The Passion Season: The Covalent Series, #1

By Libby Doyle

A genre-bending tale of a superhuman warrior from another dimension, an FBI agent with a traumatic past, and the quantum magician caught between them.

 

Exiled to Earth for the sins of his father, Barakiel lives a solitary life. His only satisfaction comes from slaughtering the demons his father sends to attack him and his excursions to defend his homeworld, the Covalent Realm, where he can exercise his skills as a warrior.

 

When Special Agent Zan O'Gara shows up at his door investigating a ritual murder, Barakiel suspects his father—the traitorous warrior Lucifer—is behind it. With the leadership of the Covalent Realm watching his every move, Barakiel knows he should stay away from the beautiful FBI agent, but his discipline fails him.

 

Zan never needed discipline to stay away from men, not since she sobered up. Her life is centered on her demanding job, but when she meets Barakiel she can't get him out of her mind. Believing he is human, Zan swallows her fear to pursue a relationship.

 

Love blooms between them much to the distress of Pellus, the Covalent adept assigned to keep an eye on Barakiel during his exile. Though Pellus tries to stop the ill-advised relationship, Barakiel does not listen, setting in motion a sequence of events that will forever change the fate of the Covalent and humanity alike.

 

"A tale about Lucifer's son that deftly draws in readers with engrossing characters." — Kirkus Reviews

 

​WARNING: The Passion Season is a love story, but not a romance. This book is for adults only. It contains foul language, violence, explicit sex, and sexual violence presented as trauma, NOT as a precursor to romantic feelings. Be aware: This is not a stand-alone novel but the first in an epic series. All five books in this science fantasy thriller are now available. The Covalent Series is complete!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Libby Doyle
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780997298543

Libby Doyle

Libby Doyle escapes real life by writing extravagant tales, filled with adventure, sex, and violence. When not tapping away at her fiction, she's been known to work as an attorney and a journalist. Libby loves absurd humor, travel, punk rock, and her husband. She is the author of The Covalent Series, an epic science fantasy in five parts.

Book preview

Welcome to the world of the Covalent, ancient beings who hold the elemental forces in balance.

The Passion Season is the first novel in a genre-bending, five-book series that is by turns mystery, thriller, urban fantasy, and sci-fi adventure. Above all, the series is the story of a great love and its consequences.

The Covalent Series serves up action, intrigue, violence, and sex. As one reviewer noted, if you like your expectations met, this is not the book for you, but if you want to light up your imagination—read on!

Nuzan, the fifth and final book of The Covalent Series, is live. The series is complete!

Also by Libby Doyle

The Pain Season

The Vengeance Season

The Warlord Season

Nuzan

Learn more at libbydoyle.com.

. . . I with thee have fixed my lot, certain to undergo like doom; if death consort with thee, death is to me as life.

― John Milton, Paradise Lost

WHAT IS A COVALENT BOND?

A bond in which one or more pairs of electrons are shared by two atoms to create a stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces.

COVALENT PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Rainer (ry•ner) Barakiel (ba•rack•ē•el)

Pellus (pel•les)

Ravellen (ra•vel•en)

Abraxos (ah•brax•sōs)

Remiel (rem•ē•el)

Osmadiel (oz•mod•ē•el)

Camael (kam•ā•el)

Galizur (gal•ih•zer)

Roan (row•ahn)

Kemuel (kem•ū•el)

Tariel (tahr•ē•el)

Yahoel (yah•hō•el)

PROLOGUE

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THE STENCH, OH THE STENCH. I smell it still, the same as when I found her in my chambers, her entrails strung across the lamps like shredded cloth. She was my mother. I loved her. Why did he kill her?

She had gone to him. As soon as I was old enough she left her home to be with him. How she must have suffered, denying herself to shield me from his treachery. He was her mate, her match, but by the time she went to him he was no longer the warrior she knew. In his presence, she could not withstand his will. She lured me there, to his kingdom of Destruction. I escaped him and he murdered her.

I killed her as surely as he did. She loved us and we killed her and now he draws me here, to this empty place, this Void. I feel him now, my father, gripping my mind with his terrible fever of power. Like sound that cannot be heard. Outside trying to get in. Inside trying to get out.

