I haven’t shared a snippet in some time. This is the opening bit to the book that captured my agent’s interest. We don’t have it on submission right now, but I will share that it did gather some interest. We aren’t marketing it right now for several reasons, but there are plans for it. While there were a bunch of monster investigator books that came out after we first took this out, DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD is pretty different. The villain is something I haven’t seen in another book. I LOVE Beri and the friends she makes in this series, so you will see more of her. I’m just not sure in what publishing format yet. Hope you enjoy!
Dweller on the Threshold
Chapter One
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Flannery O’Connor
The monsters never show up when they’re supposed to.
I’d been in the damned marsh for hours. Crouched. Cramped.
Pissed.
I could walk this part of Florida’s wilderness coast blindfolded, yet I’d picked the worst possible hiding place. One could only take cold, wet, goo-encrusted jeans and wrinkled fingertips for so long. And the damned prickly grasses! Scratches burned on my face and exposed arms where the whip-like strands had smacked my skin with the wind.
If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to run after this most recent rumor, I would have remembered to put on the windbreaker I kept in the back of my vehicle, which was currently a new, luscious red Jeep. Any monster investigator worth her weight went to a scene prepared. I knew better! At least I had my bag of tricks—my backpack—strapped into place and luckily I’d remembered to grab my binoculars.
I grimaced when the grasses started shifting again. The current came as a flat sheet of water creeping through the marshes, forming bubbles between the blades. Small creatures scuttled about, gathering gifts from the ocean. A fiddler crab raced by the hand I had propped on a slippery piece of higher ground.
Ignoring it, I trained the lenses on one narrow, glistening strip of ocean–the only part of the coast visible in the light of the full moon. Most of the sky rolled thick and black from the blanket of clouds that wrapped everything except the moon. She glowered through, as if daring them to block her light. Usually, I felt more a part of nature’s world than that of human’s. The earth called to me, especially water. The never-ending expanse of moving, living liquid, the sucking swoosh of it crashing into the beach…the tinge of salt on the wind.
Somehow, it all worked together to wipe the worries from my mind.
But not tonight.
There was something to the air lately. Something that curled dark and low in my gut…something that kept reminding me of the last case I ran with my sister—the night what was left of my humanity had been viciously pulled loose. I’d been left in the kind of shadowy place where no one should ever dwell. As a result, I hadn’t seen my sister for months. There was a time that would have seemed crazy.
Shivering, I narrowed my eyes to that spot and focused on the problem at hand. Two people had drowned here a week ago. Two good swimmers—life guards for Goddess’ sake! I’d hit up a cop I knew for details on the investigation and come up with nada. Because he had nada. No one could tell why they’d drowned.
I thought I knew.
And in the next minute, I was sure of it as a wispy being formed over the water.
My heart sank like a lead weight. The ghosts of the drowned were the most powerful kind of spirits. Because the marsh water here moved slowly, the sluggish swoop of it combined with the energy of the water itself did something powerful to the dead, something that made them grow in strength until they drew even the strong to their sweet call.
A call that ended none too sweetly.