Here's a new vampire tale to help get into the Halloween season...
A Night Shift Novel
by Margo Bond Collins
Just release: October 8, 2014
Amazon | Goodreads
Only fifty years left before vampires rule the world.
When Dallas police detective Cami Davis joined the city's vampire unit, she planned to use the job as a stepping-stone to a better position in the department.
But she didn't know then what she knows now: there's a silent war raging between humans and vampires, and the vampires are winning.
So with the help of a disaffected vampire and an ex-cop addict, Cami is going undercover, determined to solve a series of recent murders, discover a way to overthrow the local Sanguinary government, and, in the process, help win the war for the human race.
But can she maintain her own humanity in the process? Or will Cami find herself, along with the rest of the world, pulled under a darkness she cannot oppose?
Excerpt:
"Hey, Bradley." I beckoned the crime-scene tech, who had finally arrived and was snapping on gloves.
"Is that a piece of paper under the vic's head?"
He bent down over my shoulder to get a clearer view from my line of sight. "Looks like it's tangled in her hair," he said. He pulled a pair of long tweezers out of his kit and snagged the sliver. "Yep. Looks like it has a word written on it . . ." We both peered at the brownish, spidery writing.
"Sanguinary," I said. "Is that written in blood?"
"Maybe. I'll get the lab to run a basic analysis on it. If it's blood, we'll be able to let you know pretty quick if it's human and if so, what type. DNA will take longer."
"Sounds good." I stared at the woman a little longer. Her dark hair—almost the same color as mine—spilled out around her, matted with dark, coagulating blood. The two bloody marks on her neck shone like black stars on a white background.
Vampire.
I knew that if I lifted her dress, there would be other puncture wounds all over the body, and strange symbols carved across her skin—pentagrams within circles and other ritualistic signs. Exactly like the others. Ten murders in the four weeks since the beginning of September—all centered in downtown Dallas, and many with affluent victims whose families demanded action.
The department had been in a barely suppressed uproar.
I stood up, my knees popping a little. Five years ago, they wouldn't have done that.
And five years before that? Vampires hadn't existed, except in books and B-movies.
It took time for the world to believe. We hadn't even realized how to fight back when they'd first shown up.
This victim's ragged, bloody fingernails suggested that she had tried to resist, but obviously failed.
The red dress she wore would have originally matched the color of the relatively scant splashes of blood surrounding her, but those stains had dried to a muddy brown, the same color as the writing on the paper caught in her hair.
Her clothing suggested that she'd been at the opera that evening, though the manager, roused from her bed, swore that the building had been cleared and empty when she left.
One black, high-heel shoe lay several feet away, toppled over onto its side, the heel broken, as if she had stumbled out of it when it failed her as she ran from a pursuer.
Sanguinary.
I'd heard the word before from vampires I had taken down—whispered as a threat, shouted as a warning: the Sanguinary is coming, the Sanguinary will kill you all.
The Sanguinary is here.
It was why I was about to go undercover among the vampires.
Guest post by Margo Bond Collins:
My Favorite Vampire Hunters in Film and Television
In Sanguinary, Cami Davis is a detective on the Dallas police force, and part of an anti-vampire squad. My depiction of her is absolutely influenced by my love of vampire hunters in film and television. Here's a list of some of my favorite vampire hunters:
Buffy: Because what’s not to love about a snarky blonde cheerleader with a destiny to be a vampire slayer? Add Joss Whedon’s particular brand of brilliance, and Buffy is still one of my favorite vampire hunters, even more than fifteen years after the television series first aired.
The Winchester Brothers: Normally, these are top five lists. But I’m going to count Sam and Dean Winchester from the television series Supernatural together—it’s virtually impossible to consider them any other way. Technically, Sam and Dean are monster hunters in general, and vampires make up only a small percentage of their hunts—but since Dean was once briefly turned into a vampire and Sam had to contemplate beheading his brother, I think it counts. Plus: they’re just so beautiful.
Peter Vincent: I know that the 2011 remake of Fright Night was not exactly a favorite of either critics or fans. But I love, love, love David Tennant in the role of the stage magician whose dark past makes him a vampire expert.
Blade, Whistler, and Abigail Whistler (I'm counting these guys together, too!): I love the way the Blade film series uses the conventions of vampire film and myth. The dhampir (or half-vampire) as a vampire hunter is one of my favorite semi-obscure vampire myths, and Wesley Snipes does a nice job of being a taciturn, tortured hero in the dhampir role. Film scholar Jeffrey Weinstock has claimed that the vampire film is always about technology, and Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) is the consummate tech guy. Finally, the addition of Abigail Whistler brings the kick-ass heroine into the series, making it just about perfect, as far as I’m concerned.
Pike: In the original film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she ends up with Pike, a mechanic whose best friend is turned into a vampire. I like Pike because, like Elle in my book Legally Undead, he doesn’t want to kill vampires. In fact, he packs up to get out of town. But then he sticks around to help Buffy figure out that she is, as he says, “the guy. The chosen guy.”
I really wanted to find a film or TV version of Van Helsing to include in this list, but I just couldn’t. The movie Van Helsing was simply laughable, and the Van Helsing character in the various Dracula movies doesn’t seem strong enough. I’d love to hear about any Van Helsings or other vampire hunters I might have missed who should be considered!
Margo Bond Collins is the author of urban fantasy, contemporary romance, and paranormal mysteries. She has published a number of novels, including Sanguinary, Taming the Country Star, Legally Undead, Waking Up Dead, and Fairy, Texas.
She lives in Texas with her husband, their daughter, and several spoiled pets. Although writing fiction is her first love, she also teaches college-level English courses online. She enjoys reading romance and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, monsters, cowboys, and villains, and the strong women who love them—and sometimes fight them.
Connect with Margo:
Amazon Author Page
MargoBondCollins@gmail.com
Website
Blog
Twitter: @MargoBondCollin
Google+
Goodreads
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