Morrigan's Blood by Laura Bickle - Book Tour + Giveaway
Morrigan’s Blood
Crow’s Curse
Book One
Laura Bickle
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Syrenka Publishing LLC
Date of Publication: Sept. 25, 2020
ASIN: B08B9TJ4V9
Number of pages: 188
Word Count: 57000
Cover Artist: Danielle Fine
Tagline: Garnet has the blood of the legendary Morrigan – and legions of
vampires and witches will go to war to possess that power.
Book Description:
Garnet has the blood of the legendary Morrigan – and legions of vampires
and witches will go to war to possess that power.
As a trauma surgeon, Garnet Conners has seen more than her fair share of
blood. But when one of her patients walks off the operating table and
disappears into the night, she finds herself caught in a war between
legions of vampires and witches in her city.
Garnet has dreamed of bloody battlefields for years – and a mysterious
lover who controls a kingdom. In her waking life, Garnet is shocked to
meet that man in a club. Merrel knows her from another life, a life in
which she was the legendary Morrigan, goddess of death and war.
Garnet rejects the notion of magical incarnations altogether. But she
falls in with Sorin, a handsome warlock who’s determined to protect the
former bootlegger city of Riverpointe from a secret society of vampires.
Haunted by crows and faced with undeniable proof of magic, Garnet
scrambles to protect her career and loved ones from magical violence.
Abducted by vampires who seek to turn her into a vampire against her
will, can Garnet seize the power of the legendary Morrigan to forge her
own path in her embattled city? Or will she be forced to serve as a
fearsome weapon in a deadly nocturnal war?
Excerpt:
“What have you
got for me tonight, folks?” I asked.
I
backed through the doors of the operating theater, butt-first, gloved
hands lifted before me to keep them clean. I took small steps, mindful
not to lose traction. Those thin booties were slick, and I’d fallen on
my ass on more than one occasion when I made sudden moves. Tonight, I
was determined to get through surgery in an upright position and not
have to scrub in twice.
One
of the nurses read from notes on a computer terminal. “This guy was
found in the parking lot of a closed bowling alley. Speculation is that
he took a trip or two through the pin setting machine and got badly torn
up.”
“Well, that’s a first.” I turned toward the operating room table. The
light was so bright that hardly any shadows were cast in the room. They
focused on the unholy mess on the middle of my table.
This. I’m supposed to fix this.
A
man lay, unconscious, on the table. His chest was torn open, flaps of
skin oozing onto wads of gauze and a paper sheet. His face was a mass of
blood, now being daubed at with sponges. The anesthesiologist had found
his mouth to thread a tube down, and someone had managed to get an IV
started in one of his scraped-up arms.
My
nose wrinkled under my mask. “What do the X-rays show? How deep does the
damage go? Did he get a CT?”
A
nurse clicked on a flatscreen monitor that displayed a carousel of CT
images. I squinted at them, muttering dark oaths.
“Radiologist says it looks like a lacerated pancreas, punctured lung,
and two rib fractures,” the nurse said. The image switched to the head,
and he said: “Also the bonus of a fractured orbital bone.”
I
stared at the CTs. “Let’s start with that lung. We leave the pancreas,
and call plastic surgery on that orbital bone. This guy’s going to need
all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to put him back together
again.”
“Will do.”
I
gazed down at the poor suffering bastard. I liked seeing the imaging,
but I preferred to get a good visual with my own eyes on my patients.
Sometimes X-rays and CTs didn’t tell me everything I needed to know
about what to start sewing where. Something about seeing where the blood
moved and pooled in an injured person gave me an idea of where to begin.
The blood always led me to where I needed to direct my attention. Where
it spurted required my immediate expertise. Where it clotted or moved
lazily, I could wait a bit. When blood drained out of a limb and had
left it white, I needed to add more. I noted with approval that he was
already receiving a transfusion. As long as blood was moving, there was
a chance for him
I
frowned at his chest and touched the edges of the rends in his flesh
with gloved fingers. Those were ragged and would have to be cut clean
before I sewed him back up. I could see the edge of one of those
protruding ribs, sticking up like a finger. I glanced over his limbs,
counting the usual four. Hey, it pays to count. Count twice, cut once. I
mentally cataloged bruises and scrapes, nothing that needed my immediate
attention, though I flagged the palms of his hands to get a few stitches
from the surgical resident. Looked like defensive wounds, like the guy
had tried to fight the pin machine, but lost.
My
eyes moved up to his face. One blackened eye was swollen shut. My
fingers and gaze wandered over his scalp, checking for major wounds,
when I spied a laceration at his throat.
