Not All Hairs and Graces

R.M. Gibson

Description

What do you make for tea for a full house of hungry beasts when all you have in the cupboard is a packet of pasta and a tin of chickpeas? How do you go back to work after you slapped your co-worker at the staff Christmas party? How do you live with yourself after eating that third bar of chocolate three days into your healthy new year's resolution? How do you feel valued in a world where you are judged on the colour of your fur? How do you get over your brother bringing a fanged monster in high heels into the house? How do you get through the day when a 1000-year-old demon wants to take over your mind? Those are constant questions for Bernadette St James, a young fiery woman, part of a progressive wolf pack in Bedfordshire. Her entire life is thrown into mayhem when she meets emotionally stunted vampire beauty, Grace. Maybe there is more between the two of them than a 1000-year-old feud between their species.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528963527
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

N ot A ll H airs and G races
R.M. Gibson
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-05-29
Not All Hairs and Graces About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Introduction: 1367 Chapter 1: 2015 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4: One week later Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7: One month later, more attacks Chapter 8: One week later, More missing Chapter 9 Chapter 10: Four weeks later Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14: Two weeks later Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17: Two weeks later Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Epilogue
About the Author
R.M. Gibson, a first-time novelist born in Darlington in 1995, has always been creative and had a budding imagination and, as the years have gone on, has become invested in the social issues facing the world today. Through struggles and doubts from peers, the important thing has been to strive to achieve dreams; no matter what it takes.
Dedication
To my oldest friend, Sarah; we have been through many things together and though we may not be joined at the hip, we know our friendship will always be special. I love you, sweetie.
To Rowden, you made the time writing this novel some of my best and I will always remember that. Always and Forever...SILAS!
Copyright Information ©
R.M. Gibson 2020
The right of R.M. Gibson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528921664 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528963527 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2020
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Introduction

1367
Running, that’s it. If running is the last thing you can remember from your mortal life, you’re doing it wrong, and I definitely was, if my aching lungs were anything to go by. I looked back only once to see the mob flashing behind me. Their torches like beacons of the long death they wanted to inflict upon me. Through all of the things I had done in my life, this was the one thing I was to be punished for. It wasn’t the first time I had been chased by a mob with fire, but most of the times, it was by mortals afraid I was a witch, a vampire, a demon. But this was different—a mob of humans barely child’s play, but a mob of vampires, werewolves, witches and other demons who had all come together to take me out. I was terrified. I was outraged, but I didn’t have time for anger, it was them; they had finally surrounded me. I ran to the hills but as I ran, I saw an ominous red glow. Then I saw them—screaming angry people running towards me, cornering me. I had nowhere to go. They had me. NO, NO, NO! This couldn’t be it. NO, NO! That was it . I felt a rush of wind to my left but it was too late, the beast had me pinned to the ground. Its hot fowl breath on my face. “NO,” I screamed, clawing at the creature, “no, you won’t take me.” I was surrounded now. Closer they came and I couldn’t shake off the over grown beast. Then it came—the bite, then agony. I couldn’t even scream as its fang pierced my jugular, but no ripping anything out, just torture. Biting down hard and releasing me before the saliva took over enough to change me. This wasn’t the plan; I was to be feared. Respected. Not rebelled against. I was Ada St James; nothing could hurt me…till now.
“BURN THE DEMON.” I heard a man shout, brandishing his torch to the crowd of mixed species, all cheering for my death. They weren’t any better than me for this hell. I know I have killed and I have tortured, but I had never done this. I didn’t think I deserved this. I was tied by my hands to the rope laced in wolf’s bane, burning into me as the rope’s rough strings cut into my skin, like being slit with glass repeatedly, over and over again. I shrieked as a large demon lifted, gagged, and bound me over his shoulder, back to where they had been setting up my torture chamber. I was drugged and beaten. The only place I could have thought to have gone was the woods. They had always protected me before, but after everything I had done, even the woods were against me. The usual noisy winds had been silent, not even trying to mask my heavy breaths and fast beating heart. It was as though even the foliage wanted me dead. All the cheers for my death frightening me beyond anything I had ever experienced in my long life. There was no way out.
He turned to face the crowd lifting me high above his head and I finally saw the stakes. A tall wooden pole in the middle of a cascading waterfall of chips and firewood, all pointing up towards the centre or down to the pits of hell I was going to. I struggled as much as my small female body would allow. I was not going to die. No, NO!
I tried to scream through my gag not caring how wolf’s bane flooded my bleeding mouth as I was secured to the post by many vampires hissing at my neck to keep me down. I couldn’t hear what the leader was screaming into the cheering crowd around the blood rushing through my ear. The drum beat, I realised, wasn’t just the beat of my heart, but a chant they were trying to curse me out with. I screamed and screamed. Then, there was silence. I lifted my head. The crowd was still, as the man lowered the torch to the wood below. The flames leapt up from the ground as if the hells were consuming them. I couldn’t scream any more—the heat, the burning, the flame, scratched and scarred my tightening flesh. Tears falling from my eyes, making the last of the moisture in my body being consumed. Then I saw her, at the back of the crowd through the black trees of the forest; the witch, she raised her hands at the crystal and smiled. My chest shined where my own crystal shone back against the flames. There it was, I would die alone in this body. Ada St James would be back, and when I was, they would all be sorry. I smiled through the pain and a laugh rose up through me—a cackling laugh, insane and fierce from deep in my chest. I would be back.
Chapter 1

