Dark, Dangerous, Magical Men Who LIVE to Annihilate Evil
Blood
and Magic
Coven Enforcers, #1By Ann Gimpel
Dream Shadow Press
#NewRelease
Release Date: 7/18/16
Genre: Historical paranormal romance with a steampunk edge
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Coven Enforcers = Dark, Dangerous, Magical Men
Coven Witches bow to no one—least of all Enforcers.
Sparks ignite. Tempers run high. Passion explodes. Hot. Sweet. Impossible to ignore....
Book Description
Magic didn’t just find Luke Caulfield. It chased him down, bludgeoned him, and has been dogging him ever since. Some lessons are harder than others, but Luke embraces danger, upping the ante to give it one better. An enforcer for the Coven, a large, established group of witches, his latest assignment is playing bodyguard to the daughter of Coven leaders.
Abigail Ruskin is chaperoning a
spoiled twelve-year-old from New York to her parents’ home in Utah Territory
when Luke gets on their stagecoach in Colorado. A powerful witch herself,
Abigail senses Luke’s magic, but has no idea what he’s doing on her stagecoach.
Stuck between the petulant child and Luke’s raw sexual energy, Abigail can’t
wait for the trip to end.
Unpleasant truths surface about
the child. While Abigail’s struggling with those, wraiths, wolves, and dark
mages launch an attack. Luke’s so attracted to Abigail, she’s almost all he can
think about, but he’s leery too. The child is just plain evil. Is Abigail in
league with her? It might explain the odd attack that took out their driver and
one of their horses. In over his head, he summons enforcer backup.
Will they help him save the
woman he’s falling in love with, or demand her immediate execution?
…Cursing her long skirts and
cumbersome petticoats, Abigail used magic to skip the coach steps. Power blazed
from her hands before she could see what she was aiming at. She was afraid if
she took even a few seconds to hunt for a target, something would get her.
Being dead wasn’t desirable, but it was better than the other things wraiths
could do to her. Those turned her blood to ice chips.
With her booted feet planted
firmly on the ground, Abigail finally got a good look at the wraiths. She drew
magic from deep in the earth and sent it chasing after them when they jumped
sideways to evade her magic. Insubstantial as tall, thin puffs of smoke, they
had glowing charcoal eyes. Long, blood red claws graced what passed for hands.
Binding their victims with fiery strands was a favorite trick—just before they
sucked your soul right out of you, leaving a handy vessel for one of their
masters to occupy. Wraiths used to feed only on the living, making them into
new wraiths. They’d been bad enough then, but now they functioned as hired
thugs for practitioners of the Black Arts. It lent them the ability to operate
in broad daylight. Abigail wondered which group of sorcerers this crew worked
for. The Alchemical Council? Black Magick?
Good God but there were a lot
of them. Why? Surely they weren’t
interested in the contents of the coach, which only carried mail and Carolyn’s
substantial luggage. Ducking and spinning to escape being entwined in a blazing
net, she thought about the girl’s steamer trunks. Abigail only helped pack two
of them. The third had been locked and ready to go. Could that possibly be what
the wraiths were after?
She shut off her thoughts so
she could focus. The ragged sound of her own panting thrummed loud in her ears
as she chucked one killing blow after another. Bolts of blue-white light flared
from both hands. No point in running anything less than wide open. For each
wraith she obliterated, three more showed up to take its place. Her chest ached
from breathing sooty air and wraith stench.
Heat seared her back.
Damnation! Her skirts were on fire. Abigail funneled magic behind her to quell
the flames, but it didn’t work. Smoke stung her nostrils. Fire had already
eaten a long gouge in one of her hands. If she dropped to the ground to deal
with her burning clothes, the wraiths would pounce. Terror licked at her along
with the flames.
In spite of her brave thoughts
earlier, she didn’t want to die. Not here. And not like this. She cursed her
corset. It was hard to get a decent breath. If she’d known she was going to
have to fight—
“Keep after ’em,” Luke growled
from behind her. “I have your dress under control.” She felt him drape something
heavy around her shoulders—a lap robe he must’ve snatched from inside the
coach—and press it close against her with his body. Gratitude wrapped warm
tentacles around her. Having him right next to her made her already pounding
heart do flip-flops, but she forced herself to focus on something other than
all those rock-hard muscles jammed against her back.
“Are they all on this side of
the coach?” she wheezed, still struggling to breathe. Between the smoke, her
stays, and Luke’s body so near, it was a losing battle.
“Pretty much. Guess they want
you more than me. Actually, they’ve been trying to get to the trunks up top.”
A discordant warning note
sounded in the back of her mind. What the hell was in the girl’s luggage that
would draw wraiths? Her back wasn’t hot anymore, so she assumed the fire was
out.
That
fire, maybe. The one inside me is just getting going…
She squirmed from more than the
smoke and struggled not to turn around and press the front of herself against
Luke. They had bigger problems than his undeniable charisma. Luke didn’t seem
to be in a hurry to move away, though. He remained front to back with her, and
she absorbed power flowing from him. Damn, but he was strong. What she wouldn’t
give for that kind of magic.
It
would help if I could breathe…
With difficulty, Abigail forced
her mind away from Luke’s charms. “The driver?” She hadn’t been round to the
front of the wagon to check.
“Dead.”
“Ever driven one of these
things?”
“Concentrate on killing, woman.
If we can’t get shut of the wraiths, ’twon’t matter a diddly damn.”
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