PROLOGUE The night began with a teenage dare. She followed reluctantly as he led her by the hand to the shadow of the Black Angel. A full moon gave them less privacy than she would have liked. Her back now against the horizontal concrete slab, she waited for him to lay his body across hers. Her lips prayed for the encounter to be quick because out of the corner of her eye a raven watched them intently from atop a gravestone. Unlike most cemetery angels, whose heads and wings lift upward toward heaven, this statue's face and wings bent downward over the grave it guarded--as if pointing straight to hell. And while angel sculptures are traditionally a golden bronze or white marble, this one's hue was black. Besides the figure's sinister posture and color, its stony eyes seemed to stare into hers as if issuing a personal condemnation. Her feeling of doom was so strong, the girl struggled to move away. But he held her down, pushed her dress up to her waist, and there, at the hem of the Black Angel, they sinned. The writer paused over the keyboard and reread the scene. Then with a smile, added sensory and sensual details about places the boy was hard and the girl was soft, and how their throaty moans were the only sound of life amid the dark tombstones. A final tweak when the female character closed her eyes tight to shut out the angel's glare completed the carnal passage. © 2011 Julie Kramer Excerpted from Killing Kate: A Novel by Julie Kramer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.