Comes from Esmerelda Bishop’s story, Robin’s Cap.

Blurb:

Tales of ancient evil surround Hermitage Castle. What happens when legend becomes reality? Graham Parish and Kat Davis are about to find out.

***

        Kat stiffened in his arms. “Graham, what is that?” she breathed, fear shaking her voice.

         He peered around her and shot to his feet, pulling Kat behind him. He backed up, pressing her to the wall.

         There, before them, stood the subject of his thoughts. The powrie’s grin spread across his face, its razor sharp teeth gleaming in the dimly lit room.

         “Graham, what the hell is that?” She screamed the words in his ear. Her grip tightened on the back of his shirt. The material flattened across his chest.

         Shrugging, Graham tried to loosen her grasp. “That is Robin Redcap.”

         He felt Kat jerk behind him. “The troll from the fairy tale?”

         The faerie growled. Graham got the impression he didn’t take kindly to being called a troll. Redcap moved. A colorful burst of blurring light streaked across the room. The creature materialized where the light stopped.

         Graham swallowed. He had no doubt the creature was fucking with them by showing off its speed.

“How do we get rid of it?”

         Good question. Should he tell her getting rid of it was not an option? The only end result would be it getting rid of them.

          Subconsciously he had known that, but had refused to admit it until now. Now he was faced with the reality that they would not survive this night.

          Redcap moved again; this time the beam of light headed straight for them. Graham grabbed Kat as he stumbled backward, trying to put space between them. Kat clamped onto his arm, bringing it against her chest and screamed in his ear.

          The closer the creature crept, the scarier it looked. Deep wrinkles lined its filthy face. Its red eyes filled with bloodlust. The metallic smell of blood and the musty odor of death hung in the air.

          The powrie’s lead boots clunked heavily on the floor.

          Kat screamed.

          Redcap smiled. “Don’t be afraid, kitty. It will only hurt a lot.”

***

Visit Esmerelda at her web site, her blog, or her MySpace.

To purchase In the Gloaming, click here.  

Nita
http://www.nitawick.com/

Okay… Last try.  I’m having serious issues with formatting on the blog today.  Every time I post something, it’s messed up.  I edit to fix it, then something else is messed up.  Seems like our editor had the same problem when she was formatting the book.  She swore it was faeries playing tricks on her.  LOL

Sooooo…..  Here’s one more try.  If it’s messed up this time, it’s just gonna have to be messed up.  LOL 

Nita

UPDATE 4-18-08:  Well, it wasn’t the last try.  Sheesh.  After having this up her for almost a week, I realized that the links were messed up.  Ugh.  With all the formatting problems I was having on this blog site, I decided to copy and paste from my MySpace blog.  And I forgot that although I’d originally made the links here, MySpace changes them.    Sorry.  They should work now.

***

This week I’ll be posting an excerpt each day, one from each of the five awesome stories included in the In the Gloaming anthology.  I’ve asked each of the other authors to pick an excerpt from their own stories that will give you a tempting little taste. 

Today’s excerpt is from K. M. Frontain’s story, The Icicle.   

***

“There’s an icicle hanging from the eave of the sauna, just on the corner where we run out to chill off in the snow.”

Elli’s mother trudged three steps further before pausing and turning about. “What’s that?” she said.

“There’s an icicle—”

“Are you coming or not?” David shouted from somewhere at the front of the lodge.

A trickle of snow pattered off the steep slope of the roof. A huge sheet slid down the incline and plopped on the side path Glen had shovelled earlier that day. Elli eyed it and reserved a small gloat for later when her stepbrother returned from the village. For now, she hid the amusement behind a bored expression.

Didn’t matter. Her mother wouldn’t have noticed an open gloat anyhow.

“That man will start an avalanche,” Susan Erickson-Waite grumbled, facing front again. “A real one. That almost landed on my head.”

