C.D. Breadner's Blog, page 5

Soul Stealer Sneak Peek

So here it is – as voted by two out of three people wanting to know what Voro was up to in the next book. Pardon the language.

Soul Stealer will be available for purchase and download in the upcoming weeks. 

…

Voro could feel Raphael’s trepidation beside him. The guy was genuinely freaking out with worry that Voro might do something unthinkable in front of Saint Peter.

The dude behind the desk in front of them was shuffling papers, apologizing for not being ready for their meeting. He quickly signed something, handed it to the male novice behind his left shoulder and then greeted them both with a smile, folding his hands in front of him, ready to deal out a decision.

Voro was used to having no idea where he would end up. And this time was no different, just more existential. His mortal form was dead and decaying on the other side, and the forces that had forged it were likely not on his side anymore. Due to an odd twist of fate having everything to do with self-sacrifice, here he was on the sunny side of the clouds, chilling his heels while they decided what to do with him.

It had been five months now. It was becoming apparent that they had no idea what to do with him.

“Voro,” the older man said, smiling nicely enough. “How are you finding our accommodations? Still satisfactory?”

Voro couldn’t lie to this guy. Found that out the first day. Peter really did know all; he just couldn’t do anything about it all. And Voro wasn’t about to drop this guy just for being friendly. Peter could kick ass better than most pro wrestlers.

“Things are quite to my liking, sir.”

Peter gave a slight shake of the head. “Nine novices in one week.”

Shit. This again.

“We know that free will is always in question, but the spirits of our novices are fragile. After lying with you once one poor girl tried to kill herself for the debauchery she’d committed.”

Beginner’s mistake. They couldn’t die.

“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t want to come in your house and just start wrecking the place. They come to me.”

Peter smiled. “Free will.”

Voro was confused. “Exactly.”

“I’m talking about yours. You can turn them away, you know.”

Voro stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Peter, can I ask you a question?”

“Please don’t,” Raphael said softly beside him.

Voro ignored him. “Have you ever fucked anything?”

The question hung in the room like the passing of gas.  No one moved, but at least Peter wasn’t enraged or embarrassed. He just took off his glasses and set them on his ink blotter. “What the hell are you talking about?”

That’s the closest anyone around here would come to cussing on this side. Voro was instantly impressed.

“I’m just saying, if you’ve never had sex, how can you tell me that I could always just say no?” He made it sound like the preposterous suggestion that it truly was.

“Some good and decent part of you should take a moment, look upon their youth and innocence, and realize that for them the physical act is love. And for you … it’s an itch.”

“Good and decent part of me? You’ve seen my birth certificate, right?”

Peter smiled indulgently. “Good and decent would be the traits that saved the life and honour of a frustro.”

At the word Voro had to look down at his feet, bare in their flip-flops, and realized that maybe he was ridiculous after all.

“See Voro? You can’t even deny it. So the next time one of our novices loses sight of her virtue, please keep in mind your dear Iola.”

“She was never my dear,” he insisted.

Voro noticed when Raphael closed his eyes. He recognized the tone, apparently.

“She was a biological trap sprung to catch me, and I did exactly as expected. That’s not free will, either.”

Peter leveled a gaze at him, losing the affable expression. “Instead of condemning her to spend her days wallowing in your brand of filth you ended your six-hundred year existence of fucking and sin eating.”

“Just like expected,” Voro finished for him, not even catching the cuss word that time.

“No. Not at all like expected. She could have just killed you. Or the decipio could have done it.”

“This was better … for her,” he was actually getting choked up. Damn it.

“That’s almost something like love.”

“No. It was basically a potion, wasn’t it?”

Peter sighed. “There is no witchcraft. If the trap plays out the way it’s meant you go back to Hell, and those two live a natural life where they either deal with what happens or they don’t.”

“No.”

Peter’s frown deepened. “I beg your pardon?”

Raphael actually grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

“If a Sin Eater is slain by the decipio, the decipio then kills the frustro.”

Peter gave pause. “Sometimes.”

“Too big a chance. So I ended the whole stupid thing. And here we are. Tell me again how well this whole thing worked out?”

Peter put his glasses back on. “You know, Voro. We will find a use for you eventually. But just remember that we can either make this pleasant or not. It’s not like you can go home again, is it?”

 

Another introduction: Claudia Bauer

Claudia covered her mouth with her free hand. The woman just stared back at her, and the silence was almost too much … too private. She moved her eyes from the woman’s own grey ones and that’s when she noticed the bruises on the neck. Just like the woman they’d found the day before in that dumpster. Strangled. Although it was hard to tell what in all this gore had killed her.

