Excerpt Monday

Andromeda Chained to a Rock by Paul Gustave Dore, c. 1869
image courtesy of Wikimedia

Once a month I get together with some other authors and post an excerpt. The organizing body for this grand experiment is Excerpt Monday. Check them out for more info., and check out the links at the bottom if you'd like to excerpt surf.

This month's excerpt is from my WIP, an erotic medieval/fantasy romance. This is how it opens. Please let me know if you like the mood and voice--and most importantly, if you'd keep reading. It's sort of an experiment.


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Cry Surrender by Evie Byrne

Chapter One


They came at night. The whole of the nunnery emptied out in a panic, the sisters flitting about like ghosts in their bedclothes, their wails echoing through the cloisters. The men’s torches tossed red, fanged shadows across the walls, transforming a place of peace into the halls of hell. Yet they had not touched the holy women--not yet. The Angel’s mercenaries only resembled barbarians. They shouted and shoved, but they did not molest.

I knelt among the sisters and prayed that it would remain so, until I heard the clatter of hooves on cobblestones. Breaking off my prayer, I glanced up and saw a demon in black armor, mounted on a black horse, wearing the crest of the Black Angel.

“Most accursed,” hissed the sister by my side. “He is anathema.”

Hearing that, I should have returned to my prayers with twice the fervor, but I could not take my eyes off him, even if were to be damned for it. Lucas de Gris, Angelus Domitor--the Pope’s Conquering Angel, scourge of the Cathar heretics, fallen from grace, but not from power.

The rumors around him had reached even my cloistered ears. They said he was deformed, a monster as ill-favored as he was ruthless. They said he’d been born in Saracen lands and bore the marks of the ungodly. Some even said that he was a Saracen himself, but none knew for certain, for it was also said no living man had ever seen his face.

Had Lucifer himself strolled into the cloisters, I could not be more amazed. My praying hands fell limp in my lap and I stared at him like a simpleton.

A giant he seemed. His armor gleamed in the torchlight, silver chasing flashed across it like lightening against a black sky. Where he was not covered with plate, he was covered was mail. Where there was not mail, there was leather.

I wondered what it would be like to be clothed in gleaming steel and mounted high on a horse fit for a god. Legend was he’d never been wounded in battle, though some said now that he’d lost the Pope’s blessing, his final wounding would come soon enough.

“Tessa! Thank our Blessed Mother you’re here.” My only friend, Agnes, threw herself into my arms and began to weep.

“Shh, my love.” I rocked Agnes and stroked her hair, but kept my eyes on the Angel. Even the golden relics in the church sanctuary could not compare to its polished, perfect smoothness of his armor, its pristine invulnerability. I longed to run my hands over the smooth, molded planes of his cuirass. Would it be hot or cold to the touch?

“He will kill us all,” Agnes sobbed.

“No, never think it.”

Agnes raised her head. Her pretty grey eyes were red and swollen. “You’re not afraid.”

This did not come as a question, but as a statement--and an accusation. Agnes’s face hardened. She knew me too well. “What are you thinking about?”

Freedom.

The Angel had come for a woman. What else would he want? St. Alban’s had no significant treasure, no relics except for a knuckle bone reputing to have belonged to St. Gerome but may have just as well have belonged to his mother, his butcher or his pet pig. Our Psalter wasn’t even jeweled. No, the Angel had come for me. This was how the devil granted wishes.

Glancing around to make sure no one could hear, Agnes whispered, “You can’t be in your wits. Not with these men. Not with him.”

I could not explain the calm certainty that filled me. It felt like the hand of God, though I knew to think so was blasphemy.

“They’ll do unspeakable things to you.” Agnes' voice cracked with misery. She dug her fingers into the soft flesh of my arms. “They’ll cut your throat and leave your body in a ditch.”

A man standing next to the Angel rapped his pike on the cobblestones and shouted for silence. The weeping and praying ceased and all eyes turned to him. In a rough, country accent the man said, “My lord wishes you to know he wishes none of you harm. Who is the Abbess?”

