M. Peters
Excerpts and Upcoming Tidbits
Excerpts from Roses In The Rain, A Horror Thriller:
Elise had snapped her head back when Joseph had raised his voice. “All right, if that’s how you want to play.” Her voice was quiet, but when she slammed her badge down on his desk, the force she used rattled the plate glass in the door. “You won’t have to take me off the case. I’m taking myself off – I’m cashing in my vacation time as of right now, Chief, so you’d better be prepared to take my place, since you’re the only person in this precinct who could even come close to being able to out-shoot me.”
“Don’t do this, Elise,” Joseph warned her. “I know what you think you’re doing. If you do find him, you have no authority to arrest him as a civilian. None. And based on what you’ve told me, the guy’s not going to just wait around while you call for backup.”
“Who says I’ll need backup, Chief? He’s considered armed and dangerous – that’s more than I need to know to be able to shoot him in the head and still sleep at night.”
“Goddamit, Elise!”
“God has nothing to do with this shit, Chief. Sorry to say it, but he doesn’t. See you later.” And before he could react, she stalked out of his office, slamming the door behind her. Dropping off her gun before she left, Elise avoided speaking with anyone. Briefly, she considered leaving her car at the station and walking the ten blocks back to her apartment just to let off some steam, but she knew she’d regret that in the morning when she was forced to come back. Maybe I’ll just drive out to the river and run for a while.
Inspired, she did just that, parking at the head of the trail which ran for three or four meandering miles along the river and changing into her runner’s outfit. Slipping on her favourite sneakers and jogging in place as she locked her car, she warmed up, already feeling the stress of the day begin to slide off her shoulders.
More than once, she glanced behind and around her as she ran. Her instincts often tingled when she ran out here, especially towards the end of the day, and usually it was nothing more than a couple of dealers meeting back in the trees or a group of potheads and drunks coming to make some noise by the water. I’m keyed up, is all. Goddamned Noir – since when did I start calling him that, anyway? – has me jumping at shadows. And that’s what the fucker wants, too – he wants me to be afraid. Well, I’m not afraid, she insisted, shoving a tendril of her hair out of her face as she ran. Certainly not of some sick fuck like him.
By the time full dark had come and running was out of the question, Elise was calmer. She would find him – she had accepted his ‘gauntlet’, as he’d put it. Even if he hadn’t murdered poor Iris, she was ready to throw down with him. I just have to make sure to get in a little something extra for her sake. Maybe I’ll shoot him in the balls first and his head, second.
Pausing to stretch her muscles, she loped around the back of her car, casually inspecting it to ensure that all remained as it had been when she’d left it an hour before.
Something white sat on her passenger seat – something that had not been there when she’d locked the car. Spidery, familiar handwriting spelled out her name.
On second thought, maybe I’ll shoot him twice in the balls.
Scrambling for her keys, she unlocked her car and dove for the handgun she kept in the door pocket.
“Looking for this?” I rose up out of the shadowy depression in front of her car and leaned casually on the hood. “You really shouldn’t leave a spare key clipped to the bottom of your auto, you know,” I chided her. “Anyone at all could have been waiting for you in that back seat.”
“Give me back my gun, you son of a bitch,” she hissed. “How the fuck did you get into my car? If you broke one of my windows, I’ll break your goddamned face.”
“Aren’t you a foul-mouthed wench – and your listening skills are terrible,” I remarked blandly. “Did your ape of a chief teach you all those filthy words, or did Daddy sit you on his knee and spank you until you could say them correctly?”
She swung at me then, and I suppose I should have taken a moment to admire her audacity. Instead, I rolled neatly across the hood of her car and put the vehicle between us. Grinning harshly at her, I held up the gun. “It’s loaded, isn’t it?”
“Give me back my gun. Now. You have ten seconds.”
“Is that as long as it’s going to take you to reach that cellphone of yours?” I inquired amiably, inspecting the magazine and snapping it back into place when I was satisfied it was full. Calmly, I disengaged the safety, enjoying how the sound made her jump. “I can be long gone from here before you complete that call, you know. Or, and this is certainly the least desirable of the two options, you could be dead.” I smiled, giving her an eyeful of my pointed fangs, then pulled back the slide atop the barrel. The gun obligingly uttered its Hollywood-esque sharp click and I pointed its muzzle directly between her breasts.
