Angel of Mercy Chapter 2-3 excerpts

Some people will always love, some people never lose hope, some people never die…

These excerpts are from The Chronicles of the Grey Raven. Book One, Angel of Mercy, now available on Smashwords and Amazon and Amazon UK

CHAPTER TWO
Saturday, January 4th, 2014

My first memories of America were of wide open skies and everything seemed bigger, the houses, stores, cars and there was a general feeling of confidence. We lived in San Antonio, Texas due to the fact dad still had two months to go before he was discharged. One incident that struck dad as odd was the fact she referred to the San Pedro Springs area as Yanaguana, meaning refreshing waters.
“The Payaya Indians once lived here.”
Dad didn’t believe her until he took her to a local museum and found out the truth for himself.
“That’s my Cat, the walking encyclopedia.”
It wasn’t the only odd thing about his new wife. She was a doctor who smoked and yet she didn’t show any signs of wanting to give up, although she frowned on smoking as being an unhealthy habit. Over the years I tried to get her to stop but she wasn’t for giving up something she enjoyed. Another oddity was her expertise with firearms. About a month after we arrived in America we went to dinner at his buddy’s house. They had quite a bit of land out back and as he’d just bought himself a new pistol to add to his collection, he and dad set up some cans to do their male bonding thing. Cat and me were inside when they started banging away and eventually she took me outside to have a look. To dad’s surprise, she wanted to have a shot and I can remember the look on his buddy’s face, she didn’t exactly come off as one of those NRA types.

CHAPTER THREE
Sunday, January 5th, 2014

Jana came over for dinner tonight. You remember her from my previous entry? The last time I’d seen her was back in New Orleans as a kid, I wasn’t aware she’d changed jobs let alone countries. She’s working as a security consultant for the Latvian consulate in Edinburgh now. Being a vampire, she changes jobs and locations frequently. We spent a bit of time talking about New Orleans and recalling old memories, I’d no idea back then she was a vampire as well. She read the first two entries and wants to read more! That’s okay, it just feels weird having someone read my stuff, apart from mom of course. One of the things she asked was if there were any other hints I’d picked up that might indicate my stepmom was different to other moms and I had to think about that one.
There were signs of course but nothing that might point to vampirism.
Like the fact she was so knowledgeable and multilingual. Indeed when we went to an Italian restaurant once and she ordered in Italian the waiter, who was a recent immigrant, mistook her for an Italian rather than a Scot who’d learned the language. One of the things we native English speakers don’t realize is that other languages have accents too. This waiter actually thought she was from Milan. A few months later we were at a soccer game and as we were leaving she got into a conversation with another Italian. This woman was from Venice and she thought Cat was from Venice as well. It’s one thing to learn another language but it’s another thing entirely to manage the different accents. Cat could change mid stream and I suppose that’s one hint.

When my stepmom’s plane went down a part of me died, Cat was my world. In her place she left us to her friends, the Grey Ravens. Over the years I slowly came to realise her death was a mere facade. When we were reunited I learned the truth about Clan Grey Raven and her remarkable history. Some people will always love. Some people never lose hope. Some people never die…
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