Wine and Sorrow (The Martyr’s Vow Book 4)
Date Published: 12-15-2025
Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
to reconnect with his estranged culture and investigate his family’s
troubled history. But when a sadistic oligarch kidnaps them, their honeymoon
spirals into a living nightmare.
Frightened and far from home, Armand and Vonnie race against time to locate a
powerful artifact before their captor does, or they’ll join the dead in
the underworld forever. The couple’s frantic quest takes them to lush
mountains, desolate monasteries, and bustling markets, but they’re not
traveling alone. A distant cousin with a penchant for stretching the truth, a
mythological strongman who hurls boulders like skipping stones, and a stuffy
ghost with a love for poetry join them on this macabre treasure hunt.
Armand must summon the courage of his ancestors and sacrifice himself for
love, or the Scribe of Death will come for his beloved.
Bittersweet and brutal, The Book of Wine and Sorrow is the thrilling
conclusion to The Martyr’s Vow series and a heart-aching testament to
survival and wrestling with your demons.
Chapter 1
PANIC IN THE STRIP CLUB
The stripper wraps her toned leg around the metal pole and flashes me a dead-eyed stare.
Platinum blonde hair tumbles over her bare shoulders as she gyrates to a hip-hop song, a titillating dance in the spotlight-splashed club.
Turning her shapely butt towards me, the amount of one dollar bills tucked between her G-string makes her look like a peacock proudly displaying its colorful plumage. I sheepishly remove a dollar from my pocket and gently toss it at her. She smiles, scoops it up with manicured fingers, and places it with the rest.
In a flat voice, the stripper says, “Hey, Armand.”
“Hey, Crystal,” I reply, avoiding eye contact.
“How’s Vonnie?” The woman removes her bikini top, revealing two pert breasts.
“She’s good. We’re getting married,” I ignore the bikini top she drapes around my bald head.
“Oh? Congratulations.” Crystal spreads her legs. “I knew you two had chemistry.”
My heart skips a beat and perspiration slicks my forehead. I absent-mindedly wipe my brow with the bikini top like it’s a monogrammed handkerchief.
“Yeah. That’s what people say…” I tell her.
The other strip club patrons give me the hairy eyeball because the woman they’re ogling is chatting with me. One acne-scarred brute clutching a dollar bill pushes his way around me. Crystal crawls on her hands and knees, snatches the bill between her teeth, and growls at him. The patron melts in his chair, apparently satisfied.
Crystal winks at me and sends the bill down below with the others.
“Tell Vonnie I said hi.” Crystal grinds her pelvis against the pole. The crowd goes wild. My stomach plummets, and I slink away from the stage as fast as I can.
I haven’t visited the Neon Oasis, Fresno’s swankiest strip club, ever since I met Vonnie Hudgens, a former stripper and now my fiancé. Watching other women perform on the same stage Vonnie did is a disquieting déjà vu.
Now I’m here reluctantly because my brothers at the Legion of the Lamb thought hosting a bachelor party for me would be the ultimate boy’s night out.
But all it did was dredge up memories.
A hand claps my back.
“Hey, Tark!”
A wiry man, pale skin, military-style buzzcut, bushy pornstache covering his upper lip, holds his beer aloft.
“Hey, Reece,” I say, my voice somewhere between tired and jaded.
“What’s wrong, brother? It’s your party. Your last night of freedom as a single guy.” Reece gulps his beer and belches loudly. “Enjoy!”
“I am.”
“Look, between you, me, and the wall, I despise these kind of places. But we’re here, Hank’s bankrolling the whole thing, so let’s try and unwind. Okay, bro?” Reece says, too old to say “bro” but ironically blends in with the mostly younger, mostly sleazy crowd.
“I need a drink. Excuse me, Reece.” I slip away towards the bar.
I ease myself onto a barstool, take out my wallet, and place it on the bar, indicating I’m ready for business. The bartender, an attractive blonde with piercing, cold eyes notices me.
She does a double-take.
“Armand? It’s been a while,” she says.
“Hey, Vee. Yes, it has,” I reply.
“Seen Vonnie lately?”
“Uh huh. We’re getting married.”
Vee smiles. “No shit? Congratulations, man. She really liked you when she worked here. That deserves a drink on the house.” Vee pours me a beer and slides it over. “What’ve you been up to?”
The condensation on the glass is cool and sweaty in my palm.
“Oh, this and that,” I take a tentative sip. The beer slides down smooth like a dream. “I’m in the consultation business.”
I don’t tell her what I consult on, or that I hunt the things that go bump in the night.
“Hey, man! What’re you doing over here?” the man with dark brown skin and handlebar mustache asks me.
He’s wall-to-wall muscles and sporting a Legion of the Lamb leather vest.
“Just getting a drink, Big Earl.” I hold up my beer as proof.
Big Earl’s brows furrow. “Naw, man! Come over and sit with us. It’s your bachelor party.”
“So it is.”
“You seem down, Tark. What’s up?”