I
gently probed it with gloved hands. Some kind of puncture…the machine
must have caught him near a seeping vein. It had nearly dried up,
smelling rusty and not like the bright, coppery blood of his more
critical wounds. It could still take a few extra stitches.
I
stared down at the unfortunate guy’s oozing chest. Peeling back a flap
of skin, I felt around for the collapsed lung. My finger quickly
squished around and found the hole, and I extended my free hand for a
scalpel. Time to get this party started…
…when the patient sat bolt upright on the table. His good eye was open,
rolling.
I
yanked my hands back and yelped at the anesthesiologist, “Curt, what the
actual hell?”
The
OR erupted in a flurry of activity. The anesthesiologist arrived at the
patient’s side with a syringe, while nurses tried to push the patient
back down.
But
he was flailing, windmilling with his arms like a pro wrestler in the
ring. The IV ripped out of his arm, and the line slashed back at the
anesthesiologist, whipping across his face. The patient reached up and
ripped the tube out of his throat. His foot caught an instrument tray,
sending scalpels flying. His blood line yanked away, spewing crimson all
over the floor.
I
held my hands out, using my most calming voice. Not that I had a
particularly calming voice; I was a surgeon. We don’t talk to patients.
But I tried: “You’re safe. I’m your doctor, Dr. Conners. If you just lie
back, we’ll make you comfortable and—”
The
guy shrieked and launched himself off the table. The paper sheet tangled
around his legs, and he grasped it around his waist as he put his
shoulder down and aimed for the door. His shoulder hit me in the arm,
and I slipped on my booties, landing on my ass on the tile floor. The
patient launched through the swinging doors and disappeared down the
hall.
I
swore and ripped my booties off my sneakered feet. I clambered to my
feet and punched the intercom at the door with my elbow. “Security, code
orange at OR 6.” I couldn’t say: I’ve got a runner taking off down the
hall. Please send somebody to stop him, because anyone listening to that
would freak the hell out, and I would get a talking-to from HR.
I
straight-armed the door and took off after the guy. I had no idea how
the hell this man was still walking around. Those injuries should have
flattened him, and he’d been anesthetized. I had graduated med school
with Curt a few years ago, and knew him not to be a careless
anesthesiologist who played on his phone in the OR.
The
patient skidded down the hallway, landing at a dead end, where a window
overlooked the parking lot. The sun had just set, and the sky was the
violet color of a fresh bruise. I approached him slowly, like I was
herding a feral cat. I tugged my mask down to try and give him a human
face to look at.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” I murmured soothingly. I wanted to
keep him here until security arrived. If he got even further loose and
hurt himself, that would be one obnoxiously long incident report. And an
even more involved surgery after that.
“No,
no,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not gonna be okay. The
bloodsuckers found me…and the Lusine couldn’t protect me.”
“I
don’t know who that is,” I said, thinking that the guy had probably run
afoul of some loan sharks. Maybe the mob? “But you’re safe here. We can
protect you.”
“No,” he gasped, his face twisted in agony. “No one can protect me. And
no one can protect Emily.”
He
turned toward the window, backed up a few steps.
“No,
wait…” I could see what he was trying to do, and I was helpless to stop
it.
He
rushed the window, aiming for it with his shoulder. All the latches on
the hospital windows on patient floors were welded shut, but this wasn’t
an area where conscious patients had access, and the window was not
secured against suicide attempts. The glass buckled under his shoulder,
the window crumpled away, and he pitched through in a hail of glass into
the falling darkness.
I
rushed to the window and stared down at the parking lot in horror. Three
stories down, the patient sprawled on the parking lot blacktop,
flattened like a bug under a shoe.
Curt
had come up behind me. “Oh, my god, Garnet…did he…”
“He
jumped,” I said, my heart in my mouth. I turned and ran to the
stairwell, barking at him. “Get a gurney and the ER team.”
I
burst into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. As I rounded
the third curve, my path was blocked by a tall, dark-haired man in a
brown velvet blazer and jeans. He was the type of guy that I might have
liked to meet in my off-time—he had a kind of scholarly intensity in his
hazel gaze and a bit of roguishness in the stubble that covered his
sharp jaw.
“Stand aside,” I blurted. “Emergency!” As if my bloody gloves and
surgical gown weren’t warning enough.
But
he blocked my path, one hand on either stair rail, his long arms
spanning the length of the stairwell. “That man is dangerous,” he
growled softly.
“That man is under my care,” I announced, lifting my chin. I walked into
the man, figuring that he would give way to my outstretched bloody
gloves. Like a normal person would.
