Book Title: Digging Up the Past
Author: Sandi Brackeen
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: August 22, 2015
Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions
The Spade of Apocatequil can raise the dead and grant immortality—and it’s been stolen!
When supernatural agents Riley Perez and Jason, her partner at the clandestine government agency DUE, are given the task of tracking down the magical artifact, they discover that the culprit may be one of the workers at an archaeological dig at Shady Shores. Is it John Braden, the head archaeologist on-site, who was involved in the original discovery of the spade? Or is it Danny Roget, the anthropologist, who claims that there have been strange sightings? Riley and Jason’s hunt for the spade is endangered by a rash of sudden, unexplainable deaths of people involved in the dig. Together with Cameron Delaney, the intriguing alpha werewolf who runs Cerberus Security, the company in charge of protecting the archaeologists at the dig, Riley and Jason must find the spade before it can be used to destroy the world!
For a minute, I couldn’t feel any emotions in the basement at all. Then, like someone had pulled a blanket off my shields, fanatical self-righteousness crashed against my shields from behind, and I wheeled around.
To my five feet four inches, most people look fairly large, but this guy was about twice my height. His shaggy hair was tucked up under a ball cap and he had on a T-shirt with the saying on it almost faded to nothing, just like most of the students on campus, but his eyes were the giveaway. There was nothing there but hate. Hate and dark energy swirled around him. The hate was his. The energy belonged to whoever was controlling him.
His eyes flashed when he saw me, and he charged. Fortunately for me, all he saw was a rather small woman with no outward defenses, and his smugness echoed around him as he charged. He thought he had an easy mark.
I sidestepped his charge, spun, and aimed a kick at his knee. I missed the knee and hit his calf, but the pressure from my kick and his momentum was enough to send him stumbling, and give me enough time to get my gun out. He turned to come after me again, but when he saw the gun, he ducked behind the office door closest to him. A flash of metal told me he’d pulled out his own weapon. He apparently hadn’t seen me as enough of a threat to bother with his gun before. Now I was annoyed and puzzled. How had he known I’d be here?
I slipped over to the wall by the door and eased down the wide hall toward the office. The door opened, and a sharp crack echoed through the hall as he shot blindly in the direction of where I had been standing. The door slammed shut again. I ducked below window height and crept along the wall. He opened the door and fired again. He was obviously not a pro. His emotional blast was all about hate and fear.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell the source of the dark energy empowering his emotions. It swirled around him, feeding on itself and growing, until it manifested around him like a second skin. I’ve done a little bit of work with channeling energy, and whoever was controlling this guy was strong, way stronger than me. It’s difficult enough to control the energy when you’re trying to channel it and push it out from yourself in the first place. Rather makes you feel like a pushmi-pullyu since you’re trying to do two opposite things at the same time. This guy could not only push and focus while drawing energy in, he could push it far enough to control someone possibly miles away. That was the only thing that was certain about the man before me: he was a pawn. Didn’t make him any less dangerous, but I’d try hard not to kill him.
Sandi lives in Texas with a roommate, two yellow Labs, a shepherd/border collie mix, and two terrier mixes. The animals were all rescues. Her full-time job is as the public information officer for the local sheriff’s office, and she teaches English part time at the local community college. She says she has a couple of degrees lying around somewhere, and she’s been writing ever since she can remember, although she took time off for work and school, and previously her writing has been more geared toward short stories and academic papers. Sandi has now switched to writing fiction and currently has several more books in the works.
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