Shadows to Light
Available at Amazon
Shadows to Light, book five in the Shadows of Justice series, solves the mystery of Mira Luther, the gifted healer who has appeared in all four of the previous Shadows of Justice novels.
Readers first meet Mira and Jameson in the short story, Mira’s Gift, available at Night Owl Reviews.
A supernatural healer, Mira escapes a trial of her peers only to be sent on an impossible mission: Rescue her scientist father from a madman who’s using him to create bio-weapons. But she’s no spy. On her own, with no real clues, she isn’t sure where to turn.
Part of a covert task force searching for a missing government scientist, Jameson is tasked with staring at a laboratory building day in and day out. The boredom is overwhelming until Mira, a woman he cannot forget, shows up in a place she should never be.
Forced together by circumstance, Mira and Jameson enter an adventure that will push them to their limits – and quite possibly beyond.
Discover all of the Shadows of Justice adventures at the Shadows of Justice series page
~~~REVIEWS~~~
“Regan Black clearly has a talent for creating heroines who aren’t afraid to kick some butt…” –Tanya C.
“It seemed like a reasonable start and end to what should have been a five minute relationship in Mira’s Gift, a short by Regan Black. Except readers clamored for more. I should know. I was one of them…Black’s built another great romance into a fantastic urban fantasy adventure that includes shopping at Water Tower Place. And how many people can do that convincingly? Shadows of Light is strong as a stand-alone read, but better if you know the cast and crew from the whole series. (Plus, then you remember that we’ve met Mira in all the books!)” –Author Kimberly Hope 5 stars (Amazon, Goodreads)
~~~ENJOY AN EXCERPT~~~
Prologue
2094: a combat zone in North Africa
The sirens cried ‘incoming’ outside the triage tent and Mira followed standard protocol to protect the patients on her end of the facility. The vicious chatter of automatic weapons seeking the incoming MEDEVAC helicopter barely registered, she had such faith in the Soldiers charged with keeping the medical unit safe.
“Hard to believe there was a day when that big red cross equaled neutral territory.”
Her closest patient made a noise that combined coughing with laughter. “No respect in the modern era, huh?”
“None,” she agreed with a smile. She reached for his wrist, found his pulse kicking, and gave him a gentle nudge with her innate healing gift to calm him down. “We’ll get you out safely. Just rest.”
“Yeah, got plenty of that coming.” He smiled up at her. “How about you come with me?”
She felt herself blushing, though he was hardly the first to make an overture. “You’ll be glad I’m not in the way when you get to the hospital ship. The nurses are a lot more attractive out there.” She ran her hand over the stained bandage, pulsed in a little more energy to slow the bleeding and reduce any infection from the shrapnel lodged so deep in his side the field surgeon had decided passing him up the line to the Navy hospital was his best bet.
“Now get some rest,” she ordered with a smile. He was young and healthy and she told herself he’d survive and go on to live a long life without much lingering physical pain.
“I think you’ve made me better already.” He caught her hand before she could move away. “You must be the one they talk about.”
“I think you’ve lost some common sense along with the blood.” Mira ran an experienced glance over the patient in the next bed, but the morphine pump pushing the painkiller into his system put him beyond caring or comprehension of their conversation.
“Nah. Word gets around when good stuff happens in this hellhole. They’ve been talking about a nurse who heals with just a touch. A dark angel,” he added with a nod to her hair.
She shook her head, added an indulgent smile. “That’d be the grim reaper, wouldn’t it? I bet ‘they’ were on some powerful drugs.”
“Sweetheart, this is my third tour in four years, I know how to tell one end of the bull from the other.”
Crap. Once again it was time to move on, find a new position. Maybe even return to the states. She’d thought being in a mobile triage unit would prevent this sort of thing.
“Around here we’ve just got a great team and a good system, but we’re fresh out of angels.”
“You are her.”
“If you need to think so.” The wash of the helicopter’s blades pressed in on the tent, saving her from more questions. “That must be your ride.”
