Spotlight and a chapter Excerpt
The first in a captivating new series
from bestselling author S.G. Redling, creator of Flowertown and
Damocles
OURSELVES
S.G.
Redling
|
S.G. Redling burst onto the scene
with Flowertown, a high-octane
conspiracy thriller that earned her fans around the globe and was followed by
bestsellers including the space adventure Damocles
and techno-thrillers The Widow File
and Redemption Key. In her latest
novel, Redling charts new territory – and puts a fascinating new twist on vampire
lore – in telling the story of the Nahan, a human race who live among, but are
startlingly different from, “common” humans. OURSELVES (47North; January 27, 2015) is our first peek into this hidden world, a world the Nahan have protected by
cultivating the myths of fanged, bloodsucking monsters that haunt legends.
The Nahan have always been among us: working in our offices,
attending our schools, living next door. Polite but private, they are also
efficient and extremely protective. Young Tomas lives a sheltered life in the
Nahan community, his future secured by the long arm of the Council that
protects their people throughout the world. But when he meets Stell, a wild,
beautiful girl outcast from a Nahan cult, they ignite in each other a desire
for a different path.
Soon, Tomas is training with the elite and bizarre order of
Storytellers, while Stell uncovers her own skills as an assassin. When they
unearth corruption within the Council and a dangerous plot that has already
cost one young Storyteller his sanity, they must test their new skills and,
teaming up with other young Nahan, challenge the most powerful organization in
their world.
Darkly sensual and remarkably detailed, OURSELVES introduces readers to the compelling, sensual, and imaginative world of the Nahan, a secret society hiding in plain sight.
S. G. Redling hosted
a morning radio program for fifteen years before turning to writing. A graduate
of Georgetown University, she was a finalist in the 2011 Esquire Short
Short Fiction Contest. She is the author of The Widow File, Redemption
Key, Damocles, Flowertown, and Braid: Three Twisted
Stories. She currently resides in her home state of West Virginia.
###
OURSELVES
S.G. Redling
On Sale: January 27, 2015 · Amazon Publishing/47North · 334 Pages
$14.95 Trade Paperback · ISBN: 978-1-4778-2039-1
$4.99 Kindle Price · ASIN: B00LOXDISI
Chapter Excerpt :
Excerpted from OURSELVES by S.G. Redling. Copyright 2015.
Published By 47North. Used by permission of the publisher. Not for reprint
without permission.
CHAPTER ONE
Nahan Da Li
Nahan da li: literally, Are you Nahan? A traditional
welcome, a friendly greeting, affectionate.
Stell
knew there was something wrong with her. Something dark lived inside of her.
She didn’t know what it was or how the others could see it. She might not even
have known about it herself if she didn’t see it in the eyes of the congregation
and feel it in the fists of her uncle. When she was little, she used to look
for it in the ribbons of blood that poured from her body when the ritual knives
cut into her.
Now she knew better.
Whatever was wrong with her couldn’t
be cut out like a splinter underneath her skin. Whatever was wrong with her was
wrong to the bone.
Since she couldn’t cut it out or
pray it out, Stell took herself and her darkness out of the compound at every
opportunity. She’d climb through the hole in the wall behind her bed, crawl
through the forsythia, and run hard and fast up the steep western side of
Calstow Mountain. She’d run like someone chased her although she knew the
congregation wouldn’t miss her. Her classmates wouldn’t. Stell drew the wrath
of Uncle Rom like a magnet to a lodestone and everyone gave Stell a wide berth.
She thought maybe her mother missed
her when she took off into the woods of Calstow Mountain. She thought maybe
Malbette might worry about her daughter alone in the darkness of the mountain
forests, might wonder if her child was safe and unharmed running through
streams and climbing trees, sleeping under the stars and waking in beds of pine
needles day after day. She thought her mother might miss her but Malbette’s
eyes had a distance in them that was impossible to read so Stell didn’t think
about her mother much.
After all, Stell wasn’t a kid
anymore. She had to be at least twenty by now. Maybe closer to twenty-five.
Nobody ever told Stell how old she
was. Nobody ever told Stell anything except to shut up and to repent and to
pray. Nobody cared whether or not she could read. (She could but she hated to.)
The teachers didn’t care that Stell never looked at the maps or listened to the
Traditions or that she learned her numbers quickly. Stell never asked questions
and nobody noticed or cared.
When she was little, before she knew
better, she’d ask questions.
She’d asked why she had to pray so
hard, why she had to bleed into the bowls in the filthy church room. She’d
stomped her foot and cried and clung to her silent mother as the two of them
were led to Uncle Rom’s waiting ritual chamber to be cut and bled before the
pale faces of the congregation.
