Showing results by author "Craig Schaefer" in All Categories

It should have been a routine mission: stop the sale of a bio-organic weapon, round up the bad guys, and fly home before breakfast. Harmony Black and Jessie Temple are field agents for Vigilant Lock, a covert agency that defends humanity against supernatural threats; espionage, monsters, and mayhem are all in a day’s work. What they find this time, though, is a puzzle demanding an answer.

Conspiracies swirl like shadows around Livia, the pope's daughter, who refuses to be anyone's pawn: chasing the whispers of a deadly coup, she vows to expose the truth and save her church from disaster. Livia has secrets of her own, though, and one wrong move could cost her life and her soul.

Marie Reinhart is an NYPD detective on the trail of a serial killer. When she sleeps, though, she dreams of other lives; she dreams of being a knight, in strange wars and strange worlds. On the other side of the city, Nessa Roth is a college professor trapped in a loveless marriage, an unwilling prop in a political dynasty. She's also a fledgling witch, weaving poppets and tiny spells behind closed doors. When Marie's case draws her into Nessa's path, sparks fly. What comes next is more than a furtive whirlwind affair; it's the first pebbles of an avalanche.

Daniel Faust is back from hell and out for blood. He has a new face and a deadly mission: to find the tiger-queen Naavarasi and his own traitorous brother, and put them both six feet underground. But when Naavarasi’s shape-shifting minions abduct one of Daniel’s own, it’s time for a desperate rescue. With his demonic lover Caitlin and his precocious apprentice Melanie, he follows a thread of nonexistent airlines, ghostly packages, and urban legends all the way to Springfield, a small town with big secrets.

The House of Dead Roses offers murder, espionage, and mayhem to the highest bidder. Agent Harmony Black's war against the infernal cult -- and their seductive, sadistic mistress, the demoness Nadine -- last found her facing off against Nadine's top assassin under the glittering lights of Las Vegas, a battle that left her physically and psychically scarred.

Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients' problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control. Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his own former employer, a racket boss who isn't entirely human.

Harmony Black is much more than your average FBI special agent. In addition to being a practicing witch, she's also an operative for Vigilant Lock, an off-the-books program created to battle occult threats - by any means necessary. Despite her dedication to fighting the monsters threatening society, Harmony has become deeply conflicted about her job. Her last investigation resulted in a pile of dead bodies, and she suspects the wrong people are being punished for it.

When two operatives go dark in Tampa, chasing the trail of an oligarch with ties to the demonic underworld, Vigilant Lock - the nation’s first and last line of defense against occult attack - sends their best to the rescue: Harmony Black, a troubled investigator and an elemental witch with a keen but tangled mind; and her partner Jessie Temple, the daughter of a supernatural slasher and the inheritor of her father’s powers.

Faust has been caged, buried, cut off from his allies and his magic. His enemies think they've won. They're about to learn, the hard way, that this is one sorcerer who always has a trick up his sleeve. Nobody has ever escaped from the Iceberg. But the Iceberg has never had a prisoner like Daniel Faust.

The first story ever told left a scar on the skin of the universe, with its characters doomed to an endless cycle of reincarnation and death. Trapped by his enemies, Daniel Faust - magician, mobster, and newly-minted knight of hell - has been cast in the role of the eternal Thief. Now, the story is dead-set on writing his final chapter, the one that ends with a knife in his back. The curse can’t be broken without tracking down the original Thief. The truth is buried beneath the legacy of a long-dead stage magician and a cache of occult relics from the 1940s.

Irresistibly drawn to mysteries, if only to debunk them, reporter Lionel Page exposes supernatural frauds, swindlers, and charlatans. His latest case is an obsession—at least for an ancient and wealthy heiress: verify the authenticity of a lost Edgar Allan Poe manuscript circulating through New York City’s literary underworld. But the shrewd Regina Dunkle offers more than money. It’s a pact. Fulfill her request, and Lionel’s own notorious buried past, one he’s been running from since he was a child, will remain hidden.

Las Vegas, Nevada. For some, a neon drenched playground. For Harmony Black, a graveyard of bad memories. But when your job is protecting humanity from the horrors of the occult underworld, you go where the mission sends you. The annual TechTopia conference draws Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, big thinkers, startup investors - and the Basilisk, a former German military intelligence officer turned freelance assassin. He’s in town to make a killing, and his target could be any of a thousand potential victims.

Seelie Rose knows a thing or two about visions. As a fledgling witch and the inheritor of a magical legacy, it's her duty to watch over the dreamscape of New York City. Usually that means battling errant nightmares; now she's facing down alien intelligences, incursions from other realms, and the dawning suspicion that she isn't the only dream-witch in town.

Felix Rossini is a man with a thousand enemies. Framed for murder, hunted by Mirenze's protectors as well as the criminal underworld, he struggles to survive and fight back against the conspiracy that has marked him for death. A conspiracy of another kind is brewing across the ocean, as the corrupt aristocracy draws Livia Serafini's oldest friends into a plot to destroy her. If she can't find a way to overcome the occult infection spreading through her veins, they may not have to.

To the church, she is a heretic, tried in absentia and sentenced to burn. To her brother, Carlo, she stands as a threat to his corrupt rule and a symbol of resistance. To her new "allies" in the East, she is a pawn to be played and sacrificed as they see fit. They don't hear the whispers that follow her in the streets: whispers of hope and the name of a long-dead saint. When Livia rises up to fight, she will not rise alone.

Out of prison and back on the streets, Daniel Faust returns home to a city on fire. The Chicago mob is making their play for control of Las Vegas, with an army of gunmen and a lethal shapeshifter on their side, while Daniel's friend Jennifer marshals the forces of the Vegas underworld. Staying on the sidelines isn't an option, especially when a Metro detective orders him to get the war under control - and if he can't, he'll expose Daniel's secrets to the FBI.

When NYPD detective Marie Reinhart met Nessa Roth, a Manhattan socialite and dabbler in the occult, sparks flew. Then came the gunfire. Nessa and Marie are the Witch and her Knight, characters from a fairy tale brought to life and trapped in an endless curse: to meet, fall in love, and be torn from each other’s arms by violent death, again and again for all eternity. Now they have one slim chance to escape their doom. It lies in Wisdom's Grave, the resting-place of the first witch who ever lived, and the wellspring of magic.

Daniel Faust’s last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he’s on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.

Daniel Faust - sorcerer, thief, and newly-minted Las Vegas crime boss - has debts to pay. One of those debts has just come due, an IOU to be paid in the form of a high-risk heist, and it's a job he can't refuse. The mark? Daniel's arch-nemesis, a man with a Cheshire smile and the powers of a living god. The score? A sacrificial dagger buried under layers of electronic, occult, and human security, snug on the far side of a custom-built deathtrap.

It's a bad time for unfinished business to come back and haunt him, forcing Daniel Faust to confront his tortured history and the family he left behind. It's an even worse time for his surviving foes to join forces and take deadly aim at Faust's throne. Toss in a syndicate operative from a parallel world, a deranged, half-demon assassin hungry for a duel, and the shadowy machinations of the King of Worms, and the stage is set for a showdown under the neon lights of Vegas.