Rose Titus is here to tell us about Key 13: And Other Stories, dark fantasy, fantasy, horror.
There's also a great giveaway.
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Key 13: And other Stories
Rose Titus
Publication date: October 6th 2017
Genres: Adult, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror
Rose Titus, author of The Vampire Next Door Trilogy, now brings together a collection of her best short stories. Here in this book you will find tales of vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, space aliens, and even a few angels. These stories answer questions such as where do we go after we die? What is the future of this planet? And what is the future of humanity? There are also stories of young runaways, old hippies, worried mothers, troubled families, love gone horribly wrong, selfish billionaires, people who find themselves suddenly homeless, old men with their recollections of days gone by, and girls gone wild! There may even be a murder or two.
Rose Titus resides somewhere in cold, dreary New England with two manipulative cats and a very out of date computer with which she creates horror and fantasy fiction. She also has a restored classic Buick to ride around in while in search of adventure.
For travel she has stayed the night in an allegedly haunted castle, has taken a boat ride on Loch Ness, and has visited the Bermuda Triangle -- without getting lost.
Her work has previously appeared in Lost Worlds, Lynx Eye, Bog Gob, Mausoleum, Weird Terrain, Descend, The Dead River Review, and other literary magazines. She also writes regularly for Blood Moon Rising Magazine.
When she's not working or writing or messing with her old car, she waits by the mailbox for her Fortean Times to arrive.
Polly Schattel is here to tell us about Crater Girl, an LGBTQ+ dark fantasy.
There's also a great giveaway.
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Crater Girl
Polly Schattel
Publication date: June 28th 2026
Genres: Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, LGBTQ+
Greta Tyler has issues. She’s broke, divorced, trans, recently defrocked from her Episcopal priesthood, and her underpaid assistant hates her. But hey, things could always be worse, right?
As a social worker in a small, northern Alabama city, Greta’s just trying to do a little good in the world, and also come to terms with a complicated new life, a demanding new career, and the crushing finality that her marriage to her childhood sweetheart is over for good. But when her friend Suhey fails to show for a party, Greta suspects the worst: Suhey’s either been deported or kidnapped. Thus begins an increasingly surreal odyssey through the inscrutable byways and backroads of contemporary rural America.
Tormented by self-doubt, and with a tendency to harm whatever she touches, Greta careens through a sinister underworld she never knew existed—billionaires and busboys, asteroids and assassins, human traffickers and misfit geniuses … and also an infernal plan to radically change the world.
But first, how to come up with the rent?
Crater Girl is Polly Schattel’s genre-jumping tale of gender politics, self-loathing, clandestine organizations, interstellar geology, thuggee death cults, and the search for personal redemption in the rusted over-sprawl of the meta-modern South.
“The first time I ever heard of the concept of the dead eye was in reference to a man I knew was troubled before I’d even reached my teens. Rick M. Scharpley, who his seventh grade homeroom class called Mr. Scharpley to his face but Prick Him Sharply behind his back, was a substitute who’d been brought in to take over after our regular history teacher had broken her back in a car accident. He’d taught us through the rest of that year, a mousy, chubby man with sensible hair, sensible glasses, and a perfectly sensible face. No one knew whether he had a wife or kids, or a family back home, and he seemed normal enough to his students, even funny sometimes, until you’d spent an afternoon or so with him. Then you’d start to notice how his eyes had grown soft and buggy and darkly fascinated with you, and how the little ironic twist of his smile rarely faltered. He knew his history, and he could sometimes make stuff like antebellum Alabama halfway interesting, but the various disparate parts of him commingled oddly, which pushed him almost into full-on creepazoid territory, and you found yourself wanting “to spend as little time in his presence as possible but unable to say exactly why. In class it wasn’t too bad; his cigarette prestidigitation and his day-drinker legerdemain made a decent distraction for the after-school detention crew. But we thought even then, even as kids, that beneath his southern gentleman’s surface, there flowed an underground reservoir rich with self-loathing, a vast subterranean sea of near-bottomless black pain.
We knew this, the whole town knew this, because one sunny Sunday in that summer of 2006, Mr. Scharpley left a note magneted to the front of his refrigerator, a very personal kind of mini-manifesto within which he detailed all manners of abuses, self- and otherwise. Then he carried half a dozen syringes loaded with a potent pesticide called chlordecone into the local farmer’s market, and began injecting random crates of peaches with them. Eight people, most of them kids and old folks, had fallen into foamy-mouthed convulsions before he’d pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the frontage road.
