"Could you love one of the Four Horsemen?"
Reviewed by Clare O'Beara
Posted February 8, 2013
Paranormal Romance
Jillian comes across a large naked man in deep Colorado
snow. She pushes the logs off her sled and rolls him on,
taking him back to her cabin. Some good care revives him
and he says his name is Reseph. His distinct lack of
inhibitions is worrying and he also seems to have amnesia.
Jillian tries to keep control of the situation, because
she's very much alone with this stranger.
A fallen angel meanwhile is conversing with a friend of
Reseph's from which we learn that the man is one of the
Four Horsemen from the Book of Revelations. Angels and
demons are his way of life. Prior to this novel, the world
was under siege by vicious demons, and nobody knows why
they disappeared.
Jillian drives Reseph into town and buys him some clothes,
takes him to the sheriff. He wants to stay with her but
for all she knows, he could be a serial killer, though a
hot one, and her horses and cat like him. Later that night
however, the stranger reappears at her cabin. Jillian
welcomes him, because she's just found that some neighbours
have been killed, and the demons haven't all vanished...
but maybe she's trusting the wrong man....
The paranormal side of ROGUE RIDER is somewhat surreal,
with fallen angels throwing barbecue parties where
hellhound pups cavort with kids while angels grill hotdogs.
Names like Pestilence, Harvester and Thanatos give it an
inaccessible feel but the characters do come across as
individuals, though complex ones with a background in
earlier parts of the Lords of Deliverance series.
Read as
a standalone it can be hard to get into the paranormal
aspect but Jillian's story grounds us in her reality.
She's a good tough female, shooting a demon without
hesitation.
Strong language, explicit sex and gory deaths of people and
animals mean ROGUE RIDER won't be for everyone. Larissa Ione
has built up a world on each side of the divide which is
multilayered and rich in characters, and each book in the
series follows a different Horseman's story. Those who
enjoy a horror read will like ROGUE RIDER and follow
Jillian's adventure and romance with bated breath.
SUMMARY
They're here.
They ride.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Born of a match between good and evil, four siblings stand
between hell's minions and everything they want to destroy.
They are the Lords of Deliverance, and they have the power
to ward off Doomsday . . . or let it ride . . .
ROGUE RIDER
Jillian Cardiff came to this remote mountain town to forget
the demon attack that almost killed her. Instead, she
rescues-and falls for-a gorgeous stranger who has no memory
of anything other than his name. Handsome, charming, and
protective, Reseph seems like the kind of man whom Jillian
can trust. But with hints of a troubling history of his own,
he's also the kind of man who can be very dangerous . . .
Reseph may not know why he mysteriously appeared in
Jillian's life, but he knows he wants to stay. Yet when
Jillian's neighbors are killed, and demon hunters arrive on
the scene, Reseph fears that he's putting Jillian in danger.
And once it's revealed that Reseph is also Pestilence, the
Horseman responsible for ravaging the world, he and Jillian
must face the greatest challenge of all: Can they forget the
horrors of a chilling past to save the future they both desire?
ExcerptIt was cold. So fucking cold.
He opened his eyes, but he saw…nothing. Groaning, he
shifted, because he seemed to be face-down. Yeah…he was
doing a face-plant, all right. But where was he? All he
could see was snow. No, that wasn’t true; he could see trees
laden with snow. And snow banks laden with snow. And snow
laden with more fucking snow.
So he was in a forest…with snow. But where? Why?
And who the hell was he?
Reseph.
The name slurred through his ears as if uttered by a
drunk man.
Reseph.
Sounded vaguely familiar, he supposed. Reseph. Okay, he
could work with that. Especially since no other names popped
into his head.
Weakly, he tried to push himself to his knees, but his
arms wobbled like rubber, and he kept falling on his face.
After four tries, he gave up and just lay there, panting and
shivering.
Somewhere overhead, an owl hooted, and a few minutes
later, a wolf howled into the growing darkness. Reseph took
comfort in the sounds, because they meant he wasn’t alone.
Sure, the owl might fly over and shit on him, and the wolf
might eat him alive, but at least he’d have company for a
little while.
He didn’t know much about himself, but he knew he didn’t
like to be alone.
He also did not like snow.
Curious then, how he’d ended up alone in the snow. Had
someone abandoned him here? A tremor of anxiety shook his
insides as hard as the cold was shaking him on the outside.
Surely someone was looking for him.