Uncle Rom had answered those
questions with snarls and threats and long recitations of Tradition but those
weren’t the questions that silenced Stell. Malbette had done that.
Stell had
asked about her father.
She didn’t know how old she was when
she’d asked but since she hadn’t been tall enough to look out the window, Stell
figured she’d been pretty young. Young enough to press her luck. Stell had
demanded her mother tell her why she didn’t have a father like the other kids
in the compound. Stell had shouted and pled, whined and wept, badgering
Malbette to tell her who father was and why he wasn’t with them and why nobody
would tell her anything about him.
Malbette hadn’t answered her.
Instead, she ignored her daughter’s dirty, grasping hands and settled into the
only chair in the small shack they called home. She folded her hands in her
lap, stared into the grimy wood of the near wall, and fell silent. At first
Stell had raged as small children do. She cried and pulled but Malbette
wouldn’t move. She climbed into her mother’s lap but the larger hands made no
move to comfort her. And finally Stell got quiet too. She curled up on the
floor beside her mother’s chair, thumb tucked securely in her mouth, her cheeks
pressed into the scratchy wool of her mother’s skirts.
They sat that way for three days.
When Malbette rose from the chair on
the third day, smoothing her skirts, and walking off as if nothing unusual had
happened, Stell wiped at the tears and spit and snot that had dried on her
face. She headed into her room, pulled the cot away from the wall, and kicked
at the loose board behind it. She crawled through that hole and ran up to the
mountain.
On Calstow Mountain it didn’t matter what was
wrong with Stell. Whatever darkness she had inside her didn’t bother the
raccoons or opossum or hawks. The wild turkeys kept their distance but the
streams and poplars didn’t mind her. The only ones that screamed at her were
the blue jays and they screamed at everything. They even screamed at the
common.
Stell loved those moments when she
heard something crashing through the brush louder than any forest creature
would. Birds would fly and Stell would climb as fast as she could up into the
nearest tree, folding into herself and being as silent as an owl so she could
watch and listen to the strangely dressed, heavily burdened common making their
way along the forest trails. She listened to their voices; their English
sounded so different from hers, no trace of a Nahan accent at all. And
sometimes if she really stared at one of them, if she really focused on one
particular part of one particular common, that common would freeze. Stell would
bite her lip, trying not to giggle as they scanned the forest around them, some
ancient instinct alerting them to a danger they couldn’t see.
Stell didn’t know why they would
fear her but she loved it when that happened.
Maybe that had something to do with
the darkness within her.
She didn’t care. The common would go
and Stell would climb down and the mountain would be hers again. It was hers
today and Stell lay in her favorite spot, a thick blanket of moss between the
creek bed and a thicket of blackberry bushes. Summer had only just started
warming up the mountain and it would be weeks until the blackberries appeared
but Stell had peeled off her gray, woolen dress as she always did once the snow
melted. She’d tossed the hated garment into the poplar branches and sprawled
out along the chilly moss.
The canopy overheard hadn’t
thickened fully yet and the sun warmed her pale skin. Bits of mud flaked off
her body as she stretched long. She must have fallen
asleep because she didn’t hear the rattling of the blackberry branches or the swearing
until it was too late to hide. Stell leapt to her feet, blinking away the
sleep, as the branches closed together, catching the skin of a young man who
pulled at the thorns.
They stared at each other. Stell
knew her eyes and mouth were as wide open as his.
He was Nahan. She could see it and
smell it and feel it.
And he was beautiful.
“Nahan da li?” she asked,
smiling at this wondrous site before her.
He looked nothing like the
congregation. His clothes weren’t drab and rough. His skin shone with a health
she had never seen. And most wondrous of all? His surprised gape turned into a
smile.
“What? Oh yeah, yeah.” He nodded but
Stell didn’t think he blinked. “I’m Nahan. I’m…I’m…I’m Thomas. Tomas. Tomas is
my real, you know, my real name, um, that we, you know, use here because my
grandparents…that’s my name when I’m here. I mean it’s my name but I use Thomas
when I’m home but here I use, you know, my name. Tomas.”
Stell watched the words pour out of
his beautiful mouth. She wanted to touch the shadows of pink that rose on his
pale cheeks as he talked and talked. He said more to her in that minute than
anyone had said to Stell in months.
“I’m Stell, " she said but he
seemed to want more. “All the time. I’m only ever Stell.”
The pink on his cheeks settled into
a glorious rose shade that matched the lower lip he licked. His teeth shone
white as he bit into it and Stell couldn’t think of a single reason to ever
look at anything else again. She watched his mouth move and waited for more
words.
“Why are you naked?”
“My dress is in the tree.”
“Do you want me to get it down?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
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