The
Huntress
The
Alterealm Series
J.
Risk
Genre: New Adult Paranormal
Fantasy
Publisher: First Realm Publishing
Number of pages: 200
Word Count: 121,000
Cover Artist: Jared at Off the Wall Creation
Book Description:
What would you do if you woke up
in another realm where the residents are beings from fictional tales?
Where all those things that go
bump in the night are real and other realities do exist!!
Damariss Maxx just woke up in a
world where all those things that go bump in the night are real.
An alternate realm where the
residents are beings she thought only existed in fiction.
Will she find the way to keep
life normal and simple for those unknowing without losing her own sanity?
All she has to do now is find a
way to protect the people in her world from the nightmares that have bleed from
this other realm into it and fulfill a prophecy that says she's their huntress
queen or doom this other world to a bleak, violent existence.
Available at First Realm
Publishing and Amazon
Chapter
One
I didn’t even
get both eyes opened and focused before I knew something was wrong. Where was the color? I was only seeing sepia? Everything was
brown. Blinking rapidly, I tried to
readjust my eyes to see if there was any other hue. It didn’t change a thing and for the life of
me I couldn’t figure out why.
Sitting there, I
tried to decipher what was going on and why I was sitting on the ground. Looking down I ran my hand over the dried
dusty surface. Why was I on the ground?
Craning my neck as far as I could in all directions, I looked around. Okay, where was the pavement and cement? The
buildings and streets I called my natural turf?
The why’s flying
around in my brain suddenly decided the top question, was what the hell was
going on?
Squeezing my
eyes shut, I struggled to recall the last thing I remembered doing. I was hunting down a bounty—a nice one with a
large dollar sign attached to her. I had
tracked her a*s down and…
I confronted
her? Yes, I was minutes away from calling Frank and telling him to get out his
shiny pen and sign my check.
So what happened
between then and now? Not to sound
repetitive, which is something that drives me nuts, but what the hell was going
on?
Startled, I
started to check for bullet holes or the deep crevices that knives leave behind
in flesh. That had to be it, I’d taken a
beating and this was that in between place you sit when you’re near death’s
door, but not quite ready to see what lies on the other side.
Finding no
critical injury, I slumped forward and rubbed my head. There was some rational explanation for this,
there had to be. Had I been drugged? It could be some crazy hallucination. Any minute now I was going to either wake up
in my bed at home or some hospital with a cheery nurse leaning over me,
reassuring me we are going to be just fine.
I only had to wait it out a little longer and all would be normal.
To kill time
until I woke up, I looked around some more. Wherever this was it looked like a
burnt out world. Not the charred kind of
burn, but depleted and completely used up sort.
Vacant.
Sitting still
wasn’t really a strong trait of mine, so I figured I’d get up and take a look
around, there had to be something to see around here. If my body was actually somewhere else for
safekeeping, what harm could come to me, right?
I staggered like
I’d never stood before, struggling to get my balance. Whatever was going on with me, my equilibrium
was totally shot. Standing there swaying
like grass in the breeze, I turned carefully trying to see if there was
anything around me except rust tinted dirt and nothingness.
My heart
stumbled around in my chest when I spotted someone coming in my direction. Yes! I wasn’t the only one in this soulless
place.
The closer it
got to me made me the more I questioned my original conclusion. I didn’t know, exactly, but it was not
someone it was a something. No one label
could describe it. Standing over six
feet, it had the shape of a man dressed in jeans and a large, very out of
fashion gingham snap up shirt. When I
reached the face, I can only describe it as part wrinkle puppy dog with floppy
skin crossed with Freddy and Jason after the slash scenes.
It stopped in
front of me and instinct had me reach around behind me under my jean jacket for
my raptor claw knife, which I put on as regular as underwear when dressing; and
that would be everyday, by the way. Relief
washed over me when I felt the small circular handle. At least while waiting to
survive I got to bring my toys with me.
