Daemon Blood by Mary Maddox Blog Tour and Giveaway!

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

One day, Montez brought a pair of Bluetooth headphones to class. I was sitting cross-legged on a pillow. Kneeling in front of me, he slipped the headphones onto my head. He took his phone from his hip pocket and opened an app, then pressed a button on the headphones. A cold electronic voice in the earpieces said, “Connected.”

“Just listen,” he said. “Don’t try to push your mind in one direction or another.” 

“I never do. Push my mind, I mean.” 

“Do you always go to the same place? That lake?” 

“Uh-huh.”

“This might get you out of your rut.” 

I didn’t think of the lake as a rut, but I nodded. He was the teacher. 

He touched the screen and sounds welled from the headphones—a bizarre mix of fluttering, pulsing, and screeching that some people might call music. I spent a few minutes trying to adjust to the soundtrack, not sure I could stand the weirdness through an entire session. The music rooted in my mind like an invasive plant and began shooting out tendrils that also put down roots. A fear close to panic seized me, that the music would crowd out every thought, every emotion, and I would become nothing but the soil where it grew. 

“Relax.” Montez’s voice reached me through the tangle of sound. “Unclench your jaw. Lower your shoulders; let them hang. Not forward, straight down.” His hands eased my shoulders into the correct position. “Now breathe.”

I began to accept the music. A heavy peace settled over me—surrender, I guess you could call it—and I became aware of my heartbeat. Its rhythm echoed the pulses from the headphones, and I merged with the music. Beautiful now. I wanted it to go on forever. My thoughts dissolved into blackness, and I felt a sensation of traveling over great distance. My mouth went dry, but the word water couldn’t take shape in my mind, so I couldn’t ask for any.

The music morphed into a soft roar. Mild warmth touched my face. I breathed in a fishy odor, different from that of the lake. No mud. Instead, a new kind of dankness and—what? Salt? The blackness faded to a pearly luminescence and resolved into a place I’d never seen before. 

The roar came from an ocean. I was standing on a pier, gazing past the rolling waves at ships silhouetted against the bright horizon. Not romantic ships with sails and streamlined hulls, but huge freighters or warships that reminded me of insects. Judging by the angle of the sun on my face, it was late morning or early afternoon. A plover perched on a rail, its alien black eyes watchful, its gray and white feathers ruffling in the breeze. With a sharp cry, the bird launched itself into the hazy blue sky. The warmth, the openness, and the undulation and steady roar of the ocean almost overwhelmed me. I turned and began walking.

The whole length of the pier stretched in front of me. Three squat towers were built at intervals along one side. People strolled or leaned on the rails and gazed out to sea. Children scampered ahead of their mothers, waving their arms and startling birds into flight. Men sat fishing at the edge of the pier, plastic pails at their sides.

I knew the pier existed somewhere in the physical world. My mind, supercharged by the music, had somehow projected me there.

I walked by two women who stood talking. One of them, dark-haired and dressed in a gauzy red blouse over leggings, twisted around to glance at me and then turned back to her friend.

She sees me.

The realization shocked me. It might have jarred me from my trance, but the weird fluttering music held me in place.

The pier ended at a beach. People bobbed among the waves or sunbathed on the white sand. Beyond the beach, houses and apartments were built close together, their balconies lush with potted plants and flowers, their windows gleaming in the afternoon light.

A woman came toward me on the pier. She wore a long dress slit almost to her hip. She fixed her gaze on me, her hazel eyes glowing beneath smoky eye makeup. Her shoulder-length platinum hair was streaked with purple. A snake tattoo crawled down her left arm, flicking a red forked tongue. Its green tail disappeared up the sleeve of her T-shirt, reappeared above the deep scoop of the neckline, and tapered to an end between the knobs of her collarbone. An intricate design of flames and pentacles decorated her right arm. My nostrils tingled from her perfume, fruity and heavy with spice. “I know who you are.” Her growly voice sounded fake, part of her goth persona. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

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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