New Release Spotlight and Giveaway! GIANT SLAYERS by Jeff Altabef & Ken Altabef

Revenge.

Alzsheba, the Witch of Endor, knew quite a lot about revenge. The need for revenge was an itch she suffered most keenly, a burr beneath her skin that did nothing but burn and prod. A need unfulfilled. But that would change, starting today.

            

The Philistine camp buzzed with activity: weapons clattered, mules brayed, men shouted, boasted, argued. Little men who thought raised voices and bluster made them less pathetic and small. Blind, stupid, stinking sheep. The entire lot of them. They fight and die for a king who cares nothing about them. King Farrah sits on a thrown far away and doesn’t even know their names. Mindless sheep! Are they stupid enough to believe General Bulgossa, the bloated idiot the King has put in charge, is their shepherd? Do they think it is Goliath, who leads them in battle, towering above them like some bronzed god? Do they even suspect another unseen shepherd, one who guides them quietly,
carefully, from the shadows?

            

Her mind spun in tight angry circles. Enough! She had work to do. Twilight had come, and twilight was the only time for the things she must do. When day met night, when light succumbed to darkness, when the mists settled on the fields and the walls between the worlds were at their thinnest.

            

Alzsheba strode away from the camp—a tall beauty with high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, and dark stain on her lips. Her sheep were well served for the night. Let them drink, and gamble, and bicker and boast. None saw the lone figure of a woman, young and athletic, dressed in skin-tight leather breaches and bodice, heading toward the cliffs of chiseled basalt. They wanted only to feed their bellies and drink their fill and tell tall tales. Then they would sleep. But sleep would not find her, not while the need for revenge consumed her, that maddening itch still unfulfilled.

            

She squeezed into a narrow cleft in the rocky cliff face. Inside, she had dug out a tiny chamber, an earthy crypt where, even kneeling, the top of her head scraped the dirt above. She struck flint, lighting a pair of incense stands, and the pungent aromas of burning opium, poison hemlock and spice inflamed her senses. 

            

A small wooden stand filled the center of the narrow chamber in the rocks. On top sat a small stone altar that had been captured from one of the Hebrew towns. The horns at the four corners had been broken off, the winged disc symbol on the front defaced. Dried blood crusted the burnished copper plate on the corrupted altar. 

The witch emptied a small pouch of human ashes onto the plate, arranging the burnt offering in a circle. She felt power flow from the ashes, the murders still fresh.