Lia Cooper's Blog, page 2
February 19, 2018
New Release: It’s Finally Here, Blood & Bone Book 4
It’s finally here lovely readers, the long awaited sequel to The Symbiotic Law!
Writing the original trilogy was an amazing experience and I knew very shortly after publishing The Symbiotic Law that I had to write a follow-up story delving into the emotional fallout from that novel, but I’ll admit that it took me some time to be in a place where I felt that I *could* tackle that narrative. A Sanguine Solution is the result of several years carefully feeling my way through Ethan Ellison’s tangled emotions and I couldn’t be more pleased with the direction the story took.
Writing A Sanguine Solution this year has truly opened up so many new creative avenues and new plot threads in this universe that I’m excited to continue exploring. And while this will truly be the last book in the Blood & Bone series, I can say for certain that it won’t be the last story about these characters (but I’ll have more to say on that in the coming months ;))
For now, please enjoy Blood & Bone #4: A Sanguine Solution.
Blurb
How do you keep getting up in the morning when you can’t to look at yourself in the mirror?
Having returned to Seattle, Ethan Ellison would say that he’s trying to piece his life back together but who is he kidding? There’s no returning to life as he knew it, not after Ali’s revelation about their parentage. Now, Ethan’s haunted by personal ghosts and plagued by increasingly temperamental magic.
For Patrick Clanahan, returning to work should be easier than dealing with a mate who can’t stand his touch. But there’s nothing easy about a series of murders that all point to vampire activity in a city where there are no vampires. It’s bringing back to mind the murder of his last partner, slain by vampires a year before he met Ethan—as though Pat didn’t have enough to worry about.
Return to the world of Blood & Bone’s alternative supernatural Seattle, where Ethan and Patrick are about to face their darkest inner demons and scratch the lid on a cover-up bigger than either of them.
This novel picks up after the events of the original trilogy as well as Medium Rare (The Profane Series #1) and Vapor Trail (The Profane Series #2).
Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
November 27, 2017
ATTN: Book Reviewers (ARCs for B&B4 A Sanguine Solution)
Hello my lovelies! I wanted to write up a quick life update because things have been a little crazy out here in my neck of the woods and whenever life gets busy it has a habit of affecting book releases.
If you don’t follow me on twitter, I’ll start by saying that I’ve started working as a barista again for the holidays at a very busy starbucks. It’s a great opportunity to work with a lot of really cool people but it did come at a time when I’ve been struggling to balance so many creative projects. I’ve also been participating in NaNoWriMo, vlogging the first half of November, and finishing up edits on B&B #4. As I’ve mentioned here a few times, I’m intending to release Blood & Bone #4: A Sanguine Solution in the very near future. Originally I had hoped it would be out at the end of October but now we’re looking at “before Christmas.”
Since there’s a little bit more of a lead on the release, I thought I would take the opportunity to offer ARCs of B&B4 to interested book reviewers in exchange for an honest review after release. Seeing as this is the fourth book in a series in an extended universe, I do have a short little questionnaire for you to fill out to request an ARC if you’re interested:
>> https://goo.gl/forms/efMZ9UDCl3VnzPUK2
Copies should be made available sometime in the next two weeks, so please fill out the form and let me know before then!
November 19, 2017
Sneak Peak: Blood & Bone #4 – A Sanguine Solution 5/?
[image error]The countdown to Book 4 continues this week with another snippet from B&B 4: A Sanguine Solution.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4.
B&B 3.5 Remainders, an f/f novella set during The Symbiotic Law is also now available through amazon!
Chapter 2b
Patrick
Pat met Sabira Mallory in the parking lot. She had a newspaper raised over her head to fend off the rain.
“I spent most of last night making phone calls,” she said.
Their trip to the club near yesterday’s body had been frustratingly fruitless. Despite Mallory’s assertion that someone would have to be on the premises to get ready for the evening’s crowd, they had been met with a quiet, locked building. Pat’s wolf senses had confirmed that there hadn’t been anyone home.
“Hopefully Lynch has a name for us,” he murmured, holding the door open for her.
They stopped at their desks first to strip out of raincoats and shake water out of their clothes. Then they went down to the second floor break room to see if anyone had made coffee for the morning shift. Mallory sniffed the Mr Coffee carafe suspiciously and dumped the dregs into the sink while Pat measured grounds into a paper filter for a new pot. Even if the coffee left something to be desired, some charitable soul had set out two boxes of pastries.
Mallory picked up an apple fritter between her first and middle fingers and said, “It’s not a scone, but you can’t argue with fried dough no matter what continent it comes from.”
“Were you able to find the club owners?” Pat asked, ripping his attention away from the coffee. He didn’t really need the caffeine since Ethan had poured him enough coffee into a travel mug to make his stomach churn but it gave his hands something to do.
“Still a negative on that point, but I did have a long and illuminating conversation with the manager at the adult bookshop our victim died behind. Not a vampire—yes, I checked their information through our system—and according to Mr Jester—yes, and that is his real name—they don’t get vampires around their neighborhood.”
“That’s a bold statement.”
“So said I to Mr Jester, but he was very adamant. He wanted to make sure that I knew the neighborhood didn’t put up with that kind of riff raff. His words exactly.”
