Fairie Tales (Book 1 of the Revelations Trilogy) by Fiona Skye is today's featured book on One Thousand Worlds.
The world changed four years ago, on an early October night two days before the Full Moon.
That was the night my mentor, a 3,000-year-old vampire known as Onyx, the Duke of Tucson, decided to reveal his existence to the world—and I joined him by shifting into a big black Jaguar on live TV.
Of course, we were sort of helped along in our decision by the release of surveillance footage of the two of us handily beating the ever-living crap out of five rather large muscular men and a twelve-foot tall giant, without so much as a bruise or broken bone between us. Oh, and then there was the police department headquarters that was demolished in a series of extremely localized earthquakes, a man who floated in midair, Onyx hurling elephant-sized chunks of rubble at the floaty guy without breaking a sweat, and Onyx nearly burning to ashes and healing those wounds in mere hours, rather than months.
At first, no one wanted to believe it. The existence of actual bloodsucking undead, of people who really did turn into animals every full moon, had to be a hoax started by desperate people looking to make a quick buck. But as more and more Preternaturals revealed their true natures, including some famous actors and powerful politicians, the truth became harder to deny.
In the years after the Night of Revelations, the world went a little mad. Groups of humans banded together and hunted down anyone they suspected of being a Preternatural creature. Thousands of innocent people—most of whom were actually human—were killed in riots that spread across the globe. Then a popular Republican Senator from Arizona came out as a Tiger and began pushing a bill through the U.S. Congress called the Preternatural Equal Rights Act. It was a long, hard fight, but the bill was eventually passed and real dialogue began, the riots died down, and the world's population slowly came to accept us.
The PERA provided a wealth of federally-protected civil rights, as well as funding for new law enforcement units at the federal, state, and local levels, and a new prison system tailored to accommodate the special challenges of incarcerating Preternatural creatures who broke the law. The new units made up the "Preternatural Law Enforcement Bureau," and with an acronym of "PLEB", it was no stretch of the imagination to begin calling the agents "Plebeians." In Arizona, the head of the Federal PLEB office was none other than my ex-boyfriend, Deacon Lindley, a former cop who had been present when the police headquarters had been destroyed. Yeah, his new job caused me a lot of joy and happiness. It had not been a good break-up; we couldn't be in the same room together without fighting, and since I was pretty much the public face of the Preternatural world now, we spent a lot of time in the same room together.
I became a celebrity overnight. I couldn't leave my house for weeks due to the glut of reporters and TV cameras that were camped out in my front yard. Even after the fervor finally died down and the reporters moved on to cover Senator Romero's story, I was still stopped and asked for autographs everywhere I went. I also received death threats; some enterprising person even sent me a gorgeous rosewood box lined with purple velvet that contained six silver bullets, each carved with my name. Deacon wanted to assign me a protective detail after that, but I flatly refused to live in fear.
I left my job as a crime-beat reporter for the Tucson Daily Gazette after the PERA passed, and wrote a book based on my early life and my experiences living as a Cat. After the book spent nearly a full year at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list, I received an offer from CNN to become an on-air personality, with my own nightly talk show dedicated to discussions of the new world order and the role that Preternaturals would have in it.
Not all of my kind were happy with what had happened on that October night, four years ago. Apart from the humans' reactions, I'd faced my fair share of threats and anger from those of my kind who thought it would have been better to remain hidden away, struggling to pretend that they were human. These were usually the older vampires, Onyx's contemporaries, who had been in the shadows for centuries. I could understand their reluctance to come out into the open and stop hiding: when someone followed a behavioral pattern long enough, it became far more than mere habit. It became a way of life, an ingrained part of one's culture. So I didn't begrudge them their anger or even their threats—much.
I tried to hold onto the life I'd lived before Night of Revelations. I still ate at the same restaurants, had the same friends, shopped at the same stores. I still spent weekends in Tempe, flirting with anything in trousers, only now I didn't have to pretend to be drunk or stupid to get laid. Still, some changes were inevitable. I moved to an exclusive and secure neighborhood in the northeastern foothills of Tucson, and I was now a television celebrity, the public face of things that went bump in the night everywhere; my life was a long way away from the days when I'd been just another journalist struggling to get by.
Synopsis:
Riley O'Rourke,
a TV talk show host with a serious addiction to gummi worms, broke one of the
unwritten rules of being a Preternatural—she told the world the things that go
bump in the night are real and to prove it, she changed into a jaguar on live
TV, plunging the world into years of chaos that required an act of Congress to
stop.
Not all the
Preternaturals are happy with this new world order, however, and the Queen of
the Winter Faeries punishes Riley for her role in the Night of Revelations by
sending some of the nastiest storybook characters imaginable to kill her.
The Winter Queen's rival, the Summer Queen, offers Riley and her
loved ones protection in exchange for stealing a magic mirror from the Winter
court, an object which has promoted rivalry between the Summer and Winter
factions for eons. Riley agrees to what seems an impossible task: break into
the Winter court's castle, sneak past Red Caps, giants, and something called
the Nuckelavee, steal the mirror and bring it back to the Summer Court, all
without the Winter Queen ever finding out.
