Beyond the Moon. Michele HaufЧитать онлайн книгу.
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Rook crawled over to Verity. He wanted to embrace her, to kiss her, to whisper that it was all going to be fine. And it would be.
But not with vampires running amok.
He dug out a blade from his boot and sawed through the ropes around her wrists.
“Rook, look out!”
Rook spun around to see flame following the thin line of gasoline up to the second circle. It ignited the gasoline around Verity’s feet.
Verity screamed. He cut through the thick rope and freed her hands. Rook pulled off his coat and wrapped it about her shoulders. He lifted her, rushed the outer circle and leaped over it, turning to hit the floor with his shoulder while he kept Verity safely to his chest to avoid the impact. He rolled over on top of her. A quick kiss was necessary. She tasted like fear and ash.
MICHELE HAUF has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. Her first published novel was Dark Rapture. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries populate her stories. And if she followed the adage “write what you know,” all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries she has never visited and of creatures she has never seen.
Michele can be found on Facebook and Twitter and at www.michelehauf.com. You can also write to Michele at PO Box 23, Anoka, MN 55303, USA.
Beyond
the Moon
Michele Hauf
This one is for me, because Rook is mine.
Contents
Verity Von Velde’s mother, Amandine, had the ability to determine the origin of a person’s soul. So when Verity was born in the 1860s, Amandine had known her child’s soul had once belonged to a witch—who had died twice.
Knowing she possessed a reincarnated soul helped Verity to understand the strange compulsions she experienced on occasion. The first time, at fifteen, had been on that horrible night she’d been compelled to rush to the forested village of Clichy, just outside of Paris, and had spied the bonfire. Amandine Von Velde had been betrayed by the witch hunter to whom she had unknowingly promised her heart. “Witch!” the crowd had shouted, and they’d laughed and clapped as the flames had consumed her mother’s screams.
That night, left alone in the small cottage she had shared with her mother, Verity had fallen into a deep sadness. Years later, the compulsion had once again led her to the aqueducts beneath Paris where her grandmother, Freesia, had apported out of a Faery portal to hug the granddaughter she hadn’t visited for years. Freesia had been born with a faery soul. Of all the witches in the Von Velde family, she was the only one with sidhe ichor running through her veins.
Freesia had carried with her the quilt Great-Grandmother Bluebell had made for Verity’s mother. Because Bluebell had decided not to prolong her immortality and had died a natural death (which was rare for witches, even in a time when the burnings had begun to fade), her compassion lived on in the quilt. As Freesia had wrapped the quilt about Verity’s shoulders, she’d felt the hugs her mother and great-grandmother could never give her again.
“I know your mother begged you never to trust a man,” Freesia had said as they’d stood beneath the city beside the gently flowing aqueduct waters. For men had been Amandine’s curse and death. “But I would bid you trust the right man.”
Verity had liked the sound of that and had nodded, promising her grandmother she would give it consideration. When she began to protest that she did not know what to do all alone, Freesia had added,