Excerpts from War of Desires (working title)
“Amaroq, please,” Keith sighed, a hint of irritation rising in his voice. “Must you be so offensive?”
Don’t ask me that. You’re the one that picks the pretty lovers with nothing upstairs.
“Let me hit him just once,” Javier begged. “Just once. I’ll knock his teeth so far back into his head that he’ll have to gum those rabbits to death.”
“No,” Keith responded flatly, pushing himself to his feet. “Are we finished here with our tete-a-tete? I’m thirsty, and I think I’ve earned the drink.”
Javier watched him for a moment, then reached out and drew Keith into his arms. For a moment, he floundered, not certain of the mechanics of doing so because of the differences in their height, but Keith lowered his head to lay his cheek against Javier’s shoulder, solving the problem. “I’m tired of the secrets, Keith,” Javier murmured after a time. “I’m tired of spending every night in your arms without knowing anything about you. I hide nothing from you,” he insisted, aware that he was repeating a tired line, but unable to help himself. “I think I’m owed the same courtesy.”
Keith sighed, his breath ruffling the lace of Javier’s collar. “Yes. I can make no excuse – I can only say that I was alone for a very long time – excepting Amaroq, of course,” he allowed when the wolf yipped softly in protest. “And … I became very used to keeping secrets to myself.”
Javier made a rude noise. “I don’t know why you bothered to say anything. I wouldn’t consider him much more of a companion than his fleas. So tell me more about this brother of yours.”
Keith raised his head and looked down at Javier, but did not move away from his embrace. “What did you want to know?”
“His height is a good start – I want to know how large his coffin will have to be when I nail him inside of it.”
Keith shoved Javier hard enough to send the golden Spaniard reeling onto the damp ground, stalking away when his laughter rang out loudly enough to carry across the river to the bustling soirée still in swing at Drayton Hall. As a shout rang out, all three of them glanced in that direction, then fled as one back towards the residential area of the city where their home was located.
Javier tossed a questioning glance over his shoulder at Keith. “I thought you said you were thirsty,” he commented as they turned onto the tree-lined lane that wound towards their home.
“I am,” Keith replied. “Come this way.” He started down a side street, one which led, Javier knew, to the port where they would find more than their share of undesirables whose absences would not be easily noticed, but Javier did not immediately give chase. Amaroq loped up to his side and froze in mid-step, sensing, perhaps, what Keith was either ignoring or had not yet noticed.
“Well, good evening – little brother.”
Excerpt for 11/11:
“Javier, let him up. You’ve won.” Keith shifted nervously. While he knew Javier had been the certain victor of the duel, demeaning Dante in front of him wasn’t going to sweeten his brother’s disposition towards either of them.
“Now you step in?” Dante spat, tugging viciously away from Javier’s hold. His hair had been made slippery from the powdery underside of the wig he had chosen to wear in town tonight to hide the length and darkness of his own mane; it slid through Javier’s fingers with only a few minor snarls. Javier moved cautiously out of reach, his sword hand closing more comfortably around the hilt of his weapon in case Dante tried anything more. But Dante’s eyes were flashing their icy hatred in Keith’s direction, not his.
“You would defend him over me? You gave me this accused eternity because you couldn’t bear to be without your brother, but as soon as your little calf started making eyes at you, brotherly love was tossed to the wayside, I see.”
Keith flinched and Amaroq snarled, but it was Javier once again who turned Dante’s tirade against himself.
“This from the man who hasn’t bothered to contact his sibling in almost five hundred years? You can speak of brotherly love with a straight face? I’m sure this has proven, once and for all, that there is no such thing as a God, for if there had been, I’m certain there wouldn’t be any more left of you than a smoking hole in the middle of the yard!” Javier shook his head. “The only reason you’re spouting off about familial affections now is because you’ve lost – and, furthermore, you were caught trying to weasel out on it. Every time he’s spoken of you to me,” Javier continued, hoping that Dante wouldn’t know how little truly had passed between himself and Keith on that subject, “it has been with a deeper and more terrible regret than anything I have ever seen any other man bear in the two centuries I’ve spent on this earth. I couldn’t know why if I spent the next thousand years asking, but he mourns for his brother.” Though his sword was still pointed at Dante’s neck and his eyes were snapping with passion, his voice was very quiet. “You’re not a man I’d miss for more than five minutes if it were up to me, but Keith sees things in people that no one else sees – because he looks harder than anyone else does.”