I sift through my feelings about Vonnie, marriage, and the Legion. My life took a wild ride over the past few years and I guess everything is catching up to me.
“I’m getting married,” I reply meekly.
“Yeah.” Big Earl searches my face. “You getting cold feet, brother?”
“No. I don’t think so. It’s just that…” I trail off. What’s bothering me isn’t the wedding, it’s that the Armenian death goddess Spandaramet marked me and Hell’s legions are coming for me. That’s what happens when you hunt too many demons.
“Whatever it is, let it go. We got you. Plus, it’s your night,” Big Earl tells me. “Now come on.”
I follow him to a table where the rest of the Legion awaits. Reece, Muskrat, and Hank are already there, drinking and staring at the strippers.
“Uh, hey, Tark! Where, uh, were you?” says an overweight goofus who has barbecue sauce on his beard. Muskrat clutches a chicken wing in his thick fingers and devours it in front of us. “You, uh, try the wings?”
“While the idea of strip club chicken wings sounds tempting, I’ll pass,” I say.
“Come on, brother. This is your party. Last night of freedom.” The crotchety biker grandpa clutches his cane. His scraggily beard hangs down and his wrinkled face belies his seasoned age.
“This place brings back memories, Hank,” I tell him. “Memories I’d sooner forget.”
Hank nods like he gets me.
“Uh-huh. This is where Vonnie worked. Where her former boss Stuart was murdered,” Hank says.
I didn’t think about Stuart Newkin’s worm-riddled corpse until Hank brings it up. The image flashes in my mind, the wriggling white worms in his eye sockets, his open mouth, his mummified skin.
“This place certainly has its ghosts,” I mumble.
If you can channel the dead, the ghosts won’t leave you alone. I’ve witnessed plenty of spirits thanks to my bloodline curse, and I don’t want to see any more, especially during my bachelor party.
Reece stands up and hoists his beer.
“A toast to our brother Tark!” he shouts. “Come on, my dudes! Raise those beers!”
Big Earl, Hank, Bill, and Muskrat all lift their glasses and offer a toast to my health and wish me a happy marriage.
“Congrats to you and Vonnie,” says Bill, a rugged Asian man with scars on his cheeks. “May you both have a harmonious union for a hundred years.”
The Legion drinks to Bill’s traditional Chinese wedding blessing, but I’m not paying attention.
A lone figure in a black trench coat distracts me. He’s by himself near the stage, eyeing a stripper named Topaz, whose gravity-defying act involves shimmying around the pole. The stranger’s long hair hangs in oily locks and sweeps across his acne-scarred forehead. Long fingernails scrape across the table as he mutters a guttural language I can’t understand but have heard before.
This dude couldn’t be more suspicious here if he wore an orange neon jumpsuit and a blue wig.
“What’s that guy doing?” I nudge Big Earl.
Hearing that particular sentence, Big Earl’s head whips around faster than that girl from The Exorcist.
“It’s like…a ritual,” Big Earl says.
“Oh, yeah. Now I see it. But what’s he doing?”
We get our answer a few seconds later when a crimson light bursts from the stranger’s hands and strikes Topaz. The woman flies out of her high heels and across the room before landing in a lifeless heap on the floor. Everyone in the club freezes.
Reece pulls Crystal from his lap and takes a few tentative steps towards the stranger. Big Earl and Muskrat bolt upright.
“What the hell was that?” Hank drops his beer and points at Topaz. “Check on her. See if she’s okay.”
I jump out of my seat and rush towards the incapacitated woman, while one of the bouncers, a sinewy young man with a shaved head, makes a beeline for the stranger.
The stripper’s limbs twitch as if a powerful energy courses through her. Her eyes snap open. They’re full-on jet black.
The bouncer advances towards the cackling stranger.
“Stay away from him,” I warn the bouncer.
With one fluid motion the bouncer grabs the interloper with both hands and is immediately repelled by a powerful blast of energy, sending him through the air and into the wall. The twitching bouncer strikes the floor with his full weight.
Topaz’s hand seizes my throat. My reflexes kick in and I hurl myself backwards to escape her, but she pulls herself up. A tentacle, covered in viscous drool, extends from her mouth towards my face. My fist makes sharp contact with the side of her head. It rattles her, but not enough. She still has me.
The bouncer’s body convulses and he hauls himself to his feet. He surveys the club through all-black eyes.
“I’m on it!” Big Earl rushes through the club as the patrons head for the exit.
Big Earl raises his hands and cautiously approaches the bouncer.
“Come on, man. Settle down,” Big Earl says. “Nice and easy.”
The bouncer – or whatever it is now – isn’t in the mood for conversation. He lunges at Big Earl, an inhuman howl escaping from his mouth. Big Earl swings and connects, but the punch does nothing. The bouncer shakes it off and smiles, his opal eyes black and soulless. Whatever the stranger unleashed isn’t good.
Muskrat grabs Topaz by the waist and pulls her off me. My hands instinctively go to my throat. Whatever she did is gonna leave a mark.