Lip still quivering, wayward son? You disappoint me. Your mother was impure. I offered her rapture, yet she could not excise her desire to protect you. Spilling her blood was the most pleasure I ever got from her. You are not like her. I can feel your hatred, hard and sharp as a blade. I live inside you. Return to me and we will subjugate the realms. Return to me or die.

A rush of force. Voracious power. To submit would draw all things to me, pulverize them into a nothingness that only I can fill. Yet buried deep within me is something that I know. I do not understand it, but I know it. I do not belong to you, father. I do not. My Balance will hold. You will not wrest my love from me. Though it lives in pain, it is mine.

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Covalent City, Age of Lucifer’s Rebellion, Phase 7816, Earthly Year 724

Barakiel stood on the edge of the terrace trying to calm his mind. He watched citizens cross the Great Plaza far below and admired the mammoth gates of Covalent City, glowing amber within the pale granite of the city walls. Warriors patrolled the ramparts beneath thin towers of vermilion light. He envied them their duty.

Beyond the occasional flash of the city’s protective barrier, the Stream glimmered sapphire on the horizon. He imagined losing himself in its electromagnetic storms, which might be preferable to the fate the Covalent Council was to decide for him. As the son of the traitor Lucifer, he was an object of hatred and fear, too young to hold anything but a dim promise of power. He had no idea how to resist their pronouncement.

Perhaps they will execute me. That would be one way to ensure my father does not lay waste to their shining city.

The attendant appeared and showed Barakiel into the Council Chamber. His father had described it to him once. Told him how the thick, high pillars shimmered away and reformed, how the great table appeared as a reflecting pool yet was as solid as stone. His father said the Chamber was meant to be an expression of the Council’s mastery over matter and energy. Then he laughed.

Shallow tricks, that is all, by fools who have allowed comfort to make them forget what they are.

Another attendant directed Barakiel to stand by the head of the table. He was addressed by Ravellen, a traveler Covalent of pale beauty, clothed in the crimson robes of the Council president.

Welcome to our chamber, Barakiel.

Thank you, madam president, esteemed Council members. He bowed.

We are sorry for the loss of your mother, Ravellen continued. We are sorry you were unable to save her.

She made her choice.

And you? What would you choose?

To continue my training. Already, I fight as well as warriors double my age.

We do not think this is possible. Your father obviously seeks your death or enslavement. He must see you as a threat.

They think they know him better than I do. He tries to kill me because he loved me once.

I know that, Barakiel said. But even when my mother lured me to him I was able to escape. I would ask the Council to have faith in me.

This is not a question of our faith in you. Ravellen looked down, her lips set in a hard line. When he left your mother’s body in your chambers, Lucifer revealed he has the means to infiltrate the Realm. We have taken measures to stop him, but we do not believe we have seen his last attempt at an incursion.

My father had his minions sneak into the Realm with my mother’s corpse to cause me pain, Barakiel said, keeping his posture rigid to give an impression of the confidence he did not feel. It was hardly an attack. He never moved against the city when I was a child and far more vulnerable. I do not think he will challenge our stronghold now. I should be permitted to continue my training.

Ravellen folded her hands before her, disrupting the table’s watery illusion to reveal hard granite. She looked at Barakiel as if he were a boy who had been horribly bullied at school, but who had no choice but to go back and face it again.

When you were a child your father had lately been driven from the Realm. You know as well as I do his power has grown. Now that he has failed to make you his creature he will never stop trying to kill you, to crush your defiance.

The Council Forces could prevent a full-scale siege, she explained, but violent incursions were another matter. Barakiel’s death might be their singular goal, but they would carry the threat of casualties. This was not a risk the Council was willing to force on its citizens.

So fight him. Go after him, Barakiel said. Destroy him before he can ever reach the city.

The Council members exchanged glances. Abraxos, a thick-limbed warrior with a high shock of black hair, leaned forward in his seat.

To safeguard you? he asked, snorting rudely. Ever since Lucifer brought the demons under his command our forces have been challenged to keep him from the city gates. We are in no position to meet him in his own realm.

With time, he will only grow stronger. Barakiel forced himself to look Abraxos in the eye. We should attack him now.

