The Spirit Chaser
Book One
Kat Mayor
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance,
Horror, Ghosts
Publisher: Kat Mayor
Date of Publication: November 13, 2015
ISBN:1517161479
ASIN: B01845NL8K
Number of pages: 424
Number of words: 134,300
Book Description
Some places are too evil. Some places should be left alone.
Austin Cole has it made. Star of the hit television show Spirit Chaser Investigations, he has become the world’s most famous paranormal investigator. Although hard work, a talented investigation team, and favorable genetics have something to do with it, it’s his lack of fear and willingness to take risks no one else will that make Spirit Chaser Investigations cable’s number-one show.
When a ghost-hunt-gone-wrong seriously injures his best friend and lead psychic, Austin is forced to find a replacement for a team member he considers irreplaceable.
Casey Lawson can’t catch a break. She’s been on her own since she turned eighteen and is scraping by as a part-time psychic and cashier at a New Age store. When a desperate Austin Cole calls her up and offers her a position on his team, has her fortune finally changed?
He’s a control freak; she’s stubborn and opinionated. It takes time, but when they finally realize they’re working on the same side, everything clicks, both on and off screen.
Just when things are looking up, a new threat emerges. Over the years, Austin has angered plenty of demons, and one of them has set her sights on him. Now he’s the one in danger, and it’s up to the team to rescue him from the riskiest investigation of their lives.
Excerpt
Three
“Casey, what do you
sense?” Austin asked as he stared at the mirror. “Casey?” He turned around, but
she was not behind him. “Where’s our psychic?” he asked Luis.
“She was standing right
here when I went to get you.”
“Damn it. Can’t she
follow the simplest instructions?” Austin turned around and exited the
bathroom. Thai and the others followed.
“What the hell,” Gary
said. He could hear a low, guttural growl. He was looking for its source when
he saw Casey standing at the other end of the hall, in front of Brad’s room. He
cocked his head to the side as he studied her strange, frenetic behavior. She
would go to one corner of the space and push and pull on the air, then move to
another side and do the same thing. To Gary, she looked like a psychotic mime
trying to break out of an invisible jail cell.
Casey shouted at the
air around her. “Be gone. You may not enter me.” She swatted at the mist with
her hand. Luis wrapped his purple stole around his neck and began to pray.
Thai’s eyebrows were
furrowed in concentration. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” Austin asked
him.
“There are dark auras
surrounding Casey.”
“Auras? Is she in
danger?” Austin demanded. He paced back and forth. It sucked being the only one
who couldn’t sense a damn thing.
“I don’t know.” Thai
shook his head slowly. “I can’t detect her energy anymore. The dark entities
are overshadowing it.”
Austin’s eyes met
Thai’s as he registered the significance of what he’d just said. “Fuck!” Austin
ran full speed toward Casey.
“Wait!” Thai cried out.
Austin didn’t stop until he was standing two feet in front of his psychic. Her
eyes were trained on something he couldn’t see and she held the cross around
her neck out in front of her. Now he understood what Thai was talking about.
Although he couldn’t see the mist, he could tell when he passed through it. The
air was dense and cold all around him. Casey shouted into the air. “Leave me
alone!” A dark sense of dread and despair came over Austin. He shook his head
to clear his mind. “Focus. Get control,” he told himself. His number one
priority was getting his psychic to safety. Casey was still yelling as Austin
grabbed her hand to pull her out of there. The heavy air pressed around him
like he was walking underwater. It felt like fifty-pound weights were strapped
to his legs. Entering the mist had been easy enough, but now that he was here,
the evil didn’t want to let him go.
Time seemed to slow
down as he trudged along. Austin heard a low-pitched growl and felt cool breath
on his neck. It made his skin crawl. Up ahead, he could see Luis making the
sign of the cross and flicking holy water in his direction. Gary and Thai were
shouting at him and waving, but their voices sounded muffled and far off. This is nuts, thought Austin. The
hallway wasn’t that long; he should be back to the landing by now. It felt like
he was moving in slow motion. It took all his concentration to put one foot in
front of the other. It all seemed so pointless. Why was he bothering to get
them out at all? It would be so much easier just to lie down on the floor and
let the mist engulf them both.
Horrific images passed
through his mind in a dark, twisted cinematic presentation. He saw himself
lying in bed in his loft in LA. He sat up and poured a glass of whiskey. There
was a prescription drug container on his bedside table next to the bottle of
booze. He emptied it out, pouring the small white pills on the table. Then he
scooped them up and swallowed them all. That image faded, and a new one
appeared. He was standing on a chair in the middle of his room. A rope with a
loop was hanging from the ceiling. Austin grabbed it and put his head through
it. Then he kicked the chair out from under him. His legs were jerking as his
face went from red to gray. Then, his body stilled. The third and final image
was of him picking a pistol up off a table. Even though he had never handled a
firearm before, he knew it was a Beretta. He studied the gun. It was beautiful.
His mouth watered as he thought about placing the cool, metallic barrel against
his tongue. He shoved it down his throat and pulled the trigger. The loud
concussion was the last thing he heard before he came back to himself. “No!” he
shouted. It was the dark entity messing with his mind, but damn if it didn’t
feel real.
While he had been out
of it, he’d lost his grip on Casey. Panicking, he stretched his hands out in
the dark mist until he found her arm. This time, he picked her up and threw her
over his shoulder to keep from losing her again.
Just as he wondered if
they’d ever get out, the oppressive energy let go, like a rubber band pulled
taut and then released. He fell forward as he was shoved back into real time.
To keep from falling, he threw out one hand to brace himself, and held onto
Casey with the other. As soon as he had his feet back under him, he took off,
flying past his team and heading down the staircase. Only when they were safely
out of the house did he put Casey down. Austin bent over at the waist with his
hands on his knees, catching his breath. He looked back at the door he had just
run out of. It all seemed surreal. Just a few moments ago they had been trapped
inside.
Kat Mayor is a native Texan, wife, and mom. In addition to The Spirit Chaser, she has written a young adult series, The Circle. She’s a full-time reader, part-time writer, and when she’s not kicking a story around in her head, she loves to read and review books on Goodreads.
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2 comments:
Oooh. This sounds good. Definitely going in the top twenty TBR list. Hopefully I like it. I have been experiencing difficulties finding books that intrigue me. I spend hours trying to find something because I really just want to take a couple of hours just for reading. It is like a a tiny brain vacation for me. I think I may be in the mist of a change in genre and interest. I hope not I have been comfortable where I am for quite some time. Last year by this time, I had a
ready read over 40 full length books. This year, only about 10. And some of those were short length novellas.
Oooh. This sounds good. Definitely going in the top twenty TBR list. Hopefully I like it. I have been experiencing difficulties finding books that intrigue me. I spend hours trying to find something because I really just want to take a couple of hours just for reading. It is like a a tiny brain vacation for me. I think I may be in the mist of a change in genre and interest. I hope not I have been comfortable where I am for quite some time. Last year by this time, I had a
ready read over 40 full length books. This year, only about 10. And some of those were short length novellas.
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