Saint Peter's Gate

Fran Comesanas

Description

“Comesanas intertwines the age old parable of Heaven, Hell, and Earth into a page turning and captivating novel with gripping characters that the reader will both love and hate.”
—The US Review of Books
Bitter and resentful toward humanity because of her past life, a ruthless hunter demon tracks and claims the souls of her human victims, offering them nothing but terror and death. As her career as a hunter progresses, she discovers that a rogue demon is hatching a diabolical plot to raise an army of demons to take control of Saint Peter’s Gate to usurp power. As the hunter begins to discover more about her past, she finds out that the rogue demon is responsible for her family’s death. Will the knowledge of what really happened to her family change her feelings about humanity, or will she be dragged into darkness, consumed by her constant contact with the damned souls she harvests?

Sujets

• Peter
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Trafford Publishing
• Date de parution: 17 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781490781259
• Langue: English

Extrait

SAINT PETER’S GATE
PATH OF DARKNESS
 
 
 
 
FRAN COMESANAS
 
 
 
© Copyright 2017 Fran Comesanas. 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 written prior permission of the author.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4907-8127-3 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-4907-8126-6 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-4907-8125-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017903337
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
 
Trafford rev. 03/07/2017
 
www.trafford.com North America & international toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada) fax: [phone]
Contents
PROLOGUE
BOOK I
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
BOOK II
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
 
EPILOGUE
 
 
 
To my family:
Thank you for keeping my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds.
Afghanistan: The Lost Pages
In the winter of 2013, I was given the opportunity to be appointed as a law enforcement advisor for the United States Army. I accepted, and that spring I found myself at Fort Campbell, home of one of the greatest military units in the world. The men and women of the 101 st Airborne Division are some of the finest people it has been my pleasure to meet. Being there only deepened my respect for our military members. They were respectful, knowledgeable, and incredibly professional.
I was assigned to what is known as the Security Force Assistance Advisory Team or SFAAT. I could not have asked for a better group of men. They were all young and proud. The team had a wide variety of personalities and talents, which meshed together to become what many considered to be the finest SFAAT in RC East, Afghanistan.
The team worked long hours, easily more than fourteen hours a day, every day, seven days a week. There were mounted patrols and more meetings and helicopter flights than I can remember. We shared rooms, food, and even our precious care packages sent from loved ones back home. We shared much laughter and grieved, it seemed, too often. Since I had never deployed, my team taught me the ropes and kept me safe.
I have much to thank them for.
In what little downtime there was, I managed to write about thirty pages of this book. Unfortunately, those pages were lost. Only a small part of those pages was salvaged from what could be remembered and then pieced back together with the rest of the story. In many ways, I can liken those lost pages to Afghanistan.
After writing those lost pages, I saved them to a flash drive and set it aside, excited to add the material to my story when I got home. As time went by, I forgot about the flash drive. It wasn’t difficult to forget about it, as most days, we were on the go. Eventually, I lost the flash drive, and the thirty pages I had written. The long days at the forward operating base continued right up until the morning it was time for me to catch my helicopter flight to Bagram, and eventually, home.
As Americans, it has become easy for us to forget about Afghanistan. It’s not often in the news anymore, and honestly, celebrity tweets make more headlines than our military members that are put in harm’s way every day in Afghanistan, and other places around the world. Like that flash drive, we take it for granted that it’s always there and so it loses its importance to us.
Our military men and women are still out there. Still fighting. They are fighting for their friends and families, fighting for us. Fortunately, my team made it home safe, but the same cannot be said of soldiers that I came to know, and many others that I was never fortunate enough to meet. They are gone now, but not forgotten. I will never forget them, or their sacrifice. For those that fought or are still fighting for this country, I hope that someday, in this life or the next, I will get to shake your hand and thank you for your service.
 
