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Jul 25, 2013

Cover Reveal - One Blood Series by Stavros

Love in Vein by Stavros
One Blood Series Book Two

Däm’Um: Song of the Vam Pŷr’s

"Love is a serious mental disease"
- Plato, 428 BC - 348 BC

When one’s life is long, the opportunity for sin is great. How great, then, are the sins of a vampire strung to the wheel of fate?

This is the driving question that consumes the continuing saga from the critically-acclaimed novel, Blood Junky. Beginning just mere hours after the last page of Blood Junky... Love in Vein is a tale of crime and consequence, of love and sacrifice, intricately woven with real historic events. Set amidst gorgeous southwestern landscapes, a seemingly innocuous journey unravels a tapestry of events that threatens to crush the lives of all who are stitched into fate’s delicate skein.

Linnet Pevensey is a two hundred and fifty-six-year-old Child of Evensong. Plagued by the memories of a horrific sandstorm in 1934 and the brutal murder of an entire farming village, she has been locked into returning to the scene of the crime every decade looking for redemption. With the wild, violent, and unpredictable century-old vampire Z joining Lin on her ritual, the two lost souls have wreaked havoc in their own right, killing and burning their feed sites, to cover their tracks, when Lin feels the pull to return to that northeastern corner of New Mexico.

Blurb con't, Giveaway, Excerpts, Books One & More


Now, as they barrel down the road to that hallowed site, pursued by two Arizona homicide detectives, Lin finds hope for her salvation in the form of a young medical student named Sarah Somers. But Sarah is more than just a stranger that Lin has met along the way. She is the spitting image of one of the slain villagers from the massacre that haunts the vampire.

Sarah’s uncanny resemblance to the murdered woman draws Lin into a deep emotional journey of karma and lies. She abandons her long time friend for the young woman, causing unsettling repercussions that pits her very soul against her dark vampiric nature.

Will Lin risk her sanity to save the girl that destiny has re-birthed for her, or will she become the monster that she has always feared?

   

Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Available Now
Publisher:
Crazy Duck Press (CDP)

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Love in Vein Purchase links:
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Love in Vein Excerpt:
Mukesh turned from the brash vixen for a moment as the biker dyke set a handful of items on the counter. Jared didn’t even have a chance to move the trashy tabloid from where it lay before Lin placed her purchase items down. Mukesh sighed. What’s wrong with these kids today, lazy and absent-minded, always dressing like a bunch of freaks?! Mukesh moved to ring up the hooligans himself, but caught the tall, lanky punk shifting off to his right from out of the corner of his eye.

“In the mood for a little snack, huh?” Jared asked the pale, imposing chick.

Z laughed aloud and it popped like thunder. Lin smirked at the irony of the boy’s innocent question and Mukesh turned to see the eyes of the cold-hearted killer heading straight at him.

“Yeah,” Lin uttered, “something like that.”

Suddenly, and quicker than the old man could ever imagine, the redheaded wench was on him and he was flying through the air. She merely placed a hand to his collar and he hit the coke machine with a bright painful crash, splurting beverage syrup and soda water all over the place. Jared turned in the direction of the loud noise. That was a mistake. He took his eyes off the maddening red veins that crisscrossed Lin’s peerless spectrum and she pushed him back using both hands. It felt like he’d been hit with a War-Hammer, +5 Damage Bonus! He landed on the floor with all the breath knocked out of his lungs.

Lin bounded over the checkout counter, landing squarely on the old tiled floor banging on the clerk’s eardrums. Straddling him like a graceful jockey over a downed racehorse, he tried to fight back by reaching up to push the alarm. The biker dyke stomped on his outstretched arm with her big-ass boots. It smarted.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the raven-haired harlot stroked with her tongue. “I don’t think so.”

“Please, take whatever you want and just go,” cried Mukesh trying to find some reasonable way out of this abrupt nightmare. “We don’t want any trouble.”

The old man’s cries filtered past Lin’s ears.

”We aim to do just that,” muttered Z to the frightened man. “Don’t we, baby?”

Lin smirked. Z was in her zone. Every second the tall, vivacious coquette took breaking the law reminded her of the days when she was robbin’ banks and shootin’ it up with her husband Simon Ray.

“Yeah,” Lin uttered coldly to the live thing twitching on the floor
under her. “Just that.”

