BLURB:
There are lots of dangerous things hanging around Portland lately but, when a Demonic tattoo artist comes to town, everything goes to Hell in DEMON’S INK.
This young adult novel is set in Portland, Oregon and with Halloween coming, you'll want to have a scary story to share...that’s where DEMON'S INK comes in.
This is a romantic thriller but really it's about art but art that's more than anyone bargained for.
Drake and Bartos come to the Pacific Northwest, where they open yet another tattoo shop but Bartos has no trouble dealing with the competition because there’s nothing normal about his art. And he’s stealing more than clients from the local skin artists. He's stealing their souls.
Customers fall in love with Bartos Slinderman’s tats but end up paying the ultimate price for their purchase because unlike Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, they can’t walk away from this art and it’s beautiful until the artwork takes on a life of its own...
But, when Drake meets Scarlett everything begins to change…again. He’s found something he never thought possible: love. And, it’s complicated. Now he’s going to have to make the choice of a lifetime—and beyond. Will he choose love or life? And, if he chooses love, he just might have to give up his soul.
EXCERPT:
DRAKE
Expectations can ruin everything. Like thinking my senior year was going to be something special. What a set up that was.
I should have known better than to get my hopes up.
Ever.
I’d never been lucky. No one in my family was. I was probably only six when I’d heard grandpa say, “We come from a long line of losers.” He was talking to my Dad. I don’t even know about what. But, now, I know I should have listened to him.
Dad had already gone to prison, leaving Mom and me worse off than ever. And we were never good but, at least while he’d hung around, she managed to act like things were okay. Now she wasn’t even trying to pretend. Really it was way worse than that; she wasn’t even getting up off the couch any more.
I’d come home from school to find her passed out. The first couple times it freaked me out. Seeing her face-planted in the front room and not knowing whether she was alive or dead, I didn’t want to be the one to find her like that, to turn her over, to have to check to see if she was still breathing but I did. . . and I had no idea if she was high or drunk. I didn’t even care because what difference did it make? She was out of it. That was all that mattered.
So, after Dad went to jail, I was completely alone until Bartos made me a deal I couldn’t refuse but that was later.
For weeks, I’d come home after class and make a sandwich—if there was bread—otherwise it was a bowl of cereal for breakfast and dinner, sometimes I’d eat it dry because the milk had gone bad.
I knew I was going to have to get a job if I wanted to survive and I’d started looking around but that was right before everything changed.
It was late one Thursday evening. I still remember because I was thinking, “Only one more day…” I just didn’t know how right I was.
I don’t know what woke me up that night. Maybe it was the smell, the heat, the sound of my Mom screaming. I really don’t know. But I opened my eyes to the thick burning haze of a room filled with smoke.
I’d gone down into the basement that night and fallen asleep.
Looking around, I already knew there were no windows. I was trapped.
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