by Stephen D. Sullivan (Author), Mark Maddox (Illustrator)
August 30, 2020
437 pages
The monsters aren’t only in the museum!
Despite a lifetime of traveling with their father to collect strange artifacts, twins Topaz and Opal Cushing have never fully believed in monsters or the supernatural. Oh, sure, they share an eerie psychic connection, and their tarot card readings often come true, but… Werewolves? Vampires? Living mummies? None of those could be real. Those legends are just for rubes. Right?
Since the girls’ father has been away, though, strange things have been happening in the family’s little exhibit—and in the waxworks studio that shares their dilapidated Victorian mansion on the outskirts of London. Now, the twins’ dreams of a fun, romantic summer season are turning into a nightmare, and the monsters are running...
Dr. Cushing’s Chamber of Horrors!
Excerpt
The Werewolf – Transylvania
The Night of the Full Moon
The man moved through the moonlit forest at what for him probably seemed a quick and silent pace.But, to the beast, his every footstep and rustle of clothing echoed like thunder. The man was slow, too, and he reeked of body odor and something the werewolf’s animal nature could barely identify—cologne, a terrible, unnatural stench.
Involuntarily, the wolf’s black lips curled away from its sharp teeth, and it nearly growled. But then it remembered itself. This was no ordinary man; this was its foe—the being it had been created to kill. And the beast knew instinctively that the man sought to destroy it, as well.
The werewolf feared nothing. The full moon beamed all her occult fury into its hairy frame. The preternatural animal could sense its own power, its own near invulnerability. All the world was its prey, and its talons and teeth were sharp enough to rend the flesh of any mortal.
And, yet, somehow, the monster knew that this man had the means to destroy it: weapons of silver—proof against even the supernatural power of the beast—and a gun loaded with silver bullets.
Reflexively, the wolf-thing clutched at its shoulder; blood still trickled there.
The creature’s memory was brief and blurry, but it remembered the man wounding it, not long after moonrise. They’d skirmished briefly, before the shot had rung out and the fire of silver tore through the monster’s shoulder.
The wolf had fled then, seeking the safety of the deeper woods, leaving the battered hunter amid the corpses of his hounds, which would track the beast no longer.
But the man had recovered, and it seemed he could track, too, though not as effectively as his dogs.
Nor as effectively as the wolf, for the monster had recovered, as well.
The silver-inflicted wound still stung it, but the bullet had passed cleanly through.
And the creature was strong—even when wounded—far stronger than any man.
The hunter moved quickly and nearly silently past the tree where the wolf lay waiting. The beast had hidden in the upper canopy, leaping from tree to tree, to avoid leaving a blood trail on the ground.
The wolf-thing was clever—more clever than the man, as well as stronger.
The time had come to prove it!
The monster sprang.
The hunter turned, as if sensing his peril at the last instant.
He raised his gun toward the werewolf’s slavering jaws.
BANG!
About the Author:
Stephen D. Sullivan has over sixty published titles to his name and helped create more comics and games than he can either list or remember.
A Scribe award-winner for “Best Novel Adaptation, 2016” with his book Manos: The Hands of Fate, Sullivan lives with his wife in a small town in Wisconsin.
You can contact him via Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, or on his website: www.stephendsullivan.com
Also, to add to the Halloween mischief, we'll be holding an Easter Egg hunt. One of our bloggers has agreed to post a picture of a werewolf. First one to find the werewolf and comment on "Werewolves, Mummies, Dr. Cushing's, oh, my!" wins the Easter Egg hunt. Good luck... :)
GIVEAWAY
Thanks for sharing your great book and for the giveaway too.
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