Claudia felt tears welling up in her eyes. God, of all the stupid things she’d done in her past, this could have been her on so many occasions. So many times she was not in control of her facilities, surrounded by strangers that could have easily done worse to her. But no, she was alive and this tall, possibly distinguished woman who lived in this amazing mansion … was not. She was hurt and tortured in her own beautiful home.

Claudia was making a lot of assumptions with that whole theory, but it was that same dependable instinct telling her these details, too. This woman lived here alone, someone had known that, and someone had gotten in here, laid in wait, and brutally, sadistically attacked her, then left her to be found in this horrific and disgusting manner. At least try to hide what you’ve done. At least show that after the rage you realized how wrong it was. But no … left like trash.

She heard footsteps pounding up the steps and coming into the foyer behind her, felt hands take her by the shoulders and lead her out the front doors. She must have been pale, because someone was telling her to just breathe deep, but it sounded like a voice coming from underwater. Claudia did as told, the night air feeling very cold. It eased her stomach without her even knowing she’d been nauseous.

She heard her fellow officers calling for an ambulance. She knew that they would start taking pictures soon, cataloguing evidence.

Claudia shook her shoulders, trying to clear out her head. She’d seen this shit before … why was she spending so much worry on this one?

Even more worrisome, why did she feel linked to this woman somehow?

Sin Eater Book One for sale on Amazon.com.

It’s a book!

 

So I wrote this thing, and it sat as a Word document on a thumbdrive for almost two years. The only person other than me that knew of it was a good friend who had read it as I wrote it, chapter-by-chapter. So what was all that effort for?

I decided to self-publish it, first as an eBook since Amazon KDP was so easy and agreeable to use. The I found CreateSpace, and decided to also make a paperback option available, all through an Amazon entry. Many friends asked for copies, so I just had a shipment of copies come in that my friends and associates have been buying from me.

It likely won’t make me a fortune, I know that. But opening that box of books that I made was so ridiculously exciting for me. The support of my friends makes this even more thrilling. I wrote a book and people are reading it. This could be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

I am just so terribly pleased with myself right now. Thank you.

My first Amazon review!

Breadner breathes new life to old folklore in this debut novel (pun intended). The concept of sin-eating is fascinating in itself, but Breadner manages to create a new world of sympathetic characters fighting the age-old war of good versus evil.

While the antagonist is evident from the start, things are not always as they seem. You find yourself rooting for The Sin Eater, compassionate for what and who he is, even if it is clear to what side he owes allegiance. Breadner does an excellent job of detaching the man from his work, giving him a history and storyline all his own. I love the flashbacks to his past encounters, revealing memories that lead to a greater understanding of what is to come.

The female characters in Sin Eater are strong, capable, and likeable. While the love stories woven throughout are entertaining (and downright sexy) you never find yourself hoping for the proverbial rescue – these women can kick ass all on their own. Breadner created Iola and Claudia with such depth that you could swear they were actually friends of yours.

Plotline. We got so much going on here! There’s the classic love story happening in one apartment, a torrid hook-up going on across the hall, and all the while evil lurks everywhere, looking to take over the world. You know, the basics… Breadner’s got some pretty great surprise reveals, and everything comes together very nicely in one final showdown. And… there’s plenty of sexy bits along the way….. so that’s a win.

I look forward to delving deeper into the world of the Sin Eater! Bring on novel 2!

Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A10S1YH2E6ETTW/ref=cm_pdp_rev_more?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R1ADPI1B93SC1C

Let me introduce you to the Sin Eater …

The Sin Eater was at a restaurant, sitting at a patio table. The late night traffic was heavy, since this was the first truly warm night of spring and a Saturday besides. Show offs cruised the streets with car stereos pumping loudly. Groups of loudly giggling girls were looking to be looked at, trolling for bars and people to notice how short their skirts were and how long their list of “dos” was compared to their “do nots.”

He was in an expensive suit again, a dark brown Ford this time minus the tie, pretending to read a paper while watching the human horde coming and going past him. No one was evil, but everyone was horny. It was amazing how the warmer weather brought it out in them.

Women smelled of chocolate when they saw a man or woman they desired. Men gave off an aroma of cinnamon or cloves or some other dark, exotic spice. Every time a pair got together around him it made him incredibly hungry.

No evil, though. Just everyone walking around smelling like a bakery.

