Please help me welcome Author Morgan St. Knight to my blog today!
Curse
of Prometheus:
A
Tale of Medea
Morgan
St. Knight
Genre: Paranormal/urban fantasy
AISN: B00HRG6FEA
ISBN-13: 978-0991396092
Number of pages: 276
Word count: 107,000
The
ancient world's most notorious sorceress has just become the modern world's
only hope for survival.
Book Description:
How do you fight a god of light
who has been seduced by darkness? That’s the challenge Medea Keres must meet.
Posing as a wealthy young heiress in modern day Atlanta, no one knows she is
the original Medea, the sorceress from ancient Greek legends.
As priestess of the witch goddess
Hecate, Medea is charged with hunting demons that would otherwise overrun the
world. Now she must face a far greater adversary. One of the twelve shining
Olympian gods has turned rogue, violating the edict against human sacrifice. As
the body count quickly rises, Medea knows her enemy is getting stronger.
With the help of the underworld
nymph Orphne and the hero-god Heracles, she must find a way to unmask the evil
so that the other Olympians will take action.
But as she probes deeper into a
blood-soaked labyrinth of suspense and intrigue, Medea finds a net of deceit
and treachery that will require all of her cunning to escape.
Available at Amazon
Excerpt
1
He reached out a
tentative hand to touch one of the wings. “God,” he whispered. “God, God, God,
I’m sorry. What have you done to me?”
“Get off it!” I snapped. “Don’t even
pretend that this is a surprise. Who or what are you? And don’t bother telling
me you’re some kind of angel. No angel has moves like the ones you just made
with me!”
“I don’t want to interrupt, but we have
something else to deal with,” Heracles said, putting a hand on my arm. “I’m
sure this can wait. He won’t be going anywhere.” He gently tugged me towards
the steps.
“Stay with him,” I told Orphne, hoping she
knew the harshness in my tone wasn’t directed at her. “Don’t take your eyes off
of him.”
She half-smiled at that. “That’ll be an
easy promise to keep.”
Heracles bounded up the basement steps but
I took them one at a time, a little reluctantly at that. I’d had enough
aggravation for the night. I didn’t need something else on my plate.
“You’ll want to put something on, unless the
neighbors are very liberal.” He was heading for the front door.
“Not by a long shot,” I muttered. I pulled
my London Fog out of the closet and belted it around me. We stepped outside
into a steady fall of rain. There were still muted flashes and thunder rolls
overhead, but nothing like there’d been a short time ago.
I threw my hands up. “This is what you
wanted to show me? I know they don’t have anything but wonderful weather on
Olympus, but surely you haven’t forgotten what rain is.”
He walked towards the street. “It’s not
quite the way I remember it. Come along. You’ll see what I mean.”
I quashed the sound of annoyance rising in
my throat and trotted to catch up with him. The rain seemed to be easing.
He strode across the street. “Over here.
You’ll get the picture.”
The invective I’d chosen stopped at the tip
of my tongue as I stepped out into the street.
And out of the rain.
I’d known rain to stop abruptly before, but
this was different. Mostly, because I could still hear the rain behind me.
I think I knew what I was going to see
before I completed my slow turn. Something at the back of my mind said not to
look, but I had to. Heracles was standing there with his arms folded.
“Any ideas?” Damn him anyway, if he wasn’t
smirking when he said it.
I didn’t find anything at all funny about
the fact that the storm was centered over my house—and only my house. The
clouds, with their soft flashes of lightning and gentle peals of low thunder,
were directly overhead. The sky over the rest of the street was clear, faint
stars sparkling overhead.
“Shit,” I said with real passion. “Shit,
shit, SHIT!” Stamping my bare foot repeatedly on the asphalt to punctuate the
curses hurt like hell, but I didn’t care at that point.
“Shall I hazard a guess that this has
something to do with what you were up to with our winged friend?”
The anger and shock were fading, but they
weren’t gone. I began pacing.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened
with him. But the storm came up just as we were...” I let the rest hang, but
he’d gotten the message.
