Beneath the Skin
Empire of the Sky, Book Five
by
Mikala Ash
Steampunk Romance
Publisher: Changeling Press
Publication Date: November 29, 2024
Page count: 133 pages
SYNOPSIS:
Soulmates? Or simply lovers? Selena and Nancy hope their paramours can see
beneath the skin.
Selena Whiteheart has her hands full. The malignant witch, Lady Neva, has
kidnapped her lovers, Jacob McCleary and Captain Kit Colby. While keeping
her Home Office handler, Harry Kincaid, satisfied in every way, Selena vows
to rescue them, but first she must contend with a mesmerised assassin.
Meanwhile Nancy Lea, envoy in human form of the goblin king, Mon Ilson,
Emperor of Space, has failed in her bid to secure peace. Queen Victoria has
sent her packing with a flea in her ear. With her lover and protector,
Captain Jaimee Dalgliesh, she returns to the moon to report. With three days
to kill, Nancy teaches Jaimee the joys of weightless lovemaking. However,
Jaimee comes face to face with a real goblin. Can he overcome his visceral
disgust and love the soul beneath Nancy's stolen skin?
The soul of Agent Felicity Cressy, murdered by Lady Neva, finds a safe
haven in Nancy's mind. Will Mon Ilson return her to her body, and what does
he expect in return?
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EXCERPT:
Copyright ©2024 Mikala Ash
Selena Whiteheart
1867 -- A Vixen in the Mist
I am a duplicitous witch.
Like Janus, the mythological god of beginnings and endings, I present
different faces to the world. I began as Marjorie Fletcher, a naïve
country virgin murdered for my body by hideous goblins. My homeless soul
found refuge in the mind of Cressida Troy, with whom I fell in love.
Inevitably I also lost my heart to her fiancé, Jacob McCleary, and I
experienced lovemaking for the first time through Cressida. Now, as Selena
Whiteheart, human agent of Mon Ilson, the goblin king and self-styled
Emperor of Space, and owner of the empire’s greatest airborne gambling
and bawdy house, I love the handsome and brave Captain Kit Colby.
I stood at my fireplace staring at the likenesses of Jacob and Kit inside a
gold locket. I’d drawn both myself, and think I captured their
essential differences rather well. Jacob, the former schoolteacher, whose
intelligent gaze signified his thoughtful and considerate nature both in and
out of bed, had given me my first experience of lovemaking, albeit
vicariously. He was now estranged from Cressida Troy after the murder of
Fleur Cumberland, which I had orchestrated. Kit, on the other hand, was a
lusty warrior, a decorated hero of the savage air war against Prussia and
the Hungarian Empire. As befitting his martial nature, Kit was both forceful
and deliberate in his lovemaking.
I was lost for a few moments in a warm memory of passionate kisses,
entwined tongues, probing fingers and hard, thrusting cocks before a wave of
fear coursed through me. Tears threatened to flow as I traced their
images.
I was not alone in my office. I was dimly aware of the earnest little man
jabbering about an invention of his. I didn’t care about Mr. Frasier.
I was immersed in a sea of despair, and the peril my charade placed not just
Jacob and Kit in, but me also.
Both Jacob and Kit were captives of Lady Neva Talbot-Rhys, a powerful witch
hell-bent on killing Queen Victoria. Lady Neva held the Queen responsible
for her lover’s death during England’s devastating military
reprisal against Prussia. I understood her wanting revenge. I felt the same
about her.
I had to get them back. Lady Neva was a merciless malevolent maniac,
capable of wholesale slaughter -- I’d witnessed that firsthand. My
heart chilled at the thought of what horrors Jacob and Kit were suffering at
her evil hands.
I wanted desperately to believe they still lived. Why else would Lady Neva
kidnap them but to use them for some nefarious purpose?
Jacob had been sent by Mon Ilson to add weight to his envoy Nancy
Lea’s mission to arrange a demonstration of his ultimate weapon. Lady
Neva had stumbled upon Jacob during her search for Kit, and being a skilled
mind reader, she would have instantly known Jacob’s value. That would
have been a surprise to her, no doubt. But she was not one to miss an
opportunity to cause the Queen even greater problems. She had intended to
kidnap Nancy Lea as well, but fortunately she had escaped. I believed Lady
Neva had probably gone to Europe to sell Jacob’s knowledge to one of
Britain’s host of enemies. If that was the case, then Mon
Ilson’s carefully laid plans could be wrecked and chaos would ensue,
resulting in the deaths of millions. Frustratingly, our overseas agents had
not detected any sign of Lady Neva. She had disappeared like a vixen in the
mist.
