Chasing Fate

By J.R. Thorn

Every Thousand Years the Cycle of Death Returns

A young psychic named Renee inherits her grandmother's terrifying powers and summons two hot (and very naked) angels to help her save the world. Paired up with her ex-boyfriend turned vampire, she's in for a hell of a ride.

Every thousand years the cycle of death comes to claim the three major realms: Earth, heaven, and hell. It's her turn to chase fate and stop the cycle from devouring her world, bringing heaven and hell down with it.

When the echoes of calamity begin to take form and destroy her beloved Fortune Street, she'll have to race against the clock to stop her new vision from coming to fruition. Earth in ashes and heaven and hell collapsed in a ball of flames.

Edwin and Devon aren't the kind of angels she'd expected to conjure with her new gifts for such a monumental task. With Devon's constant flirting, Edwin's sexy brooding, and Jeffery's distracting fangs, she'll have to hope they're more useful than they are distracting in the game of chasing fate.


This is a reverse harem story intended for mature audiences. This is a standalone story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.R. Thorn
• Release date: Aug 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393099864

Book preview

Chapter 1

I couldn’t go to the hospital, not again, not today. My grandmother raved that I couldn’t be anywhere near her right now, so here I was, desperately shuffling her Tarot cards as if sending my fate out of order could undo the visions. The dark magic hissing across the worn tableaus never lied—not to me. The faded faces gave me enough foresight to know that my beloved grandmother was going to die. Her passing would be marked by the blood moon, but I didn’t look to see if the sickly, ruby gleam had begun its crawl across the windowsill. Instead, I bent over the fortune table where my grandmother had once taught me this terrible power, and shuffled the cards until they tore under my fingers.

That same vision that had plagued me for years came again. My grandmother’s voice filtered through my mind.

The world is stitched together by this magic. You must harness it before it’s ripped apart.

I looked down at the cards I’d just torn under my fingertips, only to find that they’d righted themselves again. Two cards stood face up with wicked grins. The dark angel and the man of light.

It wasn’t the typical Tarot deck… it was one tailored to our shop. My grandmother liked to call them a Fate deck.

Forced by my own stubborn need to fulfill the vision, I flipped over the overturned cards.

Each one… burned.

My fingernails scratched across the wooden table. I’d never fully believed in the nonsense my grandmother lived and breathed, even when I’d started to have the visions.

I picked up a burnt card, but it transformed until it glimmered with a healthy sheen. The tableau revealed itself to be a key, of course. Was this hallucination real? Or was I finally losing my shit?

My insides churned and I wished that Jen was here. Only my best friend knew about my issues, and her lips pressed into a thin line every time I announced that schizophrenia must run in my family.

I didn’t have a mother or father to speak of. When I’d asked my grandmother about it, she’d smiled and told me that she was the only parent I needed and one day, I’d understand.

Now she was on her deathbed—one that I’d fucking foreseen. There was no way, right?

I made the mistake of turning and getting a perfect view of a ripe blood moon that stood out in the sky like a forbidden fruit ready to pluck.

My grandmother would have said that this was natural. I was just inheriting my abilities. She had the uncanny ability to know what was going to happen next, but I’d just played along. A little sign on the door proudly glittered her name: Madame Jennie. It was her job to make people believe she could see things. She’d had such a gift to make this musty little shop feel like it filled to the brim with magic. Without her crackly voice to give it character, it was empty. Just me, my burnt cards, and a blood moon. I’d never felt so isolated and cold.

An icy draft found its way across my feet and curled around my ankles, amplifying the sensation of dread. I shivered and forced myself away from the rounded table where my grandmother had given so many people hope. Now that she was gone, I felt like she’d taken all the hope with her. Her readings had always been optimistic, at least at the end. There would always be tears and anxious clients on the edge of their seat as my grandma stared into a cloudy little ball. She’d always laugh and tell me later that she didn’t need glass to see the future or to commune with the dead. She was a Keymaster to the spirit realm, and one day, I’d understand what that meant. She’d always looked sad when she’d assured me the last part, as if she didn’t want me to understand.

