Five star reviews on Amazon, and Night Owl Romance rates it a 4, if you haven't checked it out already, settle in with a novel that gives you a complex plot with mixed genres.
OUT OF THE PAST is a paranormal thriller that is part historical and part modern day. The first reviewer stated: "Out of the Past is a crime-mystery, a thriller, a romance—intensely sensual, interweaving 1880's London with present day Toronto
OUT OF THE PAST
Cover by: Kayden McLeod
Blurb:
A series
of killings has the Toronto Police Department in turmoil. The press has labelled
the killer a “werewolf” and hysteria is on the rise in the heat of the summer… Detective Damien Knightley is the lead investigator, but he’s got secrets of his
own that need guarding in this very public investigation. Knightley is a
vampire, and as the case gets more complex, what he discovers has him both
baffled and worried.
In the
Northern Ontario town of Brighton Toronto
As Damien
recalls a love from a century ago, the threads of time are being pulled
together, joining the past and the present. The beautiful woman he is falling in
love with is bringing back memories he’d rather forget, and when the killer is
finally revealed, there are more questions than answers in the
identity…
Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
January
The flames rose, blindingly
intense, searing away the last vestiges of reality. Somewhere inside her, Shanna
Blackthorne felt a scream of terror begin. Her hands moved, sluggishly, as
though through mud, until they reached her face. She wanted to obliterate the
inferno that raged before her, but it refused to be extinguished so easily. She
gulped air into desperate, struggling lungs, but only the hot, dry fire poured
into her body.
The scream escaped.
There was no one to hear
it.
Pain exploded within her, but in
its wake was clarity. She writhed, whimpered weakly, and shook her head in
denial of what unfolded before objecting eyes...
Fog
shrouded the night, curling, mist-like tentacles that floated above the street
in search of human warmth. Despite the relative earliness of the hour, the
normally busy roads were eerily quiet. Only the occasional burst of noise from
an opening door gave evidence to the teeming life of the vast city. Outside the
noisy pubs, a lone figure prowled the streets.
He watched, and
waited. Patience was a familiar imposition, but it ended well,
usually.
Tonight would be
no different.
He picked one of
the oldest dives in the vicinity, a place he knew well. He also knew most of the
women who frequented the establishment. He had long ago decided he preferred the
sweetness of feminine flesh to males. There was one lady in particular that he had wanted
to get close to, but she had always eluded him. It was the eve of a new year
tonight, and he decided it would begin with her
company.
He didn't have to
wait long, but she emerged from the tavern with another man in tow. Furious, he
followed.
He hesitated as he
watched the couple from the mouth of a darkened alley. They were less than a
block from the Britannia, a public house located at the North corner of
Commercial
Street Dorset Street Holiday stupor.
The scents of sex
and sweat teased his senses and he felt another, stronger pang of hunger deep
within him.
He stepped into
the alley and approached the couple in complete silence. She knew he was there,
he realized a moment later when her liquor-brightened eyes pierced the shadows
and found him in the darkness. His heartbeat quickened, he heard his own sharp
intake of breath, felt the rapid pulse he'd learned to associate with fear and
excitement. Her customer quickly pulled himself together and stumbled off
without a backward glance. The passage of time held hunter and prey motionless,
clear blue eyes locked with glassy hazel. When she held out her hand to him, he
stepped toward her.
"You're not like
the others, are you?" she questioned in a slurred
voice.
There was still
enough awareness to make him pause. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her
head so he could look more closely at her. She was very young, especially for
life in Whitechapel. She was not overly pretty. Before long she would be like so
many of the women who populated this area, aged by the harshness of a life that
meant little to any of them.
"What's your
name?" He pretended not to know as he
kept his tone a gentle, compassionate whisper.
"They call me
Emma, my lord," she grinned, the expression exposed rotting teeth and foul
breath. He might have been wrong about her age, he realized distantly. She
straightened her clothes and inched closer to him. Here was a handsome young
lord, and if she played this right, she might be rewarded richly for her
trouble.
"Do they?" He smiled, imagined he could hear the shift
of her thoughts as she contemplated her chances of successfully robbing him.
Still smiling, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold coin. Her eyes
fastened on the proffered money, greed easily read past the haze of alcohol.
When she snatched the coin from his hand, he pressed her back against the cold
brick of the building.
Emma's spurt of
laughter was abruptly silenced when her head was yanked to one side. The snap of
bones was audible, followed by a groan of pain. Then the only murmur that could
be heard in the blackness was the soft maddened laughter of pleasure as his
teeth tore her flesh from her bones...
"No... Dear God! Enough... please?"
Shanna wept bitterly, disoriented
and horrified by the latest dream/vision. The savage inner conflagration had
receded, replaced by the reality of the tiny blaze in the ancient stone
fireplace that dominated her small living room. There was little comfort in the
awareness that what she had seen was very old. The agony of the killer still
twisted around her heart, chilled her despite the heat that emanated from the
hearth. This was simply the latest in a long line of dreams that had brought
unbearable terror into her life. She'd heard about the others, those that were
not ancient deaths, but happening now, and with each murder came the fear that
she might have stopped it. The reasonable part of her mind knew better, of
course, she never saw a death before it occurred, but that did not make it
easier to witness people being destroyed. She cringed, tried to escape the rest
of the thought, failed. She could still feel the flesh being torn from fragile
bones, muscle and sinew shredding like paper in the hands of a killer that was
more monster than man.
She forced herself to her feet, and
walked into the lovely, old-fashioned kitchen. As she went through the ritual of
making tea, she made herself recall every detail of the murder she had been
forced to witness and feel. Within the heart of the killer was a conflict as old
as the latest vision itself.
Pain, coupled with deeply repressed
fears. The mind of this killer was not mayhem and madness, despite the obvious
appearances. She sensed agony, and loneliness, and confusion. Like an empath,
she absorbed the emotions, made them part of herself, and cried softly without
truly being conscious she did so. Shanna had known isolation and ridicule in her
own life, knew what the scorn and contempt of others could drive someone to, if
they didn't learn to draw on inner strengths.
She pulled her lacy shawl closer to
her, huddled against its illusory warmth. Long waves of auburn hair fell to her
waist, and she swept the heavy fall back in a gesture as natural as breathing.
The whistle of the kettle drew her wandering attention back to mundane tasks,
and she finished her chore automatically.
A short while later, curled before
the fire once again, Shanna shivered. Her gaze flew to the door of her cottage-
style home, and the sound of a low, anguished howl wrenched at her soul. Pure,
raw agony flooded her body, and with it came a terror stronger than anything she
had ever before known.
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