Shiver Story Description:
A year ago Corey Abbott’s life entered the realm of the bizarre when he discovered the things that go bump in the night are real. But working for the local vampire council didn’t prepare him for were-deer shifters.
Nine months ago Dare Buckley’s herd abandoned him. Now, he’s slowly going mad from Lyme disease...something that doesn’t hurt normal deer, but for were-deer is fatal.
On one snowy, sleet-filled night, the two collided...literally.
This Christmas two men find love in the most unexpected place...a lonely, desolate highway.
It’s definitely not your typical meet-cute, but it’s a twist of fate that would even make Santa happy.
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Dare Buckley shuddered as he looked left at the wall of
barren mesquite trees and right at a dead, grey field grass. Nothing looked
familiar. He scented the air, but besides the bitter tang of the icy sleet, he
couldn’t sense anything, anyone in the dark.
It was finally happening. He was succumbing to the disease.
Confusion and panic wracked him as he searched the desolate, wintery
countryside for something...anything...that might look familiar.
He tore through the bare mesquite bushes, their branches
rustling against his fur in his wake. His cloven hooves pounded across the
frozen ground, echoing in the dark of the night. Breath huffed out his snout in
tiny puffs of white fog as he shifted his weight, his path turning more and
more erratic during the panicked flight.
Where the hell was he? He needed to find...something. His
heart rate pounded through his chest, echoing in his ears. He needed to calm
down, but his brain wasn’t getting that signal as he became more and more
confused.
Finally, he burst through the thicket. Freedom.
But a blast of white light burned his retina before something
hot and piercing slammed into him. Hard, earthshattering, blinding pain rattled
him as his body flew through the air.
Then the world went black.
***
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Corey Abbott slammed his hand on
the top of his steering wheel as he skidded to a stop. The sound of the sleet
hitting the windshield and his wipers on the glass were the only sounds as he
peered into the dark of night. “Merry Christmas to me,” he muttered. “Fuck!” He
didn’t need an expensive repair bill on his truck right now. “Fucking deer.”
But even as he said it, he shook his head. It was his own
damn fault. He’d been thinking about Damien and not paying that close of attention.
He knew better. Out here in West Texas, there were more deer than jack-rabbits.
He grabbed his flashlight out of the console between the
front seats and flipped on his hazards in case anyone else happened to be on
the road. But that wasn’t likely to happen. He hadn’t seen a soul the whole
ride home from work in San Angelo.
The sleet that had moved in about an hour ago kept most West
Texans home. They only got weather like this a couple of times a year. None of
the locals could drive on it, so the place simply shut down rather than try to
deal with it.
He clicked on the flashlight and shrugged on his heavy, brown,
canvas Carhartt coat to fight off the frigid cold before he climbed out of his
truck. From the wonky light ahead, one
of his headlights had been smashed in, but as he rounded the front bumper of
his truck, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
A huge antler had gotten tangled with his hood and hung off
the grill as a macabre reminder of the animal he hit. The animal no longer
attached to the appendage. “Shit. He was huge, wasn’t he?” That massive antler
was one side of the biggest rack Corey had ever seen. It had to have at least a
dozen points on it. How big had that deer been?
Corey swung his
flashlight around, looking for the deer.
There in the ditch lay the buck’s hindquarters. Corey approached it
slowly, not sure if it was dead or just wounded. He had his handgun under his
seat if he needed it. He would never leave a wounded animal to suffer. Although
it was probably stupid to come close to the injured animal without it right
now.
Corey passed the light over the completely still carcass and
squinted in disbelief. West Texas had become a hunter’s mecca with ranches
importing foreign, exotic deer. This one looked like a normal whitetail, which
was native, but it was at least twice as big as the regular deer. No, this boy
was at least the size of a full-grown elk with the antler rack to match.
A section of his scalp had been ripped away with the antler,
and now, blood covered his head—a gruesome macabre mess. Definitely dead.
This majestic buck had probably been beautiful, standing tall
and proud, but now with half his rack gone and the rest of him in the ditch,
dead and bloody...
Corey shook his head and blew out a sigh to control the remorse
and guilt trying to rise up his throat. Ever since Damien had died in front of
him last year, it had been harder to deal with death...of any sort. This type—totally
needless—was the worst kind.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said to the deer. “Fucking waste. I should
have done better and been on the lookout for you.”
Deer roamed the fields, grazed, and bedded down here in the
evenings. Corey usually did a better job of paying attention to them. But he
couldn’t do anything about it now.
He turned back to the damage to the truck. He had a huge
steel brush guard, but it hadn’t done much to prevent the damage and would need
to be replaced or rebuilt. The hood, front bumper, and the front fender on the
passenger’s side were completely trashed. Fuck.
He ducked his head and examined the wheel well, but it looked
like the integrity had held there. He hoped so. His house was still a good five
miles away. In this cold with his insufficient clothing layers, that walk would
be worse than miserable. And he just happened to be in the dead zone where
there wasn’t any cell service on this road, so he was shit out of luck for
calling for help.
He rounded to the cab of the truck to climb in when he caught
sight of the buck again. Again, remorse flooded him. Such a waste.
He stilled, considering. It was December twenty-third, two
days before Christmas. The downturn in oil prices had affected so many people in
this area who were barely scraping by right now. The meat from that buck could
do some good for someone who didn’t have meat for Christmas dinner.
It wasn’t entirely legal to tag road kill. Special permission
had to come from a game warden to do so, but since he planned to claim this one
to donate to the local food pantry, maybe he’d be forgiven. And the odds were
no one would ever realize what he’d done anyway. It’s not like a game warden
would be out here tonight. He just had to figure out how to get the mammoth
beast loaded into the bed of his truck.
Fifteen minutes later, with a tarp and a fuck-ton of muscling,
Corey had the buck dragged up into the bed of his truck, a hunting game tag
tied onto his remaining antler. And because of the impromptu workout, he didn’t
have to worry about being cold anymore. He had sweat dripping down his spine.
He went around to the front of the truck, pried the damaged antler
out of the metal brush guard, and threw it into the back with the dead deer. No
one would believe this story if he didn’t keep the evidence. Then he climbed
into the truck, turned the heat up, and restarted toward home. Again.
It was going to be a long night since he still had to dress
out the dead animal before he could relax again.
***
Thirty minutes later, Corey had the garage prepped for butchering
the massive buck with tarps and buckets. He was exhausted and tempted to leave
the carcass for the night, but then the beast would freeze and make everything
more difficult. So he sucked it up and headed out into the cold to where he’d
backed his truck up to the garage door.
He glanced into the bed as he opened the tailgate and froze.
“What the fuck?”
Instead of a dead and bloody deer...a bloody, naked man lay
there.
For the rest of what happens with Dare & Corey, go buy the book for only $1.99...
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