sat within me. Waiting. Eager. Not something I would ever admit to, but a power I held, ready and waiting for an attack I hoped would never come.
Cai poured tea into tiny cups with even tinier handles. Ming lifted hers and I waited to sip the pale green tea until she pulled the cup away from her mouth. Then I tasted. Hoping I was doing it all in the right order. “I’m honored that Ming of Glass would share her Tieguanyin tea. It is delicious.”
“It is my favorite tea, gifted to those who please me most. The tea is even better with a drop of my Cai’s blood in it. Would you like to try it?”
My cup clattered into its saucer. “Ummm.” I stopped, aware my heart rate had sped again, my mind racing.
Cai leaned around the corner through the swinging doors. There was fresh blood on his lips. Rick’s blood? Aya’s? No. Cai would have drank from a vampire. Another vampire waiting around the corner. If I ever, ever, ever cursed, now would be the time.
“I am honored,” I lied, knowing she could smell the lie.
Cai entered the room again.
“But I should refuse your kind offer,” I said quickly. “I don’t know that my kind do well with blood.” And if I had a drop of his blood, that might tie him to my land, it might make him mine, and Ming would probably be really angry that I stole him. If I was right. “Especially strong blood like the blood your primo must surely have, after drinking from a Mithran as strong as Ming of Glass.”
Yummy raised her eyebrows in amusement and I wondered if the flattery was too much.
“I do see the difficulty in drinking Cai’s blood,” Ming said. “It may unsettle your . . . tree.”
It was so much in so few words.
I lifted the tea again and sipped, knowing that I needed to punch back, politely, or be considered prey. I smiled slowly. “Trees have wonderful self-defense mechanisms. Some of them have thorns. Some strangling vines.”
Cai walked back into the kitchen, and I could hear him whistling through the door.
Wackadoodle.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt seventeen
We drank slowly until the teacups were empty. Even Yummy, who clearly didn’t care for the tea overmuch, finished her cup. Ming placed her empty cup into the saucer and I followed suit. Yummy placed hers down last, though I had a feeling she had been finished with her tea for a while. Her eyes still looked amused.
“Yvonne,” Ming said. “The cards.”
Yummy shuffled the deck.
To me, Ming ordered, “Ask your different question.”
I cut the deck, sat back from the table a fraction of an inch. Placed my hands in my lap, one curled on top of the other. I pulled on my energies, and Soulwood answered with strength and comfort. “Why are the Mithrans different now?”
Yummy’s pale eyes met mine in shock. I had a feeling no one had asked why. They had just blamed the life in their bodies and the return of their souls on me. I was an easy target, an easy out.
Ming breathed in slowly. She had been vamped out all this time, but now her fangs clicked back into her mouth and her bloody eyes bled back to white.
Yummy laid out the cards in three rows of seven. “The Romany spread,” she said. Quickly, she pointed to the various rows, telling me about the horizontal rows A, B, and C, and the columns A through G, followed by the number of each card in the spread.
I didn’t take in much of it, but with this many cards, I could tell that the Blood Tarot, if it really was a Blood Tarot deck, was composed of two decks of cards, or one deck that was augmented with other, newer cards. The fancy cards, what Yummy called the Major Arcana, were older, much older, than the rest of the deck.
“The cards in the center column are the querent. That would be you.” Yummy pointed to the one closest. “Your past.” She indicated the center card. “The middle card is your present. And the bottom is your future.” She flipped over the card for my past. It wasn’t Death.
Yummy’s eyes met Ming’s.
“What?” I asked.
“Not Death. For the first time it isn’t Death,” Yummy said.
She sounded breathless, which, had I not been in danger, would have been funny, since vampires didn’t need to breathe. Right now, it just made my spine tighten even more.
“Instead,” Yummy said, “we have the Tower upright. Complete and utter disruption. Abandoning former ties.”
“Like I did when I left the church.”
“And as we Mithrans are going through now,” Ming said.
“Nell is the one who broke the chain of Death with that question, with this reading,” Yummy said as she flipped over the middle card. It showed two angels flying above the Earth, blowing trumpets. “Judgment. You are becoming free of what held you back.”
“But my question was ‘Why are the Mithrans different now?’ So if this stuff is really magic, then you vampires are the ones becoming free.”
Yummy flipped over the top card. It was a globe being held in the hands of two children. The children were naked, winged, and flying in the air.
“The most auspicious card in the entire tarot,” she whispered to me. “The card of the World always shows the globe of Earth held in the hands of twin children.”
I flinched before I could hold it in. My sister Esther had just given birth to twins. But it was unlikely that vampires would be interested in plant-children. And the twins on the card looked like stylized cherubs, not plant-people.
“This card of the Major Arcana means great success in all areas of life.” She smiled at Ming. “If this is the answer to her question, the good fortune is to be in all areas of our lives.”
“If we survive this change,” Ming said. She turned her black eyes to me and said, “I will answer your question. The change within us began recently with an upheaval and the return of our souls. It is still happening now. We are still in danger now. One hour before dawn, all of my Mithrans younger than a half century are chained in their lairs and watched over by their most trusted blood-servants. This is the only way they can be prevented from walking into the sun and burning. Shackled by who we are becoming, we wait out this change together, hoping we will all survive.
“Also,” she continued, “there are enemies in my city. The body we found is proof of this.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

Excerpt eighteen
Without turning over any of the other cards, Yummy gathered them into the single deck, placed them in the tin box, and strapped it closed. I assumed that meant our tarot card session was over. I had survived.
Ming settled her vampire eyes on me, but I didn’t feel any attempt at mesmerism. She wasn’t trying to roll me. “Many people and creatures want the Blood Tarot,” she said. “Black-witches, blood witches, power-hungry humans, weres of any stripe, Anzu for reasons of their own. The dragons of light—the arcenciels, who do not want a powerful tool in the hands of anyone—wish to find it. The skinwalker and the Dark Queen. My enemies, both Mithran and Naturaleza.”
Were-creatures and skinwalkers. Unit Eighteen had three special agents who were werecats. FireWind was a skinwalker. And FireWind had been breathing down my neck asking questions about my search for the Blood Tarot. Soul was an arcenciel, and she had been on vacation for far too long, long enough that Unit Eighteen was growing concerned. And Mithrans and Naturaleza were both vampires. One group kept humans like pets, the other liked hunting and killing. Until tonight, they all had felt like maggots to me.
“With the Blood Tarot,” she said, “I have great power. All others want the cursed deck. I have it. Therefore, you will work with me, for me, and I will protect you.”
Instead of answering her demand to work for her, I said, “You said your enemy was after the cards, but you didn’t offer a name. Who?”
“The most dangerous searcher of all: the Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada,” Ming said. “He is near us. He searches for the final death of the undead and for the Blood Tarot. He searches to bathe in the blood of his enemies. He searches for the end of this world and the rebirth of the next. And he intends to ride the dragon.”
Wackadoodle, I thought, just like T. Laine said. Except that the forms of the word search had been oddly accented.
“I owe you two boons,” Ming said, “yet I offer a third if you will do one thing for me. A small thing for one such as you.”
“I won’t promise you anything,” I said.
She was still holding me with her eyes, but she didn’t try to roll me, which might be the most strange part of this entire evening, because all vamps wanted to roll people and drink them down. It’s what they did. I didn’t break the contact either.
She took on a pleading expression. “I ask for little of you. Yet I offer a third boon,” she said. “Find Tomás. Kill him. And kill the four and the four who guard him still, for even with souls to guide
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ Copyright Faith Hunter

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