Friday, July 12, 2013

Her Yearning for Blood, TRIPLE-LENGTH, Episode Four available at Amazon & Barnes & Noble!


Available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble! This 80+-page episode begins to illustrate how the vampire virus is responsible for not just zombies but also the feared werewolf species.

Evan and Kayla fight for their lives, while Thomas prepares the dangerous wolf-satiate ceremony to save his beloved queen, Belinda.

Here's a small excerpt:

Screams emanated from one of the brick corridors leading to the right, the larder. Apparently, the cooks were playing with the food again.

Having no patience for minutiae, he ignored the shrieks of terror and descended another stairway that ended at a concrete hallway—Death Row as some members of the clan had come to call the burning chambers. An apt term.

He marched past several guards and stopped in front of Belinda’s steel door. The guard readily moved aside.

“How is she?”

“A lot of screaming, sir, but there are still words.”

Thomas pounded. “Belinda, can we talk?”

“Fuck you!” came her shrill voice. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” He opened the door and likened the odor to condensed sewer air pumped through a hose.

At least a dozen corpses were piled against one wall. Blood and gore covered the entire room. Limbs from at least three humans littered the furniture, floor and bed.

One head had been stripped and now, stark white, smiled at him from where she held it in her lap. She sat in a lotus position on the floor with her back against the farther concrete wall.

The skin on her face was black and cracked, and her arms had open wounds that were well beyond healing. At that moment, Thomas would gladly have cut his own arteries to feed and heal her if it would have helped.

I don’t know how you have managed to remain conscious, my love, but thank heaven you have!

Belinda placed the skull on the floor beside a clump of intestines and got to her feet. Her movements still retained a certain grace.

She stretched as if waking from a deep slumber. The movement caused skin to crack and slough off both her arms.

She wiped the bloody flakes away like dried residue from a mud bath. Her once crystal blue eyes were now speckled with red.

She stared at him.

Thomas bowed. “Your Highness, it is good to see you.”

“Much as it would be pleasant to look upon road kill,” she snapped.

“You will always be perfection to me,” he said with utter sincerity.

It gratified him to see a fleeting smile cross her cracked lips. 

“I don’t know how much longer I can fight, Thomas.”

“You have been so brave, Your Highness. Just a little—”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!” she screamed. The cords of her neck rose as she struggled with emotions that he could not begin to imagine. “It’s time to light the fires. Burn me before I lose every shred of dignity!”

“Never!” Thomas stated.

She snarled and crouched, ready to leap at him. Though her chains were still intact, he almost didn’t care.

He had pledged his never-ending loyalty and love to this woman, and her valiant fight against the burning made him realize all the more why it was imperative that she live. She would be a magnificent queen when the vampires wrested power away from the humans.

“We found the rogues.”

A dozen expressions of anger crossed her face before she was able to regain control.

“I’m beyond fantasies, Thomas. My time has arrived.”

“Your Highness, we found several, maybe an entire clan of rogues in Groacherville, Maine. Carlson is with them now. I have dispatched other teams to join him.”

“Carlson needed others?” Her lips curled with revulsion.

“I believe he has and continues to perform his duties admirably.” He paused. Thomas hated to give her reason to doubt, but Belinda deserved the whole truth. “But the rogues have captured him. The other two members of his team were killed.”

Her eyes widened.

“They possess the secret?” she asked with an awed hiss.

“It appears so, Your Highness, which would explain how they defeated our soldiers. Longevity equals strength.”

A charred tongue swept across blackened lips. “So it’s true. All these years…”

“I am attempting to negotiate with the rogues now, but if that fails, by morning I plan to attack.”

Belinda raked a hand through snarls of dark hair. She pulled out a clump and flung it to the floor.

A piece of attached bloody scalp made a splattering sound. Thomas averted his gaze.

“My mind is like a mine field,” Belinda hissed. “No matter what I think about, focus on, it wants to explode.”

“I hope to have the rogues in custody by morning.”

“I’ll be a raging, mindless monster by morning!” Her shrill voice could have shattered glass. “Willpower is no longer enough!”

Thomas’s eyes shot up to stare into her bloodshot orbs. “You’re not suggesting…”

“Bring me a satiate, Thomas. And you better do it fast!”

“It’s forbidden. If the Council—”

“Whether you believe I am needed for our clan’s salvation or not, I am hours from the burning.”

“If it got out, the Council would destroy everyone in Boston. The whole clan—”

“Our clan, Thomas! Had you and I not held this group together after the uprising, there would be nothing. The Council owes me—owes us—this much!”

With that, Thomas’ beloved grabbed the chains that kept her at a secure distance from him and screamed. Her arms tightened with muscle she had acquired over the hundreds of hours they had sparred…and played…together.

The cords on her filthy, bruised neck sprang out like wings. Impossibly, the chains snapped and danger crouched like a demon between them.

He was only three steps from the door, but she could easily have reached him before—

“My mind,” she said, “all that I am, hangs from the tiniest scrap of flesh.” She grimaced. “Rage boils like an angry river in my mind, my love. I could kill you. I. Need. To. Kill. You.”

She dropped to a seated position and hugged her knees.

“But you have always been my salvation, Thomas, the only thing that has made this brutal life worth living. Leave now—and bring the wolf-satiate or not. Either way, know that—I. Love. You.”

“Your Highness.”

Her body shook violently.

“Belinda—”

“Go, fool,” she said through gritted teeth. “Go now!”

Thomas blinked away a tear and bolted for the exit. In movements too fast for a human to follow, he surged through and slammed the steel door behind him.

A body struck the other side. Belinda’s wails of fury accompanied sounds of pounding fists and claws scoring across steel.

Thomas turned to the startled light-haired vampire. Average height, maybe in his late-thirties, the guard had a boyish look to him.

“You have been with the clan for one month, two?” Thomas asked.

“I was turned seventy-three days ago, sir.”

“Good!” Thomas grabbed his chin and squeezed it painfully. He stared into dark amber eyes and pushed against the new vampire’s will. “You are going to do something for me and will say nothing to anyone in or outside of this clan. Do you understand?”

The guard’s eyes had glazed over. He nodded.

“You will drive to the forest…”



Thanks for reading the excerpt. Angelica and I are very proud of this series. You can get the first three episodes (it says only Episode One, but you'll find bonus Episodes Two and Three inside) right here at Amazon:

 
 
And Episode Four--over 80 pages--is just 99 cents!
 
 

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