Title: Wehr Wolff Castle
Series: The Wehr Wolff Chronicles, Book One
Author: B. Bentley Summers
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 7/24/17
Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 120200
Genre: Paranormal/Horror, WW2, Alternate history, Lit/genre, fantasy/paranormal, horror, war, action, thriller, cisgender, abuse, military, experimentation, shifters, werewolves, spies, scientists
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Synopsis
During the rise of Nazi Germany, Hagen Messer joins the Royal Air Force as an American soldier who specializes in tracking. He’s attached to British commandos and given a seemingly simple mission—to find a captive and destroy a dam—but everything goes awry. Hagen’s plane crashes into Germany’s Wehr Forest and he has to use his extrasensory abilities to track the captive to nearby Wehr Wolff Castle, a secret Nazi base where vile experiments are being conducted.
Hagen and his surviving team members must sneak into the castle and devise a way to destroy the experimental labs creating diabolical creatures. Hagen is horrified to find Nazis and scientists with no scruples, and at the most inconvenient time, he learns that he may be in love with one of his teammates, an Irishman named Liam. In order to protect his love and his friends, Hagen must feign nonchalance amidst pure degeneracy and suspicion. Hagen soon discovers, though, that he is in over his head.
What may not only redeem him, but also save his lover and friends, is a childhood past and a darkness lurking deep inside him, just waiting to be engaged.
Excerpt
Wehr Wolff Castle
B. Bentley Summers © 2017
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Hagen
May 10, 1940
Somewhere over the border of Switzerland & Southern Nazi Germany
The wind whistled through the shattered window and into the airplane’s cabin. The draft had a cold bite, the air a metallic smell. A tremble spasmed through Hagen, and he crossed his arms over his chest and shivered.
On the row of seats facing him, blood spatter spread over the chairs and over the remaining wall. The engine nearest him sputtered.
This time, it’ll surely stop.
He rose from his seat and looked out through a nearby window to the wing. Black smoke poured from the spinning propeller but then cleared, and the engine roared back to life, setting into a steady thrum. He stared past the wing to the mountain range below. The plane passed through a heavy white cloud, and he sat back down in his seat.
One recurrent thought plagued him. If we crash, will it hurt? Breathe. Just breathe.
Raising his hands, he stared once again at the blood that had partially dried on them. Not his, thankfully. He wiped them on his shirt-front, which was soaked with blood, then reached for his forehead and winced as his fingertips dusted his wound.
Shouting from the cockpit drew his attention.
Lt. David sat in the one-man cockpit and turned so he could shout up to the white-haired pilot assistant, Alan Hodges. Hodges stood close to the pilot’s chair, holding onto a map and yelling down.
Someone grabbed Hagen’s knee and shouted at him gruffly. He met Sgt. Collins’s gaze. The man’s short salt-and-pepper stubbled face had specks of blood in it. The large man sat back on his haunches, his belly protruding over his belt. He peered at Hagen’s forehead and nodded with approval.
“Cheers, Kraut, received your first war wound.” Sgt. Collins leaned in and touched Hagen’s paratrooper jacket. “That blood yours?”
Hagen shook his head, licked his lips, and then asked, “We on the right course, Sarge?”
Sgt. Collins cupped his hand to his ear and furrowed his brow.
“Are we on the right course?” Hagen shouted.
Sgt. Collins glanced up at the front of the plane, where Lt. David and Officer Hodges argued, then brought his eyes back to Hagen.
“Have no bloody idea, Kraut. All I know is that I hope we don’t land in Hitler’s front lawn.”
Hagen nodded and clenched his fists. The sergeant shouted something else at him, but Hagen stared over his shoulder at the woman on the other side of the airplane. Roesia. He barely knew her, but it was comforting to see a survivor from the onslaught. So many had died. Her face was pasty white, and she had a vacant stare.
Sgt. Collins snapped his fingers in front of Hagen’s face, gaining his attention once again.
“Bloody hell, you’re completely out of it!” Sgt. Collins said, patting Hagen’s chest and sides, looking for any wounds. “Nothing. You’re lucky, Kraut.”
Sgt. Collins stood, went toward the tail, and yelled down to the lower gun turret. “O’Malley, say something, you Irishman!”
“Me arse is killing me, Sarge!”
A smile formed on Hagen’s face at hearing his friend’s voice.
The sergeant moved toward the tail and yelled up to the upper gun turret. “Kirby, keep your wits about you! If those bandits come at us, you take as many of them as you can.”
Corporal Kirby yelled something unintelligible. Hagen shifted in his seat and stared down as a viscous red fluid ran across the floor. A photograph lay near his foot. Reaching down, he plucked it off the ground—the one of him and his father from a year or so ago. Except half of it was now bloodstained and he could only see himself. He studied the broad-shouldered striking nineteen-year-old with a full-face grin that made him radiant. The picture could easily have been of one of those Hollywood actors, but it was of himself.
He leaned his head against the chair as his teeth chattered and his eyes became impossibly heavy.
Seems like so much has happened since then. But I arrived in England just two days ago? That’s it? Just two days?
