QSFer Andrea Speed has a new MM paranormal romance out: Darlings of New Midnight.
There’s more than one way to interpret destiny.
The Son of Satan, a demon hunter, a mummy, a witch, a harpy, and the messenger of an elder god walk into a bar… and try to prevent the apocalypse? The devil isn’t thrilled, and frankly the angels aren’t either. But from the bowels of Hell to the chilly Halls of Heaven, from Thailand to Tacoma to the bottom of the ocean, this ragtag group of supernaturals plans to fight the prophecy and save the world or die trying. With enemies among the most powerful beings ever to exist and allies they can’t trust as far as they can throw, they’d better get their act together fast.
Warnings: Alcoholism, mental illness, bad childhoood, torture, suicide, kidnapping, child endangerment, end of the world
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Excerpt
And yes, he and Ceri had heard all the jokes about the boy with angel blood and the Crown Prince of Hell being involved. Some assholes liked to refer to them as Romeo and Juliet, like they were being original or clever. Sometimes Romeo and Julian or Jude, but it was no less annoying. Or vaguely homophobic and dumb.
Logan was glad Gill hadn’t come with Raphael this time, but why hadn’t she? If they wanted Logan off-balance—or spitting angry—bringing Gill would have done it. But maybe they were waiting to launch that bomb, because once they did, there would be no going back.
Ceri gave him a sympathetic look, suggesting he knew what Logan was thinking about, but thankfully Lyn picked this moment to land on the street a few feet short of where the angels had appeared. Esme jumped off her back, while Lyn started to shake out her wings.
As funny as that sounded, it was part of her shift process. Lyn bent over and flapped her wings in what seemed like a drying and not flying way, and her arms appeared to shrink while her feathers were absorbed beneath her skin. It was like someone reversed the frames on her transformation into a harpy.
Esme ran her hands through her close-cropped hair, which looked fluffier from the wind, and said, “We just missed some angels, didn’t we?” Esme had her own warding tattoos, including one that told her when angels or demons were in the vicinity. Of course, when she was around Ceri, it was going off all the time, but she said it measured degrees of danger. How, Logan had no idea. But he wasn’t the natural-born bruja.
“You didn’t miss much,” Logan told her.
Esme made a dramatic face and held her hand out toward him. “Join us, and you will become more powerful than you could ever imagine.”
“Basically.”
“Assclowns.” She shook her head and turned to study the locked gate. “So, Ceri, you wanna do the honors? I can do a blanket spell afterward.”
Ceri shrugged. “Why not?” He walked up to the gate and put his hand on it. The gate flew open as if an armored truck had slammed into it at a hundred miles an hour, and something metal broke off and flew away. Again, Ceri was a sweetheart, but as Lucifer’s son, he had leveled up as far as power sets went. Maybe he was the fabled Destroyer of Earth because technically? If he wanted to crack the globe in half, no one could stop him.
Esme, who was standing behind him, threw a spell designed to cause all the hidden traps to start glowing. Her spells were done in a mix of Spanish and Latin that seemed unique to hr, as he’d never encountered any other witch who did that. But Esme claimed she could trace her magical bloodline all the way back to the Aztecs, which could be a lie but, knowing her, probably wasn’t. Esmerelda Navarro was the kind of witch only spoken about in hushed whispers, like she was the boogeyman or a cautionary tale. Probably due to her evil eye. But still, it was cool being friends with the most powerful witch on the planet. Again, all the supernaturals on this team were tanks, and Logan was the sad, sorry human. All he brought to the team was a pretty face and a bit of snark. He was the court-mandated mediocre white guy.
Lyn, back to human, said, “Hey, babe, I could use some feet warmers.” Yep, she was barefoot and back to her very human-looking feet. Logan had seen her naked; he knew she looked as human as he did, and he had no idea how this human-to-harpy thing worked. It looked painful, but she claimed it didn’t hurt. It was just “weird.” Which, no shit.
Esme looked back and said a few words, and soft black boots seemed to spontaneously form over Lyn’s feet. She looked at them and said, “Neat. Can I keep these?”
“Only if I can borrow them.”
Lyn approached Esme and gave her a little side hug, which Esme returned. They were so cute together, it almost made Logan’s teeth hurt. He went to where they were, getting his first good loo(k inside the gate.
The Delacourt Manor still looked like the setting of about 50 percent of the haunted-house movies in existence, although now there were glowing sigils and neon lines stretched above the tiled driveway, and the formerly manicured lawn and garden had gone to seed. To say there were a lot of mystical traps was an understatement. How many had Esme found? At least a dozen.
Ceri let out a low whistle. “He did not want unexpected visitors.”
“Or any visitors,” Lyn said. “Can you guys deactivate all of these?”
Ceri and Esme shared a look before they both glanced at Lyn. “Between the Prince of Hell and the most badass witch on earth?” Esme said. “Yeah, I think we got this.”
“Cocky goeth before a fall,” Lyn warned.
Author Bio
Andrea Speed writes way too much (and yet seemingly not enough). She is the writer of the Infected series and the Josh of the Damned series, as well as a bunch of other stuff, and was editor in chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviewed comics as well as movies. She’s won a couple of Rainbow Awards and feels she may be ubiquitous on the web. But she is not (sadly) the Italian DJ of the same name that often comes up first in Google searches. A small medicinal horse.
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