QSFer Virginia Black has a new lesbian paranormal romance out: Consecrated Ground.
Consecrated Ground is a multiracial lesbian paranormal tour de force that will leave you wary of the shadows and absolutely breathless.
Like her father before her, Joan Matthews is a witch. For generations, their family of binder witches has protected Calvert, Oregon from vampires by strengthening the land with spellcraft. Pushing back against tradition, Joan defied her father and left town to become a war witch, one who fights the monsters hand-to-hand. But when her father dies, Joan returns to find her hometown assailed by a vampire lord’s endless attacks—and the answers lie with the one woman who chose a rival over Joan.
Leigh Phan once believed her heart was safe and her future was set. When Joan left town, Leigh’s choices led to ruin and unintended consequences. Now Leigh harbors a dark secret forcing her to live a moment-to-moment existence. Her only hope of survival lies in trusting the war witch who left her behind.
Now it’s up to Joan to fight for a town she left behind, while Leigh faces a destiny she never imagined was possible. With Calvert on the brink of total destruction, Joan and Leigh join forces and face inconvenient truths in order to save their town—and each other.
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Excerpt
The gnarled oak greeted Joan like an old friend. Half a mile from the Calvert town limits, its lowest thickest limb marked the curve in the road just as she remembered, but she ignored the sign suggesting she slow down.
If she did, the three men blocking her side of the two-lane road would probably try to stab her tires.
One was armed with only a menacing look, but the others held a crowbar and a knife respectively. One was black like Joan but with short thick matted natural hair, and shorter than her near-six-feet in height. Crowbar guy had a few inches on her. All three of them were too grimy and underfed to gauge their ages any better than between twenty-five and forty.
They stood in direct sunlight, so they weren’t vampires. Ultraviolet rays made dead flesh decompose faster. These men were most likely vampire thralls, human minions under vampire control.
Crowbar tried to knock out a headlight, but the cages on the grill prevented that sort of thing. The one with the knife fell over in an attempt to stab a tire, then rolled clear when she sped up.
Joan glanced in the rearview mirror. She chalked the whole event down to a wide, boring miss.
Then the dog showed up.
Even for a Siberian Husky, he was large, with black, grey, and white fur warring for dominance over his coat. He should have been lumbering down the highway as big as he was, but all that muscle raced in spectacular symmetry.
The dog passed Joan as he ran in the opposite direction, bearing down on the enemy behind her.
In the rearview, he leapt for the neck of the human thrall with the knife and took the man down in one clean pounce. Crowbar raised his weapon with obvious intent.
Joan hit the brakes so hard, the tires screeched in protest. She shifted into reverse.
A honk of the horn distracted them from the dog. She jacked the wheel to one side before parking Luther at an angle in the lane. She opened the door and leapt to the road without her gun. A ranged battle was always better, one where the enemy never got the chance to touch her, but if she shot her semi-automatic pistol into this mess, she might hit the dog.
Instead, she drew a six-inch black powder coated Bowie from the worn leather sheath at her thigh.
Knife Guy lay on the ground wrestling with the dog, thankfully forgetful that he held a weapon. Crowbar came at Joan, but she blocked his overhead swing with one arm. She swept her other elbow at his jaw. He grunted in pain and fell back but didn’t drop the crowbar.
Shorty moved in, his fists raised like a boxer’s, but without gloves one solid punch would break his hand.
She tapped her tongue twice against the roof of her mouth and puffed a burst of air in his direction. A small cloud of mist appeared in front of his face, and he pulled back in surprise. She almost felt badly for him. The chances these guys had ever faced a war witch were slim.
“It’s okay if you want to forsake your masters,” she said. “I swear I won’t tell.”
None of them had her level of training, but it was still three against one. Against two, if she counted the dog, who had scrambled away from the guy on the ground when he grabbed at an ear hard enough to make the dog yowl.
Crowbar had long greasy hair and a thick, filthy beard. Thanks to her elbow hit, one of his lips was split and bleeding. He adjusted his grip and came at her again. Knife Guy moved more slowly, looking grislier by the second as the blood flowed down his front. Shorty lurched into any gap where he’d fit, even if he didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
It was madness in close quarters as she hit them more than they managed to hit her. The dog joined the fight, but that only made things more complicated. Especially when Joan tripped over the dog and landed flat on her back.
Her head slammed against the asphalt seconds before Crowbar threw himself over her. She bucked him half-off her, enough to get a knee between his legs, but he landed a solid hit with his weight behind it to her midsection.
She didn’t yell or puke and counted herself lucky he’d missed her ribs.
“Aere vacuum,” she said, the words conjuring an air-based spell of her own design. It sucked the air from his lungs, and while he sputtered to catch his breath, she broke free.
They weren’t going to stop, and if she didn’t end this, she’d tire and they’d gain an advantage. No way was she dying on a shit-country road in backwater nowhere at the hands of bloodsucker gophers.
The next time Shorty came at her, she slid her knife between his ribs right into his heart. He was dead before she pulled the knife free.
She was too busy staving off the other two to watch him fall. Knife Guy came at her, his neck a macabre sheet of blood, but she kicked him hard enough in the stomach to shift him back. It gave her enough room to deal with Crowbar.
When he was close enough, Joan palmed his nose into his brain. His head snapped back and he collapsed.
The arc of the autumn sunlight shifted and threw the road into shadow. A shiver of warning slid across the back of Joan’s neck.
A fourth man leapt from a nearby tree to the ground.
Unnatural golden light glinted in his honey-brown eyes, and sclera that should have been white gleamed yellow. When his malicious grin promised pain at best and violation at worst, Joan tasted nothing but danger.
The bloodling strolled towards her as if he had all the time in the world.
Author Bio
Virginia Black writes women-loving-women fiction with angsty protagonists. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her gorgeous wife and smart-assed teenaged daughter. Her works include the short stories “Season Finale” and “Love Undaunted” in the Sapphire Books FANDOM TO FANTASY series, “Constant” in the GCLS Writing Academy anthology WRITING FREEDOM, and “Reclamation” in the Bold Strokes Books anthology “IN OUR WORDS – Queer Stories from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Writers”.
Virginia is a graduate of the GCLS Writing Academy. Her first novel, CONSECRATED GROUND from Bywater Books, features a vampire hunter of rakish beauty and war witch badassery. Learn more at virginiablackwrites.com.
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