“Remember Pompeii,” he said with a teasing
note in his voice.
“Accident! It was just… an… accident!”
“An accident that conveniently happened as
you were getting…acquainted… with a very unusual young man down on a nearby
beach. An unusual young man who, it turned out—”
“Was the son of Poseidon and a mortal
woman,” I finished weakly as I sat down on the curb. Not a soul was stirring,
not even a light as far down the street as I could see.
I leaned back a bit and jumped as I got
splashed by the rain that was still falling resolutely on my yard. It felt
better to lean forward and put my head in my hands anyway.
“I don’t need this. I don’t need something
else. Tonight of all nights, I don’t need this.”
Heracles crossed the street and sat down
next to me. “Cheer up. It could be worse. It could have been another Vesuvius.
Or maybe some other horrendous disaster. At least we weren’t buried like
Pompeii.”
“It’s disaster enough, isn’t it?” Still, I
shivered a bit at what could have happened. We were nowhere near a volcano, but
the New Madrid fault was close enough to Atlanta that it might have decided to
give way during my little escapade. Just
because the Earth moved for me, didn’t mean it had to move for millions of
other people. I decided to count my blessings.
“Mixed bloods, Medea. Mixed bloods can call
up very unusual phenomena when they mate. Perhaps it’s best we never were more
than friends. Even when I was mortal, I was still half-god.”
The rain was tapering off behind us. If
there was any luck to be had, I hoped it would be enough to ensure that no one
had bothered looking out their window to see a storm drenching only my house
that night.
“I suppose we’d best figure out who and what
our friend is, and whether he’s any threat.” Heracles rose, holding out a hand
without prompting this time. I took it and let him pull me up.
“Just what I needed. Another mystery.”
He trudged back through the grass. “Maybe
this one will be easier to solve.” He sounded nonchalant enough about it. I
tried to let the mood infect me, but it kept its distance. I felt like one of
the storm clouds hovering over my house had just floated down and taken up
permanent residence over my head.
Excerpt
2
I spoke the charm that unsealed the
sanctuary door. It swung open, and simultaneously candles in sconces around the
walls flared to life.
But they weren’t the only things that were
glowing.
Next to the altar that held a statue of
Hecate, a censer and vessels for libations, there was a small side-table. The
single object on it was radiating an eerie light. It was a Sybil’s mirror, my
direct link to Hades. It was a convenient way to send in my reports.
It was convenient most of the time, anyway.
Just not at that particular moment. It should not have been glowing before I
spoke the incantation to activate it.
The smart thing to do would have been to run
right out of that room, lock the door from the outside and chant an invocation
to call up some of the entities I was on friendly terms with. But smart is
never high on my list when I’m tired and hungry.
So I went closer to the mirror. Mistake
number one. The surface rippled like water, and I knew that images would soon
break through.
At first, all I could see was something
ill-defined, like an object bobbing just below the surface of a cloudy pool of
water. The image became more defined. I dimly saw a bejeweled hand caressing
what appeared to be a crumpled mound of crimson velvet. The image sharpened
even more: it was not velvet.
It was flesh. A gaping, bloody hole in a
human torso. The hand was stroking it slightly, dabbling ringed fingers into
the gash as someone might lazily trail their hand in a cool pond on a warm
spring day. I could tell it was a man’s body, but the image wasn’t wide enough
for me to see his face, or the woman who was stroking the wound.
Everything had a cloudy sheen to it and her
jewelry had an off color, making the gems unidentifiable. They were an odd, bluish-green.
A soft voice filled the room, as if it was
coming from every corner.
“Drink, drink…” it cajoled. A woman’s voice,
light and soothing with the hint of myriad promises.
The image receded a bit, enough for me to
see more of the torso as well as the body’s arms. I could see it was a man, but
no more.
The vista slowly sank back into dimness.
