Butcher's Road
1932: Fortune and celebrity are years behind Butch Cardinal. Once a world-class wrestler, Cardinal now serves as hired muscle for a second-rate Chicago mobster. While collecting a parcel from a gangland lowlife, Cardinal witnesses the man's murder. Though wounded, he escapes the killers and flees into the night carrying the package. In it is a necklace with a metal pendant. Bent and scratched, the thing looks like a piece of junk, but the trinket is the reason a man died. It's the reason a lot of people will die. Finding shelter with another shamed wrestler in New Orleans, Cardinal embarks on search for answers that will reveal a world of metallic charms and weapons, all forged with unimaginable powers. Alone and outgunned, Cardinal must stand against the Chicago mobs, a brilliant and insane hitman, the police, and a mysterious order intent on retrieving their relic.
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Lee Thomas
Lee Thomas is the award-winning author of Stained, Parish Damned, Damage, and The Dust of Wonderland (Alyson). In addition to numerous magazines, his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies A Walk on the Darkside (Roc), Unspeakable Horror (Dark Scribe), and Inferno (Tor), among others. His short story collection In the Closet, Under the Bed (Dark Scribe) was released in December of 2009.
He has won both the Bram Stoker Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
Writing as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed, he is the author of the Wicked Dead series, Mason, and Shimmer from HarperTeen.
Lee currently lives in Austin, TX, where he's working on a number of projects.