I shuddered and took in a ragged breath of despair at what she would do to
Kit. Unlike Jacob, who had political value, poor Kit she could torture at
her leisure. Kit had become the object of her revenge after thwarting her
plan to use the Prince of Wales to kill the Queen.
For the time being, as Selena Whiteheart, I do the bidding of the goblin
king, the most powerful witch in history. For the moment our goals aligned.
He too wanted Lady Neva found, for her determination to kill Queen Victoria
threatened to derail his own plans of conquest.
My service to Mon Ilson requires a significant amount of time and energy,
for I must hide my true intentions from him by burying them deep within my
consciousness. I hate Mon Ilson. His goblins had murdered me, and then
stolen my body from the grave. While I obeyed his commands, I secretly
supported his overthrow by Cressida Troy, now his empress, another human
with another name: Nil Ilson.
Cressida had saved my soul. Or rather my nascent magical abilities had led
me to her, and her mind became my temporary safe haven. Then my magical
powers were like a seed, waiting for water and heat. Unwittingly Mon Ilson
supplied those himself, for when he read Cressida’s mind, he had
detected me and recognised my potential as a servant. Like Pandora he opened
the box of magic and let me absorb as much as I could hold.
To regain my body, I had enchanted both Cressida and Mon Ilson into
believing they loved each other and convinced her to prove her loyalty to
him so he would return my soul to my body. As my puppet, Cressida killed the
most powerful human witch, Fleur Cumberland. Mon Ilson repaid me by
returning my soul to my body and sending me to Earth to prepare the way for
his conquest. I had confessed my perfidy to Cressida, hoping she would work
with me to resist him. Cressida married Mon Ilson, and adopted the name Nil
Ilson, and the title Empress of Space.
Mon Ilson’s plan to overthrow the British Empire required the
co-opting of Queen Victoria. He meant to use the vast infrastructure of her
empire to take over the world with hardly a fight. So, for the time being
I’d be his enthusiastic cat’s paw until I could help Nil Ilson,
Cressida, defeat him.
But first I have to find Jacob and Kit.
“Ahem. Er. Miss Whiteheart?”
The clearing throat and hesitant voice reminded me of Mr. Frasier’s
presence. I closed the locket and turned to face the untidily dressed,
red-haired little man. Before I’d lost myself in my own thoughts,
he’d been enthusiastically engaged in a technical monologue about his
new invention.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, returning the locket to my bosom.
“Pray continue.”
He cleared his throat again, and after taking a deep breath began to list
the benefits of his new gadget, a tamperproof roulette wheel.
“It will kill any accusation of fraudulence,” he had
begun.
As if the honesty of my tables had ever been in question. The idea that I
would be accused of cheating was insulting, but I continued to listen with
feigned interest.
His name was David Frasier, a middle-aged inventor and factory owner from
Edinburgh. He’d been introduced to me by Special Branch agent and my
latest lover, Harry Kincaid. After making the introductions, Harry had
excused himself, saying he had to send a message to his club.
That was a lie. The murky shade of Harry’s aura had given him away. I
knew he was listening at the door. He’d asked me to be nice to Frasier
as he was trying to recruit him as a spy. He visited the continent often,
doing business with some prominent politicians and industrialists. The
introduction to me would put Frasier in Harry’s debt.
It was for that reason I resigned myself to listen without objection to the
fellow’s insulting proposition.
Frasier stopped in mid-sentence. He had been enthusiastically describing
his contrivance, something to do with building a miniature mechanical
computational device invented by Charles Babbage, when his face had become
flushed, and beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. His hands started
to tremble, and his final words ended in a slur. His aura had, in an
instant, transformed into a seething pulsating muddy blob, the colours
bubbling through each other in a roiling mass. A moment before it had been
quite normal, nervous perhaps, and very excited, but that is not unusual in
men meeting me for the first time, and after all, he was trying to make a
sale. The transition had been so abrupt, so unnatural, I reached out to his
mind to see the cause. I sensed despair, and most of all, mind-numbing fear.
Hardly a coherent thought peeked through. The one that did was
unmistakable.
“Mr. Frasier, don’t do this!” I put a suppression spell
over him. “Whatever it is, I can help.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Aussie Mikala Ash used to be a mild-mannered training & development
consultant by day, and a wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by
night. Now she is a brazen full-time writer and nature photographer who is
concentrating on having among other things, “… bags, and bags
of fun!” Mikala can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.
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