Bite
the Bullet
Vampire
Cohorts
Book
One
Angela
Louise McGurk
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Angela Louise McGurk
Date of Publication: 12 December 2015
ISBN: 9781310584299
ASIN: B018EK7082
Number of pages: 324
Word Count: 116,000
Cover Artist: Angela Louise McGurk
Book
Description:
Let me tell you what it was to be made vampire. It
wasn’t birth. Birth implies pushing, tearing forth into the light, screaming.
Becoming immortal was to be pulled, to be tugged irrevocably into darkness, and
it was silent.
I should have fought, any person should fight, but
my mind had been filled with a hazy calm which forbade any battle. Struggling
had been the last thing on my mind, even when my bus arrived and my assailant
waved it on, dismissing my last hope of escape.
Yet my lack of rebellion was far from the most
unsettling part of the stranger’s control over me. The truth was that the man
could’ve asked anything of me and I would’ve complied, but he didn’t need to
vocalise his request. I knew instinctively what he wanted. I sighed and
surrendered myself as he held me against his front in a lover’s embrace,
tipping my head and willingly giving him access to my throat.
“One day you’ll understand,” he whispered, his tone
subdued. I’ve often wondered since if he was really talking to me. Perhaps he’d
been talking to himself, persuading himself that one day I’d know and accept
his reasons for what he’d planned for me.
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Because when my fangs came
in, my world altered irrevocably. It became somewhere dark, somewhere filled
with murder and blood, where magic was sinister and where even my closest ally
seemed more like an enemy... Even if he did make my heart skip a beat.
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Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
THE CHOICE I NEVER HAD
“Shall we begin like David Copperfield? ‘I am
born... I grew up.’ Or shall we begin when I was born to darkness, as I call
it? That's really where we should start, don't you think?”
-Louis de Pointe du Lac,
Interview with the Vampire
1994, (film adaptation)
PERHAPS Louis de Pointe du Lac was correct, perhaps
that’s where my story should begin too. The words, taken from a film which I’d
seen many times, imply that my life before was irrelevant. They infer that it
was a fleeting dream before my re-birth as something ‘other’. That’s what they
told me too, the people who stripped away my humanity. The past was irrelevant
and my future, my immediate future, would be lived at another’s pleasure.
I’m bound now, to my Sire.
But that wasn’t the beginning either. Let me tell
you what it was to be made vampire. It wasn’t birth. Birth implies pushing,
tearing forth into the light, screaming. Becoming immortal was to be pulled, to
be tugged irrevocably into darkness, and it was silent.
That’s what it is to be vampire; dark and silent. We
are the shadows, the ones you catch out of the corner of your eye only to have
them vanish when you turn to look. We are that darker shade in the blackness of
the night.
The cool breeze that touches your throat on a frosty
evening? That airy caress which causes you to shiver and wrap your scarf more
securely around your neck? That’s us too, when we’ve come close enough to bite
but decided you aren’t the flavour of the night. Not the present night, at
least.
You should fear each inexplicable shiver. Don’t
laugh and say, “Someone’s just walked over my grave”. Turn immediately and lash
out. Fight, even if you think you’re alone. God knows I wish I’d done so. It
wouldn’t have stopped him. Nothing would have stopped him, but I could’ve been
proud of myself. Instead, I’m ashamed.
I’m ashamed because I felt him there. I felt his
towering body press against my back as I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the
last ride home. His lips brushed my neck, his touch several degrees cooler than
human, and inexplicably, I’d frozen. I was immobilised, without even the urge
to fight.
It was an illogical, dangerous, reaction.
I should have fought, any person should fight, but
my mind had been filled with a hazy calm which forbade any battle. Struggling
had been the last thing on my mind, even when my bus arrived and my assailant
waved it on, dismissing my last hope of escape.
Yet my lack of rebellion was far from the most
unsettling part of the stranger’s control over me. The truth was that the man
could’ve asked anything of me and I would’ve complied, but he didn’t need to
vocalise his request. I knew instinctively what he wanted. I sighed and
surrendered myself as he held me against his front in a lover’s embrace, tipping
my head and willingly giving him access to my throat.
“One day you’ll understand,” he whispered, his tone
subdued, before he licked my skin and tasted me for the first time.
The strange mix of local Geordie and lilting Irish
in his accent was seductive, but his tone was tinged with uncertainty. I’ve
often wondered since if he was really talking to me. Perhaps he’d been talking
to himself, persuading himself that one day I’d know and accept his reasons for
what he’d planned for me. At the time, my mind wasn’t clear enough to dwell on
the strangeness of his claim.
His fangs broke the flesh of my throat with a soft
pop. There was a second of fiery pain before the cold, the numbness, seeped
through me. The chill began where his mouth worked, sucking hungrily at the
wound he’d created. My arms became heavy and my legs grew weaker until he, the
faceless, nameless creature behind me, had to support my weight. Even then he
didn’t stop, and as he pulled my lifeblood from my body a strange tugging
sensation bloomed inside me, becoming stronger with each swallow.
It started at my core, in some deep, primal part of
me which had nothing to do with rational thought or fickle emotion. I felt it
in my belly, in my gut, a thread forming which bound me to the man at my back.
Through him, because of him, new parts of me awoke. There was a hunger like
nothing I’d ever felt, a burning need which increased as the pull became ever
more uncompromising. It didn’t hurt, not exactly, but I knew it would do if I
didn’t slake my thirst. I needed to be satisfied and he knew what to give me.
When he raised his wrist to my lips, I forced my
still human teeth into his flesh. He growled as I bit him roughly, the arm he
was using to support me tightening around my waist. There was nothing special
about his blood. Nothing obvious, at least. It was warm and coppery and what
remained of my rational thought demanded that I spit it out, that I rebel
against what the stranger was demanding of me.
I couldn’t.
As hot liquid spilled down my throat the pulling
sensation urged me to give in, to relinquish my humanity and set some wild
thing free. With each draw, his blood grew sweeter on my tongue. With each
needy suck my vision grew dimmer, darker, until there was nothing but unbroken
blackness and my willingness to let him tear everything I was from my body.
I knew that when I woke, I’d be different. Altered.
I’d be something which I’d never wanted to become. In that moment, I didn’t
care. It felt like a dream; a strange, ghastly, and yet exquisite fantasy. The
dream drew me down into the most primitive, inherent part of who I was, to a
place where I would both find and lose myself. I loved and loathed that place,
and I knew that when I left it, the ‘me’ I’d been would no longer exist.
Eventually, even that understanding abandoned me,
and when my comprehension failed, I floated into a nothingness that seemed as
though it would be eternal.
About
the Author:
Angela grew up in a small pit village in the county
of Northumberland in England. Currently she lives in an entirely different pit
village in the same county, along with her husband and their two children. She
qualified in Architectural Technology and has worked in construction, as well
as running her own wedding stationery and graphic design business. Currently
Angela's time is taken up with chasing a three year old, a four year old and a
kid in his thirties who really should know better. Between that she works,
writes and draws.
She is currently writing the final book in the
Vampire Cohort series while editing the first book in the series for
publication, as well as trying to store up the hundred other stories which are
always racing around in her mind! While a love of writing has always been part
of Angela's life, in recent years it has become a daily requirement. The
vampires, werewolves, gods and fae just won't leave her alone!
Among Angela's other loves are camping, kayaking,
the Lake District and history. She is a bit of a sci-fi geek, a bit of a Joss
Whedon fan, and has such an eclectic taste in music it would take pages to
write down what she likes.
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