It’s officially spooky season. Even though physical distancing measures will change the way we celebrate Hallowe’en in 2020, we still crave the thrills and chills of the season. Your favorite bestselling authors have stepped forward to tickle your scary bone with a few samples from their spookiest books.
Avengers of Blood
By Gae-Lynn Woods
A wheelbarrow lay on its side against the fence, alongside a toppled step ladder. Closer to the middle of the courtyard, a misshapen pile of red plastic smoldered. A sycamore tree grew in one corner, its smooth-barked trunk rising gracefully from a patch of scraggly dirt.
Goober whimpered as his vision expanded to take in the scene. Only seven feet or so from the ground, the tree’s lowest limb sprung outward at a nearly ninety-degree angle, and from it dangled a zombie, blackened and blazing.
Tongues of orange flame danced in a mouth stretched wide in a silent scream and nibbled at the rope around the zombie’s neck. The concrete beneath him was scorched and heat rose in shimmering waves from its surface.
Rise of the Faire Amanti
(Ascendant Series #3)
By Raine Thomas
“Your cousin Sem is dead,” Vycor sneered.
Ty tried to move, but he couldn’t. Vycor’s Mynders had ambushed him. He was strapped to one of the seats in the palace’s Ritual Chamber…the same seat he had sat in while he mentally tortured Vycor just a couple of lunar cycles before.
They had been so close to defeating the Advisor. His demise had been within their grasp. There had been just one misstep.
One deadly misstep.
“He died screaming for mercy,” Vycor said as he laid out implements beside the altar in the center of the chamber. “He cursed your name, TaeDane. He knew it was your fault that he suffered so long before death claimed him.”
“You’re lying,” Ty growled. He knew Sem had gotten out of the palace.
He had to have gotten out.
“Am I?”
At a silent command, one of the Mynder guards standing in the chamber brought forth a basket. Ty’s stomach clenched when he saw the blood leaking out of the basket’s bottom and dripping onto the floor, but he controlled his reaction so Vycor couldn’t see his wariness. Without any preamble, the guard dumped the basket at Ty’s feet. Sem’s head flopped out, splashing gore onto Ty’s boots.
“He was still alive when we dismembered him,” Vycor said conversationally, his gaze on Ty’s face. “In fact, his ‘member’ was one of the first things I cut off. I’ll have to be even more inventive when I kill you.”
The Ghost Host
By DelSheree Gladden
There’s a moment where nothing appears to happen, then Echo’s hand moves quickly back to the board, words scrawling out hastily, almost too sloppy to read. Halfway through her message, I feel ice creep up my spine. It takes the others a few mores seconds before mouths drop open and eyes open wide in shock.
The past is vengeful. Life demands balance. Death even more so. What you took must be repaid. The debt collector is coming.
The chalk falls from Echo’s hand and she spins around in disbelief. “Where did she go?” Echo demands, oblivious to the message still. “Where did she go? How’d she get out of the circle?” Panic spins Echo toward Kyran, her gaze dropping to the broken line of salt. She points at him, angry he broke the circle without her explicit instruction, but Kyran points at the chalkboard wordlessly.
Echo whips around, still angry, but it falls away as soon as her eyes see the message left for her and not some relative of Phibe’s. I barely have a second to react when her eyes roll back. There are heavy steps to my right, voices calling out, but I’m the closest and get my hand under her neck half an inch from her head smacking into the floor. Dad said Echo’s instincts were good, but he didn’t say they bordered on prescient. There’s no way two weeks is going to be enough time.
The Children of the Seventh Son
The Dark Age, Book 2 (coming soon)
Scott Bury
As soon as Javor’s foot touched the intersection, Preyatel trembled again and the sky became dark. The other people vanished in a thick, misty gloom, the horses and donkeys and oxen, too. Nighttime chill replaced the afternoon heat. Javor’s skin tingled.
An arch stretched over the crossroads now, which had not been there a second before. Javor turned around to try to see beyond the mist. When he faced the city again, he saw her.
