Book Description:
When monsters stalk the darkness of Prohibition era Chicago, it takes a special kind of hero to kill them.
Private detective Mark Van Ryn’s
supernatural power over shadow has made him an outcast his whole life. When a
mutated creature starts eating Chicago’s gangsters from the inside out, Mark is
the only man in the city who can hunt it down and destroy it. But a dangerous
lady has a job for Mark too, one that might cost him more than his life.
Gifted perfumer Eliza Karlova needs a man. The most evil man Chicago’s got. And she needs Mark to find him for her. Because Eliza has a deadly power of her own and a family legacy she’s doomed to keep. But when forbidden passion flames up between Eliza and the angelically handsome detective, she has to decide between her destiny, and the man she loves.
War brews in the city as the Century of Progress World’s Fair draws near, and Mark and Eliza must find a way to trust each other if their love, and Chicago, are to survive.
Gritty and gripping, powerful and sexy, Shadow and Poison will have your heart racing with each kill and every searing kiss. ~ Max Watson, author of Chains of Nurture
Eliza’s face was
carefully turned away from him as she cuddled up next to Duke. Pretending that
if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her, maybe.
That never
works, sweetheart. Drink in hand, he ambled across the room toward the darling
couple.
Duke watched him
coming with a half-smile. “Mark,” he drawled. “We seem to be meeting everywhere
nowadays. I see neither hide nor hair of you for years, and now here you are.
Again.”
“Funny
coincidence, eh Lionel?”
“Indeed.” He
slid a glance at McGann and his boys, who were eyeing them right back.
“Interesting friends you’ve made.”
“I might say the
same for you,” Mark returned, his eyes on Eliza.
“Ah, where are
my manners?” Duke said with a little laugh. “You remember Miss Karlova.”
She held out her
hand in a languid gesture. “How do you do,” she said, with a polite, distant
smile on her lips. As if those lips hadn’t been locked on his a few hours ago.
A hard smile
edged his own mouth as he took her hand in his. “Yeah,” he said. “Eliza isn’t
the kind of lady a man forgets. Thank you for the lovely morning we spent
together, by the way. I hope you enjoyed the red hot sausage.” He brought her
hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over her gloved fingertips.
Her face drained
of color as she stared at him, wide-eyed. She all but snatched her hand away
from him.“You—you remember.”
Duke arched an
eyebrow at her. “What’s this? You spent the morning with Mark? Why, how
charitable of you to visit with a poor invalid, my dear.”
“Yeah, she’s a
regular angel of mercy.” Mark kept his eyes on Eliza. “We could talk about the
reason you came to see me, or we can dance. What do you say angel?”
“I . . . I . .
.” she said.
“Speechless with
delight, I guess.” He plopped his whiskey glass down on the table and all but
scooped Eliza up out of her chair. “You don’t mind, do you old fellow?” he said
to Duke. Without waiting for a reply he swept Eliza onto the dance floor.
It had been a
long time since he’d danced with a woman. Not since the fluffy little
debutantes of his youth. But she made it easy. She was a smooth, graceful
dancer, responding to the lightest touch as he moved her around the floor. Her
gloved hand rested light as smoke on his shoulder, the fingers of the other
clasping his softly.
But though her
body moved beautifully with his, from the neck up, she wasn’t happy with him at
all. Her eyes were narrowed, her lush red lips drawn tight. “What are you
doing?” she murmured. “Why are you trying to convince Duke you’re courting me?”
“Would you
rather I told him you hired me to spy on him?”
“I would rather
you hadn’t come here at all. What do you think you’re about, interfering with
my plans like this?”
“It isn’t about
you, sweetheart. I’m on a job. It’s just your bad luck if I accidentally wreck
your chance to nab a murderer for a husband.”
“For your
information, you can’t destroy my chance to ‘nab’ Duke, no matter what you do.
You’re only making a fool of yourself, Mr. Van Ryn.”
“Since our lips
got to know each other so well this morning, I think you can call me Mark.”
Her cheeks turned
pink. “So you remember that too.”
“If you think
I’d forget a kiss like that just because you tell me to, you don’t know me very
well, Eliza.” He slipped his hand down her back an inch and squeezed her
softly.
She sucked in a
breath and her blush deepened. “Stop that. What do you want, Mark? Really.”
“I want to know
what Duke told you about his pet monster.”
“Nothing. The
only topic we’ve spoken about is the World’s Fair.”
“That’s all?”
“That, and all
the important politicians who will be there on opening day. Lionel wants very
badly to impress them.”
“So it’s Lionel,
is it?”
“Yes. What else
should I call my future fiancé?”
“The defendant?”
“Hilarious.” The
band started winding up its tune. “Now that you’ve got what you came for, you
can take me back to my table.”
“I haven’t got
everything I want yet, angel, but I will.”
She didn’t
dignify that with a reply, but pivoted, chin in the air, and marched off the
dance floor, barely waiting for him to escort her.
Duke was
watching them with hooded eyes. He got up lazily as they approached and held
out his hand to Eliza. “You dance beautifully, my dear. All you need is a
partner worthy of you, and you would be without peer.”
“I’m already
without peer, darling, but I wouldn’t mind another dance,” she said with a
saucy smile.
Duke immediately
took her in his arms and danced her off as a new tune began.
“Have fun kids,”
Mark said. The sight of Eliza in Duke’s arms did something nasty to his
insides, so he turned away went back to the bar. He ignored McGann’s meaningful
glare as he passed by their table and put his foot on the rail and his elbow on
the counter. “Gimme another whiskey,” he said to the barkeep.
As the man
poured his drink, McGann got up and huffed over next to him. “What are you
doing? You’re not here to make time with some twist,” he said.
He looked away
from McGann, staring into the long mirror behind the bar. His own ghost-white
face stared back at him. Behind his reflection, Eliza and Duke danced past. “I
know what I’m doing,” he said. “This is all part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw the bartender standing a few feet away from him,
staring down into a sink behind the counter. He craned his neck for a better
look and saw water bubbling up out of the pipes. The man took a piece of wire
out from underneath the counter and stuck it into the drain, probing around.
The hair at the
back of Mark’s neck stirred.
“Did you hear
what I said, punk?” McGann barked. “What’s your plan to catch this thing?”
In the mirror,
Mark saw Eliza stop short in the middle of the dance floor. She pulled away
from Duke and spun toward the bar, nostrils flaring, eyes wide.
“Damn!” Mark
lunged for McGann. “Get back!”
A fountain of
greasy water exploded from the sink, shooting past the bartender and sending
him tumbling to the floor. A tentacle like a long rope of jelly lashed out of
the drain straight for McGann’s face. Mark got a fist in the gangster’s collar
and yanked him away from the thing, but he wasn’t quite fast enough.
The tip of the
tentacle whipped across McGann’s chin, leaving a wide red streak like an acid
burn. One touch of that thing could dissolve human flesh. Mark released McGann
and he flailed away, pulling out his gun.
Mark was dimly
aware of the screams erupting around him, the Outfit boys leaping to their feet
and drawing their heaters, people in a mad stampede toward the doors.
But all his focus was on the mass of slime
pouring itself out of the drain, across the bar and onto the floor. It was a
rubbery, pulsing, roiling mass of greenish jelly that quickly formed a viscous
blob three times as big as a man. Tendrils of slime shot out of the main body,
probing around like long tongues licking the air, and then sucking themselves
back in with an awful slurping sound.
There you are at
last, you ugly bastard. He gathered his shadow and got ready for a brawl.
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