Pat frowned. “What does that mean, ‘riff raff’?”
“I think he meant anything non-human. A bit rich coming from…but it doesn’t do any good to judge people for their preferences. Do you know much about the local coven?”
“There’s no central coven in the city. The nearest one sleeps in Port Townsend. But that just means we have a couple thousand vampires, more than half of them undocumented, and there’s no central oversight body to keep everyone in line.”
“So, it’s a complete mess.”
“More or less.”
“And do these undocumented vampires often kill humans? I tried looking that up too, but I don’t have the right clearance.”
Pat snorted as the coffee machine clicked off. He reached for Mallory’s cup, pouring coffee over a spoonful of sugar and handing it to her. He used a spoonful of powdered creamer in his own coffee. It didn’t taste all that great but it was safer than drinking from any of the milk cartons in the shared refrigerator.
“Thanks,” Mallory said. Her eyes shut in satisfaction as she sipped.
They took the stairs back up to the third floor and settled in at their desks. Mallory shared her notes from the day before with him while they checked their email. Nothing from Lynch but it was still early. There were also brief reports from the responding officers and a complete folder of pictures of the crime scene.
“How long would it take for a single vampire to drain a person?” Mallory asked.
“Not sure.”
“But they don’t usually need to feed so much, right? I’ve read that. Only a feral or a starving vampire would need all of the blood from a human body, and this girl looks well and truly drained.”
“Could have been more than one feeder.”
“Wouldn’t there be a second set of bite marks if that were the case?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So, are you going to tell me how you know so much about vampires?” Mallory asked without looking up from her computer.
“You make it sound like I’m some expert. I’m not.”
“But you have met one before.”
Pat frowned at her, looking for the angle to her question. He couldn’t believe that it was as innocently asked as it sounded. Not with his history. But Mallory made an expectant gesture with her hands, waiting for an answer, guileless.
“I’ve met a few over the years.”
She matched him frown for frown. “Why are you being so cagey?”
“I’m not.”
“Clanahan.”
“Oh, come on,” he snapped.
Mallory’s set her coffee mug down on her desk with a thud.
“You read everyone’s files,” he said.
“You mean I’ve read your file.”
He stared at her.
“Yes, of course. I did when I was promoted to your partner, but I don’t see how that’s relevant. There’s nothing in there about vampires.”
“What? That’s not right.”
She made an exasperated noise. “Do you think I would have missed something like that? Now, will you please just explain. Why are you so touchy about the subject?”
“My ex-partner was killed by vampires.”
“Ellison?” she said, shooting him a confused look.
“No.”
“Sloane. Did you read his file too?”
“Most of its classified. At least from my clearance level.”
“Seriously?”
“You didn’t know?”
Pat shook his head. “Why would it be? Everyone here knows what happened.”
“Maybe if they were in this department at the time, but I’ve only ever heard rumors about it below this floor. Captain Augustas said it was gruesome. That it left its mark on you.”
“When did she say that?” he demanded.
“When she gave me this job.”
“She warned you about me?”
“I know, you’d think you were a loose canon I needed watch out for,” Mallory said in a wry voice, looking away.
He couldn’t even argue with her about that.
“So, what happened to Sloane?” she asked, sighing heavily. “It has to be more interesting than just death by vampires if someone higher up thinks it needs to be classified.”
“I never thought about it as a conspiracy.”
She gave him a arch look.
“I don’t know, and that’s part of the problem. Adam went off on his own. Looking into something. And then he was attacked, and he died before I made it to the hospital. No physical evidence except for the bite, nothing in his files or at his apartment to tell us what he’d been investigating.”
An image of Ethan’s wane face staring out the window of his townhouse flickered across Pat’s inner eye. He flinched and came back to himself in the moment, sitting across from Mallory, whose dark eyes were tracking him she could glean every secret from the shadows on his face.
“Case closed,” he muttered.
“And apparently classified.”
“I don’t know why they’d do that.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Indeed. And you never looked into it any further?”
“Jordan ordered me not too. Besides, I saw the scene, they didn’t miss anything. And I searched Adam’s apartment myself. There were no leads.”
“No coven door to knock down.”
Pat shifted in his seat and looked away, staring at his email inbox.
“Not that you didn’t try.”
“Maybe,” he muttered.
“I find it hard to believe that there’s no organized family in a city of this size. I should look into that.”
“I’m going to go see if Tobias has something for us.”
She made a distracted noise to mark his departure.
November 6, 2017
Sneak Peak: Blood & Bone #4 – A Sanguine Solution 4/?
[image error]The countdown to Book 4 continues this week with another snippet from B&B 4: A Sanguine Solution.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3.
B&B 3.5 Remainders, an f/f novella set during The Symbiotic Law is also now available through amazon!
Chapter 2a
Ethan
Once upon a time, Ethan Ellison had been a simple man, doing a simple job for the Seattle Police Department, living an uncomplicated life. He had fucked whomever he wanted to fuck. Had drunk. Had danced. Had solved simple crimes involving petty people smart enough to abuse magic but dumb enough not to do it very well.