He took a sip of the espresso he had at his elbow, and in doing so, caught a glimpse of a woman walking past, having obviously worked late. She gave off a metallic pang of annoyance, since everyone was in her way, drunk, and keeping her from getting home as quickly as possible. She was harried and exasperated. She’d had a long day. The stress was apparent even without his keen olfactory.

She dressed in a conservative skirt suit, the blazer locking and loading her upper assets in a professional way; a look he’d always liked. And the skirt was of an office-appropriate length. As she passed him she didn’t look over, just continued on her way.

And that’s when he saw her ass, and it made his hand freeze with the espresso halfway to his lips.

Her ass was perfect. In his long life he’d gone through all the male obsessions with the female anatomy, and his present fixation was on the ass. Again. The skirt she wore was snug enough to show its roundness and its firmness. Her coat short enough to courteously allow a full view. As she passed he saw it from behind, her hips curving to her outer thighs in a perfect arc. It was so perfect it pained him … and then he realized his pain was from a throbbing erection punching forward against his fly. This ridiculous human body. Shouldn’t a person have more control over the damn thing?

He put the cup down without looking away from her. He could just imagine running his hand up over the arc of her hip, then dipping it back down to caress just under that muscle that was flexing as she walked. She came to a stop at a cross walk.

Well, he was a Sin Eater, capable of accessing someone’s mind and central nervous system on a whim. He found her neuropaths easily, and just by imagining his hand running down her lower back to caress one cheek, he sent the sensation right into her cerebral cortex.

She straightened her back where she stood, squaring her shoulders. Keeping her composure, she turned, trying to see it someone was behind her, grabbing her … but he knew she liked the sensation. He read it from her mind. Hell, she was even letting a small smile show as she tried to figure out where it came from. But she had the angle wrong, because in his mind he had her bent over in front of him, and now he imagined his hand sweeping up over her lower back, and pulling her against his hips as he bent to kiss her between the shoulder blades.

He watched the woman catch her breath, closing her eyes and weaving slightly on her feet. When she opened her eyes again she was blinking rapidly, a delicious flush to her cheeks. And she was looking right at him. She smiled.

Gotcha.

 

From Sin Eater Book One, available in print or eBook.

Meeting Charles Goodwin …

Charles couldn’t remember how he got to the roof of the office building across from the bakery. But he knew why he was there, and she was now sleeping in bed. She’d come home with the woman from the night before, who maybe was the one he wanted. But it was so hard to be sure, and he got confused so easily.

But the one with the long dark hair and the long legs and arms was what he wanted now. She was perfect. She’d be a challenge to break. And all these degenerate bitches had to be broken.

He watched her window as the light turned off in her bedroom. He’d have to be careful getting in. She looked tough, and he thought she would fight to the death. But there wouldn’t have to be a death. Just as long as she was … hurting.

He cracked his knuckles and his focus returned. Yep … she was the next one. He knew for sure once she kissed that woman, right in front of the window for everyone to see. It was disgusting. She’d be sorry for that … and while he had her, maybe he could show her the natural order of things. Sometimes the master let him have them first, before he completely broke them. This one … he would like very much to take her before she died.

And he knew which subway train her friend took on a regular basis, so he wouldn’t have to remember this place. Just the trains. He even knew which stop she got on, it was right next door to his little apartment.

This was going to be perfect. He just had to surprise her.

From Sin Eater Book One.

The Sin Eater finds Iola …

The Sin Eater had followed her, caught her scent in the subway, and had stayed in the shadows. Correction. He followed the homicidal nut job that was following her out of the subway and up to the street. He had a boatload of sin strapped to his shoulders, and the Sin Eater felt completely compelled to follow.

Bullshit, he would have followed her anyway. She smelled … pure of heart, as lame as that might have sounded. She was beautiful. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was a brand new soul. He almost chuckled … she still had that “new soul” smell.

But this human following her had the stink of evil all over him, and the Sin Eater could all but taste his psychotic rage and violent lust for her. He’d never interjected to stop humans from doing what they wanted. After all, he was there to lap up their messes. But as the man’s frenzy of bloodlust was piqued and the Sin Eater found himself actually wanting to get involved and help a human female, something amazing happened.

This woman, this gorgeous creature, who looked as delicate as an orchid, pushed this scumbag. With her … mind? She may as well have reached out and shoved him. No one had made any movement, but suddenly the man had reeled back, turned on his heel and stalked away like it was his idea.

The Sin Eater froze in his tracks. He’d felt it, the force of her … will emanating outward like a fist. He felt the man retract the intentions he’d had, just pulled them back and tucked them away.

