Life Cycle Tour: Excerpt, Review & Giveaway!

Posted September 14, 2012 by Silvia in Uncategorized / 12 Comments

This is the final stop for Life Cycle Tour (by Dark Mind Book Tours)!!

Zoe Winters writes quirky and sometimes dark paranormal romance (and dark fantasy). Her favorite colors are rainbow and clear. For updates on new releases and opportunities for contests/giveaways sign up for the newsletter by sending a blank email to: freekept@gmail.com (As a thank you, you’ll receive a free copy of the debut novella in the Preternaturals series: Kept.)

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Here you can read the book summary: Immortality can be a bitch… Tamara has lived nearly two thousand years, trapped by a spell of her own creation. Hunted by her enemy and former lover, she knows there is only one man strong enough to release her from the curse. But will Cain honor her death wish, or keep her for himself, whatever the cost? Two ancient souls. Two weary fighters, torn between love and hate, forced to decide if the other could be worth living for.
Heat Level 3 of 5. Some sexually explicit content and innuendo.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Though Life Cycle is book 4 in the Preternaturals series, it can be read out of order with no problem.


__________________________________________________________________________________


LIFE CYCLE EXCERPT
USED WITH PERMISSION, COPYRIGHT 2012 ZOE WINTERS

Prologue
123 A.D. A
hidden cavern near the waters of the Blue Grotto in Italy.
Tamar shivered with her twelve companions.
They were about to attempt their most daring incantation. An opening at the top
of the cavern allowed the light from the full moon to shine down on them,
illuminating their secret gathering and adding its own power to the unfolding
ritual.


Salt water splashed on
her from a waterfall in the nearby pool. They’d searched for the water of
immortality, a legend that had spread since before her birth. Far and wide,
people had spoken of water that could make a person eternal and young.


But it wasn’t the
water that conferred immortality. It was the creatures that lived inside the
water. They were transparent and hard to see, with spongy tops and long
tendrils on the bottom that could sting if you got too close. They didn’t die.
Instead, they could age backward, reaching the end of their life, and then,
without dying, start over again.


“We’ll freeze to death
if you don’t hurry.” Tamar glared at the man in the middle of the circle. The
irony of freezing to death while seeking immortality caused her to stifle a
dark laugh.


“The potion must be
altered with other ingredients unless you want to come back as a newborn each
time. You’ll find that frustrating,” Jacob said. He was their leader and the
best with potions.


Tamar made a face, but
huddled closer to her sister, Naomi, for warmth. A circle of salt had been
poured around them. Candles were already lit. A large stone had become a
makeshift table upon which the coven leader worked. The sea creatures had been
pulverized and added to an iron pot. He poured the herbal infusions into the
potion.


Jacob passed a sharp knife to the person
on his left. “Each of us must contribute blood to the potion or it will fail.
The magic is in this creature, but they have no blood. Our blood must bond with
this animal if we hope to succeed.”


“Are you sure that’s
necessary?” Naomi asked. Tamar nodded her agreement. Cutting themselves and
mixing their blood seemed extreme. What would be the consequences of linking
together eternally?


“I am sure,” Jacob
said, losing patience with their squeamishness. Magic like this had a price,
and they all knew it. But the consequences always showed themselves when it was
too late.


One by one they sliced the center of their
palms with the ritual knife and added their blood. Jacob stirred the concoction
with a wooden spoon; it smelled like death. When he was finished, he dipped a
silver goblet into the brew.


“We each drink and
then we chant,” he said, passing the goblet.


Tamar couldn’t help
feeling pride at the chant she’d written. When they’d all drunk, they clasped
hands and turned their faces up to the moonlight. The cavern echoed their words
back to them. “Da immortalitatem. Renatus sine oblitus. Numquam moriens. Da
immortalitatem. Renatus sine oblitus. Numquam moriens…”


And then they all died.

Tamar jolted as oxygen flooded into her
body. Something felt very strange. Had the spell worked? She glanced around at
her companions, each of them coming back to life one by one.


