Hi guys welcome to my stop on the Summoner´s Tale Tour, let me tell you this book sounds abso. wicked, so lets go check it out and please let me know what you think about it.
Ohh and by the way don´t forget to enter the super cool giveaway the author has for you.
Check out whats up for grabs.
10 eBook copies of My Familiar Stranger and 2 eBook copies of The Witch's Dream by Victoria Danann
Ends 03/08/2013
Book Info
Title: The Summoner's Tale
Series: The Order of the Black Swan #3
Author: Victoria Danann
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: 7th House
Format: Ebook
Length: 300 pages
Release Date: February 14th, 2013
Synopsis
A secret society, a witch, a psychic, vampires, modern day knights, heroes, elves, fae, assassins from another dimension, and fairytales come together where emotions intersect. Two souls, joined by a mystical bond, separated by distance, must simultaneously struggle through pain and darkness in an ultimate confrontation with character and an ultimate struggle for life proving that true love waits patiently through lifetimes and finds courage to survive. Even in the strangest places. Even when you're least expecting it. Even when you're far, far from home.
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE:
BLACK SWAN
FIELD TRAINING MANUAL Section I:
Chapter 1, #1
The plural of
vampire is vampire.
When the rush
of activity subsided, he found himself alone with his own thoughts; a condition
that was more than familiar since he had spent hundreds of years that way.
Without the distraction of his friends' banter, since his proposed staff had
left Edinburgh,
he had begun to see his task not just as a job, but as a mission, one immersed
in the duality of joy and gravity.
He had never
considered himself to be impatient. Quite the contrary, everything he had ever
pursued in earnest, from painting to music to writing, had depended upon
patience. But, his cognizance of the enormity of the burden he had accepted had
grown over the past months and he had turned to brooding about the time that
was passing.
Every day
that nothing was accomplished was a day when more people had their humanity
taken from them, another day when vampire remained imprisoned in bodies
infected with the foulest disease imaginable, and, also, another day when
people died.
The project
was moving painfully slowly. Everyone who had originally been assigned to work
with Baka was gone: married, retired, whatever. Everyone except Heaven - who
had turned out to be anything but.
The large work
space, intended for several people, seemed deserted with him alone most of the
time. He worked from early in the morning till late at night, challenging both
the hours in the day and the fact that he was one excruciatingly short-handed
task force leader.
When Heaven
was present, her moods ran the range of a shallow bell curve from disagreeable
to surly to sullen. He admitted that he had provoked her on their first
meeting, for reasons that were a mystery to him. Something about her instantly
put him on edge and made him feel anxious.
Even though
that feeling persisted, he had attempted to make amends so that they could work
together amicably. To no avail. She was prickly to the core, spurning every
effort on his part to develop a rudimentary standard of civility. She behaved
as if simple courtesy was more than she could manage which meant that
"nice" was a goal way too distant.
He not only
had to work with a person who detested his very presence, but, adding insult to
injury, it seemed he couldn't shake an inexplicably strong attraction to her.
He found himself staring at the curve of her cheek with her head bowed over
work. Or the shine of her chestnut hair when she walked through a ray of light.
Or the way her lips pursed whenever he gave her something to do. It was damned
aggravating.
To make
matters worse, he seemed to have lost interest in pursuing other women.
At exactly fifteen after five she double
checked her wristwatch, closed an open folder, rose, pushed her arms into her
sweater jacket, put her purse on her shoulder and, like every other day, walked
out of the office without saying goodnight.
He
perpetually struggled to concentrate because the space seemed to vibrate with a
low level, but annoying irritation when she was there. It was stand to reason that he
would be glad to see her gather her things and go, but, in fact, he hated it
even more when she left. He heaved a big sigh. Fuck me.
Baka had been
a person with a well-developed sense of morality, and a well-functioning
conscience before he became a vampire. During the last hundred years of life as
a vampire, having survived long enough to blessedly recover his understanding
of right and wrong, he had voluntarily turned himself into The Order and served
as "consultant" voluntarily consuming only artificial sustenance.
No. He had
never been short on conscience. And that conscience was rubbing a hole in his
brain telling him that it would be wrong to simply sit at a desk and plan a
strategy on paper while, at the same time, doing nothing. So, keeping his own counsel,
for better or worse, he determined that he would continue to work as a
bureaucrat during the day, but would spend his nights - at least part of them -
looking for others he might help back to the light.
He had worked with Monq at Jefferson Unit
labs to develop a delivery solution. Taking a page from the methodology of the
late Gautier Nibelung, they had decided that the safest and most effective
approach would be dart gun. Each dart was outfitted with a tiny canister that
would puncture on impact releasing a formula that was part stun and part cure.
The proper dose of stun solution had been determined by tests on Baka himself.
So he knew it worked. First hand. Obviously vampire must be incapacitated while
the viral antidote works. As medicinal remedies go, it is fast working, but not
instant. There is a delay of two to four hours between introduction to the
system and complete reversal of the disease, depending upon the age and
constitution of the individual.
His plan
wasn't perfect. It depended on encountering one vampire at a time and
extracting him, while paralyzed, without engaging other vampire. Tricky, but
the alternative was waiting for a task force to be vetted, assembled, and
trained. And waiting was the one thing he couldn't manage. Maybe it wasn't the
smartest thing he'd ever done, but, hell, he'd had a long life.
To his advantage, he still had certain attributes that were extra human. Not
like comic book heroes. More like human plus. No one knew if these benefits
would fade away over time, but, for now, he was a little stronger, a little
faster, and could see in the dark a little better than most people. All traits
very useful for vampire hunting.
It just so happened that he found his
assigned base of operations in prime territory that qualified as a vampire
magnet on all counts. In Edinburgh's
Old Town there was a large pedestrian
population that came out at night and it was built on top of an underground
system that was not utilized to any extent that would interfere with the needs
of vampire. All this was literally in sight of his office - five minutes' walk
away.
In a darkly
poetic way, it was fitting that vampire would thrive in Edinburgh's underground city which consisted
of a system of tunnels, caverns, and cells cut into the much softer sandstone
under the rock that the above-ground Old
Town is built upon. It's
a place with grisly history where thousands of hapless poor lived in darkness,
packed together without sanitation and with the vilest of criminals. Plague victims
were not removed and buried or burned, but just sealed in their cells.
Modern day
Ghost Tours offer a shallow excursion - shallow because individuals don't want
to stay in the underground very long. Words like "creepy" are
frequently used even by hard-core insensitives. That leaves miles of maze for a
vampire haven.
Baka had been
a vampire long enough to know all about how they think. He knew that the days
of the Beltane festival would be a gorge fest for vampire. The Royal Mile, just
over the heads of vampire living in the Underground, would be crowded with
visitors to the city, visitors intent on celebration and revelry, danger being
the last thing on their minds. It would be a blessing to vampire in the
original sense of the word which was bloodletting; when, as a rite of passage,
young pagans would stand in a pit under a grate where a bull was sacrificed and
bathe in the blood that fell.
So Baka
finished his day, went to dinner alone, and slowly savored every bite of his of
actual food. Afterward, driven by a heartfelt desire to do some good in the
world, he pulled on a pair of cargo pants and equipped the dozen pockets with
two dart guns and as many canisters as he could carry without being slowed
down. He descended the stairs to the main foyer wondering if, even partial
redemption for a long life of misdeeds, is possible. The fact that he was not
accountable for that infamous history should have given him some peace of
absolution. But didn't. He said good evening to the doorman and headed out into
the night.
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Charlotte Abel was born and raised in Oklahoma where she met her soulmate, Pete. She chased him to Boulder, Colorado and finally convinced him they were meant to be together forever. They've raised three kids, two ferrets, three dogs and countless hamsters -- and are still happily married. 