The Sin Eater had stopped breathing. How the hell had she done it? He could do that. He could reach into people’s minds and change their very personalities if he wanted. There was nothing he couldn’t do to someone when he had complete control of their mind.

But she wasn’t like him otherwise he would have recognized it when she sat down across from him on the subway. She was human but she was … a complete puzzle.

He watched her enter a door next to a closed bakery, and he imagined she was going up the stairs to an apartment above. Sure enough, after a moment, a light came on in the front of the building. He watched her approach the window, pouring water out of one of those stainless steel bottles into a sad pile of green next to the window. Some kind of house plant, who knew what it was supposed to be.  You didn’t have to be a Sin Eater to know it wasn’t much longer for this world.

Her mouth was moving, and as he watched, she seemed to be talking to someone. Husband, boyfriend, he assumed. Then she bopped her head twice to one side, and kept talking, pausing only to bop her head again. She’s singing, he realized, and he smiled … but lost it almost as quickly as it appeared. Normally he could touch a person’s mind and find out their entire history with one glance.

But this one … she was a blank page. He read nothing from her … except the smell of jasmine and vanilla. So. Damn. Pure.

From Sin Eater Book One.

1944. Meet Abigail …

Strange how monotony can make time stand still. And yet, if asked, Abigail could not tell you what she wore on her birthday in 1943, even though every day seemed to stretch for an agonizing length of tedious and exhausting boredom.

Over four years. Almost one thousand and five hundred days. The same thing, day after day after day. All she seemed to do was pace around her house, checking windows, locking doors.

Outside her world a lot was happening. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and the United States joined in the conflict, you could almost feel hope flicker back, like a faint pulse. On the verboten BBC she heard of the invasion of Italy. The victory in Stalingrad, while truly sounding horrendous and terribly violent, was at least a bright light. Germany was being beaten back, inch by painful inch.

Britain succeeded in regaining all ground earned through blood by Italy and Germany in North Africa. The disastrous assault on Dieppe had been grim. Then the Allies attacked Egypt, sweeping west through Libya.

When Germany took control of Vichy France, local anger rose again. The armistice signed between the Vichy government and Germany was torn like tissue on the wind. The Axis withdrew further from Tunisia, bolstering their forces in Europe. And still nothing changed for her or her neighbours.

It was the news of Africa she tried to follow more than anything else, even though an increase in Resistance civil disobedience was all the local talk, from the limited contact she had with locals, anyway. The one person she needed to hear from had gone completely silent. She still had no word from James. With all the fighting in that fucking desert it was starting to feel like deliberate torture.

Four bloody years.

So here, again, tonight, she made the rounds of her home. She went around the exterior walls of the upstairs, closing the blinds. Locking the windows. Leaving her bedroom light on as she did so. She used the washroom, then made the same circle around the downstairs she’d done every night for over four years. Windows. Doors. Blinds. Lights off.

Then she’d turn off the bedroom light as though she’d gone to sleep, and made her way downstairs, through the cellar, down the secret steps and in to the shelter. With the inside door tightly closed she turned the light on and took stock of what was left on the shelves.

It was running out. She barely ate, because she hardly expended any energy. The canned good supply was dwindling. Each can of vegetables lasted at least two days. Anything that came fresh from the garden was mostly taken, what was left to her never did make it through winter. Luckily one neighbour had taken to hunting and not telling anyone, so he was able to get meat to her every now and then, since she was now basically an honorary member of the Resistance through no actions of her own.

The man that had shown up past curfew at her home had been one Phillipe Moreau, and he had been lost in the dark trying to find the Boulangers, honest members of the French Resistance. In the past few weeks they’d managed to take out a few phone lines, and she knew at that moment they were trying to sabotage the electricity grid – there was a large switching station not too far from their division.  They used some of Abigail’s far-flung outbuildings as hide outs, and just like that she was protected by a network of surprisingly well-armed and well-organised Free French.

The only real positive of being out in the country was that life was a lot less restricted than in the larger cities. Abigail had been quite upset at the rules they had to follow until they heard the tales of people being arrested past curfew and disappearing, hopefully to work farms and not because they’d been killed and hidden away. The not knowing and constant paranoia would have driven her mad.

Out here she respected the curfew, turned over the Army’s share of her vegetable garden without complaint. That’s all she really had to do. The animals were long gone, taken during the initial battle so now the barn and chicken coop stood empty. When rations were handed out she turned up, feeling guilty since she had a more than ample supply of goods when she knew for a fact that families of five were only given twice what she received. It truly wasn’t fair but the neighbours couldn’t be wondering what she was eating. She shared her rations with the larger families to keep their goodwill but still kept some to make it look like she needed it.

