Teaser Tuesday: Hey, What the Heck Happened To Dante?

As you may recall at the end of the second book, Vampire's Trill, Dante Badheart (the good-looking Native American shift-changer/telepath who was seeing Sabrina in first book, and then was ordered to stop seeing her from his vampire master) died. At the end of the second book Dante comes in his spirit form to Sabrina as she lie in a hospital bed recovering from injuries sustained from her dealings with the Woobines. He promised her he would find a way to come back to her. Remember? He admits that he loved her and never told her (the swine). He swore that if he ever found a way to physically be with her again he would do it. How romantic. Right?

Dante gave Sabrina a black stone with a little quartz running through it. She would wear it in the third novel Vampire Nocturne, as a way to remember him by. But during a moment while killing the Dreadfuls on Beyond the Black Viel, Sabrina realizes that the stone is doing something very strange whenever she kills a Dreadful.

Here is an excerpt from one of those odd moments.

Joha and Drachen stood on the either side of the doorway, I faced it dead-on.

“I'm going in alone. The both of you stay out here with Ali,” I warned them. I didn't need them to get in the way. They knew I was pretty handy with my dagger from what I'd done before dinner. I had the straps off my dagger in case we came across a Dreadful. The tally on my kills stood at three. I had a feeling it was about to go up by at least one notch.

I reached for the beaver-tail style door latch, feeling my heart rate accelerate. I'd confirmed that Dreadfuls had never touched or attacked anyone. No one knew how many there were, since they all looked alike. So far, Aljehambra was the only one who had seen one in her room out of the three.

Without stepping inside, I pushed the door open. The Dagger of Delphi didn't hesitate. It flew out of its sheath. Aljehambra and Joha made noisy intakes of air. The room, and what it contained, was backlit by the fireplace deep within the room. The dark, and very familiar shape, stood near the bed. The arms of the cloak flew up like the shredded wings of a huge bat when the dagger thunked into it. Then, the Dreadful collapsed and withered to the rug, looking like an overly large prune.

Behind me, Aljehambra made a sudden shriek and Joha comforted her. From the muffling of her voice, I knew she had probably ducked into the folds of his arms, hiding her face from the whole scene.

Drachen had moved to the other side of the doorway, next to me. He stood motionless while I checked over my shoulder. His long hair swayed slightly in some errant breeze. His aura felt like a warm inviting cloak; his scent exotic, like some funky incense and it was all I could do not to put my nose into his hair and indulge in it.

And then I would eat him whole.

His large, expressive eyes gazed into the room. Sudden desire skittered through me and I had to wonder if he was attempting to put a thrall on me. Or was it me being horny? I voted for the latter, since Drachen wasn't a fully developed vampire,yet. And I was unable to change into my alter ego—Weregirl—and so felt frustrated.

Silvery light beamed back to me, and caught me off guard. The essence from the creature was absorbed by Dante's Stone, like before. This time it hit me more forcefully, and I jerked with a little surprised gasp. Drachen noticed, but said nothing. The stone felt heavier suddenly; more dense. It was like carrying a gold nugget around my neck. The dagger returned and I snatched it out of the air, twirled it, and secured it. This earned an impressed look from Drachen.

“It's gone,” I said. I wasn't able to say the word kill in regard to these things, because I knew they weren't flesh and blood, but they had an essence. One the stone could absorb, and this gave me no small measure of dread. Why was the stone—the one Dante's ectoplasmic double had disappeared into—sucking in these creatures' essence? I hadn't really had a chance to think on this very deeply. But now, after it happened every time, I had the feeling that the stone was taking on energy for some later manifestation. Call me psychic. But I wondered what would the end result be. That was the scary question.

© 2012 Lorelei Bell

Guest Host: Sabrina Strong ~ Being a Were-Creature Really Sucks!

Hi, there everyone! Sabrina Strong in for Lorelei Bell who has just gone on vacation, and I'm so jealous. I haven't had a vacation in almost a year. But, I'm in here today to fill in for Lorelei. Just for today. Lorelei will be back at the helm soon.

Meanwhile, I was just wondering what I would post about today, instead of nasty old vampires.

Well, there's all sorts of supernatural creatures out there. And doggone it if I didn't run smack dab into one one night and it bit me!

You remember? I was bitten by a werewolf. You were probably wondering Will Sabrina turn into a werewolf? So, I'm here to tell you, I didn't turn into a werewolf totally. I became a were-creature. Half-human and half—the other thing.

