Rebecca

Eight weeks ago, Johnny Malone showed up at my office, flipping a playing card between his fingers like I was wasting his time. Me. The one with the PhD. The one a self-confessed arsonist came to for help in controlling his "urges". The one he visits every week and undresses with his eyes.

Twenty-year-old Serenity always dreamed of being a veterinarian. She's always been the good girl. The one people could always count on, but that changes after her girlfriend makes a bet that she shouldn't have. Draven is a lone wolf, he has been on his own since his parents died when he was 16, he found his home among the freaks, the performers, the traveling carnies, and lives his nights as a funhouse horror clown.

Renegade patriot Harry Lampeter is called back into service by MI6. The Franco-German alliance has occupied the island of Guernsey and plans to invade England. They try to pass their action off as a peacekeeping operation but they have built steam launchers for their flying bombs, high altitude observation balloons for targeting, and "Big Bertha", an enormous gun situated on the French coast that can bombard London.

Three friends set out on a mountain hiking adventure meant to pull one of their minds away from the sorrow of losing his wife. But things take a quick and sinister turn when they are forced to camp for the night at the mountain’s dark peak. Something is out there, something evil. It hides in the black of the forest, and it waits. It stalks. And it wants all their lives.

I am a soulless vampire, in service to the Vampire Intelligence Agency as their top black ops agent, protecting the immortal royals of Europe in a world of shadows and secrets. My life revolves around strategy, competition, and keeping our society safe. Why in hellfire have I been assigned to escort this delicious plus-size fashion designer to meet one of the Immortal Princesses? For a damn dress? I should be out stalking and destroying the hunters who seek to destroy anyone and anything immortal.

Shots fired leaves two dead and two wounded. Detective Tap, now a widow, must try to overcome her guilt and paranoia that the shooter was after her. Afraid now that her profession has led to endangering her family, she struggles to get emotionally well so she can establish some kind of normalcy in her children's lives again and help find the killer.

So, I've checked off some life goals and added a few new ones to my list: Get out of hell's belly without letting my ungrateful charges die.Get a new name that's more badass. Stop wasting my breath on lectures and start annoying the quad hell squad every time they annoy me. Fight fire with fire. Ha! Another hell pun. Find out who the hell killed me.

I'm not so different from most people. Like everyone else, I have life goals. Goal #1: Become a real girl instead of this invisible ghost thing I currently am. Goal #2: Convince the four men I've been haunting for the past five years to pick me to be their new toy after goal one is complete. Goal #3: Figure out who/what I am and why I can't remember anything past the five years I've been haunting this quad. Goal #4: Eat popcorn. See? Perfectly normal. Sort of. Gotta start small, after all. It's not like anyone else is perfect either.

I'm getting a little tired of completing my goals, only to have the bar raised too substantially for me to transition at a productive pace. I started off as a sad little ghost with an impossible crush on four really hot, Gothic guys with some attitude problems. Now I'm The Apocalypse, they're the Four Horsemen, and Lucifer is my f--ked-up daddy.

The life goals have stacked up since I started this journey as a sad, lonely little ghost. I'm not sure how things escalated so quickly from trying to be seen and heard, to bearing the weight of the world on my vain little shoulders. As a result, my goals have gotten a little more serious. We're the most screwed up collection of antiheroes the world has ever seen, because the only thing that makes me want to save the world is knowing I could lose my boys forever if I don't. It's one hell of a love story, you know?