. But he
didn’t. My sticky gloves nearly mashed into the velvet of his jacket,
and he didn’t flinch. This close, he smelled like old books and moss.
“You
can’t go down there,” he said. His voice was soft, but insistent.
My
eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to tell me where to go,” I chirped
petulantly. I ducked under his arm, darting out of his reach, and
barreled down the steps the remaining way to ground level.
I
rushed out into the parking lot and stopped short.
“What the actual hell—”
The
patient peeled himself off the ground and crawled to his feet. He
reminded me of a half-dead insect when he did so, shaking and rickety
and dripping blood.
That’s impossible, I thought. There was no way that a human being could
do that. I took two steps toward him…
…and
a dozen people flitted out of the darkness, from the shadows beneath
cars and behind shrubs. The overhead parking lot lights, haloed by
moths, illuminated their long shadows on the pavement.
I
breathed a sigh of relief. The squad was here and would get him stable,
get him back to my OR.
But…my brow wrinkled. That wasn’t the squad. Nobody was in uniform. They
converged on him as he turned, screaming.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Heads turned toward me. Their faces were moon-pale and glistening in the
lamplight.
The
man in the velvet jacket grabbed my arm, dragging me back. “You want no
part of this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” I growled. I stomped on his instep and
twisted my arm to break his grip at the weakest part, the thumb. I
whirled and ran toward the fracas.
The
shadowy people had plucked my patient off the pavement, clotting around
him.
I
yelled at them, the way I might yell at pigeons in the park who were
eating my dropped French fries.
Overhead, the parking lot lights shattered, one by one, in a series of
pops. Someone had a gun. I flinched back, shielding my face from flying
shards of plastic with my hands, as I was suddenly plunged into
darkness. I heard fighting, yelling, as if a gang war had broken out in
front of me, roiling in the dark where no one could see.
Or
at least, as dark as things could get in Riverpointe. Riverpointe was a
decently sized city, and ambient light filtered back quickly from the
freeway, headlights on the access road to the hospital, and the
hospital’s helipad above.
As
my vision adjusted, I realized I was alone. The people who were trying
to abduct my patient, my patient…even that fascinating-smelling velvet
guy…all were gone.
Ambulance lights flashed at the end of the parking lot, approaching me.
Behind me, I heard the hammering of footsteps on the stairwell. Security
spilled out behind me, along with a few cops who’d been hanging out in
the nurse’s lounge. The EMTs pulled up to the curb, and there were all
of a sudden a couple dozen people churning in a uniformed cloud around
me.
“Where’d the guy go?” a security guard asked me.
A
moth that had once orbited the parking lot lights flitted down and
smacked my face. I batted at it, grimacing.
“I
don’t know,” I whispered, stunned. “He was just…taken.”
The
moth landed on the ground on its back, wiggling.
With
bloody fingers, I picked it up and placed it gently in a nearby shrub.
Lights, voices, and radios crackled around me. Questions rose and fell,
directed at me in a tide of inquiries I couldn’t answer. But I stared at
the bloody moth, stained by my touch, as it sought a safe place among
the churning shadows and light.
About the Author:
Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books
out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. She now dreams up stories
about the monsters under the stairs and sometimes reads them to her cats.
Her books have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.
Laura’s work has also been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project
2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio
reading list for 2015-2016. The latest updates on her work can be found at
authorlaurabickle.com.
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3078uLT
Website: https://www.authorlaurabickle.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Laura_Bickle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurabickle
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Author.Laura.Bickle/
Giveaway
17 Comments
How long did it take you to write your book?
ReplyDeleteHi! This one has been in my head for several years! I started writing it this year, and was super excited to get it done for Halloween season!
DeleteI love books about vampires.
ReplyDeleteMe, too! Vampires are a lot of fun!
DeleteI absolutely love this cover and can't wait to read this one
ReplyDeleteThanks! The cover artist is Danielle fine at https://www.daniellefine.com/. I love her work!
DeleteSuper creepy cover!
ReplyDeleteThanks! My cover artist is Danielle Fine at https://www.daniellefine.com/. Her work always inspires me!
DeleteThanks so much for hosting me today!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! :)
DeleteVery nice cover. I like the eyes. Thanks for the chance. I like the fantasy genre.
ReplyDeleteThanks! My cover artist, Danielle Fine, makes wonderful vampires!
Deleteawesome cover, this sounds really good
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I hope you enjoy! :-)
DeleteI like the cover
ReplyDeleteThe cover for this book is great.
ReplyDeleteThe cover sets the tone for the book. The colors and graphics are great.
ReplyDeletePlease try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.