AT last! The cover of the final book in the Jane Yellowrock series!
And now that you have drooled over it — because I totally drooled over it — don’t forget: OF CLAWS AND FANGS is out NOW at all your favorite book distributors. Below is an excerpt from My Dark Knight, a short story from Angie Baby’s point of view.
She dragged her eyes back to the hillside. The magic on the hill didn’t move like an animal. It moved in a line and a clump. Daddy would say it moved like chaos. Daddy was big into chaos. The sparkles were witchy, the colors were-creature, but the size of the magic was wrong for a moveable witch ward or glamour and wrong for a were-creature. Mama said it wasn’t there at all, so it wasn’t witch magic.
She studied her own magic, zinging through her blood, knowing she needed someone close by, someone strong, to deal with the strange not-witch magic. There were only a few she trusted, and her magic told her that Ant Jane was too far away. Her Dark Knight, Edmund, was vampire strong and when she thought about him, the magic in her blood got brighter. He was nearby.
She retrieved her mama’s cell, returned to the window, and punched in the security code. She looked through the contact list for Edmund, the vampire she’d sworn a blood oath to. She had wanted him to be her fiancée, but when he swore his blood oath and fealty, he didn’t promise to marry her. He swore “to the Everharts and Truebloods . . . I shall protect your children and your children’s children unto the laying down of my own undeath.” He had included her whole family, which was how he became their protector. The mystical bond wasn’t what she wanted, but it was good enough until she grew up and convinced him to marry her.
She was just about to touch the call button when EJ said, “Sissy? Its bells is comin’ c’oser to the house. If it’s a animal, it can get in the ward.”
She found the glow in the dead trees on the hillside. Fear shot through her, a bright sizzle of her own red-gold magic. The line-and-clump magic was closer, and brighter. It was directly outside the ward that protected the house and grounds. This wasn’t good. The hedge of thorns was built to allow Ant Jane to get in. If a Big Bad Ugly had figured that out and had a way to use that one weakness, they were in trouble. She had to make her parents understand. Still holding the phone, she grabbed EJ, his blanket, and the flashlight, and hauled him across the TV room toward her parents’ bedroom. The critters followed, KitKit meowing.
She made a fist at the entrance of the bedroom and envisioned the power she had stretched over her parents’ sleep. “Wake up,” she said. The magic flashed red-gold, a sizzle of light, and rushed back into her, popping like a rubber band and covering her with a copper-pink glow. “Ow! Mama! Daddy!” she shouted.
In the dark, Mama rolled over. “Kids? What are you doing up at this hour?”
And then the ward made a gong, GONG, GONG! Daddy sat up, still asleep, one arm waving in the air, his other reaching for his flute. Mama raced clumsily to the window and threw open the drapes, looking up the hill, holding her baby bump. Bright light blasted in. Mama said a very bad word, followed by, “Evan, what is that thing?”
Her little brother’s hands covered his ears. “It’s louder! Bad bells hu’ts my ea’us.”
Angie pulled EJ closer, under her arm, standing in the doorway. She heard nothing now that the gonging had stopped, because her magic didn’t work that way, but there were the dazzling, angry lights of an attack. “I told you it was out there,” she accused her parents as Mama and Daddy poured magic into the wards. The thing on the hill started gonging again, which everyone could hear, louder and louder. It threw lights at the ward. Hammering on it. The ward began to hum and echo, brighter and brighter.
EJ cried in pain. KitKit leaped onto the bed, her eyes on Mama, stalking her across the mattress. George tangled into EJ’s blanket, underfoot.
Mama screamed, “I don’t see anything!”
“Me neither,” Daddy said. “But the ward is fracturing.”
The foreign magic was beating a way through. That shouldn’t be possible. If it busted the ward, there would be an explosion. They could all die. Unless they dropped the ward and just let the attackers in.
“Evan!” Mama shouted over the magical noise. Terrified.
“Angie,” Daddy yelled. “Make a ward. The strongest one you can. Now!”
Angie breathed in hard, shocked. Mama and Daddy didn’t know she could do big magic.
“Do it! Use all you got. I know you can,” Daddy shouted. He blew a long, piercing note full of magic on his flute, creating a personal ward for Mama. He was red-faced and breathless. Mama was panting.
Using her hands and her power, Angie pulled the bindings off EJ, her parents’ confining magic tangling around her, sticking to her fingers. Beneath the bindings, EJ’s magic glowed a soft purple with sparkling green lights.
“Ohhh,” he said. “That feels good.”
Daddy’s music filled the room, the notes full of power. The hedge of thorns shivered. Mama’s magic went black as a cave, so dark it sucked all light out of the air, her death magics like a cloud around her. They were wild raw magic and every time she used them she risked losing control and killing them all. Now they had two ways to die.
EJ’s eyes got big. “Sissy, I’m sca’aed.”
“Me too.” Scared because her ward would protect her and EJ, but it wouldn’t stop the thing on the hill or stop Mama from using death magics, and the ward Daddy wrapped around Mama was unfamiliar. Daddy stumbled, sweating, his magic sputtering as he started a personal ward for himself. To EJ, Angie said, “I learned how to do this in magic camp.” Which wasn’t entirely a lie. “You trust me?”
EJ threw his arms around her waist, knocking them to the floor, George under her knees. Angie reached inside and found her magic. She looped and twisted it with EJ’s. Carefully, she imagined a circle around them, over them, and under them, like being in the middle of a beach ball. Daddy said to make it strong, so she thought about the hedge of thorns and the magic of heaven. Angel magic glowed brighter than any magic anywhere. It was the strongest magic she had ever seen. Maybe she could . . . Angie reached out and pushed the world aside, just a little. Angel magic glowed out from the other side, blinding bright.
The gonging was so loud EJ screamed, his head in her middle. Tears raced down Angie’s face, burning. Daddy’s magic went louder too, as he snapped a pale yellow ward in place over himself.
Mama’s magic went pure black. It hit her new, yellow ward.
KitKit leaped, claws out, cat-screaming, for Mama.
Angie pulled the new magic into hers and said softly, “Safe.”