“Muskrat, wait,” I rasp.
The stripper wheels around and her neck grows several inches. A disturbing cracking sound, like sinew and bone splintering, emanates from her. Two obsidian horns push through her forehead.
“A demon,” I whisper. “He put a demon inside her.”
—
Author Guest Post
HOW TO WRITE DURING TERRIBLE TIMES
By Eric Avedissian
Hey, have you heard the news? Of course you have. If you have two opposable thumbs, you probably own a smartphone. And if you own a smartphone, you’re probably like my students and are endlessly doomscrolling, slack jawed, eyes riveted to those tiny screens.
And what’s on those screens lately is really terrible.
The protests, the shootings, the political violence. A lack of empathy breeds dehumanization and media-sponsored propaganda destroys trust in our institutions. There’s something in the air and it’s a rancid stench of a nation eating itself alive.
How do we write when the world is seemingly coming apart? When violence is commonplace? When new witch hunts and persecutions rock the land?
How do you write anything when you want to crawl into bed and stay there?
Limit Your News Intake
First of all, I get that you want to stay on top of things. An informed populace is an educated populace and all that. I’m not saying you should eliminate your media consumption, only curb it. If you like watching your favorite cable news network (and why would anyone want to), maybe scale back to watching only at a certain time. If your thumbs are surgically attached to your smartphone, maybe give that a rest. If your feed is chock full of sensationalism and amateur pundits opining away, maybe don’t scroll as much? Give yourself a vacation from the despair.
A glut of social media can lead to anxiety, loneliness, depression, or a fear of missing out. All of these can kill your momentum and prevent you from writing.
I’m not saying delete your social media apps and chuck your phone into the sea. Limiting your media consumption can only benefit your mental health and reduce stress. Fill your life with horrible news and despair and your nihilistic heart will find excuses not to write. You’ll be too fatigued. Too fatalistic. I don’t want that for you. There’s enough impostor syndrome and self-doubt in this business already.
Take a Break
If you’re overwhelmed, take some time away from writing. While this might sound counterintuitive, it’s part of the process. Not every writer can write every day. If you can, good for you, keep on typing you beautiful maniac. But if you need a break, for the love of all things holy, take the break. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Meditate with fifty cats. Whatever keeps you sane, chill out and do it. You’ll return to your writing refreshed, ready to tackle your stories with a new outlook.
Misery Loves Company
While writing can be a solitary endeavor, it needn’t be. Talk to other writers, even if you’re an introvert who lives in a hermit cave. Making connections in the writing community keeps you sane and lets you bounce your doubts and fears off other writers. Commiserate with those going through the query trenches like you, the fellow scribes anxious about success. Hold epic bitch sessions where you discuss the dumpster fire burning around you. Writers love complaining. Find a few and compare notes. Gripe about the post-literate hellhole and how nobody reads anymore. Then make a blood pact and form a cult of like-minded writers who’ll do something about it.
Be Hopeful in the Face of Doom
The forces of evil in both fiction and reality wants to break a hero’s spirit. Reality wants to drain you dry, to siphon all hope you have. It wants to leave your body and spirit a broken husk. Don’t let them. There’s a sign displayed in my office that reads, “Illegitimi Non Carborundum.” Roughly translated, it means, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
That should be your mission as a writer. You must forge a suit of armor against the cruelties of the world, protecting you from apathy, indifference, and despair. Fortified with your new mission, the writer must sally forth and slay these enemies with words. Let your writing be resistance.
Write as much as you can on anything you’d like. Even if the writing isn’t polished or perfect, just write. The fact that you’re showing up and writing is a huge “eff you” to the forces of inertia.
The times may be terrible, the world might be a blood-streaked mess, a chaotic hellscape where maniac warlords rule and where everything good and kind is ridiculed and attacked, but you’re still writing. You’re creating. You’re brave enough to express yourself during an age when books are censored and art is defunded.
Seek catharsis through your words. Let emotions spill out. You don’t have to share your writing with anyone, but the act of writing can be subversive. Only a few paragraphs a day can help manage your anxiety and deliver hope. Nobody can take your innermost feelings from you. The more you write, the better you can process your world. You aren’t a helpless peasant swept up in darkness and gloom: you are a word wizard crafting a protection spell that’ll heal yourself and help others. Words are powerful, especially during terrible times.
Keep writing.
Keep dreaming.
And don’t let the bastards grind you down.
About the Author
Eric Avedissian is an adjunct professor and speculative fiction author. His
published work includes the award-winning novel The Ocean Hugs Hard and the
Martyr’s Vow series (Accursed Son, Mr. Penny-Farthing, Blood Family, and
The Book of Wine & Sorrow). His short stories appear in various
anthologies, including Across the Universe, Great Wars, and Rituals &
Grimoires. Avedissian received a 2024 Fellowship in Prose from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and a
ridiculous number of books. Find him online at www.ericavedissian.com if you dare.
Twitter: @angryreporter
Instagram: @ericavedissian
Threads: @ericavedissian
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