Witch Hunt: PERSECUTED

SILHOUETTE NOCTURNE™ #14
April 2007
ISBN-13:978-0-373-61761-6

Magic is in her blood…

Elena Jones thinks that her dream-visions are why her life has been a living nightmare. She would do anything to stop them—anything to give her daughter a normal life. But when her dreams show her long-lost sisters in danger, Elena has the chance to transform her curse into a gift. To stop death, before it strikes.

And death is in her dreams…

Joseph Dolce is her grandmother's right-hand man, with violence in his past and darkness in his soul. Elena dreams of him, too—sweeter dreams, but just as dangerous. Joseph doesn't want to be her knight in shining armor. But his generous lovemaking and selflessly heroic actions cause Elena to have a change of heart. Now, instead of seeing unwanted visions, she'll do everything in her power to make a special one come true.…

Reviews

"In a stunning sequel to Haunted, Persecuted is a journey into a mother’s worst nightmare. The kidnapping of Elena’s daughter is a situation that grips a reader to sit at attention as they follow along through the novel. Fear and danger leap out at you keeping the thudding in your chest roaring until you reach the very end. Part of a three part series, one can hardly anticipate what Lisa Childs has in store for us in Damned. Though after the interview that is featured on this months update, this reviewer has it on good authority that some of the secondary characters from this series could be back in a major way.

Lisa Childs does a wonderful job of keeping things mysterious, leaving us only little crumbs to follow along as she writes. This is not to say however her style lags in any way, quite the contrary she gives us just enough to carry the story. With so many questions unanswered the conclusion to this trio will be no doubt a great one." -- Joyce, CK's Kwips & Kritiques

"The second book in the enthralling Witch Hunt series continues the story of three sisters being hunted because they are witches. These women are sought because they possess special charms which a fanatic desires above all else. With powerful emotions and gripping action, Lisa Childs delivers a captivating story with PERSECUTED.  Regardless of the genre in which Lisa Childs writes, she creates memorable characters and intriguing storylines to thoroughly entertain readers. In her latest paranormal story, the details are chillingly real and the personalities of each character are genuinely depicted. Whether Ms. Child is showing how Elena’s abilities affect her or describing the potent feelings between her and Joseph, the scene is always skillfully presented. This story is filled with emotions, some angry, others fearful and numerous passionate yearnings. When the characters felt these inner thoughts or even expressed them, I was pulled deeper into their personal lives, which had me either concerned for them or despising them for their devious and hurtful ways.  The reason for the resurrected witch hunt is cleverly written, and there are several surprising developments during this story. The book’s ending has me anxiously in anticipation of the next story. PERSECUTED is a stirring paranormal romance, where wonder and reality are cleverly blended." -- Amelia Richard, SingleTitles.com

"Persecuted (3), by Lisa Childs, is a solid book. Childs' depiction of Elena as a frightened mother seems very accurate. " -- Alexandra Kay, RT BookClub

"Lisa Childs has written a spellbinding book about a woman who is forced to accept that not only is she a witch but her daughter is as well. This paranormal romantic thriller is full of action but it Elena, vulnerable yet fierce when it comes to her daughter who is the reason her abduction makes the tale move at such a rapid pace. " -- Harriet Klausner

Excerpt:

Chapter One

The muscles in Elena's arms strained as she struggled against the ropes binding her wrists behind her back. Coarse fibers bit into her skin, scratching so deeply that blood, warm and sticky, ran down her wrists and pooled in her palms.

She bit her lip, holding in a cry at the sting. But that pain was nothing in comparison to the heat of the flames springing up around her. Sweat ran down her face, nearly blinding her, but still she could see a man on the other side of the flames. A hood covered his head; a dark brown robe concealed his body. But his frame, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, identified him as male.

Others stood behind him in the shadows and smoke, also clad in those dark brown robes. They chanted, their voices rising above the hiss and crackle of the flames. "Exstinguo...veneficus..."

The words were unfamiliar, but she suspected they called her a witch.

"Nooo..." She wasn't a witch. The smoke choked her, cutting off her protest and her breath.

Her line of vision shifted, away from the cloaked figures, to the woman bound to the stake in the middle of the circle of flames. Was Elena the witch? The woman's hair was dark and curly, not blond like Elena's. The woman's eyes were dark and wide, not pale blue.  

Uncaring of the pain, Elena continued to struggle, trying to free herself from the hold of the ropes, of the dream. Of the vision.

A scream tore from her throat as she kicked at the covers and bolted upright in bed. Shaking, she settled into the pillows piled against her headboard and gasped for breath, her lungs burning.

As the woman was burning...