Author Bio:
POLLY SCHATTEL lives in the mountains near Asheville, NC with her wife and three vicious and savage but very adorable animals.
Daymon Ashcord is here to tell us about Makerborn, Maladies of Empire #1, dark fantasy.
There's also a great giveaway.
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Makerborn
Daymon Ashcord
(Maladies of Empire, #1)
Publication date: June 15th 2026
Genres: Adult, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy
The God War is over. An empire built on suffering, slavery, and betrayal remains…
In the fractured lands of the Salvian Empire, the Great Houses rule through blood and fear. For years, Alandra Phoenyka has hunted powerful Sonomancers in the empire’s name, paid in empty promises that her stolen daughter would be returned. Each step forward demands another compromise. Another betrayal. Another piece of herself lost.
When those promises turn to treachery, she is forced to take matters into her own hands and risk everything to reclaim her child.
In the empire’s mining camps, Bez Windstrider has endured years of torture and brutal experimentation. Broken but unyielding, he clings to one purpose: vengeance. The men who murdered his parents will pay, and their deaths will complete the ritual needed to free his parents’ souls from damnation.
But the deeper his grief cuts, the more he becomes something far more dangerous, for himself and for the empire.
As their paths draw closer, the buried truths of the God War begin to surface. What begins as two personal vendettas threatens to unravel something far greater than either of them can control.
Because empires do not fall quietly.
And the gods that shaped them are not as dead as they seem.
Makerborn is the first book in the Maladies of Empire series, a brutal epic dark fantasy of vengeance, sacrifice, and the cost of love.
For readers of dark, character-driven epic fantasy in the vein of Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, R.F. Kuang, Evan Winter, and Steven Erikson.
Bez woke in darkness, deep in a pit, having failed his parents yet again. The night air was heavy and damp. The acrid stench of feces had lessened, but his nose still burned with the stink of decay. He felt like he would never wash the smell from his body. What does it matter now?
The moist earth offered scant relief from the Southern Waste’s merciless heat. Sweat slicked his body. His skin felt on fire, reminding him of how the Salvians slowly roasted meat on spits. He pinched his right nostril and blew out a thick wad of phlegm.
How long? How squalling long have they left me down here to rot?
He traced fine grooves in the earthy wall of his cage with long, dirty fingernails. Twenty-seven days he’d scratched before he’d given up counting. Then the real fun began. Weeks of wading in his own shit like a rutting hog once the pit guards had stopped retrieving his privy bucket. Weeks more of starvation when the obvious solution to avoid living in a hog pen penetrated his addled mind: no food, no feces. His only companions were self-pity, nightmares, and maggots gorging on his noxious filth.
And the moans of indentured miners, likely years past their freedom date, and Collared All-Tribe—his people—drifting down in his dirt tomb.
“Water,” cried a pit prisoner.
“Bread, just a heel of bread for Seal’s sake,” whined another.
“It was Tuftson,” someone sniveled. “He made me do it. It was him. Please, let me out.”
“Shut your gobs!” bellowed a voice.
The sounds washed over him, had become part of him, familiar as his gnawing hunger or the ever-present worms wriggling against his hot skin. Even without starlight, his people’s blessed vision allowed him to penetrate the mirk. He watched his sunken stomach rise and fall. Each rib pressed against his skin. Sour spit filled his mouth.
He wasn’t surprised that an army of worms assaulted the sides of his stomach and shoulders while he dozed. The slimy little grubs coated him with a sticky sludge, but he was past caring. Hands trembling, he brushed the vanguard away that had reached his chest. His legs were a lost cause. Scores of grubs covered them so only his toes peeked out.
Bez yawned. Heat-induced spans of intermittent sleep kept him drowsy and muddled. Sometimes his parents sat beside him in the dirt, back from the dead, singing and laughing. Other times, he was in the mountains climbing crags, or swimming in crystalline lakes so clear he could see rocks at the bottom. Moments ago, he was a boy again, running barefoot with his cousins through Uncle Darian’s fields, the tall grass whipping at his legs. Then a cry from a prisoner or the damp air clogging his nose had awakened him, shattering the vision. What was real or imagined blurred. Maybe I’m with my uncle still and the pit is only a nightmare.
