Cataclysm

First published by The Writer’s Coffee Shop, 2011

Copyright © C.L. Parker, 2011

The right of C.L. Parker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Writer’s Coffee Shop
(Australia) PO Box 2013 Hornsby Westfield NSW 1635
(USA) PO Box 2116 Waxahachie TX 75168

Paperback ISBN- 978-1-61213-070-5
E-book ISBN- 978-1-61213-071-2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the US Congress Library.

Author photo by: Christy Boone, Sweet Somethings Photography.
Cover image by: © Fallenangel / © CURAphotography / © Aleksejs Kostins
Cover design by: Jennifer McGuire

www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/cparker

C.L. Parker lives near Louisville, Kentucky with hertwo sons. After a brief stint in the US Navy, she settled down and started raising a family; however, her love for the written word pulled at the corners of her imagination, and she soon found herself unable to deny her calling any longer. Before long, Parker ventured into the world of writing. An outlet for her overactive imagination, it quickly grew into a passion that could not be ignored. Having a fascination for the paranormal, it didn’t take long to decide what type of book she would really love to write.

Parker’s reality is that she is easily lost to a world of fantasy, driven to bring her characters to life if only in the pages of a book, for their story is one that must be told.

Cataclysm
handed my ass to me on a silver platter, all beaten and mangled to bits. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but pretty damn close to the truth. While writing this book, I endured many obstacles in my personal life, and they all seemed to attack at the same time. Really, it’s not fair to gang up on someone like that, but it didn’t matter. I persevered and was victorious, but not without calling in some reinforcements of my own. My pre-readers:
Bobbie Butler
,
Jessica Manley
,
Melanie Edwards
,
Fernanda Read
, and our latest addition,
Maureen Morgan
. I also need to tip my hat to
Darynda Jones
. Where Mel is my Yoda, Darynda is my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I swear, I’m not a
Star Wars
nerd.

Huge thanks to
Lauren Schmelz
, my fantastic editor/Siamese Twin—she knows I like it rough and has no qualms whatsoever in giving it to me that way, but she always has my back.

While I obviously have to take some creative liberties, it is always my goal to keep as close to what the experts “believe” to be the truth as possible. When we’re dealing with the paranormal world, that opens up a whole other can of worms; and I’m talking three-headed worms from the center of the Earth that turn into were-apes when the moon is full, were sired by a demon-possessed fairy, and birthed by a witch angel with a thirst for blood. Many thanks to
John E.L. Tenney
for helping me decipher what may or may not be plausible—which is pretty much anything. The inside of your head is such an awesome place to be.

Special thanks to these fine businesses of St. Augustine, Florida: Silver Feather, Panama Hattie’s, Dune’s Cracker House, Casa Monica Hotel, The World Famous Oasis Deck and Restaurant, and Watson Realty Corp.

This book is dedicated to my Granny Catherine, who passed away just five short days before the release of
Supernova
. She was the foundation of all that my family and I are spiritually, and our loss was great.

Granny, you might not have been able to hold my dream in your hands, but you always held my love in your heart.

Te amo por siempre
. I will love you... forever.

It was one simple, little task: lure Dominic Grayson to the graveyard and chant the spell that would separate his soul from his body so his father could inhabit it. That was all. She wasn’t asked to cure world hunger. She wasn’t asked to bring peace to Earth and good will to all men. Not that she really gave a rat’s ass about all that mumbo-jumbo anyway. All she had to do was make it possible for her lover to walk the Earth in human form again.

But Sinclair Davis had failed.

Failing was all she managed to do lately, and she didn’t know how many more chances she would have before the man to whom she had sworn her undying devotion would tire of her failures and go in search of someone who could get the job done.

Losing Drake D’Mon wasn’t a thought she could swallow very well. The very idea of it was enough to make her nauseous. He was her everything: lover, teacher, confidant. And he was the only one who gave a damn about what happened to her.

Dragging her wounded pride behind her, she limped up the stairs of the front porch to her house. It had been a long walk back from the graveyard, and her Mary Janes were caked in mud, one of them missing a heel. Her black stockings looked like they had just barely survived a battle with a demonic cat, and her ruby gypsy skirt was shredded from being caught on a fallen tree limb. Still, her attire looked a lot better than her hair and makeup. She had definitely seen better days, but appearance was the least of her concerns.