Amazon BEST SELLER in Fantasy Romance.
a love letter to Paranormal ROMANCE
In keeping with the season, I'm including an excerpt from the book at the end of this post that described a witchcraft event. (Not to be confused with Wicca. All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans, just as all Christians are not Catholic.)
Litha Brandywine is a witch who is employed by The Order of the Black Swan and, when it comes to events of a paranormal nature, she's the best tracker alive. In the scene cited here, she is performing a rite to locate a missing person.
Though the book has been out for less than a week, several people have commented about the details of the working described. Let me take the opportunity to say that this is a work of fiction. The magick described in the book is based on actual practice, but, according to the very wise policy originally established by the Egyptian Mystery Schools, I would never accurately recreate the details of a spell or method that could hold a potential of harm in the wrong hands; either to the would-be practitioner or others. Enough things are depicted to convey the feeling, but enough details are always scrambled, disguised, and withheld to prevent misuse as a result of the description.
READING THE SERIES IN ORDER HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. MyFamiliar Stranger, BOOK ONE. This series is a true serial in the sense that every book begins where the last ended. BOOK TWO, The Witch's Dream is a PURE romance and might be seen as the second act in a three act play.
DESCRIPTION: From New York to Ireland
to Edinburgh to Siena to the Texas Hill Country to Napa Valley, a secret
society, a witch, a demon, a psychic, a berserker, an ex-vampire, modern day
knights, heroes, werewolves, elves and fae come together where emotions
intersect. The story maps a trail from rages to epiphanies, but, in the end,
proves that true love can find you in the strangest places, when you're least
expecting it, even when you're far, far from home.
He was left behind when Elora Laiken made her choice. Now he’s had it with love, but a transplanted witch who happens to be the world’s best tracker hopes she can change his mind.
The Witch’s Dream begins with B Team on temporary assignment to Black Swan headquarters in Edinburgh where they are supposed to fill in for stretched-thin resources and assist with a werewolf issue. They’ve been given permission to stop in Ireland for a few days and help celebrate a handfasting at the palace in Derry.
When they reach Edinburgh, the afterglow of an elftale wedding quickly turns all business. A missing person report turns into a demon abduction. A simple werewolf sanction becomes a diplomatic issue requiring the one thing Elora is no longer willing to give - finesse.
INCLUDES: The first chapter of the third book, The Summoner's Tale.
Erotic content: 18+ A few steamy scenes. No menage. No BDSM.
He was left behind when Elora Laiken made her choice. Now he’s had it with love, but a transplanted witch who happens to be the world’s best tracker hopes she can change his mind.
The Witch’s Dream begins with B Team on temporary assignment to Black Swan headquarters in Edinburgh where they are supposed to fill in for stretched-thin resources and assist with a werewolf issue. They’ve been given permission to stop in Ireland for a few days and help celebrate a handfasting at the palace in Derry.
When they reach Edinburgh, the afterglow of an elftale wedding quickly turns all business. A missing person report turns into a demon abduction. A simple werewolf sanction becomes a diplomatic issue requiring the one thing Elora is no longer willing to give - finesse.
INCLUDES: The first chapter of the third book, The Summoner's Tale.
Erotic content: 18+ A few steamy scenes. No menage. No BDSM.
EXCERPT.
It was Litha's great honor to have the dragon temporarily in
her keeping as he had been recognized as a potent object of power and in
service to magick for millennia. The proud Teuton dragon currently served as
The Order's own version of Prometheus, silently holding the world on its
shoulders while also protecting its treasure: a precious crystal ball held
lovingly in its curved claws. The multifaceted crystal ball picked up every
color in the room and reflected it back onto walls and ceiling as rainbow prisms.
The effect was a space that was magical as well as magickal. Litha’s dragon, and she thought of him that
way as she was his temporary caretaker, was charged with several tasks and he
performed each admirably.
The globe, rendered
in shades of green and brown, was perhaps a foot and a half in diameter and
hinged very much like one of those liquor cabinet parlor tricks. It would
separate at the equator and become two parts of a sphere, one half stationary,
one half lid. When opened, it revealed one of Litha's two most prized
treasures, a concave, black glass, scrying plate the same diameter as the
globe's equator. The dragon stand had been built so that, when standing
barefoot, the scrying plate was at exactly the same height as Litha's navel.
She reached out and lovingly ran her hand over the dragon's
head as if he was a living pet. Sometime during the past two thousand years,
his eyes had been replaced with black glass. The candle flames and rainbow
prism danced together in his eyes making them seem so intelligent and lifelike
that it was easy to imagine him as a familiar.