Hesitantly, he stretched his hands to either side, fingertips brushing the cool, root-tangled walls. Feet firmly pressed against damp earth. Not a nightmare. He moaned like a wounded animal.
“Guardian spirits above,” he wheezed, not wiping the hot tears streaking down his cheek. “There’s no way out.”
But that was a lie. There was a way. His fingers searched for the gouge in the wall, finding the sharp-edged shard of obsidian he’d hidden there. My final escape.
He pried it free, hand shaking, and pressed the jagged edge against the soft flesh of his right wrist. A bead of blood sprang from the tip.
“I’ll do it this time,” he said to the crude face carved into the wall. A pause. “I know that’s what I said last time. By the All-Spirit, I can’t—” His throat tightened. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Enjoying your new home, demon-blood?” asked an unwelcome voice from the pit’s metal cage above.
“Dorota,” he rasped, tongue clumsy from disuse. “What a pleasure.”
He hated Yan’s henchwoman, but at that moment, his life in the balance, he clung to her words like a drowning man to driftwood.
Her chuckles echoed in the earthy tomb. “Liar. Play it friendly as you like, slit-eyes, but we both know what you are.” She crouched, damp hair plastered to her face, mouth hooked in a grin that never reached her eyes. “I saw the demon in you when we caught you on that ridge. Thought you were clever, didn’t you? Thought the aqueduct workers wouldn’t notice you and your two friends? What is the count? Your third?”
It was his fourth failed attempt to escape the Makersmetal mining camp, but he didn’t bother correcting the murdering bitch. I failed them just like my parents. Tala dead. Marcel beaten or worse. Anelia missing. And Bez… well, he would die in darkness, dooming his parents’ souls to wander the Shadowlands forever, never to reunite with their ancestors. He choked down a sob, not wanting to give her any satisfaction seeing him broken.
Author Bio:
Daymon Ashcord writes dark fantasy shaped by suffering, resilience, and the brutal edges of love pushed too far.
Born in Gdańsk, Poland, and raised in New York, he grew up on science fiction, fantasy, and the stories that linger long after the final page. After studying accounting and public policy, he left a conventional path to travel the world and create a documentary, turning storytelling into something essential.
His debut novel, Makerborn (2026), reflects years of persistence, personal setbacks, and a fascination with the darker truths people endure to survive.
He lives in North Carolina, hiking mountains by day and writing by night. He is considering adopting a dog, a cat, or both, and suspects they would judge him harshly.
Emily Carrington is here to tell us about Tilthos Pack, LGBTQ, dark fantasy, shifters.
Read on for details...
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LGBTQ, Dark Fantasy, Shifters
Date Published: January 16 2026
Lovers who have stood the test of time find themselves on unsteady ground. Can
their love prevail despite the terror working its way through the pack?
Wedding a Genie: Mark and Luke are getting married… or are they?
Mark’s pride may not allow him to show how he feels to a roomful of his
nearest and dearest.
The Mating Ceremony: Ethan and Jeremy have been forced into a mating ceremony.
Can their love survive their pack traditions?
The Separation: Separated by hundreds of miles and a promise, Charlie and Luis
long for each other. Will their love survive?
A Solstice Sundering: When Ethan is ordered back to the pack, his strained
relationship with Jeremy comes to the forefront. Can they weather this storm?
Uncertain Foundations: Lovers who have stood the test of time find themselves
on unsteady ground. Can their love prevail?
Excerpt from Wedding a Genie
Mark paced. He was dressed, finally, in his coat and tie, his hair tamed. He
looked almost the same as he did every day for work, except this was a tux,
not just a suit. And it wasn’t black, like the majority of his dress
clothes. Luke had picked out a soft brown garment that complemented
Mark’s deep tan and his dark brown hair. The tie he wore was the same
blue as his eyes. The tie clip, which he hadn’t even known was a thing
until Luke produced it, was golden and in the shape of a dragon.
He looked good.
But he longed to rip off all his clothes and go for a swim in the Gulf of
Mexico.
Someone knocked on the door to the “groom’s” changing room
on the boat he and Luke had rented for their wedding. Mark quit pacing and
forced his hands not to shake. “Come in.”
