THE END?Not if you dive into Mercedes’ other books:Nameless: The Darkness Comes—Luna Masterson sees demons. She has been dealing with the demonic all her life, so when her brother gets tangled up with a demon named Sparkles, ‘Luna the Lunatic’ rolls in on her motorcycle to save the day. Armed with the ability to harm demons, her scathing sarcasm, and a hefty chip on her shoulder, Luna gathers the most unusual of allies, teaming up with a green-eyed heroin addict and a snarky demon ‘of some import.’ After all, outcasts of a feather should stick together . . . even until the end.Little Dead Red—The Wolf is roaming the city, and he must be stopped. In this modern day retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf takes to the city streets to capture his prey, but the hunter is close behind him. With Grim Marie on the prowl, the hunter becomes the hunted.Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy—Bryony Adams is destined to be murdered, but fortunately Fate has terrible
BIOGRAPHYMercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantasist who wears stilettos, red lipstick, and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of the short story collection Beautiful Sorrows, the novellas Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love and Little Dead Red, and the novels Nameless: The Darkness Comes and Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy. She often speaks at conferences and teaches workshops on several subjects, including personal branding and how to write a novel in stolen moments. Mercedes lives and works in Sin City with her family and menagerie of Strange and Unusual Pets. You can reach her at www.abrokenlaptop.com.
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CHAPTER ONEShe was beautiful, this woman who wandered the graveyard. All hair and eyes. In a light cotton dress covering her rounded belly, she walked barefoot across the overgrown lawns. She smiled and laughed as she touched the flowers garnishing the dead.She saw a particularly beautiful headstone, a grave marker.“Montessa,” she read, and something about it, the strength of it, the delicacy, stopped her in her tracks. She stood and waited. Moreover, she felt.“That will be your name, darling,” she told the child in her womb. The newly named Montessa skipped and spun and twirled. Or perhaps she sucked her thumb in silence. Her mama couldn’t really tell these days now that she was so ill. But she carried a little girl, she was sure of it, and she loved this child fiercely.“Your life will be charmed,” she said, navigating through the headstones and weeping angels as well as she could. “I believe wonderful things happen to little girls named Montessa. You’re special.”Sweet tho
CHAPTER TWOMontessa awoke and moaned. Renan’s blows had been nearly unbearable this time. She blinked, but the room remained dark.“Decided to wake up?” The voice was soft, surprisingly so. The words were spoken intimately like a lover would, but she didn’t recognize the voice, except to say that it was strangely beautiful and foreign.The hood was yanked off her head, and Montessa blinked in the dim light that came from a small lamp. Even that light was too much.“I’m going to throw up,” she said. A shadow suddenly swooped close, holding a large, plastic bowl in front of her face. She retched, twice. Montessa realized the stranger was holding her hair back from her face. “Thank you,” she whispered when she was done. The bowl was emptied. The stranger mopped at her face with a damp baby wipe. She closed her eyes to keep out the light.“I don’t like filth. Don’t mistake this for tenderness.”That soft voice again.She nearly laughed. She felt her lips turn up despite herself.“
CHAPTER THREEThe meathead bouncer saw Montessa leave that night, but he didn’t see where she went. Assumed she walked home if she didn’t have a ride. She’d been walking home a lot lately.“What’s that supposed to mean?” Renan demanded. His voice was hot and dangerous, his eyes narrowed to slits. He took his aggression and turned it on high.“Nothing. It just means that she’s been walking home a lot lately. What’s with the attitude, man?”“You didn’t see nobody pick her up or nothin’?”“Not that I saw.”Renan ran his hand over his hair. “She’ll be so sorry for this.”“Cool it. She could be in trouble. This doesn’t seem like her.”Renan glared at the meathead. “And just how do you know anything about her, huh? Not supposed to talk to the girls, are you? Not supposed to talk to my girl.”The bouncer stepped forward. “Then maybe you should take care of your girl, huh? Keep an eye out for her.”“What was that?”“You heard me.”Renan left with his anger burning slow. Didn’t come
CHAPTER FOURIt seemed a shame to be so close to the sea and not to dabble in it just a little. There was nowhere Lu liked better. Sometimes he thought he’d been born of the sea, a Boy of Sorrows, and one day he’d simply walk back into the waves and disappear.“Fitting,” she said.“Why is that?”She stared at the ocean with a fierceness that belied her earlier good nature.He saw long canines, guillotines, and axes in her eyes.“You get rid of all of us, don’t you? In pieces and parts. How many are found? How long does it take? You have this life of secrecy. And in the end, you think you’ll just disappear and nobody will notice. It doesn’t happen like that.”“It happens exactly like that.”“It doesn’t. There’s always somebody who will miss you. Somebody who will know you’re gone. You think you can live on this Earth and not leave some kind of imprint?”Had he been the laughing type, he would have laughed at this, but it didn’t seem terribly funny. It just seemed terrible. “Who