The Druid Stone blog Tour

Out of the Tombs, Exceedingly Fierce

by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane

Ah, Scotland, an Art History student's wet dream. Gorgeous old castles, great booze, sexy locals with even sexier accents, and even a gory ghost story or two. Maxwell Lewis is here for two reasons: to get a few great photographs, and to forget about his boring commitment-obsessed ex, in that order. Knock Castle seems to offer him opportunities for both. All the excitement Maxwell's ever wanted and a hot guy to enjoy it with. If only the ghosts could stay in the story...

Excerpt

Northeast Scotland, 29 October, 2003

Maxwell, who had grown up with consistent parental praise for his vivid imagination, vividly imagined the fog curling away to reveal the severed heads of seven Scottish lairdlings neatly impaled on their own peat shovels.

“And the poor laird fell from the top of his tower as he heard the tragic word,” declaimed the tour guide. Maxwell had been in Scotland a week, long enough to realize that the guide was laying on the r’s a bit thicker than necessary. The other tourists seemed to appreciate the performance: the Italian woman to his left vibrated her breasts in perfect rhythm with his sonorous “hearrrrrd”.

“Shit was hardcore back then,” said the American teenager, who wore a Linkin Park t-shirt and an awed expression. “Dude. All seven of his sons. Whack, whack, whack...”

Maxwell didn’t wait for him to finish the exact count. He wandered off a few paces, rubbed his chin and tried to focus his mind’s eye. Celtic feudalism, ritual sacrifice, penny-dreadful gore, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Damien Hirst’s dead cow museum pieces? So many ideas spawned by the imagery, but then, of course, so many ideas already done before. Definitely not a painting, no.

He reached out to touch the green lichen crawling across the stone—

“Can you take our picture, son?”

—and drew it back. His flash of irritation faded, because the elderly couple beaming at him were so stereotypically quaint and squat and jolly, wearing matching fanny packs. “Oh, of course,” he said, with a genuine smile.

The wife of the pair seemed pleased. “Gosh, that’s a lovely accent you’ve got,” she said as she handed him her middle-of-the-road point-and-shoot. “Are you from around here, then?”

He fumbled the camera for a second before finding and sliding the on-off button. “Canadian actually, but my parents are from London. I live in Victoria. That’s on the West coast.” He added that last detail quickly, before they assumed “Victoria” was the name of some posh London suburb instead of a Canadian island populated mostly by retirees and anarcho-hippies. “Um, say cheese!”

“You just—” the husband tried to direct.

“He’s got it, Bill. Cheese!”

“Scoot to the left, would you? So the castle’s right over your shoulder. That’s it!” He raised the camera and squeezed off three shots, the third of which was ruined by some guy wandering in from the left side. He looked up from the viewscreen, squinting at the man who’d ruined the third shot, and then sucked in a deep breath.

What really caught his eye was the tan. Sure, he’d seen plenty of hot guys — blokes? — since coming to the UK two weeks ago, but they all seemed to have the pasty malnourished coloring of someone who spent too much time in the rain. Which made sense, of course, because they did. In fact, it was kind of a minor miracle that it wasn’t raining now.

The man in front of him apparently didn’t have that problem, and Maxwell guessed it wasn’t because he spent a lot of time in a bed lined with lightbulbs. He looked perfectly outdoors-y. His hiking boots were well worn, and by the way his khakis and flannel shirt draped, Maxwell could tell he had a cut, lean body underneath — not quite broad enough for a weightlifter, but a rock-climber, maybe.

“Can we have our camera back?”

“Oh, huh, yeah,” he muttered, stuffing it unceremoniously back into the woman’s hands. He thought he said something like, “Enjoy the rest of the tour,” but he couldn’t be sure. Too transfixed to be subtle, he made a beeline for the man who’d ruined their shot. But not his.

Only a few more paces. He just needed to work his way through this knot of Korean tourists posing with the guide, scrabble over a bit of brush...