You see, we didn't know if Nicolas had gotten all the werewolf venom out of me, or was in time getting to me after chasing off the werewolf that bit me. Well, turns out, I had to go through the transformation. Believe me, waking up in the middle of a corn field naked on a November morning is not my idea of fun. You can just about have this werewolf business! But my vision and olfactory senses are about 10 percent better than they were before. I'm also more aware of pheromones, auras, and the like. I can't see auras, I can just detect them better than before I was bitten. I feel them, sort of like you feel humidity, or the lack of it. I feel a strong aura when I meet up with one, and it either attracts me, or makes me wary. It's a good thing to know when you're in the presences of someone who is supernatural.

Of course, there are still those I don't get a read from. Being a touch clairvoyant, I'm able to know things about people who are around me. Also, places. I know exactly the lay out of a house or building before I even step into it. Sort of cool, I think. But the knowing things about people sometimes gets me into trouble. And also, it helps me find out things that I need to know to help others. So, it's sort of a double edged sword where the knowing kicks in without my even inviting it and I sometimes go into a trance and won't come out for a while. It tends to scare people who aren't prepared for it.

I'm unable to tell you too much about this, but I can tell you that Dante, the Native American shift-changer, was with me to protect me. But afterwards I met up with some more werewolves. It was a little touch and go, I can tell you that much. They were all waiting for me up at my house. Fortunately, Dante was with me—as I said—and so were the twins.

If you forgot who the twins are, they are Heath and Lief Sufferden from Liverpool, England, and both were turned into vampires in 1969. If you don't know this, then you didn't read the first book, Vampire Ascending. So, if you don't want to get lost, you'd better just go and buy a copy, or the eBook, because the second book is due to come out soon. Lorelei hasn't got a publishing date as yet, but it might be in a month or so. And you sure as heck don't' want to be left behind. I was just speaking to her last night, and she tells me she is finished with a 1st draft of the third book and is working on a first draft of the fourth. Trying to keep up with me, you see? I keep her sort of busy with all my many adventures with the vampires, werewolves, demons, new worlds, elves, and leprechauns and so forth.

Well, guess that's all I can think of saying to keep you all up to date. Oh, and there is a couple of first chapters, I believe here for the next book Vampire's Trill. I believe there are other chapters and excerpts from her next books as well. So, enjoy! I'll be hanging around, just in case Lorelei needs me. Happy weekend everyone!

 

Hello to my friends and fans . . . here are my updates:

It's been quite an up and down week--weather was up and down, definitely. Went from the 90's down to the 50's, had to drive in the most torrential rain I've ever driven in--along with lightning. Ah, the exciting moments of a bus driver. I had to apologise for not having towels, and welcomed them to Seattle as they got on rather soppy.

And my book's eBook sales went from the basement back up, and sort of hovered there for a few days, momentarily hitting an all-time high at # 31,940--for a brief few hours yesterday, and then dropped off. But that's expected. I just was a bit thrilled that a bunch of people are showing they are very interested in my book. If it gets to #1 I might just pass out, but it's a long ways from that.

As some of you may know, I've sent in my second book to my publisher. I got word back that they are aiming for a late summer release. I told him that's fine with me, but my fans wanted it last week.

Sorry. But you know, if it were one of your big house publishers, you'd all have to wait a full year for the hard-bound copy to come out, and then another year after that for the softbound. I'm guessing you won't mind to wait just a few more months to get your hands on an eBook of my next installment of Sabrina Strong's escapades with the vampires, werewolves and shape shifters.

I've been posting little tidbits to do with the next book, little hints, and helpful background into sibyls, and something called the Dagger of Delphi, over at Vampire Writer's Retreat and there's a bit on the mystic ring, which has something called the Seal of Solomon, and such on it. The above are coins with the Seal of Solomon on them. Sort of a little thing I thought I'd put up here today.

I'm, of course, working on the third book, so I'm only getting out once in a while to post and make comments. Any of the work I am doing on the third book can be viewed over at Lorelei's Writing Journal. I may have portions of chapters, or just notes on what I'm doing. This third book is going to be somewhat different, taking Sabrina into a different world almost right away. This is my "steampunk" novel with all the delicious hunks to drool over, and a couple of mysteries to solve, and danger. Plus, if you have an avad interest in Dracula, you'll be pleased to know I've got him in this as well. You'll want to see how I've done this, I'm sure.

I'm also happy, I want to say, for my longest friend here on blogspot, Heather McCorkle of Heather's Oddessey. She has made a tough, but I think, good decision, after much work, on her book, "Secret of Spruce Knoll" and at trying very, very hard to find an agent to take it, and having to come to a very tough decision over self-publishing, or going with a small publisher.

I have been a follower of Heather's for four years, now, and she mine, and we've been supportive of each other this whole while, and I wouldn't think of stopping my support of her. I think if there were a nice award for friendship, I would give it to her. But being blogging friends is enough. I wish her the best of luck!