The Dark Side has issued a hit on Santa Claus and sent their secret weapon, a Recruiter named Wanda, to take the old guy down. But Wanda might not be prepared for Santa’s hot, heavenly bodyguard…

Happy Holidays everyone! Welcome to my quirky urban fantasy series Dark Vs. Light, where nothing is as it seems and the stakes are downright quirky. It’s another fabric of the universe, a gray zone, where the Dark and the Light sides sometimes touch down – and have to deal with the discomfort.

And hey – I’m giving away a book today… so leave a message and I hope YOU win!

Here’s an excerpt for ya.
Linda

“Hot Holiday” – Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

Wanda thought about climbing the outside of the building like a spider, hands over high heels, but she wasn’t alone in New York. And anyway, her skirt was too tight.

The first rule in the Recruiter handbook, if there had been a copy anywhere, would have been to never let a target see you coming. The second rule was not to become a loser. Losers were so unattractive, even before the raging fires down there got through with them.

She felt the presence of her targets in that building. Santa Claus was up there. As for Santa’s handsome guard, Cameron Kent, or whatever his real name might be, he wasn’t listed in the Who’s Who of existence. His soul had no known serial number. In fact, there was no mention of Kent at all, even when sorted by physical description.

What did that leave? Some sort of cheater trying to beat the system and succeeding? Well, she was a master of that game.

Looking up with full concentration, Wanda was able to pinpoint Mister Kent’s life force in there as easily as though she was attached to him by a string. Because of the contact they’d had on the street and the scent she had marked him with, they were mystically joined at the hip… which made his rebuff and the thought of Kent being an incognito rebel particularly frustrating.

When lightning split the night sky over her newly acquired auburn-haired head””one bolt only, lavender-white, mesmerizingly bright, and coming out of nowhere””Wanda grinned.

“You’ve got to love an omen like that.”

But the lightning didn’t dissipate, as it should have. Nor were there any clouds in the sky. It became a solid streak of buzzing electrical charge that came to ground on the street, missing cars, taxis, busses and sidewalks as it sliced through the pavement near the curb beside her like a knife passing through butter.

The wayward streak made a whining sound as it disappeared into the fissure it had created. Leftover static lifted the hair at the nape of Wanda’s neck as she swayed on her heels and righted herself.

No ordinary omen, then.

A warning.

But whose side had sent it?

An answer to her question arrived. That sizzling bolt had left a stench of burnt toast in its wake, and only one thing smelled like that.