It was easy to see how that all fell apart; to track the moments he went awry. It began that morning Police Captain Jordan Augustas called him into her office to meet his temporary partner: Patrick Clanahan, werewolf, Major Crimes, kind of a dick but ultimately a decent sort of guy.
That moment stood out, but recently, Ethan had begun to wonder if the fault in his stars stretched further back in his personal history. Had he been cursed from the start being born of a loveless witch and a power-hungry mage? Was it too simple to blame the course of one’s life on their parents?
Of course.
A part of Ethan missed the simpler days he’d lived before he’d ever been tangled up in all of Patrick Clanahan’s werewolf mate bullshit.
Now, he lay in a bed next to the other man, pressing his body to the very edge of the mattress so that there was maximum space between them, and fighting for sleep. And when he did find that ephemeral dreamland, it seemed determined to be as unpleasant as possible.
Five nights out of seven since returning to Seattle, Ethan woke up drenched in sweat, gasping for air, and swearing in the same breath that he couldn’t remember what the dream had been about.
He suspected that Pat knew he was lying, but dark circles had been growing under the wolf’s own eyes, and he never said anything about the lies.
Ethan woke himself up again with hitching breaths. He’d sweated through the arms and chest of his T-shirt. Next to him, Pat groaned and rolled over so that they were facing one another.
“You okay?” the wolf mumbled, eyes flickering against the pull of sleep.
“Go back to sleep,” Ethan said, pushing himself back.
The wolf reached for him, thick shoulder muscles bunching up under the sliver of silvery moonlight that lit the bedroom.
Ethan pressed the wolf’s hand down against the bed and repeated, “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
It wasn’t fair him waking Pat up like this every night when the wolf still had to go into the station in the morning. Was especially cruel on mornings like the previous day when he got a call from Dispatch hours before his alarm was set to go off.
For once, the images in Ethan’s mind were foggy and easier to push aside as he slipped out of the bed and hid himself in the downstairs half bath. It was tiny and cramped, a little dusty because Pat never used it, but if he was very quiet, sometimes Pat would do what he was told and go back to sleep without coming out to investigate further.
He sat on the closed toilet and waited for his heart to calm down. This took a while, but in the meantime the townhouse remained quiet, no sign of Pat following him downstairs.
Ethan sighed and sat back. He could see the upper half of his face in the vanity mirror, just pieces of it illuminated by a streetlight outside, the rest of it fell into dark shadows that appeared almost skeletal.
“You’re not looking so hot, man.”
Ethan’s spine straightened with a snap, his wide eyes sweeping the dark for the voice. He stood up and slipped—
“Ethan!”
His eyes snapped open, meeting Pat’s wide, scared expression. Ethan had two fists wrapped up in the wolf’s sleep shirt, knuckles digging hard into Pat’s sternum, and he couldn’t tell if he’d been trying to drag the wolf closer or shove him away. His heart beat so fast it ached under his breastbone, and his breath shuddered in and out of his lungs in short little bursts that were a hair away from a full on panic attack.
He gasped, mouth open wide, trying to suck in enough air to fight off the black spots fringing the edges of his vision.
Above him Pat’s eyes were so wide. The wolf had one hand wrapped around Ethan’s wrists and the other arm around his shoulders, trying to tug him closer against his locked elbows.
It was instinct to flatted his hands against Pat’s chest and shove at him. It shouldn’t have been so easy to move Patrick Clanahan, and not just because he was a healthy young werewolf, but because he was a solidly built man, easily twenty pounds of muscle heavier than Ethan. But a little zing of electricity shot through Ethan’s fingers and jolted Pat away from him.
The wolf shouted as he fell over the opposite side of the bed with a crash.
“Fuck,” Ethan said, pressing one hand against his hammering chest. He looked around the bedroom, searching for that voice, but—but that had been the dream. Hadn’t it?
“Fuck!”
He scrambled across the bed and met Pat as he hauled himself up off the floor, a startled look on his face.
“I’m so sorry!”
The wolf shook his head.
Ethan reached out one shaking hand, not quite making contact.
“Are you okay?”
“Nothing’s broke. Are you okay?”
He shook his head. “It was just a—”
“Don’t say it was just a dream.”
“It was,” he said with a scowl, confident that those wolf eyes would be able to see it clearly even in the low light.
“That’s wasn’t ‘just’ anything.”
Ethan sat up straight and crossed his arms, both in defiance and to hide the shakiness in his muscles.
“What else do you want me to say?”
Pat threw up his hands and made a frustrated noise. “Anything. I wish you would say literally anything. Anything you want to say. I’m here. I’m listening. You can talk to me about anything.” The wolf glanced down. He pressed his hands against the edge of the bed, gripping the mused duvet.
“I know I’m not always the best at—at talking about things.”
Ethan snorted.
“I know,” Pat repeated. “But I want to be here for you. I’m trying to be. But I don’t know—”
“You know half the problem is you just don’t fucking listen to me?” Ethan snapped, embracing the rush of anger simmering inside his chest. It had burned away the edges of his panic.
“What? I just said I was—”
“You’re proving my point right now.”
