Brilliant Disguise ... Other Worlds, Other Loves: Lexi Ander's Five Tips for Hanging Out in Her World

A big welcome to Lexi Ander! I'm going to fangirl here because Lexi writes the best scifi and fantasy. I want to move into her worlds (read the excerpt to see what I mean)... which might be why she sent along some tips for how to survive in this one. :)

Top 5 Tips For Hanging Out With The Black Harbingers

(5) Don't ask about London's treasure. As a half-troll, London is formidable in size and strength. Because she's only part troll, she's not bound to any one bridge in the city. Still, she likes collecting baubles and pretties, storing them I a treasure box buried under her favorite passover. Many won't find any value in the rocks and polished glass she finds, but there are always those who believe that there are least one or two items of value worth taking the risk. The last time someone stole London's horde, she'd chased the French-Canadian captain back to his vessel. Even with a harpoon through one leg, she'd retrieved her chest and sunk the unlucky ship. At least once a year, someone finds where London has buried her treasure only to lose their lives when she takes it back. If she thinks you're interested, she might just break a limb or two to dissuade your curiosity.

(4) Don’t call Hog fat. Not only will you get a beat down for being disrespectful, Hog is a hedge witch. Able to walk the line between life and death, hedge witches can also create way points, following both physical lines (streets) and metaphorical ones (connecting unrelated archways). Piss him off and you could walk through a doorway and exit through another on the other side of the hemisphere.

(3) Whatever you do, don't scoff when you are told Thorne is a scorpion shifter. You would think that hearing her shifter type would garner a bit of caution and people would keep a respectful distance. But there are those who are infinitely stupid and don't think before they speak. There has been more than one poor fool who believed that Thorne transforms into a palm-sized scorpion, not stopping to remember where scorpion shifters actually came from... The blood of Medusa created Thorne's people. The older they are the bigger their shifted form. Thorne is considered young by her people's standards, meaning her scorpion is the size of a Newfoundland. Some don't believe this until they see her shift, then they piss themselves before fleeing.

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(2) Don't take scale shed from Newt. At one time, snake shifters believe those born like Newt—who couldn't make a full shift—were the sacred children of the revered Mayan supreme god Itzamna. But in recent history, many came to believe those who couldn't achieve full transformation into a snake weren't children of a god but the product of too much mating with humans. Zamna's like Newt were forced from the snake pits and many died, unable to adjust to living alone among the humans. Those who survived where later sought out by the snake shifters who belatedly realized the error of their assumptions. They couldn't breed without ingesting the discarded scales of those shunned Zamna. Nowadays, the Zamna leave the pits of their own accord and collaborate with other Zamnas to sell their shed. If you take one, thinking to make a tidy profit, you'd better rethink your logic. Female snake shifters can scent shed from miles away. They are deadly and will gleefully tear you to pieces in order to claim the coveted scale. Newt has been known to send a small bag of shed to his enemy and then letting slip where there are unclaimed scales to be had for free.

(1) No matter how tempted, don't kiss Nightingale. No one knows which fae court Night came from and he has never invited anyone to ask. Those who dare to speculate why Night doesn't live among his own people whisper he was spurned because of his deadly kiss. Not that he has killed anyone by puckering up but people are known to forget little things, such as what they did that day, to big things like who they are. So if you want to keep your memories intact, no matter how tempting Night is, don't press your lips to his because no one comes away unscathed.

Thank you for stopping by and reading!!

Title: Death Mask

Series: Black Harbingers MC

Author(s): Lexi Ander

Cover Artist: Kirby Crow

Categories: Gay, Urban Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Roughhouse Raiders

Length: 43,000 words

Release Date: November 9, 2016

Blurb:

Grim Misery, the President of the Black Harbinger Motorcycle Club, discovers a wounded warlock and four werepups aboard the club's LSD shipment. And the news kept getting better and better. Not only is the warlock sitting on the edge of death, he's illegally bonded to the werepups, which could trigger a war with the werewolves—and he turns out to be Misery's estranged husband.

Years ago, Griffin turned Misery away to be with another warlock by the name of Marcheso Aldo. Misery left everything behind, even his family, but couldn't shake the heartbreak Griffin caused. With Griffin thrust back into Misery's life, he discovers things aren't as they seem... and everything is about to get much, much worse.

Excerpt:

Chapter One

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." ~Norman Cousins

"Prez, you're gonna want to take a look at this." Nightingale, Sergeant in Arms of the Black Harbingers MC, called to me from the tail end of the box truck that recently arrived from the docks. The products the vehicle carried included the much-awaited shipment of LSD for the city's elder vampires. The goods were late by one week, and I had some agitated parasites on my hands. If someone so much as fucked with the shite, they would be in a world of hurt, because I had no qualms feeding the arseholes to the bloodsuckers.

