Well, it’s been a whole year but the second short novel in my After Death series is finally out! You can pick it up on Amazon for $0.99/£0.77. Part one is permanently free on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and iTunes; you can check out the ‘Books' page on my website for links: www.sharonstevensonauthor.com/books
I’ll be releasing the next two parts of this planned six-part series next year so the good news is that the wait won’t be quite so long for the next book! If you’re an urban fantasy fan who enjoys light entertainment with a dark sense of humour then you might want to give it a whirl.


Warning: These books contain profanity and sexual references. If you’re easily offended by that sort of thing you should probably leave now…


RAISED: PART TWO

After being killed by a one night stand and raised for the purpose of being recruited into the King’s Royal Guard, Pete went on the run.

His escape didn’t go as planned.

One dead User later…



Raised: Part Two


AN EXCERPT FROM RAISED: PART TWO:

There’s only so much one dead guy can take. I learned that pretty fast when Nick put a horrendous puppet-spell on me and made me go all clunky B-movie zombie on a bunch of hot chicks in the club. The screaming was bad enough, but one of them had taken her shoe off and punctured a hole in my arm. She’d had to be dragged away kicking and cursing. I flipped her the bird when Nick let me have control of my own body back. I doubt she even saw it by then. Glowering at my new User was fast becoming my new favourite past-time, not that he even noticed. He was too busy enjoying the attention he was getting from women who used to ignore him. Power; it drives chicks wild. Who’d have known?

The club was awash with flashing lights, scantily-clothed women and big, buff, irritable-looking men. Practically everyone was wearing leather. It was either a biker joint or a fetish club. I was leaning towards biker bar going by the number of times Nick had used me to fend off attacks from scary-looking dudes in Motorhead t-shirts. I was getting pretty sick of being used like a human Rottweiler by the time Nick was actually on stage and otherwise distracted.

I sank into the shadows at the side of the stage and tried not to think about how much this would suck if this were my life… Oh wait I have no life; I was revoked entitlement to a life when a crazy bitch decided to go slash-happy on me and paint my kitchen a vibrant shade of O-negative. My snort of laughter drew the drummer’s wary glance. He shook his head at me and kept right on banging away like a possessed monkey.

I should probably explain; Nick’s band is a mix of speed metal and rap metal with a heavy coating of grunge rock. This made for a head-ache forming combo. I doubted they were getting paid for the noise they were making.

It was too warm. The lights burning onto the stage and the equipment beside me were making the room uncomfortably hot. I folded my arms and snarled at a tattooed-girl with pink hair who was peering nosily over at me. She raised a pierced eyebrow and looked away slowly. Bitch.

I had no idea how long Nick spent writhing around on the beer-stained stage, singing mostly out of tune, but I took an interest when he decided to levitate three foot above the stage and perform a guitar solo that the rest of the band clearly hadn’t seen coming. They all stopped playing once he got five minutes into his over-blown, self-indulgent performance. He had women pushing against the stage to get close to him. He was glowing like Britt used to, overflowing with magic he just had to use. I rolled my eyes. It hadn’t been a short night so far and it didn’t look like it was going to wind down anytime soon either.

I wanted to get home already. The day had been long enough. The thought of sleep made me smile, even if it wasn’t something I strictly needed to do anymore. It was just one of those things that made me feel more human, more like the old me. I needed to feel human, particularly after the way Nick had just had me acting. They were actually afraid of me. Most of them, anyway. The disinterested few had the right idea but the majority actually seemed to think they would turn into an Animate if I bit them. Idiots. Why the hell would I want to bite them? They probably thought I was after their brains too. I snorted.

Nick came back to earth and was instantly mauled by his new-found groupies. His t-shirt was quickly ripped from him. He grinned at their lack of restraint. The tint of red on their wandering hands was more than just over-flow. He was be-spelling them. I frowned at him. The blonde girl pushing the others out the way grabbed Nick by the neck and pulled him into an open mouthed kiss. Her eyes flashed red before they closed.

What the fuck?

The band rightfully got aggravated and abandoned their instruments to go the bar. Three minutes later they were drinking, raising my jealousy. Not being able to eat or drink anymore bit the big one. I’d taken to chewing food for the taste and spitting it out again, but it just isn’t the same. Swallowing is highly underrated.