His brother, Jonathan, stepped in and shut the door. “Are you all
right?”
Mark scowled. “Why?”
To his surprise, Jonathan didn’t snap right back. “Because I was
nervous as hell when I got married to Becca,” he said quietly “And
you haven’t known Luke half as long as I knew Becca before I proposed.
“Besides, Mark,” he added, “I know you. Making a change like
this is difficult at the best of times and you’ve just been promoted.
You’re trying to get your feet under you.”
Mark let out a long sigh. “You’re right, I’m nervous. I love
him, I want to be with him for the rest of my life. Why am I so
jittery?”
“Like I said, it’s a big change.” Jonathan turned for the
door.
“That’s it? You’re going to come in here, confront me about
my nerves, and then just walk out?”
“You’re calmer now,” Jonathan pointed out.
Mark huffed a laugh. “I still want to go for a swim in the gulf.”
“As long as you get back here in time to dry yourself off, I don’t
see why that’s a problem. It’s almost an hour
before…” Jonathan tilted his head and said, “Or maybe
Luke’s presence would help.”
Mark’s tension rocketed up from a five all the way to a ten.
“Luke?” he squeaked.
Jonathan left the room and Luke stood in the doorway with two tall glasses in
his hands. “I know we’re not supposed to see each other before the
wedding,” Luke said, sounding apologetic. “But do you mind if I
come in?”
Mark took two steps back and gestured his soon-to-be-husband inside. Luke used
his magic to close the door without touching it.
“Showoff,” Mark teased weakly.
“Genie prerogative,” Luke answered. He took a sip from the glass
in his left hand and offered Mark the other one.
It was a rum and Coke; Mark sensed that even before he could smell the
contents. Luke knew what relaxed him. “You could feel my agitation all
the way from the other side of the boat, huh?” he asked as he sipped.
And then took a little more because Luke just made this particular drink so
perfectly.
Luke, being a genie, Mark’s former genie, had a connection to
Mark’s emotions. Sort of like the telepathic link Mark had to Luke,
although in that case it was because of Mark’s dragon genetics. For
Luke, it had everything to do with the rules that governed his species. Or at
least that was what he and Mark had decided. Probably, if SearchLight ever
chose to study genies more thoroughly, they would find a different, or at
least more exact, answer.
Luke nodded, his golden eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. He set his
glass on a handy table and crossed to Mark. “What’s wrong?”
Damn, but Luke looked good. Mark traced the lapel of his lover’s tux.
Brown, like Mark’s, but a lighter shade. Luke had really coordinated
everything. “You look like a sex god,” Mark murmured.
That got him a brief smile but then Luke’s serious expression returned.
“Talk to me, my Mark. What’s making you so jumpy?”
Mark didn’t know how to lay hands on the source of his nervousness and
so he simply shook his head. He, too, set his glass down and wrapped his arms
tightly around Luke, resting his cheek against his lover’s shoulder. His
whole body wanted to shake and he held it at bay. He felt so safe in
Luke’s embrace.
“Okay, so this is helping,” Luke correctly interpreted. “I
can just hold you during the whole ceremony if you want.”
Mark tensed. “I don’t want…” He stepped back.
The look on Luke’s face was that of a stricken calf.
Mark hugged him close again. “It’s not you, it’s me, and I
know that sounds like a crock of shit but…” He rubbed
Luke’s back. “Please understand… I’m sorry… I
don’t know how to explain but I’m so sorry…” He let
his words fade away as Luke placed a gentle kiss on his hair. Mark
couldn’t help thinking he shouldn’t feel this way, not when he was
the head of a whole damned department, he’d known Luke for three plus
years, and he all but worshiped the ground his genie lover walked on. Why was
he feeling so defensive?
“I’m feeling vulnerable,” he whispered as the truth made
itself known.
Luke’s voice in his ear was unfailingly soothing and warm. “If you
want, we can postpone or…” His swallow was audible in
Mark’s ear.
About the Author
Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender
women’s speculative fiction. Seeking a world made of equality, she
created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its
problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host
of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires. And in the
contemporary world she’s named “Sticks & Stones,” Emily
has vowed to create small towns where prejudice is challenged by a passionate
quest for equality. Find her on Facebook at Shapeshifter Central or on her
website.
