Mission: The Lady

About 45 minutes ago, I arrived in the middle of nowhere... somewhere in Kansas. I swear, I can't see why people live here, but that's just me. My name is Dan. That's all you need to know for now. I've steel blue eyes that put people off. Women think I look like someone who wouldn't think twice about taking them into a back alley somewhere and do something untoward to them. But I'm not really that type. Men think I'm that type too, and that I'm dangerous. They've no idea how dangerous. After three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, I decided enough was enough. I wanted to do something different. Besides, it's a bitch being a werewolf and trying to hide it during the full of the moon. Sure, it helped me in certain skirmishes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but really, it was almost unfair.

So, here I am. I arrived in this Hummer in a place that is about as desolate as some of the places I've been to half a world away.

I've just had an interview with three guys before I was sent down. They were also werewolves. I've never met them before. We've been hired by the same people. Um, at least that's all they know about me. Vampires usually like to hire us for muscle, and because we're so loyal to our jobs.

Okay, I'm chuckling to myself. See, I'm a mole. I've already been hired by Mr. T--uh, that's Mr. Tremayne. Actually through a third party, but makes no difference. My job is to somehow thwart whatever they've got planned for the little lady who is to arrive here tonight. The man I'm about to meet, Mr. Paduraru, is double crossing Mr. T. This is what I've been briefed by another of Mr. T's men who originally brought me in. I got put on the list as the "door man". Tough job, guarding a door, but you'd be surprised.

So, I'm here at this old Atlas F Missile site, which means a lot of stairs. See what I mean?

I'm told to take these stairs down to the first level. Looks like the contractor did a bang up job turning this place into a condo. I mean, who would have thought of making a condo out of an old, underground missile site? Of course, it would take someone like Mr. T with a lot of dough to afford this.

The stairway ends at a set of 6,000-pound blast doors. These were designed to keep occupants safe during a nuclear attack. The doors curve inward to offset the vacuum effect of a blast... at least that's the thought behind it.

Hard to believe these doors are still functional, considering that a number of blast doors from other sites have since buckled under their own weight. As large as these suckers are, it only takes a gentle shove to push them open.

Well, here I am. I'm taken inside one of the apartments. I'm to be given my "orders" from a man called Paduraru. He's the one, I've been told, is playing double cross on his boss, Mr. T.

Vampires. Really. I can take them and I can leave them, but Mr. T is signing my check for this job, as far as I'm concerned. And his bank roll exceeds Paduraru's considerably.

When I was briefed about this position, I was told the woman I'm to help protect is "special". I'm not certain in what way, but she's highly regarded in the vampire circles. Her name's Sabrina Strong. When I dug a little more, I found out that a lot of Supes were both intrigued by her apparent abilities, and in awe of her.

But, like I said, I'm paid the big bucks to do my job, and I'll do it to the best of my ability. I'm to ignore much of what Mr. Paduraru tells me to do. Especially if it's to harm Ms. Strong in any way.

I'm standing in a main room of the condo. I'm not certain where Mr. T. is, but he's somewhere in this silo/condo. I was also briefed that Mr. T. is dying of silver poisoning. If this Strong woman doesn't get to the proper place in this huge facility, he will most definitely die. So, I'm all for getting the little Lady to where she needs to go.

Finally, a dark-haired man, about 5'10" enters the room. I know right away he's a vampire. He greets me, and identifies himself as Nicolas Paduraru. He's your typical vampire, with the look of a predator and too much arrogance and confidence for my taste.

He explains my job is to stand outside the first door and greet Ms. Strong, and ring him when she gets here. Fine. A boring job, but hey, twenty-five thousand from Mr. T, and another ten grand from Mr. Paduraru, here. That's the beauty of being a double agent. If you survive, you get paid double. Uh, if you can get paid up-front, at least half (which I did), you come out alive and smiling from ear to ear all the way to the bank. 'Course, I've got some debts to pay, so I'm not going to be rich afterwards by no means.

Paduraru explains in his suave, thick accent--I've pegged him as a several hundred years old from some western European country, like Romania--tells me that under no circumstances is Sabrina to get beyond the third door. That's the other door heading another direction from the one I came through to enter this condo.

Really.