We would not succeed.

Barakiel hoped they could not sense his fear. The Council members could be planning his death as surely as his father was, but he knew they were right. They had not really defeated Lucifer and the Corrupted, the bloodthirsty Covalent warriors who joined him in his rebellion. The traitors fled to the Destructive Realm where they were able to lick their wounds.

Not sure what they would find in that mysterious realm, the Council Forces didn’t pursue the traitors. This proved to be a mistake. Before long, Lucifer learned to control the demons, beasts that serve an impulse to obliterate everything in their path. He took the demons’ savage power and bent it to his own purpose, infusing it with strategy and intelligence.

Faced with such a foe, the Council had no care for Barakiel’s fate. He was a problem, nothing more. He lowered his head and took a slow, deep breath before he looked up to address Ravellen.

So, what are you going to do with me?

We will send you to the Earthly Realm, somewhat out of your father’s reach, Ravellen said. He will attack you, I am sure, but his attacks will be bounded by physical and temporal laws. We believe you can protect yourself.

I will be alone. By the Council’s own declaration, the Covalent’s days of playing god in the Earthly Realm are over.

We will send a traveler with you. He will not always be there, but he will know at all times where you are. He will help you.

You mean he will mind me.

You say that like it is a bad thing. You are still an adolescent, Barakiel, even if you do not fight like one.

If I am to be banished for nothing I myself have done, pay me the courtesy of admitting you do not trust me.

The Council members regarded him sternly but said nothing. Barakiel fancied he could see their brains working.

Just like his father. Why would we trust him? He is dangerous.

So, who is this traveler? Barakiel asked.

His name is Pellus. He is quite skilled.

Well, then. There is no reason to delay.

No. He is waiting for you on the terrace.

The Council members rose to recite the Covalent Pledge. He knew they expected him to recite it with them.

We are Covalent.

We stand between Creation and Destruction.

To bond them, to bind them.

Our blood we pledge to this.

To Balance, preserver of life.

Barakiel did not recite the pledge. He walked out.

Exiled. Sent to live among the humans with a minder. Ah, well, what does it matter? Nothing could be worse than what happened to me in my father’s brutal realm.

A skilled traveler might allow Barakiel to visit his home, or at least let him journey through the cosmos, although he had no idea if he should expect that. He didn’t know any travelers. Almost everyone Barakiel knew well was a warrior. He’d been taught by a few scholars but had known the other types of Covalent only in passing.

He paused in the anteroom to consider what facts he knew. Covalent born with the talent to perceive the molecular composition of things studied for thousands of phases until they could predict the behavior of subatomic particles. They became travelers, able to move among the realms using rifts in the fabric of existence. Those who achieved mastery became adepts, the highest rank of traveler. These rare and powerful Covalent were able to manipulate the properties of matter and energy, to detect and alter the bonds that give structure to all things.

Barakiel’s mother Yahoel had been close friends with a few travelers. She used to tell him stories of their exploits. In the ancient times, when the Covalent bonded the Creative and Destructive Realms to halt their expansion and bring them to Balance, myriad dimensions had burst in folds from the bonded realms. The travelers were tasked to explore them. Many were lost in the uncharted heavens, but many returned with valuable resources or tales of great beauty and power.

Eventually, the travelers discovered the humans in their lovely sphere. The Covalent openly visited the Earthly Realm, fascinated to learn of beings so like themselves but whose short lives were an expression of Creation transformed to Destruction. Primitive humans came to view them as gods or divine emissaries, but many Covalent were ill-behaved. Warriors of the Rising could not resist playing war games with the hapless creatures. Others enjoyed controlling the humans through sex or fear. Many Covalent lost Balance as the price of victimizing the weak. They grew sick and weak themselves. As a result, the Council outlawed all travel to the Earthly Realm. Thanks to the short lives of humans, the presence of the Covalent among them quickly receded into myth.

Now Barakiel was to be banished to their world, the attentions of this mysterious traveler his only link with home.

He emerged from the anteroom to find the traveler standing by the terrace railing. He was much smaller than Barakiel, dark-skinned, with hair the color of bark and wide-set eyes that glowed like moss in starlight. To Barakiel’s surprise, he wore the black robes of an adept. Travel to and from the Earthly Realm with a single companion hardly required that level of skill.