He held onto that hope as he gradually became aware of a
gnawing ache in his bones, accompanied by a stabbing pain in
his head. Looked like he was in for a little
unconsciousness. Cool. Because right now, he was both
freezing and burning up, hurting and numb. It sucked.
Yep, passing out would be a good thing.
Real. Fucking. Good.
***
Idiot. Dumbass. Meteorological moron.
Jillian Cardiff mentally cursed the meteorologist who
screwed the pooch on the timing of this blizzard. She had
nothing against weather people; hell, she’d worked with them
for years in the FAA. But this…this was ridiculous.
Now she was in a rush to get back to her cabin before
visibility went completely to shit and her draft horse, Sam,
got testy.
“Come on, boy.” She gave the big sorrel an affectionate
slap on the shoulder. “The rest of the firewood can wait.”
Sam followed her, not needing to be led by the rope
snapped to his halter. He knew the way home and was as eager
as she was to get inside a warm, cozy building. The sled
carrying quarter cord of firewood dragged behind him,
cutting through the two feet of snow they’d gotten a few
days ago. This new storm would probably dump another couple
of feet, and by the end of November they’d have more snow
than they’d know what to do with.
The wind shrieked like a living thing, and snow blasted
her face. Hefting her rifle more securely onto her shoulder,
Jillian put her head down and pushed against the gale. Times
like this, she really missed Florida. Not that she’d ever go
back. Some things you just couldn’t forget.
Like being torn apart by demons.
She shivered, but it had nothing to do with the
temperature. She was not going there again. The attack was
behind her, and as long as she didn’t watch TV, get on the
internet, or look at her scars, she never had to think about
it.
A long, mournful howl pierced the late afternoon
darkness. Had to be close if she could hear it over the
wind. Sam snorted and tossed his head, and she slowed to
take the lead rope and give him a pat on his big brown nose.
“It’s okay, buddy. The wolves won’t bother us.” No,
wolves generally left humans alone. If anything, cougars
were the big concern. In recent weeks, two area hunters had
been found torn to pieces, the carnage blamed on the big
cats.
She could handle a cougar. What she couldn’t handle was
the dark. Demons lurked in the dark.
Abruptly, Sam reared up, a desperate whinny breaking from
his big chest. The rope jerked out of Jillian’s hand, and
she nearly lost her footing in the icy snow as she scrambled
to catch it. Sam’s front hooves hit the ground and his
shoulder rammed her, sending her tumbling down an incline.
Her yelp cut off as she slammed into a tree trunk.
Pain spiderwebbed around the right side of her rib cage,
and ouch, that was going to be tender tomorrow.
“Dammit, Sam,” she muttered, as she crawled back up the
snowy slope, pausing to grab the rifle that had been flung
into a snowbank.
Sam was snorting, going nuts as he pawed at a snowdrift.
Jillian dug ice from places ice shouldn’t be as she clomped
through the snow, wondering what in the world had startled
Sam and now had him so freaked out.
“You’d better be digging up a pot of gold, you mangy—”
She broke off with a startled gasp.
A man…a naked man…his body face-down and covered in a
dusting of snow, lay in a messy sprawl just off the
trail.
“Oh, my God.” Her hands shook as she stripped off her
glove and brushed aside his long, platinum hair to put her
fingers to his throat. His skin was icy to the touch, which
she expected, but when the steady thump of a pulse bounded
against her fingertips, she nearly jumped out of her own
skin. He was alive. With a strong pulse. Holy cow, how?
Okay, so…think. She had to get help, but they were in the
middle of an intensifying snowstorm, and there was no way
off the mountain except by snowmobile. She couldn’t risk
that in the storm, and it could take hours to get to the
nearest town. He could be dead by then.
Shit.
Praying this guy wasn’t a serial killer and trying not to
think too hard on why he’d be in the mountains, naked, in
the winter, she eased Sam up the trail until the sled was
alongside the man’s body. As quickly as she could, she
heaved the firewood to the other side of the path and tucked
the ax into the loop on Sam’s padded harness.
Rolling the man onto the sled was not as easy as she’d
hoped. The guy was heavy as a damned boulder and
huge. And…handsome. And very, very naked.
“Really?” she muttered to herself. “You’re going to
notice how hot he is now?”
Granted, it was impossible not to notice those things,
but she still felt a little guilty as she ran her hands over
him, checking for injuries. Aside from being unconscious and
as frozen as a fish stick, he appeared to be uninjured.