Keith had risen as Javier had begun to speak, perhaps thinking that he would have to intervene before another battle burst forth between the two, but at Javier’s words, he stopped completely. Both D’Ameron men stared at Javier as if neither one of them could quite wrap their heads around what they had just heard him utter, but slowly, their gazes turned to each other’s faces.
Keith’s features were carefully schooled now, Javier noticed; his moment of shock had slipped away and he wore what Javier privately termed his ‘winter face’ for its cold dearth of evident emotions, but Dante’s face quivered beneath the crumbling outer layer of his surprise. Something in his eyes shivered and shifted, but he turned away before either man could be certain whether it was fury or a sadness so terrible that Javier was glad he had only been forced to gaze upon its brief possibility rather than the full reality.
“Dante.” Keith’s voice was as carefully controlled as his face, but Javier, more attuned to Keith than he had thought he could be to anyone, could hear the rest of his emotions licking at the underside of his words. Fear – that same terrible sorrow – a soul-deep weariness and … hope. All of that was present in the dual syllables of his brother’s name, but Javier thought that the trembling flicker of hope might have been the worst of all.
Excerpt from 11/18
Keith attempted to rise to his feet, but his knees buckled beneath him and he was forced to hunch forward into the cool gravestone, pressing his face against its damp surface to avoid toppling headfirst on to the blanket of ground beneath which the owner of this headstone presumably slept. His cheek slid across the rough writing, but he got his hands carefully beneath him before he fell further, and drew in a deep breath. It was as he was gauging the distance between the door of the crypt and his current location that he felt Javier’s mind reach out and hesitantly touch his. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with love and tenderness at the brief flickers of worry and fear he read in their tenuous connection, but the tearing pain growing in his body supplanted his rational reactions a moment later and replaced all thoughts of Javier with nothing more than hot, animal desire.
Violently, he twisted away from the presence of Javier’s mind, half-snarling as he scrabbled forward, clawing at the damp earth he crossed on all fours. He had to get away from them, had to hide himself away until the wolf blood in him was dormant once more, or they would be nothing more than food to him! Javier, Clase, Antoinine – all of them would be rendered as nothing more than hunks of steaming meat beneath the onslaught of his wolf-form’s hunger.
Hardly aware that he was whining through his clenched teeth, he scrambled into the crypt, slamming the heavy door shut behind him with the full weight of his body once he was on the other side. He felt Javier’s mind reach out once again, but he pushed it away as violently as he could.
His Leader would be here soon. Once he was here, they could hunt … and eat … and run … but until then, he had to hide away from everyone. He had to keep them safe – from himself.
Whimpering, he curled into the farthest corner of the small crypt, his eyes fixed not on the cold marble of the walls which surrounded him, but rather the flash of laughter – and lust – in his fledgling’s eyes. Tears slipped from Keith’s weary eyes as he grieved for the loss of Javier’s nearness – and, in the next second, out of fear of what could have come about, had his Leader not interrupted them before it was too late. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, I could have cursed him for good, he wept silently. The notion that he had not, and that all was still as it had always been, had not yet crossed his mind.
What was I thinking – tonight or any night? Dante was right – he has always been right! What justification had I to press this on any of them? But Javier – my God, my Javier, what could I have done to him tonight, if Leader had not stopped me …? He could not think of Amaroq as anything other than the role he played within their pack while he was under the influence of this half-wolf state; on some level, he was surprised to find he could think of anyone else by their names at all.
He turned his head as he felt his Leader’s presence grow close amongst the stones, then fade into the last dying gasp of the night as something called him away. A low, puppyish whine worked its way out from behind Keith’s clenched fangs and then he was falling into the diurnal slumber of the vampire, reaching out for the golden form of a man who was not there.
Excerpt for 11/24
“Amaroq, if Keith gets hurt tonight … will he heal like a vampire does?”
The werewolf whined. No. He’s … me. I heal faster than a normal wolf does, but … he’s not as immune to danger in this form. If … if she found him first …
“If he was in trouble, I’d know. You’d know.” Javier glanced in the direction of the church, still a ways off. “Wouldn’t we?”