Hail, warrior, the adept said. I am Pellus. I am to be your traveler.

You are to be my minder.

As you wish.

So, am I to live in the wilderness alone, ripping out the livers of beasts for my supper and terrorizing the humans until I become legend? Barakiel paced along the terrace. Or perhaps I should make them love and worship me like the Covalent of ages past.

Pellus sighed. We more had in mind that you would live among them, as one of them.

And how shall I pass as human? I am light-skinned and fair-haired. I am much larger than they are. I do not know any of their languages. Barakiel looked out at the Stream. I will be a freak.

I plan to place you near a pale, war-like people on fertile land near the northern sea. Most may reach only to your chest, but I do not think your size is so extreme as to be freakish. Pellus spoke with a tone of gentle instruction. Barakiel wanted to shout at him.

How you gain acceptance is up to you, Pellus continued. You may observe the humans for a time. I will teach you to conceal yourself. You are not a traveler, so your technique will be limited, but I can show you how to form a shield with your energy that will hide you from weak human eyes. You may stay concealed if you choose.

Yes, a life of isolation stretching before me for eons sounds just wonderful.

The Council warned me of your bitterness.

How nice of them.

I am sorry for what has happened to you, Barakiel, Pellus said, a slight crease by his eyes all that revealed his discomfort. I knew your mother. I saw her often until my duties kept me from the Realm. Though you do not remember, I have known you since you were born. As a Warrior of the Rising, you are a great loss to us. So young, but already I see how the energy pools at your feet. You could be a great leader but you are not safe here.

Barakiel stared at the adept for some time without really seeing him. He struggled to remain impassive.

As if my safety is anyone’s concern, he mumbled. No matter. Let us go.

By the time they reached Barakiel’s chambers, earthly clothes had been delivered. He donned the strange garments then packed his few belongings in a sling. He leaned his head against the cool stone wall then cast his eyes around the spartan rooms. He would not miss them.

They have been home to my nightmares as much as anything else.

Have you ever passed through a rift? Pellus asked.

No.

The adept explained that they would travel through one of the kinetic rifts, gaps in the fabric of existence that continuously appeared and disappeared, the perpetual breathing of reality. Only Covalent travelers could perceive and use these rifts.

You are likely to find the experience disorienting, but do not worry. We will be bonded. Entangled. Where I go you must follow. You will feel it, but it is not intrusive. Do you understand?

Yes. Barakiel’s voice came out a croak. 

In a hundred pulses, they stood before the rift, although Barakiel saw nothing. The adept grabbed his forearm and they passed inside. Dark energy blasted through him until he was not so much a body as a scattering of particles. But Pellus was there, the control at the edge of his awareness. Barakiel’s terror eased. Ripples of translucent color played across his mind like the blooming of ghostly flowers.

And they were through into the loamy air, hung with dew. Beneath his feet a thick carpet of green. Above his head a gray canopy that moved by virtue of some force he did not understand. His new home.

VERNAL EQUINOX

CHAPTER 1

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Philadelphia, Earthly Year 2014, Age of Lucifer’s Rebellion, Phase 18996

THE DEMONS SURGED into the Earthly Realm through the axial rift, their yellow eyes gleaming from toothy, half-formed faces. Thick limbs jumped with the lust for violence as they locked onto their quarry. As always, Barakiel waited for them, his sword a line of blue steel glinting in the sun.

The axial rifts were the only way Lucifer could send the demons to attack his son. Without fail, Pellus knew precisely where they would appear. When they appeared was a function of their nature.

Unlike the kinetic rifts, these ruptures in the fabric of existence blinked open only at a solstice or equinox when the Earth’s axis shifted relative to the sun. This shift would stretch and twist the dimensional fabric to create a network of fissures that enclosed the planet like the branches of a tree. A dozen or so demons would cram into the rift and rocket through a branch to stage their assault.

Barakiel didn’t know whether they sought to kill him or capture him. They never lived long enough for their goal to become clear. He would draw them to an abandoned industrial building or a neglected stretch of the city where Pellus could conceal the skirmish from human perception under a curtain of refracted light.

