A warm welcome to authors Jenna Rose and Katey Hawthorne joining us today to talk about their new release “Kanaan & Tilney: The Case of the Man Eater

Katey and Jenna join us to share an exclusive excerpt and brought a giveaway especially for our blog readers 🙂

Welcome Jenna & Katey 🙂

We’re so happy to be here at Love Bytes today–and Happy Birthday to the blog! We’ve just had our second Kanaan & Tilney mystery drop from Less Than Three, and it’s called The Case of the Man-Eater. Our wolf-shifter and pyromancer PIs are hot on the case… even if it hits a little too close to home. Someone might be targeting people like Lowell Kanaan himself.

And the “man-eater” thing may be literal. Who doesn’t like a little murder in their romance novels? Right? So here you go, a juicy piece of the plot, complete with our City Coroner, Reggie, aka Sweater Vest.

Today’s sweater vest was a great one, though John could only see part of it under Reggie’s lab coat. Some kind of burgundy knit. John didn’t care much for Reggie’s plain button-downs, but the sweater vests, he outright coveted. Wasn’t sure he could pull them off himself but vowed to try someday. John waved hello.

Lowell returned the smile. “Hey, Reg. How’s it going?”

“Eh, Patterson’s having a meltdown about all the voices again—mediums and morgues, right?—so I’m short-staffed. Poor woman. Otherwise, same old. Which one are you here for?” Reggie pulled the sheet up over whatever he’d been working on and took off his blue latex gloves. His hands were his own, but he had one pinkie finger that was definitely a different color than the rest, indicating it had been a transplant.

A year ago, John would’ve just asked about it, but Lowell had taught him what his mother had never managed: sometimes it just wasn’t his damn business.

“Mateo Morales. Beast vic.”

“Right, yeah.” Reggie stuffed the gloves into a biohazard bin and went for his charts. “Someone either trying to make it look like a Beast attack or just really pissed off. I remember.”

Lowell’s eyes followed him. “And what do you think?”

“Neither, really,” Reggie said. He wiped his free hand against his lab coat, then flipped a few pages on the clipboard. “Here, look at this. He’s right over there, but…these slashes were deliberate. Made in threes, yeah, but also, that deep one right there? Carotid. Probably the first one cut.”

“There was blood spray on the wall,” John recalled. “Up high.”

“Before he fell,” Reggie said. He handed the board off to Lowell and led them to a far corner of the morgue.

The place was huge, brightly lit with fluorescents, smelling of chemicals more than anything else. Almost like a hospital, just…well, not a very good one. All slick metal and white tile, though, which was near enough. Most people would call it creepy; John just called it interesting. So did Reggie, though. Of course Reggie was one of those Necros to whom death was an actual friend. Every Necromorph drew their energy from some living thing, some chemical reaction, some interplay of organic molecules. Reggie drew his from decomposition.

Seen in a certain light, John could understand how it seemed gross to most people. But really it was just efficient.

“Someone who knew what they were doing, then,” Lowell mused aloud, his expression darkening.

“And I mean to tell the PD that, but…” Reggie shrugged.

John was well aware that Reggie and Lowell had similar problems there. Reggie, at least, had a real position of respect, which was pretty amazing for a Necromorph, let alone one with his particular energy source. “But,” John echoed, scrunching up his nose.

Reggie pulled back the sheet, revealing Morales’s body, cold and bloodless, eyes closed, slashed all to shit. The wounds went in threes, like Reggie said, but it was neater than claws—even John could see that.

Except for a few spots where the flesh was exceptionally ragged. “That’s—wait. Those are bite marks. Like, someone literally took bites of him? Tell me nothing was bitten off.” John blinked in amazement. Right, that was gross.

“No, just sliced out. But that’s what everyone will assume, and that’s just part of why they’re going to fight hard for this easy Beast perpetrator theory of theirs.” Reggie was pulling on a new pair of gloves from the nearest box.

Lowell rubbed at his nose (supersmell must be rough sometimes) and stepped up close to the body. “You know us dangerous Beasts and our violent tempers.” He looked at Reggie. “Any clues on the body?”

“In the same vein…” Reggie reached in and down, lifting a flap of skin. “This bite mark here is the clearest. And this is not animal; it’s a human bite. So if they try any shifted rage-Beast bullshit, we may have them.”

John mumbled, “For all it’ll matter.”

“Sent a sample to the lab. Hopefully there’s DNA. Hopefully we have a match.” Reggie didn’t sound particularly hopeful, though.

Lowell stared at Morales’s body, a frown creasing his brow. “You’ll let us know when you hear back?”

“Yeah,” Reggie said. “Otherwise, what you see is what you get. Few more bites here”—he pointed— “here. Bled out quick.” He gestured to another wound at the radial artery. “It’s vicious and it’s neat, for all it made a mess.”

“The BSPD are going to fuck this up so bad,” John said with a sigh.

KANAAN & TILNEY: THE CASE OF THE MAN-EATER

Book 2 in the Kanaan & Tilney series by Jenna Rose and Katey Hawthorne

Wolf-Beast and ex-cop Lowell recently brought his boyfriend, Elementalist and mystery author John, into the PI business with him. They’ve been solving cases for Boston’s diverse praeternatural community ever since. When a young Terran feels that the brutal murder of his Beast boyfriend isn’t being treated seriously enough by the police, he brings the case to Kanaan & Tilney for a second opinion.

Similarly defiled corpses pop up around Boston as they race to find the killer. All the victims are packless Beasts, like Lowell, and the vicious nature of the killings stir up old prejudices in the praeternatural community. Throw a personal vendetta and some ugly family history for Lowell in the mix, and the trails are as muddy as ever. It will take everything Kanaan and Tilney have, as a team and a couple, if they hope to stop a serial killer—and survive doing so.

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Jenna Rose  is an avid reader and writer, particularly when it comes to science-fiction and fantasy.  Currently, she works as a receptionist, but her real love is writing. In her free time, she likes to read comic books, play video games, and waste time on the internet. She currently lives in Massachusetts with her dog, Harley.

http://www.jennarosewrites.com/

https://twitter.com/jennarosewrites

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Katey Hawthorne is a reader and writer of superpowered and paranormal romance, even though the only degree she holds is in the history of art. (Or, possibly, because the only degree she holds is in the history of art.) Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in Ohio with her family, two cats, and one very large puppy. 

http://www.kateyhawthorne.com/  

https://www.instagram.com/hawthornekatey/

https://twitter.com/hawthornetaylor

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