TRIGGER WARNING: Aftermath of a violent attack.
This is scene two in my current work in progress. You can read the first scene here: Vampire Story (excerpt).
Nick Markovich stood just inside the front door of the Black Goddess and watched the crowd.
The place was full of women. Pale girls with dyed black hair and low-cut tops and an obvious interest in vampires. But it was the red-head at the back table who had caught his attention.
She was too lean and too tall, and her hair was too bright. But Nick could feel the pulse of her life-force all the way across the room.
It was unusual. But he knew why it was happening.
She was fae.
Which meant it was possible rumors about a fae tracker operating right here in the district were true.
She’d come in alone. But she obviously knew people - the bartender, a donor, the half-breed vampire who had just sat down at her table.
He could tell she didn’t like the guy from where he sat. So when she tossed back her drink and led him into the back, it was the last thing Nick would have expected.
A girl like that could do better than somebody so far off the bloodline, he was more human than vampire. Which meant she was probably a pro.
Pro donors were common in places like the Goddess, but Nick didn’t care about the girl or what she was doing. It didn’t matter to him if she was selling it or giving it away. Or if the energy singing through her veins was a song only he could hear.
Except that it did.
It mattered that he could hear it. And it especially mattered that he could hear it from here. Something was wrong.
He strode across the floor and into the back. It took him a couple of seconds to close in on the energy. Then he had it.
A half-open door at the end of the corridor.
Nick pushed open the door and stepped into a bathroom. And there she was.
Sitting on the floor like she’d been dropped.
Her back was against the wall, and her head was tipped back. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. Eyes half closed. Lips parted. Teeth stained black with vampire blood.
Throat torn open.
Ragged parallel channels. Raw weeping flesh. A current of blood running slowly down a long graceful neck, catching in the hollow just above her clavicle, overflowing onto her chest.
The blood was still fresh. Still breathtakingly red.
Nick squatted down next to her. She smelled like iron and juniper berries and absinthe.
“What did you do?” he asked softly.
Her lips curled into a whisper. “You know.”
He did.
Swap.
She wasn’t a donor. She was a player.
He pressed three fingers flat against the raw meat of the wound. “Swallow,” he said into her ear.
She put her hand on his. The heavy lids lifted. The green eyes brightened with fear. She was having trouble breathing. She was remembering the attack. Instinct told her to fight. He asked for surrender.
Trust me.
The bright, frightened look faded. Her eyes softened. Her throat lifted. The swallow slipped beneath his fingers.
He let the energy go. Let it travel slowly out from center. The power vibrated down through the hollow conduit of his arm, hummed into his hand, seeped through his fingers, and funneled into her flesh.
Cells clumped. Blood clotted. The wound began the long, tedious process of becoming a scar.
The girl’s eyes closed. She drifted back into the dark fold of her unconscious.
Nick stood and looked down at her.
He wanted to remember her just as she was. With her bright hair and bloody neck and the little leather skirt riding high on the elegant wide open sprawl of her legs.
__________________
Read Excerpt 1: The Black Goddess
Excerpted from Trancing Miranda
©2024 Barbara Graver Wilder
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together... - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NRSV-CE
I grew up in a family of artists and writers. My grandfather sculpted, my father did pen and ink, my uncle painted, my mom worked as a journalist until she got married and my great uncle Howard was a feature writer and editor at a magazine called The Living Wilderness.
In light of all that, my parents were fine with the many hours I spent drawing and designing and writing short stories or poetry. But the bar was set high at home and I didn't get a lot of positive feedback on anything I created. Which might have been why the nice things my teachers, and the occasional classmate, said about my writing and artwork had such an effect.
By the end of elementary school I'd decided that my teachers were right and that when it came time for me to go away to college I would study English or Art or both.
My parents didn't agree. Probably because, with the exception of my great uncle Howard, everybody in my family, no matter how talented, worked a regular nine to five and did creative stuff on the side. According to my father, art was a hobby - not a career. As part of that conversation, I was told that being the best artist or poet in the entire sixth grade didn't mean anything because by the time I got to college I would see that other people were better.
At twelve the idea of choosing a career that didn't pay the bills seemed almost irrelevant but, because being the best was a big deal in our family, I took the prediction about college to heart. My teachers and classmates still said nice things. But by my sophomore year in high school I had stopped drawing and, aside from the occasional dark poem, there was no more writing for a very long time.
When it came time to choose a career, I chose nursing. But as an adult, just like many of my relatives, I dabbled.
I took art and craft classes. And when I was forced to take time off from my job because of a family tragedy I began to write fiction. I wrote a couple of manuscripts and hated them. But I learned about writing through doing it.
Finally, I went back to community college and majored in commercial art. For a
time I even worked in the graphic design department of our local newspaper.
But eventually I went back to nursing because I was a single mom and I needed
the money.
I missed the freedom of working at the paper but there were some things I liked about nursing - like the people I got to know as a visiting nurse. Some told me stories about coal mines and the depression and growing up in other countries. Others patiently corrected my garbled attempts to learn Polish or Gaelic. A few were instrumental in my decision to convert to the Catholic faith.
But the wisdom that is most relevant here came from a retired nurse I used to visit. In her retirement she had taken up painting. Her work featured big blown out Georgia O'Keeffe style flowers and impressionist landscapes that dripped with color. One day after showing me her newest project, she made a prediction. And, unlike the prediction made when I was planning my college career in seventh grade, this one came true.
I remember it word for word. "You are going to love retirement, Barbara, because it will give you a chance to do all the things you've always wanted to do."
I guess that a lot of people probably think that's what will happen to them when they retire and then don't have the money or good health to actually do it. But I am, I think, one of the lucky ones - because the things I want to do are neither expensive or strenuous.
It is not necessarily easy, however.
I missed the freedom of working at the paper but there were some things I liked about nursing - like the people I got to know as a visiting nurse. Some told me stories about coal mines and the depression and growing up in other countries. Others patiently corrected my garbled attempts to learn Polish or Gaelic. A few were instrumental in my decision to convert to the Catholic faith.
But the wisdom that is most relevant here came from a retired nurse I used to visit. In her retirement she had taken up painting. Her work featured big blown out Georgia O'Keeffe style flowers and impressionist landscapes that dripped with color. One day after showing me her newest project, she made a prediction. And, unlike the prediction made when I was planning my college career in seventh grade, this one came true.
I remember it word for word. "You are going to love retirement, Barbara, because it will give you a chance to do all the things you've always wanted to do."
I guess that a lot of people probably think that's what will happen to them when they retire and then don't have the money or good health to actually do it. But I am, I think, one of the lucky ones - because the things I want to do are neither expensive or strenuous.
It is not necessarily easy, however.
I still struggle with confidence and prioritizing and feeling selfish or silly
or old. I have a love / hate relationship with my writing. I tear
it down over and over again. But I keep coming back to it.
I finished my first paranormal vampire two weeks ago. Most of the members of my critique group hated the ending. For a while I thought about quitting, then I decided to learn about how autism impacts writing. And that was a turning point.
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