Your idiot beasts will never defeat me, father. You wait for me to make a mistake. You will be waiting forever.

This year, the vernal equinox occurred in the middle of the day and Barakiel was nervous. The rift always split into an empty space, but the city was the city. Pellus had to work much harder to conceal the battle when humans were close and active. And they might be, considering the rift had appeared near the Philadelphia Zoo. At least it was a weekday, and a cold one, which meant less people about.

The snarling demons rushed Barakiel, who waited in an empty utility yard behind the zoo. They ran over the hard-packed dirt and crumbled cement, streaking past a collapsed chain link fence. He charged to meet them, turning on the speed as he rotated his body to the left and extended his right arm across his chest. He whipped his hips back to the right at the same time he sliced with his sword. Humming with speed, his blade took three heads before the beasts had the chance to register movement.

As the other monsters watched the heads fly in a spray of brown blood, they called out in their guttural language. They reformed and rushed Barakiel again, their double-sided axes flailing. One beast caught his arm and sliced it open, but this did not stop him from leaping forward and plunging his sword into the chests of two more, one after the other. They were dead before they shut their gaping mouths. He ran past the remaining demons, seeking to lure them deeper into the utility yard, beyond the mess of poles and wires, away from the houses nearby. They all followed him, thoughts of tactics gone as they reacted to the thought that he might escape. Barakiel smiled.

This will not take long.

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Philadelphia

Pellus headed to the computer as soon as he and Barakiel passed through the front door—not a good sign. Barakiel wanted to sit on his balcony, staring at the river and brooding, but the adept’s clicking and tapping meant he had work on his mind.

You get cleaned up, he said. I will break into the police computer system to see if they discovered any bodies.

Barakiel sighed and went to remove his armor. Of course, Pellus was right. If the ritual murder Barakiel had discovered shortly after the winter solstice had anything to do with him or the demons, now would be the time for another one.

The bathroom soothed his irritation. Soft sunlight fell through high windows onto blue tile and a wall of hanging plants. He breathed their scent in deeply, then took his time washing the foul-smelling demon blood off his skin, out of his hair. He stared at the drain until the water ran clear.

Yes, better, but I am still restless. I do not understand it.

Perhaps he was more worried about the body he’d found than he thought. Left on display not far from his compound, the corpse had been surrounded by daggers at the four points of the compass, its internal organs removed. He’d also found a carved wooden medallion lying on the remains that showed the Earth in the embrace of a great tree. Although he couldn’t be sure, Barakiel feared this was a depiction of an axial rift. He had taken the daggers and the medallion but left the body for the humans to discover.

Considering the heinous things humans did to each other, he hoped the ritual had nothing to do with him. That it was a fluke. Certainly it resembled a sacrifice, but the idiot bands of humans who worshipped a cartoon version of Lucifer generally never moved beyond chickens.

Pellus had found something by the time Barakiel came out of the bathroom, judging by his grave expression.

What is it?

An incident report. Early this morning park rangers found what they think is a human spleen in the national park, plus evidence of a ritual burning. They found daggers and a wooden badge.

Balance help us. Someone burned a body?

The police do not think so. Not enough ash.

This equinox rite appeared to be some less elaborate version of the solstice ritual, Pellus said, but it couldn’t have been demons unless they’d been hiding in the Earthly Realm for months. The report said that whatever went on had occurred at least seven hours before the axial rift opened. Barakiel didn’t know what to make of it at all.

We need to get next to this investigation, Pellus said. You should contact Professor Carson. Have lunch with him or some such. Tell him you are still interested in sharing your knowledge. Urge him to call you if the authorities ever ask for help.

Thanks to Barakiel’s generous financial support of the Penn Museum and his extensive collection of edged weapons, he had known Phillip Carson for years. The professor specialized in antique blades and firearms and consulted with law enforcement about them occasionally. Barakiel had told him he’d love to serve in the same capacity, that he found the idea exciting. He knew the professor would do everything he could to fulfill the request. Such was the power of money.

All right. I will call him tomorrow.

Good. Now, let us attend to your financial affairs.

Demon take you, Pellus, Barakiel said, louder than he intended. Can you please leave me alone? Slaughtering demons and discussing spleens is enough for one day, is it not?

