All Souls Day
I don’t want to be a downer, but 2014 was
marked with a lot of loss. I lost a lot of friends—people I loved—to illness.
Cancer, depression, some vague disease. People outside of my immediate
network—friends of friends—were experiencing the same thing. Vibrant people
taken way before their time to freak accidents or sudden illnesses.
Even my beloved Mercy, my Rottie and the
inspiration for the character Dog in Hell’s Bell, developed an untreatable
autoimmune disease and had to be put to sleep.
Losing such an extraordinary number of
old friends this year was almost prophetic, since I was killing off a character
in Tainted Blood. I knew that Nina had to experience a devastating loss so that
her character could progress, could grow up, could learn to stand completely on
her own.
It was hard to write, and for many many
months, I danced around which character to sacrifice, trying to protect Nina
from the anguish of losing someone close to her. “Nina already experienced loss
when her parents died. Just off a peripheral character,” I’d argue with myself,
hoping to keep all of my main characters alive. But I was unable to move
forward in the story because I was refusing to let go, refusing to let Nina
grow as a person and a character. This event changes her considerably. It will
take every ounce of her strength and determination to get through this.
So this Halloween, after I take my kid
trick or treating, I’ll sit outside and enjoy a crisp October night and think
about the loved ones I have lost this year, and in years prior, and hope that
the veil is thin enough so they can pierce though.
We can share one more laugh,
raise one more pint, take one more long walk, before saying goodbye.
Hell's Belle Series
Book 2
Karen Greco
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Date of Publication: Oct. 20, 2014
ISBN: ISBN-13:978-1500844448
ISBN-10:1500844446
ASIN: TBD
Number of pages: 582
Word Count: 95,704
Cover Artist: Robin Ludwig Design Inc.
Book Description:
After surviving a vampire assassin (not to mention an awkward affair with a hot FBI agent that ended worse than she could have imagined), witch/vampire hybrid Nina Martinez is reunited with the full Blood Ops team in Providence, Rhode Island. Her Aunt Babe is tutoring her in all things witchcraft, and her vampire partner Frankie is enjoying the benefits of daywalking, courtesy of a demon spell.
When a segment of the Rhode Island vampire population is marked for death by a tainted blood supply, Nina and her team race to find Patient Zero before the local vampire population is wiped out. But when a demon infestation threatens to take control of the city, Nina must join forces with newly elected mayor—and closet demon— Ami Bertrand before the city falls into ruin.
Filled with fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat action, Nina and her group of supernatural misfits battle a surprising new enemy that threatens their very existence.
No wonder she still can’t get a date.
Download this Hell's Belle Prequel for Free at Smashwords
River
Vamp
A
Hell’s Belle Prequel
Short
Story
Karen
Greco
Book Description:
Frankie and Nina head to New York
City for an early Blood Ops mission.
Guess what they fish out of the
Gowanus Canal?
Free at Smashwords and BN
Excerpt:
CHAPTER
ONE
"Jesus
Christ, Frankie," I muttered as the crowbar hit the worn marble floor with
an earsplitting clatter. So much for
stealth. We should have just ripped through the doors with explosives.
We were breaking
into the Superman Building. At 26 floors, it was the first skyscraper ever
built in downtown Providence. It lost its last tenant three years ago, and the
gorgeous art deco structure was now a towering reminder of better days, when
manufacturing was booming and people had money to burn. Years of attempts to
"revitalize" the area had fallen flat. This left plenty of room for
the underground supernatural factions to sweep in and take over.
Frankie flashed
a fangy grin at me. "What's the fun in surprising them? It's never a good
time unless it all goes off the rails."
I shook my head
and sighed. Ever since Frankie was charmed by a demon to walk in the sunlight,
he thought he was invincible. And, sure, being a vampire helped, but he could
be staked just as easy as any other vamp. His arrogance could get us both
killed.
We walked
swiftly through the lobby of the abandoned high rise, keeping tight to the
walls. In our all-black commando outfits, we blended easily into the dark
hallway.
I stole a
wistful look at the bank of elevators. The electricity was cut to the building.
We'd be taking the stairs. "Want to guess what floor they're on?"
"I say top
floor," Frankie said with his hand already on the door to the stairwell.
It was going to
be a long-ass climb. Up the 26 stories and possibly a few extra flights to get
to the tippy top of the building's airship docking station. Seriously. The very
top floor of the building was built for docking blimp-like airships, so there
was a pretty cool waiting area/corporate suite turned Depression-era speakeasy
at the apex. Too bad we were seeing it under these circumstances.
About a week
ago, a suspicious news report piqued our interest. A group of crazed
individuals were caught rampaging through downtown, tossing cars with
superhuman strength, punching through brick walls and causing general weird
mayhem. A few witnesses described them with blood around their mouths.