“It’s just coincidence, Mom. It’s a myth that loud noises cause avalanches.” 

“That was no coincidence,” Susan said. She took a step forward.

“Wait! Mom, someone should break the icicle. It could fall on a head…or something.” Something that might hurt worse than a head.What the heck was she thinking? What else would it fall on but a head? Her family didn’t slide down the path like otters.Well, Glen did once, but not after he’d hurt his penis on an icy, lumpy patch despite the swimsuit around his middle. That had been hilarious.

“The icicle can wait a few hours until we’re back from the village,” her mother said, glancing back. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

Shit, yes! “Yeah, I’m staying here to use the sauna and the whirlpool without Glen sneering at how stupid I look with this cast sticking out of the water.” And staring at her crotch because she had a leg raised.

Susan cast a suspicious glare at the roof, which had yet to shed the full complement of that week’s snowfall. “Well, I think it’s safe. I’m off. Don’t get the cast wet, Elli.”

“Mom! I know already. I’ll put a garbage bag around it. I’ll use duct tape to seal it and I’ll keep it out of the water too.” I’m an adult now, Mom. Look at me clearly, please.

Her mother tested the snow pile with one foot. She sank in to the calf of her black winter boot. “Damn…! All right, use a garbage bag, but stay away from the icicle.”

Adult, Mom! “Yeah, sure,” Elli said.

But as if she could stay away from it. The beaten path, a four-foot-deep trench that Glen never bothered to widen, passed directly under the icicle to the snow bed they used for chilling down. The other side of the sauna building had bushes, an old oak that dropped twigs, and fir trees that littered needles and cones everywhere. And there was scat. Squirrel scat, probably, though she seldom saw the pesky little poops actually commit their atrocity on the pristine snow after a blizzard.

Even if she rolled in pristine snow, she’d uncover the foul snow beneath.

Susan buried her second leg up to the calf in snow. “Don’t stay in the sauna too long,” she called.

“I know, Mom.”

“But stay in there if you trip and hurt your leg again! Crawl in if you have to, especially if you’re closer to the sauna than the lodge.”

“Mom, I’m not going to trip.”

“Don’t shut the door all the way if that happens. I don’t want you dying of heat exhaustion. A second broken leg we can fix.”

“Mom! Go already!”

Her mother looked back, frowning with disapproval. “Don’t be so impatient. It’s your impatience that put you in the cast to begin with.”

God! Elli scowled. “I know, Mom. Please don’t harp about it.”

Her mother’s frown deepened. “I do not harp.” She hugged the front of her fur coat tighter together, turned away, trudged through the detritus of the mini-avalanche and disappeared around the corner of the house.

“Thank you, God,” Elli whispered.

“Bye, Essie!” Glen hollered. Essie, short of E.S.E. or Elli Sol Erickson. But sometimes Glen called her Nessie, short for beached sea monster, this despite the fact that she’d lost the thirty-two extra pounds she’d been hauling about when they’d been teens.

“Good bye!” she shouted back.

“Don’t get your cast wet! Keep your leg up!”

“Shut up!”

Glen laughed. Elli’s mother barked for a return of manners. Car doors slammed, and the engine revved to a higher pitch.

And another mini-avalanche grumbled against the roof and woofed onto the first pile.

“Snow, you sound like a crotchety old dog that failed to get up,” Elli said. “And you’re still a coincidence.”

The red SUV edged backward into view. Her stepfather waved. Elli waved back, smiling and meaning it. In the back seat, Glen gave her the finger and made a swirling motion with his hand.

“Not on your life, Glen,” Elli said, still smiling. “Go fuck yourself, you twat glomper.” Her stepbrother was such a perverted asshole. “And yet somehow Mom thinks he’s perfect.” The boy she never had. “Good fucking thing or someone would be in jail right now.”

The SUV rolled behind trees and slipped in and out of view. Tree trunk, red flash, tree trunk, red flash, tree trunk…. Elli turned and faced the sauna. And the icicle.

