Veritas
by Quinn Coleridge
Publication date: July 13th 2017
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical
by Quinn Coleridge
Publication date: July 13th 2017
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical
BLURB
The ghosts are angry, thinking
I’ve neglected them.
Do not forget us, they call out from the grave.
I won’t, I promise them. Upon my life, I won’t.
Being a demigoddess in 1892
Stonehenge, Colorado isn’t all one might suppose, especially when the dead are
involved. Yet as Veritas of the Rocky Mountain sovereignty, it is Hester
Grayson’s calling to help restless spirits cross over by bringing their killers
to justice. Blind and pale as an albino, she dwells on the fringes of the
nouveau riche, working with her telepathic beau Tom Craddock to catch the
guilty.
When a young woman is brutally
murdered, Hester and Tom are determined to solve the case as they have every
other. But this one demands more. The killer wears many faces and wields
greater magic than even Hester possesses. All sleuthing stops, however, when
Tom is gravely wounded, and Hester is cast out of her parent’s mansion into the
brutal squalor of an asylum.
At the mercy of an insane doctor,
surrounded by agitated ghosts, Hester fights to maintain her own sanity by
planning her escape and the downfall of her enemies. Can she achieve her goal
and expose the madman who sent her to hell? Or will he continue his bloody
reign in Stonehenge?
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EXCERPT:
My
prayer for relief goes unanswered, and faces flash through my mind. Those I saw
in my last vision, the one initiated when the doctor touched my skin. Men,
women, old, young—they appear and blur a moment later, shifting into the next
person. All of Faust’s victims are deep-branded inside me. They are angry,
thinking I’ve neglected them.
Do not forget us, they call out from the
grave. I won’t,
I promise them. Upon my
life, I won’t.
The
ghosts tell me to find the Book and steal it. Escape the asylum and expose
Faust to the world. Let him answer for every crime, they say, condemned by his
own words. If only these spirits could be a bit more specific. How exactly do I
escape to do their bidding? Have they any suggestions? But the dead only wail
and cry for justice. Blasted ghosts always leave the finer points of the plan
for me to figure out.
Further
enraged by my hesitation, they cause me to burn hotter. All right, all right, I
reply through my psyche. As you wish, I so promise. Truth vibrates through the
Pit, and the dead finally set my body free. They have accepted my vow, for the
moment, but might be less forgiving tomorrow if I don’t take action. I work for
a very impatient crowd.
Most
people belong to another in some capacity, as a daughter or son, a sister,
spouse, or neighbor, but the inmates of this place have been forgotten. They
have no one to speak for them, or to avenge their wrongs. And so I’m here, dumb
and blind, to serve as the mouthpiece of the wretched, whether I like it or
not. That brazen hussy Fate does love a paradox.
Ironically,
serving the dead gives me a reason to live, to go on breathing each day. It
answers Hamlet’s eternal question of whether to be or not to be with an
affirmative. That is why I crawl about the Pit on my knees, searching for a
palm-sized piece of metal. It has been hidden and used many times by the
inmates before me. I find the broken iron strip and turn toward the northern
wall. The rough surface is covered with spider webs and dirt, but something
else as well.
Words.
Hundreds
of them have been scratched into the crumbling stone with this strip of iron. I
trace the curves and the straight lines of the letters, as I did with my
alphabet stencils at home. Of sound mind, one inmate wrote, never insane. In
another place, I find Hungry, God Sees, and Died Alone. I scrape the iron
against rock. Over and over, until each letter is formed, perfect and smooth.
Wiping the sweat from my brow, I blow the dust away from my masterpiece, my
call to arms.
LEX
TALIONIS
YOUR
DAY OF RECKONING AWAITS, FAUST
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