Pellus frowned. Your agitation persists?

Immediately, Barakiel regretted his outburst. He hung his head and reminded himself how much worse his life would be if not for Pellus. The minds of traveler adepts were beyond the most powerful supercomputers the Earthly Realm could offer. Human information technology was child’s play to Pellus. Even asymmetrical encryption did not pose much of a problem for him. He’d made Barakiel an obscene fortune and created a false identity so airtight that even a human schooled in computer forensics couldn’t tell anything was amiss.

When Barakiel moved to Philadelphia from Germany, Pellus had worked his magic to obtain immigration papers, a birth certificate, even diplomas from German schools. The adept could provide anything the warrior may need at any time he may need it. He could scrub any trace of Barakiel’s existence from the internet whenever he needed to disappear.

Forgive me, Pellus. I am a horrible ingrate.

It is all right, Barakiel. Your situation is not easy.

Perhaps not, but it had been worse in the past. Why did he feel so unsettled? He wanted to forget the endless wheel of demon attacks. Forget his exile. But nothing brought him peace.

Hunger lives inside me. Need. My acts as a warrior no longer satisfy. Not completely. I do not even know what I want.

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Philadelphia

Alexandra O’Gara sat down at her desk in her nondescript office with a giant mug of coffee. She rubbed her eyes, stretched and yawned.

I have to stop playing weeknight gigs.

She took a swig of the coffee, pulled her keyboard into her lap and settled down to her least favorite part of the job.

Fucking reports. It never stops.

Her boss, James Nguyen, was obsessed with reports, causing no end of grumbling among the agents in the FBI’s Philadelphia field office. At least this report was about an unusual incident. Park rangers found evidence of a strange ritual enacted between the holly bushes next to the Second United States Bank, inside the national historical park. Ornate daggers were arranged like the points of a compass around a pile of ashes. A wooden carving of a jagged tree inside a circle sat on top of the ashes. Whatever had been burned was most likely part of a person, because they found a human spleen in the bushes nearby. The park rangers called the FBI.

Although city police kept an eye on the area, they had not seen anything unusual. They suspected the ritual had occurred between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. when patrols were infrequent. The thick holly had hidden whatever had gone on from the surveillance cameras, but they’d recorded several people wandering around that morning. The FBI was trying to track them down.

The spleen had been preserved with formaldehyde, a detail Zan found creepier than anything else. Thus far, the matching body had not been located.

Neither the daggers nor the carving bore any useful fingerprints or trace evidence. The strangeness of the apparent crime left it hard to categorize, so it became a question of who wanted to take it on. Everyone knew Zan had a thing for blades. The file wound up on her desk.

As she proofread her report, her partner, Melissa Romani, arrived.

One of these days I’ll beat you here, Zan. She took off her knit cap and smoothed her short brown hair.

Not with a kid to get off to preschool, you won’t. How is the little sweet pea, anyway?

She’s great. She’s all excited about their science project. They stuck potatoes in glasses of water, you know, using toothpicks to hold them up? She has her very own potato.

Zan nodded. A classic.

Yeah. Let me see here. What’s the agenda? Mel paused while she opened a file. We need to lean on the DNA lab for the spleen results and check missing persons. What about those knives?

They look old. I’ll ask the Art Crimes Division to call Professor Carson. Maybe he’ll know something about them.

Is that the guy from the Penn Museum? The one who helped us with that antique gun last year?

That’s him.

Okay, good. Mel continued to peer at her computer, engaging in a flurry of clicks. We have a meeting with Nguyen in ten minutes.

Yep. I just printed out the report. Zan walked over to the printer as Mel shuffled papers and glanced at her.

Emmett and I had dinner last night with one of his colleagues from Temple University, Mel said. He’s cute. And single.

For Christ’s sake, no.

Hear me out!

I’m done letting you fix me up. Zan gave her partner a pointed look. It never works.

What does it cost you? Mel asked. You go out on a date with a decent guy. Listen to him tell you you’re beautiful. It would be nice.

I don’t find most men all that interesting.

This one is, Mel said with a curt twist of her head. He’s a philosophy professor. Super smart. He’s also tall and built. I think he does some weird sport like lacrosse or Frisbee lacrosse or something.

