Blog Tour & Giveaway: The Corpse Goddess by Kristi Jones

Title: The Corpse Goddess
Author: Kristi Jones
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Find “The Corpse Goddess”:
Amazon / B&N / Smashwords
The Book Depository / Evernight Publishing

Party girl Meg Highbury wakes up the morning of her twenty-first birthday with one hell of a hangover – and a walking corpse in her apartment. Meg turns to her straight-laced neighbor Armando for help and together they discover that Meg is a Valkyrie.

What’s more, her first duty is to trade places with the corpse. But Meg is being sent to her Death Duty too soon. In a race against time, Meg frantically tries to find a loophole to her gruesome fate, but while Meg is determined to live whatever the cost, Armando’s strict moral principles keep getting in the way of her plans for escape.

Can Meg walk the ‘right’ and narrow path, possibly sacrificing her mortal life, for love? And if she can, will Armando have the stomach to love a rotting corpse of a girl who is falling apart in more ways than one?

Thanks to author, Kristi Jones, for this deleted scene!! Enjoy!!

~Deleted Scene~

Meg sat with her back against one of the larger headstones, sucking back the last of the wine. Her tongue felt like chalk and her head was swimming. Minutes sped by, unchecked.
She was staring into the corn, when she saw it. A black cloud taking shape, forming itself into a mass, a form, a figure.
“Tee, is that you?”
The darkness emerging from the corn stopped. Meg could make out the shape of a head, two arms that seemed to go on forever, and a pair of long, lanky legs.
“Not funny, Tee. I’m not that shrunk. I mean, drunk.”
The tall figure moved closer. The wind rushing through the corn suddenly smelled of mothballs and spoiled hamburger meat.
“Ugh, girl. You need to take a shower. You smell like you’ve been rolling in something nasty.”
Meg hiccupped and put the wine bottle to her lips. “Oops,” she giggled. “Empty. Guess we need to get to that party. Gotta spend some quality time with freaking Danny Kole. Little bastard.”
Still hanging on to the empty wine bottle, Meg got to her feet. Another rush of wind carried the smell of rotting meat to her nostrils. “Christ. Maybe we should stop for that shower before the party.”
She heaved her backpack up and stumbled over and around the gravestones, heading for the car. The figure, and it’s unclean stench, followed her at a slow, steady pace. Meg fished her keys out of her pocket and pressed the plastic fob that unlocked the doors. She opened the back passenger side door and tossed her backpack onto the seat, then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. The car light was on and Meg squinted against it’s bright glow.
“I’m driving.”
Her companion gave no argument. The figure’s head tilted to the side. Meg leaned across the seats and opened the door. “Come on, lazybones. Can’t hold your weed, huh?” She let loose another stream of laughter.
Meg closed her eyes, trying to blink away the alcohol haze. She drew a breath through her nostrils and the dumpster smell singed her nose hairs.
“Tee, what the hell is that smell?” she started. But the thing climbing into her car was not Tessandra Conley.
It was the hand that snapped Meg sober. A skeleton of a hand missing a considerable amount of flesh. In fact, when Meg stopped screaming long enough to take a breath, she saw the hand was more bone than flesh and what little flesh remained was decidedly rancid.
The thing sat down in the passenger seat. Meg’s throat was raw. She knew she should get out of the car. She needed to get her legs moving. She needed to run, to run away fast.
But her muscles were frozen. Her sluggish, alcohol drenched brain registered the fact that terror really could freeze muscles and that on some level, this was hilarious. Unfortunately, the terror made it impossible to laugh.
“Zomblie,” Meg whispered. Again, some part of her brain told her this was hilarious. She’d said ‘zomblie’. And again, she couldn’t laugh. She sat frozen in her seat, her hands molded to the steering wheel. “Zombie,” she said again. The words blew through her lips like so much air. She didn’t know who she was talking to. There was nobody in the graveyard to save her.
The Zomblie turned it’s head. It wore a dusty black suit that had rotted away in places. It’s eyes were long gone, but Meg felt herself drawn to those two gaping, rotting holes. The lips were gone too and left a gleaming, toothy, lipless grimace.
“What – what – what are you?”
The thing lifted it’s arms, finger bones dangling like Halloween party decorations. Meg pressed her back against the door, still clutching the steering wheel, knowing those hands were headed straight for her throat. But instead the thing reached for the seat belt, drew it out and clipped the buckle secure.
“Click it or ticket?” Meg murmured. Her breathing was still coming in gasps, but the idea of a zombie buckling itself in was so far outside the realm of possibility that she knew at that moment she must be dreaming or hallucinating or having a brain aneurism. All of which was reassuring.
Her passenger stared ahead, hands back in it’s lap.
“You need a ride?”
No response.
“Okay, okay. I know what’s going on. Tee added a little extra something to the weed, right?”
No response.
“Right. Okay. So I just need to go home. Sleep this freaking nightmare off and wake up fresh tomorrow. No worries. Right.”
Meg jabbed her key toward the ignition, her hand shaking violently. She missed, took a shaky breath, tried again. The car roared to life. The Zomblie didn’t move.
“Good. Right. Home. Screw the party. Not like I wanted to see that miserable little bastard anyway. No more partying for this girl.” Meg muttered to herself.
She pulled onto Brownsville Highway, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead, wishing she had blinders. “Party’s over. For tonight anyway.”
The heater blew out a mass of hot air. The stench of her passenger blew out with it and Meg hurried to roll down the window. A blast of cold air cleared the car out a bit. She leaned her head out the window and took a deep breath.
“Pretty smelly fucking hallucination.”

~Giveaway~

a Rafflecopter giveaway

~About the Author~

Kristi Jones spent her childhood exploring European castles, crumbling manor houses and ornate cathedrals, always looking for secret passages and hidden rooms. She holds a degree in European history and loves to throw ‘ordinary’ characters into extraordinary circumstances.

She currently lives in south Texas with her husband and two children, who inspire her daily. She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas and Romance Writers of America. She loves old movies, being a Mom, the feel of paper in her hands and things that go bump in the night.

Website / Blog / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads