Total pages in book: 20
Estimated words: 18410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 92(@200wpm)___ 74(@250wpm)___ 61(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 18410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 92(@200wpm)___ 74(@250wpm)___ 61(@300wpm)
The Curse was the prequal to Heir of Ashes, read more about Heir of Ashes below:
ABOUT HEIR OF ASHES
“Heir of Ashes” is about a young woman called Roxanne Fosch, a twenty-two fee hybrid who escaped a government research facility after spending nine years as a captive. As Roxanne is dodging mercenaries left and right, she discovers that her own clan had offered her to the human scientists as a scapegoat to keep the government away from them – because she’s a mixed breed, the offspring of a dhiultadh and a human.
Book blurb:
Roxanne Fosch had a perfectly normal life at the age of twelve. Cool, popular, pretty, smart. Her dreams of a perfect, successful and prosperous future seemed well within her grasp.
By the time she was twenty-two she had become a commodity. A fugitive. She was being hunted.
As Roxanne embarks on the dangerous quest to search for half-truths about her past, she discovers she’s not just an abnormal human, but a rarity even among her Fee peers.
She is hunted by scientists, keen to exploit her extraordinary abilities, as well as other beings far more dangerous whose plans for her she cannot fathom
Book Excerpt:
When I was young I believed one couldn’t ask anything better from life. I had everything. I was pretty, smart, I ran with the popular crowd, I had a crush on the cutest boy in class and had the nicest best friend ever. In other words, I was a total show off. Then came the Paranormal Scientists Society (PSS), like the Big Bad Wolf with a big metal baseball bat that shattered my world. That was about ten years ago. Now all I want is to be left alone to live my life peacefully, to be the girl next door.
Things happen, and they have happened to me. You never believe them, or you believe things will only happen to the next person while you watch, maybe even sympathize; though you continue living your life to the fullest. But, like I said, they happened to me. My life shattered and many pieces were just lost. I was no longer a show off. I was still pretty and smart, though they were no longer mere traits, but necessary tools for my survival. I had no friends, no home, no one I could talk to, no life. Things that centered my world when I was younger are so far down my list of priorities that I can scarcely see myself as that girl again. If a guy looks twice at me now-a-days, all I care about is the possibility that he may or may not be a danger to me. I know how sad that is, and I’d be willing to change a little, if I didn’t have to run for my life every time I turned a corner.
If I were younger, I’d pray for a miracle. Today, I just hope for the best.
–Roxanne Whitmore Fosch
Chapter One
I had just finished chopping onions for Paul when the sky broke.
It wasn’t really a kaboom, but more like giant rocks tumbling down a hill. Like a giant avalanche.
On its heel followed the torrential downpour I’d been hearing about for the past few days. A sense of foreboding kept nagging at me, a feeling that I was missing something that I should know. Or see.
“Do you need anything else before I go?” I asked Paul as I hung my apron on a peg and tried to shake the sensation away. I could hear some of the crowd outside dispersing, going home to celebrate another weekend with family, friends or just be alone after a fulfilling meal; and the booming laughter of those who lingered for a drink and latest gossip in the diner.
“That’ll be all,” he said, sending me a distracted smile over his shoulder. Paul’s wife, Maggie, and her sister Michelle had been the first people to welcome me into town three months prior.
I went inside Paul’s office and grabbed my purse, a huge monstrosity Michelle had desperately tried to destroy, but inside were things I couldn’t leave behind if I had to make a hasty exit. Dr. Maxwell’s journal was also inside. It had helped me sort a lot of things since I had escaped, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted, and I never went anywhere without it.
I slung the purse on my left shoulder and let it dangle on my right side, the easier if I needed to run, then let myself out from the back door of the diner. The downpour was like a water sheet in front of me, blocking anything farther than a few feet from view.
Already water was gathering on the street, herding the brown leaves that had gathered at the edges toward the drainage system.
It was unbelievably cold for October, but I’d only been there for three months so I wasn’t sure if this was the norm for early autumn.
I shivered involuntarily and tucked my gloveless hands inside my pockets. I loved autumn, when trees turned into that burnish gold color and animals scurried to gather supplies for the winter, but it seemed like here, in this small town, winter had already arrived.
Another flash of light appeared, just a few yards to my left, followed immediately by a loud ka-boom! And the bucket of giant rocks down the mountain.
That sense of foreboding returned, I glanced around, and found nothing that felt out of place.
Paul’s Diner was only two blocks away from Marian’s bed and breakfast and, on a clear day, the lack of tall buildings in between would have given me a clear view of both. I hurried to the small B & B where I rented a small room on the second floor, wondering if Rudolph (AKA “Rudy”, the local trouble maker, would be waiting for me by the door like he did most days despite of the downpour. I believe the only reason his bullying didn’t extend to outright harassment was because I refused all other offers from other men. That, and the fact that most of the town’s folk had become a little overprotective of me, believing I was hiding from an abusive husband. Since I never denied or confirmed, I’d been the focus of a lot of pitying looks, especially from the older women, and it had prompted Michelle to dye my black hair red as a disguise.
As my long legs ate the small distance between the diner and the old brick house, I thought about calling Michelle and asking her over so we could do something fun. I had missed the excitement of going out with my friends during my teen years, locked up in a bedroom in the PSS headquarters in Washington. I had permission to watch the world from a TV and read about it from books whenever I wasn’t down in a lab. Sometimes I was sent to the small library where I received a rudimentary education, but it was nothing near what I’d have learned had I gone to school.
I didn’t see Marian behind her desk in the foyer, but when I passed her office door I heard the low sound of a talk show and saw reflective lights coming from the TV. I’d stop by in the morning and pay my rent then; I knew how much she hated being interrupted from her talk shows. Plus, I was soaked to the bones and my appearance would only prompt her to pour one of those awful teas down my throat, so I took the back stairs on the corner and headed up to my room, which was the last one in the corridor, telling myself I’d grab some dry clothes than backtrack and dry off the water trail I left behind.
I stopped in front of my bedroom door, unzipped my purse, and began to rummage inside for my key.
The moment I unlocked the door and reached for the switch on the wall to my right, I knew…
Links:
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/794798
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heir-Ashes-Roxanne-Fosch-01-ebook/dp/B07B1JBMCW
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38737080-heir-of-ashes?from_search=true