Larriane Wills a.k.a. Larion Wills

No cover for this yet, but here's a peek at what it's about.
To look at Judith you wouldn't know she was a freak, the result of an illegal experiment by a too eager doctor. Judith didn't age. She was immune to disease. She hated living but couldn't take her own life and after living three adult lifetimes moved to the isolation of the deep forest. When the end of the world came, leaving only small pockets of living, she didn't care. Judith cared about little of anything until Garth dropped fifteen feet out of the air to nearly land on her head. Keeping the full grown man with a child's mind to find out where he came from and how gave her something to do. Then they made a mistake. They came after Garth and learned it did not pay to make an Eternal angry. Time did not restrain her revenge against those who sent him back from the future.
excerpt:

She eased back a few feet when he stirred, to observe his reaction to his destination.  Open mouthed, wide-eyed wonder gave a childlike quality to what she admitted to herself was a handsome face.  Until he saw her.  Then it was terror controlled, caught, and transferred to anger.  He started up only to fall, and when he realized he didn’t have the strength to run from her, he crawled, dragging himself away, staring at her belligerently over his shoulder. 

He wasn’t mute. “Trick,” he retorted. 

“Falling out of the sky that way was some trick.  Where did you come from?”

“You know,” he told her sullenly, what little strength he had fading rapidly.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

“You Supreme,” he spat out, but his head dropped to lie on his arms.

She didn’t know if that was a title or a name.  She tried name.  “My name is Judith.  You’re in the White Mountains in Arizona.”

“Burnt out waste land.”

He said each word slowly as if he had just learned it, but if it wasn’t his native language he didn’t have any accent.

“If wastelands are what you want, try over the mountains.  It seems like your aim was off in distance as well as height.  Why would you want to go there?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No want.”

She stood up, and he screamed, “No!” clawing and kicking at the ground but without the strength to drag himself forward.

Judith didn’t follow, telling him, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Punish.  No.  No.”  He was quickly working himself into hysteria.  “Know station. No will band.  No Madeline.  No pleasure band.  No Mother.  Supreme.  Supreme punish no band.”

He babbled incoherently and was in danger of hurting himself the way he fought despite his weakness to get up and run from her.  She didn’t want him hurt.  He had aroused her curiosity, and she wanted answers. 

“Calm down,” she told him dispassionately and moved towards him.

He screamed again, rolled, trying to get away from her.  He collapsed the instant her fingers touched his shoulder, went limp with his face in his folded arms crying like a baby.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she repeated impatiently.  “There’s no reason to be afraid.  I just want to ask you a few questions.”

She obviously wasn’t going to get any answers.  He cried himself into either a faint or sleep giving her no more even in incoherent words.  She would have to stay with him until he rested and his mind cleared, and she had no intentions of spending the night in the open cold.  She was certain, however, if she left him, even as weak as he was, he wouldn’t be there when she came back.  No way could he manage the walk to the house, if he would go with her, and she wasn’t positive she wanted him in her house at all.

Her hatred of human company of any kind battled with her curiosity to put her in a quandary.  Curiosity won.  She tied him, hand and foot, to be sure he would stay there while she went after the snowmobile to move him.

Historical, western soft romance. He had a past he didn't care to talk about. She had a past she fought to keep hidden. He thought it had been long enough that no one would recognize him, that he could get in and out, do what he wanted and leave. She thought she was condemned to a live of fear and misery. When their paths crossed, everything changed for both of them, and those who pursued him discovered the white savage that laid beneath the surface while he fought to live and she fought to save him.  Due for release in May 2010.
Excerpt:

She invited him to make himself comfortable in the parlor, even offered him a book to read.  She sat herself across from him, taking up her basket of mending.  She wasn’t afraid to be near him, she didn’t keep the gun with her, so what was making her so nervous she had trouble darning the sock with her trembling fingers.

The dog stretched, his nails scratching on the bare wood floor as he wiggled to a more comfortable position.  Clay watched him squirm, thinking it was funny how a dog would choose to lay on the hard wood when there were so many rugs scattered around.  One was behind him to the right, in front of the door, one to the left, behind him, in front of the cook stove.  Fact, there were rugs scattered all around him, but the dog was lying right in the middle where there was no rug.

Right in the middle stuck in his mind, and Clay studyied the room again.  Wasn’t it interesting how he couldn’t reach the pantry or front door without walking by the dog, and if he was walking to the bedroom, he’d have to walk in front of him?

“Thought you wanted me to talk to you,” he said to break the silence.

She startled, jabbing herself nicely with the needle.  “You didn’t seem so inclined,” she said, trying to hide the fact that her finger was bleeding.

“I think maybe I might have changed my mind.  That dog got a name?”

“No,” she said quickly, then changed it to, “Yes.  I call him Wolf for obvious reasons.  I’m going to bed now.”  Her basket thumped to the floor beside her chair as she stood up.  “There are blankets and a pillow in the chest.”

She pointed to a chest situated conveniently against the wall furthest from the dog. 

“More than one way to kill a dog,” he said, walking over to the chest.  “Safest way is to shoot him, if he’s far enough away.”  He sat down on the chest, looking at her.  “Unless he’s running at you.  Hard to hit then.  Best thing to do is let him jump you, so you can break his neck or his jaw.”

“You couldn’t,” she said in a strained whisper.

“When he jumps at you, you grab a hold of his jaw and nose.  All you have to do is pry them apart.  That’s the easiest way.”

“He’s mauled men badly before,” she half-heartedly warned.

“Because they were afraid of him.  I’m not.  There’s not a dog alive that a man can’t beat if he keeps his head.”

“Please, I…” 

 “Don’t ever set that dog on me or I will kill him,” he warned coldly.

“A man like you would never know or understand fear.  You have to live it to know how desperate a person could be to never be alone.”

“Having someone with you won’t make it go away,” he answered.  “You just need someone to make you feel safe long enough to know you don’t have anything to fear.”

“Who? Henry?” she asked with an ironic smile. “No,” she said, answering for him.  “No one can, not even a man like you who’s never known a day of fear in his life.”

Clay watched her silently as in defeat and resignation she put the dog out of his way in the pantry and closed herself away from sight with the bedroom door.  She was wrong, of course.  He did know what her kind of fear was like.  If he could stay longer than the time it would take her husband to return, he might even be able to prove it to her.  But he couldn’t stay, and he shouldn’t stay as long as he’d given his word he would.  He shouldn’t even be here.  He shouldn’t have stopped.  Every minute made the fear claw stronger in his guts, just knowing they were near. Telling himself there was little chance they’d be coming so far of the main road did no good.  He shouldn’t have let that first look at the blond-haired, green-eyed beauty influence him in to staying, no matter how afraid he thought she was.

 

No cover or even a blurb as yet, but the sixth in my historical western series will be released Aug 2011 through Museitup Publishing.