The Curse
Book One of the series, The Legend of Blackbeard’s Chalice
Blurb
Jack Porter is in hot pursuit of his kidnapped wife. Not an easy feat considering it is 1718 and the kidnapper is Edward Teach — Blackbeard — the pirate wreaking havoc over the eastern seaboard. Determined to rescue her, Jack sneaks aboard the pirate’s ship but is too late. Hannah dies in his arms.
Nearly 300 years in the future, Claire Winslow vacations on a secluded east coast island, where the image of a man walking the misty shore haunts her. Then he comes to her one night, kisses her, and disappears. The next night they make love and he tells her his name is Jack. But did they really make love? Or was it a dream? And why did he call her Hannah?
The Curse, the first book in the series The Legend of Blackbeard’s Chalice, sends Jack and Claire on a wild search through time to posses a powerful historical artifact – the silver-plated chalice made from Blackbeard’s skull. This chalice holds the key to their destiny — the reversing of Blackbeard’s Curse — their future, and their love.
Will they find it?
From Chapter 1:
Near the barrier islands, off the Carolina coast, 1718
Jack Porter eyed the ship moving just off the shore with a vengeance. It was near midnight and if Teach thought he could easily slip through the inlet without being seen, he was wrong. Jack Porter saw everything. He’d waited for this moment for three days. There was not a man on earth who would stop him from getting Edward Teach tonight. There was not a man in hell who would keep him from retrieving his wife.
Not a man in hell.
He watched as the ship slipped quietly through the night, the moon glow illuminating the path to Teach’s Hole, a four-mile wide channel flanked by Ocracoke Island on the east and a wide shoal on the west. Teach was smart, there was no doubt. He could flee in either direction to safety and freedom if approached by an enemy, as long as he wasn’t approached from both directions. But Teach would be expecting a large ship or a sloop. He wouldn’t be expecting a lone man in a small craft. He definitely wouldn’t be expecting Jack Porter.
His oars sliced silently through the water at the edge of the marsh, following Teach until he anchored ship. It was all he could do to wait, but he had to. He had to wait until Teach’s crew had drunk themselves stone cold and Teach himself was under the effects of laudanum. Just a week earlier, Teach had taken prisoners and demanded medicine as ransom, laudanum his preference. It was rumored that the ship’s surgeon was not the only one in need of the drug; Teach needed it to survive. And Jack was counting on the rumors being true. Only after the ship was quiet, and the crew and Teach were sleeping off the effects of their liquor and drugs, would he finish his task. Only then would he retrieve his wife and take her back home.
If indeed his wife was still aboard the pirate’s vessel.
He cringed at the thought. Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he was also known, was famous for his scandalous ways and his ill respect of women. Wives he took and abandoned, forced to marry aboard his ship, then tossed aside to suffer. But they were the lucky ones. Some were killed. Others he simply raped, mutilated, and left to die. Or passed on to his crew.
Hannah had to be there. And if she were not, then he still would not stop searching. He would find her. He would take her home and love her, no matter what Teach had managed to do to her. He would always love her.
There was nothing that could make him stop.
Excerpt
Blackbeard's severed head speaks to Jack and Claire moments before being swept through time by a treasure-seeking Blackbeard cultist:
“Be damned, the two of you! I place the loss of my head on your shoulders. Until my head is returned to my watery grave in the rightful century, your love will be cursed to reside in separate times! And may the curse rest with you and your offspring throughout eternity!”
