Familiar Love: Book Two
Mullins was lured into hell through desperation—and a fatal mistake. He’s done his best to hang onto his soul in the twisted realm of the underworld, and serving the Youngblood family when summoned has been his only joy. Edward concocts a plan to spring Mullins by collecting a series of items to perform an ancient ritual—an idea that terrifies Mullins. He can’t bear the thought of losing Edward and his brothers to a dangerous quest.
But every item in their collection is an adventure in brotherhood and magic, and as Mullins watches from the sidelines, he becomes more and more hopeful that they will succeed. When the time comes for Mullins to join the mission, can he find enough faith and hope to redeem himself and allow himself happiness in the arms of a man who would literally go to hell and back—and beyond—to have Mullins by his side?
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Excerpt...
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Cat gives this one 4 Meows...
You do need to read Familar Angels firs but there is enough backstory to refresh your memory. That was my only issue was there was so much backstory it felt like two books and made the story longer. Maybe I was just too anxious to see how they pulled saving Mullins off and if they did. Lol!
The characters are unique. We have three cat familiars that are brothers by love and raised together as very young boys. We have a fallen Angel (Suriel’s story is in book one) two Demon’s, a witch and Emma and Leonard’s son. A very complicated but loving family.
The storyline is good. Edward is trying to save Mullin’s from Hell and they have to find some ingredients for a complicated spell. Of course it’s not an easy task and bad Demon’s wanting their souls, and Leonard back in Hell make it even harder.
There is lots of action, a touch of humor, romance and of course a good Urban fantasy.
This book is a pure fun page turner!
Excerpt...
A Good Brother’s Spit
THE MARKET was supposed to be neutral ground.
Edward Youngblood gathered his thin silk scarf tighter around his hair and face, making sure his features were obscured. His bright green eyes and sunburned skin were obvious over the covering, but he couldn’t help that.
This was supposed to be a place of anonymity. A sort of “Magic Users Are Us” where those with knowledge of the arcane gathered on a hidden plane of existence to talk shop and trade artifacts.
But that didn’t mean the name Edward Youngblood wasn’t being whispered fiercely these days, and Edward could feel the sands of time running through his fingers even as he took a step inside the gathering tent and out of the fierce suns of this desert plane.
He really needed this chameleon’s tongue.
It wasn’t an actual tongue of an actual chameleon—that would be easy enough to gather and downright cruel. What he needed was rarer and bit more just, to his way of thinking. The spell called for Chameleon’s Tongue, After Use, which meant the tongue of a spy, a shapeshifter who had betrayed his people, right after the act of betrayal.
He looked up at Cuamo, the barkeep of the Market, and nodded. He had intel—the best—that such a shapeshifter would be in this bar this night.
Cuamo nodded and looked away, catching the eyes of four hooded figures in the corner of the tent, and Edward stiffened.
He knew those brown eyes, snapping mad over a hand-woven scarf, and he knew the crossed blue eyes of the man next to him, and oh, God and Goddess help him, he knew the ginormous shoulders and hazel eyes of the man across from them.
And there was no denying the angel in the corner, with or without his wings.
Edward tore the scarf from his face, all need for pretense gone.
“Goddammit!” He stalked to the corner and threw himself gracelessly into the pile of cushions they’d set next to their table for him. “What in the unholy fuck are you idiots doing here?”
Harry Youngblood, his brother, ripped off his burnoose and let the full weight of his scowl fall on Edward, and Edward felt his fury start to subside.
“Edward fucking Youngblood—did you really think we’d let you do this alone?”
Edward swallowed, then crossed his arms on their low table the better to bury his head. “It was supposed to be my quest,” he said, as close to apology as he ever came. “I’m supposed to find the items alone—”
“And you did,” Beltane Youngblood, the hazel-eyed giant, said earnestly. His burnoose fell off without thought—but then, Beltane barely had to breathe and there were ripples in the world. “You found all—”
“Some,” Edward corrected.
“Most of the ingredients here all by yourself, and you put them in the back of my parents’ minivan, which got inconveniently….”
“Blown up,” Francis supplied at Bel’s side, looking dreamily up at the grown young man he and his brother familiars had known since his first breath. “They got blown up, remember?”
Beltane smiled besottedly down at Francis, and Edward tried and failed to avoid rolling his eyes. The Youngblood brothers were not technically brothers, nor related by blood. The thing that had started up between Beltane and Francis in the past year both defied description and was never discussed among Francis, Edward, and Harry—but that didn’t mean Edward and Harry didn’t spend their time worrying about how it might end up.
The whole lot of them were in each other’s pockets far too deeply for a failed love affair to separate two of them—and as steady and loyal as Beltane had been since birth, Francis had always been as skittish as, well, a Siamese cat. Messing with the Youngblood chemistry was not wise.
But Bel didn’t seem to worry about that. Ever. “Yes, but it was mother who did the blowing up. I mean, she was getting us all away from psychos with guns at the time, but I don’t think she wants reminding.” Bel sounded very earnest, as he should. His mother was, well, the reason they were all walking around—not just on planet earth but on this particular magical plane where none of them had any business being.
“I’m just saying, there were explosions,” Francis told him mildly. Then he smiled, an expression blissfully cold and deeply disturbing on his narrow, roman-nosed face. “I liked the explosions.”
“I helped with those, remember?” Bel said with pride. “Mother had just finished teaching me flourishes, right? A little blue, a little green—”
“I was there, Beltane,” Edward snapped, trying not to let their byplay distract him. “I remember.”
“But we weren’t there, were we, Harry?” Harry’s beloved, Suriel, turned big earth-brown eyes to Harry’s face. Harry—the oldest of them, the protector—had a jaw of granite and a brow that had been pulled down into a scowl more often than not. In over 140 years of friendship and brotherhood, Harry had proven himself the most aggressive and driven of the lot of them.
Angst and pain, Amy Lane Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
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