The wolf’s mouth snapped closed with a click. He stood in one smooth motion and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. The light under the door flicked on, and Ethan listened to the water running.
He slipped out of the bed and stripped out of his ruined clothes. They weren’t exactly the same size, but Pat had been over-eager to get Ethan into his clothes before. Now he stole sweatpants and a well-washed tank top from the wolf’s drawers and pulled them on, savoring the feel of soft cotton against his skin. The sense memory of water on his face clung to the edges of his mind.
Ethan shook his head. Dreams were tricky things. He could still feel the water, but the sound of the voice, the exact timbre, was already fading.
By the time Pat emerged from the bathroom, Ethan had wrapped himself up under the duvet, back turned towards the middle of the bed. The wolf climbed in on the other side and they there in silence and deep breathing.
“You want me to listen, but you don’t want to talk,” the wolf said softly.
Ethan’s face split into a painful smile that he was glad the wolf couldn’t see. He didn’t reply, and after another minute of silence Pat huffed and turned over onto his side, facing away from him.
He couldn’t fall asleep again even though his eyes felt hot and gritty. Eventually, Pat’s breathing evened out enough that Ethan could tell he’d dropped into a light doze. Both of their phone alarms went off too soon, rousing the wolf to get dressed.
It was still dark outside, darker even still thanks to the drizzling rain that had been a constant feature since they flew in from Toronto.
Ethan debated with himself whether to stay in bed and pretend to sleep, but while the shower was running, he forced himself to get up and go downstairs. He made toast and coffee before Pat came stumbling down, unknotted tie wrapped around his neck.
Ethan watched a bead of water make its covetous track down between the wolf’s collarbones. He shouldn’t feel envy for a drop of water. According to Pat that—all of that muscle and bone and frustrating obstinance—was his and only his, but there was nothing in Ethan that could make him reach out and take it. He buried his nose in his coffee cup and grunted a wordless goodbye as Pat left for work.
tbc
October 30, 2017
Sneak Peak: Blood & Bone #4 – A Sanguine Solution 3/?
[image error]
The countdown to Book 4 continues this week with another snippet from B&B 4: A Sanguine Solution.
B&B 3.5 Remainders, an f/f novella set during The Symbiotic Law is also now available through amazon!
Chapter 1c
“Sorry,” the wolf muttered, though there wasn’t anything apologetic about his tone, only a hint of confusion and more bitterness than was probably healthy to hear in the voice of the man who claimed to be in love with you.
“Are you tired?” Pat asked. “Hungry? I could fix you something.”
“It’s too early for dinner.”
“I’ll start something,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Ethan lay there listening to his partner open and close the refrigerator in quick succession. He smelled onions cooking and knife noises moving against a cutting board, but it was impossible to tell what Pat was fixing. He wasn’t a gourmand or anything, but the wolf had a surprisingly robust collection of recipes that he could fix without too much effort. Something about helping to cook family meals growing up, Ethan hadn’t been paying much attention when he’d explained it.
At any other time he would have been more than happy to reap the rewards of Pat’s skills, but he’d found it difficult to keep solid foods down—when he could bring himself to eat anything in the first place. He knew intellectually that a loss of appetite was symptomatic of several things, depression being one, but knowing that didn’t help him get over the apathy that had spread through every corner of his life.
He blinked his eyes open some time later, not noticing when he had slipped into a light doze. Pat stood over him, one hand warm against his shoulder to shake him awake. Ethan cringed under the touch; everywhere he could feel Pat’s body heat his skin started to crawl—the sensation akin to a thousand centipede legs shimmying across his body.
Pat let go and jerked back. “It’s ready if you want to eat.”
Ethan dragged himself up into a sitting position and eyed the bowls of pasta on the living room table.
The television was on but muted in the background, paused on the Netflix landing page.
He held the bowl of homemade mac’n’cheese in his hands while Pat sat down next to him, careful this time to keep a spare couple of inches between them. It was hard for the wolf, who had become rather touchy-feely on their globe trotting adventure over the autumn. He figured that it must have been that pack mentality labeling him as part of the wolf’s family or something. That’s what a mate was, right? Like a soulmate or something equally ridiculous. He’d been reading Jansson’s book about it, but Ethan still struggled to think the word “mate” without grimacing in disbelief. He hadn’t been raised to believe in that kind of hocus pocus, which was saying a lot when he’d been trained in just about every other sort of magic. But magical, pre-determined soulmate crap? Not in his wheelhouse.
But ever since Patrick Clanahan had gotten it into his head that Ethan was his mate, he seemed to take every opportunity to get up in Ethan’s business. Before—well, before it hadn’t been so bad. The wolf was easy enough on the eyes and a decent lay, open to instruction and eager to please, which Ethan had appreciated on more than one occasion. But that was before.
Before.
He forced himself to take a bite of the food so that Pat would stop staring at him and eat his own dinner.
In the here and after he couldn’t trust his instincts. The same instincts that told him to sink into Pat’s strength and let the wolf carry him. The same instincts that had led him astray so badly in the previous year. And he couldn’t trust Pat’s instincts anymore than his own; they were ruled by this belief in a magical system of true love.