Max, our newest
Blood Ops member serving as double agent in the FBI, was on record as calling
this a "bath salt related incident." It was simple to blame this
behavior on meth-heads on a DIY bender. But we knew better. They were vampires,
and they were out of control. Frankie and I were dispatched to take care of
them.
We climbed the
stairs quickly, Frankie almost a floor ahead of me as we ascended. My calves
ached by the 17th floor, and I was dripping with sweat. The vamps would be able
to smell me by floor 22 if they were paying attention. Since I am half vampire, I can handle a fair
amount of physical exertion. But a swift walk up the stairs of a high-rise
carrying an extra 35 pounds of vampire-fighting gear was punishing. Pushing
through the cramps in my legs, I silently vowed to increase my workouts. It was
hard enough to match Frankie's speed and strength, but now that he thought he
was the Man of Steel, it was damn near impossible just to catch up to him.
We hit the top,
and I finally had a chance to catch my breath. Frankie smirked at my
all-too-human physical stamina.
When my heart
stopped racing, I double-fisted a pair of stakes and nodded at Frankie. He
kicked the door open and we launched into the penthouse. Moonlight poured
through the grime-coated glass ceiling.
We rushed in
like hellfire, expecting to find ourselves in the middle of a melee. But the
room appeared empty.
"Top floor,
Frankie? Really?" I grumbled, re-sheathing my stakes. "How much you
want to bet they're on two?"
Frankie raised
his arm and shushed me. I shot him a dirty look, but quickly softened it when I
heard the hushed groans too.
I motioned to
Frankie to move towards the sounds, and we cautiously walked to the back of the
room. A shape was huddled in a dark corner with two bodies laid out on the
floor in front of it. I pulled a mag light out from one of my cargo pants
pockets and trained it on the shadowy forms.
A female vampire
inched away from the light. Blood was smeared down her face and neck, and it
covered her chest. Two male vampires were on the floor, their fronts washed in
red as well. The walls were covered in sticky, black-red blood. The entire room
was just dripping. It looked like a blood bank exploded.
The vampires on
the floor were truly dead, their pale faces cracked like antique porcelain
dolls. Their appendages were just starting to decompose, but their midsections
were blown out, like they swallowed a bomb and it exploded. The one still
living, for lack of a better word, looked close to meeting true death herself.
The emaciated vampire half-sobbed, half-moaned as she rocked back and forth.
Although they
matched the descriptions of the vamps-gone-wild group, these couldn't be our
marauders. They were simply too sick. They looked like junkies who overdosed. A
few times.
"What do we
do?" I had never seen anything like this before. I sure as hell hoped
Frankie would know how to handle this mess.
Frankie walked a
wide semicircle around the vampires, his shoes making sucking noises as he
lifted them off the sticky, blood-soaked floor. He was worried, clearly on
guard.
"What's
your name?" he asked.
"Kate,"
she croaked out.
"Right,
Kate," Frankie's voice was soothing. "How long have your friends been
like this?"
"Since
yesterday." Her hoarse voice was barely above a whisper. "We slept in
the stairwell but they came in here last night and just...." She motioned
at the carnage around her and let out a muffled sob.
"So you
were able to walk back and forth to the stairwell? Can you do it now?" I
asked.
She tried
pulling herself up, but wasn't strong enough to handle the weight of her tiny
body. So she crawled towards us, plowing over the disintegrating corpses.
"Stop,
Kate! Stay right there!" Frankie visibly jumped back, his shoes making a
sharp thwack as they lifted off the gummy floor. "Nina, you need to call
Max and Dr. O. Max needs to get the electricity back on to this building. She's
going to need to go out the elevator, and Dr. O needs to bring her down."
"Why are we
taking her out of the building?" I asked. Our mission was to kill them.
Two were dead, and the last one was nearly there. Mission almost complete.
"Because
they are Beta-Vamps." Frankie glanced at the vamp on the floor.
"Right?"
She nodded, tears
streaming down her face.
"No
way," I protested. "Betas don't rampage like that."
"They do if
they are sick," Frankie explained calmly, his eyes still on Kate.
Beta-Vamps were
like the hippies of the vampire world. They were vampires that were missing the
predator genome sequence. They weren't human killers. They survived on who
knows what. Maybe animal blood. Maybe blood stolen from hospitals. In some
extreme cases, they ate rust for the iron content. Betas were rare, and,
because of their peace-loving nature, extremely vulnerable to attack from all
sorts of supernatural factions.
"So why
don't we just carry her down?" I said with a shrug, stepping towards Kate,
breaking my boots' suction to the floor.