I, of course, assure him I won't let her get past me to go beyond this condo. I've got five hours before she is due to figure out how I'm to bushwhack this bastard, and not set off any alarms to the goons above. Those three looked like something they pulled out of a hole in New York City. The worst kind of werewolves are from New York, but then, the ones from Louisiana have a few quirks  in their personalities that you just don't want to experience, if you get my drift. That's where someone like me can, and will, take them out.

Paduraru takes me on a tour of the place. Shows me the water closet, in case I have need.

Swanky, no?
And this is the door I'm to guard.

Well, I've got a few hours to figure out a plan. The men up top searched me, so, I've been relieved of any and all of my weapons. So, that means it will be my bruit strength, and werewolf senses to get the job done.

I wonder what Ms. Strong looks like. From what I learned, she's quite fetching.


Coming soon....

Sabrina Strong on Sabrina Strong

 Hi, everyone.Sabrina Strong, here and I'm in for Lorelei today, and I'm totally unprepared, but here it goes. Just bare with me.

Let me start from the beginning. If someone told me I would be working for vampires in Chicago a year ago, I'd have laughed my head off. But there I was answering an ad for a clairvoyant in the paper. Yeah. I'm a Touch Clairvoyant. You don't meet very many of those, I bet, do ya?

So, I get an interview with a guy with an accent. It wasn't the accent that tipped me off he was a vampire, I just knew he was. See? I'm pretty good at the clairvoyant stuff.

So, I manage to get Mr. Paduraru to meet me at a local place near me, and what the hell? I get out of my Jeep and a wolf attacks me. Not just any wolf, it's like I should have known right away it was a werewolf. But Nicolas Paduraru chases the wolf off by changing into one himself. I thought I was going nuts, really. And this cute guy came running out, calling my name. I never met him before, and he knew my name. It so happens Steve was working with Nicolas, so he knew who I was. Still with me?

Well, Nicolas returns as a man--er a vampire. They decide I need to have the wound sucked of werewolf venom. So, Nicolas does this for me. From that moment on I'm imprinted on him. I thought he was the most handsome man I'd seen. Until I met Bjorn Tremayne, of course.

While Nicolas definitely wants to have something with me in a human-vampire way--and me too, by the way--Bjorn won't allow it, because he's his sire. You don't do things behind your sire's back unless you want a quick death.

When I met Tremayne, there was no question about his abilities as a vampire. He could thrawl me from across the room and he never had even a drop of my blood. To say I would have been attracted to him without all the vampire pheramones going around is an understatement. Standing at seven foot tall, you'd think he was an ex-football player. Broad shoulders, buttery blond hair, and aqua eyes, he had an easy way about him, but he could be deadly, and I caught that right away too.

Then there was Dante Badheart. Native American scion to Tremayne. He's also a shift-changer, shaman, and was assigned to be with me 24/7. To say we sort of were attracted to one another is another understatement.

So, juggling three guys who are total hunks was only one of my problems. I also had to figure out who had murdered Tremayne's wife. And this wasn't easy because I had become a target for whoever it was. Dodging bullets and arrows is not fun, believe me.

I would have quit my first night on the job, because it was really scary being among all the vampires, and trying to stay calm enough that I wouldn't pee my pants, especially when I meet several other vampires and have a vision to boot! But then my boss, Mr. Tremayne hands me a huge bonus check, promising me a much larger sum, AND a car, that I let the idea of danger just vanish--for at least an hour or so.

This in the beginning of my adventures from the first book Vampire Ascending I'd like to tell you more, but I've run out of time. Maybe you can check it out on Amazon, by clicking on the book's title. They would make great gifts--ebook or paperbacks. There's also the second book Vampire's Trill. Lorelei would love to see more "Like"s there as well. Eventually there'll be a third book, and hopefully it will be out there soon.

Well, until next time, this is Sabrina Strong--oh! I see that my friend Rick text messaged me. He's working for Tremayne these days. Oh, he wants to talk to me. I'll tell him to pop on over. He can do that, you know, since he's a leprechaun.

Have a great day!

Teaser Tuesday from Vampire's Trill Chapter 8

Hi, everyone. Well, it's Teaser Tuesday. Today I'm taking this from Vampire's Trill from chapter 8

When it was over, as I lay there catching my breath and trying to focus my eyes, I heard a man's voice anxiously asking me if I was all right. He was hovering over me, and he sounded scared, half out of his mind.