Interesting horse tattoo on his right forearm, though.
When she’d skimmed her fingers over it, she swore she’d felt
a dim vibration, as if the henna-colored lines pulsed with a
mild electrical current. Too bad warmth didn’t ride in on
that current, though, because damn, she swore the
temperature plummeted twenty degrees in the few minutes it
took to check the guy out.
As if Mother Nature had some sort of grudge against her,
the biting cold wind picked up even more, and the snow,
which she normally loved, became an enemy. It was probably
stupid of her, but she stripped off her coat and laid it
over the guy, tucking the coat’s sleeves carefully beneath
him. The half-dozen shirt layers she was wearing should
protect her for a while, as long as they hurried.
“Let’s go, Sammy.” She urged the gelding to move
faster than she’d normally like, but nothing about this
situation was normal.
She was freezing and exhausted by the time she smelled
the smoke from her wood fire, and her eyelashes were crusted
with ice by the time she eased Sam up to the rickety porch.
The frigid air burned her lungs with each breath as she
dragged the man’s dead weight off the sled and then
unhitched Sam. She’d remove the harness later. Right now she
had to get the man into the house and the horse into the
barn.
She ran the thirty yards to the barn and, battling the
wind, tugged open the door. Sam trotted inside, but she
didn’t bother taking him to his stall. He’d find it on his
own.
Too bad getting the man to her bedroom wasn’t nearly as
easy as putting up the horse. As a fitness freak who worked
a small farm, Jillian wasn’t a wuss, but she thought she
might have dislocated something as she dragged Fish Stick
across the floor. She spent another ten minutes heaving and
straining to lift him onto her bed.
Once he was sprawled out on his back, his broad shoulders
taking up an enormous amount of room on the mattress, she
cranked the electric blanket to the highest setting and
checked his pulse. Still strong. Shouldn’t it be sluggish?
She’d taken basic CPR classes as well as Search and Rescue
training, and from what she remembered, hypothermia caused a
slow, weak pulse. Fish Stick’s couldn’t be more opposite.
Steady, surging, and she swore his skin had already pinked
up a little.
Leaving the mystery alone for now, she checked the phone,
and sure enough, it was dead. Next, she stoked the fire and
turned up the electric heat to eighty degrees. She was
lucky to have electricity at all, actually. The power kept
flickering, and it was probably only a matter of time before
it went the way of the phone line.
Ooh, and then she’d be alone, in the dark with no phone,
in the middle of nowhere…with a stranger.
This was a horror movie setup. She even had the token
small animal to prove the situation was serious and make all
the women in the audience worry.
Her Bengal cat, Doodle, watched the activity from his bed
in front of the wood stove, unconcerned that there was a
strange man in the house. But then, nothing really fazed
him. As long as he had food and someone to pet him, he
didn’t bother to get excited about much.
“You’re a big help there, buddy.” She shot Doodle a dirty
look as she changed into dry sweats and slippers. “I’m going
to check on the complete stranger in my bed, but don’t worry
about me, okay?”
Doodle blinked his green eyes at her.
Wishing she had a big dog right about now, Jillian
slipped into the bedroom. As she entered, Fish Stick sighed
and shifted in the bed, just the smallest movement, but
enough to give her a bit of hope.
Then his eyes popped open.
Startled, she leaped back, slapping her hand over her
mouth. His eyes…God, they were amazing. The lightest shade
of blue, and crystal clear, like a shallow glacier. They
bored into her, but there was nothing cold about them. The
raw heat in them pierced her all the way to her core.
Feeling silly for her overreaction but her legs trembling
anyway, she returned to the bedside.
“I’m Jillian. I found you in the woods. You’re going to
be okay.” She wasn’t sure if he understood or not, but
his eyes closed, and his thickly-muscled chest began to rise
and fall in a deep, regular rhythm. His color was good
now, and his full lips, once pale and chapped, were a
smooth, dusky rose.
Remarkable.
What now? Maybe she should get something hot into his
stomach. Quietly, she started for the door to put some broth
on the stove.
“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a broken whisper. “Did I…hurt
you?”
She inhaled sharply and turned, risking a look at him.
Once again, his eyes drilled into her, but this time, they
seemed to…glow a little.
“No.” She swallowed dryly. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
His long, golden lashes fluttered down, as if he was
satisfied by her answer. But dear God, why would he think he
might have hurt her?
Who the hell had she brought into her house?
What do you think about this review?
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