 
 
 
Smokin’ Aces
PROLOGUE
The wave smashed him against the high cliff wall. The impact sent a blinding wave of pain through his skull. The water pounded him again, forcing his battered body deeper and nearly forcing the air from his lungs. The demon didn’t know which direction the surface lay. He could feel himself being pulled along now. The current had sucked him in. He felt a sudden acceleration. As he tried to orient himself, he was suddenly slammed up into a wall. A tunnel? He was doomed. Being dragged into a deep cave meant that he would most certainly drown. His lungs were burning now. All he could hope for was that he would get pushed into an air pocket so that he would be able to add a few more seconds to what had become a miserable existence. He was reaching the end of his endurance. As he gave up his struggle to keep his body from spinning and flipping, the current spilled him into a shallow pool.
The demon managed to drag himself half out of the silvery liquid. He tried gulping for air. He gagged and vomited. He coughed and turned over on his back. He looked down and realized his legs were still lying in the water. He dragged himself out, knowing very well that there were things that could easily drag him back in. Drowning would be sweet bliss compared to being bitten in half, or worse. Horrors best not spoken of thrived in this place. The Deep had meant to claim him, but somehow, he had survived.
The demon forced his seven-foot frame upright. Only then did he realize the severity of the peril that he now faced. His right leg buckled underneath him. He fell back down in a painful heap. He reached to feel his knee and noticed a bone sticking out of his right arm. Practically crippled, He nearly said out loud. He could manage somewhat with the broken arm, but the injury to his knee would cut down his mobility. That could prove fatal in this place.
He felt cold—something he hadn’t felt in millennia. He slowly moved to his left. The scraping of his body against the cave floor sounded unnaturally loud. The demon stopped for a moment, pain flaring in his broken arm. An uncharacteristic whimper escaped his torn lip. He moved to the left a bit more and found the cave’s wall. The pain in his head was fading, bringing the rest of his injuries into focus.
He could hear his breathing and the sound of the underground stream that had dumped him in this unholy place. He felt like a rodent that had been run over by a speeding car. He wanted to kill something. That always made him feel better. The demon needed to find a way out, find a way back to the surface. The idea made him smile in the dark.
Unbeknownst to the demon, another entity lay undisturbed in the darkness of the caves. Unlike the demon, it didn’t know what day it was. It didn’t even know what century it was for that matter. It had been awakened. Something had entered its deep refuge. Surviving in Limbo long after its brethren had perished had heightened its sense of survival. A great war had destroyed nearly all his kind long ago. On the day that war ended, Limbo had very nearly been torn from the fabric of reality because of the powers that had been wielded. Unluckily for him, the powers of Light had vanquished the darkness. The forces of Saint Peter’s had survived yet again.
The pain of the matter faded as the ancient intelligence heard yet again the scraping of claw on stone. The cave the ancient wyrm resided in was partially filled with the silvery liquid that seeped in from the Deep. He flexed his massive claws, black talons that had kept their razor-sharp edge throughout the centuries. Thick muscles contracted and complained as the wyrm began to slither and climb, pulling the rest of its enormous body out of the water in utter silence.
If the great beast could be seen on the surface, it would appear to be as black as night about three quarters of the way down its body. The rest had been somehow stained over time by the silvery white liquid of the Deep, causing the scales to take on a similar color. In the darkness of the cave, not even the wyrm knew that its hide had been discolored.
The wyrm, now climbing a sheer vertical wall, could smell what had disturbed its sleep. What manner of treachery is this? It climbed a bit higher, and then stopped, listening for another telltale sound. Wretched creature, move again so that I may taste of your flesh. It could not remember the last time it had eaten. In the cavern’s complete darkness, the wyrm flicked its tongue out, smiling maliciously.
The cavern the wyrm currently occupied had not been open to the cave above when it had originally entered, but water had bored an opening down into its refuge over the centuries. The wyrm could not see that the opening wasn’t large enough for it to pass through completely. As it dragged itself up into the higher cave, it got stuck. The creature that had awakened it was only scant yards away from its maw. Perhaps if it could somehow dislodge the creature from the cavern’s wall, it would fall close enough to reach. The thought pleased it greatly, so it tried to remember what it was that demons loved the most. The wyrm knew it was a demon. Its smell was unique, like deceit and rotting meat.