The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (25 page)

The Dead Hamlets
© 2015 by Peter Roman
Cover artwork © 2015 by Erik Mohr
Cover design © 2015 by Samantha Beiko
Interior design © 2015 by Alysha DeMarsh / BUNGALOW

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

EPub Edition JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-317-9

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CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]

Edited by Kelsi Morris
Copyedited and proofread by Michael Matheson

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

For thousands of years, Cross has wandered the earth, a mortal soul trapped in the undying body left behind by Christ. He’s been a thief, a con man, a soldier and a drunkard. He’s fought as a slave in the Colosseum and as a knight at King Arthur’s side. But now he must play the part of reluctant hero, as an angel comes to him for help finding the Mona Lisa—the real Mona Lisa that inspired the painting. Cross’s quest takes him into a secret world within our own, populated by characters just as strange and wondrous as he is: gorgons and dead gods hidden away in museums; faeries that live in countryside pubs, trapping and enslaving unwary travellers; and super-rich collectors who trade magical artifacts among themselves. He’s haunted by memories of Penelope, the only woman he truly loved, and he wants to avenge her death at the hands of his ancient enemy, Judas, a forgotten god from an ancient time. The angel promises to deliver Judas to Cross, but nothing is ever what it seems when Judas is involved, and when a group of renegade angels looking for a new holy war show up, things truly go to hell.

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