Crazed unicorns, immortals, gods, vampires, and werewolves turn up dead in the Bronx. Bram Gold, hunter for hire, investigates the events. Can he stop the destruction of New York?
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
January 31, 2019
224 pages
Publisher: WordFire Press LLC
Trade paperback $14.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-946-1
Ebook $4.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-947-8
Hardback $25.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-984-3
Ebook $4.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-947-8
Hardback $25.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-984-3
Bram Gold is a Courser, a hunter-for-hire who deals with supernatural creatures, mystical happenings, and things that go booga-booga in the night. Under the supervision of the Wardein—his childhood friend Miriam Zerelli, who is in charge of all magical activity in the Bronx, New York—he's who you hire if you need a crazed unicorn wrangled, some werewolves guarded while they gallivant around under the full moon, or an ill-advised attempt to bind a god stopped.
The Bronx is the home to several immortals, who are notoriously hard to kill—so it comes as rather a surprise when one of them turns up murdered, seemingly by a vampire. In addition, binding spells all across town are either coming undone, failing to work, or are difficult to restore. As Bram investigates, more immortals turn up dead, and a strange woman keeps appearing long enough to give cryptic advice and then disappear. Soon, he uncovers a nasty sequence of events that could lead to the destruction of New York!
The first in a new series of urban fantasy thrillers taking place in the Boogie-Down Bronx from best-selling, award-winning author Keith R.A. DeCandido.
The Bronx is the home to several immortals, who are notoriously hard to kill—so it comes as rather a surprise when one of them turns up murdered, seemingly by a vampire. In addition, binding spells all across town are either coming undone, failing to work, or are difficult to restore. As Bram investigates, more immortals turn up dead, and a strange woman keeps appearing long enough to give cryptic advice and then disappear. Soon, he uncovers a nasty sequence of events that could lead to the destruction of New York!
The first in a new series of urban fantasy thrillers taking place in the Boogie-Down Bronx from best-selling, award-winning author Keith R.A. DeCandido.
EXCERPT:
I would like to state for the record that starting Shabbos with a crazed unicorn charging at you horn-first kinda sucks.
I stood stock still while it came at me, waiting until I could see the bloodshot whites of its eyes. Then at the last second, I bent my knees, ducked, and rolled away on my left shoulder—which I then wrenched on the sidewalk as I rolled.
The hardest part of my job was not screaming like a five-year-old when I felt pain. You’d think it would be easier, given that pain was inflicted on me pretty much daily, but still it took an effort.
I rolled to my feet, my right hand holding my left shoulder to make sure it didn’t move around too much, since every time it did so, white-hot knives of agony shot up and down my left arm. My white-maned attacker skidded to a halt, its hooves scraping against the uneven concrete.
“Ohmigod, don’t hurt him, Mr. Gold!”
“You out of your fuckin’ mind, Leesa, that thing tried to kill me!”
Sparing a glance to the open black metal gate in front of the house on 180th Street, I saw Leesa and Siri, the young couple who rented the ground floor. The two were both black women, but the similarities ended there. Leesa was short and stocky, wore thick plastic-framed glasses, and had long hair painstakingly kept straight and tied into a ponytail held by a sparkly pink hair clip; she had a high squeaky voice and wore a flower-print sundress. Siri was tall, thin, had close-cropped hair, and didn’t wear glasses; she stuck with a plain T-shirt and jeans.
Leesa had taken in the unicorn—from what I’d heard, far from her first stray—which had gone crazy when Siri came home, and even more deranged once I showed up.
I’d been hired to track down this particular beast and return it to where it belonged. Leesa needn’t have worried, because the client wanted the psychotic little equine intact. I just had to get the damn talisman onto its two-foot-long, sharp golden horn, sparkling with the reflected light of the early evening sun on 180th, which was currently pointed right at my spleen.
Yeah. Why did I take this job, again?
The unicorn snorted, nostrils flaring, and charged me again. This time I twisted out of the way to the right instead of rolling to the left and got shouldered in the rib cage.
Instinctively, I clutched my ribs with the arm that had the bad shoulder, then winced in pain. At least they weren’t busted—they felt bruised, but that was it.
The unicorn stopped, turned around, and now was snarling, along with the flared nostrils.
I think I pissed the thing off.
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Keith R.A. DeCandido was born in what is now the Wakefield campus of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. When he's not writing, Keith is an editor (for clients both personal and corporate), a martial artist (he achieved his third-degree black belt in karate in 2017, and he regularly teaches karate to kids), an avid New York Yankees fan, and probably some other stuff he can't remember due to the lack of sleep. Find out less at his inadequate web site at www.DeCandido.net.
WordFire Press is a mid-size new-model publisher founded by New York Times bestselling authors Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. You can find us atwordfirepress.com. Tweet us @WordFirePress. Follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/WordfireIncWordfirePress.
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