As I shakily stood, I didn’t want to face the reality that my grandmother would finally immerse herself into that spirit realm today. Perhaps that understanding she’d dreaded would be the day of her death—the day I stopped believing in magic.

Just when I was about to give up trying to sense my grandmother in her old shop and go back to my lonely apartment, a glimmer caught my eye. The crooked shelves that housed herbs and spells were supposed to line the entire east wall, but when I looked again, I noticed this time that there were now two sets of shelves… and an old door wedged in the middle.

The hell? I muttered under my breath as I approached what was certainly a new hallucination. My visions always came when I least expected them. I ran my fingers over the wooden frame and my heart fluttered to life when I realized either this was real, or I’d finally gone off the edge. My visions had never included tactile sensation.

Looking around the shop, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Quiet, ruby moonlight continued to stream in through the streaked windows that really needed some cleaning and only the faint thrum of music trickled down the streets.

Turning back to the door, I did what any insane person would do. I wrapped my fingers around the brass handle and twisted.

A dark room greeted me when I pushed my way inside. What kind of shit were you hiding from me? I hissed as I forced my trembling legs to function.

Whatever my grandmother had been, I was ready to become a believer—or to hammer the final nail in my sanity coffin.

Candles came to life when I entered the room and I swallowed a startled scream. There was no way my hallucinations could be this creative. Somehow… this was real.

A single pedestal housed an ancient book. Even though it emanated with an ancient power, the gleaming cover looked untouched by time. Black marble encrusted the thick pages was polished to a fine sheen and engraved runes wound through each other across the surface.

As I approached it, the book flung open and I squeaked with surprise.

This wasn’t happening.

The book opened to a page with three sentences in calligraphy. The left page depicted three orbs, one blue, one white, and one a vibrant red.

I don’t know why I read the words, but I did. It was in Latin, but somehow I knew the meaning as I spoke the ancient spell.

Keymaster of Earth, may your magic fulfill me.

Angel of Light, I summon you to assist me.

Demon of Death, I beseech you to protect me.

I don’t know what had compelled me to speak those words aloud, or if I was really reading Latin off some ancient grimoire in a secret room in the back of my grandmother’s shop… but it was going to get a whole lot weirder.

Two orbs glowed on the floor and my eyes went wide. I should have run, or screamed, or done something other than stand gawking at the magical swirls that blistered scars across my vision, but I was frozen stiff. It wasn’t terror that gripped me, but a deep understanding in the core of my stomach that said while I’d shrugged off my grandmother’s promises, I’d kept a small seed alive in my heart that there’d been truth to her words. I’d wanted to believe her. I’d always wanted to trust that everything in my life had happened for a reason. My grandmother had been so good to me and I wanted her to still be around when I graduated high school and found a guy to settle down with. I’d always known that wouldn’t happen because she’d never tell me her real age. She had to be in her nineties by the way wisdom gleamed in her eyes, but I’d always been convinced she was a lot older than that and just didn’t want the publicity in a book of records for world’s oldest and most stubborn fortune-teller.

When the two glowing orbs turned into naked men with wings, I knew my grandmother had a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

To my left knelt an angel with a boyish smile and slicked back hair. To my right, another with the body of a warrior and eyes that pierced me to my soul.

When they stood, a blush sent a wave of scaling heat across my cheeks. Uh… n-naked, I stuttered, putting my hand up to block the lower half of their bodies. "Very, very naked."

The one to my right stepped out of his orb and spread his wings, frowning when the long stems of his feathers grazed the confines of the room. Don’t be a prude, he said with a low angelic voice that had my knees knocking. He stretched his wings again as if he felt cramped. Your spell doesn’t bring objects through. Just flesh.

I blinked at him over the rim of my hand that I refused to lower in spite of the heat uncurling in my stomach at the low curves at his hips. Um, spell? Right. I offered him a nervous laugh that made me sound utterly ridiculous. "If I cast a spell, I’m really really sorry. I didn’t mean to—"

He glowered with such violence in his gaze that my throat closed up. There are no accidents with the grimoire, he growled. You have summoned me, Edwin, angel of the heavens. He pointed to his comrade. This is Devon, angel of hell. His gaze moved past