Shadow Rising (43 page)

AC/DC:
“Hells Bells,” “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution”

Adam Lambert:
“Mad World”

Air:
“Napalm Love,” “The Word ‘Hurricane’”

AJ Roach:
“Devil May Dance”

Amanda Blank:
“Make It Take It”

Asteroids Galaxy Tour:
“The Sun Ain’t Shining No More,” “The Golden Age,” “Sunshine Coolin’”

Avalon Rising:
“The Great Selkie”

Awolnation:
“Sail”

Beck:
“Nausea”

Black Sabbath:
“Paranoid”

Blue Oyster Cult:
“Godzilla”

The Bravery:
“Believe”

Celtic Woman:
“The Voice”

Cobra Verde:
“Play with Fire”

David Bowie:
“I’m Afraid of Americans”

Depeche Mode:
“Dream On”

Eels:
“Souljacker Part I,” “Love of the Loveless”

Fleetwood Mac:
“Gold Dust Woman”

Foo Fighters:
“All My Life”

Foster the People:
“Pumped Up Kicks”

Gary Numan:
“Cold Warning,” “The Hunter,” “Stormtrooper in Drag,” “Hybrid,” “Down in the Park,” “Cars (Hybrid version),” “Dream Killer,” “Voix,” “Are Friends Electric,” “Dead Son Rising,” “The Fall,” “When the Sky Bleeds, He Will Come”

Gorillaz:
“Every Planet We Reach Is Dead,” “Dare,” “Stylo”

Hives:
“Tick Tock Boom”

Lady Gaga:
“I Like It Rough,” “Paparazzi,” “Born This Way”

Ladytron:
“I’m Not Scared”

Lou Reed:
“Walk on the Wild Side”

Madonna:
“4 Minutes”

Marilyn Manson:
“Rock Is Dead”

Metallica:
“Enter Sandman”

People in Planes:
“Vampire”

Puddle of Mudd:
“Psycho”

Rob Zombie:
“Living Dead Girl,” “Mars Needs Women”

Róisin Murphy:
“Ramalama (Bang Bang)”

Saliva:
“Broken Sunday”

Seether:
“Remedy”

Soundgarden:
“Fell on Black Days,” “Superunknown,” “Spoonman”

Stone Temple Pilots:
“Dead & Bloated”

Sully Erna:
“The Rise”

Tori Amos:
“In the Springtime of His Voodoo”

U2:
“Vertigo,” “Elevation”

Ween:
“Mutilated Lips”

Woodland:
“I Remember,” “Morgana Moon,” “Blood of the Moon,” “First Melt”

Yoko Kanno:
“Lithium Flower,” “Run Rabbit Junk”

Zero 7:
“In the Waiting Line”

Dear Reader:

I hope that you enjoyed
Shadow Rising,
the twelfth book in the Otherworld Series, as much as I enjoyed writing it. The world is ever expanding with each book, and so many possibilities have opened up for the coming books. Next up in this series: Camille’s book
, Haunted Moon,
which will be book thirteen, coming February 2013, and after that, Night Vision, book four of the Indigo Court Series, will be out in July 2013, before we come back to Otherworld for Delilah’s book.

I’m including the first chapter from
Haunted Moon
here to give you a sneak peek. For those of you new to my books, I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you into my worlds. For those of you who’ve been reading my books for a while, I wanted to thank you for revisiting the D’Artigo Sisters’ world once again.

Bright Blessings,
The Painted Panther
Yasmine Galenorn

“Just breathe in, slow…That’s it. Now, out in one, two, three.” Morio’s voice was low in my ear as he knelt behind me, leaning down, his hands on my shoulders, magic tingling through his fingers, into my body.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, wearing a filmy black dress, my arms extended to the sides. In my left hand, I balanced an orb of obsidian. In my right, I grasped a yew wand, carved with intricate symbols etched in silver.

“Now, focus on the spirit. Keep your gaze on it.” Again, the soft whisper of his voice caressed my ear. We were in tune, my youkai and I, sitting in a flaming circle outside under the night sky, in a long-forgotten graveyard. The borders of the circle were ablaze with magical fire—the purple crackle of death magic—and I was doing my best to control it, struggling to multitask the spells we were working on.

