The
Reaper’s Daughter
The
Reaper’s Daughter Series
Book
One
KM
Randall
Genre:
Paranormal/Dark Fantasy
Publisher:
Booktrope
Date
of Publication: 5/9/15
ISBN:
978-1-62015-841-8
ASIN:
B00X90741G
Number
of pages: 244
Cover
Artist: Shari Ryan
Book
Description:
I've
always felt like an average girl ... except for my strange
relationship with death. You could say I like to court it. Whether
I'm soaring through the air as a flyer for Specter University's cheer
squad, or speeding down the steepest mountain with only grace and
balance keeping me from an icy end, I've always needed to feel a
rush. But now Death is courting me―in more ways than one. First,
there's Rishi, a rogue death deity who has a penchant for annoying me
nearly to my grave and whose intense gaze has the power to see right
through me. Then there's Hades, who I'd rather had stayed just a
myth. Now that he knows I exist, he's not going to leave me alone
until I meet the same end as my mother.
Oh
yeah, did I forget to mention her? I spent my whole life thinking she
had died when I was a baby, but now I've found out she's much more
than dead. Fifty years ago, Hades banished my mother from the
underworld and took away her ability to cross over souls―souls that
have wandered lost through the world ever since. Now she wants me to
clean up the mess.
You
may have heard of her before...
They
call her the Grim Reaper.
Book
Trailer: https://youtu.be/SATOtS9Ehuk
Excerpt:
Present
THE
ROLLING GREEN of her eyes was dimming fast, losing color and life to
the quick click of time that beat out her days and nights, a
perpetual circle that was now fading to a close. Light brown hair
that had been recently styled into looping curls was limp against the
black pillowcase―a metaphor for her wilted spirit, I mused,
thinking offhandedly how proud my English professor would be at my
thoughtful use of language.
I
sighed. I didn’t want to be here.
When
her eyes met mine, I knew she saw me for who I really was—what I
really was. She reached out an eager hand to take mine. I didn’t
want anything to do with it. But it wasn’t because her fingers were
slick with blood, deep crimson dripping down her arm and fingernails
from where she’d so precisely placed a razor blade to her vein and
dug deep, thinking she’d be free of her pain. It was because her
face reflected back to me all the times I’d felt I’d been given a
shitty deal. Current situation: case in point.
“Hi,”
she whispered, her once pink lips fading with every pump of her life,
which was idly dripping away from her to the plush white carpet
below. I could smell the newness of it, the fresh aroma of a recently
laid floor. That’s going to be a bitch to get clean.
I
looked around her bedroom, at the dance trophies and pictures of
smiling friends, and wondered why. Why me? “Blake …” Hearing
my mother's warning tone, I looked over at her where she stood in the
shadows, overseeing my tutelage.
“Why
can’t we just call an ambulance? It’s not too late. They could
save her,” I whispered fiercely, staring at the girl’s hand
stretched out to me as if I were her savior and not her end. “We
should save—”
“It’s
not for us to decide, you know that. We are only here to bring souls
over, not save their mortal lives. Take her, she wants to go.”
“And
will she still feel the same when she’s looking down at her body?”
I asked, not even bothering to check my mother’s expression when
she didn’t answer. Suicide wasn’t a peaceful death. It was
pain―that much I knew.
I
choked back the tears that wanted to rise in my eyes for this girl,
for me … I turned to her once more and leaned down, brushing a
strand of her hair from her graying face. “What’s your name?”
Barely
blinking, her pale eyes darted to me. “Carly,” she said, choking
around her words.
“Just
hold my hand and I’ll help you cross,” I said softly, forcing
myself to meet her gaze so that someone would witness her ending as
they had her beginning.
She
smiled slowly, and I saw that in life she had been pretty. When she’d
believed. When she’d had hope.
“The
light?” Her eyes widened, glittering green for a brief moment in
their otherwise colorless depths at the prospect of going somewhere
beautiful after this life had been so cold.
I
nodded, although I didn’t really know where she would go. I was
only in training, but I hoped it was someplace good, where her
tormented soul could rest.
She
had small, feminine hands, I thought, as she laced her slippery
fingers around my longer warm ones. She didn’t last long, her pulse
giving one last flutter before sputtering out.
The
room was suffused with the silence left behind in the absence of such
a simple thing. The thundering lack of a person’s heartbeat had
never seemed quite so loud. As life departed Carly’s mortal coil,
her soul lifted from the body, but unlike some souls I’d seen that
were light and buoyant, at peace with the next step in their
existence, hers was outlined in darkness, and it rippled, suspended
in space like a special effect in a bad horror film. Her gaze turned
from her body to me, sorrow coming to settle on the slope of her
bowed shoulders and in the recesses of her eyes. Regret was a fickle
creature. It always came too late.
About
the Author :
As
a girl, K.M. always wished she’d suddenly come into magical powers
or cross over into a Faerie circle. Although that has yet to happen,
she instead lives vicariously through the characters she creates
writing fantasy and paranormal.
When
K.M. is not busy writing her next novel, she serves as a freelance
editor and writer. She has a master’s degree in journalism from
Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree in English-Lit from
Nazareth College of Rochester. K.M. lives in Upstate New York’s
Finger Lakes region with her husband, her extremely energetic little
boy, and their crazy goldendoodle Luna (short for Lunatic)
Learn more at http://www.kmrandallauthor.com/
@KM_Randall
https://www.facebook.com/authorKMRandall
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8125589.K_M_Randall
Tour giveaway 2 ebook copies The Reaper’s Daughter 2 paperbacks The Reaper’s Daughter open to US Shipping
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Thank you for hosting me! -KM
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