Jonathan Wright is here to tell us about Incubus, a dark fantasy, horror, action romance.
Read on for details...
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Dark Fantasy/Horror Action Romance
Date Published: December 23, 2025
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
Life -- and love -- with a man who fights nightmares is bound to
be… different.
Smart, capable, and lethal, Sarah Fenton never needed rescuing -- until she
met Joe Horn and his horrifying nemesis, the muck-drippy-thing. Together they
defeated that nightmare, and for the first time in decades Joe could stop
running.
In the process, Sarah discovered her weakness -- Joe. The hard-as-nails woman
becomes Joe’s willing sub -- his slave girl. Joe is a perfect Dom, but
Sarah has even darker fantasies -- lurid, sensual and totally submissive.
Sometimes, they even come to life.
Now one of them is stalking her, and she feels the awful temptation of
nightmarish pleasure. The darker the fantasy, the more intense the pleasure.
Pleasure stronger than any drug. Pleasure that threatens to drown her. The
pleasure of surrender… to an Incubus.
Warning: This is a Razor’s Edge Erotica short story. Expect
limited plot and character development, and lots of heat. If you’re
looking for a lengthy plot driven erotic romance, this is not it!
Jongo infested her fantasies, dark, muscular, commanding. Sarah masturbated
three or four times a day thinking of him coming to take her, dragging her by
her hair, stumbling naked from the house, immune to his kicks and punches,
honed by years of training that would kill an ordinary man.
Not ordinary, Jongo. Not him. No. Her struggles only fed his burning hunger.
And hers. As now. As naked as she was, his huge cock throbbing and bouncing as
he walked, his grip was casual, yet inhumanly strong.
Stronger even than Joe, whom she had called Master more often than not. But
this wasn’t really about Joe…
* * *
Exhausted, struggling to keep her feet as she stumbled, Sarah gave up, then
was dragged, then followed him limply, his grip in her thick hair making her
walk head down, like a slave, cursing, then crying, then sobbing…
please, please, please.
Please, what? The demon’s strength, already huge, increased as he
stepped out of the trees onto the beach. As his foot touched the water, he
dragged her upright until she stood with her head tilted back, staring up at
him. He pushed her away, his hooded eyes nearly invisible in the shadows of
the moon. “Kneel.” He grinned as he stroked his cock with his free
hand.
Sarah stumbled and fell into knee-deep water. Rising, sputtering as water
streamed down her body, defiance failed her; words choked her. She breathed
heavily, staring at his cock.
“Recall how I took you before, so easily, wrapping you in my vines, my
seaweed, stroking your hungry body until you begged me to take you. How I made
you scream my name.”
Her legs quivered. She wanted to curse him, scream for help, for Joe
to… rescue…
Sarah had never in her life needed rescuing. Except for one time…
* * *
The wind sucked her along the dirty cement floor, into the waiting maw of that
THING, the muck-drippy-thing, as she steadied the pistol and emptied the
fourteen-round clip into its indescribable excuse for a face as the spindly
spider arms reached for her…
Then Joe was there, grabbing her by the collar and pulling her back. Stronger
than any man she had ever known. Pulling her back from the edge. Saving her.
* * *
Sarah hadn’t felt weak. Not then. Not like she felt now.
Weak. So weak. Why do I feel this way? Jongo is a monster, a creature from the
icy black depths of the harshest place on earth. Why do I feel so fucking hot?
She stroked her clit with one hand as she slowly sank to her knees in the
warm, swirling water. She spread the fingers of her other hand and teased her
nipples, shivering as she imagined being held against her will in the depths
of his lair.
“You are helpless,” Jongo told her. “Helpless.” A
ritual. A spell.
Yes. Helpless! Helpless! I am helpless! Her mouth fell open. She arched her
back, presenting her full tits.
I have to stop. I have to be strong! “No!” she gasped in a
purposely seductive parody of defiance. Wait. Purposely? Like I want this?
Jongo grinned and said nothing, continued stroking his cock. His huge, erect
cock. She couldn’t stop looking at it. At him. I love cock. I love it.Joe says I’m a cock-hungry slut. I get wet when he whispers that to me.
Helpless… His voice faded, still there, still commanding. She came with
a short, harsh cry as the orgasm claimed her.
