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Connie Corcoran Wilson<\/a> and Virtual Author Book Tours kindly arranged for me to share an excerpt as part of the book tour for Hellfire\u00c2\u00a0& Damnation III<\/em><\/a>. I hope you enjoy it!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Final Victim<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee had been drinking since late afternoon. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much stop the<\/p>\n pain of the voices in his head, as clarify what the voices were saying.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do the Reverend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bidding, to a point<\/em>, thought Lee. Reverend Jones<\/em><\/p>\n says Dave Downing has to die. If God or the devil wants poor old Dave dead,<\/em><\/p>\n He must give me some sort of sign. I ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t no cold-blooded killer!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee took another swig of Old Milwaukee. He would have preferred<\/p>\n Jack Daniels, but he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the money.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee looked out the window of the shabby white house that stood be-<\/p>\n low the hill. High up on the hill was where the rich people lived. The poor<\/p>\n people lived down here. Lee was staring at the wet grass of his small yard.<\/p>\n It had rained less than an hour ago. He thought the drops of water on the<\/p>\n grass resembled the tears of some gigantic creature.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee popped the top of his sixth beer and glanced outside again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Suddenly, birds. Thousands and thousands of birds. Black birds.<\/p>\n European starlings. They were everywhere! On his lawn. On the lawn of<\/p>\n the neighbor to his left, Ed Grant. On Rose Till\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawn, his neighbor to the<\/p>\n right. He watched Rosie Till\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s golden collie, Honey, barking furiously as<\/p>\n she chased the birds as far as her chain would allow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Melanie! Come quick! There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birds everywhere! They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re peckin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 away<\/p>\n at our yard and Ed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Rosie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Melanie Elliot rushed down the stairs. She could hear the urgency in<\/p>\n her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drunken voice. She stared in astonishment at the spectacle<\/p>\n taking place outside on their lawn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The weird thing is that the birds stop right there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, pointing<\/p>\n to the perimeter of their neighbors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lawns. Melanie was right. The birds<\/p>\n were covering nearly every inch of Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawn and Ed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawn and Rose\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawn.<\/p>\n But the ubiquitous birds, clucking and pecking and sucking eagerly at the<\/p>\n earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bosom, stopped at the sidewalks of the two neighboring houses.<\/p>\n Only three lawns were infested by the omnipresent birds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There were no birds across the street. There were no birds on any other<\/p>\n lawns beyond those three, which they could see by glancing up and down<\/p>\n Third Street. Only here, in their lawn and those of their two closest neighbors,<\/p>\n were there hundreds\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthousands, even\u00e2\u20ac\u201dof noisy, hungry, pecking black<\/p>\n birds, greedily digging with their beaks. But what were they digging for?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Melanie asked the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do you think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re eating? What<\/p>\n are they looking for, Lee?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are they migrating? Is there some<\/p>\n special food in just these three lawns that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve targeted? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so weird that<\/p>\n they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t across the street or, really, anywhere but on these three lawns.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n She shook her head in confusion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee took a deep breath. He had just realized something that gave him<\/p>\n a start. He was going to have to admit to the Reverend that he had been<\/p>\n given a sign. The Reverend Jeremiah Jones had predicted to Lee just yes-<\/p>\n terday that he would be given a sign\u00e2\u20ac\u201da sign that he must follow Reverend<\/p>\n Jeremiah Jones\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 instructions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jeremiah said to Lee, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The heavens might open up. You might hear a<\/p>\n loud voice telling you to do what I tell you. To do what is necessary. It has to<\/p>\n be the way I tell you. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to follow my directions. To the letter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The<\/p>\n Reverend spoke slowly, in a stern tone of voice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lee thought, This must be the sign the Reverend was talking about.<\/em><\/p>\n What else could it be?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What Lee and Melanie Elliot were seeing defied logic. There was no<\/p>\n reasonable explanation for the sudden appearance of hordes of angry black<\/p>\n birds, mimicking Alfred Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movie The Birds<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The small black creatures were everywhere: on the gables of the houses.<\/p>\n On the roofs of Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house and his neighbors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 homes. On their lawns. In<\/p>\n the trees. Greedily pecking at the still-wet grass, searching for some mys-<\/p>\n terious food item. Some magic worm, perhaps? The entire experience left<\/p>\n both Lee and Melody chattering about the occurrence with their next-door<\/p>\n neighbors for hours afterwards. No one knew of any logical explanation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Lee thought he might know what it all meant. And he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like<\/p>\n what it meant for his future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To be continued on March 25th at What You Talking Bout Willis?<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Connie Corcoran Wilson and Virtual Author Book Tours kindly arranged for me to share an excerpt as part of the book tour for Hellfire\u00c2\u00a0& Damnation III. I hope you enjoy it! Circle Six: Heresy The Final Victim Lee had been drinking since late afternoon. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much stop the pain of the… Continue reading Excerpt from Hellfire & Damnation III<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[764],"class_list":["post-4771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","tag-hellfire-damnation-iii","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4774,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771\/revisions\/4774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Circle Six: Heresy<\/h1>\n