Jared went white when he saw the tips of the gnarled fangs protruding from the gums of the smirking killer. He knew then that he was going to die. He quickly thought about what Rune Shadow 2.0 would do in a situation like this. He wondered who would feed his cat and it occurred to him that he wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. Allison was scheduled. It was written in blue ink, a cursive script. It should’ve been her! Before Jared could cry out, plead to God, or spit in the face of death the ashen woman was on top of him, tearing into his neck. He felt the harsh, unbelievable sting of his flesh being torn and couldn’t get over how the sounds of his own screaming eclipsed the maniacal snarling brutality of his fate.

Mukesh pleaded for his life as he witnessed Jared writhing in agony, being ripped apart. Such savage cruelty! He turned away and his bulging, brown eyes fell on the cold, uncaring thing on top of him as she pressed her lithe frame into his trembling flab. He couldn’t help Jared now. He couldn’t even help himself. He thought of Banhi and how his death was going to ruin their daughter’s wedding. He wondered why the bitch waited, why didn’t she attack him like her friend had done to Jared? Why is she toying with me?!

Z inhaled Mukesh’s fear as the store erupted all around her into a cacophony of beautiful music. She nestled her nose into the soft corner of the old man’s shoulder and licked perspiration and soda from his dark mocha skin. His jugular vein pulsed rapidly under her tongue, a tiny ticking, and Z’s ailing Jadaraa Soo jittered along her bones, dancing to the tune.

“I love Indian food,” she exhaled in a panting lust.

The Maestro descended into the hot flesh of the eastern man with an opened mouth. Hungry. She clasped her arms tightly around him and cracked three ribs, making his battered screams a constant treble. The vampiric veins that twisted into the shape of her fangs unwound, like a ballerina’s pirouette, and drove deeper into Mukesh’s flesh, breaking through muscle, wrapping itself around the carotid artery, squeezing, while Z suckled, draining the old man like sweet nectar from the stamen of a honeysuckle flower.