Who knew? In a few more months she might need all of her rations.

She was paid back for some rations with preserves. The Boulangers, for example, made fantastic jam from berries their children collected. She gave them her sugar and received a few jars of jam throughout the year. Having something she enjoyed, even if it was just jam on a stale cracker, was sadly one of the bright points of her year. The Martins also shared the odd loaf of bread, which was a nice change. She gave them her share of cooking oil since she had more than enough stored in her shelter. At Christmas they would even send her a cake.

Hauptmann Bossong continued to be a pest to her. She had no idea what kept him trapped in this part of France. Maybe he liked it, or maybe he was overlooked by the higher ups in the German military. She had no idea. She continued to be polite but unavailable. He kept his hands to himself, at least. From time to time he would show up with gifts – extra sugar rations, chocolate, champagne. All these she turned over to the neighbours that were helping her.

If he ever found out she’d be dead. He clearly thought he was harbouring a secret crush that no one else knew about.

Phillip Moreau had found it delightfully amusing. For four years a man chases a woman who obviously has no interest in him. What kind of pathetic man does such a thing? Of course, Phillipe was French and had rarely met a woman that said no.

Abigail never admitted it to anyone, but she found herself feeling sorry for the Captain in spite of her fear of him. To some extent Phillipe was right: she had never encouraged him and other than the day he took her to view her father’s body he had never tried to touch her. Perhaps he’d never been with a woman and the thought was terrifying to him. She could believe that: every woman she spoke to had the same reaction to him that she did.

He wasn’t … right. He had ice water in his veins.

For a while the warm-blooded German men had definitely been scarier. Sometimes they got bored, and when soldiers got bored and had access to alcohol women had best be hidden and forgotten about. The Richards had relatives around Boulogne that had been slaughtered in their home, their daughters raped; the youngest of them just fourteen years old.

No German soldier had so much as looked at Abigail, and if that was the effect of having Hauptmann Bossong interested in her she’d endure the occasional awkward conversation. Recently his visits were becoming few and far between as the Allies seemed to be gaining momentum.

Despite her boredom and isolation, she didn’t dare hope for too much. The arrival of American and British/Canadian forces were certainly good news, but if it amounted to nothing she’d hate to be denied something as precious as hope. What she needed more than anything was confirmation that her husband still lived. Anything else was background noise until she knew for a fact, one way or the other.

There was the slightest trembling that shook the walls of her shelter suddenly. After flickering, the page of her book before her went black as the lights went out overhead. She hesitated, then snuck up the cellar stairs and crossed the kitchen to where she knew her odds and ends were kept in a drawer. She found a candle, then after more groping in the dark she found some matches. She should really keep some of these in the shelter, but usually she was sleeping when the power went out so it didn’t matter.

She struck the match and lit the candle’s wick. It wasn’t the power outage that had her concerned. It was that sound that had come first. She knew what explosions sounded like.

A peek out the front windows told her nothing was happening outside. In the moonlight everything looked like it normally did. A glance out the kitchen window confirmed that the road was empty, as well.

Something was wrong. Abigail wondered if maybe the Resistance had made its first strike this close to her house.

Next she went upstairs, checking out the windows up there. All the way to the coast nothing was stirring that she could see. Out the bathroom window she saw it.

Orange flames, high enough for her to see from five miles away. That explosion was definitely the work of people she knew, and it most certainly caused this power outage.

Headlights were racing from the fire at that moment. She let the curtain fall back in to place, returning to her bedroom, sitting on the edge of her bed and listening so intently she could hear her own pulse. On a night as quiet as this she heard the vehicle on the road as it got closer to her yard. And then it stopped. A car door shut. She heard frantic voices, yelling, not even trying to be quiet. They certainly weren’t local, were they?

Pounding from the back door made her jump.

“Abigail! Abigail, open up at once!”

Her heart leapt in to her throat but she carried her candle to the kitchen. Before she could get to the door it burst inward, making her cry out and nearly drop the flame.

Large men in uniform crowded in to her kitchen, making it feel very small. They carried someone with them, and he was moaning loudly. Everyone was shouting in panic. Something was dripping dark liquid on the floor. A boot smeared it. It looked like blood.

Hauptmann Bossong took her by the elbow, shining a torch in her face. She winced at the bright light. Who had taken the candle away from her?