Jongo laughed. “You have already surrendered. Do as I command! Keep
stroking yourself!”
She did. I can’t stop. I can’t disobey him. It feels so good to
obey. I want more!
“Think how my hard cock will feel in your hot, wet cunt. You will beg
for it. Beg for it, woman! Beg for my cock! For when you do, when I plunge
into you, you will be mine. My slave. Forever!”
Sarah came again, moaning this time, closing her eyes and thrusting hard,
pushing her fingers deep into her soft tits. “Yes! Jongo, fuck me! Yes!
Make me your slave! Make me your slave!”
She dropped back into the water as he fell on her, forcing her legs apart,
driving his cock into her, driving her will deep down into the chill, black
depths of his domain where it dissolved like tendrils of ink. She wrapped her
legs around him and thrust mindlessly, screaming as she came and came
and…
* * *
Sarah lay on the table on the veranda, sweating, her tits heaving, her knees
spread, hips moving rhythmically up and down in time with her frantic thrusts
as she came for the fifth time. “Ah, fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” She rammed
the dildo into her cunt one final time before slowly drawing it out. Her whole
body quivered, drenched in sweat, as she lowered her legs and stretched,
groaning.
“Well, I think you must clean off that table before you use it for
anything else.”
Sarah gasped in shock, but without shame or embarrassment.
Belle stood not three feet away, a gorgeous Jamaican woman of medium height
and surpassing curves, dressed in paint spattered clothes and carrying various
implements of artistic creation. “You missing your man Joe? He’s
only been gone a day.” Belle arched one elegant brow for emphasis.
Sarah dropped the dildo and draped one arm over her sweaty face. “You
have no idea…” Joe liked to watch her fuck herself like that.
Imagining him doing so made it hotter for her.
Belle chuckled and began setting up an easel. “So hot for your Dom, you
maybe forget we had an appointment to paint those luscious curves?”
About the Author
Jonathan Wright retired to the northeast, where he is surrounded by family and
trees in about equal numbers. In his free time he enjoys thinking up
erotically terrifying situations for his characters, who insist they
don’t like that sort of thing. When he isn’t writing about
slavering fangs in the dark he does weird-ass paintings.
He has a daughter who will admit to the relationship under duress. He puts up
with her because she makes great cookies.
We don't know why she puts up with him.
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
Save 15% off any order at ChangelingPress.com with code RABT15
A.P. Mobley is here to tell us about The Skeleton Faerie, Children of the Death Gods #1, dark fantasy, fantasy, mythology.
There's also a great giveaway.
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The Skeleton Faerie
A.P. Mobley
(Children of the Death Gods, #1)
Publication date: November 8th 2025
Genres: Adult, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Mythology
Faerie folklore meets a nuclear postapocalypse in this dark mythological fantasy woven with secrets, treachery, and star-crossed love.
Ninety-nine years after the Nuclear War of 1989, twenty-one-year-old Gus Brandon should only be interested in the survival of humanity and the expansion of his compound. But he’s obsessed with legends from the distant past, superstitions of an expired people.
While searching forbidden ruins for the scraps of stories lost to time, he stumbles upon a mysterious young woman covered in scars. Her name is Saoirse, and their meeting sets off a bloody chain of events—one in which Gus discovers that the folklore he loves just might be real, and that it’s tied to mankind in ways he could have never imagined.
Soon the lines between myth and reality blur, as do the lines between realms.
Gus will have to rely on his knowledge—and Saoirse—to survive the horrors awaiting him… in this world and the next.
When Gus and his teammates were a mere mile from the compound, the sun had almost finished setting, and the temperature had dropped significantly. A breeze grazed the back of his bare neck and arms, sending chills through his body. In every direction, all that was visible were trees, the only noises those of his and his companions’ boots and their animals’ hooves crunching against shriveled grass and fallen leaves. Occasionally, crows—some of them genetically altered, their feathers stained a pinkish color—flapped from branch to branch, their harsh caws piercing the quiet.
Maybe it was because of the extensive amount of folklore he’d been reading, but these days, the dark played tricks on Gus’s eyes, making him see monsters when nothing was there.
Nothing could be there, after all, as the stories he so loved weren’t real.
