Hey folks,
Happy Monday! I hope you all had a good weekend. I’ve got the final post in my launch series for the last book in the Blood of Kings series. The book is out tomorrow, but you can preorder it now for delivery to your reading device as soon as it goes live! I’ve left all the links down at the bottom of this post!
This time, the focus is on the hero of the tale, Conrad. I’m not going to say a whole lot more – I’ll let the excerpt speak for itself!
In the darkness of the laneway, there was no reliable way for Conrad to tell how long he had been waiting. It felt like an age—far longer than it likely was—but when the door creaked open and Luther finally appeared, Conrad found himself not wanting to know how things had gone.
He grimaced and raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Are you… finished?’
Luther nodded, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth. ‘It’s as we thought. They’re a bunch of idiots hoping to attract a demon to show them the route to power, riches, and immortality, through made-up rites and bits they’ve cobbled together from other cult groups, and some scraps of documents they’ve managed to get their hands on.’
Conrad chewed his lip. It was a little disappointing. It had been a distant hope, but know they knew for certain.
‘Is he…?’ Conrad asked.
‘Oh—oh, no,’ Luther said. ‘I told him he could have a few minutes to put himself back together.’ He saw the reaction on Conrad’s face and added, ‘Not literally. I gave him a bit of a fright, is all. Well, a lot of a fright.’ He lowered his voice, and said with pride, ‘I’m pretty sure he crapped himself.’
‘That’s…’ How did one reply to that? ‘Impressive?’
‘Didn’t even have to lay a hand on him,’ Luther said. ‘Cleaned my fingernails a bit with one of these.’ He held up the leather roll of torture implements he’d so suggestively laid out on the desk. ‘These are actually for making and shaping quills. Picked them up in a stationer’s shop in Voorn about fifteen years ago. Not sure how you’re supposed to use them, but they’re great for putting the frights on someone.’ He chuckled.
With that one statement, many of the layers of terror through which Conrad had viewed the Intelligenciers sloughed away.
‘I can’t say I was expecting to hear that,’ Conrad said.
‘Expectations and imagination are amongst the Intelligencier’s greatest tools,’ Luther said. ‘No, I’m pretty sure these lads are full of it. They’re planning an expedition off to some ruin called Urlachen, where they think they’ll find their new demon masters and their well-deserved riches, immortality, virility, and whatever else it is they think the demons will do for them. Pretty much everything except suck their souls out, which is what they’re actually going to do. Assuming these plonkers ever manage to find a demon.’
That’s it for today! The Demon Hunter – Blood of Kings Book 3 is out tomorrow. It’s available on preorder now, so you can have it delivered to your device as soon as it goes live!
Another fantastic by Duncan!! I couldn’t put it down once I started it.