Love. It made his insides cringe up in a kind of secondhand embarrassment whenever the word slithered out of the shadows around them.
Ethan couldn’t trust that either.
Instead he sat in Detective Pat Clanahan’s living room trying not to gag on objectively delicious pasta while the television droned quietly in front of his glazed eyes.
He slipped into the bathroom afterwards and stayed in there longer than was polite.
He needed more clothes but he was loathe to pick them up from his apartment, and at the same time he couldn’t ask Pat to do it. The wolf would—wouldn’t ask a question about it either, but Ethan’s pride held him back.
Cold water out of the faucet felt soothing against his overheated skin.
tbc
October 23, 2017
Sneak Peak: Blood & Bone #4 – A Sanguine Solution 2/?
[image error] The countdown to Book 4 continues this week with another snippet from B&B 4: A Sanguine Solution. Go Here to read the first part.
B&B 3.5 Remainders, an f/f novella set during The Symbiotic Law is also now available through amazon!
Chapter 1b
Ethan
He was relieved when the email came through, informing him that his request for time off had been granted effective immediately.
Ethan closed Pat’s laptop and got up from his desk—it was spare, like the rest of the werewolf’s townhouse, neat and tidy in a way that suggested the room wasn’t used very often, rather than that it was frequently picked up.
The townhouse was quiet. Pat’s cousins, who lived next door, were gone for the rest of the month on a snowboarding trip over winter break. Ethan relished the peace, soaked it up until it weighed down his bones. He slid onto the couch and stretched out on his stomach, cheek pressed into the rough cushion. He breathed slowly, pushing all the air out of his lungs and holding his breath until they ached before he broke and inhaled again. A weight that he could sink under.
From his position, Ethan could see the edge of his book—it wasn’t even his book, it belonged to a dead man, inherited through something like attrition—poking out from between the cushions of one of the matching campaign chairs. He’d read it cover to cover by now, there wasn’t much else to do since he had yet to find a secret stash of paperbacks, DVDs or even porn. Pat Clanahan, it turned out, wasn’t much of a reader.
If Ethan had learned anything in the past couple of weeks, it was that the wolf spent what little spare time he wasn’t at the station, working out in his dining room-turned-gym.
He frowned and rubbed his cheek against the cushion. Fuck he was bored. He’d passed through the stages of mindless sleep and marathon insomnia and come out the other side to—to this. To a state where he wasn’t particularly tired but wasn’t exactly motivated to do any work either. Not that he had any work to do, not now.
It was the right decision, handing in his request for time off. He knew deep down that it had been the smart move. Even though he’d just taken three months off to spend them running around the world, it had hardly counted as a vacation, and now…
Now, Ethan couldn’t see anything except his si—her—her shocked face as it disappeared under the roiling sea, whipped down and away out of sight, playing out in a loop whether he was awake or asleep.
He was distracted and there was nothing worse than a distracted cop. A distracted cop missed things, missed clues, missed suspects, missed the shaky knife until it was already stuck between their ribs by the hapless junkie. And that was if they were lucky and their distraction only got themselves killed. He couldn’t bear to think about being the cause of someone hurting Pat again. The guy had been through enough on Ethan’s behalf, not least of all because Ethan was an emotionally crippled jackass.
So, instead he lay on Pat’s sofa, soaking up the feel of gravity weighing him down until he felt like a lead weight pressing a groove in the werewolf’s sofa. This was how he’d leave his mark.
Without him being conscious of it, the sun moved across the room, marking the inevitable march of time until it slapped him in the face.
Ethan flinched back, squinting, aware all of a sudden that the day had slipped away from him and it was early afternoon. The deadbolt turned on the front door and before he could think of moving, making himself look less pathetic, more presentable, Pat swung the door open, halting on the threshold with his keys in one hand and his eyes frozen on Ethan.
“Hey,” the wolf greeted him.
“Hey,” Ethan murmured, sitting up in a series of twitches and jerks. He scrubbed a hand at the lethargy clinging to his eyes. “How’s—you’re early.”
Pat’s mouth turned down at the corners, his face drawn with a tired look. “I got called in early.”
“Did something happen?”
Ethan watched indecision move across his partner’s face. He could see the moment Pat decided not to answer honestly, and Ethan chose to look away first, as though he could lessen that twinge of disappointment he felt if he manufactured the pocket of space between them. Pat didn’t trust him enough to talk about whatever it was with him. Not the whole truth at least.
But why should he? Ethan looked down at his threadbare T-shirt and sweatpants. He’d tendered his own leave of absence that morning. Of course Pat couldn’t trust him with the details from an open case.
“No, never mind.” Ethan held up his hand to forestall any shifty replies. “Forget I asked.”
Pat sighed and kicked his shoes off, dropped his wrinkled jacket over the back of a chair and took a seat on the living room table so that they were on a better eye level. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning to do?”
Ethan shrugged.
“I wish you— Fuck it. The Captain said she approved your request. Just so you know.”
“Yeah, I got the email.”
