Welcome to The Wormhole and my day on the Hellsbane Tour! It is my pleasure to present:
Hellsbane by Paige Cuccaro!
A HELLSBANE BOOK - Book One - by Paige Cuccaro
Emma Jane Hellsbane just found out she’s not human—or, at least, not only human. She’s half angel, too, and now Heaven’s got a job for her: round up all the Fallen angels and their red-skinned, horned devil-demon minions and boot their butts back into the abyss. Only problem? The demons and their Fallen masters fight back…and they don’t fight fair.
Luckily for Emma, she can put a stop to the constant threat of having her head hacked off if she figures out which Fallen angel is her father—and then kill him before he kills her. Of course, in the meantime, she’ll have to avoid accidentally seducing her angelic mentor, help an old friend conquer his own Fallen sperm donor, and basically save the world from a cataclysmic divine smack down.
No one said being Heaven’s bounty hunter would be easy. But with a name like Hellsbane, Emma Jane was born for the job.
Loving the blurb!? Here's an excerpt for your reading pleasure:
(taken from chapter one - Hellsbane #1):
Tommy charged from the boutique room into the entryway behind me. He swung his arm, bringing his big sword to his shoulder.
Time slowed. Something behind me growled, like no animal I’d ever heard. I spun around and saw—I kid you not—a great, horned demon.
Spittle sprayed out with every breath from his big, red nostrils and from between his white, pointy teeth. The nice, normal-looking mailman had morphed into a red-skinned devil-thing. There were veins bulging up his thick neck and along his forehead, where his horns poked out from his head like a bull. And he was still wearing the tattered remains of his mailman’s uniform, shoes shredded by cloven hoofs.
Tommy swung his sword, but he was weak and off-balance. The big devil-thing dodged him easily, shoving an arm out to send Tommy flying past me and into the wall. Drywall cracked and Tommy slid to the floor, breathless. The beast charged toward him, and like a deer in headlights, I stood in his way.
Barreling at me, he pulled a dagger from his mail pouch and swung it. I hit the floor, reflexes taking over. When he lunged forward, swinging again, I rolled out of the way. He kept coming, stomping my grandmother’s hardwood floors with his big, goatlike feet.
I snagged the little table under the mirror in the entryway and shoved it in his path. He stumbled into it, then swept it to the side, slamming it into the wall and knocking the mirror off its nail. The heavy frame hit hard, glass shattering across the floor. I turned and covered my face just as Tommy leapt over me.
Metal clashed against metal. I pushed up, scooting backward on my butt, away from the fight. Sword and dagger were swinging so fast, they were mostly a blur. Tommy lunged and swung, caught meat, then ducked back. The devil-thing parried, then attacked, his fat, three-fingered hands wielding the dagger as though he’d been born holding it.
He caught Tommy’s sword arm, slicing flesh, spraying blood, and Tommy yelled, dropping his weapon. He was already injured. It was a wonder he was even standing.
He stumbled back, searching the floor for his sword, eyes wide, panicked.
Where is it? Frantic, I used the bottom of my skirt to grab a big shard of the mirror and jammed it hard into the devil-thing’s ankle. He didn’t even look down, his yellow gaze on Tommy, stalking toward him, dagger dripping with Tommy’s blood.
He reached out, snagged his big hand around Tommy’s neck, and lifted him off his feet.
“Time to die, nephilim,” he said in a gruff voice that still sounded creepily like the human mailman I’d welcomed inside.
Tommy fought in the devil’s grip, kicking at his body, landing blow after blow. He pounded his fists against the thing’s thick red arms, but he just laughed, raising his dagger, ready to plunge it deep into Tommy’s gut.
Where was his damn sword? I scanned the entry, spotted the hilt sticking out from under the crumpled rug. Without thinking, I scrambled over on hands and knees, shoving slivers of mirror out of my path. But when I took a second to glance back at Tommy, a glass splinter jammed into the side of my palm. I plucked it out. Tommy was still hanging from the demon’s stiff-arm, his face ashen, his lips turning blue. He jerked wildly, his gaze steady on me instead of the devil. He shook his head as best he could, his dark lips mouthing, “No. Don’t touch it,” in little more than a hoarse croak.
My fingers found the sword, gathered the handle into my palm. I lifted it in one easy motion. The weight of it felt good in my hand, the round grip settling perfectly into my palm. I raised it to my shoulder like a baseball bat just as a searing white heat burned along my inner wrist.
“Ah, shit!” I ignored the stinging pain and swung. In that brief instant, as the blade sailed toward him, the demon turned as though something about me was suddenly worth his notice. The blade sliced cleanly through his neck. His yellow eyes, with creepy, vertical, black-slit pupils, blinked at me.
“Nephilim,” he said.
And then his head fell off.
The body collapsed, and Tommy crumpled to the floor with it. He sucked breath into his lungs, then scooted backward a moment before the whole of the demon who was once a mailman melted into a big pile of black, smoldering ooze.
I flicked my gaze to Tommy, who was clutching his neck, staring at the pile of gooey devil. I swallowed around the emotion clogging at the back of my throat. “That was not a mailman.”
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