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    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)
    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)
    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)
    Ebook52 pages42 minutes

    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)

    By Jordan Castillo Price

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The hunt is on.

    Pretty young men and women like Michael's best friend, Scary Mary, are disappearing from underground goth clubs all over Detroit. For over two years, Michael has been scouring the midwest for buried newspaper articles and obscure medical reports, and now he's finally pinpointed the source of the problem. Too bad he can't exactly go to the cops and tell them his friend was murdered by vampires. Since it's his duty to start wiping out the scourge, he's posing as bait—and he's got a bag of sharpened hickory stakes to do the job.

    Everything should go smoothly, given the amount of preparation that Michael has put into the hunt. He's got a practiced repertoire of come-hither eyeliner looks and a full blister-pack of the date rape drug Rohypnol. But he didn't count on Wild Bill showing up.

    Wild Bill is a vision in spiked hair and scuffed black leather—exactly the type of guy Michael would have fallen for...if he'd ever had the chance. Unfortunately, with a vampire in his sights, Michael has no time for an actual date. Despite his best efforts, it seems there's nothing Michael can do to shake Bill loose. Looks like they're in for a wild, wild ride.
    (Novelette - Explicit Gay Content)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJCP Books
    Release dateOct 14, 2012
    ISBN9781935540243
    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)
    Author

    Jordan Castillo Price

    Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner city Chicago, to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Any disembodied noises, she’s decided, will be blamed on the ice maker.Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations.

    Read more from Jordan Castillo Price

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    Reviews for Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1)

    3.5/5

    42 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1) opens in a Detroit bar in the first-person viewpoint of Michael, who awaits an arranged date. But why does he have a satchel filled with hickory stakes and Rohypnol (the date-rape drug)? Michael, who has recently learned of the existence of vampires, has made it his sacred calling to hunt down and destroy them. His first slaying will happen tonight as soon as he lures vampire Gray back to his hotel room. Using himself as sexual bait, he plans to slip Gray some Rohypnol to slow the vampire down enough to kill.

      Meanwhile, a gorgeous guy leans over to ask for a light. This man is completely Michael’s type from his spiked blond hair to his chipped black nail polish and ripped jeans. He introduces himself as Wild Bill and Michael would desperately love to go home with him. But Michael’s mission compels him to brush off Bill as Gray arrives. He senses that he is hopelessly outmatched by a vampire like Gray. Then disaster strikes as Michael and Gray leave the bar – and Bill cheerfully invites himself along for a threesome. Anything could happen now.

      This dark novelette (at 11, 285 words) of white-hot suspense was first published in 2008 by Changeling Press, and is now in its second edition from JCP Books. What makes the biggest impression on me is the story’s unrelenting tension. Also, its complete unpredictability. Michael’s viewpoint contains a haunting combination of determination and wounded innocence. At 21 years old, he is far too young to give up a normal life to dedicate himself to vampire hunting. He is well aware that he probably won’t survive much longer. Yet, his reasons for choosing such a perilous life are intensely personal and it gives Payback and subsequent installments in the Channeling Morpheus series a satisfying emotional depth.

      Meanwhile, Bill adds the unpredictability and flashes of humor that balance out the darkness and gravity of Michael’s viewpoint. This is a marvelous introduction to a very strong series. If, like me, you picked up a copy in 2008, the second edition is not significantly changed. If you haven’t yet tried the series, now is the time as it is re-released from JCP Books. It is not-to-be-missed!

      Val for AReCafe

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      First and foremost, this story is mostly sex. Hot sex to a point but not as much as it could be because Michael is distracted the entire time. I was also so thrown for a loop that Price wrote a scene with a three-some when the Psycop series is so vanilla (and I love it) but it set the stage for this very different series which is darker and dirtier.

      I'm not passing judgment on threesomes--my purity score is pretty low for someone who hasn't really done drugs so I would be that proverbial pot--but the way this one plays out, a menage-a-trois that is also a one-night stand, is definitely on the grungy side. (Did I really just say that? No diagonal reference intended.)

      As the books progress, there is more plot and thus they are longer (there is always lots of hot sex). I wish they were illustrated because I am head over heels in lust with the cover model. (See the version of the cover art for installment five that has him facing sideways holding a gun. He is soooo pretty. I like pretty boys.)

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Payback (Channeling Morpheus 1) - Jordan Castillo Price

    Payback

    Channeling Morpheus 1

    Jordan Castillo Price

    Smashwords Edition 2.0

    www.JCPbooks.com

    JCP Books LLC • PO Box 153 • Barneveld, WI 53507

    SECOND ELECTRONIC EDITION 2011

    Cover art by Jordan Castillo Price

    Payback: Channeling Morpheus 1. Copyright © 2008 by Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Originally published electronically as Channeling Morpheus: Payback by Changeling Press in 2008 and by JCP Books in 2009 in the paperback Channeling Morpheus for Scary Mary

    ISBN 978-1-935540-24-3

    Chapter One

    I picked up my bag, or satchel, or whatever you want to call it, and checked it again—even though I knew everything was still there. It had to be, because it’d been pressed against my foot, and if anyone had been rifling through it, I would have felt them doing it. Mallet? Check. Wooden stake—hickory, of course? Check. Crucifix? Well, yeah. Like five of those. Rohypnol? Check. Holy water? Check. Eyeliner? Check.

    Yeah, eyeliner. It looks good on me. Scary Mary used to say that. She’d sworn up and down that I was one of those guys who could pull it off.

    My hand sank deep into the bag and brushed against the eyeliner. Or maybe it was a pen. I inched my fingers down the length of it and felt the tip. Damn. It was a pen. Maybe I could use it for touchup anyway if I sweated off all the eyeliner.

    Or else I’d have to find the vampire and lure him out of the club before it came to that.

    Got a light?

    I jumped. I wasn’t scared, though. Just startled. It was way too early for vampires, barely an hour past sunset. But I hadn’t realized there was anyone standing practically on top of me while I was digging through my bag. Or whatever you want to call it.

    I don’t…. He was so hot he was incandescent. I don’t smoke.

    The guy who’d wanted the light was smiling. Still standing practically on top of me, too. Staring me right in the eye.

    You’d think that would be all. He asked for a light. I didn’t have one. And then he would move on. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe he’d just been looking for an excuse to talk.

    He slid himself onto the barstool beside mine. I did my best to look nonchalant. He was…amazing. Tall and lean, with ripped up jeans and spiked blond hair, earrings and a snake tattoo on his neck and chipped black nail polish. And he wanted to talk to me.

    Couldn’t I have run into him any other night? Like, a night that I didn’t already have a date with a vampire?

    Got a name, Mister Lung Association? he asked me.

    Michael.

    Michael, Michael, Motorcycle. He tucked his cigarette behind his ear and shook my hand. Well, more like he jammed his hand toward me, and I either had to shake it or be knocked off the barstool. Wild Bill.

    A hot guy who had the balls to call himself Wild Bill, straightfaced no less, was hitting on me in a mostly-empty bar. My mind reeled. I hadn’t been putting on my approachable vibe. I saved that for the vampires. I’d been going through my bag, minding my own business. And here he was, with

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