And even if there was a chance that they were real (and he knew there wasn’t), his compound was on the western side of a mountain range called the Black Hills, located within the fallen United States of America—far, far away from the places those magical tales took place.
Yet he still found himself imagining all manner of malevolent faeries prowling the woods at night. He saw them skulking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
In masses of collapsed cottonwoods, he imagined there were redcaps hiding, plotting to slaughter any stray travelers passing by.
In murders of crows, he imagined there were sluagh flying, scouring the forest floor for the next unlucky fellow whose soul they might devour.
In fast-moving streams, he imagined there were kelpies biding their time, anticipating the moment a person came close enough to drown and eat.
Thankfully, the logical side of his brain knew he had nothing to worry about—even as far as nonfictional threats went. The worst anyone on scavenge-duty had encountered in the last year was a couple of mountain lions and some rattlesnakes, and although he and his teammates had never run into anything like that, they knew how to take care of it as easily as the other people of the compound had: with bullets.
No one left the compound without a loaded gun and extra ammo.
Gus and his team were safe.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and if it weren’t for the smog blanketing the sky (a lingering effect of the Nuclear War, which the elders said should clear up any decade now), the moon and stars might have lit up the night. The temperature fell even further, clouds of breath filling the air in front of Gus’s face and fogging up his glasses.
“Guess we should have packed our coats,” Nancy remarked as she walked in front of Gus, guiding her pig along. She began to shiver. “I hate when the weather gets like this. Hot during the day, cold at night.”
Twigs cracked to the left. Hand flying to his holster, Gus looked that way, his goat bleating, Nancy’s pig squealing.
A flash of movement in the trees, there and gone in an instant.
“What the . . . ?” Oliver tossed his bundle of birds over his shoulder and retrieved his flashlight, his teeth chattering. He and Adam stood several feet to Gus’s right. “Did you guys see that?”
Adam drew his handgun. “Probably a mountain lion. We’re almost home, so just keep your eyes peeled and your weapons ready.”
“Maybe speed it up a little too,” Gus added, and he and Nancy pulled out their handguns. The team continued toward the compound.
Not five minutes had passed before more branches snapped behind them. Again, the goat bleated, and the pig squealed.
Everyone swung around, preparing to shoot. Oliver shined his flashlight into the trees.
The glow revealed a creature that made Gus’s skin prickle with goose bumps.
Author Bio:
A. P. Mobley is the Halloween-loving, rock-music-obsessed author of dark fantasy inspired by mythology. She doesn’t only write about her favorite myths, folktales, and fairy tales in books, though; she discusses them on her podcast, Myths (& Folktales & Fairy tales), as well as on her blog and newsletter. She grew up in Wyoming and Nebraska and currently lives in South Dakota, and when she’s not up to her elbows in research for her next project, she can be found consuming dangerous amounts of coffee, reading speculative fiction, or rewatching The Good Place.
Never miss an update from A. P. by signing up for her newsletter. Full list of books and Content Warnings on her website.
Emily Carrington is here to tell us about Conventions of Dragons, an LGBTQ polyamorous dark fantasy featuring shapeshifters.
Read on for details...
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LGBTQ, Dark Fantasy, Polyamorous, Shapeshifters
Date Published: October 31, 2025
When duty calls, where will the heart go?
Joel’s twin has been hurt, and Joel decides to stay with him rather than
join his new lovers across the sea. But fate, and a serial killer, have other
plans.
Parisa and Noah are drifting apart and without Joel they might lose everything
they’ve built.
Can this new throuple fight together to win their happiness or will evil
triumph?
EXCERPT
“Hooo-elll…”
It was Parisa’s voice, but he couldn’t touch her physically or
telepathically. All Joel’s senses were blurred.
Joel wasn’t sure if he’d passed out, but everything was foggy. Not
dark, since he had no concept of light beyond the meaning of the word, but
misty. It was like the fog that clung to his face and arms, to his hearing and
sense of smell when he’d visited England thirty years ago. He’d
never forget that sensation of everything being muffled. The sound of his own
voice had been right, but the tapping of his cane tip on the cobblestones in
London had been oddly removed from the rest of him. He’d actually fallen
a couple of times in London, not because he couldn’t feel the ground but
because he had tried too hard to rely on the sound of his cane to tell him the
depth of things like cracks and steps.