“Should I call someone? Should I call the paramedics?” he was demanding with panic in his voice and a cell phone in his hand.

Yeah. What happens to me when I go into a full trance is genuinely scary. I didn't blame him for that look on his face.

I shook the cobwebs out of my head — at least partially. “What? No. No, don't call anyone. They don't know how to treat my form of affliction.”

“Jesus,” he said. I was glad to see, however, that he had pulled on some jeans while I had been out of it. Tattooed heavily on the upper body and both arms, I saw some wild-looking scenes on his chest that I didn't want to linger on.

“Are you—”

“I'm alright. I... My face was wet. I wiped it, wondering what it was. I gaped at my hand. Spit? Realizing my hands were uncovered—and at the same time I was still naked—I said, “Where are my clothes?”

“Babe, you came that way,” he said. “Don't you remember? You went into your creature. You came to me. We were together the whole night.”

“What?” I was trying to make sense of it all. Here I was, naked as the day I was born, in a strange man's house with him telling me that we'd spent the night together. Then it came to me: he had been a wolf, and I was — whatever I became. “Oh. Shit.” I'd forgotten because of what had just happened to me. I had been totally out.

We stared at one another for a few heartbeats.

“Do you usually babble like that?” he asked, pointing at me with the cell phone.

“Babble?” I asked.

“Yeah. It was really freaky,” he said. “It was like you had a seizure or something. I didn't know what to do, but I knew that I didn't want you to bump into anything while you were under that spell, whatever you call it.”

“I'm a clairvoyant. Sometimes I black out, sometimes I talk about what I see, and sometimes I speak in tongues.” I knew that when I did that, no one could understand me, except, apparently, vampires. Who knew?

“The blacking out part I can handle, but whatever else you just did was scary.”

“You mean going into a trance and babbling?” I pulled the blanket up as I gathered my legs underneath me and sat up.

“I guess. It was all nonsense,” he said. “I couldn't make heads or tails of it.”

“I really, really need to go home, if that's okay with you,” I said soberly, changing the subject. (I didn't want to be here, and I didn't want to spend one more minute with Hobart than I had to, but I needed clothes.) "Do you have something I can wear?"

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure, sure.” He seemed distracted.

I twisted my mouth with his lack of moving. “Is there something wrong?”

He looked up at me then. “No. Just... memories.” I felt his sadness. He seemed so despondent I had to ask.

“What's wrong? What happened?”

Gazing at me, he took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, his shoulders going limp. “Frank was really bummed by his old lady being killed and all. I thought that he might go off the deep end, but... ”

“Okay, old lady meaning his girlfriend or wife?”

“Yeah, his woman. She was run over by a semi.”

“Run over!” I was shocked.

“She was a wolf at the time. Semi got her, just missed him. He was really depressed afterward. Blamed himself for it. So, him biting you, well, that might be something that maybe Frank did to try and find himself someone else. He marked you for himself. Tonight, if he'd been out there, he would have called to you. And you would have come to him just like you did to me.”

“Okay, I'm sick of you people biting and marking me for future lays or whatever you have in mind.” Holding the blanket around myself, I leapt to my feet, and he jumped up too.

“What are you talking about? I didn't bite you.”

I strode off, but it was hard to storm out of the room naked with only a ratty blanket around myself. I had nowhere to go, so I stood with my back to him, arms crossed around the blanket. “I was bitten when I was ten by a rogue master vampire.”

Teaser Tuesday ~ More from Vampire's Trill

This is Teaser Tuesday! If you joined me last Tuesday you know that I posted something from my next book, Vampire's Trill, which is coming out soon.

The object is to choose a random page and two lines from that page and post. I'm going to cheat and give you a little more from the end of a chapter.

The picture here is for mood.



Once I tore through the last obstacle to the outdoors, I pulled in wonderful scents. It lit my brain in such an exciting way, I wanted to explore it all. I wanted to experience everything I saw and smelled. I dove onto the cool grass and rolled around on my back, scratching it. Oh! How good and freeing this felt.

Then, I heard the lone plaintive call from a little distance beyond the open field and stopped my wiggling movements on the ground. It was a beautiful sound. Better than what I could make. High, sweet to my ears. I rolled over to listen, cocking my ears.

I sniffed the air toward that sound.

Male. Oooh, goodie.