Big brown eyes
assessed me slowly and I wanted to make the call that it was harmless, but
yeah, having tracked down anything from a sicko killer to a card shark in the
last three years, I knew better than to fall for sappy looks.
“Are you a
magishian? You juisht appeared.”
A male voice,
even though he spoke with a heavy lisp that randomly inserted ish into his
words. Then again if I had saggy lips
like he did, I’d be happy to talk at all.
I sized him up for a few more seconds, trying to gauge whether he was
really in front of me, or if I was having some sort of psychotic episode. Was a magician good or bad? I decided the play dumb, being blonde did
have some advantages. “A magician?”
Those brown eyes
developed a nervous quiver. Magician
equaled bad. “No…”
He looked
relieved. “Oh good. I didn’t want to have to bash you over the
head.”
I grasped my
raptor tightly and shrugged. “Yeah, me
either.”
The sky
brightened and began to glow a rust orange color. When I asked for some color, I’d hoped for
something out of the orange family.
“We better go,
they’ll be coming soon.”
“They?” I glanced around quickly, not wanting to take
my eyes off him for long.
He nodded and
pranced on the spot, the nervous movement had me on high alert. “The daywalkers.” He whispered.
Daywalkers? Did I even want to know? I didn’t think so, but this bizarre nightmare
wasn’t going to be complete if I didn’t ask.
Looking me over
a few times, his eyes widened under the pressure of his drooping forehead; that
was quite the expression. “You’re not
one of them are you?”
I walked in the
day, night and even at dusk, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I decided honesty might work, if not violence
was always a good backup. Judging by his
expression daywalker ranked on the bad list with magician. “I—I don’t know what you’d call me.”
Those sappy eyes
looked me up and down a few times trying to figure me out. “You better come with me. It’s not safe to
leave you wandering around.” He looked
behind him and then motioned behind me and started walking.
I knew in my gut
it was a mistake, but as I had no other real options… I didn’t know where I was
or what was going on and so far he knew more than I did. “Where are we going?”
Pausing he
glanced over his shoulder and then lumbered along again. “I’ll take you to Troy, he’ll know what to
do.”
My eyes were
starting to strain as the sky brightened. “This Troy, he’s in charge?”
He stopped so
suddenly I almost ploughed right into his back.
When he turned and looked at me, his eyes weren’t a sad brown any more
but were leaning more towards red. It
had to be from the strange color of the sunrise. “You’re not from Alterealm are you?”
“Is that where
we are?”
He nodded.
“Nope.”
That nervous
jitter of his seemed to return all at one.
“How did you get here?”
A reasonable
question that I had nothing to offer that resembled an answer. “I don’t know that either.”
His red eyes
darted to the sky. “We have to go.”
Turning, he
began jogging toward, well, nothing that I could see. Not wanting to find out
what he was afraid of, I ran along behind him.
All I could think was this Troy person, if he was a person, better have
some answers.
He stopped again
and dropped down onto his knees. Was he
hurt? Surely that short jaunt hadn’t
winded him that much. He began tapping
his hand on the ground. What was he
doing? Looking all around us, I kept
watch for anything really, not wanting to meet these daywalkers in the
slightest. Just when I’d had about
enough of his short break, he grasped something in the sand and pulled a door
in the ground open.
“We’re going to
have to use the shortcut. We don’t have time to get to the main gates.”
Looking down
into a hole with a ladder, I glanced around again and despite every muscle in
my body telling me to run and get the hell out of here, I started down the
metal rungs into a deep hole that would take me, hopefully back to friggin’
reality.
About
the Author:
I wanted to write a story that
would fit into young adult, new adult and adult levels. Something that was
serious with fun paranormal and afntasy elements that everyone could read and
enjoy.
I've even decided to use J. Risk
as the pen name for this to separate this
series from my other writing which is definitely adult reading material.
Author Jacqueline Paige-Multi-published
Paranormal Romance author of The Magic Seasons series, The Hidden Senses Trilogy,
The Dream Series and more
@JacqPaige
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