“We’re all children.”
Chapter One
Golatha Falls,
Georgia. The Present.
Tam perched on the bar
stool in her kitchen, still as death. Her third cup of Earl Grey tea cooled on
the counter, ignored. Normally the warm brew calmed her nerves, but nothing
would comfort her today.


She’d read her tarot
cards, tea leaves, and scried with a bowl of water and sea salt. Everything she
tried gave her the same morbid story. The death card glared back at her,
mocking, and though she’d told many others—sometimes truthfully, sometimes not
so much—that the death card didn’t always mean death, she knew this card said
her number was up.


Jack—as Jacob was called now—was back, and
he was after her. She fought to keep the tremor out of her hand as she raised
the tea to her lips. He wouldn’t offer her a quick death. It would involve a
cold stone slab, bleeding to death, and having vital organs removed.
Ritualistic, because ritual was how you got the most effect out of stealing a
fellow magic user’s power.


Tam had considered
herself a cycler since the night she was reborn in that cavern nearly
two thousand years ago. True to Jack’s word, each time they died, they came
right back in their own younger body, looking for all the world to be about
twelve years old—an inconvenience to say the least. Tam had been shuffled from
orphanage to orphanage each time she began a new life cycle.


This last time she’d gotten lucky and been
adopted by a well-to-do family who had taken her in and put her through a good
school. The thought was nice, though pointless, given how many times she’d
already suffered through school.


Cyclers kept their memories, their sense
of continuity. They were effectively immortal, just like the rare breed of
jellyfish they’d discovered so long ago.


Jack had only been
actively hunting the other cyclers for a few centuries. He’d gone power hungry,
convinced he could stop the cycle altogether and achieve true immortality by draining
the power of his coven. Magic users aged differently—the more magic, the longer
they could live. But it wasn’t just that. She knew him. He had an
angle—something more than a personal quest for immortality.


If murder was his new hobby, his purpose for
gaining all that power couldn’t be good. If he was going to get her anyway,
suicide seemed the smarter option. It would free her to be reborn the normal
way and keep her safe from a more brutal death at Jack’s hands.


But it wasn’t so simple. There were two
ways she could die for real—and two ways only: at the hands of another cycler,
or through magical means by a very old preternatural being, such as a demon or
vampire at least a few thousand years old. Those were hard to come by, and
their killing methods were usually too creative for Tam’s taste. She wanted to
break the cycle, not be tortured.


Either way, she’d managed, through this
latest cycle, to stifle the suicidal urge.
 Until now.

The image of the demon she’d chosen formed
in her mind. Cain. The very first incubus. If he couldn’t kill her, nobody
could. And he hated her. It should be simple enough to get him to agree,
assuming she could find him. She’d dropped him in front of his badass pals a
couple of times already with energy balls. He was probably plotting her death
at this very moment.


Anna might know where
to find him, since she was mated to a demon, but Tam hadn’t seen her best
friend in three months. It wasn’t as if Tam had directions to the demon portals
or a way to get through to their dimension even if she did. If Anna surfaced in
the human dimension, Tam could do a spell to locate her, but who could say when
that would happen? And would it be before Jack reached her?


Deep in her gut, she
knew she was going to die—either by Cain’s hand or by Jack’s. As arrogant as
the bastard was, Cain’s methods would at least be pleasurable. Bleeding out and
organ removal versus orgasms. Gee, how do I decide? They both sound so
glamorous and exciting.
***
Cain snarled as he
passed through the portal point into Cary Town, Washington. The filmy
dimensional doorway shimmered and then fizzled out of existence as he moved
through the forest away from it. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to be
summoned by the vampire king. Half-breeds.


He’d thought his business
with Anthony was finished when Cain had delivered his don’t mess with us
again or there will be a war
speech the last time they’d met. But now there
was a bigger evil brewing, something that risked the living standards of all
the factions—and possibly their lives.