He had no doubt. Hekate, as a slender young girl with long, dark hair. She held a large keyring in her left hand. At her feet, again, the immense black dog sat, its eyes fixed on Javor.
You have not heeded our warnings, she said without moving her mouth.
“I have heeded you,” he answered. “I have not raised a hand against anything that has not attacked me or my family, first.”
Your missions are harmful to both sides of the balance. They will also be futile in themselves.
“The balance again. You mean Earth and Sky.”
You continue to follow masters who lead you away from your destined path. They seek to use you for their gods’ purposes. They seek to use their gods, celestial archons, for their own material wealth. For temporal luxury and power over other humans. They are willful fools. They blind themselves with fantasies of heavenly glory. They abandon the mother who birthed them.
“Do you mean Moist Mother Earth?”
As she had in Javor’s homeland, Hekate changed from a young girl to a mature, beautiful woman, hair curled in Roman style.
One of your words for it, yes. Humanity’s mother. One source of all life.
“The Christians talk about their heavenly father. But you are on the side of the earthly mother.”
Both are needed for life.
Hekate changed again, becoming the crone. Her hair hung limp. Lines creased her face, but she was still beautiful.
Do not believe everything the sky-worshippers tell you. On this mission, you will see an opening. A clue to the direction of deeper truth.
“What does that mean?”
It means you must be awake and aware of every detail.
She changed again, features flowing, hair becoming wavy. The lines on her face faded. Her back straightened, and Hekate was the maiden again.
The dog raised its head and howled. The light grew stronger as Hekate and her hound faded.
“Wait!” Javor stepped forward to keep the vision real, and collided with a bearded man pushing a cart across the intersection.
“Watch where you are going, you twit,” the man snarled, bending to pick up vegetables that Javor had knocked from the cart.
The Children of the Seventh Son will be released on Hallowe’en Day.
The Dark
By David C. Cassidy
Time passed. Kelan’s mind began to drown within that endless sea of white, and he drifted off, to dream within the dream. His eyelids had just dropped shut when the car hit some black ice and skidded onto the shoulder. “Dad!”
The vehicle rocked as his father negotiated the car from gravel to pavement. They slowed just a little. “You okay, Soldier?”
Kelan nodded. He checked their cargo and his heart stuttered. “Dad! It’s out!”
“Calm down, Kelan, it’s not—”
“It IS! The box tipped over and the jar is out!”
“It’s okay, it’s still in the jar—”
“NO, NO! The top is off! It’s OUT!”
Then he saw it, scampering up the seat. How the things moved so quickly terrified him, and now it was free, loose in the car. Almost unconsciously, he unsnapped his belt and brought his legs up, swaying on his haunches. He shrank as small as he was able and steadied his trembling body between the dashboard and seat. Suddenly his lungs begged for air. His eyes grew, and before he could stop it, that grave cold gripped him the way it always did, the way only that thing in the car could.
“Kelan! Sit down! Put your belt back on!”
He wouldn’t . . . couldn’t. The thing was loose, it was coming for him. He could hear it scurrying about, its hairy spider legs clicking the way they did, the way only he could hear, the way the dark‑skinned man with the strange accent had sworn was only his imagination.
He wasn’t imagining this.
The spider was nowhere in sight. He was going to scream and scream and scream, and then he would feel it, that warm wetness growing between his legs.
Click‑click‑click. Faster now. Clickclickclick.
Desperate for any edge that might distance himself, he tried to get higher by extending his legs. His head hit the roof and forced him back down. The thing was under his seat now, he could feel it. He could hear it.
“Kelan Lisk! Sit down this minute!”
His father applied the brakes gently, and the car slid on some ice and fishtailed. Kelan fell sideways toward him and reached out for support. His hand found the steering wheel and gripped it hard. The weight of his body pulled the wheel right, and the vehicle slipped into a spin.
“DAAAAADEEEEE!”
Like those samples? Check out the books on the authors’ BestSelling Reads pages, their websites and at your preferred e-tailers.
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