Power Inversion by Sara Codair ~ Blog Tour and Excerpt
Sara Codair has a new queer supernatural/urban fantasy book out, Evanstar Chronicles book two: ‘Power Inversion.” And there’s a giveaway!
But first, an…
Introduction
The main character, Erin, dreams potential futures. Their cousin, Mel, is a telepath. Sometimes, when they sleep in the same house, their minds synch up and Mel dreams the same thing as Erin. In this scene, Erin has just dreamed a future in which Mel’s body is destroyed, but their soul survives shattered into hundreds of pieces and scattered across the multiverse.
The dream sequences were getting a little too long and since this potential future never came to pass, I decided to remove it from the sequence. As a result, I also had to delete Mel’s reaction to it. However, the scene in which Erin helps Mel get through the panic attack the dream triggered showed how Mel and Erin’s relationship had flipped from Power Surge to Power Inversion. In Power Surge, Mel was usually the one helping Erin. Now Erin is returning the favor for Mel.
Deleted Scene:
I woke to a soft knock on the door between my room and Mel’s. When I didn’t immediately reply, the knocking grew louder. The bed shook as Bessie leapt off it, plopped over to the door, and woofed.
“Mel? It’s not locked unless you locked it,” I half-yawned, half-shouted.
“Erin?” Mike slowly opened the door and peeked in the room. His glasses were crooked, and his hair stood up even more than usual. I was pretty sure the Hulk pajamas he was wearing were actually mine.
“Is Mel okay?” I sat up too quickly, and the room spun. My head throbbed.
“Panic attack. I think. I can’t reach her.” Mike took a few more steps into the room. “Are you well enough to help?”
I stood up slowly. My brain felt like it was swollen and pulsating against my skull. The room tilted with every step I took. Mike met me about half way and caught me as I tripped over a pile of the shredded, dirty, pajamas I’d worn during last night’s fight.
I swallowed my pride and awkwardness and let him support me while we walked through the round door, into Mel’s room.
“You really think I can reach her when you can’t? I think she likes you better.”
Mike smiled as he helped me over the threshold between. “You and her have a special connection. You spend a lot of time in each other’s heads.”
“I think you and her do that too. Maybe more so. You live together. And you…” I decided it would be less awkward if I didn’t finish that sentence.
Mike sighed. “It’s not about which one of us is closer to her. Your brain is different from mine. Mel says mentally chatting you is like talking with another telepath.”
“Mel never told me that.” I had to stop walking a minute and let my head stop spinning.
Mike guided forward towards Mel. “Sometimes when you get used to lying, to hiding things, it gets very hard to be open and honest, especially when you come across things you don’t understand.”
Mel sat with her back against the headboard, arms wrapped around her knees, pressing them up to her chest. She was shaking, choking on tears. Her eyes were open, swirling, and not blinking.
I let go of Mike and carefully lowered myself so I was sitting next to Mel.
“I’ve never seen her this bad. It’s like she can’t hear anything I say or think and doesn’t even realize when I touch her,” said Mike. He sank down on the foot of the bed, turned, and made eye contact with me. “You’ve made her hear you from almost a mile away. Make her hear you now.”
You’re breathing like a honking goose is stuck in your throat, I thought as loudly as I could.
Mel made a sound somewhere between a snort and bark, an almost laugh that got crushed by panic on the way out, which meant she could hear my thoughts.
My instinct was to back away. If she were me and someone got too close, I’d lash out without even knowing who it was.
But Mel wasn’t me.
I inched closer, moving Mike’s pillow and leaned so my back was against the headboard and my shoulders were a hair away from Mel’s. I looked at the room, at her obnoxious yellow curtains, the survivors of an old stuffed animal collection Bessie was gradually decimating, the dresser with the heart shaped mirror, and Mike, sitting at the foot of her bed, in my pajamas, way too confident in my ability to help his fiancé through the worst panic attack I’d ever seen. I held all that in my head and put my hand over hers. Just like the other times, I imagined our veins were HDMI cables transmitting image and sound. I’m here. So are you.
I leaned my aching head against hers and replayed the present moment over and over.
Eventually, her muscles relaxed a little. What you…saw…happen to…me. It’s….worse than…dying.
It’s not going to happen, I thought right back at her. I’ll make sure it doesn’t. Trust me.
“I’m trying,” said Mel, her breathing regulating enough to form words. “But I’m afraid.”
Do you have to be a monster to fight one?
Erin Evanstar is a demon hunter, a protector of humanity from nightmarish predators that feed on people’s fears and flesh. They are settling into their dual life of being a teen and hunting demons.
When a tentacled horror abducts Erin’s partner, José, Erin and their family go on the hunt to get him back. But Erin gets an ultimatum: help the Fallen Angels bring on the apocalypse or watch José die. Erin will do anything to save José, but fighting monsters comes with a grim price–becoming one themselves.
Warnings: Violence, Death, Death of a Minor Character, Temporary Death of a Main Character, Mention of Past Abuse, Mention of Miscarriage, Pregnancy of Side Character, Self-harm, Suicidal Ideation, Guns, Grief, Kidnapping/abduction, alcohol use, brief depiction of humans enslaved by a supernatural creature
Where to Find Power Inversion
NineStar Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
Giveaway
Sara is giving away a $10 Amazon gift card with this blog tour. Enter via Rafflecopter:
Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47130/?
