Dancing With Vengeance:
A Woman Reborn
by
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The curse invoked, Helena stilled her voice. Her body no longer surged with power, but was quiet, debilitated. The raw sensation of omnipotence had vanished. She felt exposed. Her eyes on Greillia, she trembled with exhaustion. Seeing her weakness, he laughed and his mouth ripened into a vicious sneer.
Yet, behind his bravado, she sensed fear. Though her words had been Persian, she knew he had felt the full force of their malevolence. The curse had been woven, tightly, without a seam, lacking only her blood to secure it through time and space. How she understood this, Helena could not have said. The knowledge emanated from her flesh, her very bones.
Something of the power lingered, separate, alive, unwelcome. She could not give it a name, much less set it aside. She continued to stare at Greillia, undisturbed by the malice in his eyes. She knew darkness; she had been its instrument. His evil was puny, inconsequential compared to what had consumed her, what had fed upon her soul.
She wished it away. But unable to focus, her thoughts drifted. Time slowed, losing its continuity. Someone nudged her, but she ignored the prodding. Instead, with dispassion, she wondered why her hands had reversed the order of the runes, drawing first with the left then with the right. Oddly apathetic, she disregarded the mystery, staring at nothing in particular on the ground.
Again, there was an intrusion, someone squeezing her hand, shaking it. She stirred herself and saw Caratipian, his eyes intense with dread.
'Helena!' he whispered. 'What have you done?'
She smiled with twisted exultation, cherishing the darkness. It was a cocoon, shielding her, keeping her safe. 'Greillia will find his death hard.'
'The dark lord doesn't do your bidding, you do his. If you don't stop this, he'll have you for all time.'
'What's wrong with revenge? ' she flung back. Caratipian persisted, his distress and affection creating ever-widening cracks in her shadow world, pushing through the miasma, forcing her to feel again.
'The price is too high, Helena. You'll pay with your soul, with your humanity, In the end, you'll be no better than he.'
Hot with shame, she heard truth in his words. Still, the heaviness remained, its malevolence corrupting the very air she breathed. In despair, she struggled against its odious taint.
'You must do as I say, Helena.'
Her voice was flat, monosyllabic. 'Tell me what to do.'
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About the Book
Dancing With Vengeance - A Woman Reborn is a romance despite the harshness and brutality of its setting. Helena and Valamir come together in the maelstrom of destruction as Attila the Hun journeys across the steppes of Russia. Greillia, Attila's cousin, shatters Helena's life through violence. Like a compulsion, she lusts for bloody revenge against him. This dark passion awakens in Helena a sinister ancestral ability: the ability to invoke an evil presence through runes and ancient words.
Though Valamir, an Ostrogoth, is allied to the Huns, who Helena despises, he rekindles in her the possibility of love. Yet, she is at war within herself. Despite her growing feelings for Valamir, Helena remains trapped by grief and her thirst for closure through revenge.
Filled with action, this novel combines sexual tension with a clash between the forces of Light and Dark as Helena struggles for the courage to return to the world of the living.
About the Author
Katherine Gibson Newcomer is a "Renaissance" woman well acclimated to the new millennium. After a year at Ripon Hall, Oxford, England, she graduated from Drew University with a B.A. in Religion and Music. In 1978, she received her J.D. from Rutgers Law School-The State University of New Jersey at Newark and gained admission to the N.J. Bar. Opting out from law to stay home with her two children, she manages a thriving business as a music teacher and refines her skills as a classical pianist through performance. She has explored a fascination with religion by conducting small workshops in personal growth and self-empowerment. Yet, almost at any time of the day or night, K. Gibson Newcomer can be found writing on her computer. She is hard at work on her second novel, Tatiana and the Hidden Land, a fantasy set in the distant future. She has been a repeated guest on "Changes," a live radio program on WDVR F.M. Along with other interests, she studies various martial arts and perseveres in her life-long passion for riding horses.