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**books can be read as standalones in any order!**
Chase Nightly, L'UccisoreTeam Nightly Book 1by Kate PorterGenre: Urban FantasyChase Nightly is a born and bred Georgia boy from Savannah, who loves his
job as a social studies teacher, his bachelorhood and his widowed mother.RaeChandler is a contemporary big city woman with no desire to change
that fact; as different from Chase as night and day with one
important exception: They are both leaders of elite teams of vampire
slayers called Uccisore, but with very different territories. When
Rae shows up in Savannah for reasons other than visiting family,
Chase demands to know her true motives. Sparks fly the moment they
meet and past life memories surface, memories that keep Rae off
balance and terrified that destiny will claim her heart once more.When Gordon Charles, Vampire King, kidnaps Chase’s mother, the two
leaders must join forces and put their chaotic feelings aside to save
her from becoming the Vampire Queen.Goodreads * Amazon
But the vampires were as real as the people they’d once been when their hearts beat. They slunk among the shadows. They hid. They watched as the uccisore watched.Team Nightly: seven elite warriors all armed with steel swords, wooden stakes and enhanced senses of l’uccisore. The team stood in silent sentry . . . watching . . . waiting. The anticipation of the coming battle set their blood humming and their hearts pounding heavily in their chests.Chuck, Simon, and Sheila held to their leader’s right flank as Michael, Gabe, and Tony held to his left waiting for Chase Nightly, team leader, to give them the order to attack. Their purpose, their spirits were as one as Chase took the first step, slowly moving into the darkness with only one objective: to end the vampires.With a barely perceptible nod the silent command was given. A single step behind their leader, swords held at the ready, the team was dressed in black to blend with the night.Chase saw the red eyes blazing at him through the shadows like burning embers; sharp fangs glistened wetly in the slanted beam of moonlight. Without warning and with a speed endemic to the undead two of them flew at Chase. With the deadly accurate speed of a blood-line uccisore, he raised his sword to strike but the vampire sprang high into the air above him, slipping past Chase’s blade and out of his reach. Like striking lightening, the vamp came at him again. Behind him, Chase heard the clashing swords and grunts from landed blows of his team as they took up the battle around him.One vampire came from his left as another came from his right, with the practiced precision of a well-choreographed dance he took the first one’s head. In less than a heartbeat the vampire exploded into a cloud of gray ash, drifting to the ground to mingle with dirt and refuse. He took the head of the second before the dust of the first had settled. “Not as fast as you should have been, were you?” he asked the two, now ended vampires.A trickle of sweat slid down Chase’s brow to drip into a pair of clear, green eyes. He swiped the back of his left hand across his forehead, spinning around simultaneously to block with his right arm a lethal fist as it swung at Chase’s head. The pain sang through muscle and bone to his shoulder, numbing his whole arm and nearly causing him to release his grip on his sword.The hot Savannah night air was still, not a whisper of a breeze could be felt as the living battled the walking dead. The sweat soaked through the material of the uccisori clothing plastering it to their powerful bodies. The intense heat wasn’t a problem for those they fought: the dead did not perspire.