Ethan glanced up at his partner through his bangs—he needed a haircut again. He was lazy enough to just let it grow out but Ethan couldn’t stand the way he looked with long hair. It did something strange to the angles of his face, made them look gangly and overlarge until he didn’t look like himself anymore. On a good day, he could hardly stand to look in the mirror at all—he was afraid what would happen if he looked and saw someone else. Someone…
“Ethan?” Pat said quietly, leaning towards him. He hesitated a second before resting his palm on Ethan’s knee, warm and solid, grounding in a way that settled the unhappy flutter working it’s way up his throat, threatening to choke him.
Ethan swallowed and said, “I know I didn’t ask if—I mean, is it okay if I, you know, stay here?” And then he tensed, searching Pat’s face for any sign of discomfort at the idea but there wasn’t any. If anything, the wolf’s shoulders eased an inch at his question, which Ethan watched from the corner of his eye, curious.
“You must know…” Pat sat up, looking around anywhere but at his eyes. “Of course you can stay here.”
Ethan nodded slowly.
“What about your place?”
“What about it?”
“You’re still paying rent on it, aren’t you?”
“The lease isn’t up for a couple of months.” His lips twitched but not into a smile. “Besides, where else would I store all my shit?”
Pat shifted his weight on the table and for a second it looked like he was going to reach out. Ethan braced himself for a touch against his bare skin, only breathing again in relief when it didn’t come.
“You could store it here,” the wolf said.
“Don’t ask me to move in.”
It wasn’t fair the way Pat’s face crumpled up around the edges. It was too much, not just this twisted thing between them that he hadn’t had any say in—this wolf thing—but also the expectations that Pat kept putting onto it. Sometimes when he lay still for too long and thought about the look in the wolf’s eyes, Ethan felt as though the pressure would grind him into a fine powder.
Just another complication that he wasn’t equipped to deal with just then. And it made him a little angry the way Pat kept flirting with the edge of that anvil, pressing down no matter how hard Ethan tried to ease out from under it.
“Don’t,” he said.
tbc
October 16, 2017
Cover Reveal & Sneak Peak at Blood & Bone #4: A Sanguine Solution
I’ve been teasing a follow-up novel to The Symbiotic Law for a while now. I began drafting a fourth book in the series all the way back in February 2015 but it’s been a crazy couple of years between life getting in the way and other projects cropping up to steal my attention. But I’ve really excited to say that FINALLY, finally book 4 is almost here! In fact, it looks like it might be out as early as the first week in November.
Last week I released a bonus novella that bridges some of the time between books 3 and 4 in the series, which you can pick up a copy of here: Blood & Bone 3.5 Remainders.
Book Four Cover Reveal
[image error] A Sanguine Solution picks up very soon after the end of the main events in Book 3 and will hopefully answer some questions about how Ethan and Patrick finally found their happy ending together. It also includes several familiar faces from the previous books such as Detective Sabira Mallory, as well as Vector Clanahan and Lachlan Graham who were introduced to the universe in their own trilogy, The Profane Series. A passing familiarity with The Profane Series will be make some things in A Sanguine Solution more clear, but ultimately this book is about Ethan and Patrick dealing with their evolving relationship.
Sneak Peak at A Sanguine Solution
And lastly, over the next two weeks I’ll be releasing snippets from Chapters 1 and 2 of A Sanguine Solution. Keep reading for the first of these snippets and make sure to follow me on twitter (@LiaCooperWrites), my mailing list, or here at the blog to find out as soon as Book 4 is released!
The beginning of December 2012 – Patrick
It was the way every story began: with a death, a murder, blood on the streets. Only this time there wasn’t any blood. To spill it would have been a waste.
“Why is it always a dead girl?” Detective Patrick Clanahan muttered under his breath.
The temperature had dropped down just above freezing, settling in at 33F—all thanks to the thick clouds that had blanketed the city of Seattle through the evening and after moon rise. It made the night dark, blocking out the moon and stars, what little you might have seen of them past the city lights, and turning everything a dull grey. The faces of the patrol officers taping off the crime scene were washed bone white under the cop lights.
At least it hadn’t started raining.
The victim might have looked serene, laid on on her back, head propped up on one bent arm, face relaxed even in death, but for the fact that she had been found drained of blood in the alley behind a 24 hour adult entertainment shop.
“Some sort of…hook-up gone wrong?” asked a young man in the black SPD patrolman’s uniform, glancing up at Pat.
Pat frowned at the officer’s tone and gestured for him to step aside so that he could get a closer look at the body. The body. She had been a living, breathing person just a couple hours ago and now she was a husk: drained, dead, and discarded.
He fucking hated vampires.
“I thought you went home,” Pat said over his shoulder.
Captain Jordan Augustas’s heels clicked to a stop next to him. He could just make out the distinct note of the handmade soap she favored, wafting over top the smell of dirt, oily water, and the earliest stages of decay.
“I had. But then I heard the call on the scanner.”
“You should really turn that thing off when you’re not on duty.”
She snorted. “I’m never off duty. Especially when someone drains a human and doesn’t even try to hide the body.”
“You’d rather they try?”
“I’d rather our perps didn’t work quite so hard to write the P-I’s headlines for them.”
Pat huffed under his breath. He startled when Jordan laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine.”
Pat stood and shrugged her off.
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask. Are you sure you have time to take this one?”