The clubhouse for the MC was a repurposed three-story library. The block had been slated for demolition after World War II to make way for a strip mall or some such. I loved the building, with its Grecian columns, marble floors, and the liberal use of dark woods. She had character, and after I greased a few palms, she became our clubhouse, our home.

On the ground floor, to the rear of the building, were two bay doors. Semis could back up to one of them, allowing people to walk into the bed without using a ramp. The second bay, vehicles drove directly onto the dock. Granted, unloading the boxes was harder, but we didn't have to worry about prying eyes and for this shipment, we needed complete privacy.

By the tone of Night's voice, I wouldn't like what I'd see. One of the prospects had been sent to retrieve the truck from the docks. Not quite members of the MC, prospects were initiates working through the probationary period. Simply put, they were the club's gofers. They did anything and everything the brothers asked of them. They guarded the bikes in public places, manned the doors at the parties, and made sure no one unauthorized entered the clubhouse. If a brother's old lady needed to go somewhere, a prospect escorted them. The list of shitty duties was endless. At the end of the probation period, the brothers voted the prospect in or out, but until then, the prospect did what they were told, without complaint. Our newest prospect, Tinman, who'd picked up the box truck, stood off to the side looking concerned, but not afraid.

"The truck was where you'd said it'd be, Misery. There weren't any problems and no one followed me," he said, without prompting.

When I rounded the rear of the non-descript vehicle, the door was rolled up, exposing the back of the compartment, stacked with boxes. Nightingale stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his cut hidden by the muscular bulk of his arms. At one time, he'd been a Noble Fae. From which court, I'd never asked. When most preternaturals came looking to join the Black Harbingers, they left behind who they once were. The brothers only cared about the here and now, content to leave whatever hell they'd escaped in the past. We all carried secrets best left undisturbed, and we let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak.

Those who didn't know of Nightingale's origins wouldn't have believed he belonged to that waif-like race. He'd shed his litheness, becoming a motherfucking powerhouse of strength and muscle. Even his unnaturally-white hair, which many people assumed the poor bastard had gone gray early, didn't soften his appearance. Most bikers didn't have facial piercings because they stumbled into too many fistfights, but not Night. He wore a ring in the right nostril and two in his bottom lip that he fiddled with when something bothered him, like now. When he met my gaze, his green eyes were troubled. Then the scent hit me.

Blood.

When I went to ask what the fuck he was waiting for, Night placed a pale finger over his lips, biding me to listen. The sound was faint, but the soft whines of some kind of dog or… Well, fuck me sideways.

"Someone find Hog and Lalios." My request was made in a low voice, but the brothers jumped to it as if I'd yelled. Perhaps they felt my tension or they, too, scented the blood wafting from the back of the truck, now that the door had been raised.

More than one person drew a weapon. Grabbing the handrail on the side of the door, I readied to climb into the back.

"Misery," Night called to me softly, but I ignored him.

Even if werewolves had hidden in the truck, I didn't worry about my safety. The sound of the pitiful, tiny snarls and growls intensified when my heavy boots struck the bed. Pausing to listen, I couldn't hear an adult voice among the pups. With the scent of blood heavier in the confines of the cabin, I surmised the parent was severely injured. A werewolf in pain was a dangerous creature, more animal than man. Blinded by the agony, instinct would take over, and he, or she, would attack first to protect their young. If that were to happen, then I was the one equipped to handle the werewolf. Sure, I could be hurt like anyone else, but I was hard to kill. Living for almost two hundred years had proven that.

Listening intently, I heard three, perhaps four distinct voices, which was surprising. Nowadays, werewolves lived longer than they did five hundred years ago. When they became the stuff of folklore, people stopped hunting them. Since they lived a more peaceful existence, the number of litters they birthed dropped off to where pups were now born singly to couples every hundred years or so. The young were precious to the packs and there being four here made my skin crawl with foreboding. The day kept getting better and better.

Giveaway

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Author Bio

Lexi has always been an avid reader, and at a young age started reading (secretly) her mother’s romances (the ones she was told not to touch). She was the only teenager she knew of who would be grounded from reading. Later, with a pencil and a note book, she wrote her own stories and shared them with friends because she loved to see their reactions. A Texas transplant, Lexi now kicks her boots up in the Midwest with her Yankee husband and her eighty-pound puppies named after vacuum cleaners.