We’d better hope so, Amaroq replied grimly.
Before Javier could say anything more, he saw the werewolf turn and vanish neatly into the shadows lining the lane beyond their home. How something as white as he is can vanish that fast… Well, if he can get away from me that quickly, this Vivien will have all the more trouble with him. That will have to be good enough for me tonight. Moving off in the opposite direction, he felt the two vials he now wore clicking against each other.
I’ve lived with the man I love for over two hundred years, and I know less about him than I knew about Ofelia! And that was true – to some extent, he thought. But if Amaroq’s right … and the contents of this vial show me things I can never, ever forget about Keith … He shook his head, continuing on his way towards the church he’d visited in the wee hours of the previous morning. I don’t want our relationship to change… I have to trust him to eventually realize he needs to be open with me – and if that involves him sharing his past with me, then so be it. And if it doesn’t… then … so be it. Keith is … Keith is worth far more to me than anyone else I have ever had in my life … and I don’t want to lose him. Not over this. Not over anything, but certainly not over who he slept with or who did horrible things to him over four hundred years ago. Amaroq’s right, Javier realized. I would want to hurt those people, and in seeking my revenge, Keith would only see my anger and my pain – all stemming from his pain. I can’t do that to him. I can’t.
As he raised his head, the church came into view, and though he half-expected to see some shining light surmounting its peak, representing this silent epiphany which he had so recently experienced, the modest structure remained dark and silent.
Javier snorted. House of God. Bah. If there is a God, he wouldn’t have anything to do with us anyway. Grimly, he passed the little building and slipped through the gate leading into the quiet cemetery. For a moment, all of the stories he’d ever heard of spirits wandering around graveyards touched his consciousness, but almost as soon as he felt the hair begin to rise on the back of his neck, the sheer peace of the place inundated his senses. There was nothing here except the remains of peacefully-sleeping human beings. Their bones and ashes moldered here amongst the fog-wreathed stones which served as reminders to passersby that they had once existed, but no self-respecting ghost, Javier decided, could ever see fit to choose a place as serene as this one for its final haunting place.
Quietly, his thoughts still half-caught by this notion of ghouls and other ghastly creatures, Javier crunched through the damp grass. Neatly avoiding markers and headstones as they loomed into his path from beneath their blanket of night, he moved up the hill towards where he could just about sense Amaroq’s presence. The nearness of the wolf calmed him; it meant nothing untoward had happened to Keith – if it had, the homolupine would have been down here to tell him about it already – so he was free to continue on his way. Just beginning to consider the notion that any malicious haunts would most likely haunt the places that were the birthplaces of the terrible things which had created the hatred and pain that kept them tied to this world, Javier stopped short as he caught sight of very slight movements between the stones off to his left. A trickle of his earlier unease returning to grip his spine, Javier did not stop his forward motion until his acute hearing informed him of the swift passage of a crossbow bolt coming quickly towards him.
He threw himself down amidst the stones, rolling in the wet grass until he came to rest alongside one of the raised tombs that dotted this cemetery. Upon first arriving in Nouvelle Orléans, Javier had been horrified at the thought of people being buried above ground, where any enterprising gravedigger with the right set of tools and several able cohorts, could rapidly avail themselves of whatever remained within the departed person’s coffin. But he’d soon come to realize that, in low-lying areas like these, burying the dead in the usual fashion was quite impractical.
Besides, he thought wryly, it’s providing me cover for the moment. He felt the brief reach of a vampire’s mind sliding past, and he was desperately thankful, suddenly, that Keith had taught him how to conceal his presence from any other vampires in the vicinity. They know I’m here – it’s too late to hide that – but if I can just … He concentrated and felt dim surprise reflect in the other vampire’s mind as he abruptly vanished from the scope of its mental reach. Now whoever it is will have to come and find me on their own, he thought grimly, allowing a brief smile to touch his lips. And I think they’ll find I’m more trouble than they were bargaining for.
Quick, stealthy movements to his left, beyond the shelter of his graveside hiding place. He felt the creature’s mind groping uselessly about in the mists; it couldn’t tear his presence away from anything else within the cemetery, and he grinned to feel its frustration.