“With all due respect, sir, why the hell wouldn’t I?”
Jordan tucked both hands in the pockets of her fawn colored wool coat. “I was going to file his request in the morning, effective immediately. I was just relieved to see him take the step without the Review Board needing to be involved.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your partner.”
“My—” Pat bit his lip and glanced over Jordan’s shoulder.
“The time off will be good for him. For both of you. I’d understand if you want to pass on this one.”
He knew what she had to be thinking. The way this looked. They had been here before, or close enough to leave a cold weight in his chest even now more than a year later. But it would be too easy to accept her offer and pass the buck to someone else.
“There’s no doubt this falls on my desk, Captain. I’ll handle it.” Case closed, end of story: he only hoped his tone made that clear to her.
“Fine. I’ll trust your judgment, but I just wanted to put the offer out there.”
“We’re all too busy,” Pat replied, hunching his shoulders against the icy wind rolling off the Puget Sound and down Seattle’s dark streets. “You should go home, like you were planning.” He checked the time on his phone and glanced up the street. “The Medical Examiner will be here in a few minutes and we’ll get everything processed before 9 AM.”
“Sounds good. See that you do,” Jordan said, nodding brusquely. She hesitated and said, “Drop by my office tomorrow when you have a spare minute. There’s something we should discuss,” and then left, click clicking back to her unmarked off duty car.
It always happened this way, getting called out of his bed at half past midnight to oversee the careful dismantling of death. Not that he’d been soundly sleeping before the call. A sound sleep was hard to catch these days, his mind and body too aware of the tension that gripped his mate and left the other man restless at all hours.
Ethan—Detective Ethan Ellison—had hardly left Pat’s townhouse in the weeks since the incident on board his uncle’s boat. He’d hardly slept either. These days, Pat usually found the mage tucked into a corner of his living room sofa, staring at a book for hours without turning a single page.
And he knew that he didn’t have the words to bring Ethan out of his own head. He never had the right words for anything it seemed, let alone a delicate situation like this one. Instead, Pat was reduced to watching quietly from the sidelines as his mate sank deeper and deeper into his internal maelstrom, withdrawing a little further each day.
He was pulled out of his own thoughts by the arrival of the ME, Doctor Janice Lynch, and her assistant. Lynch gave him a lingering look from head to foot—“Good morning, Detective.”—before getting down to work next to the body, measuring and scraping and indicating where she wanted a particular picture taken.
And it was just like Pat promised, they had the scene wrapped before the sun rose much past nine in the morning. Lynch drove off with the body and a weak estimate that she’d have some preliminary findings before the end of the day. Not that he needed her to tell him cause of death: the two jagged puncture marks on the victim’s neck were testament enough.
Lynch would run the bite through their fang database but he had his doubts that they’d find anything. Too many vampires and too few on record for the database to be much more than a department joke. And the science supporting the Unique Fang Theory was spotty at best. They weren’t fingerprints and the wounds often involved the kind of trauma that made accurate comparisons difficult.
He met his junior partner back at the station. Detective Sabira Mallory had a cup of coffee in either hand and a long wool coat on over her suit jacket, still buttoned against the winter chill.
“You look rather ragged,” she murmured in her clipped English—by way of two transplanted Lebanese immigrant parents—accent. “How early did you get in?”
“There was a homicide.”
“You might have rung me.”
“Figured one of us should be well-rested.”
Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Oh, yes, of course. Here, I brought you coffee.”
Pat took the steaming cup with a heartfelt thanks and gulped a few mouthfuls before the heat burned his mouth. He flicked his department issue computer on and logged into the system to check his email—it looked like Toby was on the ball that morning, he’d already forwarded copies of the crime scene photos to Pat’s account.
“Our victim is a twenty-two year old female, name of Jocelyn Linetti, she’s a college student at the University of Washington. Her death was reported to Dispatch by an anonymous tip from a blocked number a little past 4 AM this morning. I got the call half an hour later and arrived on the scene before five.”
Mallory suppressed a yawn while she slipped out of her winter coat and hung it from the wobbly coat rack next to their desks. He couldn’t remember when that particular rack had appeared, suspected it had been an addition brought in by Mallory herself. He’d never seen her throw a single article of clothing over the back of her chair, lest it wrinkle.
His partner sipped her coffee while her computer rumbled to life, nodding along to his description of the scene.
“No mistaking it then,” she murmured.
“I’d say so, but obviously we have to wait for Lynch’s report to confirm. Did you get the photos?”
Mallory nodded, her eyes darting over her computer screen, one hand deftly maneuvering her mouse while the other remained occupied with her coffee.
“You know, I’ve never met a vampire before,” she said.
“I have.”
Her dark eyebrows inched back up her forehead.
“Yes. What about the tip?”
“I’m submitting a request to the phone company. We talked to the businesses that were open when we got to the scene but so far no one’s admitting that they saw anything. Sadly, not shocking.”
“I’m amazed you found anyone hanging around to talk to at all—not at this address. You know there’s a new club about three blocks away from the scene? Did you check there?”
“How do you know that?”
“Google,” Mallory said dryly. “So did you?”
“Didn’t go that wide. You want to check it out?”
