Odium
III by Claire C. Riley
Serie:
(The Dead Saga #3)
Release
Date: March 23rd
ODIUM
III The Dead Saga
In
this life, nothing is simple…not even DEATH
.
In
the third instalment of the Odium series, having distanced herself
from Mikey, Nina is on a mission. She’s seeking a woman who could
be the answer to all their problems…or just another nightmare made
reality.
Travelling
alongside Nova, the two women are faced with countless threats and
inexplicable circumstances…just another day in the land of the
dead.
But
Nina is changing, feeling the strain of this life, and beginning to
rethink the choices she’s made and the woman she’s become. New
allies will be forged on this road of self-discovery, bonds will be
broken, and old enemies will resurface. Nina will be forced to make a
decision that could have devastating consequences.
However
life is nothing without someone to love, or a family to love you in
return. And in this new world, there is only one way to prove that
love is still possible. Sacrifice.
Out
March 23rd 2015
©
Copyright Claire C. Riley
TEASER
ODIUM
III The Dead Saga Excerpt
I
reached the first one, side-stepping as it stretched its one bony arm
for me. The other arm was barely a nub of bone left jutting out of
its socket, yet it still moved. I managed to get behind it and I
raised my katana high, slamming it through the back of the deader’s
neck before it could turn around. The force of my blow knocked it to
its knees but didn’t cut it all the way through, and I grunted as I
struggled to wrench the katana free from the thick flesh and bone of
its neck. I pressed down, begging the sword not to snap.
Finally
the blade cut right through and the head fell from its shoulders with
a resounding splat. The body slumped forward with a thud, and thick
black gore that smelled like rotten eggs and three-day-old sewage
pumped slowly from out of the hole in its neck. The mouth of the head
continued to snap, and I slammed my sword through the side of its
temple to end the deader’s eternal misery and then I moved on to
the next one.
Nova
was surrounded by two deaders and the ankle-biter, and I hurried
across to help her. I jogged to her side, ignoring my own slow-moving
deader, and I stabbed through the ankle-biter’s skull. Ankle-biters
were scary, because you never freaking saw them coming. I had drawn
the attention of Nova’s two deaders, but she stabbed one in the
back of the skull before it could even take a step toward me, and the
other followed swiftly afterwards.
I
turned back to my one, sidestepping it and letting it follow me until
its back was to Nova. She used both knives to hack either side of its
neck in one swift movement, and the head popped up into the air like
a jumping bean and landed on the ground with a small thud. It was
still moving, jaws snapping away as it persistently tried to get to
me, and I grimaced. It was possibly once a fairly attractive male.
Cloudy blue eyes stared up at me hungrily, its teeth still relatively
normal instead of broken and black. Even its skin, though pale and
sallow, was still covering a full face, instead of having rotted away
in parts, leaving us with a gory view of what lay underneath. I
presumed this man had died from injuries other than the more standard
facial bites, which were what usually got people killed.
Death
brought on the zombie infection, not saliva or blood transference,
and a chunk out of the face or neck was almost always a sure killer.
Nova’s
boot made contact with the head and sent it flying through the air
and into the fields to the left of us. Black blood trailed through
the sky in an arc and she whooped and fist-pumped the air.
“Touchdown!”
she yelled ridiculously. She raised her hand in an attempt to high
five me.
“That’s
not cool. You need to go find that head and end it.” I bent down
and wiped my blade across the now headless deader’s body, cleaning
it free of the gore.
“What?
Why?” She bent down and cleaned her knives on a different deader’s
back. “You’re just miserable. You’re always miserable,
especially when you’re sick,” she huffed.
“You
don’t know what I’m like when I’m sick.”
Nova
rolled her eyes. “Well you’re sick now, and you’re a moody and
miserable, so looks like I was right.”
“Whatever.
You can’t leave a dangerous head out in the wild like that. What if
someone is walking through here and doesn’t see it? What then? A
dangerous head like that could kill someone.” I scowled and stood
back up, releasing a hearty sneeze. “Go find the damn head.”
Nova
stood back up, giving me a hard glare. “No, you go find the damn
head if it’s so important to you.” She turned away and started
looking through the pockets of another of the dead bodies at our
feet, looking for anything useful. “No one would be stupid enough
to walk through a field barefoot anyway. People wear shoes, Nina!”
She pocketed several items, not bothering to show me what they were,
which only pissed me off more, since we were supposed to be sharing
everything.
“That’s
a dangerous head, Nova. Go kill it.” I bent back down and started
to fumble in my deader’s pockets, finding some gum and a lighter,
plus a picture of a pretty woman. The picture did nothing to temper
my growing anger. “Do they not deserve any goddamn respect?” I
muttered to myself more than her. So I was surprised when Nova
replied.
“No,
no they don’t. I hate them all and they deserve to die a horrible
death.”
My
eyes snapped to hers. “You’re being a dick now.”
“Since
when did you become a union leader for the Undead Society? These
aren’t humans anymore,” she snarled.
©
Claire C. Riley 2015
Claire
C. Riley Bio.
Claire
C Riley is a Bestselling British Horror Author, whose work includes:
Odium The Dead Saga – book 1, 2 and 3, Limerence 1& 2 (The
Obsession Series) Odium Origins A Dead Saga Novella – book 1, 2 and
coming soon 3, and several other full length novels including Thicker
Than Blood co-authored with USA Today Best Selling author Madeline
Sheehan.
She
writes characters that are realistic and kills them without mercy.
Claire
lives in the UK with her three young daughters, husband, and scruffy
dog.
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