“Abigail, please. Help him. Er ist mein bruder.”

She didn’t need to be told. The man now being laid out on her kitchen table was the mirror image of the captain, if not younger-looking. Something was wrong with his arm. His jacket sleeve was torn and dark stains were wicking their way from his elbow to his shoulder.

“What happened?” She stepped forward, leaning over where the wound must have been.

“Eine explosion. He was caught by shrapnel.”

“Take off his jacket. I need to see what’s happened.”

She went to a cupboard where she knew she’d find scissors. There were enough torches flashing light all over she was able to see them immediately. But the time she got back they’d rolled him to one side and were carefully easing the sleeve off his arm. It wasn’t working – he was screaming “Nein - hör auf! Nein!”

“Okay, wait. We’ll cut his coat off.”

They lowered him to his back again, and Abigail set to snipping away at the sleeve at the shoulder. A pity the fabric was of such good quality – it was very hard to cut with dulling scissors. But she got them all the way around, and one of the soldiers lifted his shoulder slightly so she could pull the fabric away. Abigail did it as gently as she could but the boy still yelled and cursed in between bouts of “Das tut weh!”

She knew it was hurting him. Let him yowl if it helped.

As he was rolled on to his back a second time the arm flopped to the side, which mercifully hurt so much the boy passed out.

“Friedrich!” The captain was as close to emotional as she’d ever seen a German get. “Friedrich, wake up!”

“Let him rest,” she instructed, prodding the torn mass of flesh in the arm. “If he keeps moving around and screaming we might make this worse.”

She couldn’t imagine worse, though. His skin was ripped apart in ribbons, likely done by multiple pieces of flying metal. The muscle and skin were all the same colour. She couldn’t even begin to stitch this closed, but she could stop the bleeding.

“All I can do is tie his arm off in a tourniquet. It’ll ensure he doesn’t bleed to death before you get him to a hospital.”

The captain nodded jerkily. He wasn’t made of stone; he genuinely had concern for his brother. Abigail felt a pang of sympathy, but she didn’t let it linger or else it could become a habit. She got one of the solders to remove his belt as she got a bottle of Russian vodka out of the cabinet. It was from the captain – if he was pleased that she kept it he didn’t show it.

She poured vodka over the bloody mess to clean it, but that was the most she could do. She had sulfanilamide and morphine downstairs, but that was going to stay her secret. She certainly wasn’t going to produce army-issue first aid supplies from her root cellar.

She tightened the belt enough to staunch the blood loss, maybe  a little tighter  than she would in a hospital. She doubted it would get too infected during the half-hour drive to Calais. The boy likely would have been fine without her help, but the captain had panicked and brought his brother to her first. Again, sympathy. Abigail pushed it aside.

The soldiers carried their unconscious genosse from her house a lot more quietly than they’d entered. She stayed by the kitchen table, staring down at the blood on the wooden top. She moved to the sink to wet a cloth to start cleaning, and when she returned she realized the captain hadn’t left yet. He had his flashlight playing over the table. The only other light came from her candlestick set on the counter. So that’s where it went.

“Hauptmann Bossong,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “are you all right?”

She startled him, and he turned wide and confused eyes on her. “I couldn’t see how bad it was. All I could see was the all the blood. I was so sure he was going to die.”

Abigail could do one of two things. She could keep the cold distance from him she’d been fighting to maintain. Or she could give in to her girl side and act on that sympathy she felt rising to surface again.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing. You assessed the situation before reacting. That’s what a good leader does.”

He exhaled and looked at her hand. Then he looked back at her.

“Thank you, Abigail. I am sorry if we startled you tonight.”

This was very wrong. She was actually feeling comfortable.

He took her hand off his shoulder but held it, thumb running over the back. “Thank you for helping Friedrich.” Then he was gone. Abigail was left to clean the blood from the floor and table by herself in the dark.

New project I’m editing …

All this training, and it’s sea sickness that’s going to do me in, Elliot thought miserably as the boat tilted starboard again and he had to close his eyes against the lurching of his stomach. The troop ship that took them to England had been a piece of cake, not unlike a train really. This little skiff was rudely reminding him he was, as a matter of fact, on water.

There was a cold sweat on his skin, but everyone looked a little damp from the sea spray. He was breathing heavy but he had to or else he was going to throw up. Plus then the other men might think he was scared which, oddly, he wasn’t. He felt a troubling calmness, actually. Three years cleaning latrines and wandering the English countryside playing war games had led up to this. It wasn’t something to fear: it was just the inevitable conclusion of what they’d been meant to do.