A slap of metal caused his gaze to shift to the other side of the plane. A commando by the name of Commander Ford picked up the assault rifles and opened each ammo clip to check the bullets inside. Once satisfied, he laid them on top of a tarp that had turned a dark maroon from the blood-drenched floor. A second commando sat in a seat next to him, twirling a serrated knife in one hand.
The spinning knife mesmerized Hagen and helped him ignore the macabre scene around him.
Yes, it was. Two days ago, I rode into Shoreham Royal Air Force Base.
A freshly trained paratrooper from America with no war experience. While my brother’s mortally wounded body lay in front of me years ago, it was nothing like this.
Memories of the last couple of days reeled through his mind.
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Coming up with a Pen Name
Wanda is my pen name for Young Adult novels and she is my maternal grandmother. Bentley is my mother’s maiden name. Summers is the surname of my father.
I think somewhere when coming up with an author name I wanted to honor all the people who had a strong influence on my creativity, aspirations to be a writer, and the drive to keep me going despite all the obstacles author’s face when starting.
Those people I wanted to acknowledge were my father, mother and maternal grandparents.
Wanda, my grandmother, was a survivor of the Great Depression. Her family lost their farm forcing them to move into the city and she had to quit school during middle school in order to work and help the family with money. My grandmother was not known as a great listener and looking back, she had severe Attention Deficit Disorder. Conversations never stayed on topic and she’d lose interest if you were talking. She was certainly one of the most friendly person you’d ever know, but somewhere down deep, I think there was a emotional disconnect.
She was married to my grandfather but that was a cantankerous relationship. Before my grandfather I gathered she had been in loved with her first husband who had been electrocuted; and I’m guessing there was other personal history that contained some trauma that people of that generation did not share. I discovered my mother had never been close to her as a child even though everyone in the neighborhood considered my grandmother to be a saint. No doubt she loved my mother the most, but I’m guessing somewhere along the line she forgot how to express love or perhaps there was too much risk in acknowledging her love to another who was so close to her.
But Wanda one thing was certain. She was a prodigy in painting and drawing; though she never received any formal training she left what I consider great pieces of arts. To this day I keep one of her paintings with me wherever I have moved. An Indian woman looking over a cliff out into a sea. When I saw the photograph she used to make the painting I realized the person looking out was not a woman, but actually an Indian man. She had transformed the cheekbones, skin texture and hair to create this mysterious and beautiful woman. I had this tingling sensation then. I realized she was a true romantic. Someone who only knew how to express love through her artwork. This painting has become a talisman for me over the years.
Her husband Walter, whom she married years later in her life, was a vociferous reader. He was also an ex-Catholic, a self-proclaimed atheist and had a very morbid sense of humor. Every week in the summer we always one made one stop at an old fashion ice cream parlor and then to the library to return his books and borrow more. From him I learned he valued books and stories contained in them than ever did of material goods or money. He also loved history and it was teachings, rather than any formal school, where I learned much of my U.S. History.
My father was a structural engineer who had a knack for what I would simply call divergent thinking. He seemed to have an inborn sense of thinking “outside the box” and look at problems with a singular perspective I’ve never yet seen. I’d say that gave my creativity a sense of complexity that allows me to put unique spins on plots.
And my mother was a straightforward woman who has and probably always be a reader of history. She was never a World War II buff as she detested the Nazi regime and the stories that went with them. But she did always have a sense of appreciation of not just the history before her, but the history she was living. In everything I write I am mindful of the history of each character and how those past experiences create internal motives for this character to now make decisions.
As I wrote Wehr Wolff Castle I had a deep appreciation for the people who shaped me. I attempted a story with a twisting plot with some complexity, likable characters, narrated a romance, added some morbidity along with dark humor; and everything was indeed embedded in the Nazi Germany time period.
Meet the Author
Bryce is a psychologist, gay author, and the founder of Queer Sense Theory.
Not sure what he wanted to do in life, Bryce spent his 20s exploring different jobs and landed one job in Bangkok, Thailand, which has yet to be topped. Deciding it was time to get a career, Bryce completed his doctorate degree in psychology at the University of Houston. Upon graduation he worked for the Department of Veteran Affairs for six years before becoming a contract psychologist who provides examinations to veterans, helping them get their disability and pension entitlements.
Bryce writes popular fiction genres that fall in the areas of Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Thriller, Supernatural, Suspense or a blend all of them, and he has a passion for gay fiction. He has self-published several gay fiction short stories and a novel that follow the character, Daemon the Demon Boy. He also published YA Post-Apocalyptic novels, Amen to Rot series as well as The Zombie Squad. The Zombie Squad was a finalist for the 2016 Readers Favorite in YA Horror. Rotville is a self-published Sci-Fi Thriller/ Horror that has been self-published was a finalist for the 2016 US Book News Contest.
He is also the founder of Queer Sense theory which provides a theoretical model on how people form attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals and shape one’s gender and sexual orientation identity. The theory looks closely at the interaction between social models, language, and attachment, or human connections, affect one’s feelings and thereby influence attitudes. Queer Sense is currently under review by a literary agency and will hopefully be published soon.
A new middle-grade werewolf book as well as a gay erotic urban fantasy book are in the pre-publishing phase.
Wehr Wolff Castle is the first installment of The Wehr Wolff Chronicles.
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