Even awake she could see her, illuminated by a flash of lightning inside Elena's mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and began a chant of her own, "It's just a dream. It's just a dream."

But she wasn't sleeping. She hardly ever slept anymore for fear of dreaming of torture and murder. The images rolled through her mind no matter where she was or what she was doing. They weren't like the "dreams" she'd had her whole life, the innocuous images of something someone might do or say a day or two after she'd dreamt it. These weren't little revelations of déjà vu. They were murder, and she was an eyewitness to the unspeakable horror.

She reached out, needing the comfort of strong arms to hold her, to protect her. But for the blankets tangled around her legs, the bed was empty and cold. Her husband no longer shared their room. She'd been the one to throw out his stuff after accusing him of cheating. Not even his tyrant of a boss would send him out of town as often as Kirk was gone.

Truthfully, she'd been gone a long time too. Despite the fact she'd rarely left the house, she'd been absent from their marriage. She'd pushed him away. But why hadn't he fought for her, for them? Had he ever loved her or only her money? The hurt that pressed on her heart wasn't new, like an ache from an old injury rather than a fresh wound.

She fumbled with the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flooded the room with light. Real light. Not that eerie flash only inside her head. The warm glow of the bulb in the Tiffany lamp offered no comfort either.

Although he denied the cheating and only moved as far as the guest room, she knew Kirk was lying, but she hadn't told him how she'd gained her knowledge of his affair. She'd "seen" him with another woman. At first she'd passed those images off as she had her others, figments of her overactive imagination or products of stress or paranoia. Finally she'd forced herself to face the truth about her sham of a marriage...and herself.

She didn't love Kirk; maybe she never had, because she'd never trusted him enough to tell him anything about her past or herself. During college, their relationship was mostly superficial and fun, things that Elena's life had never been. But their relationship had never really deepened, despite marriage, despite the beautiful four-year old daughter they shared, and it had stopped being fun a long time ago. Sick of all the lies, his and hers, she'd finally filed for divorce.

For so long Elena hadn't been able to discern truth from fiction. Although she hadn't seen her mother in twenty years, she could hear her lilting voice echoing in her head with the words of a gypsy proverb, There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

When she'd been taken away from her mother two decades ago, she had also been separated from her younger half-sisters. She'd only recently reconnected with Ariel. Elena had been twelve, Ariel nine and their youngest sister, Irina, just four when social services had taken them away from their mother. They'd never seen Mother again. Alive.

Ariel had seen her dead, though. Her sister could see people after they passed away. She hadn't wanted to see Elena and Irina for the first time in two decades the way she had their mother, so she'd searched for her sisters to warn them that someone had started a witch hunt. She hadn't found Irina yet, and had only stumbled across Elena by accident.

But Elena had already known about the witch hunt because of her dreams. She'd fought so hard to suppress her visions, to convince herself that they weren't real. When her sister had found her, Elena had had to admit to the truth, if only to herself.

The visions were why Elena was cursed, not the three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vendetta that had started the first witch hunt. One of Elena's Durikken ancestors had been accused of killing the female members of the McGregor family and was burned at the stake. But like Elena, she'd seen her future and urged her daughter to run. That child, for whom Elena was named, had found safety, and she'd continued the Durikken legacy, passing on to her children the special abilities that people mistook for witchcraft.

Now someone else had resurrected the vendetta that Eli McGregor had begun three and a half centuries ago, of ritualistically killing all witches. Elena had dreamed, sleeping and awake, of his murders. While she saw his victims, she hadn't seen the killer; she couldn't identify him. Helplessness and frustration churned in her stomach, gnawing at the lining like ulcers. 

"I don't want this!" she insisted to the empty room, as she had for so many years.  

Leaning over, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the nightstand drawer and pulled with such force that the drawer dropped onto the floor. Papers flew out, scattering across the thick beige carpet. Her copy of the divorce papers. Her husband refused to sign his. She couldn't continue their farce of a marriage, which had been over long ago and was past time to officially end. If only she was a witch, like the legend claimed, then she could cast a spell on Kirk and make him go away forever. Somehow she suspected that a big check would do the job.

Elena rolled out of bed and dropped to her knees on the floor. Instead of picking up the papers, she pushed them aside. In the dim light, she couldn't see what she sought. Blindly she ran her fingertips through the carpet, raking it, until her nails grazed warm metal. She dug the pewter charm from the thick fibers, then dropped the little star, the tips dulled with age, into her palm. Twenty years ago her mother had pressed the star upon her, telling Elena that as well as keeping her safe, the charm would ensure that she never forgot who or what she was.