Even his newly turned succubus and her
werewolf mate would be at the meeting, which was going to be awkward to say the
least, given that they all hated Anthony. And the feeling was mutual. How this
was going to go with everybody in one room, he couldn’t say. Officially, the
werewolf pack was banished from Cary Town. If someone saw them slinking through
the night to Anthony’s penthouse, things would get entertaining.


The demon nodded at the guardian in the
lobby of the Cary Town Luxury Apartments. This meeting was being kept on the
down-low. The Preternatural Council had been shut out. Even most of the vampire
king’s coven didn’t know he was fraternizing with the enemy and holding a
secret meeting in his former penthouse residence. Cain stepped onto the
elevator and pulled out the key he’d been given to gain access to the sixth
floor.


The door at the end of
the hall was answered by a vampire who looked more like a butler. “They’re on
the roof by the pool, sir.”


Cain took the stairs
two at a time. His presence announced itself as the metal door clanged against
the brick. All eyes went to him, and he smirked.


“Well, well, looks
like the gang’s all here.” And what a motley crew they were.


Anthony stood at one
end of the table beside an overhead projector and portable screen that had been
plugged into an outlet embedded in the brick.


At the table were
several familiar faces. Beside Anthony was his human mate, Charlee. Coming
around the table was Cain’s brother, Luc, and his annoying mate, Anna. Then
there was Jane, the new succubus who was mated to Cole, the Cary Town werewolf
pack alpha. The rest, he didn’t know.


“You’re late,” Anthony
said, bristling. “We’ve been waiting, and Charlotte needs her rest. The baby
takes a lot out of her.”


Cain’s eyes cut to the vampire’s mate. She
was so pregnant she’d pop any day now. If this meeting was about her and her
spawn, heads were going to roll. If he didn’t care about a half-breed, he sure
as hell didn’t care about a quarter-breed.


“I was detained. These
things happen. Lovely little school teacher. I made some third graders very
happy today. Or they’ll be happy tomorrow, anyway.”


Cole growled from his
seat beside Jane. “You killed a woman, you mean.”


Cain chuckled. “My god, man, what is it
with you and this obsession with killing? Which one of us is the demon? Perhaps
amongst your kind third graders are happy when their teacher dies. She’s… just
a little spent. She’ll have to take a sick day tomorrow.”


He dropped into a
chair at the end of the table where he could most easily glare at and annoy
Anthony. Since Cain wasn’t killing him right now, annoying him would be the
second best thing. He didn’t like that Anthony was in charge of this meeting.
The vampire king was practically a child next to Cain’s eight thousand years.
It should be seniority rule.


The vampire cleared
his throat. “Sitting next to you is Father Hadrian who is one of mine… And over
here is our resident sorcerer, Dayne, and his lovely werecat, Greta.” Anthony
leered at the brunette beside the sorcerer and Greta gripped Dayne’s hand
tighter.


“Therian, not werecat!
You know I hate that term,” Greta hissed.
“Whether you like it
or not, it’s accurate.”


“Really, Anthony?”
Charlee said
, an irritated expression on her face at
her mate’s goading.
The vampire chuckled. “What? Is it my
fault your friend is so easy to mess with?”


He took a clear plastic sheet with writing
on it and placed it on the overhead projector. “I apologize for being so vague
as to the purpose of this meeting. Half of you are officially enemies, but if I
go to the Preternatural Council with this, my vampires will all know, and I’m
not prepared for it to go public yet. We can go back to hating each other after
we’ve eliminated the threat.”


Anthony flipped on the
light of the projector, and an electric buzz filled the silence. “I had this
letter reproduced onto a transparency for our purposes. In case the context
doesn’t spell it out to you, we’ve been contacted by Jack the Ripper. He’s
still alive, and he’s one of us.”


“You couldn’t just use
a computer program?” the werewolf asked. Cole was the most tech-savvy of the
group.