Our Abbess stepped forward, her back rigid. I had never seen her without her habit. She almost looked human.

The man made a slight bow. “Lady, we will leave peacefully this night, and place this in your hand--” He brought forth a purse which he hefted in his palm. “All we ask in return is one convent-raised virgin to be my lord’s companion.”

The Abbess addressed the Angel directly. “You mistake St. Alban’s for a bawdy house, Sir Lucas. I suggest you take yourself to one directly.”

The Angel did not answer, or respond in any way, though his horse danced restlessly under him. The answer came from his man, and it came fast and stinging as a whip. “If you do not cooperate, my lady, you might mistake St. Alban’s for a charnel house.”

An even deeper hush, if possible, fell over the courtyard. No one dared look right or left. I know they all prayed, Not me, oh please not me, dear Lord. But my wicked heart began to beat double time. All I needed was courage--the same fool courage I’d need to plunge off a cliff.

I did not allow myself to think another moment. I leapt to my feet. “Take me.”

Agnes caught me around the legs, dragged me to the ground and pinned my body with her own. But she couldn't hide me any longer.

From beneath her elbow, I watched the Angel knee his horse toward us. He kept a tight hand on his mount--a horse too massive for close quarters, too spirited to pass willingly through throngs of wailing, pleading women. It tossed its great head and worried the bit, snorted clouds of steam and struck sparks off the stones with its steel shod hooves.

I shivered Under Agnes’s warm weight. I shivered because I knew this moment was true and real, as no moment in my life had been true. I’d met my destiny.

In one quick movement, I rolled out from under Agnes. A hoof the size of a trencher landed just in front of my nose. I looked up.

And up.

Up the legs of the horse, its long shanks wrapped with corded muscle, its fine, quivering skin streaked with sweat. Up to the Black Angel’s foot, encased in a pointed boot, a long silver spur at his ankle. Up his silver worked greaves, each delicate filigree and floret etched painfully clear to my eye. Up his armored flanks, past his powerful arms bent at the reins. Up his breast, formed like a god’s and encased in a molded steel cuirass, and finally to his face.

Lord Be Merciful.

A finely wrought mask served as his visor. It was the face of a summer youth rendered in steel, a visage as beautiful as it was cruel.

I sought his eyes behind that mask, but saw only darkness.



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Other Excerpt Monday participants, for your clickage:


Our brave organizers:

Mel Berthier, Urban Fantasy (PG 13)
and
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)

Joining us this week:

Kinsey W. Holley, Paranormal (PG)
Caitlynn Lowe, Epic Fantasy (PG)
Dara Soren, Paranormal (PG)

Babette James, Fantasy Romance (PG13)
Christina DeLorenzo, YA (PG 13)
Nika Dixon, Romantic Suspense (PG 13)
Bryn Donovan, Paranormal Romance (PG13)
Kaige, Historic Romance (PG-13)
Julia Knight, Fantasy Romance (PG 13)
Adelle Laudan, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Jeannie Lin, Historical Romance (PG13)
RF Long, Paranormal (PG13)
Rebecca Savage, romantic suspense (PG 13)
Crista McHugh, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)
Leigh Royals, Historical Romance (PG 13)

Jax Cassidy, Contemporary Romance (R)
Maya Doyle, Paranormal Romance (R)
Cate Hart, Paranormal (R)
Ali Katz, Historical Erotic Romance (R)
Inez Kelley, Romantic Comedy (R)
Aislinn Kerry, Paranormal Romance (R)
Elise Logan, Fantasy Romance (R)
Cherrie Lynn, Paranormal Romance (R)
Alina Morgan, Urban Fantasy (R)
Vivienne Westlake, Erotic Historical (R)

Stephanie Adkins, Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Evie Byrne, Medieval Paranormal Romance (NC 17)
Kim Knox, Erotic SF Romance (NC17)
Lauren Murphy, Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Kirsten Saell, Erotic Romance (NC 17)