On another note, here's a couple quickie reads for Labor Day weekend. The first is an excerpt from The Getaway Girls: A New Orleans Tale of Monsters, Mayhem and Moms. The second is an excerpt from the sequel, which I'm working on right now. Enjoy!
(The Getaway Girls - From Chapter 3)
Hey, girl.” Audrey nearly jumped as a tall, skinny
blonde man wearing obscenely tight jeans and a tattered Madonna t-shirt
appeared out of the fog with an unlit cigarette in his hand.Audrey could see
the shadowy figures of Declan and Beth just beyond the mist. They had already
exited the alley into Jackson Square.
The skinny man put his hand on his chest, saying,
“Oh, honey, did I scare you? Y’all, I am so sorry. I was just lookin’ for
a light. Do y’all have one?”
Audrey took a deep breath and nodded. “Uh,
sure.” She fumbled with her purse, looking for her lighter. Then
she remembered. “Oh, crap, I lost my lighter.” She looked up at the man
to apologize.
The tall, thin blonde man was gone.
Carl was standing in his place. He stared down
at her with intense, black eyes and spoke in his chocolate-rich British accent.
“No need to apologize. I believe you left your lighter with me.
Now,” he said, coming in closer as Audrey tried to shrink back against the
window, “where did we leave off the last time we met?”
Audrey’s breathing sped up and out of the corner of
her eye she tried to see Declan, but she couldn’t see a thing in the cool, damp
gloom.
“Oh, yes, I remember.” Carl’s finely chiseled face
loomed over Audrey as his eyes traced the curve of her neck down the plunging
line of her purple dress. His nostrils flared as though he’d just smelled
freshly baked cookies.
Audrey’s throat tightened, suffocating the scream
she wanted to let loose. She prayed that Carl hadn’t seen Syd, who had backed
up behind the restaurant sign. Audrey tried to feel inside her purse for
something, anything to use as a weapon but her fingers were clumsy. All
she could feel was a half-empty chewing gum package.
Carl’s lip curled as she flailed around in her
purse. “I think you’re out of lighters, Audrey.” A curious look
flickered in his dark eyes. “I see someone has cleaned up your face,” he
noted. “I do hate to hit a woman, but you left me with little choice. You
really ought not to bite a man’s ear when he’s trying to kill you.”
Audrey began to sweat as Carl stared at her.
“Lift up your hair,” he ordered.
Because she didn’t know what else to do, she
complied, twisting her brown hair around her finger and holding it at the
crown. “Why?” she pleaded.
Carl cocked his head. “You have a very supple neck,
Audrey.” He stroked his lower lip. “I’m trying to decide from which angle to
break it.”
Audrey’s chest burned, shooting acid up through her
throat and she screamed, “Declan!”
Carl looked quickly over his shoulder and then
turned back to Audrey and shook his finger, saying, “I don’t think so, Audrey;
I’m not into threesomes.” He inched forward and wedged his muscular thigh
in between her legs. “Now shut up and fuck me.”
“No. Fuck YOU!” Syd jumped up from behind the
sign holding a can of hair spray, and she pushed down the nozzle as hard as she
could. “That’s real aerosol, motherfucker, you better run!”
Carl stepped back as the fumes filled his mouth and
eyes. “You’re going to regret that,” he growled.
“Get away from her, Carl!” Declan
snarled as he leapt in front of the women, yanked up the wooden placard and
swung it at Carl’s face, keeping a healthy distance as Syd and Audrey scooted
further down the alley.
“She’s mine. This isn’t your business,”
Carl said, wiping his eyes and looking at Declan with mild annoyance.
Declan shoved the women behind him as he swung the
sign again, but Carl sneered at him and merely swatted at the makeshift weapon.
“You know you can’t save her, Declan,” Carl said, walking toward him.
“Just give her to me, and I’ll leave the rest of them alone.”
Suddenly the gleam of red and orange flames
swirled through the alley, flashing through the mist. A long, thin
stick lit on both ends sailed through the air, the smell of sizzling fire sharp
and close.
Audrey gasped as a young Hispanic man back-flipped
in front of her, snatching the fiery stick just before it reached her
face. She looked beyond him into Jackson Square, where street performers
waylaid straggling tourists on their way out of the Quarter. A nearby crowd
watched the man, oohing and aahing as he tossed the stick up in the air again
and caught it with a quick flick of the wrist.
The man came closer, juggling his flame near Carl,
who hissed, “I’ll find you again, Audrey,” before melting away into the
mist. The man winked at Audrey, before turning his stick upside down and
swallowing the flame first on one end and then the other. The crowd
cheered, he blew Audrey a kiss and then flipped back to his audience.
(Getaway Girls Sequel - as yet untitled.... Warning: this is 1st draft stuff, so yes, there will be typos)
Jean-Paul
grabbed her waist and swung her so that she straddled him. She could feel one
very unvampire-like part of him hard against her bikini bottom. Her very
flimsy, easily ripped off bikini bottoms.
She pulled away. “What am I doing? What are you doing?”
Jean-Paul
grinned. “I’m about to make love. But
if you want to pretend we’re doing something else, I can role play.”