Zan rolled her eyes. I also hate the setup. Both people feel so much pressure, as well as vaguely pathetic.

No man feels pathetic about a setup after he sees those pretty blue eyes and that silky black hair, dear. Instead, he’s thanking Jesus for good friends.

Thanks, Mel, but no thanks.

You’re a workaholic. You need something else in your life. Mel adopted her do-as-I-say stance. Zan knew it well. It didn’t work on her.

I play guitar in a band. I write songs. I have outside interests.

That’s what I mean, Mel said. I think you stay so busy just to avoid feeling lonely.

And what’s the matter with that? Zan spread her hands. It means I don’t feel lonely. We’ve had this conversation before, Mel. Maybe it’s the damage I inflicted on myself in my drinking days, but I’m not looking for a man, at least not right now. She glanced into the hallway to make sure no one was there. When she spoke again her voice was low. It’s for the best. You know how messed up I was. The shit I did. Better to keep to myself.

Mel regarded her with a pained expression. As I’ve said before, shame can go fuck itself.

I tell myself that all the time. Doesn’t mean I want to talk about it.

So keep things casual. Don’t you get horny?

Yes. So I have sex. And it stinks because most men are lousy in bed, Zan said. And then it gets messy and complicated. Remember that guy you set me up with who wouldn’t leave me alone?

Yeah. He was a nice guy. I don’t know why you didn’t like him.

He was boring as hell.

See that? Mel pointed a finger at her. You’re too damn picky.

Easy for you to say. Your man has poetry in his soul.

He’s a poet, Zan, Mel said in a flat tone.

Well, you should know what I mean then. Zan laughed. Her partner would never stop trying to set her up. It was their own little ritual. We better head to Nguyen’s office, she said.

CHAPTER 2

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THE ANTIQUE WEAPONS COLLECTOR recommended by Professor Carson owned several acres along the Delaware River in the Bridesburg section of Philadelphia, slightly north of the Betsy Ross Bridge. Zan pulled over on Richmond Street to go over the background check the clerk had included with her copy of the consulting agreement.

Rainer Barakiel, 33, had immigrated to the United States from Germany nine years previous. The owner of several offshore companies, he was known for his philanthropy, especially his support of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The man spent a lot of money on violins as well, the kind that had names. More to the point, he collected antique, bladed weapons. Her information did not include a picture. Zan wondered what a guy who collected violins and weapons would look like.

Probably nerdy.

When she arrived at the address she paused to take it in. The place could withstand a siege. It was ringed by a high stone wall in front of a line of thick hedges and black alders, with a stand of cherry trees at the western boundary. It sat behind some kind of disused industrial facility, with a few small businesses along its southern side. The northern boundary was the old course of the Frankford Creek, with the river to the east.

Zan drove through the open gateway to find a modern building made of glass and mismatched wood that extended almost all the way to the river. Two small outbuildings sat beside it. She figured living on a former industrial site was a small price to pay for all that space and privacy, and those beautiful cherry trees just beginning to bloom.

The front of the main building had a set of double wooden doors and a smaller entrance to the side with the bell. She rang.

When the door opened, Zan forgot she was supposed to speak. The man was gigantic, she guessed nearly seven feet, with broad shoulders and an athletic build. High cheekbones framed a straight nose. Full lips complemented a strong jaw. A few strands of unruly blond hair fell over eyes that seemed to be several shades of blue at once. She imagined they hid something primeval, just barely restrained. He smiled. Her face felt hot.

What the hell. Don’t be such a fool.

Um, hello, I’m Special Agent Alexandra O’Gara of the FBI. She stuck out her hand. My office made an appointment.

Yes. I’m Rainer Barakiel. A pleasure to meet you.

His voice

Reviews for The Passion Season

[ogrezed · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well written and engaging, up to a point. The action and sex sequences got to be a little repetitive, and nothing is really resolved by the end of the book. Of the main couple, the female FBI agent is far more interesting than the petulant and stalkerish male angel/demon.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to continue on to the second book. If the first book had a resoution of sorts, I probably would have. But I'm not sure I need a (somewhat simple) story that may end up taking four books to resolve.