Now, although the sense of being wrapped in cotton persisted, he felt even
more cut off from the world because he was really two people. He
couldn’t attend to his own movements or speech while living in
Jules’s head. Especially not when Jules was so distant from the world.
His whole spirit seemed caught up in confusion and fear. So although Joel and
Jules sometimes lived in each other’s heads for brief moments, there had
never been such a fundamental separation from physical reality.
Dimly, he could feel a hand caressing his face. He tried to reach up and catch
those fingers, but his arms felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. He
attempted another connection with Jules, one that would allow him to
communicate more than just his confusion and to feel Jules’s sense of
dislocation. That, too, failed.
Someone spoke then, their voice cutting through the fog. “Joel.”
It was James, the dragon guarding him. “Joel, come back. Follow me if
you’re turned around.”
He clung to those words and finally managed, by trailing after them in the
psychic world, to reestablish himself in the realm of touch, hearing, and
scent.
The person caressing his face paused and Parisa asked, “Can you hear me,
Joel?”
“Yes,” he croaked, his throat dry.
“Drink,” she answered, and he opened his mouth, unsure if he would
feel a glass against his lips or her cupped hand. He registered the water as
cool and drank as palmfuls were brought to his lips. From where he’d
heard Parisa’s voice, he’d expected the water to come from another
angle. Maybe Noah was actually giving him the refreshing liquid.
“James?” he asked between mouthfuls.
“He’s not here,” Parisa said, “although I heard him
too. It was like he somehow tapped into a telepathy that could be carried to
more than one person.”
“Are either of you hurt?” Joel asked.
“No,” Parisa answered after a moment. He wondered what caused the
hesitation. Then she explained. “Noah is shell-shocked, I think.
He’s --”
“I’m fine,” Noah said firmly. “Just… sorry
about…”
Struggling to raise his head, Joel felt hands tighten on his shoulders. He
fought down the instantaneous panic that clawed at his throat. “Unless
there’s a reason for me to be lying on my back,” he said as gently
as he could manage, “I’d rather sit up.”
The hands released him and as he sat up, crossing his legs, he felt
Parisa’s breath on his shoulder blade. He was still naked. He shivered
and instinctively pulled his legs up to shield his stomach and softer bits. He
wasn’t afraid of Parisa or Noah, but he felt vulnerable. “What
happened?”
“There was an explosion,” Noah said, and he did sound a little
shocky because his voice trembled. “Over at the other house, we
think.”
“Definitely not here,” Parisa put in. “Do either of you need
a towel? There aren’t robes in here, and I don’t think we should
leave the bathroom until we get the all-clear.”
So, that was why his bare butt was on tile. “Did you two carry me in
here?”
Again, there was that momentary pause. Then Parisa said, “I helped Noah
and carried you, yes.”
Their location made sense even if nothing else did. As far as Joel knew, the
bathroom might be the only room in the smaller house without windows.
Not like the one that had blown inward, injuring Jules.
He shivered as that realization, sent by his twin, hit him. Jules didn’t
actually know it had been a window, but he’d had glass taken out of his
arm so he’d made an educated guess. Joel said, “Soon as we can, I
need to get to Jules. Something’s seriously wrong with him.”
“Can you feel him?” Parisa asked, her hand warm on his back.
“Not now but…” He shivered again, unable to help himself.
“He was muffled, or that’s what it felt like. Like having your
head wrapped in a blanket.”
Noah began, “Did he --”
Someone interrupted, throwing open the door. “Here they are,” said
James, his voice tight.
“Good,” said a voice that came out slightly tinny. “Help is
on the way but it’s a good hour out. See if you can move them to this
building.”
“Will do.” James crouched, his voice coming from off to
Joel’s right. “Are any of you hurt?”
Joel shook his head. “I’m fine. It didn’t happen
here.” He reached out toward James’s voice, but Parisa caught his
hand.
“Agent Tavery,” she said softly, “you’re
bleeding.”
About the Author
Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender
women’s speculative fiction. Seeking a world made of equality, she
created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its
problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host
of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires. And in the
contemporary world she’s named “Sticks & Stones,” Emily
has vowed to create small towns where prejudice is challenged by a passionate
quest for equality. Find her on Facebook at Shapeshifter Central or on her
website.
