Title: Darkest Rendezvous
Age and Genre: Adult Historical
Paranormal Romance
Word Count: 50,000
Query:
Set in alternate 19th
century New York, Darkest Rendezvous is the tale of ethereal beauty, Miss
Persephone Greaves, who is caught up in a rivalrous love triangle between a
wicked Vampyre Count, a roguish Lycanthrope Chieftain and the miserly ghoul
next door as she becomes key to a plot by renegade humans to destroy her world.
Count Nicodemus von
Shroud, the newest lord of Manor Sanguine Ligurio, is as handsome as he is
wealthy and has the eye of every eligible lady of New York's Famous
Four Hundred but his heart belongs to the enchanting Miss Persephone
Greaves. However, Miss Greaves is a Zombi, a civilized class of zombie recently
elevated to the nethermost circles of the necroelite and though she is the
daughter of a highly esteemed physician, she is still considered beneath
the touch of the most powerful Vampyre clan in America.
Mr. Rufus Bane, chief of
the Lupis Tribe, has also taken notice of the delectable Miss Greaves at
Nightshade Manor’s latest Moonlight Ball and refuses to concede to his Vampyre
rival for the lady’s affections despite her impending engagement to ominous
Ghoul, Lord Lucius Newmont. However, insurrections and assassination attempts
by Rufus’ fellow Lycanthropes may prove slightly distracting.
Miss Persephone Greaves’
first season is a bigger success than she could have ever dreamed. Resigned to
spend eternity as bride to ominous Lord Lucius Newmont, her phenomenal beauty
and charm seem to overcome the age old stigma her kind face for atrocities
past, garnering ringing approval from New York’s famous Four Hundred. Against
warnings from friends and the wishes of her father, Persephone finds herself
falling for both the intense werewolf whose kisses set her body aflame and a
seductive Vampyre whose gaze sends her mind reeling with wicked dreams.
While Persephone tries to
decide her course of action, a mysterious illness starts killing human slaves,
Lycanthrope tribesmen and the oldest and weakest members of the
necroelite. When Persephone is poisoned, Rufus and Nicodemus uncover a plot to
destroy the nation’s undead and must work together to expose betrayals and save
their beloved.
First 250 Words
Persephone Greaves stood
in the dimly lit hallway and watched as the slaves lumbered by. Even in the
mindless state in which the undead allowed them to exist, Persephone didn’t
trust humans. Everything about them from the way their grey skin hung loosely from
their bones and gaping mouths to the milky unseeing eyes that always seem to be
watching, waiting for something made her uneasy. Persephone wished her father
would finish his examination of the Newmonts’ kitchen slave who had suddenly
fallen ill so they could quit this place. Of course she didn’t have to hover in
the slave quarters. Lucius Newmont was in his study but would gladly keep
Persephone company in the parlor.
The Ghoul was ten years
Persephone’s senior and even as a lanky youth, Lucius had been very serious and
solemn. The Newmonts had lost their parents towards the end of the 1812
Uprising, before the humans’ defeat, and at 14 years of age Lucius took the
responsibility of his and his sister’s welfare on to his ossified shoulders.
Being business partners as well as neighbors, Dr. Sebastian Greaves assisted
Captain Newmont’s children as often as Lucius would allow and so became like an
extended family. Dr. Greaves would, on occasion, allude to a match between
Persephone and Lucius but she simply was not interested.
Repulsive as Ghouls were,
the Newmont siblings always made the effort to be fashionable. Lucius was tall,
slender and always well dressed.
*****
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