Hunter's SwordTeam Nightly Book 2 Armed with family legends and a blessed sword dating back to the first
crusades, Hunter Blackfox leaves the reservation in Cherokee, North
Carolina to replace a fallen member of Team Nightly and help protect
the city of Savannah, Georgia. His life is about to change…When he first lays eyes on Sheila Maxson, he likens her to Aphrodite,
Helen of Troy, and Jackie Onassis—sex, beauty, and class—all
rolled into one, long, luscious package just for him.Sheila Maxson is a seasoned member of Team Nightly and a bloodline uccisore
gifted with exceptional speed and agility on the battlefield. But
she’s battling more than the rising number of vampires. The
horrific memories of an event that took place only days after 9/11
when she, her brother Michael, and their aging grandfather tried to
protect first responders from frenzied vampires, as they searched for
survivors at ground zero, are slowly chipping away at Sheila’s
emotional armor. With the added guilt of losing a friend and uccisore
brother in battle, the short fuse of her control is burning fast.Each time she and Hunter are in the same vicinity, Sheila goes on the
attack and Hunter has no option but to fight back. Until the night
Chase and Rae’s daughter is born and the vampire king breaches the
hospital nursery. The bickering teammates must team up to protect the
innocent newborn.Hunter must find a way to bring down the walls that Sheila has erected
around herself in order to save not just Chase and Rae’s baby, but
the woman of his dreams as well.As word comes to them that Hunter’s Sword is coveted by Gordon
Charles, Vampire King, the entire team must find a way to keep it out
of vampire clutches.Gordon Charles will do whatever he must to corrupt the powers of the sword
and sway its magic to benefit his cause. To do that he must spill
Luccisore blood…Sheila’s blood.Goodreads * Amazon
The heat of rage radiated off of Hunter Blackfox in rippling waves as he stormed through the door. It flew open with such force that it slammed against the wall with a resounding boom.“Did you or did you not bring me in as your Second?” he said with a guttural growl as his boots thundered across the threshold.Hunter wasn’t so far over the edge with his anger that he didn’t see the momentary confusion cross Chase Nightly’s face. A too long lock of black hair fell across Chase’s forehead before he brushed it back, piercing Hunter with his bottle green eyes. It only took a moment for Hunter to see when realization had sunk into his boss.“Aw shit. What has Sheila done now?” A mixture of frustration and resignation brewed in Chase’s voice like bitter, day-old coffee as Hunter watched Team Nightly’s leader fall back in his chair and throw the pen he’d been writing with on the desk.“What’s she done? I’ll tell you what she’s done!” Hunter bellowed, as fury turned his dark eyes almost black. “That woman is a menace. She needs to be locked up for the safety of the human race before she has a chance to breed.”“Hunter,” Chase said wearily, as he rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep the past three nights. Subtlety is not working here. What happened?” Hunter could see the unspoken end of his question, “this time,” in Chase’s face.“Every time we get within sight of each other, she tries to stake my ass,” he said as he began pacing the small area. “Then she does this, ‘oops, my bad’ lame-assed apology.”He pulled off the remains of his tattered, blood streaked shirt and let it drop to the floor at his feet. “Look at this, Chase. She tried to kill me. Again!” Blood oozed from a long jagged slash from his left shoulder to his elbow and tracks of red trickled down his forearm. A matching wound marred the skin of his right side from his collarbone to the joint of his shoulder.“Okay,” Chase said as he blew out a breath. He rubbed the back of his neck. “That doesn’t look so bad. Was it a training accident?”“You wish, Boss. And that’s not the damn point. For God’s sake, she tried to freaking kill me!”Hunter placed his large hands on the desk and leaned in to face his uccisore team leader. “I was minding my own business, standing in the kitchen at The Blue Mermaid talking to Carly and Tony before they opened for the lunch crowd. The next thing I know, Xena, Warrior Lunatic barges through the back door, grabs up a butcher’s knife and comes at me like I’m a vamp ready to sink my fangs into someone. A move like that would have killed a normal person.”He pushed off the desk and resumed his marching pace back and forth across the carpet, before stopping and dropping his six foot three inch, two hundred pound frame, into a chair. His body deflated just a bit with the release of some of the steam his anger and frustration had built up inside of him. His bare shoulders slumped and his head fell forward in defeat.