Frankie was in
front of me before I could take another step. My stomach rolled as Frankie
dropped his guard and a wave of his panic washed over me.
A few months
ago, Frankie had to bind me to him to save my life. For the most part, we're
dealing with it just fine. But if he's in emo overdrive and forgets to close
off our connection, I get hit with whatever he's feeling. It also works the
same in the other direction.
"Don't go
near her. She's been infected."
"Infected?
With what? Beta-Vamps aren't vulnerable to infections."
"With..."
Frankie stopped. He looked shattered. "My God, I haven't seen this since
1877."
"What is
it?" I pushed.
"Opium
poisoning."
"Did you
just say opium?"
"Blood-born
opium poison. If it gets into our bodies, we die." Frankie was visibly
nervous, moving in a jittery semicircle around the woman. "We can't go
near her."
"Oh. Shit.
Does Dr. O know what to do?" I shrunk back. Opium. Who knew? Apparently
Frankie. That explained why vampires were always told not to get their fix from
heavy drug users.
"I'm not
sure. That's why you need to call him. And he'll need Max since we really
shouldn't stay here. Now please. She doesn't have much time."
Right. I pulled
out my phone. I'd start with Max. He'd need time to power up the building
anyway.
He answered on
the sixth ring.
He sounded
groggy. "What's up?"
"Sorry to
wake you but we're at the Superman Building with two seriously dead vamps and
one who is really sick. We need to turn on the power to get her out of here
with the elevator. Can you get this building back on the grid?"
"Christ,
can't one of you just carry her down the stairs?" His voice was muffled,
like he was pressing his face into his pillow.
"Frankie
and I can't touch her. She has some sort of infection, something that only
vampires can contract. And it kills them."
"Really?"
He jolted awake. I heard the bed sheets rustle as he got up.
"I don't
know, really. I've never heard of this before. But I know Frankie is freaking
out, and said we need to get her out of here. And he only freaks out if there's
a damn good reason."
"You know I
worked for the FBI all day, right?" he groused. I heard a closet door
slam.
"Seriously?
Are you going to do this right now?"
"You both
were going up there to stake them anyway. So they die of something else. It's
the same outcome. Why save her?"
"Because,
she's not a predator vampire."
"What the
hell are you talking about?"
"Look, I'll
explain later, but we are running out of time. I need to get Dr. O here, and
you need to get the electricity on at this place."
"Jesus, you
people are complicated. I'll be there in 20." He hung up before I could
respond.
Like Frankie,
Max had made a deal with resident demon and Providence mayor Ami Bertrand. As a
result, Bertrand had turned Max into a Berserker, a supernatural warrior that
went extinct with the Vikings. Well, extinct up until Bertrand's curse.
Since Max had
been turned into a supernatural entity, but one that was supposed to be
extinct, he joined our team as a double agent with the FBI. Our team is Blood
Ops, an elite government agency that deals with rogue supernatural factions.
Technically, we also don't exist. To humans, anyway. Our existence — hell, the
very existence of anything supernatural — was on a "need to know"
basis, and even the president of the United States didn't need to know. Only a
very select few Department of Defense members knew about Blood Ops. That's
plausible deniability for you.
But damn, the
Berserker in Max sure made him grumpy.
I hit the speed
dial button for Dr. O. Dr. Lachlan O'Malley led our unit of Blood Ops. Though
he mostly resembled your favorite 60-something college professor, Dr. O was a
Druid priest, which made him pretty damn old. And, like the Druid priests
before him, he knew absolutely everything.
"Nina,
what's wrong?" Dr. O asked in his thick brogue. I could tell I woke him
up.
"Sorry Doc,
but we have a problem here. We have Beta-Vamps that ingested opium. Two are
dead — like for real, seriously dead. One is barely hanging on."
"Opium? Are
you sure?" Dr. O sounded a lot more awake suddenly.
"Frankie
says he's sure. Said he hasn't seen this since 18-something or other."
"Frankie
would know. Do you have her quarantined?"
"Quarantined?
Frankie said not to touch her. He didn't say anything about a quarantine."
This was weird.
"You are in
the same room with her?"
"Where else
would we be?" I asked, impatience getting the best of me.
"If any of
their blood gets into your blood stream, or Frankie's, that would be very
bad."
"Yeah,
Frankie already explained that to me. We aren't touching her.
"Nina, I am
afraid it's much more serious than that. Opium poisoning tends to make infected
vampires projectile vomit out blood before they die. Then their torso
explodes."
That sounded
bad. And gross.
"When? When
would that happen?" I gripped the phone tightly, eyeballing Kate. She
whimpered in the corner near the vampire bodies with her back against the wall.
"It could
happen at any time. Lock her in wherever you are, and wait until I get there.