I watched Nick take turns with a couple of the more ravenous groupies. Their heated kisses dropped away quickly, replaced by hair-pulling and face-scratching when they started to actually bitch-fight each other. This wasn’t funny anymore. Nick was too busy to even notice the havoc he was creating; he was staring at the chest of the blonde who’d managed the climb on to the stage and had ripped her t-shirt off to keep his attention. The flimsy bra she was wearing was completely see-through under the spot-lights.

“You’ve got to be taking the piss,” I cursed, picking up one of the drum sticks the possessed monkey had left on the stage next to his kit. This wasn’t happening. I was not about to stand around and witness a live sex show. Even if the girl hadn’t been out of her head on Nick’s magic it wasn’t something I’d want to see. I chucked one of the sticks at him, hard. It hit him in the back and made him turn. The girl’s arms closed around his skinny chest from behind. The nipple ring and belly-button piercings she started toying with made me cringe, but no more so than seeing the chain that disappeared from Nick’s belly piercing into his jeans. Yuck. I so did not need to know what that was attached to. “That’s enough,” I warned.

Nick frowned at me, smiling when the girl licked his neck. “What? This is one of your only obligations, Pete. So…”

“I never agreed to stand around and watch you cast lust spells,” I argued, folding my arms.

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not doing anything wrong here.” He pushed the girl back. “So don’t get all preachy with me.”

“They don’t want you. You’re just forcing them to like you. It’s disgusting.”

“What the fuck would you know?” He stared at me. “You don’t have the first clue about what women really want.”

The girl behind him was glowing almost painfully now. He was pushing too much magic into her. She was going to crash. Her hands wandered as her eyes rolled up in her head. She moaned loudly, fingers following the chain hanging from Nick’s piercing.

“Oh, aye? Well, whatever it is, it’s not in your pants.”

The girl passed out, tumbling backwards and moaning lightly as she hit the floor. Nick turned and gazed down at her, no expression on his face. He knelt and touched her, and the glow of his magic coursed back towards him. He didn’t look at me again until the magic was safely contained within his own body. “It was just a bit of fun. If you’re going to keep over-reacting I’ll need to re-think your contract.”

I didn’t say anything. The thinly veiled threat wasn’t worth reacting to. Nick had gotten out of control but he’d stopped when he’d seen the harm he was doing. He just didn’t like being told what to do.

I folded my arms. “What time is this place open ‘til?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nick said, turning and soaking up the drizzle of magic he’d poured over the crowd. They were suddenly a whole hell of a lot less rowdy. The bitch-fights near the stage stopped dead. Girls who’d been tearing each other’s hair out seconds before started crying and hugging and throwing out absolutes; let’s never fight again, don’t ever let me drink vodka again, you’ll always be my best friend no matter what. It was kind of nice and reassuring after the slip I’d just witnessed from Nick.

“We can go,” Nick said, putting his guitar in its case and picking up his leather jacket.

“What about…”

“The guys will tidy up. Or is asking others to pack shit up against your moral code as well?”

“I was only asking.”

“Well next time don’t bother,” he informed me, “unless you want to become a cleaning zombie.”

I knew when to keep my mouth shut; I’d seen the state of his flat. Nick hauled his jacket on and passed me his guitar case. I took it without complaint.

“So, do I get tomorrow off?” I was probably chancing my luck.

Nick frowned at me. “What the hell do you need a day off for?”

“I kind of still have to pay rent, unless you’re going to pay me to be a cleaning zombie?”

“Oh, right. That’s a bit balls.”

“You’ll need to sign my ‘back to work’ form.” Then I’d need to find an actual paying job at a place that recruited Animates. I got the feeling that was going to be quite a bit harder than it sounded. I couldn’t remember seeing Animates working anywhere out in the big wide world, besides the castle. I got the shivers just thinking about it.

“Well, you’re lucky I don’t have any gigs this weekend. You’ll need to find a job where there’s no weekend shifts,” he said, “and you’ll have to let me see the work contract before you sign it.”

Crap. I had to get pre-approval now too. This was going to just suck big hairy donkey balls.



LINKS:

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MP310C2

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MP310C2

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...