Guest Post:New Serial Fiction "Cambion" by Cari Z

I'm so excited to be here today to announce the release of my first serial fiction endeavor! The folks over at Storm Moon Press have been pursuing this amazing format of fiction in a slightly new way. My serial, Cambion, stars badass demons and packs a punch with a blend of action, seduction, and the supernatural. My release this month is for the first episode of the entire shebang. With these serials, everything is organized by season. My Season 1 is called Dark Around the Edges, and it will have a total of six episodes, the first of which came out today. Each of the other episodes will come out once a month. The best part is that each episode is basically a short story. So, you get to read them in sequence and follow along, with the opportunity to share with me and other readers what you'd love to see most as the story unfolds.

Curious? Here's the blurb for the Cambion series, the season, and Episode 1: "Heaven's On Fire". :D

Devon Harper is a cambion, the offspring of an incubus and one of his female followers. Discovered by those who could've helped him too late to be saved from his nature, he barely survived a brutal childhood before getting a handle on his powers of seduction. Lust, sex, desire: these are second nature to cambion, and are their road to both riches and ruin. Devon has the power to bring people to their knees with a glance, to drive them so crazy with pleasure that they forget their names, and occasionally forget to breathe as well. He could use his birthright to force the world to worship him, but Devon is trying to fight against the pull, to do what he can to track down people with the power to summon a demon and stop them before more cambion can be made.

But Devon doesn't realize that the path he and his friends are following is only one strand of a web laid in place by a demon who's not content to wait on the whims of humanity to get out of Hell. Devon is this demon's key to staying above ground permanently, and when he finally catches up with the cambion, he's not taking no for an answer.

Episode 1: Heaven's On Fire Devon's infiltration of a Chinese kingpin's lair doesn't quite go off as planned, and lands him in a dangerous predicament. Shangdi knows about Devon, and knows how useful a cambion can be, particularly to his partner, the mysterious demon summoner Porter Grey. With time running out for Devon, it's up to the even more mysterious Rio Pagani to storm the compound and pull Devon out before Porter can put his plans for the cambion into motion.

Here's an exclusive excerpt from the first episode, "Heaven's On Fire"! Enjoy!

There was a succubus in a circle in the middle of the floor, inside of a beautiful body, a girl with long blue-black hair and perfect caramel skin. She was wildly contorted, her head spun so far around that Rio knew her host body was dead by now. She saw him, her irises solid green and iridescent like a beetle's wings, and shrieked. The dozens of men surrounding her, men so caught up in her distorted, wanton pain that they hadn't heard the gunshots, blinked hazy eyes and looked up. They saw Rio, they watched him shoot a guard coming up on his right, and finally they began to panic.

Rio lobbed a stinger into the middle of the room. To his surprise, the succubus managed to catch it, turn, and throw it at towards a shadowy corner partially shielded by a painted room divider just before it went off. There was a bang, a scream, and suddenly the succubus was free. And boy, was she angry.

Rio ignored her, threw in another stinger, and waited for it to clear a path through the crowd. Whoever was behind that divider was someone important enough to warrant revenge from a demon, and that could mean Porter Grey. The floor was a mess of bodies, some of them trampled as those at the edges fought their way out. Rio let them go. He was here for bigger game.

He shot three more people on his way across the room. Two of them were guards, both a little worse for wear, and one of them was a 'guest,' most likely Russian judging from his tattoos, who was too far from the stinger to be affected by it and too stupid to know better than to fight back. He fired one of the fallen guard's Glocks and got one shot off before taking a bullet to the forehead. The shot went wild anyway.

There were three more bodies permanently down on the far side of the room, but these ones weren't from Rio. They were just dead, the thin skin around their eyes stained by petechiae, their tongues gone purple from strain. Massive, very fatal heart attacks. The succubus was renewing herself. Rio hurried over to the divider and flung it aside. If she'd found Porter Grey—

She hadn't. She'd found someone else, an old, small man in a yellow robe. This, then, was probably the infamous Shangdi. His corpse, rather. Rio could tell even from five feet away that the man was dead, had just died, in fact. The succubus was still crouched over him, holding him close in a kiss. When she dropped the corpse, it was completely rigid, still locked in a state of orgasmic tension, robe tented and stained from Shangdi's dying release. His face was a rictus of agony, though. Anyone who thought death by pleasure was a good idea clearly hadn't tried it.

Cambion: Dark Around the Edges - Episode 1: "Heaven's On Fire" by Cari Z - Now Available! Get the first episode for just $0.99 or buy the season pass for all six episodes as they release once a month (includes extras and the final compiled e-book, all for just $11.99).