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The Demon Tamuel

A More Beautiful Monster

by Lou Sylvre

Ousting this demon has nothing to do with holy water—it’s all about a steady hand on the dagger.

Mary Evans’ blood pooling in the cobbled streets beneath her corpse symbolizes everything DuHarren hates about his contract with the demon Tamuel. After two and a half centuries of a lucrative, but usually boring and occasionally horrifying partnership, he wants to get out of the deal, and he doesn’t mind dying to do it. He fears only the prospect of Hell’s fiery brimstone. When Father Michael—a beautiful but angry green-eyed priest—performs the latest in a long line of failed exorcisms, the demon is intrigued, but so is DuHarren. Would the priest make a lover? Or better, dare he hope he might at last sever his ties to the demon and escape to a cool, quiet death?

Note: By Lou Sylvre writing as Loretta Sylvestre. Lou Sylvre is known for romance and happy endings. Same writer, but beware: this isn't that.

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Tropes: Becoming a Monster, Demonic Possession, Possession, Redemption Arc
Word Count: 7500
Setting: City (18th C, ficitonal)
Languages Available: English
Tropes: Becoming a Monster, Demonic Possession, Possession, Redemption Arc
Word Count: 7500
Setting: City (18th C, ficitonal)
Languages Available: English
Excerpt:

Nothing had ever fit my consecrated hand so perfectly as that silver dagger’s hilt. I raised the blade between us. For an instant I held it there, suspended, while in my mind Mary's blood pooled and boiled at our feet, and then I thrust the blade toward DuHarren’s lurid breast. Time lost all its markers, and I watched the subtle pulse of his flesh, each heartbeat a sweet eternity as the gleaming blade drew close. Then the tip pricked the skin and a single carmine droplet formed and fled the wound.

Reviews:Louisa Thompson on The Future Fire wrote:

This full, lush tale reaches maximum thrill in a matter of paragraphs, its potent language of blood, sweetness and fear exposing the duality of a priest and the razor-sharp line between the seductive longings of good and evil. [The author] writes through the darkness with a quiet grace and a careful touch, never letting this moving tale flop into the clichés of fiery damnation and screaming vicars.


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About the Author

Lou Sylvre loves to ponder what-ifs. Stars, seas, forest, deserts, histories and futures. Wild things and home things and gardens and lonely trees. And love, lots of love—and in her books love always wins. She thinks about the heart of the universe and the quest to find it through connection—words and music, arts and sciences, family and friends. She wishes she could live every life, know all the joys and beauty and even the bitter tang of loss and solitude that must accompany it. She can't do that, of course, so she lets the whole of it infuse her imagination and writes it instead. Sometimes her stories are suspenseful or even terrifying, sometimes romantic and even sexy. Magical and light or sorcerous and dark. Or realistic—and that's magic too. It's a quantum world out there, and we still haven't got to the point where we can always tell where physics ends and magic begins.

On a more straightforward note, she is a proudly bisexual woman, a mother, grandmother, lover of languages, and cat-herder. When writing, she works closely with lead cat and writing assistant, the (male) Queen of Budapest, Boudreau St. Clair. When he lets her have a break, she drinks strong coffee, plays guitar, grows flowers, walks a lot, and reads. Besides books and music, she loves friends and family, wild places, wild roses, sunshine, and dark chocolate. Not necessarily in that order. She lives and works in the rainy part of Washington State, and hearing from readers on Facebook or Twitter, or via e-mail (Lou dot Sylvre at gmail) always brightens a gray-sky day.