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She was meant to fear the beast. Instead, she fell for him.
PATH OF THE WOLF from Tony-Paul de Vissage is where myths breathe, monsters rise, and desire burns. It's available now, and we have an exclusive excerpt!
Isabeau de Montaigne never asked for a husband, much less one like Francois, a self-absorbed artist more devoted to his canvases than to her. She’s grown used to his long absences and strange moods, but he turns her world upside-down when he returns from his latest journey with a strange, fur-covered creature in tow. Francois claims he purchased the “wolf” from a gypsy camp. Certainly he looks and moves like a beast, but he also looks at Isabeau with undeniably human eyes.
Claiming the creature as his new muse, Francois prepares to immortalize him as Saint Jean. As Isabeau grows closer to the captive creature, she begins to see the humanity in him and questions the monstrousness of the men around her. Realizing she’s as much a captive as he is, she finds the release she needed in his arms. It’s then she realizes she must escape Francois’s cruelty or die trying.
A sensual historical fantasy about captivity, desire, and the blurred lines between man and myth. Path of the Wolf challenges what it means to be civilized, and what it takes to reclaim your freedom.
Read an excerpt and a note from Tony-Paul!
When I got the idea to write a werewolf story, I immediately said to myself: “Hold on, here. Werewolves?’ and rightly so. I wrote about vampires. Why would I want to write about a werewolf?
I thought about that a bit, then did a little googling. Goodreads has 538 novels on vampires while it only has 100 for werewolves, so vampires were definitely more popular in readable form. And why not? I reasoned. Vampires were way cooler; handsome, charming when needed, and always dressed in formal evening attire, while werewolves slouched around in shaggy, dirty fur, no matter how neat they were in human form. Vampires were always titled. (Show me a vampire whose original blood wasn’t blue,) and they were oh-so-polite (until they don’t get their way) whereas a werewolf might be your BFF by daylight but let the full moon shine and he’s as likely to eat you as greet you.
Besides, according to popular mythology, vampires and werewolves were bitter enemies with vamps were at the top of that particular food chain and wolfies second-class citizens definitely near the bottom.
Then I remembered the angst and pathos a werewolf generally suffers—remember Henry Hull and Lon Chaney, Jr in their respective roles, David Naughton’s conscience-stricken American Werewolf in London—as they suffered remorse after their transformations. Do we ever see vampires do that?
And then there was Hammer Film’s’ Curse of the Werewolf where Leon is saved by the force of Cristina’s love though he doesn’t actually live long enough to enjoy it.
Okay, so werewolves needed a few more people on Team Wolfie…
So I wrote the novel becoming Path of the Wolf, but where to start? At the beginning, naturally, namely, How does one become a werewolf?
Many ways, grasshopper…
Other than the obligatory bite, the most prevalent is to be born on Christmas Day. According to the teachings of the Holy Church then in power, anyone having the audacity to allow himself to be born on the same day as our Lord and Saviour condemned himself as soon as he drew breath. (Seemed to me the parents should’ve been the ones chastised for getting together in April rather the newborn.)
Another way was to drink water from a wolf’s footprint. Ugh! An unsanitary thought. Allowing moonlight to shine on a sleeper’s face was believed to cause insanity and also was another way to become a wolf, and there’s voluntary transformation…wrapping oneself in a wolfskin and chanting incantations. Finally, there’s the old standby, the Pact with the Devil.
In Path of the Wolf, Giovanni is a loup-Harou through no fault of his own, born on Christmas Day. Subsequently his parents are told by the parish priest to send him to a monastery where daily scourging and prayer will route the beast from his body. Before that can happen, a group of gypsies pass by and the helpless child is sold to them, to be caged and trotted out to perform pornographic acts with the gypsy leader’s daughter for the titillation of curious villagers. Enter the villain. François de Montaigne is an up and coming artist, commissioned to paint a mural of St. Jean in the Wilderness for a local church. Not finding a model among his usual group, he spots Giovanni and buys him from his captors, planning to use him in his painting and then kill him and rid the world of a monster but Fate and François’ much younger wife have different plans, for both she and Giovanni see themselves as François’ captives and both wan theier freedom…
What follows is a story that Wild Women Reviews has rated as “On a scale of 1-5, Path of the Wolf deserves a 6.”