“Don’t try, it won’t
get you anywhere,” Charlee said.
Dear Boss,
I’m back. You
didn’t take the threat seriously last time. Shame on you. Did you not
understand my joke? It wasn’t for the common people. It was for the others. Was
“from Hell” not a big enough clue? It’s where we all are, after all.
When I’ve
killed the other cyclers, I’ll change the world. There are 13 of us, a perfect
coven. The first kill was an accident, the second an experiment. Whitechapel
was only three. You were wrong. It wasn’t five. Those and others were copycats
all wanting Ripper’s glory.
Since then,
there have been four more, but I’ve been quiet as a mouse, giggling at my funny
little games. With you in power, I thought I’d make this interesting. Only
three left to kill; catch me first or Hell is mine.
Yours Truly,
The Cycler
Don’t mind the
new trade name. The old one was stale, and this one will give you something new
to chew on. A new mystery to solve. Do better this time. The stakes are higher
now.
P.S. Have fun when the human media gets this letter. I’ll
give you a head start. Tick, tock.
Cain read the letter on the projector
once, twice, and then a third time. “Why did he send this to you? And addressed
the same as the original letters? And what the fuck is a cycler?”


Anthony seemed annoyed
by Cain’s tone, but he answered anyway. “I believe I’ve met him before. At
previous points in my history, I’ve chosen to blend with the humans, exploring
various ways of living to satisfy my boredom. During the Whitechapel murders, I
worked for the London police department under an assumed name. But a few
decades before that, I owned a small fish shop. All my other employees called
me by the name I was using at that time, except one.
 He just called me “Boss.”

“There was something off
about him. I suspected he was a magic user, but it was more than that. The way
he gutted a fish… it was so clean. Surgical, almost. Even being a vampire, this
guy gave me the creeps. But I never realized he knew I’d joined the London
police or that the letters might be for me. He must have discovered what I was.
He was playing games then; now I think he’s ready to end this. Which brings me
to your other question. Does anybody besides Hadrian know what a cycler is?”


There was a consensus of head shaking.

“Father Hadrian,
perhaps you could tell us about your experience.”


The priest poured a
glass of wine from a bottle on the table and took a leisurely sip. “When I was
turned in 1955, my first meal was a blonde witch—maybe in her twenties. Her
name was Tamara. I left her corpse and went to hunt for more. When I returned
to the church, there was a young girl, maybe eleven or twelve or so with the
same blonde hair and the same eyes, wearing the same dress as the woman I
killed. She told me she was a cycler. She was powerfully magical, much more so
than I thought even a woman in her twenties should be. Magic users do
age differently, so I can’t be sure of her age before I killed her.”
The hair on the back
of Cain’s neck stood up. There were millions of women with that name, and
probably plenty of blonde witches with it as well, but his experience with Tam
had always been one of confusion over how she could take him down so easily
with a flick of her wrist.


The demon glanced at Anna, wondering if
she’d made the connection, but the idea that Father Hadrian was speaking about
the Tam they both knew hadn’t penetrated for Luc’s mate.


“Anna, do you
understand yet why this involves you?” Anthony asked.


Her eyes widened but she maintained her
denial. “No… I… Why would it involve me?”


The vampire laughed
and shook his head. “I forget how recently you were introduced to our world.
Your friend has been keeping a monumental secret from you. Tam is the woman
Father Hadrian met in the fifties.”


“That’s not possible.
I mean… we grew up together. Since we were kids…”


“Since you were about
twelve?”


Anna shut her mouth and looked down at her
hands.


“That’s what I
thought. She must have died and started a new life cycle right around that
time. We’re still not sure exactly what that means.”


The vampire king
turned to the sorcerer and werecat. “Dayne, Greta, did you do the research I
requested?”


Dayne nodded. “I might
have a theory. Since magic users are human, we’ve always been a wild card. Up
until now, we’ve kept ourselves mostly secret from normal humans and considered
ourselves part of the preternatural world, but if Jack gets enough power, he
could sway magic users to his side. I think he wants to expose the
preternaturals and fight. He’s absorbing power from his kills to make it
easier.”


Greta interrupted. “I don’t think anyone
considered there could be magical and ritual significance to the way Jack the
Ripper was killing. The killings got more complex, but if he was experimenting
with the most potent methods for power absorption, that would happen. He could
become unstoppable if he kills the other cyclers.”