Another was surfacing. A mouth, surrounded by a lush beard. It was like black
sable, sleek and oiled, arranged artfully into intricate curls and ringlets. A
classic Greek style. The mouth and beard were all I could see, no other
features to give me a clue about who it was.
The mouth was full
and sensual, or at least it normally would be. I could tell that much even
though it was twisted and pulled into a grimace. Pain? Ecstasy? A little of
both, it seemed. It was not the expression which disturbed me the most.
The lush lips were streaked with blood. I
could see, as the mouth opened in a silent groan, traces of blood on the teeth.
The image sharpened further, coming closer
as if it was trying to come out of the mirror into my reality. My eyes widened as I realized it was no
trick of light. The mouth was emerging from the mirror. Only a slight
protrusion at first, then more, more…
The rim of the Sybil’s mirror was changing,
becoming the same color as the blood on the lips pushing through the mirror’s
surface.
As I backed away my ears started buzzing and
I felt the floor wavering beneath me. I heard a sound that quickly grew louder,
a throaty whisper that turned from a hoarse cry of need into distinct words.
“Join us. Join us. Join us… Medea…”
Hearing my name sent a shock through me,
enough to make me want to bolt. But I couldn’t.
The hideous mouth opened wider and scarlet
clouds spilled from it like steam from a seething cauldron. They swept across
the floor, flowing over my feet and up my calves. My legs were rooted to the
spot even though my mind wanted nothing more than to run in terror—out of the
room, out of the house, out of the city if I could run that much.
The room reeked of copper and ordure.
Noxious fumes poured up my torso and over my chest and face, choking me.
Without warning or intent I fell backwards.
It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t stumbled. I had been pulled.
I could see the arms reaching from under my
own, curving up over my chest towards my shoulders. They ended in hands that
were as white as alabaster. White, except for the black nails that curved like
talons from the fingers. Talons that were coming dangerously close to my
throat.
I barely noticed that the vile clouds were
being sucked back into the mirror, as if some gigantic monster on the other
side had drawn in a large breath. The light started to fade from the
mirror.
I was spun around. As the mirror’s glow
dimmed I saw a face pale as moonlight, a mouth crimson as a ripe pomegranate,
and eyes the color of amethysts just inches from my face.
The most pronounced feature was the hair. It
seemed to be made of cobwebs and mist, floating in a silvery-grey cloud. Some
of it was moving. Alive. As I looked at it, things looked back at me. Vipers.
The intruder’s mouth opened, revealing long
curving fangs.
“Medea…” The voice came from a distance,
echoing as if I was in a deep cavern. The last thing I saw was the mouth
opening wider, the fangs coming closer. Then the darkness took me.
Welcome to my world.
About
the Author:
Morgan St. Knight live in
Atlanta, and is a lifelong student of mythology, the occult, and comparative
religion. With more than 25 years of experience as a journalist, Morgan enjoys
the occasional foray into fantasyland to escape the grim realities of life. He
is currently working on the sequel to "Curse of Prometheus" and is
developing a second paranormal series which also takes place in the South.
Twitter: @morganstknight
Tour
giveaway:
1 Kindle Fire HDX 7 16 GB (with
special offers)
5 Kindle Copies of Curse of
Prometheus: A tale of Medea
Kindle Giveaway
To win, you just have to follow Morgan on Twitter @MorganStKnight and send a tweet that says "Entering giveaway for CoP". Only one tweet is necessary, but you must send that one tweet to know you're interested in entering the giveaway.
Additionally, Morgan will be giving away 2 copies of "Curse of Prometheus" each week of the tour. Everyone who enters for the Kindle giveaway on a given week is automatically entered for that week's book giveaway.
And yes, if you win a copy of the book, you are still in the running for the Kindle giveaway.
Please thank Morgan for joining us today! Please check out her links and giveaway!
Keep Writing!
Jodie Pierce
Thank you for hosting me on your site today Jodie. I look forward to hearing from your readers.
ReplyDeleteJust saw you're from Cleveland. I grew up in Fairview Park! So, are there things lurking in the Metropark valleys or what?
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