At this distance he could see the tanline where his man usually wore a watch, but had foregone one today. Sandy blond hair, wavy, not quite short enough to be called a buzz-cut, but not long enough to get your fists in, either. A tendril of arousal laced through him, at that image.

Shake it off. Don’t make an ass of yourself by getting all eager.

If the man was interested, Maxwell was most definitely available. And why wouldn’t he be interested? As long as he wasn’t Scotty McStraightbloke, anyway, Maxwell figured he had a pretty good chance. He was young, fit, well-groomed, and had decent abs for an art student.

Small talk, small talk. The man was holding a light meter. “Hello, are you a photographer?” asked Maxwell as he gestured at the Canon EOS hanging from his own not-as-impressive but pleasingly angular, cashmere-sweater-covered chest.

“No,” said the man, then gave him direct eye contact and a full-body scan. “Fuck off back to your tour group, would you?”

Okay, so maybe not straight, definitely not Scottish, but not interested, either. Maxwell shook his head a little, perplexed.

“Are you lost, deaf, or daft?” The man sighed. He would have looked as young as Maxwell if not for the tracks the sun had left around his deep blue eyes. They made him look rather cynical. That was okay; after a few years with aggressively optimistic Nick, Maxwell was ready to like cynical. “I’m busy, but if you’re absolutely—”

“Not lost,” protested Maxwell, and realized he must have had a sad wounded look on his face, much like a bothersome puppy after being sprayed by a water bottle. “Can I help? Are you Irish? You sound Irish.”

“I’m from Ireland,” the man replied, but didn’t elaborate, and didn’t respond to Maxwell’s earlier question, either. If he thought Maxwell was backing down, though...

“I’m Maxwell. Lewis. First name Maxwell. Last name Lewis.” Maxwell put out a hand, which the Irishman stared at pointedly before raising an eyebrow.

“That’s quite the speech, first name Maxwell last name Lewis. I’m Cormac. Kelly.” Maxwell could practically hear the Now go away, hanging at the end. And then, surprisingly, Cormac’s face cracked into the slightest of smiles, although the expression wasn’t exactly charitable. “I’m hoping you can figure out which goes first on your own.”

Maxwell pounced on the opportunity. “Actually, I was in a Waldorf school. Knew a kid named Moonbeam Sapphire, so a man named Kelly doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.” He smiled back, the same calculatedly handsome smile he’d practiced in the mirror since he was a teenager. It hadn’t failed him yet.

It seemed to half-work on Cormac, because he no longer seemed determined to shoo off Maxwell like a fly. He returned to whatever the hell he was doing with the light meter, occasionally tilting his head back to squint up at a high window set into the castle wall. “Do you believe in ghosts, first-name-Maxwell?” he asked, without turning.

Read more for FREE:

Goodreads | Smashwords

***

Want more Cormac? His full-length novel The Druid Stone is out now from Carina Press, Amazon, B&N and ARe. For other buy links and links to other stops on the blog tour, please visit knockmanovel.com. You can can also get in touch with Violetta and Heidi at their websites.

Sean never asked to be an O'Hara, and he didn't ask to be cursed by one either.

After inheriting a hexed druid stone from his great-grandfather, Sean O’Hara starts reliving another man's torture and death...every single night. And only one person can help.

Cormac Kelly runs a paranormal investigation business and doesn't have time to deal with misinformed tourists like Sean. But Sean has real magic in his pocket, and even though Cormac is a descendant of legendary druids, he soon finds himself out of his depth...and not because Sean's the first man he's felt anything for in a long time.

The pair develop an unexpected and intensely sexual bond, but are threatened at every turn when Sean's case attracts the unwelcome attention of the mad sidhe lords of ancient Ireland. When Sean and Cormac are thrust backward in time to Ireland's violent history—and their own dark pasts—they must work together to escape the curse and save their fragile relationship.