   Laurell K. Hamilton, author of last year's New York Times bestseller A Caress of Twilight, returns to the series that started it all. Cerulean Sins, the eleventh entry in the hugely-popular Anita Blake series, finds everyone's favorite vampire hunter keeping house and kicking butt. Anita Blake is trying to get her life back to "normal" after a break-up with her werewolf lover. She has settled into a pattern of domesticity, which means that the new man in her life, the leopard shapeshifter Micah, has no problem sharing her with Jean-Claude, Master Vampire of the City. Things are as peaceful as they ever get for someone who raises the dead, when Jean-Claude receives an unexpected and unwelcome visitor: Musette, the very beautiful, very twisted representative of the European Council of Vampires. Anita soon finds herself caught up in a dangerous game of vampire power politics. To add to her troubles, she is asked to consult on a series of brutal killings, which seem to be the work of something un-human. The investigation leads her to Cerulean Sins, a vampire-run establishment that deals in erotic videos, videos that cater to very specific tastes. Anita knows one creature of the night who has such interests— Jean-Claude's visitor. But if Anita brings Musette down, the repercussions could cost her everything she holds dear. With Cerulean Sins, Laurell K. Hamilton continues to immerse readers in a world full of suspense and sensuality. Praise for Cerulean Sins: "Hamilton just keeps getting better and better."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Hamilton has endowed her heroine with a charming mix of male bravado, feminine guile, and self-deprecating humor."—Publishers Weekly "Hamilton takes her world by the teeth and runs with it, devising a whipcrack adventure that moves like the wind, grips you by the throat and doesn't let go."—Locus "With a heroine as sharp as a stake and slick as a silver bullet, Laurell K. Hamilton sucks you into her fascinating world like a vampire's kiss."—J.D. Robb
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I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted me to raise zombies at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I'd told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the party-goers, that'd be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties. I'd been trained to use an ointment spread over face, hands, heart. The smell of rosemary, like breathing in a Christmas tree, still held a great nostalgia for me. But I didn't use the ointment anymore. I'd raised the dead in emergencies without it, more than once, so it got me to thinking. Some believed it helped the spirits enter you, so the powers-that-be could use you to raise the dead. Most, in America anyway, believed that the scent and touch of the herbal mixture enhanced your psychic abilities, or even helped activate them so they'd work at all. I never seemed to have any trouble raising the dead. My psychic abilities were always on-line for animating. So I still carried the ointment, just in case, but I didn't use it anymore. The three things I did still need for animating were steel, fresh blood, and salt. (Though the salt was to put the zombie back in the grave once we were finished with it.) I'd cut my paraphernalia to absolute minimum, and recently, I'd cut it down even more... I glanced behind me at my audience. Two new uniformed police officers had joined Lieutenant Nicols and Officer Newman. The police stood in the middle of the two groups which had been allowed to come close enough to the grave to hear what the zombie would say. It was way closer than fifty feet, but both parties needed to hear Gordon Bennington, or so the judge had ruled. The judge in question had actually joined us, along with a court reporter and her little machine. He'd also brought along two burly-looking bailiffs which made me think the judge was even smarter than he looked, and I'd been pretty impressed before. Not every judge will take zombie testimony. For tonight, this graveyard was court... I unsheathed the machete and heard several gasps behind me...I put the top edge of the blade against my middle finger, the symbolism was not lost on me, and pressed my finger against the blade. I kept the machete too sharp to risk drawing the blade down my finger. It would be a bitch to need stitches because I'd cut too deep... I began to walk the circle, holding the steel point downward, my bleeding finger flat to the earth so that occasional drops would hit the ground...I knew when I'd walked the entire circle around the headstone, because the moment I touched the place where I'd begun the circle closed with a skin-tingling, hair-raising rush. I turned to face the headstone, feeling the circle around me like an invisible trembling in the air. I went to the headstone which was at the far end of the circle. I tapped the headstone with the machete. "Gordon Bennington, with steel I call you from your grave." I touched my bloody hand to the cold stone. "With blood I call you from your grave." I moved back to the far edge of the circle, at the foot of the grave. "Hear me now, Gordon Bennington, hear and obey. With steel, blood, and power, I command you to rise from your grave. Rise from your grave and walk amongst us."
—Reprinted from Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. Hamilton by permission of Berkley, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright ©2003, Laurell K. Hamilton. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. |