We were in a small cemetery, one shrouded with disuse and neglect. The smell of earth hung pungent in my nose, and a scuttling of bugs across the ground made me shiver, but I forced myself to ignore them. I had to forget they were there
as I stared at the spirit hovering in front of me. It was luminous in the night, rising above us, spiraling up from the skull that rested on the ground by my feet. I had no idea who the ghost had been, or why it was here, but only that I must break through its barriers and destroy it, setting it free to rest, or—if it would not go willingly—sending it into oblivion.

I gathered the rush of energy Morio was feeding me. The rumbling power twisted through my body, a radiant heat, a purple flame, urging me onward. The tingles sparked through my body, crackling through muscle and sinew as the power grew, buoying me up with it until it spiraled me out of my body.

Looming large before the spirit, I struggled to keep control of the fire—both of the flames forming the Circle and of those bucking through my body like a horse unwilling to take a master. Morio was feeding it through me faster than I’d ever been able to take it before. I lowered my head, searching for the key. And there…hiding behind a wayward spark,
there it was
. All magic—all energy—had a key, a signature. Control the key, control the force.

Reaching out with my mind, I latched onto the signature and, after a momentary struggle, the flames flared up. At first they resisted my control, but then they let go and quit fighting me. As they gave in to my will, they evened out, building in me like a backwash, ready to surge forth at my command.

The spirit seemed to sense my intention and shrank back, wailing, as I raised my palms to it, willing the roiling fire to blast through my body.

“Go, go now or I will destroy you,” I whispered.

The spirit would not move but instead shrieked and aimed for me, its lifeless sockets staring at me.

“I command you to depart this realm.”

Again, nothing, but it was planning something nasty, that much I could feel. I sucked in a deep breath and forced my palms forward, toward it.

“Death took you once, let death take you again.” And then I summoned the release word.
“Atataq!”

The sound of the fire roared through my ears, soaring with the pulse of my blood. It carried me with it, rising like a
purple phoenix as it blotted out the moon. I swung astride its back, riding it like I might ride a lover, the rush of orgasm claiming me as the flame shrieked down, diving for the spirit. I came hard and sharp as the fire knifed through the ghost, exploding it into vapor. As the spirit vanished, the phoenix began to turn its head.
Oh shit.
It was looking at me like I was its next target.

Through my lust-crazed haze, I heard Morio shout, “Control it! Take control or it will go after you next!”

Quickly, I brought my attention back to the key, struggling to regain my hold on it. The phoenix paused.

“Bring it back now. Damn it, do what I say! Roll the power back
now
—there…you’ve almost got it.” Morio’s voice was abrupt, but I knew he was just worried about me.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts, beginning to rein in the power, reeling it back. I worked it, coaxed it, stroked it, and finally demanded that it retreat and—after a struggle, it listened, receding like a tide, rolling back to the ocean from which it had come. The phoenix turned back to face the silent night and then vanished in a bright flash.

Polished and cleansed by the flames, my body felt as if a fine dust of ash coated its every nerve. As the wave of death magic reached my crown chakra, I let go, and Morio took over, siphoning it back out of me into the sky, releasing it to the night, back to the haunted moon overhead.

Exhausted, I collapsed. Morio leaned over me, his eyes gleaming in the night. His long black hair hung straight, and I longed to run my hands through it, to feel the silken strands between my fingers. I wanted to pull my Japanese lover, my husband, between my legs, and quench the fire that had built within me.

“Do you know how much I want you?” he whispered. “Do you know how hungry for you our magic makes me?”

“Show me, my love. Show me,” I whispered, ready to take him right there inside the circle of flames. But just then, my cell phone rang. It was in my purse, which was sitting just outside the circle. The ring tone played out “Demon Days” by the Gorillaz, which meant it was Chase. Which meant it was probably important.

“Fuck.” I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “Get that, would you?”

Morio opened the circle, stepping over the flames as he did so. He grabbed my phone out of the purse and answered. “Hello?…Morio.” After a moment, he motioned to me, his expression shifting from lusty to solemn. “Here, you need to take this. I’ll start gathering our things and disband the circle.”