The roof on that side of the bathhouse held a thinner layer of snow than the other corners—too much heat from the sauna beneath, perfect place to grow a monstrous, glacial spike.

“I’m going to hit you with my crutch,” she said to it. She hobble-thumped several feet closer, but almost tumbled when the right crutch snagged in a frozen track. She leant hard left. The left crutch rammed into her armpit. She wheezed outward. Her bag of sauna gear slid off her shoulder and down the crutch leg.

“Shit.” She stared at the bag, hauled her right crutch forward. “Stay in the sauna if you trip and hurt your leg again,” she mimicked. Her mom had put a curse on her.

Her gaze lifted to the icicle. So huge. So…crystalline. The base seemed solidly attached. Had to be a good six inches across. Might not fall until spring. Might grow into a frozen waterfall that touched the ground. The tip had already extended until it loomed only a foot from her head.

Dangerous, but it wasn’t ugly. Beneath wet, sparkling facets, a soft internal glow paid homage to winter sunlight, despite that intermittent drops of water mocked the harsh mid-winter with a deceit of spring time. Droplets cratered the new snow on the path beneath. The beginnings of an ice stalagmite had climbed the wall a few days ago, until Glen had found it a nuisance and shattered it with a hatchet. The stalagmite had already begun to reform.

Elli’s gaze rose again to the single crystal spear that gripped the eave. “You’re kind of pretty,” she said. “If you promise to fall on Glen and not me, I’ll let you stay there.”

Damn, that was one sharp tip! Did she want Glen dead?

Maybe.

Sunlight flashed on the pinnacle of the roof, as if splintered by a moving sheet of glass. Elli squinted upward. Somehow the daylight had caught itself on the apex, coalesced into a shimmering solidity shaped like a seated man.

Elli’s eyes widened in disbelief. The brightness intensified. She blinked, lifted a forearm in protest, forced teary eyes to open and peer between fingers.

The sunlight returned to normal. Her arm lowered.

The roof remained a cake decoration of white icing, trackless multiple layers with no sign of breakage anywhere along the peak.

“Snow blindness. I was warned. Don’t stare at the shiny white world too long without sunglasses.”

***

There you have it.  LOL  Just enough to make you want to read more. To learn more about this very talented author, visit her homepage, her blog, or her MySpace.

Thank you, Karen, for the wonderful excerpt. 

You can purchase this anthology of faerie stories at Freya’s Bower.  If you’re not yet convinced that you’ll love it, visit again tomorrow for another excerpt from In the Gloaming.

Nita

Mary Alice Pritchard, one of my very best friends, recently signed a contract with The Wild Rose Press to publish her book, Ghostly Mistakes.

And today, she received the cover!  Check it out!

Isn’t it awesome?  The cover artists at The Wild Rose Press are great.

She doesn’t have a release date yet.  In fact, she’s still working on edits.  But I had to share the cover.

Nita

Well, the publisher should have received the signed contract by now, so I guess it’s official.

I sold my western historical, The Wagonmaster! 

It’s not even finished yet.  Almost, but not quite.  Then I’ll have to self-edit before I send it in, of course.  I have a deadline near the first of July, so I feel confident I can get it cleaned up by then. 

I’m excited to be working with Freya’s Bower on it.  They were awesome with edits and a quick release on In the Gloaming.  I learned a great deal about how to polish my writing with the short story, and I feel that working with the very knowledgeable and professional editors at Freya’s will only make me a better writer.

Speaking of In the Gloaming…

We’ve received another stellar review!

Dark Diva Reviews gives In the Gloaming five Delightful Divas:

“All of these authors did a superb job in writing such vivid adventures that I felt I was right there in the middle of it.”

Click here to read the whole review.

So far, the reviewers are loving In the Gloaming.  Have you read it yet?  I’d love to hear what you think of it, too!

Nita