“He’ll also be a true
immortal,” Dayne said. “The more power a magic user has, the more slowly they
age. Considering the nature of what he is already, my suspicion is that he’d
become unkillable. He wouldn’t have to start over in a younger human body like
what Hadrian observed with Tamara.”
Cain stared at the table. He squeezed his
eyes shut as images flashed in his mind of Tam being ritualistically and
gruesomely murdered. He didn’t know why it pissed him off so much.


“Cain?” Anthony said.

The demon looked up, startled at being
included in the discussion. He tried to maintain a bored mask, but he couldn’t
stop his hands from balling into fists or the heat from the glow in his eyes.
“Yes?”


“We need you to
protect the witch in your dimension. It’s the only place we’re guaranteed
she’ll be safe. This affects everybody. If he kills all the cyclers, and magic
users come out of the closet, they’ll band together, which risks your demons as
well.”


Magic users were a
demon’s one weakness. Demons were exempt from death and could heal any
injury—true immortals, but they could still be trapped by a curse. They could
still feel the weakness and suffering of starvation. They could still be hurt.


All eyes were on him, waiting for his
response. He didn’t know how he felt about the little blonde witch, but if
anybody was killing her, it was going to be him, not some cheesy magical serial
killer with a world domination plot, and not one of Anthony’s thugs, either.


“I’ll protect her,”
Cain said, avoiding eye contact with the others. This was killing the shit out
of his reputation. There were dramatic gasps and whispering, but he ignored it.


“Of course, killing
her would be more expedient… if you could find a way to make her stay dead.”
The vampire king’s tone was bland.


“No!” Anna said.

“Anthony!” Charlee
said.


“I said I’d protect
her,” the demon snarled, finally meeting the eyes of everyone at the table. He
dared them to start something with him.


“We’ll also need you
to get her to tell you everything about being a cycler. We still don’t
understand how or why they exist or the extent of their powers,” Anthony said.


Cain growled. “Watch yourself, half-breed.
I could take you out without blinking. I’m sure you want to survive to be a
daddy.”


Charlee’s hand went protectively over her
pregnant belly, as if the child were in danger instead of the cocky vampire
standing beside the projector screen.


Anthony glared. “Don’t
forget, I have magic users in my employ. I have a coven of vampires that
stretches across North America and contacts with vampire leaders all over the
world. Our numbers are far greater than yours. Let’s not make this personal.
We’ve got a bigger enemy to fight.”


Cain was bored now. “Are we done here?
I’ve got a witch to collect.” He stood, already turning toward the door.


“Cain…” It was the
first word Luc had spoken since Cain had arrived. “Take Anna with you. She
knows where the witch lives.”


That would make
things easier.


Luc’s mate recoiled,
gripping tight to his arm. “What? No! Come with me,” she said.


“I should stay for the
rest of the meeting. My brother can’t harm you, remember? You can’t hold a
solid form without me,” Luc said.


When she’d given her
soul and became a demon’s mate, she’d had to die first. It made her existence
somewhat ghostly. Only her mate could give her a full, solid form. Gradually,
she would gain the same powers as Luc, but it was a lengthy process—centuries.
Anna looked from Cain to Luc a couple of times. She finally sighed and let go
of her mate.

Cain headed for the door. He didn’t bother waiting for
her, assuming she’d follow. And if she didn’t, he’d just have to find the
infuriating witch on his own.



What do you think? Still not 100% sure this is an amazing book? Then go read
MY REVIEW
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INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY!
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Silvia

About Silvia

Through her creativity and blogging, Silvia has met people from different industries and collaborated with them on various projects over the years. Her strong passion for reading and her fascination for different cultures and languages have led her to develop a keen interest in the East-Asian continent. Off to see her? Follow the colourful book road . . . ♡

12 responses to “Life Cycle Tour: Excerpt, Review & Giveaway!

  1. Of course not. I would rather live a short life with someone I love rather than to be alone forever.
    That really scares me.
    Thank you for the great giveaway!
    Artemis

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