Iron & Bone is almost here!

Only two more days until Iron & Bone, book 3 of the Lock & Key series releases on December 29th! I'm so excited to share Boner's story with you, and I thought I'd offer you Boner's Prologue from the book right here for a taste of this special man's haunted soul and the ride ahead.

This book can be read as a standalone.

I wish you all the very best of the holiday season and for a magical 2016!

xox Cat


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PROLOGUE from "Iron & Bone" - copyright 2015 Cat Porter


Running.

We’re always running from something. We convince ourselves we’re free, but we aren’t, not really.

Running from the bad things, running from the good things—they both have power over us. Both haunt, fluttering over us with vague glories, tinting us with deep failures.

Plenty of failures.

I doused my failures with gasoline. Held them at bay with knives, guns, my hands, my bike, my brothers.

My iron will.

But not my heart.

No, my heart was the flame that would light the match, ignite the blaze.

My heart made me hang on.

Because my mother’s quiet faith and stubborn determination made me believe in a better day, someday.

Because, once upon a time, my cousin would hold my hand. Her trembling would ease, and so would mine.

Because my best friend had seen me through the worst, the darkest part of myself, the both of us dirty, bloody, bruised in the back of a truck heading out of Colorado and into the unknown. Because he’d killed for me, and I’d killed for him.
Because my friend Grace had come home and had risen from her ashes. She’d breathed new life into me, making me believe that there could be brighter days instead of the endless pages I had surreptitiously torn for myself from the notebook of my life.

I’d been running but essentially standing still for years. Left behind and edging forward on my own, I’d created my niche in my club, and I was content. I didn’t need a hell of a lot, and I really didn’t give it much thought. My way of life had become rote, straightforward, a day-by-day of not too much, not too little, and just enough.

Then, out of the blue, sixteen years later, on a weed-filled cracked sidewalk in a tiny Nebraska town on a cloudy afternoon, surrounded by suitcases, boxes, and crates crammed with her stuff—all of it obviously quickly collected—there she was.

The pixie, the angel, the herald.

Jill.

Grace introduced us. Tania, Grace’s friend, held a baby—Jill’s baby—settling her into a car seat in the back of Jill’s shit-box car.

Her face was flushed, her strawberry-blonde hair knotted into two loose buns at the back of her head. Her shoulders were set in a rigid line. Dogged. Determined. Relieved.

She was running.

She’d been running a long time, too.

Her body stilled when she saw me.

It’s you, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s me.

Ah, Jill, you’ve come back to haunt me. To pull things from me, damnable things. I don’t want to look at them or touch them or feel them. Their spiky edges will tear my skin. I’d tightly bound them all in chains long ago and thrown away the keys.

I can keep you bound though, where you need to be, alongside the others and all my smoke. Otherwise, I will have to pay with what is left of me.

Pay with my scarred body.

Pay with my ripped, already severed soul.

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