Litha pulled her red robe closer as she paid homage to the
Spirits of the Four Winds whom she would be summoning to assist with Locating
Magicks. Real witches are risk takers, comes with the territory. Even so, few
witches would dare wear red when practicing the magickal arts because the color
red possesses powerful attraction properties. That means red can be a shortcut
in summoning, but also attracts the bad as well the good. Litha came from a
rich history of witch ancestors who tended to act according to a philosophy of
"great gambles bring great rewards" and, at some point, it had become
part of the family's genetic legacy. It was partly natural to her and partly
logical since Litha knew she was powerful, or practiced, enough to hold a
sufficient protection barrier while admitting friendlier Powers of Assistance
and accepting their help.
The witch took up a large purple candle and began circling
the globe in the center of the room in a clockwise direction. She carefully
counted nine revolutions as she sang an old medieval melody with lyrics written
and substituted by the witch, herself. Her singing voice was quite pleasant
although the quality of performance would have no bearing on outcome. The
melody was not more magickal because it was medieval. It was simply a useful
hook on which to hang the quatrains she had quickly, but specifically composed
for chanting which would be crucial to outcome. She wrote the four-line rhymes
in her head while she was bathing and now repeated them in magickal form while
she raised energy by stirring the atmosphere into the equivalent of a small
whirlwind.
After completing nine circles and chants, Litha used the
flame of the purple candle to light a large white candle with three wicks. She
then sprinkled a mixture of Dragon's Blood resin, Solomon's Seal, white sage,
and crystalline salt directly onto the candle's flames. When the herbs caught
fire, she invited into the circle those who could be of service whether
spirits, guides, or elementals with the caveat that they were welcome so long
as they wished her well and would not prove to be a lot of trouble later on.
When she was satisfied that conditions were optimum, she
opened the globe. She always felt a rush of satisfaction upon viewing the
gleaming surface with alphabetical, numerical, alchemical, and Theban script
symbols etched on its surface in circular patterns. Taking hold of the pendant
necklace that she always wore, she pulled downward to remove the outer cover
which was a crystal with planed edges forming a heptagon. No one would guess
that the crystal was a cover disguising a pendulum of black opal, perfectly
weighted for scrying, encased in a Celtic knot filigree of white gold matching
the necklace chain.
The pointed stone was the rarest black opal, alive with deep
red flecks called "fire" by jewelers. Litha's pendulum had been hand
crafted for her by the monks of Cairdeas Deo and given to her on her sixteenth
birthday. Or, rather, the day that had been arbitrarily established as the day
they would celebrate her birth.
That birthday was a milestone because it was the day she had
been given the freedom to legally drive by herself. In the process of
celebrating by doing exactly that she came across a scene that would forever be
etched in her heart: a pink Italianate villa sitting high above the Sonoma
Coast with vineyards terracing toward the sea, neighboring hills covered with
flowering yellow mustard so that it looked like something from a fantasy. She had
pulled the car over, taken a mental snapshot, and knew that someday she would
drive through the gate and it would be hers.
She ran her finger over the pointed end just to reestablish
the connection - which was never really broken.
When she held the pendulum over the glass, it immediately
dropped into place and stilled, awaiting instructions from its mistress. She
began to trace Katrina's name, one letter at a time, while picturing Katrina -
replaying the snapshot moments of their brief time together - and
"hearing" the sound of her voice. Then she began to add details about
Katrina's current situation and state of mind that were gained from Aelsong's
visions.
By the time she reached the "i", the pendulum was
moving on its own to complete the specification ritual. Out of the corner of
her eye, she could see candle flames dance and flicker as if a draft had blown
through the room. For Litha spontaneous movement of air was a more or less
commonplace occurrence, at least when she was scrying. If others preferred to
think of the phenomenon as invisible, or discarnate entities, it made no
difference to her.
She closed the globe and moved so that she was facing Scotia,
then held the pendulum above it simply saying, "Where?"
The pendulum did not move. Which was a first. Frowning,
Litha repeated her command a little more firmly, "Where?"
No response.
She lowered the pendulum, took it in her hand, and rolled it
around in her palm a few times while deliberately focusing on an image of
Katrina.
Again, she held the pendulum above the globe.
"Where?"
No response.
Remembering that Aelsong said Katrina was no longer in the
same reality, she decided to alter the question. She held the pendulum above
the globe and asked, "Near where?"
Almost instantly it began to pull toward the east like it
was magnetized. Allowing enough slack so that it could go where it wanted,
Litha allowed the point to slide over the map of Europe. Across France. Past
Genoa. It came to rest just south of Florence. Siena.
"Got it."
Hope you enjoy this book and have a wonderful ...
Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowstide,
Hallowmas, the Great Sabbat, the Feast of the Dead, or Witches' New Year. For
Witches who practice one of the branches of magick based in Celtic heritage, it
is called Samhain. Pronounced like sau'-wan.
My Best,
Victoria Danann
WEBSITE: http://www.VictoriaDanann.com
BLOG: http://VictoriaDanann.me
TWITTER: @vdanann
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