Riley sets out
on this quest with her mentor, a 3,000-year-old vampire, and her lover, a
federal law enforcement agent with a secret of his own. What they didn't
suspect was that taking possession of the mirror could doom the entire world's
very existence. Dealing with the Fae is always a double-edged sword, serrated
and sharp. Now Riley must find a way to undo the damage...
Author Bio:
Fiona Skye is an urban
fantasy novelist currently living in the deserts of Southern Arizona. She
shares a home with her husband, two kids, three cats, and a Border Collie,
named Cooper.
Fiona’s passion for story
telling began early in life. At age twelve, she wrote her first short story,
which was based on a song by 1980s hair band. She has dedicated her life since
then to writing, only to be occasionally distracted by her insatiable love of
yarn and crochet, and the dogged pursuit of the perfect plate of cheese
enchiladas.
She counts Diana Gabaldon
and Jim Butcher as her favorite authors and biggest influences. Joining these
two on the list of people she would wait in queue for a week to have a coffee
with are Neil Peart, David Tennant, and Brandon Sanderson.
Fairie Tales
The world changed four years ago, on an early October night two days before the Full Moon.
That was the night my mentor, a 3,000-year-old vampire known as Onyx, the Duke of Tucson, decided to reveal his existence to the world—and I joined him by shifting into a big black Jaguar on live TV.
Of course, we were sort of helped along in our decision by the release of surveillance footage of the two of us handily beating the ever-living crap out of five rather large muscular men and a twelve-foot tall giant, without so much as a bruise or broken bone between us. Oh, and then there was the police department headquarters that was demolished in a series of extremely localized earthquakes, a man who floated in midair, Onyx hurling elephant-sized chunks of rubble at the floaty guy without breaking a sweat, and Onyx nearly burning to ashes and healing those wounds in mere hours, rather than months.
At first, no one wanted to believe it. The existence of actual bloodsucking undead, of people who really did turn into animals every full moon, had to be a hoax started by desperate people looking to make a quick buck. But as more and more Preternaturals revealed their true natures, including some famous actors and powerful politicians, the truth became harder to deny.
In the years after the Night of Revelations, the world went a little mad. Groups of humans banded together and hunted down anyone they suspected of being a Preternatural creature. Thousands of innocent people—most of whom were actually human—were killed in riots that spread across the globe. Then a popular Republican Senator from Arizona came out as a Tiger and began pushing a bill through the U.S. Congress called the Preternatural Equal Rights Act. It was a long, hard fight, but the bill was eventually passed and real dialogue began, the riots died down, and the world's population slowly came to accept us.
The PERA provided a wealth of federally-protected civil rights, as well as funding for new law enforcement units at the federal, state, and local levels, and a new prison system tailored to accommodate the special challenges of incarcerating Preternatural creatures who broke the law. The new units made up the "Preternatural Law Enforcement Bureau," and with an acronym of "PLEB", it was no stretch of the imagination to begin calling the agents "Plebeians." In Arizona, the head of the Federal PLEB office was none other than my ex-boyfriend, Deacon Lindley, a former cop who had been present when the police headquarters had been destroyed. Yeah, his new job caused me a lot of joy and happiness. It had not been a good break-up; we couldn't be in the same room together without fighting, and since I was pretty much the public face of the Preternatural world now, we spent a lot of time in the same room together.
I became a celebrity overnight. I couldn't leave my house for weeks due to the glut of reporters and TV cameras that were camped out in my front yard. Even after the fervor finally died down and the reporters moved on to cover Senator Romero's story, I was still stopped and asked for autographs everywhere I went. I also received death threats; some enterprising person even sent me a gorgeous rosewood box lined with purple velvet that contained six silver bullets, each carved with my name. Deacon wanted to assign me a protective detail after that, but I flatly refused to live in fear.
I left my job as a crime-beat reporter for the Tucson Daily Gazette after the PERA passed, and wrote a book based on my early life and my experiences living as a Cat. After the book spent nearly a full year at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list, I received an offer from CNN to become an on-air personality, with my own nightly talk show dedicated to discussions of the new world order and the role that Preternaturals would have in it.
Not all of my kind were happy with what had happened on that October night, four years ago. Apart from the humans' reactions, I'd faced my fair share of threats and anger from those of my kind who thought it would have been better to remain hidden away, struggling to pretend that they were human. These were usually the older vampires, Onyx's contemporaries, who had been in the shadows for centuries. I could understand their reluctance to come out into the open and stop hiding: when someone followed a behavioral pattern long enough, it became far more than mere habit. It became a way of life, an ingrained part of one's culture. So I didn't begrudge them their anger or even their threats—much.
I tried to hold onto the life I'd lived before Night of Revelations. I still ate at the same restaurants, had the same friends, shopped at the same stores. I still spent weekends in Tempe, flirting with anything in trousers, only now I didn't have to pretend to be drunk or stupid to get laid. Still, some changes were inevitable. I moved to an exclusive and secure neighborhood in the northeastern foothills of Tucson, and I was now a television celebrity, the public face of things that went bump in the night everywhere; my life was a long way away from the days when I'd been just another journalist struggling to get by.
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