But what a way to break your cherry.

The gunfire from the beach was already raining down around them, hitting the water and the sides of the boat with sounds only heard in movies. The destroyers out on deeper water were making a hell of a racket, with explosions sounding behind them and then again on that beige ridge where they blew sand and earth four storeys into the air.

With his eyes closed Elliot could focus on his breathing, but he couldn’t hear his heartbeat. It might have been racing but he wouldn’t know. All the men on the boat were completely silent. There was only the sound of destruction.

He felt the tension increase. When he opened his eyes he could see how close they were to shore. The body language of everyone around him reinforced it. Soon their landing ship would hit the sand, that ramp would drop, and they’d be on foot. The tanks would follow. He tried not to notice the eyes of his men turn to him, gauging his reaction. He tried to show nothing; tried to stay focused on where they were going.

A shot flew by close enough to feel. The man behind his left shoulder screamed and dropped to the wooden deck, hand to his neck. Blood was gushing between his fingers, but he was breathing.

Another man helped him to the back of the ship and he was forgotten immediately. The deck dropped into water.  The first wave of men disembarked. He was in the second.

Icy water came up to his knees, and still he couldn’t feel bottom. He sank up to his chest, awake instantly, nausea forgotten. His legs pumped furiously, fighting sea water and wet sand to take him to the shore and up the embankment. He was panting by the time he dragged himself free.

The man in front of him took a bullet the second they were on dry land. He dropped to his knees, and Elliot knocked his knee on the unknown soldier’s helmet trying to avoid him as he ran. He kept his head up, looking for their targets. It wasn’t hard to find the pillbox: it was active and accurate. Another man was taken down to his right. Elliot kept going. One foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other …

At the sea wall he took cover and waited for the rest of the company to regroup and form a line. He recognized Clyde Walton on his left. Across from him the opposite way he could see Reinhold and Cleary as well. All eyes were back on him, he realized. Where the hell was Lieutenant Davidson?

No time to worry about it. They knew what they had to do.

There was no point in being sneaky. Armageddon was bellowing around them in gunfire and explosions. “With me, we go right,” he said to Walton. He pointed to the others further down. They were still paying attention. “Flank left!” He shouted best he could. His mouth was dry. He could feel electricity humming around him from Clark and the other men on his left. He looked at Walton. “You lead.” Over his left shoulder he told the rest of his little group, “Cover us.”

The Sin Eater let his boot hit the puddles of the road …

… water splashing on to the hem of his trousers. He didn’t worry that the water was probably more shit than rain. He’d been around humans so long their barbaric and primitive practices no longer shocked him. He accepted it. That’s why whenever he was in London his trousers were only worn once and discarded; left for a chamber maid or concierge to wear if they wished. After all, the fabric was fine and expensive, and if they could sell them it was as good as a tip.

He just didn’t want to wear pants with shit on them.

The hovel in his sights was a pathetic structure, listing to one side, lucky to be propped up between two stone structures with much stronger foundations. It looked as though a squatter had put a front door on someone’s garden and then stretched a thatched roof overhead. It just didn’t fit. And neither did the dying man inside.

The Sin Eater could smell the man’s fear from across the street. It never ceased to amaze him how people could suddenly find their God and faith at the exact moment they got a whiff of the fact that they were not much longer for this world. For all their disgusting behaviours and rough manners, humans were delightfully hypocritical, hence his wealth and purpose in this life.

Or was this all just a slow, meandering death? It was hard to tell. His employer, after all, took delight in not always sharing the whys and ways of the immortality He bestowed on souls. The contingencies were always an uncomfortable surprise.

When the Sin Eater reached the door of the shanty he knocked for outward appearances’ sake, then let himself in as though invited.

The room stank not only of death but also of sin; the mingling smell of moldy onion and rotten meat. Not everyone could smell it that way, but the Sin Eater could. He could sense many things strictly by smell. Anger, fear, sorrow, frustration, deceit … even evil. And over the smell of death, it was the smell of evil that brought him to this house.

A small man was wasting away on a straw mattress, mumbling “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …”

The Sin Eater shook his head, pulling a wooden stool across the floor loudly and sitting at the man’s bedside. That’s when the man noticed he was there, and as though sensing the load the Sin Eater carried, he shrunk away from him.

“Who … who art thou?”

“Worry yourself not about who I am. Worry about the why of what I am.”

