A Page Straight from Juliet Waldron #apagestraightfrom

Black Magic

by

Juliet Waldron

. 
Goran, the now grown son of Red Caterina and Christophe (as told in Red Magic) encounters a shocking destiny when he returns from years of soldiering to the Heldenberg.

  From Book 2 of the Magic Colours series:          

With an unearthly scream, Count hurled himself forward. For an instant Goran froze, watching as a green miasma flared, as the eye teeth extended. The Count’s long handsome face lengthened; his mouth became a forest of gleaming ivory, his breath an opened sepulcher.

            “Despair and Die, poor fool!”

            Blood beat in Goran’s forehead, in his loins, in his chest. The horns exploded, and he towered over the Count, his body a rippling, muscled mass. Flames shot from his eyes and spat through cracks in his black sinewy hide. He raised an arm, made a fist and roared with such rage that the stone walls of the Raptor’s Nest rocked. 

            “Corpse! Be gone! 

            The Count fell back, raised a hand to ward off the blow. The green orb protecting him wavered. Surprise twisted his features. His pale lips moved rapidly; he cowered. For an instant, he seemed only an elderly gentleman, dressed in shabby, antique clothing. As Goran reached, wanting nothing more than to grasp and crush him, when the green orb changed to black. It coalesced and fell, leaving only a heaving, crackling sooty mass upon the floor. 

            “Mary is mine!” The Count’s last words hung in the air.

             Goran blinked. The spot where the vampire had stood was marked only with a glowing pillow of creosote, like the oily residue of a chimney fire.

             Goran turned around and around in the great room. He was alone, with only the neatly covered furniture and expensive hangings for company. Furious, he threw back his horned head and roared, then stamped and stamped again. The Italian mosaic fractured; the ground beneath the floor shook. He stamped harder, crashed his giant frame into the painted walls till they cracked. A chunk of ceiling fell. He raised his arms and bellowed, called to the over-looking Heldenberg.

             The ground beneath his feet groaned and then swayed. Glass shattered as the great row of eastern windows blew out, but that only served to fuel his fury. He threw furniture through the opening and pulled down the priceless hangings. As his claws grazed wood and fabric, it burst into flame.

             Finally, he hurled himself through the broken windows, and changed again, without so much as an instant’s forethought, into a Langenmeier, long wings spread across the void. Black clouds swirled and boiled down from the heights like an avalanche of darkness. Lightning struck the roof again and again, blasting away slates.

             Below, something enormous moved on the mountain, a huge boulder parting from a stone outcrop directly uphill from the mansion. Slowly, shearing, grinding, and then gathering speed, it bowled toward The Raptor’s Nest.

             Goran exulted when he recognized it—not a boulder at all, but a squat troll, like the one he’d seen on the day he’d rescued the baby Steenbock. Misshapen and gray, bracken waved upon its knobby head. It sometimes rolled and sometimes waddled, thick legs angled wide. With a thunderous crash, it struck the side of the building. Bricks flew into the air; the many-turreted roof began a balletic inward collapse.

             With a deafening roar, the storm arrived, saturating the air with icy water. Goran stretched his wings and pushed away into the rain, aiming for a distant clear line. Studded with twinkling stars, it lay due west.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Coming soon--(I hope October) from Books We Love.
 
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