Between Him and a Hard Place
Kelex
A Wicked Tale
ARe Books
Genre: M/M, Dystopian, Vampires, PNR
About the Book:
They survived catastrophe, but can they live on together?
Archer survived the zombie virus that brought down the world by doing things he didn’t know he was capable of. When his traveling companion is murdered by dead ones, he knows his time has come. Seconds before he’s slaughtered, a combat vehicle crashes through the scene and a masked man saves the day—a man he feels inexplicably drawn to.
Only the man isn’t a man, but a vampire.
Syn is a tracker, sent out by his kind to find and protect the last of the humans and the precious blood in their veins. Archer isn’t like the others he’s found. He feels tied to the human in a way he can’t explain. The two come together explosively, both fighting the intense emotion they feel before running to escape their burning lust.
Available at ARe
Excerpt:
Archer heard an engine rev out of
nowhere, and a huge vehicle ran through the crowd of dead ones, mowing them
down with ease. The passenger door was flung open before him. A masked man
stared at him, hiding who his potential savior was. Or if he could trust
whomever was behind it.
“Get in!” a tinny voice cried
out.
Without much more consideration,
as the inside of that truck was better than the death surrounding him, he
jumped in. The man stepped on the gas before Archer could barely even attempt
to slam the door closed, not that he could’ve had he wanted to.
“Get the door shut and fast!”
“I’m trying,” Archer screamed,
stabbing his hunting knife into the head of a dead one clinging to the door. As
soon as he kicked that one off, he jammed his knife into another, slamming the
door on another set of decaying fingers and slicing them off. They fell in his
lap, still wiggling.
A dozen dead ones hung on to the
hood of the truck, which was being spun from side to side, trying to fling the
creatures off. Archer reached for a non-existent seatbelt and then held on for
dear life.
“Hold on to the wheel,” the guy
screamed, rolling down his window.
The driver lifted a pistol as
Archer grabbed the huge wheel and leaned out. One by one, he got the dead ones
between the eyes, and they fell under the moving vehicle. Bouncing as they
rumbled over the bodies, Archer tried to keep the thing on the road. He wasn’t
even sure what it was. It was something between a truck and a tank, with an
Army vibe. The tech surrounding the wheel was anything but Army-issued, though.
Whatever it was, he’d never seen anything like it, and was more than happy to
have seen it when he did.
Finally, the driver dropped back
into his seat, the dead ones gone from the hood. Just as he began to roll up
his window, a hand reached in. Lightning quick, the guy sliced the hand off
with a scary-looking blade, then proceeded to roll his window up.
Archer leaned back into his seat
and stared at the road ahead, stunned as hell he’d made it out alive. His heart
continued to thump hard in his chest as he stared at the masked driver.
“Syn,” the guy said with that
robotic-sounding voice. He held out his gloved hand.
Archer really took in the guy’s
appearance for the first time. He wore some weird gas mask-like thing with
goggles. Here it was, the middle of the summer, and he was covered from head to
toe in black leather, from his neck to his gloved fingers and shitkickers.
“Syn’s short for Synclair,” the
guy said again, still offering his hand. “As in my name. You’ve got one,
right?”
“Archer,” he answered, finally
taking the extended hand. “I can’t thank you enough,” he added as he shook it.
“No problem. I’ve been following
you for weeks,” the masked man said, returning his hand to the wheel and
looking ahead. “I’ve been just a day or so behind you for the last week. Good
thing I caught up when I did.”
Archer frowned, his hackles
rising. “Why were you following me?”
“I find humans to take to the
Southern Citadel.”
The Southern Citadel? “Wait,
what?”
“You haven’t heard of the
Citadels?” he asked, glancing over at Archer.
Archer shook his head.
“There are three human cities.
They’re walled and protected and already teeming with people. It’s my job to
help find the last of the humans to take there so some sort of civilization can
start again.”
Human cities? Walled and
protected? It sounded too good to be true. And he’d learned anything that
sounded too good to be true likely was. Even with his doubt, only one question
truly came to mind. “You guys got food and water there?”
The masked man chuckled. “All you
could ever want.”
“Then what are we waiting on?”
Archer knew he might be walking into a trap, but the promise of hot food and a
hot shower was too good to ignore. He was running on empty. He needed to
regroup.
He glanced at the man driving,
again wondering about the weird get-up, but weird was now the norm in their
fucked up world.
About the Author:
Kelex is a bestselling gay erotica author, writing contemporary to fantasy to sci-fi and everything between.
Living in the south, Kelex swelters at the laptop, writing spicy tales to the sound of soulful jazz music in the background.
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