Teaser Tuesday, Tuesday Teaser - either way, it's a tease!

Hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading:

Where we tease each other and you with micro-excerpts of our current reads.

Guidelines are at Should be Reading.

I felt like going back to reading Moonshine, by Alaya Johnson. I hope to finish it this week.

Moonshine is an urban fantasy featuring the first person account of Zephyr Hollis. Zephyr is a former vampire hunter turned over-zealous social activist living sometime during prohibition years in an alternate New York. Alternate, as in vampires and "others" are common knowledge, although in this version they have absolutely NO rights - being treated as worse then second class citizens. There are a few other species mentioned here, but other than vampires and djinn, they are just mentions.

A teaser from page 160:

"..The kids were giggling and giving him sidelong glances, like they expected him to vanish or burst into flames at any moment. Which he very well might."

Received in the mail on Monday - and coming out for sale on Tuesday, July 27th is A Wild Light, the third book in Marjorie M. Liu's Hunter Kiss novels. I am glad now that I pulled Darkness Calls from by TBR shelf to read recently - because now I have A Wild Light to review. (The first novel was Iron Hunt)

In The Hunter Kiss novels, Maxine is a hunter - the last one on earth from a long line of women hunters who inherit five little demons. These demons live on Maxine's skin during the day while they sleep and at night they come off to hunt evils. Their favorite snack (besides evil beings) is metal. They are Hungry.

From the blurb on the back, in A Wild Light, Maxine finds herself covered in blood and beside her grandfather's dead body with "no memory of what happened or of the man she loves".

I'm starting this book tonight, so I'm using the first page for the teaser.

From page 1:

"It was my birthday, the anniversary of my mother's murder, and on the way to the party, I made a special point to stop and kill a zombie.

I did it every year. My secret. Only Zee and the boys knew. Our gift to each other.

Sun had been down for only an hour, but this was Seattle, the skies were black as midnight, and the rain pounded the windshield like each drop was trying to break the glass. Cyndi Lauper played on the radio, softly, because I wanted to hear Dek and Mal sing along. "True Colors," one of my mother's favorites.

The little demons were coiled around my shoulders, heavy and warm, their breath hot against my ears as they hummed the song in their high, sweet voices. Aaz and Raw sat in the backseat, uncharacteristically quiet, their little legs dangling over the floor as they clutched half-eaten teddy bears against their scaled, muscular chests."

Don't the little demons sound sweet and cute? Sweet, cute and deadly. One of the oddly sweet things in this series is the complete love and loyalty between the deadly little demons and Maxine. This is just one part of all the interesting parts that make up these stories by Marjorie M. Liu.

I find it prudent at times, to simply follow a cat's advice.

Really.