But it wasn’t. A special ops crew rushed in, battered and bloody. The field surgeon ushered them into a curtained area and called for Mira’s assistance. She heard the special ops helicopter lift off, surely to make room for the MEDEVAC’s arrival.
“You’re next,” she assured the Soldier who still held her hand. “Be well.”
Quiet chaos reigned in the treatment area as the surgeon assessed, sorted, and barked orders. Knowing the routine, Mira jumped into the fray.
“Over here,” she said to a Soldier supporting a wounded buddy. “Help him up on the table.” She noticed no one on this team wore standard issue combat camouflage – for any branch of service – but she knew better than to ask.
“What type of weapon?”
“Looked like standard issue.” Her new patient gritted his teeth as she cut through the odd fabric of his shirt. “Nothing biological.”
She accepted the answer with a nod, her mother’s voice echoing in her head that the exam room wasn’t the place to indulge her curious nature. She only needed to know enough about the patient to treat the presented condition. Her academy instructors had reinforced that rule as well, teaching her how to limit her assessment and therefore blend in with normal nurses and medical personnel. “If they know what you can do, they will use you mercilessly. If you’re lucky.”
Her early education had been littered with tales of her unlucky ancestors who’d been run out of town, or worse, and labeled as witches, heretics, or quacks. Those poor souls usually went mad from the loneliness and frustration of not being allowed to use their healing skills.
So she focused on vital signs and moved through the exam as the Soldiers would expect, even more cautious after her conversation with the shrapnel patient. She couldn’t afford wild rumors if she wanted to keep helping where she was most needed. Where she most needed to be. Cleaning the obvious wounds too minor for the surgeon’s immediate attention, she smiled at her patient. “You’ll need a few stitches here.” She examined the track of a 9mm bullet and thanked any listening angels it wasn’t bigger or the shooter more accurate. “Let me get a tray.”
It took her less than half a minute, but she returned to a patient balanced precariously at the edge of fainting. She looked to his buddy hovering nearby. “What else should I know?”
The Soldier only shrugged as he helped her lay the man back on the table. “Never seen him like this.”
Fear, she thought. Everyone had something they couldn’t tolerate. Needles, scalpels, sometimes just procedures or even the smell of antiseptic sent patients over the edge. She’d seen variations of fear in a medical tent level strong Soldiers who thought nothing of charging into a dangerous combat situation.
“Pull the curtain on your way out.” She wanted privacy for both of them. She watched the buddy exit, and just caught sight of a sharp-eyed commanding type watching from across the treatment area. In charge in the field, patient privacy – her privacy – mattered here. Now he wouldn’t see anything he shouldn’t.
“What else should I know,” she repeated to herself as her patients eyes were glassy, his skin dry and hot. “Nothing biological, my ass.”
Following her internal instincts that screamed she was losing him, she ignored the potential complications of being discovered and went to work. She laid her hands on the patient and opened herself up, tapping the senses she’d been born with.
The first shock was feeling the familiar signature of her father. The second was realizing the residual was in the fabric on her patient. In the ‘real world’ her father was top of the heap in biomedical and military advancements.
Mira pushed deeper, sorting out the medical details, letting what she envisioned as a flashlight cruise over the prone body until it lit up the real problem. There. The frayed edges of the bullet track were reacting with the weird fabric, even though she’d cut the shirt away and saturated the wound with antiseptic solution.
No time to analyze the how, she dealt with the situation as presented. Cranking up her gift, she cupped her hands over the angry wound and cleansed it from the inside out. Gradually, she felt the fever ease, the tension fade, and the danger pass. She kept at it, closing the deepest part of the gap, until only butterfly closures were needed.
“What the hell?”
His gravelly voice was a welcome sound. She gave him a steady smile, though her knees were watery from the effort. “Now that it’s clear, I can see it’s not as bad as I thought. No stitches required. Unless you want an ugly scar?”
He grinned up at her as she smeared ointment over his shoulder and handed him the tube. “Put this on twice a day. Keep it clean.”
He sat up. “Sure thing.”
When he was gone, she leaned back on the exam table and studied a bit of the odd fabric. “What have you been up to Dad?”