“Bad?” I didn’t want to hear. I really didn’t.

But he just nodded. “Bad.” And that was that. We were out of Circle, back to a reality I wasn’t ready to face yet. But the fact was, our reality was growing more and more deadly with each week that passed.

“Camille?” Chase sounded out of breath. The detective was physically fit, so that in itself worried me.

“What’s going down? Where? And how bad?” I didn’t spare any words. Phone calls like this were always terse.

“Robbery at one of the graveyards. And we have a handful of zombies running around. As well as a bloatworgle.”

“Robbery? What the fuck are they stealing—and are the zombies doing the looting?”

Chase growled. “
No.
There’s more to it—I can’t explain now…” He paused, and I could hear him panting. So not a good sign. Chase was in great shape for an FBH—full-blooded human. Or rather, an FBH with a tiny hint of elf in his long-distance background.

“Dude, are you okay? You’re worrying me.” I didn’t like worrying about our friends because it had become an all-too-common theme. Collateral damage in this demonic war had hit us hard, and all too often as of late.

“I’d be fine if I weren’t hiding out from a fucking zombie who’s on the loose with the munchies for my brains. Or anything else it can latch onto. I’m playing hide-and-seek with it in Wyvers Point Cemetery, and unfortunately, I’m not the one doing the chasing.”

“Let me guess…the cemetery is in the Greenbelt Park District?” If I never heard of that area of Seattle again, it would still be too much.

“Yeah…Fourth and Hyland Streets. Get over here as soon as you can. And can you call the others?” He was whispering now. “Two of my men are somewhere in the graveyard, but I don’t know where. We’re all on the run. Tell you more after you get here and help me get the fuck out of this situation.”

I punched the End Call button and turned to Morio, who had quickly been gathering all of our things. “We’ve got another graveyard to pay a call on, and we’d better hurry or Chase is going to be on the dinner menu. Zombies, and a bloatworgle at the very least.”

As Morio tossed our ritual gear into the back of my Lexus, I called home. We were closer to Wyvers than my sisters, so we’d get there ahead of time. But we’d also expended a lot of energy tonight on our magical exercises, and I knew that we—or at least I—couldn’t take on a full force of undead miscreants without help.

I quickly filled Delilah in on what was going down. “Get over there, now. We’re facing a bloatworgle, several zombies, and who knows what the hell else.”

“Menolly’s at the Wayfarer. We can call her if we need her once we’re there. I’ll bring Smoky, Shade, and Vanzir.” Delilah punched off and I texted her the location.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, I clicked my seat belt shut. While I waited for Morio, I grabbed a candy bar out of the glove compartment and scarfed it down. I desperately needed the energy after working the magic we just had, so I polished off the chocolate caramel and then went for a protein bar. By then, Morio was swinging into the car, and I took off as he slammed the door.

“I guess we couldn’t expect the quiet to last for long.” Morio pulled his hair back into a ponytail and yanked off his short kimono. Beneath it, he was wearing a pair of tight black jeans that curved around his butt in an oh-so-flattering way. As he fished a deep blue turtleneck out of a backpack, I managed a glance at his glistening chest. Morio was buff—not a muscle man, but definitely buff. I got wet just looking at him. One of my three husbands, he was Japanese, a youkai-kitsune—loosely translated, a fox-demon, though he
wasn’t the kind of demon that we were fighting. Together with Smoky, my dragon, and Trillian, my alpha lover and Svartan, we made quite the quartet.

We’d been in a refreshing lull over the past five weeks, since shortly after Menolly and Nerissa got married. And we’d savored every minute, using the time to bone up on our fighting techniques and magical skills, to stockpile weapons, and to hunt down as much information as we could on Gulakah, the Lord of Ghosts.

Unfortunately, that information didn’t amount to a hill of beans. We’d also done our best to keep tabs on what was going down with the impending war in Otherworld. So, when I thought about it, we really
hadn’t
had any downtime, per se—just a short break from the continual fighting we’d been embroiled in for months now. But that short break had meant the difference between being run ragged and having a little breathing room to regain our equilibrium.