The man clearly wasn’t up for riddles, and frowned, his hands forming feeble claws and pulling at the thin, filthy blanket covering him. “I have no wealth, no money, no gold. Take what you want, but I am dying and know that it is a sin to steal.”

The Sin Eater barked a laugh at that. “Believe me, old man. I can tell you what is sin and what is not.”

The man looked back to the ceiling. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures …”

The Sin Eater shrugged, not caring if the man needed to know why he was here or not. It wasn’t necessary for his job. And no amount of praying could change what he was about to do anyway.

He closed his eyes, made a steeple of his fingers and rested his forefingers on his forehead. It wasn’t necessary, but he always did it for some reason. The … ritual of it made him feel one with these human animals.

With his mind he reached out to the man’s brain, his stream of consciousness touching at the man’s thoughts like phantom fingers. The man seemed to sense it and tried to physically pull back from it, but once the Sin Eater was in your head it was already too late.

He rifled through the useless blue sky and white clouds and golden gates drivel the man was concentrating on and reached deeper, through years of memories and back to the past; his terrible, terrible past.

Back when the man had been young, strong, and handsome. Before disease had weakened him and addled his mind. Syphilis, the Sin Eater recognized it immediately. There was always syphilis these days. Obviously, it was due to the whores.

But this man had done more than lay with them, and that was the other stench the Sin Eater could recognize; the stench of garbage and sulfur. The smell of evil.

He found the episodes the man was trying to hide from him, now that he wanted God as his savior and master and desired to arrive at St. Peter’s gate as innocent as the day he was born. But he wasn’t … he was just as drenched in as much filth as the Sin Eater. That’s what had brought the Sin Eater to his door, wasn’t it?

The Sin Eater found the sins as sure as he’d put them there himself. He immersed in them up to his optic nerves, dipping his very being into the squalid depths of this man’s past depravity.

As far as sinners went, this man was pretty standard. Not the worst by a long shot.

The memories came back as fully-encompassing revelations, taking over the Sin Eater’s senses and putting him in the moment as though he had been in the man’s body. But of course he had no control over what that body was doing, because humans all had free will and this had all been in the past.

The man had paid whores to lay with him, and the whores hadn’t minded the looks of him, even though he never presented himself as wealthy. He had been strapping and comely, they had been pleased to service someone that wasn’t old, ugly, drunk or malodorous.

But when the man had them alone in an alley or back walkway he had slaughtered them. He kept a blade hidden in his sleeve, and it wasn’t very sharp either. It was startling how the man had been able to carve these women into macabre art exhibits of hatred without anyone noticing. It had taken time to skin their heads, shred their faces, and then fuck their dead bodies.

In all, he found thirteen slayings. It was hard to be completely sure if that was all of them, since the man had lost his mind and the Sin Eater also picked up visions of the women as demons who wanted to consume his soul. The Sin Eater may have used the man’s point of view, but he could still recognize delusion over reality. The insanity sat like an uncomfortable coat, it brought distaste to the Sin Eater’s mouth. He hated the insanity. It was disorienting, like stumbling into someone else’s nightmare.

The man was weeping. That was another side effect of the Sin Eater’s ability. No matter how the man fought to keep the memory at bay, he saw exactly what the Sin Eater saw and realized that because of it, he was damned.

The Sin Eater laid his hand on the man’s chest, his own skin crawling at contact with that filthy flesh. But this was the important part; this is what his employer paid him for.

The man drew a deep breath, and the Sin Eater sent him a warm, cleansing sensation that took the sin and replaced it with … nothing. The events were erased.

The man calmed, he stopped scrabbling his hands against the blanket and his chest, and his face went slack … almost peaceful. Then he fell into a deep sleep. Judging by how his various diseases had progressed, this would likely be his last rest. The Sin Eater had arrived just in time.

When sins were admitted and divinely forgiven they vanished. Washed away by faith and purity. But when the Sin Eater worked, the sins were not gone. They were still here. They didn’t stay with the Sin Eater; they just stayed on the human plane to find another … host? Carrier? The more down here that was dark and evil, the more ground the good guys lost. Plus, it sure pissed off the guy upstairs when someone else was running around, removing sins; encroaching on His territory, so to speak.

These souls that the Sin Eater sought out were never admitted to heaven anyway. With or without their sins present, evil was evil and could not abide. It was the potential, not the deeds. Damned souls were damned. The sin was either wiped clear by the hand of ultimate power, or, after the Sin Eater’s visit, left to fester elsewhere.

From the Prologue to Book One: “Sin Eater”

Available from Amazon.com.