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Excerpt
It was early in the spring when Isabeau de Montaigne first met the man who would become her lover.
France was at war with Italy; that very day, the country had suffered another defeat in its continuing conflict begun by their king, Louis, the twelfth of that name. It was also the day when, after an absence of three months, Isabeau’s husband returned to Aux-le-Piémont.
With her skirts skimming her ankles to avoid brushing the damp grass, which made up the untended meadow that called itself their front courtyard, she met François on the path connecting their cottage to the highroad. If the sluggishness of her movements was any indication, she was unenthused about welcoming him home.
The first time he went away, when she woke to find him throwing a change of clothing into his knapsack along with his sketchbooks and charcoals, she thought he was abandoning her. He swore otherwise, that he would come back “when I’ve found what I’m seeking.”
It had happened so many times since, she didn’t worry if she awoke and her husband was gone, didn’t wait in quiet distress for the sight of his silhouette on the highroad. Sometimes, she hoped he wouldn’t come back.
Recently, he’d been approached by le église de Rue Jean-Baptiste Amélioré about painting a mural depicting their sainted namesake. François accepted and set off on a quest to find the man who’d be his subject.
This time, he’d been gone so overlong she wondered if perhaps le bon Dieu had finally granted her unspoken wish. Then she thought, why should he? He never has before.
Now, as if to underscore that belief, François was back, and this time, he wasn’t alone.
There was a dog with him, restrained at the end of a length of rope; a big lumbering brute, loping clumsily behind him. Its gait was odd, as if its forelegs were shorter than the hind ones.
He stopped. So did she.
The creature dropped to its haunches.
Without preamble or greeting, she said, “Did you find what you sought?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I did. I found my St. Jean.”
“Where is he?” She looked past him down the track, expecting to see some beautiful boy on horseback, hurrying to catch up. It was usually the handsome son of a noble family whom he had entranced with promises of immortality on canvas.
“Here.” He held up the rope.
Her gaze traveled its length to where it wrapped around the animal’s neck, only to have her attention caught and held by the oddest eyes she had ever seen. They were the color of molten copper, flecked with glints of bronze-patina-green, under heavy brows meeting in a single line, looking out of place in what she could see of the mud-bedaubed face.
Isabeau thought, these are not the eyes of a beast.
Frowning, she studied the creature’s face. An odd countenance, no snout, no muzzle with a wet bulbous nose, though fur-covered and whiskery, as uncomfortably disturbing as its eyes.
She glanced at the creature’s body, at the long, coarse hair growing in a tangled mane around its neck and down its back, spreading over dirty shoulders. A matted pelt encircled its hips, part of its texture and color like the skin of another creature, the rest its own flesh, and the legs … hairy but relatively bare, as were the feet … but so filthy.
With a start, she was certain she was looking not at an animal, but a man, a dirt-caked man, squatting at her husband’s side, his fingers digging into the grass. A man, watching her with curious but intelligent eyes.
Path of the Wolf is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble in Kindle and paperback.
Grab this forbidden dark fantasy romance today!
https://books2read.com/u/4A6WMo
About Tony-Paul De Vissage
Tony-Paul de Vissage is a Southern-American of French Huguenot heritage, whose first movie memory is of being a six-year-old viewing the old Universal horror flick, Dracula’s Daughter, on television. He was subsequently scared sleepless—and that may explain a lifelong interest in vampires.
He is now paying back his very permissive parents by writing about vampires.
TP currently has had twenty-four novels published, twenty-two under the Class Act Books imprint.
Connect with Tony-Paul
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tony-Paul-de-Vissage/author/B007BDHDZY
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5117438.Tony_Paul_de_Vissage
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