Amanda Carlson - Full Blooded

The bitch gave us two.

She must have snuck one in under Valdov’s nose. This one must have had a waiting period before activation. If the vampire knew she’d put a spell in my body to kill me, there would’ve been backlash. Sneaky witch.

All my limbs stiffened; I couldn’t move anything.

Inside my head, my wolf kept hacking at the spell. I pushed power into her, trying to feed her control. My arms throbbed and burned with a searing heat. My body’s instinct was to change, but it was too risky. The spell would probably kill me before I could shift. I had to defeat it now.

“Jess, can you hear me?” Tyler voice echoed in my ear. “What’s going on? You have to answer me.”

My eyes were open, but I couldn’t blink.

Tyler turned to Danny. “Get my father on the phone. We need help.”

No. “No,” I managed on a harsh breath. Both boys turned to stare at me. “Don’t.” I had to deal with this on my own. If my father found out, there was no way he’d let me leave town. I had to find my mate. At all costs. No matter what was going on with Jeff, or any of the other craziness, finding Rourke was my priority. My only priority. “No.” It came out slowly. “Please.”

My brother and Danny waited, both of them crouched next to me, concern on their faces.

I battled the insidious spell, pushing more control at my wolf, trying to draw power from my body and direct it at her, pumping her full. She ripped and struck at the red mass in a fervor, too fast for me to follow. I gasped for more air, my lungs barely inflating. We have to do this, I told her. We have to be stronger than her or we lose him forever. It’s giving a little, I can feel it. We’re almost there. I promise you she’s not going to win this. We are stronger. My wolf snarled, gnashing her teeth, forcing the lines back into submission, tearing the spell apart before it could fully metastasize in my body, which was exactly what it was trying to do.

I channeled one last burst of power, using everything I could gather, and aimed it at my wolf. A moment of clarity hit my mind, a bright concentration of power, and the spell snapped once and for all. The lines broke apart, dangling limply in my mind like a tattered spiderweb swaying in the wind.

Then very slowly all the color dissipated, seeping back the way it’d come, like eels sliding back into their holes.

My wolf continued to growl, lashing at the retreating lines until no red remained. But the ugliness hadn’t gone away forever. The spell was still there.

It’d just gone dormant.

When the last remnant of red vanished I fell forward, coughing for air, taking in short deep breaths. After a solid minute of panting, I finally looked up, sweaty and spent. “She’s trying to kill me.”

“Who’s trying to kill you?” Tyler asked. I’d forgotten Tyler had been out cold when Selene had blasted me in the clearing.

“Selene.” I rested my head back against the wall. “It seems she left me a fun parting gift from our party together in the woods.”

But she wasn’t going to win.

“It looked a bit touch-and-go there for a second,” Danny said, his face worried. “You’re not talking about Selene the actual Lunar Goddess, are you?”

“The very one.” The whore was trying to kill me.

“What kind of a spell is it?” Tyler asked. “It looked like it was going to consume your entire body.”

“I think it was a … death spell of some kind,” I said quietly, knowing Tyler wasn’t going to take that news well.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I have to kill the bitch before she kills me.”

The End of Book One

A Minnesota girl born and bred, Amanda Carlson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double major in speech and hearing science and child development. After enjoying her time as a sign language interpreter, she decided to stay at home and write in earnest after her second child was born. She loves playing Scrabble, tropical beaches, and shopping trips to Ikea. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids. To find out more about the author, visit www.amandacarlson.com or on Twitter @AmandaCCarlson.

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Have you always been a writer?

Yes, ever since I can remember. I started writing in junior high, using my yearbook to add faces to my stories. Over the years, I’ve written humorous essays about my kids, articles for various publications, but did I consider myself a “writer” before the publication of this book? Not really. For me, it’s one of those validation milestones that has made all my other endeavors feel worthy. Now I feel like I can call myself a writer, and it feels damn good.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I have three kids, so it’s safe to say when I’m not writing I’m trying my best to keep up with my motherly duties. I usually wrap my writing day when they get home from school, but my kids are understanding and give me extra time when I need it. Minneapolis is full of beautiful lakes and I love to walk with pals. By the end of the week I need to escape, so movies are a delicious treat. The more action-packed the better. I also love playing Scrabble—to a slightly unhealthy degree. There’s nothing better than flipping from my WIP to make a move on the Scrabble board. It clears my mind, and when I jump back, I’m ready to write again.

World building is such a big part of urban fantasy. How did you build your world in Full Blooded?

To me, world building is the best part of writing urban fantasy. Being able to invent the rules and bring readers into your universe is so much fun. I had a blast creating Full Blooded. The biggest question I started with was: Do humans know my characters exist? Once I decided their world was a secret, it shaped the book. For the individual characters, the imps, the witches, the vamps and wolves, I asked myself, how much magic do they have? How do they wield it? When all the details were fleshed out, the key was to open up the world in front of the reader and make sure they weren’t bogged down with too many details at once. Selene, the Lunar Goddess, is an actual Greek deity. I enjoyed working her into the story. There’s never a dull moment writing urban fantasy. I absolutely love this genre.

Why the “only female werewolf”? Where did the inspiration for Jessica come from?

All my books start out with a solid visual first scene, which plays out in my mind like a sequence from a movie. Jessica started in my mind with her shift, and once she was done, I knew she was completely “different” from all the other wolves. She stood out, but she also craved a strong family unit. As the books progress, you’ll see Jessica’s friends and family play a big role in her life. She made herself unique in that first scene—and people often fear what they don’t understand. Not so different from the wolves in my story. After that, everything fell into place and the story line unfolded.

How did the Cain Myth come to be?

Werewolves in my world are superstitious to an incredible degree. Jessica wasn’t supposed to exist, so to solidify the Pack’s fear, I felt they had to have something tangible. Preferably something they could hold on to and see. The Cain Myth was a great place to start … but be careful … all may not be what it seems.

How much of you are in your characters?

All of my characters come into my mind fully formed and stubborn. I can’t say any of them are me, but they are definitely a combination of the way I view the world. As a writer, I think most of the time we’re writing characters we’d love to sit down and have a drink with, rather than writing subconsciously about ourselves. At least that’s true for me. Jess may have a little bit of me infused in there somewhere, but really, she’s someone I just want to hang out with.