Images flashed in her mind like snapshots. A woman hanging. Another woman crushed beneath rocks. Another woman burning. Pain knotted her stomach and pounded at her temples. Her hands fisted, the points of the star digging into her palm.

She didn't want to remember those horrifying images.

She didn't want to be a witch.   

She lurched to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She lifted the lid to the toilet and dropped the little pewter charm into the water. Drops splashed up from inside the bowl, spattering the rim, as the star bobbed. Hand trembling, she reached for the handle. Maybe flushing the charm would stop the visions and make Elena normal. Her fingers closed around the metal handle, which was cool unlike the charm. The little star radiated warmth, always.

Her sister believed the charms held some special power to protect them, that if all three sisters united with the charms, they could stop the witch hunt. Elena's fingers slipped away from the handle. Then she reached into the bowl and pulled the star from the water. She'd held onto the charm too long to get rid of it now. Even though Elena didn't share Ariel's beliefs, she couldn't shatter her sister's hope.

Her breath coming in shallow pants, she moved to the sink, turning on the gold plated faucets to wash off the charm and her hands. Because of the soap, she kept a firm hold on the piece of metal, careful not to lose the star down the drain. She glanced at her image in the mirror, the disheveled blond hair, the wild light blue eyes, the silk chemise nightgown baring her shoulders.

"Liar," she called herself. She hadn't just lied to her sister when she'd claimed that the charms held no power; she had lied to herself, about so many things.  

The marble floor cold beneath her bare feet, Elena walked from the bathroom. With one hand, she fitted the drawer back into the nightstand, then laid the star inside. The charm's warmth had already dried it, so it glistened in the soft glow of the Tiffany lamp.

Over the years Elena had many times considered tossing out the charm, but she always refrained. No matter how hard she'd tried to forget her past, a part of her had been unwilling to let go. With the witch hunt resurrected, that part would either prove her salvation...or her demise.

# # #

Elena had no idea how long she'd been asleep when moist lips touched her shoulder, gliding over the bare skin. Her pulse quickening, she murmured and shifted against the bed, struggling to awaken. She dragged in a deep breath, the scent of citrus soap and musk.

This was not her husband joining her in bed. He wasn't even down the hall tonight; he was out of town. But when he'd been around, he hadn't touched her, not for a long time. From the way he'd started looking at her, with uneasiness and a trace of fear, he might have figured out that his wife wasn't normal. Perhaps he'd picked up clues from her nightmares, or from the things she knew before he told her.  

The lips moved, nibbling along her shoulder to her neck. The brush of moist, hot breath raised goose bumps along her skin. The blanket lowered, pushed aside by impatient hands. Then those strong, clever hands ran over her body, skimming down her arms, then around her waist and over her hips. Sometime during the night, even though the air blowing through her windows was cool in mid May in western Michigan, she had removed her nightgown. Nothing separated her skin from his as his body brushed against hers. 

"Elena," a deep voice whispered in her ear, his hot breath stirring her hair and her senses. "You're ready for me."

Excitement pulsed in her veins, and she opened her eyes, staring up into his face as he leaned over her. Desire had darkened his eyes so that only a thin circle of green rimmed his enlarged pupils. A muscle jumped in his cheek, shadowed with the beard clinging to his square jaw.

"Elena, I want you." His biceps bulged as he braced his arms on the mattress on either side of her, trapping her beneath the long, hard length of his body. His voice deepened to a throaty growl as he told her, "I want to bury myself so deep inside you that you'll feel me forever as a part of you."

"You're already part of me," she murmured.

His were the arms she'd instinctively sought earlier, when the horrifying dream had awakened her. She turned to him for comfort and protection. And for this, for the passion that pounded like a drum in her heart, heating her skin and melting her muscles so that she flowed beneath him, fitting herself to the hard lines of his body.

His chest tempted her, wide and muscular with soft, black hair that grew thinner as it arrowed down, over his washboard stomach. Some of the hair dusted his muscular legs, tickling hers, as he entwined them.

He was naked and ready. And so was she.

Her stomach quivering with anticipation, she reached up, twining her arms around his back, pulling him closer. But his weight didn't settle hot and heavy against her. Her arms moved through empty space, flailing the covers aside as she moved restlessly in her bed, empty but for her.

For the second time that night she bolted upright, panting for breath, her lungs burning with the struggle for air, as she awakened from a dream.

Just a dream.

This was no vision of the future, for there could be no future between Elena and her dream lover. Unlike the killer, she'd seen this man's face; she knew him and wished she didn't. 

He might not be the killer, but to Elena, he was just as big a threat, if not to her life, to her heart. His were the last arms in which she would find comfort or protection. With a man like him, she'd only find more heartache and danger.

Top of Page