Excerpt!
With that, she yanks open the stubborn cheap zip on the backpack and wanders to the brown arched wardrobe.
Since she was little, she's been half-convinced that this piece of shit wardrobe was built way back when the early settlers built this town—then they left it here in an abandoned cabin in the poor end that never quite took off like they had hoped. Also, this piece of shit has a family of moths that live inside it.
Gigi heaves yet another sigh as if to brace herself for the moths, at least one or two will swarm her, and she reaches for the cold brass knob.
She doesn't pull.
Doesn't get the chance to.
Her hand grips, but then—
From the inside, the doors burst open. The edge of one smacks into her, hard.
Gigi staggers back, the bag nearly slipping out of her grip.
She blinks, once, twice, and stares into the pair of eyes that gleam from the shadows of the wardrobe. The ones looking right at her.
The light is too dim in here, she can’t make out much more than those eyes… watching her from between clothes on hangers. No face, no body, nothing but eyes.
Frozen like time itself in this eternal moment, where not even her heart beats, she just stands…
Inside the wardrobe, he stands...
And as he straightens up, he becomes a ‘he’. Tall, broad-shouldered, so fucking large in how he towers over her. Sheathed in all black, a black sweater, black combat pants, black boots.
But the disturbing part, the piece he wears that has the breath knocked out of her, is a rough-textured hood. It’s pulled over his face, a sack of sorts, with two slanted holes cut out of it… where his eyes shine from. The darkest blue she’s ever seen, so perfectly deep like the far-out ocean, that she’s certain in her fleeting thought—contacts. Another piece of this disguise.
A wink of light pierces the dusty dullness between them.
Gigi looks down—just for a moment, not even a full second, at what caught the light. A knife.
It's no kitchen knife either.
In his black leather gloved hand, is a hunting knife. Large, polished, and very fucking serrated.
Frozen no more, time shatters like a fallen ice block.
All at once, her chest rises with the air for a feral scream, her face contorts into the twisted look of horror and—just as she steps back… he steps out.
Heavy black boots thud loudly on the floorboards.
The knife is closer now, close enough to illuminate the blood stains that mark it. Crimson spots on the toes of the boots not far from the scuffed sneakers on her own feet.
And the only thing she has, firms in her tightening grip, the backpack. Weightless nearly. Might as well be a piece of paper on the wind.
But the very moment that time shatters and the scream rips through her small frame, she heaves up the bag like it's filled with rocks and stones and padlocks—and she whacks it over his potato sack hood.
A split second of distraction, of his blindness even if only for a heartbeat.
That's all she has, and she uses it.
Turning on her heels so fast her that her ankles should snap, she feels the pain sear through her, but it doesn't even slow her down.
Gigi is running. She is barreling out of the room in a fast terrified breath—and right behind her is the thump of the backpack hitting a wall, then the indescribably heavy bounding noise of boots chasing her out into the hall.
Boom,
Boom,
Boom.
The darkness out in the hall is thick and instant but Gigi doesn't falter.
She races down the narrow way, hearing the crashes behind her, deafening smashes of family portraits and vases knocked out of their place to shatter on the floorboards. Like he’s intentionally wrecking all that he nears.
It only feeds her panic.
Somehow, she doesn't hear her own screams over all that noise, as though even her own wild heartbeat thumping against her eardrums is louder than her eternal shrieking.
Her cries cut off.
The weight of a solid strong body smacks right into her back.
She's thrown off her feet.
Author bio:
Quinn Blackbird is a dog-mum, full-time cog in the machine and full-time book lover.
When not writing and daydreaming, Quinn is snuggling on the couch with her three doggos.
If her love of literature could be matched, it would be by film.
Ask her about her list of underrated films... you'll be there all night.
She has always been fascinated by the anti-hero, and often found herself rooting for the villains (their speeches are making a lot of sense, don't lie).
Creepy dreams (nightmares at times) are the cause of a lot of Blackbird's books - thanks to overactive imaginations!
Sailors Bay has a bit of a problem… a serial killer problem.
What should be a sleepy old fishing town—a place so silent and forgotten that it slips off the map—has murder in the air and secrets poisoning the heart of the town.
Here… no one is safe when a masked killer starts terrorising the town.
Blood Hood is coming after them: Billie—from the wrong side of the tracks—and her friends… The ones who have a deadly secret of their own, one they kept for seven years… a dark secret that Blood Hood seems to know all about.
One by one, Blood Hood hunts them down to avenge the murder that started it all.
And Billie finds herself running from Blood Hood as well as the love of her life and ex, Dalton.
With slashed-up bodies piling up all over, Billie flees more than a masked killer… Dalton hunts her to every corner of Sailors Bay, intent on stealing her back… whether she wants him to or not.
Love is meant to flourish. Poison corrupts.
Poison is all I know.
We are all villains here….
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Quinn Blackbird is a dog-mum, full-time cog in the machine and full-time book lover.
When not writing and daydreaming, Quinn is snuggling on the couch with her three doggos.
If her love of literature could be matched, it would be by film.
Ask her about her list of underrated films... you'll be there all night.
She has always been fascinated by the anti-hero, and often found herself rooting for the villains (their speeches are making a lot of sense, don't lie).
Creepy dreams (nightmares at times) are the cause of a lot of Blackbird's books - thanks to overactive imaginations!
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