Death's Daughter: A Calliope Reaper-Jones Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

AMBER BENSON co-created, co-wrote, and directed the animated supernatural web-series Ghosts of Albion with Christopher Golden, followed by a series of novels including Witchery and Accursed, and the novella Astray. Benson and Golden also co-authored the novella The Seven Whistlers. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the fan favorite role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Benson wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

twenty-four

twenty-five

twenty-six

twenty-seven

twenty-eight

twenty-nine

epilogue

NICE DOGGIE . . .

Cerberus turned its Snarly head, and the giant, jaundiced eye unblinkingly trained itself on my frozen form. The dog’s eye narrowed, and I knew without anyone saying anything out loud that I was only one slo-mo minute from getting digested.

The other two heads stopped their obsessive licking and raised themselves in line with Snarly head. They didn’t look nearly as mean as Snarly, but as I watched, something much worse began to register in their eyes: excitement. The big hellhound’s tail started thumping more quickly against the gate.

Then, without warning, Snarly head swooped forward, teeth bared, giant eyeball trained in one direction . . . mine. Frozen in shock, I could do nothing but stare as Cerberus, the guardian of the North Gate to Hell, prepared to make me its lunch . . .

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DEATH’S DAUGHTER

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Benson Entertainment, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / March 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eISBN : 978-1-101-01451-6

ACE
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For the two special men in my life:
Dad and Adam

Acknowledgments

There are three people integral to the creation of this book: my awesome literary manager, Brendan Deneen; my equally fantastic editor, Ginjer Buchanan; and the man who started it all, my frequent collaborator and good friend Christopher Golden. Without their encouragement and support, Calliope Reaper-Jones would never have seen the light of day. I also want to send a shout-out to the singersongwriter Angela Correa, whose album Correatown furnished the sound track for the writing of this book.

one

My name is Calliope Reaper-Jones, and I think I’m losing my mind.

Okay, maybe I was being a touch melodramatic. I wasn’t completely losing my mind, but things were definitely getting a little screwy in my neck of the woods.

It was like the universe couldn’t help itself. It had to mess with you every once in a while—you know, just to make sure you were paying attention. I guess it reasoned that since we were all so busy being anal little worker ants, its job was to step in occasionally and shatter whatever carefully constructed illusions of normalcy we had created for ourselves.

Just to shake things up a little . . . for our sakes, of course.

Because, unlike us, the universe knew that illusions were just that: illusionary—and they could be destroyed with one well-placed roundhouse kick.

my kick in the pants came last Saturday: the day of my most recent blind date.

My next-door neighbor, Patience, had decided she was sick and tired of my sad ass feeling all sorry for itself—her words, not mine, but the sentiment was definitely correct. I mean, I hadn’t had a real date in, well . . . It was so pathetic an expanse of time that I didn’t even want to talk about it.

You see, my not-so “dream job” job had totally precluded me from having any kind of social life. Period. I spent all week working my butt off, so that when Saturday finally did roll around, I was too dead to the world to enjoy it. Plus which, my few pathetic attempts to “hook up” through craigslist were just that—pathetic.

I usually ended up in zombie mode until Sunday when—somehow mildly recharged—I’d get up, do my laundry, run a few necessary errands, then meet some girlfriends at whatever new “happening” breakfast place they’d decided we were going to have brunch at that weekend. They never bothered asking for my foodie opinion, just e-mailed me the address—for reference only, since I wouldn’t know a “happening” place if it hit me over the head with a shovel and whispered into my ear: “I’m a hot spot!”

Anyway, that’s enough about my pathetic excuse for a social life. Let’s go back to the blind date, and the day everything in my life went to hell in a handbasket.

Said blind-date guy was one of Patience’s office mates at Brown, Stimple, and Brown, Esquire, a big law firm uptown. I wasn’t exactly sure what she did there, but she had a really big television hanging on her wall, so it must’ve been something very important and unbelievably exciting—not. The legal world was nothing if not nail-bitingly . . . tedious.

Anyway, the guy she’d decided was my soul mate worked in a different department, but since they had mutual friends, she said it would be as “easy as pie”—her words again—to get him to take me out on the town one Saturday night in the near future, ending my fantastically long dating dry spell—hurrah!

Well, it turns out the “near future” was only two days after she’d told me about the idea in...