Lin pulled every last drop from the boy. His flesh shriveled, nestling closer to his deflated muscles and bones. It framed his deathly composure. The vampire rose off from him satiated on the vibrant liquid coursing through her Jadaraa Soo, and wiped the viscous fluid off her chin. The red stain of Jared’s blood on Lin’s pale white flesh slowly absorbed into the mesh fabric of her skin as the protruding vampiric tentacles writhed back into the shape of two extended canine teeth. The sentient blood parasite was efficient. No drop was wasted. The greedy veins under Lin’s perpetually decaying epidermis drew down the warm liquid; it consumed all – every drop, except those beaded on Lin’s silver locket. The vile, poisonous metal could keep those droplets. Lin’s Jadaraa Soo purred, emanating soft gyrations of pleasure to its host.
~~~~~~
Love in Vein Purchase links:
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Blood Junky by Stavros
One Blood Series Book One

Däm’Um: Song of the Vam Pŷr’s

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, than he also believes to be true." - Demosthenes

Blood Junky spans the globe, telling a unique tale of obsession from two distinct time periods in the life of the main character, Linnet Pevensey.

Blood Junky establishes new pathos and mythos for the immortal bloodsucker that present a more logical, and scientifically plausible, reality for how vampires could truly exist.

Linnet Pevensey is 256 years old, and she’s feeling every inch of it. Besieged by a wall of painful memories, longing for simpler times, she’s secluded herself off from the world. Lin’s roommate, Z, is unpredictable. A century-old vampire whose blood parasite has begun its last cycle, she is enthralled in every possible way to avoid the here and now. And fate is moving them both toward clandestine events.

Ryan Silva is a good looking, soulful songbird that has never had a problem getting any girl he’s ever wanted. That is…until he met Z. But getting the alluring punk’s attention is proving more difficult than he’d ever imagined. Seduced by desires to have Z feed from him, Ryan’s lines of reality blur, locking him on a downward spiral that threatens to destroy, not just his soul, but his very life if he does not stop stalking the vampires.

Dominique De’Paul, the freed blood slave of the ancient race, is unsure if she’ll be able to stop the tides of war and its inevitable genocide that have come knocking at her door. She can’t hide from the fact that her Children of Evensong are in peril! And the clock is running out! An emissary from the African warrior tribe has been dispatched to discern Mother Night’s threat to the human race, and it looks as if her darling Linnet will be sacrificed to the man’s passions in order to save her precious brood.

Weaving through the consciousness of time, between past and present, this uniquely intense journey of obsession & love travels the globe from modern day Los Angeles to the bygone eras of London, Tangiers, Africa, and the exotic lands of São Paulo, Brazil. Blood Junky is the first installment to an elaborate voyage of redemption, and the history of our world.

Blood Junky Purchase links:
CDP eShop    The Arti(s)fact Store    Book Browser    Amazon


Blood Junky Excerpt:
A corner of the pale stranger’s mouth slightly upturned toward the young man and Carmela continued her introduction, sounding the young man’s achievements, more for Linnet’s ear than for the fascination of her unique guest. Linnet was immediately struck by the beauty of the lush burgundy gown worn by the woman. It was cut to the French letter with a brocade intricately crafted to match the veil that fell from the elaborate headdress and crossed the woman’s eyes. Linnet felt the room tilt, absorbing into the splendid rose of the gown and the sublime nature of the woman’s bare shoulders. The subtle curve of her neck, the cut of her jawbone, and her powdered tan skin was captivating. The man at Linnet’s arm faded as the woman smiled, warmly, at her. Full and bright. The English lass became flush in the moment, and slowly the Contessa’s high-pitched bray took hold of her ears once again.

“…That is just what we were discussing earlier. It is an age of youth that compels us. More and more the young are advancing in areas traditionally occupied by more seasoned gentry. Take for example our beloved composer, which I was just informing Linnet priory…”

“The splendor of youth,” broke the soft, perfect voice of Madame De’Paul, “is not in one’s age, but in the timbre of one’s heart.” She placed a hand to the maid’s rosy cheek. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Linnet felt an intense draw upon her touch and leaned into the bowl of the woman’s palm, sensing the majestic weight of her eyes through the thin concealment. Butterflies lifted in her stomach and she clanged the bottom of the antique chalice against the stone railing of her balcony and exhaled, bitterly.

The Vam Pŷr was an idea clothed in flesh that pulsated a burning desire, addled Lin’s young mind in an endorphin rush that beat back her fear, canceled every cautionary warning and dived off the cliff to sprout wings like an angel and soar the heavens as a god. Lin knew it. Felt it with every beating pulse of her veiny parasite. I am corrupted by the civilized state. The manicured glitz of a million pinpricks of light danced within her hardened soul. She was spiraling down, a tattooed dragon curling into the void behind her breastplate.

Splat!

Lin yanked the locket’s chain tight against the back of her neck. Her parasite whined as it fled from the silver. That dark candle of the city in my memory was never lit. There is no afterglow from sex. Happily ever after never happens. The same putrid stenches of the streets below still invade my nostrils like Nazis, just like they did fifty years ago. That little girl who dreamed is dead, consumed in the fire of her passions. Everything. Every moment. It’s all a bitter, acid-tongued lie. Every act of life, living, screaming in this mess of noise, lost in the throttle and choke, to attain the slightest glimmer of some divine destiny for its self is but a foolhardy pursuit. There is no truth to the hopes one breeds within the mind. Everything is shit. Everything decays. It is the way of things. It’s how the universe is spun. Everything recycles into its own quiet death. Yet…

I’m still here...and Dominique will expect me to stop by for a visit.


The veiny blood parasite wove through Lin’s fine muscles, curled around porous bones, and slithered under her flesh as it caressed its host with a devoted embrace. Resilient, its tough interior hide was the pulley and the wheel of the symbiotic meat machine. Through its will the vampire drank again from the hand carved crystal, replenishing her death over and over. Lin’s death, like the universe, was constantly expanding. She, a willing victim in the everlasting freak show that had become her flimsy excuse of a life, trapped like a hostage in her own corium castle.

Lin let the antique locket go. It plummeted against the hard valley of her chest, knocking against the painted lock of her sealed, winged heart. Dark crimson veins spread out like a ripple under her inked skin, travelling deeper behind her breastplate, away from the vile silver. My own private albatross. An heirloom from a time of harsh, bitter winds and dirt so thick I could swim through the sky. It was a time of savage loss, and death so replete in its appetite that it still haunted the vampire to this day. The locket was the scale in her soul, tipping with the weight of her passions. The memory of her dark mistress burned just as brightly as the garish lit horizon of Los Angeles. It was the commencement of the journey, the crack in the impenetrable wall behind her eyes, the augury to behold.

Lin peered down and saw a lucky vagabond pick up her fallen, stale cigarettes. The universe is smiling down at him tonight. The taste of murder filled Lin’s mouth and she gagged on the dust-collected reflections, forcing them back down her gullet with another swallow of cold hemoglobin and days of yore.

Another decade has passed. It’s time.
~~~~~~
Blood Junky Purchase links:
CDP eShop    The Arti(s)fact Store    Book Browser    Amazon


Find Stavros at:
Twitter: @VisualLyricist
www.facebook.com/stavros.cockrell
www.BiteMeReallyHard.com
Stavros Amazon author page

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