Keys to the Mermaid's HeartTeam Nightly Book 3A mythical sapphire, a family legend, and a lost treasure, could lead
Carly Harden to her fondest dreams . . . or her worst nightmare.Now that Carly has revealed her secret, that she knows who and what Team
Nightly is, Tony Sargento, chef of the Blue Mermaid restaurant,
empath, and Carly’s boss, is furious with her. His jealousy at
Carly’s close friendship with Rhett James, the newest team member,
isn’t helping him calm his anger. That she’s been in love with Tony since the day they’d met, is one
thing she would never disclose. His anger at her is breaking her
heart and her past is preventing her from trusting him fully.In order to help the team locate an artifact that Gordon Charles, King
of the Vampires, is after, Carly digs a little deeper into the family
lore behind the key that she’s worn on a chain since she was a
little girl. She soon comes to believe that it is one of three needed
to open a lost treasure chest. One that is said to hold the Mermaid’s
Heart: a massive sapphire that is said to hold mystical powers and
created by Zeus himself.The powers that legend has attached to the Mermaid’s Heart, are said to
be boundless, granting the one who holds it their fondest wishes.But when Gordon Charles gets word that Carly is the owner of one of the
fabled keys to the Heart, he sends his minions to retrieve it, no
matter the cost.After Carly is attacked and nearly killed, Tony and Rhett must try to set
aside their ongoing battle, to win her heart, in order to protect
her. Even with the help of Team Nightly, it may not be enough to save
her . . . unless they find the Keys to the Mermaid’s Heart.Goodreads * Amazon
“This key,” Carly said, swinging it a little as she spoke. “Was given to me by my maternal grandmother when I was nine years old.” The soft light from the lamp sent dazzling sparks of gold light dancing off of it and onto her face.Scarlett returned with the bottle and refilled all three glasses. She set the bottle on the table, next to the empty one, with a soft clunk. “Do you still have that old cigar box full of keys?”“Yes and it’s held together with duct tape and rubber bands. I really need to find something else to keep them in.”“Get back to the story, Carly.” Sheila insisted, narrowing her eyes at Scarlett who groaned and flopped back on the couch. “The key?”“Right. Anyway, when Grammy gave this to me she told me the story behind it.” Carly picked up her glass and took a sip before continuing with the family legend. She told Sheila of how her third—or was it her fourth?—great-grandmother Charlotte’s older brother, Jacob, and two of his friends had been visiting family in Savannah, in the spring of 1861. The boys had been playing in the woods and stumbled upon a hidden cave where they’d found three keys and a treasure chest.When they opened the chest they’d found it filled with gold and jewels. A pirate’s treasure to be sure. But, the chest had been too big and too heavy for the boys to carry out of the cave. So, they each took a key and made a pact that they would all return together the next day with a wagon to haul away their treasure and they would never tell a living soul what they’d found.“They were supposed to meet the next afternoon,” Carly continued. “But when Jacob returned home he was forced to leave for California, along with his mother and baby sister. Fort Sumter had been fired upon and the Civil War had begun.”“You mean, ‘The War of Northern Aggression’ had begun, Carly. Get your facts straight, girl,” Scarlett teased.Carly ignored the jibe, rolling her eyes at Scarlett. “As I was saying, Jacob’s father was going to join the Confederate army and made plans to meet them in San Francisco after the war. This key has been passed down in my family ever since.”“So did Jacob tell anyone about the treasure?”“Nope. None except for Charlotte, that is, but that wasn’t until about seven years later. Right after their mother had died. Charlotte was…let me think.” She paused for a moment. “She was nine at the time and Jacob was around sixteen, I think Grammy said. He told the story to Charlotte and gave her the key, with the promise to never tell a soul. After their mother died, they’d been evicted, and lived homeless and hungry for nearly a year.”
