Title: RAVEN’S LAST STAND
Author: J. B Dane
Genre: Urban Fantasy PI Mystery Comedy
Book Blurb:
The worst is yet ahead for magic tossing PI Bram Farrell, and naturally a new assassin appears to up the ante!
While glad to be back in my preferred version of Detroit – the real one – there doesn’t seem to be much that stayed the same while I was gone. And, considering I thought I was away for a mere five hectic days and to Naomie and everyone else it clocked in at seven months, that’s saying something.
My last day in fictional Detroit had both friends and enemies vanishing before my eyes, but nearly the same thing had happened to my friends in real Detroit. Durkin and Dawes are no longer cops. Burt no longer drives cabs. City officials closed the Lunds' bar and grill. And worst, my pseudo cousin Delia told Naomie what I really was!
But when has anything involving me rated as normal? Calie is stockpiling books, her intent to erase me. There’s a mysterious new vampire in town and he’s brought nasty new weapons with him. Palermo is missing and no one’s seen Prisk, though ghouls are everywhere! Plus, there’s a computer virus corrupted with magic that is wiping out any accounts with one of three dangerous words attached to them: Bram, Farrell, and Raven.
I’ve really become a nowhere man now!
Excerpt:
The day before, when I’d still been in the land of fiction and solving one final crime, the murder of a muse turned mayor, the hellcat magic instructor had insisted I could do a reverse viewing of a crime scene. With Kat talking me through the process, I’d not only discovered the identity of the murderer, I’d gotten the fright of my life by having the shadowy form of an arrow loosed and headed straight for me.
While crossing the shop, I’d tried to catch the scent of the wreckers but, probably because e’Llimoor’s earth connections catered to Otherworlders as much as it did to humans, there were too many aromas present for that ploy to work. Plus, the perfume of magical workings was from hundreds of workings inside the shop itself since e’Llimoor opened for business. Hopefully, although I’d only done this trick once, and hadn’t been in the real world when I did it, I could still get it to work.
There was only one way to find out.
Make an attempt. It would either work or not bother flickering into being.
Wedging myself into the corner, each shoulder brushing against a different wall, I emptied my mind of thought. Something you probably thought I did nearly every time I opened my mouth. However, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Brains are determined bits of physical machinery. They dash about from one normal body maintenance chore to the next. You don’t want it to forget to remind the heart to pump, the lungs to power air intake and release, and other parts to do what other parts are made to do, right? But ye olde gray matter loves to lollygag on the past—particularly the mess you made of something in the wayback—or bounce back and forth on decisions to be made—like which breakfast Slam I’d order when Nomes and I finally made it to Denny’s. Sweeping all of that under the rug is not only tricky, it makes for one damn lumpy rug.
I closed my eyes, gave my shoulder muscles a stretch. Cracked my neck to ease things up. It was best to enter this conjuration calm because I sure the hell wouldn’t be calm coming out of it!
It’s a two-part trick, sorta. The mystic reading feature in magic needs to be engaged and then there’s the tricky physical aspect. You can’t blink during it even though no Whovian Weeping Angels are involved, thank goodness. Gotta find something to be relieved about after all. It doesn’t help that the automatic feature of body maintenance overseen by the brain is set to make you blink around fifteen times a minute, and the blink itself lasts a tenth of a second. We’re rarely aware of when we blink, probably because it happens so fast.
I gave myself a count to thirty seconds to rearrange priorities in my mind and gave magic the details of its job: look for the shadows prior to the destruction of the séance room, roll it back to whoever entered the room so some sort of identification could be made, and finally, lend my eyelids the courage to refuse to blink no matter what my brain threatened them with. That’s what it would feel like, after all.
Got the impression magic sighed over the list, but dumped its attitude when Faerie magic appeared to wave, wanting to be tagged in.
Not gonna happen, I told the import that had followed me home. So far, I’d only used it once and that had been in fictionland. Faerie’s presto digits had entirely different muscles and ideas from my usual grade. Even if my usual grade is demon magic.
Go figure, huh?
Nothing happened the first three times I attempted to launch the sequence. On the fourth there was a slight flicker, a better one on the fifth. By the time I went for a tenth run, things had improved though I was sweating with the effort. There was a pounding in my head as my brain beat on the inner walls of its office, attempting to escape from yet another try.
Wimp, I sensed Faerie magic ridiculing it. Tag me in. We’ll be off to breakfast in a snap then.
Stonewalled it with a firmly snarled negative. First rule of magic for any user is, don’t let the power rule you. Rule it. “Back off, Fae,” I growled aloud.
It felt like my usual magic hovered at my back, peering over my shoulders curious over the identity of the winner in this contest of wills.
Faerie magic squared off against mine. It stewed a very different type of magic from what I had always used. The possibility of personal danger awaited if I let the Fae concoction off the choke chain.
A chain it was tugging at.
“Did you not understand my order?” I snarled, going for alpha hex tosser.
Pretty sure it was giving me a killing stare but as it equated to a felt presence rather than a solid one, I forced it to recede.
The battle bolstered demon magic’s ego though. I pictured it saucing its rival with a, “the Raven likes me better than you,” sort of taunt. The dialogue with the foreign (to me) magic had lasted less than fifteen seconds. They had been a restorative batch, though. Or perhaps I was just as determined to show Faerie that it wasn’t needed.
Except it might be later. That was the whole reason I hadn’t evicted it yet. If you don’t take more ammo than you need to a gunfight, you’re just asking for delivery to boot hill.
Yep, western gunfighter logic again. It was easier to inhale than reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Maybe I should consider the audio version though.
Lacking the time to lollygag with an Iron Age general, I straightened my shoulders. Centered my sight on the open doorway, mentally froze the automatic blink sequence, and cued the demon powers.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
BookBub https://www.bookbub.com/books/raven-s-last-stand-raven-tales-book-5-the-raven-tales-by-j-b-dane
What’s your favorite thing about autumn:
As a natural redhead (plus naturally frosted streaks these days) with hazel green eyes, I look fabulous in Fall colors. But Autumn is also when the trees should be dressed in similar colors. Sadly, the past few years global warming seems to have downsized those glories where I live. And it’s delayed kicking heat to the curb, too. I love sweater weather, which autumn used to be. Never have cared much for warm, much less hot weather, so this is the season I really look forward to.
It's also a great season to set a story with a magic using PI in!
What inspired you to write this story:
This is the 5th novel in my Raven Tales urban fantasy series, so I’d have to say that I was “inspired” to pound out this edition because my hero, Bram Farrell, the Raven’s story isn’t over yet.
I set it to kick off in the days closing on All Hallows because the first book in the series, Raven’s Moon, played out on the same set of days, just a year earlier. At least in story running time. Considerably more outside of the book where releases have been spaced to one a year. Plus, it was the perfect season for things of a witchy manner to cause havoc. And havoc is nearly a byword in The Raven Tales series.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally.
Runs September 1 – 30, 2024
Drawing will be held on October 1, 2024.
Author Biography:
J.B. Dane is the author of the urban fantasy PI mystery comedy series, The Raven Tales, which includes novels published by Burns and Lea Books, and a series of Indie published novellas and short stories that are prequels and also "between the books" adventures of her MC, Bram Farrell. Quite a few 5* reviews have followed for the novels, in particular, singing praises that should make her blush though she’s too busy proudly polishing her nails against her lapel to do so. She also writes shorter fantasy fiction, many tales of which have appeared in anthologies, particularly her Nick Claus, North Pole Security stories. She writes historical and contemporary romantic mystery and speculative twisted 19th century fiction under two different names, just to confuse people. Or so they seem to think.
Social Media Links:
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