Strike Me Down

Book Three of the Holler & Hellfire Series turns its focus to Carla June Maynard, the steady heart of the Hollow Diner, and Baraqiel, the ancient Watcher of lightning who has spent ten thousand years keeping himself at a safe distance from everything he might love.

Carla June has built her life around small, faithful acts of attention. She makes coffee, keeps notebooks, remembers who needs pie, who needs silence, and who has not been seen in too long. The diner is her warm room, a place where tired people come in from the road and feel, for a little while, known. But when the quiet man at table four keeps returning every Tuesday, Carla June realizes he is not simply another regular. Baraqiel is a fallen Watcher, a being whose emotions can wake the sky, and whose loneliness has become a discipline.

Their bond begins slowly: notes under coffee cups, conversations about owls and storms, and the dangerous tenderness of being truly noticed. But the warmth Carla June has been making all her life is more than hospitality. It is inherited Weaver work, a living boundary node built into the bones of the diner itself. As Baraqiel’s held lightning begins to sing through the walls, the room becomes a beacon in the Thinning, drawing Hell-side attention toward Pike County.

When Ferals begin pressing against the south wood and ancient demonic forces move to break the diner before Carla June and Baraqiel’s bond can fully form, both must confront the truth of what they are. Carla June must accept that her warmth is power. Baraqiel must learn that distance is not the same as safety, and that love cannot be protected by hiding the truth.

Strike Me Down is an Appalachian gothic paranormal romance about trust, patience, and the courage it takes to be fully known. At its center is a woman who turns a diner into a sanctuary and a lightning-born Watcher who discovers that the most dangerous thing he has ever done is not falling from Heaven, but coming inside where he is welcome and finally loved there.