Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Wynter is a witch who once sought sanctuary for herself and her coven in Devil's Cradle. Better known as 'the Home of Monsters', it was a place for outcasts and fugitives. She now wears the brand of Cain, the infamous Ancient, who has claimed her soul for all of eternity and doesn't plan on ever letting go.
Together, Wynter and Cain have prevailed over many powerful enemies, but now they face their final - and most terrifying - battle. As the last Aeon left standing, the all-powerful Adam is out for revenge. His terms: Cain and Wynter in exchange for peace. If Devil's Cradle won't deliver them, the full force of Adam's devastating rage will fall upon them all. As the stakes are raised, Cain and Wynter will do whatever it takes to defeat Adam and keep each other safe, even if it means unleashing the monsters that live within them .
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
“Ew, I just licked at the cotton candy sticking to my upper lip and got a taste of my face paint.” Anabel shuddered, sticking out her tongue. “Tastes like chalk.”
“Why did you choose to have your face painted in that stereotypical green witch style anyway?” Wynter Dellavale asked, eyeing her coven member curiously.
“Well, this is an ‘It’s almost Halloween’ party.”
“And you’re dressed in a blood-stained cheerleader’s outfit. The face paint doesn’t go with the look.”
“Yes, but everyone will now assume that the boils and hairy warts on my face are fake.”
Wynter felt her brow crease. “No, they still look real.” They wouldn’t be there at all if the blonde didn’t use herself as a trial subject when she created new potions. Some caused all kinds of aftereffects. Rashes. Hallucinations. Bad guts. Perhaps even the belief that you were the reincarnation of Bloody Mary . . . unless Anabel’s claim to be exactly that was in fact true. Her soul did have the ability to retain all her memories from her past lives, to be fair.
Wynter sighed. “If you’d just stop experimenting—”
“I know, I know,” said Anabel with a flap of her hand.
“And yet, you keep doing it.”
The blonde’s back straightened. “Excuse me, I’m not the only person here who has bad habits.”
Xavier’s brow knitted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Anabel sniffed at him. “It means you lie all the time for no real reason. Hattie is always asking random people embarrassing questions about sex. Delilah keeps cooking up self-proclaimed karma potions that will one day get her shanked. And Wynter keeps coming back to life every time she dies—part of being a revenant, yeah, but it’s still freaky. So, you know, I don’t think any of you should be throwing stones at my glass house.”
“I’m sensing you’re expecting us to be fair,” said Xavier. “Why?”
Anabel plucked at her skirt. “I guess I thought it would be a nice change.”
“You reached too high,” he told her, scratching at his head with a grimace. “Christ, could no one have warned me that the hair chalk makes your scalp itch like a mother?” His usual tousled brown hair had been slicked back and colored lime green to go with his outfit.
“You think chalk is bad, try wearing a veil,” grumbled Hattie. “I forgot how uncomfortable they are.”
“One would think, after the amount of times you’ve been a bride, that you would have remembered,” Delilah said to her. “But then, one would also think that you’d have chosen divorce over murder, even if you do insist on the first being a sin while the latter is somehow excusable.”
Hattie shrugged. “Divorce is too lengthy a process. It was quicker to just . . . help them pass on.”
Snorting, Wynter shook her head. The woman spoke like she’d arranged for her ex-husbands to die peacefully in their sleep but, yeah, it hadn’t quite played out that way. Which was why it was weirding Wynter and the others out that Hattie was dressed like a bride right now.
Wynter and her group hadn’t been a coven for very long, having only met for the first time when they’d been kidnapped by bounty hunters who she later killed. Well, to be more exact, it was the monster that lived inside her who was responsible for the deaths.
The position of Priestess hadn’t been something Wynter ever coveted. She’d resisted for a while, just as she’d resisted officially proclaiming them a coven—one that Delilah had named the Bloodrose Coven. But it had been a pointless resistance. Still, they were more of a family. A family with rather dysfunctional dynamics and a streak of crazy that couldn’t be tamed.
Hearing squeals, Wynter looked to see a mechanical hand zooming across the floor, scaring the dancers. She fingered her renaissance-style gothic gown as she glanced around. She had no idea whose idea it was to temporarily convert the warehouse into a cemetery-themed bar, but she saluted them. The dim lighting and dry ice machine made the place feel dark, chilly, and unwelcoming. Fake tombstones, dead flowers, hanging cobwebs, and open standing caskets revealing rubber skeletons added to the creepy factor.