“I’ll touch base with Janice first. For confirmation. Just to make sure we’re asking the right questions. You look like you could use some sleep. Maybe you should go home for a couple of hours? I can pick you up around noon and—”
“I’m fine,” Pat interrupted. He cracked his neck and concentrated on sipping his hot coffee without burning his mouth until Mallory stopped studying him like a perp she needed to extract the truth from. “I’ll just go to bed early tonight. This was really good,” he said gesturing with his cup.
Mallory hmmed in agreement. “A new place opened in the storefront below my flat. You seem to have developed a better appreciation for good coffee lately, I thought you might enjoy it.”
“Yeah,” Pat said quietly.
His partner picked up her phone. “I’ll just call Janice. Then we can get going.”
“No one’s going to be left at a club at ten in the morning.”
“I’m sure there will be someone. Those floors don’t mop themselves.”
“Maybe at the clubs you frequent.”
Mallory smiled wanly and tucked her cell between her cheek and shoulder, grabbing their garbage to throw away while she waited for the ME to pick up the phone downstairs.
Pat tapped his fingers against the hard line of the shiny new cellphone nestled against his right thigh. When he saw Mallory turn, absorbed in whatever Lynch was saying, he slipped it out and thumbed it on to check his text messages, saying a half-prayer that there would be something from—
But there was nothing, no texts, no voicemails, no notices of any kind. Pat sighed and turned the device face down on the desk, rubbing at the tension gathered behind his dry eyes.
“Janice can confirm, it was definitely a vampire. You ready to go?”
“Yeah.” Pat grabbed his gun out of his desk drawer and holstered it under his left arm.
“You should let me drive.”
Pat opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off with a raised finger.
“Ah, now, three and a half months working without my partner I think is enough to say I’m no longer ‘The Rookie,’ which means it’s completely reasonable that I do the driving, especially when you look like that.”
“I don’t look that bad.”
She clapped him on the shoulder. “You really do.”
tbc
October 13, 2017
A New Blood & Bone Novella is out!
Hello lovely readers. It’s been a while, but I’m here with some exciting news!
Ever since the release of The Symbiotic Law, I knew that I wanted to write one more novel about Ethan and Patrick, but it’s taken me a few years to be ready to continue their story. In the last couple of months I’ve finally turned my attention to writing that novel, which will be titled A Sanguine Solution. It’s not quite ready for the world, but I’m hoping to release it before the end of the year, maybe as early as November!
Now, a gift to you…
To tide you over until A Sanguine Solution, I’ve written a bonus novella, Remainders, set in the Blood & Bone universe.
For awhile now, I’ve wanted to write a story starring Detective Sabira Mallory, and in the course of drafting A Sanguine Solution, I finally realized precisely what story I wanted to tell with her. Remainders grew like wildfire from that epiphany.
Returning to this universe is in many ways like meeting an old friend for coffee, and I’m super excited to share it with you once again.
[image error] Blurb:
She’s the junior partner, the freshly promoted detective in Major Crimes, but Sabira Mallory has been working her ass off all summer, first with her irritable partner Patrick Clanahan, and later with FBI Special Agent Vector Clanahan. Every way she turns she’s tripping over werewolves, and now that her partner has fled town, Sabira’s in store to meet yet another member of the McClanahan pack: Patrick’s cute sister Grace.
Set in Seattle during The Symbiotic Law, Remainders is a Blood & Bone novella which explores the blossoming friendship between Detective Mallory and Grace Clanahan.
Check out the latest novella f/f from the Blood & Bone Series!
October 11, 2017
Subscribers check your inboxes!
Hey everyone, just wanted to pop in and remind everyone who was subscribed to my mailing list as of midnight Oct 10th, be sure and go check your inboxes for a free copy of Remainders because it was sent out this morning via mailchimp!
As per usual with these things, if you don’t see the email in your inbox, don’t forget to check your spam filter–or if you use gmail, sometimes these emails can get filed under the Promotions tab!
I hope everyone is having a cozy October and I’ll see you all soon with exciting B&B4 news!
October 1, 2017
Blood & Bone 3.5 Cover Reveal & Giveaway!
Hello lovely readers, it’s been an age it seems since my last blog post but I’m back with some exciting news: Not only will I be releasing a new novel in the Blood & Bone series staring Ethan and Pat, but I’ve just about finished up a new supplementary novella set in the same universe starring Sabira Mallory and Grace Clanahan! This novella, titled Remainders, takes place during The Symbiotic Law and gives a little peek into what was happening in Seattle during the boys’ little world adventure. (please be aware this novella features an f/f relationship)
As a thank you to everyone who has stuck around through my slow release schedule, and to hopefully peek your interest in Blood & Bone 4 (coming late 2017, more news on that to come!), I’ll be giving away a free copy of Remainders to everyone who signs up to my New Release Mailing List. This is the same mailing list I’ve always had so if you’re already signed up then you’re all set.
If you’d like to make sure you receive your own free copy, you MUST sign up to the list on or before October 10th midnight PST!
If you have any questions about the giveaway or the series please feel free to leave them in the comments below or come chat with me over on twitter.
As always, happy reading!