Do not wait in the room with her, neither you nor Frankie. Do you
understand?" Dr. O's tone was stern.
"Yes, I got
it. Okay, we are on the top floor. Max is on his way to power up the building
to get her out of here. Just get here fast."
"I am on my
way."
The phone went
dead. I hightailed it over to Frankie, who was staring helplessly at Kate.
"Frankie,
we gotta get out of here." I pulled gently on his arm.
"Please
don't leave me." Kate's voice was so weak, I could barely hear her
whisper.
Frankie didn't
move. He just looked sadly at the sick Beta, his eyes filled with tears.
"Come on,
Frankie." I nudged him again. "We can't be in here right now. Dr. O's
on his way."
He hesitated.
"We can't leave her like this."
"We aren't
going to do her any good if we get sick, too," I reasoned.
He ignored me. I
changed tactics.
"Stop being
a stubborn ass," I raised my voice. He still ignored me.
Kate moaned and
fell into a fetal position. She began to convulse. Frankie made a move towards
her, but I grabbed him. Standing in front of him, I took him by both shoulders
and stared into his eyes.
"We need to
get out of here before she barfs blood all over us. Don't make me go witchy on
you."
It was an idle
threat. Only a few weeks before, I first learned that I am half-witch as well.
My witch abilities were dormant for years — hidden by my vampire genetics —
until an unfortunate encounter with a spelled knife turned on the hocus-pocus.
I was working with my witch mentor, who's also my aunt, on controlling my
newfound abilities. Much to Auntie Babe's frustration, I was not taking to it
like a fish to water. If I tried to unleash my mojo in here, poor Kate could
very well blow up, taking Frankie and me along with her.
Kate's moaning
was now punctuated by high-pitched cries of pain. Clearly in agony, she writhed
on the floor. Her hands formed into claws, and she scratched at the body of the
seriously dead vampire closest to her. His skin tore like dried papier-mâché as
she drove her nails into his corpse. As she tore at his flesh, blood bubbled
out of her mouth.
"She not
going to make it!" I shouted at Frankie, pushing on his lanky six-foot
frame. "And neither are we if we don't get out of here!"
I shoved Frankie
harder towards the door. He finally snapped out of his stupor and we fled to
across the room to the stairwell door. I pushed on it, but it didn't budge.
Shaking the handle, I pressed all my weight against it. Nothing. I moved aside
and Frankie levered a kick at the door. He succeeded in denting the door,
jamming it even harder into the frame.
"Crap,
Frankie! There's no time!" I yelled over Kate's ear-piercing shrieks.
Frankie looked
wildly around. "Can we break the windows?"
Everything was
soaked in blood. Blood we couldn't touch. Crap. I had no choice.
"Hold
on!" I closed my eyes tightly and I tried to clear my thoughts, but
between Kate's shrieks and Frankie's desperation creeping into my head, not to
mention my own stress, my mind was too unfocused to do this right. Oh well.
Close enough was going to have to do.
I felt the air
shift around me, and I latched onto this small breeze, willing it to grow to
hurricane strength. My hair loosed from its ponytail and slapped across my
face. The swelling wind pushed me forward. Grabbing Frankie's hand for
stability, I cried out the few words of Latin I could come up with that
approximated "break the damn glass." The five plate glass windows on
the south side of the room shook. I repeated the words louder, putting more
force behind them. The wind turned hurricane strength, pushing us across the
room, dangerously closer to Kate. Finally, the windows shattered one by one,
shards of glass falling 26 stories to the sidewalk.
I opened my
eyes. Kate was about to explode. Blood frothed around her lips, her shrieks now
muffled as the blood worked its way up her throat.
Hands still
clutched, Frankie and I nodded at each other, knowing exactly what we had to
do. Together, we ran straight for the windows, and leapt feet first into the
star-filled sky.
Frankie's hand
slipped out of mine as we both twisted our bodies and made a grasp for the
ledge. I caught it, just barely, almost wrenching my shoulder out of its socket
on the impact. Frankie similarly stopped short next me. We dangled 26 stories
over downtown Providence.
About the Author:
Karen Greco has spent close to twenty years in New York City, working in publicity and marketing for the entertainment industry. Originally from Rhode Island (she loves hot wieners from New York System, but can't stand coffee milk), she studied playwriting in college (and won an award or two).
After not writing plays for a long time, a life-long obsession with exorcists and Dracula drew her to urban fantasy, where she can decapitate characters with impunity.
Her first novel, Hell's Belle, was released in 2013. Tainted Blood is the second book in the best-selling Hell's Belle urban fantasy series.
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1 comment:
Thanks so much for having me. Sorry this was such a somber one...
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