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.
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Read Excerpt 1: The Black Goddess
Excerpted from Trancing Miranda
©2024 Barbara Graver Wilder
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