BOOK TOUR: The Covenant Sacrifice by Lee Allen Howard (Excerpt & Giveaway)

When the dead return to abduct the living, the living turn into monsters…

The Covenant Sacrifice

by Lee Allen Howard

Genre: LGBTQ Horror Romance

 

When the dead return to abduct the living, the living turn into monsters…

Jarod Huntingdon wants more than anything to start a family, yet he’s unable to commit to his girlfriend and isn’t sure why. When the father of his childhood best friend, Scotty, passes away, Jarod takes the opportunity to return home to the remote rural community of Annastasis Creek for a season of soul-searching.

But overnight, a violent rainstorm traps everyone in the valley, blocking roads and severing communication with the outside world. And one by one, the residents of Annastasis Creek go missing.

While helping with the search efforts, Jarod learns of a curse as old as he is, one tied to the reappearance of the cicadas, first placed on the community after five young people perished in a house fire decades before. To temporarily appease the curse, defrocked Pentecostal pastor Uriah Zalmon must find a sinner to sacrifice.

The dead are returning to Annastasis Creek…

Can Jarod break the curse for good, save the innocent from the homophobic Covenant Trustees, and vanquish what the screaming cicadas have awoken?

**Releases July 14!**

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THE COVENANT SACRIFICE

An Excerpt from Chapter 4

by Lee Allen Howard

Agatha Abbott led the young goat into the shack behind her house, which lay hidden deep in the woods of north-central Pennsylvania. Bats chittered overhead in the darkened rafters as the old woman fixed the rope to a gore-crusted post planted in the hardpacked earth. The animal bleated, and Agatha yanked the rope, hard. She had no heart for animals. No heart for anyone but her Master.

At Baphomet’s bidding, she had mated her chosen Samael and Lilith, and their unholy union had produced the beast—the new god that would break the oppressive grip of Christianity off the world.

Agatha withdrew items necessary for the ceremony from her dress pocket and arranged them on the dirt floor.

The time had come. The song of the cicadas had begun, heralding another long-awaited opportunity to reclaim what she and her now-dead grandsons had toiled for years to produce. They had tried and tried again to breed so many girls who’d either killed themselves or otherwise failed to carry the ceremonial seed to full term. Finally, the Abbotts had succeeded, only to have the offspring stolen from them. Snatched away and hidden for over three decades.

The captor of the beast-child had kept it secretly confined. Coerced it somehow into an unnatural state of hibernation. But the infernal progenitor was meant to awaken forevermore and enact the Master’s plan: to fill the skies with winged death. It was time to set her beast-child free.

As she’d done years before, Agatha unfolded a lace handkerchief and picked out a few dark hairs and some fingernail parings she’d saved for thirty-four years. She scraped some flaky material from the clippings and brushed it all from her gnarled hands into a shard of broken crockery on the floor.

From the belt of her tattered dress, she pulled her kitchen knife and tested the blade with her thumb. Sharp as a razor. She sucked salty blood away.

The old woman grasped the kid by the nub of a horn and, with a deft motion, slashed its throat. The goat jumped once and then collapsed.

Agatha caught the hot, coppery blood in her withered hand and drizzled the dish’s contents with it. Outside, the wind moaned through the trees and buffeted the shack as if in answer.

“O wise Baphomet, I bring thee the hair of the woman, the skin of the man. Solve et coagula…” Agatha incanted the ancient spell, spilling three handfuls of blood upon the shard. She lifted a final draught to her lips, willing the darkness to be released once more.

“Come forth,” she croaked. “Come forth!”

Agatha licked her bloody hand, then raised it overhead.

“I command thee to come forth,” she cried, “and sing!”

Copyright 2023 Lee Allen Howard. All rights reserved.

Lee Allen Howard writes dark fiction: horror, LGBTQ+ horror, supernatural crime, dark crime, dark mysteries, and psychological thrillers. And technical manuals. All terribly horrifying.

I’ve been a technical writer and publishing system administrator in the software industry since 1985. (Why do fiction writers pretend like they don’t have day jobs? I like to eat just like everyone else!) I also edit dark fiction and non-fiction projects. I’ve done book layout and publishing consultancy.

A long time ago I earned a bachelor’s in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I also earned a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from CI School of Theology and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University.

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Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!

 

$40 Amazon giftcard,

A copy of my short fiction collection Perpetual Nightmares,

A copy of my supernatural thriller Death Perception

-1 winner each!

a Rafflecopter giveaway