Daemon Blood
Mary Maddox
(Daemon World, #3)
Publication date: March 8th 2022
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror

Our war will not unfold in your imaginary heaven. We will fight on Earth with human beings as pawns and weapons.

Lu Darlington is a seer, bound to the daemon Talion through ritual and blood. It’s not a role she enjoys, but she has little choice: daemons take what they want and destroy whoever stands in their way.

So Lu’s surprised when Talion doesn’t punish her for her newfound ability to keep him from possessing her whenever he likes. In fact he’s pleased. The stronger she is, he explains, the more powerful he becomes.

And he needs that power, because a war is brewing in the daemon world, a war that will be fought by—and through—humans.

Lu’s friend Lisa Duncan can’t see daemons but she’s seen what they can do and so has stayed far away from Lu for years. After a bizarre attack on Lisa leaves half a dozen people dead and she learns it’s just the first skirmish in the daemon war, Lisa realizes the safest place to be is with Lu.

Then Talion sends Lu away to teach her skills to another seer and Lisa must stay behind to look after Lu’s son Solly, conceived through a daemon ceremony with Talion. At four years old Solly’s seer abilities are already so strong Lisa is sometimes more afraid of Solly than for him.

As Talion’s enemies grow bolder, Lisa and Lu face attacks from every direction. There seems little hope any of them will survive—until Talion and his allies devise a plan.

The only problem is how much it will cost.

“With Daemon Blood, Mary Maddox has crafted a timeless tale of good against evil. With compelling characters and a keen sense of the darkness that lurks within us all, Daemon Blood will stay with you long after you turn the final thrilling page.”

— David Sodergren, Author of The Forgotten Island

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EXCERPT

Panic wells up in Lisa as the drugstore’s automatic door slides open and winter air balloons against her face. The idea of stepping outside suddenly terrifies her. Post-traumatic stress, says her therapist, Sandi—as if naming a thing steals its power. A bearded guy in a camo jacket is close behind her. She has to move. Clutching her plastic bag of antidepressants and tampons like a talisman, she hurries through the door.  

A semi rumbles past on the two-lane highway beyond the drugstore’s narrow parking lot. Its diesel fumes trigger the usual nausea. The clouds unveil the sun. She imagines getting in her beat-up Honda Civic, driving until it runs out of gas, and then walking until her legs buckle. Wherever she ends up will be fine with her.

“Hey Lisa!” A gaunt man pops out of his SUV and trots across the parking lot. His glossy parka, unzipped despite the subfreezing day, bounces against his fashionably threadbare jeans.

He’s no one she knows or wants to know. She plunges her hand into her purse as she runs for her car. Where are the stupid keys? She’s still groping for them when she reaches the Civic.  

A hand seizes her shoulder and spins her around. The man in the parka presses her against the car, his groin against hers, and pokes her in the ribs with something hard. She looks down at a pistol with a short barrel, almost toylike. His open parka conceals the gun from anyone watching. Not that anyone is. Halfway across the lot, the bearded guy is climbing into a truck jacked up on monster tires. She doubts he noticed her at all. “Sorry, Lisa,” the gunman says. “I know what you’ve been through and I hate—really hate—doing this. But we need to talk.”

Panic muffles everything but her thumping heart. She wrenches her gaze from the gun to his face and opens her mouth to scream, but his eyes silence her. Colorless irises encircle the bottomless wells of his pupils. Her scream drowns in their depths, but she manages to whisper. “Who are you?”

“Willard Steeples.” His grin displays a mouthful of capped teeth edged with black along the gum line. “Author of Professor of Death.”

Evil parasite, feeding on people’s suffering. On her suffering. When she was fifteen, a psychopath tortured and disfigured her, and Steeples’ book made her into a freak show.

“You’re angry,” he says. “I get that. But your story doesn’t end with the Professor. There’s Grifford Riley, the bent cop from Chicago.”

She finally manages to speak. “What do you want?”

“This isn’t about what I want. My readers cry out for the truth.”

Author Bio:

Mary Maddox is a suspense, horror, and dark fantasy novelist with what The Charleston Times-Courier calls a “Ray Bradbury-like gift for deft, deep-shadowed description.” Born in Soldiers Summit, high in the mountains of Utah, Maddox graduated with honors in creative writing from Knox College, and went on to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She taught writing at Eastern Illinois University and has published stories in various journals, including Yellow Silk, Farmer’s Market, The Scream Online, and Huffington Post. The Illinois Arts Council has honored her fiction with a Literary Award and an Artist’s Grant.

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