Into the Darkness

By Lee Murray

From Lee Murray, the award-winning author of Into the Mist, a new Taine McKenna Adventure.

Laying low after a furore in the Urewera ranges, NZDF Sergeant Taine McKenna accompanies girlfriend Jules Ashes to France, where something ancient and evil has left its kill on the cobbles of La Ferté-Bernard. The terrified villagers have seen it before. That time, elders closed the gates and whispered of the plague. Now, the danger threatens all of Europe. The local gendarmes are going to need help. Lucky for them, McKenna is available, expendable, and ultimately deniable...

“A tension-packed expedition into primordial terror. Murray is an author to watch.”— Greig Beck, best-selling author of the Arcadian series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Murray
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370907342

Lee Murray

Lee Murray writes fiction for children and adults for which she has been lucky enough to win some literary prizes. She is currently working on various projects, one of which she hopes will be bigger than hobbits. Lee wishes she were edgier than she actually is—a fantasy which recurs whenever she is folding the washing. She lives with her family in New Zealand.

Book preview

Lee Murray

A Taine McKenna Adventure

INTO THE DARKNESS

Copyright © 2018 Lee Murray

This work first released in 2016 under the title Restless, in Snafu: Unnatural Selection, published by Cohesion Press, Australia.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher and author, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN:9781370907342

Cover Art by Kate Strawbridge

All rights reserved.

INTO THE DARKNESS

Lee Murray

La Ferté-Bernard, France

Taine replaced the demi-tasse on its saucer. Barely a mouthful, and the cup so dinky he could hardly grasp the handle. He should have asked for two.

Everything okay? asked Jules, who was sitting opposite him.

Taine smiled. It was more than okay. He was here, with her, on the terrace of a French café enjoying a European summer while back home the army tidied up loose ends from that business in the Ureweras.

R&R was what the major had ordered. Take some leave, lad. I need you and your boys out of sight and out of mind while I sort this, Arnold had said.

It was easier said than done. Since that last assignment, Taine had been restless. Even the 26km run along the Sarthe, when Jules had been presenting at her conference in Le Mans, hadn’t helped shake the feeling. It’s what you get from years of soldiering. Always on alert, always checking over your shoulder. Like this tingle at the back of his neck…

He stood, the wrought iron chair clattering on the stones behind him.

Taine?

Why the tingle...?

There! At the end of the alley. Crawling across the milky flagstones was a woman, her nails tearing on the cobbles, knees grazed, each breath dragged from her lungs.

"La velue!" she whispered and collapsed, her face dropping to the stones just metres from Taine’s feet.

Like a hot wind before a storm, the whispers ricocheted off the stone walls of the lane.

"Qu’est-ce qu’elle a dit?"

"La velue?"

"C’est pas possible!"

Ambulance! Taine shouted.

The café patrons edged away.

What the hell was the French for ambulance?

Taine crouched, reaching for the woman’s pulse, but the café owner, more pastries in his belly than on platters at the counter, yanked him back. "Touchez pas, monsieur. Do not touch!"

Taine shook him off. This woman needs an ambulance!

No one will touch her, monsieur. She is cursed.

English. That was unusual. In Le Mans, on the tourist beat, most retailers spoke at least some English, but La Ferté-Bernard was small, just a few thousand inhabitants, and this café was mainly for locals.

"Did you not hear her say la velue? The man spoke in gestures, too. Can you not see le piquant in her back?"

Piquant? What’s a piquant?

Taine scanned the woman’s back. Where the red locks met the top of her sundress, a slender quill