Out of the Deep Waters (The Seth Athenor Series)

By Peter Telemark

FROM THE DARKEST AND SILENTEST PLACE ON EARTH...

Before there was Haiti, there was Saint-Domingue, the jewel of the French Kings. But the same legendary supernatural creatures inhabited it - the Jumbee, the Zombi, the Lougarou (werewolf witches said to walk the night streets, seeking the blood of children), the Soucouyant (old women who transformed into comets at night, flying across the sky trailing a fiery tail while searching for victims).

And then there is Lusca... a great, octopus-like fish with a mouth as cruel as any shark. That is how legend describes it, yet the reality is different - and worse. For its body, glistening with primordial slime, has a wide, half-moon mouth filled with serrated teeth, and tentacles that not only grip prey but drag its slugly form across the ground...whether that ground is below the ocean or above it. And what was that attached to its dorsal hump?

It is Winter, 1732, and to that island has come a half-company of French Colonial Marines, among them the newly commissioned Junior Ensign Sacha Athenois.* It has not taken him long to make enemies of his commanding officers, for no other reason than his quiet independence. But he has also made friends (or at least, allies) on the island, among them the Commandant of the local fort, and a wealthy merchant, Maurice Trembley, and his attractive mistress.

However, all is not well in the Tremblay mansion, and Athenois finds himself caught between his duty as a physician to Maurice and the sly overtures of the mistress, whose interest does not seem purely amatory.

But there are more pressing matters - murmurs of revolt among the enslaved on the sugar and indigo plantations, the mysterious disappearance of a Marine squad sent into the southern mountains to a leprosarium, and a band of maroons (escaped slaves) who have become robbers and murderers.

Things only get worse when Athenois is ordered into those mountains on a detestable mission, only to run afoul of the criminal maroons and their deadly leader. Yet, more is going on than just crime or rumbles of revolt, for a sorcerer has come to dwell at the leprosarium and has summoned Lusca there as part of some sinister plan.

As he learns just what that plan is, Athenois is filled with foreboding, wondering if there is anything he or his fellow Marines can do to stop it.

*later to change his name to SETH ATHENOR

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HHTK7XZN
• ISBN13: 9798234206848
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: StormShadow Road
• Length: 524 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.0"