Serenity Series Book 3
by Bonnie Rose Leigh
copyright 2008, eXtasy Books
Genre: Werewolf / Menage / Series
Available: October 31, 2008
Blurb:
Willow Kincaid, a successful pub owner, never expected that dropping off her evenings take at the bank would result in her abduction. Even more bizarre is waking up tied to a temporary altar in Serenity’s only cemetery on All Hallows Eve. When robe-garbed men surround her and begin chanting from an ancient text while holding daggers over her naked body, she’s positive she’ll never live to see morning.
Derek Moretti and Quinn Donovan, werewolves without a pack or family of their own, moved to Serenity after hearing the town was in desperate need of more enforcers to take care of paranormal baddies. Within days, the pair scents their mate and takes jobs as bouncers at The Howler, the pub their mate owns. When Willow fails to return home to her apartment above the pub where they’re laying in wait to claim her, they know something has happened to her and they’ll stop at nothing to see her safely returned to them.
But Willow’s kidnapping is only the beginning, for when she’s rescued it sets off a chain of events too terrifying to be ignored. As the terror campaign in Serenity escalates, it will take all three of them to defeat their enemies and a love that even pure evil cannot conquer.
Excerpt (unedited and subject to change before final publication)
She noticed the suffocating darkness first, even before the whispered chanting reached her ears. The air tasted of mildew and dust. Goosebumps pebbled across her skin. She heard something heavy dragging in the distance just before a gust of wind brushed against her body. That’s when she realized that wherever she was, wherever they’d taken her after knocking her over the head, they’d stripped her of all her clothes.
She tried to move, tried to get up, but her arms were secured above her head somehow. Her legs were spread-eagled and something heavy and tight encircled her ankles. Her stomach clenched. A wave of nausea swept over her. She struggled against her bindings and they only tightened around her wrists and ankles, sending numbing pain through her limbs.
She needed to think, needed to find a way to save herself from Goddess knows what, but she didn’t even know where she was, who had her, or how many people she’d have to fight off. Her head pounded, beating mercilessly with every frantic pulse of her heart. This couldn’t be happening to her. She should never have left the pub tonight. How could she have been so stupid?
The whispers grew louder. She licked her lips, scared out of her mind, afraid to speak, afraid not to. Her entire body trembled. The nausea worsened. The more she struggled against her bonds, the louder the chanting grew. They had to know she’d awakened and yet they didn’t stop speaking. She could hear voices all around her, coming from every direction. So many voices, men and women, yet no one particular voice stood out as familiar to her despite the small size of their town.
If she could only see what was going on around her, perhaps she could calm herself enough to think, but the darkness was all consuming. As the voices rose in pitch yet again, a haunting wail echoed around her, like the call of a banshee portending death. Her heart thumped, thumped, thumped against her chest as fear the likes of which she’d never before felt whipped through her. Whatever was going to happen to her, it would be soon. She didn’t have a doubt in her mind about that. She just had so many regrets. She regretted that she hadn’t given in to the impulse to take Derek and Quinn to her bed before her abduction, that she hadn’t had a child of her own yet to pass her genes on to, but most of all, she regretted that more than likely the people who held her would get away with their crime.
Before another regret or morbid thought could enter her mind, the flare of a match briefly lit up the room. What she saw in that second chilled her to the bone. She closed her eyes, briefly, positive that when she opened them she’d find that she’d imagined the black-robed figures surrounding her. But when she worked up the courage to open them again, she quickly learned she hadn’t imagined a thing. The room was brighter now, allowing her to see more of what surrounded her… unfortunately.
Her entire body began to tremble as her gaze quickly scanned the small square chamber that held her. Her teeth chattered, whether from the bone-deep cold of the cement room or the sight of the thirteen black robed kidnappers surrounding her, their cowls completely cloaking their identities, she didn’t know. It took only seconds to catalogue the rest of her surroundings, making her wish she’d never bothered to regain consciousness because without a doubt she knew she was about to die.
The one reading from the tome grew louder as the light in the stone room grew brighter. That’s when Willow realized just where she’d been taken, just where they’d stashed her to perform their rituals—inside the only mausoleum in Serenity’s only cemetery.
When someone grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, brandishing a long, copper, crescent-shaped blade over her throat, all semblance of calm disappeared. She did the only thing she could. She screamed as if her life depended on it because it very well did. The obsidian dagger glinted in the low lights as it came toward her face. The chanting grew louder and louder. She screamed again before giving in to the waiting darkness.