2015

Bernie
“DANIEL, YOU DICKHEAD!” I screamed down the stairs after my brother’s retreating form. I swear that the guy has rockets in his Timberlands. Panting and gasping, I made my way to the ground floor, mentally cursing myself for picking a room on the fifth floor. I catch a glimpse of my brother and smirking, launch myself on his leather clad back…to find myself face first on the floor, with his knee on my back. I growl at my own foolishness; I should know by now not to take on Daniel when he’s had time to prepare. He’s such an asshole.
The cold stone slab tiles on the floor imprint angrily into my face as he pushes me further into the iceberg ground of our large farmhouse kitchen.
“So, who’s a dickhead?” He sneers down at me, crushing my little body with his huge frame. Asshole. Bastard. Wanker.
“You!” I groaned as his knee pressed into my back, I was not backing down no matter what. Oh God! Ow! There’s sharp bits in the cement.
“Get off, dickhead,” he smirked and got off me. I moved as fast as I could, but not fast enough as he jumped and landed hard on my back knocking the wind out of me.
“Who’s a dick head?” he repeated in that stupid patronising tone of his.
“You.”
“Who?” he taunted.
“YOU!” I screamed into the floor. You wouldn’t think he was thirty-two with the way he treated me—like a little sister, but I guess I wasn’t really acting like the twenty-nine-year-old mature woman I normally am. God is he heavy. Suddenly, the weight left me and air whooshed back into my lungs at a painful rate. I looked up to see him laughing as he opened the fridge taking out a foot-long sub and all the fillings, tucking the full tubs of meat under his chin for support as he pushed the fridge door shut with his big stupid back. I climbed back to my feet, predictably in the huff. What a dick. I watched as he lathered a thick swipe of mayonnaise onto the poor bread, soon to be drowning in the creamy delicious sauce with his big manly hands…oh God! Hormones.
Daniel wasn’t really my brother, so don’t start thinking I have some sick incestuous relationship with him; that was what I called my closest housemates and fellow pack members, and at times with the full moon and leading up to it, being in a pack with twenty fully grown and muscled wolf men with chiselled chests and musky scents…Jesus Christ, this is not good. It was only three days from the full moon and I was already getting techy. That’s my family’s fault, our specific pack. We were highly fertile, the colour of our fur made it impossible for our reaction to go unnoticed by the entire male population. He looked up, watching me as I watched him.
“Yes?” he said, mocking me. “Can I help you, doctor?”
No Bernie, don’t even try to punch his face, his stupid big fat face, his beautiful, stupid, fat…beautiful face.
I had never had any interest in Daniel in a sexual sense. We were too close. It was like a brother-sister relationship if it wasn’t for the odd nip, and it wasn’t only one-sided. But hey, that’s what our species was like. He was flirty; I was sort of flirty but more in a punchy, abusive way. But you had to be blind to not notice that he was as handsome as a Greek god, and damn did it piss me off.
“You heard me,” I scolde