EXTRACT FOR
A Terrible Tryst Of Fate
(Christopher Newman)

A Terrible Tryst of Fate



Amelia Bainbridge has a great job, good friends, and a place of her own. But what she lacks is love, and she'll only settle for true love. 



After attending her best friend's wedding she is attacked by a terrible creature that means to dine upon her flesh. Amelia is saved by a handsome silver-haired man known as Hunter. It is love at first sight for both. Who is Hunter and why is he so evasive about his past?



Amelia watches as his body heals more rapidly than any human being's could. She discovers he's one of the Fallen. Once a member of the Grigori who watched over humans at God's command, he fell from Grace after conceiving a child with a human woman centuries ago. Hunter's current employer is a Demon Prince who is seeking to halt the Second Coming by foiling Lucifer's plots.



Amelia's love for Hunter places her in the path of this demon's machinations. Into the mix comes Erzsébet, who is Hunter's occasional lover. She becomes jealous of Amelia with a hatred as deep as the Pit of Hell she's been cast into. Can Amelia and Hunter survive to explore their love while the legions of Heaven and Hell gather forces for the End of Times? 



Excerpt



Amelia let out another enraged scream as she dropped to the asphalt, soaking the knees of her pantyhose, to retrieve the scattered remnants of her sundered handbag. As she groped in the faint light she remembered her key ring. She frantically went through what was nearby, only to find her keys missing. Her heart sank as she remembered that there was a one gigabyte thumb drive attached to her set of keys. "So much for all the data on that," she snarled as she crawled to the front of her Chevy Malibu, searching for missing things. 



As she scrambled around to the front of the car she was taken aback when she discovered a pair of men's shoes on either side of the puddle in which her keychain was soaking. She looked up, only to realize she was crotch level with the stranger. She jumped to her feet as quickly as she could in order to remove herself from such a suggestive position. 



He was a short, stocky man dressed in a long black overcoat, dark trousers, and a wide brimmed hat. As she stood up she noted he was very short, barely over five feet in height. Due to the darkness and the brim of his hat, she could only see the bottom portion of his face. He did have flabby jowls that hung off his face like a bulldog's. A set of thick, wet lips spread in a smile as she cleared her throat. 



"Ah, good evening," she muttered; her face turned beet red from embarrassment. 



"Good evening," he said in a deep voice. "Did you lose something?" 



"Yes, I did. My car keys are right there between...I mean, you're nearly standing on them."



"Ah, so I am," he remarked as he tipped his gaze towards his feet. He then raised his face to hers, unfolding and stretching out the tube-like double chins under his unusual mouth. He smiled and Amelia's blood ran cold. 



His flesh was white, corpse-like and as clammy as the weather. His hair stuck out from under the hat in a haphazard manner, as if it grew in patches from his scalp. His head was wide and short, almost frog-like in appearance. But what really caught and held Amelia's eyes was that all of the teeth he displayed were small and pointed, like some horrible cannibal's. His fleshy lips trembled as she moved her gaze up to his eyes. Sunken deep into folds of whitish flesh, those eyes were black and beady. They glittered like some beetle's carapace in the parking lot lights as he spoke once more.



"I'd reach down to retrieve them," he chuckled in a wet, horrid voice. "But you really won't be needing them anymore."