I have been very vocal about my love the Transplanted Tales Series by Kate SeRine. It really does rock
You reap what you sow…
Saying
Nate Grimm has a dark past is an understatement. Fortunately, no one’s bothered
to look too closely at the Fairytale Management Authority’s lead detective and
part-time Reaper. And that’s the way Nate wants to keep it. For after centuries
of torment and loneliness, he’s finally found happiness with the hot and
hard-charging love of his life, Tess “Red” Little.
Of
course, his love for Tess is the reason there’s a posse of Reaper judges after
him, led by a sadistic bastard acquainted with Nate from once upon a time. Now,
Tess will pay the price for Nate’s transgressions unless Nate severs his ties
to the transplanted Tales—and Tess—forever. His enemy has the advantage in
speed, malice and brutality. But the Reapers have underestimated the depth of
Nate’s love and devotion. And the fury of his wrath…
Excerpt
from GRIMM CONSEQUENCES
I folded a stick of gum and shoved
it into my mouth, needing to chew on something other than the dread that was
choking me. Tess glanced my way with her patented saucy grin, which did little
to abate my anxiety. That grin meant she was about to do something reckless—and
was planning to enjoy it.
“Stay here,” I mouthed, jabbing my
finger at the ground. I started to get up from behind the wooden crates that so
far had hidden us from the quarry we’d tracked to a warehouse in an industrial
complex about ten miles from the Asylum.
She grabbed my sleeve and pulled me
back down, giving me her “you’re fucking crazy if you think I’m going to go
along with that shit” look. I’d come to know it well. And I’d been seeing it a
lot more since I’d saved her life from a psychotic sorceress a couple of months
earlier. Lucky for me, with our mark just a few feet away, Tess couldn’t launch
into the usual lecture on how she was a big girl and didn’t need me hovering
over her like some overprotective—although admittedly dashing—guardian angel of
death.
(Okay, so I added the “dashing” part.)
She could lecture all she wanted,
though. There was no way in hell I was going to let her get herself killed.
“Fine,” I mouthed. “Together.”
She rolled her eyes but then gave me
a terse nod as she palmed the gun strapped to her thigh. And then lunged out
from behind the crates.
“Damn it, Red,” I hissed, taking off
after her. “I said together!”
But she was already out of earshot,
her cherry red combat boots pounding the concrete floor of the warehouse as she
chased down the son of a bitch who’d had the bad luck to have us on his tail. I
heard Tess fire off two quick rounds. There was a roar of rage in response as
the bullets struck home.
I caught a glimpse of Tess’s black
leather trench coat flying out behind her as she took a sudden left. She was
completely out of my sight now, and I didn’t like it one damned bit. I shot
forward, dematerializing into shadow and letting the connection that bound us catapult
me forward in an instant, reappearing directly in front of her.
She slid to a halt with a startled
cry. Then her eyes widened. “Nate! Behind you!” She brought her arm up in the
next instant and fired. It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to
turn around to see what she was shooting at. Or get the hell out of the way of
the Jabberwocky’s deadliest weapon.
I dropped to my knees with a gasp a
split second after dozens of poisoned quills pierced my back, the Jabberwocky’s
venom working before I even felt the pain. But the agony wasn’t far behind.
Tendrils of fire lanced through my nerve endings, wrapped their barbed arms
around my chest and squeezed. I couldn’t breathe, could barely see.
I felt Tess’s cool hands on either
side of my face as the world began to tilt precariously, and I thought I could
hear her calling to me, but her voice was distant, faint. I managed to muster
what little strength I had and forced my eyelids open. The face I adored swam
before my eyes.
“Nate!” she screamed. “Stay with
me!”
I wanted to tell her I wasn’t going
anywhere, that I couldn’t because my
legs had ceased to function. But my tongue apparently had gone AWOL as well.
The venom from the quills of the Jabberwocky wasn’t going to kill me—nothing
from the Make Believe or the Here and Now could. But it sure as shit could fuck
with my head and was gonna hurt like a mother.
Tess’s face floated before me like
some seriously jacked up kaleidoscope, making my stomach roll with the motion.
At
least it’s not her, I told myself over and over as the venom constricted my
veins, seizing my heart in its merciless grasp. At least Tess is safe.
And then I saw him. Or thought I
did.
Demetrius.
He was standing behind Tess, wearing a
shit-eating grin that would’ve earned him a knuckle sandwich to chow on if I’d
been able to move my arms. But all I could do was blink at him, not sure if he
was a hallucination or the son of a bitch I’d once reported to in the Reaper
Corp until he’d decided to take on a job that had better suited his particular talents.
“Nate!” Tess called to me, her voice
edged with desperation.
Damn,
I must’ve looked like hell.
“Nate, goddamn it! Look at me!”
I tried to drag my eyes away from
Demetrius and his self-satisfied smile. Couldn’t. All I could do was stare,
mute, as his shadowy form twisted and swirled around Tess, threatening to
overtake her at any moment and drag her down into darkness.
And then I was falling. The ground
was only a few inches away, but it felt like I was dropping toward it in slow
motion from hundreds of feet in the air. And when my face smacked hard against
the cold concrete, it jarred me like a sucker punch to the temple. For a split
second my vision dimmed as I fought to stay conscious.
“This is Enforcer Little,” I heard
Tess barking into her phone. “I have a man down. Send a medical team right
away.”
I felt my heartbeat slowing, felt
myself slipping away, and tried to find Tess’s face through the blur. She was
leaning over me, smacking my cheek to rouse me. “Come on, Nate, hold on.”
Demetrius peered down at me from
over her shoulder, his grin growing. He shook his head with a chuckle. “Oh, how
the mighty have fallen,” he drawled, his high-pitched titter of a laugh sending
a fresh wave of hell through my nerve endings. “I’ll let her have you today,
Death Bringer. But soon, old friend, soon
we will meet again. . . .”
The second he vanished, I gave in to
the weight of my eyelids. I could hear Tess still calling to me, ordering me to
keep it together, to fight off the poison, but I couldn’t. There was no defense
against the inevitable. Eventually, death claimed us all. And I was no
exception.
Giveaway:
Kate SeRine (pronounced “serene”) faithfully watched weekend monster
movie marathons while growing up, each week hoping that maybe this time the
creature du jour would get the girl. But every week she was disappointed. So
when she began writing her own stories, Kate vowed that her characters would
always have a happily ever after. And, thus, her love for paranormal romance
was born. Kate currently writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance and is the
author of the award-winning Transplanted
Tales series, available from Kensington Books.
Kate lives in a smallish, quintessentially Midwestern town with her
husband and two sons, who share her love of storytelling. She never tires of
creating new worlds to share and is even now working on her next project.