Beth
opened her mouth, a retort on her lips, when a loud BOOM startled her.
Jean-Paul
looked to the window and yelled, “DOWN!”
He shoved Beth off his lap, and crouched over her body.
CRASH!
Bullets disintegrated the window, sending deadly splinters everywhere, missing
Beth by inches as Jean-Paul rolled her to the side, pushing her out of the way.
He jumped to his feet and punched keys on a small black panel mounted to the
wall.
Another
window shattered and Beth felt the cool slice of glass against her thigh. She
began crawling toward Jean-Paul as the panel flashed a green light and opened,
revealing a long, barrel-shaped weapon. Jean-Paul heaved it easily over his
shoulder, putting his finger to his lips as he directed Beth to the opposite
corner. He pulled a trigger and a
compact ball of flame shot through the gaping remains of the window and Beth
heard a loud explosion outside.
Another
bullet pierced glass, this one lodging in Jean-Paul’s bicep with a loud, wet
thud. Beth gasped as Jean-Paul squinted into the scope of his weapon, aimed,
and sent another fiery missile toward the unseen shooter. And another. And another.
Finally,
after lobbing what seemed like an endless barrage of explosions outside his
windows, Jean-Paul backed up and reached down with one fluid movement and
plucked Beth from the floor. “Come. Now.” He grabbed her hand, and pushed
buttons on the panel again. This time,
instead of revealing a hidden compartment, the wall itself slid open and
Jean-Paul tugged Beth inside.
The door
slammed neatly shut behind them and Beth looked quickly around. They were in
what appeared to be a safe room, walled in marble threaded with streaks of grey
and gold. The air was cool and stale, but from somewhere within the house, Beth
heard a pump kick on, and a small vent in the ceiling began dispersing an
almost invisible mist.
“What is
that?”Beth demanded, panicked that somehow biological weapons were now
involved.
“Oh,
that’s just humidity. It gets very dry
in this room if you’re in for any amount of time,” Jean-Paul answered almost
absently, as he picked at the bullet in his arm.
Beth let
that information sink in, picturing Audrey and Evie sitting safely with
cocktails by the pool. If she just hadn’t taken up Jean-Paul on his invitation
to tour the gardens, she’d be with them, enjoying a Bloody Mary that she could
certainly use right now. Goddamn flowers.
Then she
turned back to Jean-Paul, who frowned as he tried to pry the bullet out of his
arm with a pair of tweezers. His large fingers fumbled over the slim tines, and
the tweezers slipped from his grasp.
“Here,”
Beth picked up the tweezers and started to hand them back to Jean-Paul. “Do you want me to try?”
Jean-Paul
sighed, “Please. I can usually do this myself, but today I seem to be clumsy.”
Beth
stepped closer, her head bending over his arm as she slowly lowered the
tweezers to the pulpy red wound. She was conscious of the smell of him; the
spiciness of his cologne and the bitter scent of his blood, as she maneuvered
the delicate tongs around his flesh. But decades of eyebrow maintenance had
given her an edge over Jean-Paul in the tweezing department, and eventually she
wormed the bullet out.
“Thank
you,” Jean-Paul murmured as he slapped a sanitized wipe over the hole in his
arm, which already appeared to be healing, and then sat down on the floor,
looking tired.
“Who was
shooting at you?” Beth asked.
“That’s the
problem I need your help with – an
unfriendly neighbor, you might call him.”
“Scavenger.”
The name rolled off Beth’s tongue and she shuddered.
“Yes, a
scavenger – well, his human guards, probably.” Jean-Paul shook his head. “They
have the worst timing.”
“But why
would a scavenger’s guards try to shoot you?
They do know you’re a vampire, right?”
Jean-Paul
stretched. “Yes, of course, but they weren’t trying to shoot me, Beth.”
“Then .
. .” Beth found it hard to finish her question.
Jean-Paul
looked up at her. “They were aiming
for you.”
“But,”
Beth paused, “you shot him first. You saved my life, kind of.”
Jean-Paul
continued his even, dark stare into Beth’s eyes. “What kind of host would I be
if I brought you here and left you unprotected?”
As soon
as the words left his lips, what sounded like a heavy hailstorm rocked the
walls. A video monitor inside the room showed a dark figure jumping through the
window with an automatic weapon.
Beth
began to shake.
Jean-Paul
put his finger to his lips. “It’s okay,” he whispered. Then he reached into a
built-in metal drawer, pulled out a long, sharp machete and turned back to
Beth. “Just a minute,” he said. Pushing the keypad, he slid the safe room door
open just enough to lob the knife out into the living room, aiming straight for
the dark figure, who slumped to the ground.
Jean-Paul
quickly slammed the door shut again. He leaned against the cool metal for a
moment, and then his eyes met Beth’s again. She didn’t look away. He strode
over to where she stood, stopping inches away from her. He seemed to hesitate
for just a moment until Beth licked her lips. Then he kissed her again. This
time, Beth didn’t pull away. She didn’t think about her husband or her friends.
She didn’t think about anything. She just kissed him back and she didn’t stop.
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