Showing results by author "Celia Roman"

When my boy Henry was killed, I tracked a pooka through the deep wood for three days with no food in my gut and only my daddy's hunting knife for comfort. Was what got me into the monster killing business, that pooka, and I ain't regretted a single day of it since. The day I stumbled on a four-legged critter with human eyes, the rightness of my revenge begun to unravel, leading me to a clan of two-natured shifters what'd been living under my nose the whole time.

Four dark tales of the holiday spirit. In "Christmas Eve Gift", Old Bill sets out on her annual Christmas Eve journey to her niece's house and encounters an unexpected darkness along the way. In "A Dark Christmas", Alice, a dark daughter of the vampire, Elizabet, turns the table on a family of hunters. In "On the 7th Day of Christmas", Sunny finally gets to throw a party, only a monster shows up and twists a small kink into her New Year's Eve festivities. In "Twelfth Night", A 13-year-old encounters the Woman with No Face for the first time.

I had three loves in my life: my daddy, him what my mama killed in cold blood; my son Henry, God rest him; and tall as an oak Riley Treadwell. I lost all of 'em, one way or t'other, 'til Riley showed up on my stoop with a monster problem and tried to wiggle his way back into my life. Only, weren't no monster bothering him; was the one bothering his ex-girlfriend what'd stirred up a hornet's nest out on Lake Burton amongst the muckity mucks. Weren't no never mind to me, see?

After my uncle Fame run his wife off for messing around with his brother, we thought for sure we seen the last of 'em. Good riddance to bad blood, right? Only, weren't no Happy Ever After in store for any of us....

My itchy feet drug me to the ATL one night for a light flirt, but I didn't get me no R and R. 'Stead, I found a hobo, a ghost, and a trio of vampires, and me with my best weapons locked in the trunk of my daddy's car. That'll learn me to drive down to the city, if I made it off the Gold Line alive.