Winner and RAMPANT Excerptlet

Guess what? My editor has offered to donate an extra copy of BITE ME! to the Giveaway, So now we have TWO winners! And they are:

Helga
Prisca

Contact me with your address to receive your prize.

Okay, next order of business. I still haven’t gotten that whole excerpt thing sorted, but TPTB are working on it, and I should be able to post an excerpt (or link to one) really soon. In the meantime, how about a little excerptlet?

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From the pictures in the glossy brochure, the Cloisters was a Mediterranean palace, replete with colorful frescoes, marble statues of naked gods and toga-clad saints, and towering columns. So it’s understandable that after I disembarked from the crowded bus, manhandled my rolly bag up a steep hill paved with uneven cobblestones, and turned down the alleyway leading to the Cloisters, I almost missed the place entirely. In the brochure, they were very careful not to show the crumbling, poster-plastered wall surrounding the building, the shattered plywood boards covering most of the upstairs windows, the pack of stray dogs sunning themselves on the stoop, and the bum leaning against the wall with a ragged rucksack and a cardboard sign covered in incomprehensible Italian.

Any lingering hopes I might have had of a wild summer spent in Rome, riding vespas and eating gelato at midnight in picturesque piazzas, promptly disintegrated.

I hefted the bag on my shoulder and maneuvered my way past the slumbering strays.

Here goes nothing.

Beyond the enclosing walls lay a small, oblong courtyard paved in dusty, cracked mosaics and littered with trash. In the center stood marble fountain featuring a pale stone woman in a flowing stone wrap holding the tip of an alicorn in a small catchment basin. Water cascaded around the horn and spilt over the lip of the basin into the large pool at the woman’s feet.

I neared the fountain with care, as if the statue might suddenly spring to life and stab me with the weapon in its hand. I leaned close; the alicorn looked harmless from this vantage point. According to the brochure—which I was beginning not to trust—the horn had been alchemized by some martyred hunter of the past to purify the waters of the fountain. A dollop of bird poop graced one of the twists.

Yeah, some purity.

And yet, attached to a unicorn, a thing like this almost killed a guy in the Myersons’ backyard last month.

Shuddering, I turned towards the doors to the Cloisters, which were large and made of copper oxidized to a pale, sickly green. Decomposing bas-relief squares appeared to be hunting scenes of some sort, but it was hard to make out more than vague shapes—tall, lithe figures in pursuit of longer, bulkier ones.

This place was a dump.

With some little difficulty, I yanked open the door with a pop. A wash of cool air enveloped me, and with it, a scent that made my nose prickle. In contrast to the sunny city outside, the Cloisters were dark and… dank? What was that smell? I closed my eyes and sniffed again.

Fire and flood.

Great, two steps inside and this place was already reminding me of ways I could die. I tightened my grip on my suitcase handle. If I left now, how far would my traveling money take me? How much did a EuroRail pass go for nowadays?

No receptionist greeted me. Instead I entered a large gallery, a rotunda whose ceilings were studded with mosaics of gold leaf and dark-veined marble. Stone statues of Alexander the Great and other historical figures connected to the unicorn hunting lineage stared out from niches every few yards along the wall. The sound of my footsteps withered on the floor, as if even the soles of my shoes were afraid to disturb the tranquility. Rolling my bag over the threshold, I called into the gloom. “Hello?”

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw before me the outline of a woman and a beast on a raised dais in the center of the room. I approached, only to be met with another set of statues—though these looked more like the mannequins and stuffed figures you’d see in a natural history museum diorama than the hunks of marble in a sculpture gallery. A bronze plaque at the base of the dais identified the figures, and I dropped my backpack in surprise. Clothilde and Bucephalus.

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Twenty-three two days until Rampant is out. (I can count, I swear. Just not look at a calendar.)