“Holy crap!” Carly yelled, sitting bolt upright as a realization struck her, the sudden curse jolting the other women out of the story. Redemption StoneTeam Nightly Book 4The only thing keeping the beast at bay is THE REDEMPTION STONE.Chuck Logan fled Ireland fourteen years ago, letting his family believe him
dead, like his brother, Matty. When he landed on America’s shores
he was a feral werewolf, but everything changed when a special boy
and his father found him and gave him the gift of redemption.Now, Chuck has found his true mate in Scarlett James, and he is terrified
that he has now put her life in danger. Walking away after only one
night with Scarlett is the only way to keep her safe. Ashley Connor,
a wolf with an agenda, has set her sights on mating with Chuck and
building an invincible pack that will rule the entire region. She
will do whatever it takes to have her way, including partnering with
Gordon Charles, the Vampire King.After Chuck and Scarlett are attacked by a vampire who miraculously morphs
into a wolf, the reality of this new, and seemingly indestructible,
threat must be eradicated before Ashely Connor and Gordon Charles
have the chance to build their army…It may already be too late!Goodreads * Amazon
“We need to go check it out.”Simultaneously, they pulled a stake from their belts and took a firmer grip on their swords. They took several steps apart before advancing into the woods, and stooped low to make themselves less of a target. They’d gone no more than ten feet into the trees when a low, guttural growl sounded, bringing goosebumps to their skin.Charlie crouched into a fighting stance, preparing for attack. They were being stalked, but the scent was all wrong. He didn’t smell the stench of rotted flesh and death that always accompanied a vampire. This was no vamp. It was something worse. He had to get Mattie out of the woods. Now“This is wrong, Mattie,” Charlie whispered. “Go! Get back to the house and tell Da to bring help.”“No! I’ll not leave you here alone.”“Run, Mattie! Now!” Charlie demanded as the growl grew into a roar and the sound of something huge broke through the undergrowth, launching itself at him. He spun to face his attacker, but he was too slow. A mountain of foul smelling fur slammed into his side.The next moment was pure chaos as he battled something that he’d only seen in a horror movie at the cinema. In his periphery, he saw Mattie standing only a few paces away, frozen with fear.Time slowed to a snail’s pace as the beast latched razor sharp fangs onto Charlie’s left shoulder. The pain was like nothing he’d ever experienced as his knees buckled under the weight of the animal. His sword flew from his right hand, the stake all but useless in his left. As the beast opened its maw for the kill, Charlie shoved his arm into its mouth, buying him time to scream a warning.“Run, Mattie! Run!” He roared, knowing that once the beast had finished him off, his baby brother would be killed too.His shouts finally brought Mattie out of his unresponsive state.“No! Leave my brother be, you bloody bastard!” Mattie bellowed, his sword held high. He brought the honed edge down on the shoulder of the beast, doing nothing more than enraging it further.It released its downed prey, turning to the newest threat. With Charlie’s blood dripping from the wolf-like snout, its glowing amber eyes locked onto Mattie. An angry howl emanated from it seconds before it leapt.Mattie’s cries of pain and terror did more to drag Charlie to his feet than fear for his own life. He moved on shaky legs as he picked up his sword and stumbled to the mass of blood-matted fur as it feasted on Mattie, ripping at his stomach and chest.Charlie screamed out his brother’s name as he ran the blade of his sword through the skull of the beast.A deathly quiet settled around him as Charlie stared down at the giant wolf. When his sword pierced the skull, it had fallen to its side. He’d never seen one so large.
Or so deformed.Kate Porter has had one true passion, even as a young girl: writing.
Poetry and short stories were her pleasure and her escape while
growing up on a small farm approximately fifty miles south of
Indianapolis. From her first short story printed in her high school
newspaper at the age of fifteen, until the publication of her first
full length novel, SECRETS IN BETHLEHEM, in the summer of 2012 she
has dreamed of being an author. As a two-time winner of the Indie
Book of the Day award, Kate has explored different genres in her
writing career and has an eclectic collection of works to her credit
consisting of romantic suspense, mystery, and an urban fantasy
series. She has studied fiction writing at Greenville Tech, in
Greenville, SC and traveled to Georgia for a writing workshop. Kate
was featured in WOMAN'S DAY magazine and again in the Greenville News
and her hometown newspaper in Spencer, IN. She has been profiled in
her hometown newspaper, in Spencer, Indiana and in August 2013, News. Kate's novel, BLACK HARVEST, has not only received 5 stars from Reader's
Favorite, but has been awarded the 2014 NEW APPLE BOOK AWARD MEDAL
for the MYSTERY.Website * Facebook * Facebook * Twitter * Amazon * GoodreadsFollow the tour HERE
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