Excerpt
White graduation caps fell from the sky like flakes of vaporized Demon. High school was a beast, and I’d vanquished it like every monster I’d fought, with one exception—myself.
This moment deserved savoring.
Breathing deliberately, I slowed my perception of time until the caps seemed as if they were falling through cold honey on their way to the ground.
The late-spring sun beat down on me, but a breeze kept the temperature bearable. Some tassels lilted southeast—away from the towering clouds bruising the northwest sky. The weather wasn’t going to hold much longer, but I was okay with that. Thunderstorms awoke something wild in me—a pulse-racing, dance-around-like-no-one-can-see-you kind of wild—a rush of adrenaline almost as good as what I’d get from battling a Troll or sparring with Mel.
With my sense of time slowed down, the distant thunder sounded like a lion purring. The clouds glowed purple as lightning forked through them like an X-ray, temporarily revealing a mass of tentacles undulating in the clouds.
Mel, did you see that? I thought as loudly as I could, hoping my telepathic cousin would hear me.
I’d seen a lot of different Demons in the three months I’d been hunting them, but based on the stories and the Lexicon, the massive tentacled ones only materialized in oceans, and they certainly could not fly. Yet, every time lightning flashed, there they were, waving as if violent updrafts were a gentle breeze.
My heart sped up. My hands closed into fists. Mel didn’t reply.
I shut my eyes, opening my mind so I could feel all the energy around me. Most humans were blobs of buzzing heat, but Mel, a hybrid of human, Angel, and Elf, had a hotter, more intense aura with a spritz of simultaneously depressed and optimistically peppy texture. I found her near my Elven grandmother, who felt like a condensed thunderstorm.
Mel? Niben? Can you hear me? Did you see that?
Of course, there was a good chance they were both shielding. What telepath would have their mind open to other people’s thoughts when there were so many other people around?
One who hasn’t been able to properly shield in months. Mel’s melodic yet squeaky voice was a welcome presence in my mind. Shut down the hyper drive. You’re giving me a headache.
I exhaled over the course of ten seconds, willing my sense of time back to normal.
A garbled din of stretched-out voices morphed to something more akin to a clattering avalanche of pots and pans. A shoulder jostled mine. The corner of a graduation cap crashed into my head.
Erin? What had you wanted to tell me?
There were tentacles in the clouds, I thought at Mel, turning in the general direction I sensed her in.
I crashed into José, who, of course, stood right next to me.
“You okay?” he asked. Tears glistened in his midnight eyes and trickled down his sun-kissed cheeks. One snagged on the crooked tip of his nose. He clutched two graduation caps, his and mine, so tight that the scars on his knuckles were visibly stretched.
“Yeah. Are you?” I wondered if I should tell him what I’d seen. He’d been hunting Demons longer than me, but he also thrived on keeping school and the supernatural as two separate entities. And what if they hadn’t been tentacles? What if the storm had just appeared that way with the lightning in slow motion? I didn’t want to ruin his day if there wasn’t an actual threat.
“I’ll miss everyone.” He stuffed the caps under his arms and hugged me. While I wanted to celebrate because I’d made it out alive, he mourned the loss of a place that had been a haven to him for four years.
I leaned my head on his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat, trying to let his steady warmth calm the worry growing in my mind. José’s body was a rock in the sense that it was hard and athletic, but also because it anchored me when I felt as if my mind was running away.
Have you ever watched a storm with time slowed that much? asked Mel.
I shook my head before I remembered there were dozens of people between her and me. No. Do storm clouds in slow motion look like tentacles?
José kissed my hair and whispered, “Are you talking to Mel?”
I nodded.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s having trouble shielding. We should go meet up with her and the others anyway.” I stepped away from him and walked uphill.
Students, who wore white graduation robes, and their parents, who were dressed mostly in summer dresses, slacks, and collared shirts, were clumped all over Saint Patrick’s sprawling lawn.
José draped his arm over my shoulder as I wove around groups of people. The pressure was calming, lulling panic monsters back to sleep with its warm weight. I glanced up at the clouds. They were closer and darker. The wind sped up, stealing programs from a dozen people’s hands. The clouds lit up with lightning, but I didn’t see any tentacles.
Mel’s voice popped back into my head. I don’t sense anything in the clouds, and neither does Niben. I guess she’s been restraining the storm for half the ceremony. Perhaps you were seeing her power mingled with it?
Maybe. Some tension unraveled from my chest. I’d heard stories about my grandmother, Niben, controlling storms, but I’d never seen her do it. In fact, I’d never witnessed her do any magic unless she was modeling something she wanted me to try. She’d come on a few hunts, but she’d just watched with her unblinking feline eyes and later quizzed me on what I did right and wrong. For all I knew, her fabled storm magic could resemble tentacles.
About the Author
Sara Codair is an author of short stories and novels, which are packed with action, adventure, magic, and the bizarre. They partially owe their success to their faithful feline writing partner, Goose the Meowditor-In-Chief, who likes to “edit” their work by deleting entire pages.
If Sara isn’t writing, they’re probably teaching, swimming in the lake, reading fantasy, or walking their dog.
Where to Find the Author
| Website| Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon
0 Comments