Here are five excerpts from my first novel, the award-winning paranormal epic She Dies at the End. All of them deal with issues of life and death, a recurring motif in many vampire novels, including my own.
This first one is about the vision November, my main character, has seen over and over again.
She watched them bury her again.
Four people stand in a garden. The short redhead, an impatient fireplug, has a dusty shovel in his large hands. His wide shoulders stretch his clothes. A tiny teenager with caramel skin stands beside him and places a hand on his arm, her tunic marred by drops of blood. A tall waif stands apart, distraught, shaking; blue tears fall from her eyes, eyes the same shade of electric blue as her hair. Closest to the grave is the bloody businessman: his dark suit stained darker still with blood, his white shirt ruined, his shoes dusty, his designer tie twisted, now turned more noose than accessory.
His face is stone. His eyes scream. His fangs catch the light. A girl is dead because she tried to help him. His girl is dead, just like the ones before.
Her corpse waits patiently, cradled in the gnarled roots of an old tree. Blood has soaked through her blue silk dress. It stains her mouth, covering the blue tinge of death. The businessman bends down and kisses her forehead. He lifts her up, leaps gracefully into the grave, and places her carefully into her resting place. Her dark blue eyes are still open, but she doesn’t look frightened. She looks relieved. He closes them gently, touches her cheek. A drop of blood wells in his eye, rolls down his cheek, falls silently onto her dark hair, evidence of his grief: her killer's grief.
She watched them bury her again.
Excerpt number 2 serves as November's real introduction to the justice of vampires.
“So, just how awful is this going to be?”
“You mean the execution?” Ilyn asked.
“Yes, the execution,” she said, almost laughing. “Not the incredibly awkward conversation in which we are currently engaged.”
“Well, that depends on the method of execution she chooses,” Ilyn explained as they began walking down the hallway, surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards.
“She gets to pick?”
“That is our tradition if the jury deadlocks. They couldn’t decide between burning at the stake and dismemberment followed by decapitation.”
“Classy.”
The third excerpt shows the aftermath of November's first taste of battle.
You killed someone, she told herself. Then I brained another man with a mace. You killed a man. A boy. I killed a boy.
She began to shake but did her best not to make any noise. Her fairy companion, however, noticed the change in her breathing. “Hey, it’s alright. You did fine. You did better than fine. We all got out alive,” said Willow in an unusually soft tone for her. November nodded but said nothing. “Is it the shock coming out, or are you starting to feel the injuries?” she asked.
“Both. I think, um—I think it’s also just realizing that, ah, I seem to have killed someone,” November admitted in a whisper as the tears began to silently fall. Willow’s unexpected kindness had undone her.
Willow peeked at her. “You know you were totally justified, right? It was self-defense, after all.”
“I know,” November replied, drying her tears on the back of her hand. “I know it wasn’t a crime or immoral or anything. But still . . . it just feels . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”
“The first time is hard, even for us,” Willow confided. “It gets easier. But you don’t want to let it get too easy.”
Danger is always around the corner, as shown in passage number 4.
Her head spun and her arm burned as Ilyn carried her to her bed. “Was the knife poisoned or something? What is going on?” she asked frantically. What scared her most was the wild, desperate look in the king’s eyes.
He knelt beside her and pulled out the knife. It was shining and razor sharp, with a wooden inlay down the center of the blade, rendering it both a stake and a dagger. The panic left him, replaced by the calm born of surviving many crises in his long life. Perhaps he knew that she needed him to be calm.
“It’s not so much poisoned as . . . evil. It has to do with how it’s made, the magic they use, how they make the alloy with silver, how they temper the blade . . .” He hesitated, not going into the gory details of its manufacture or its effect. “A fairy forged knife creates a wound that will only heal if a powerful fairy chooses to heal it. Otherwise, it will inevitably kill its human victim. The wooden inlay is for striking vampires in the heart, of course.”
“So, we have someone heal it in the morning,” November replied, uncomprehending.
He looked so very sad before he hid his feelings behind his customary stoicism.
“You might not last that long. And even if you do,” he continued after a pause, “you might wish you hadn’t . . ."
Finally, a battle to the death begins between two ruthless vampires. Which one will prevail?
Philemon’s attack came quickly. He could no longer check his rage. He allowed his master only a few sips of blood before falling upon him, stake in one hand and silver blade in the other. His angelic features twisted with hatred, and his eyes called a shark to mind. Luka’s instincts alerted him in the nick of time. He pulled away from November, her blood dripping from his mouth, and he managed just barely to evade Philemon’s weapons as he drew his own vicious dagger.
They became a savage blur: Philemon frantic with rage and grief, Luka fighting for his life. November could barely make out which killer was which as they flew across the roof in a manic dance. She rather hoped they both might perish.
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