Meeting a vampire for the first time. An excerpt from BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN

In my BIG CRIMSON horror trilogy, a young man named Kyle comes to the aide of teenage Jim when the latter is being brutally beaten by what appears to be a much bigger bully. When the attacker turns on Kyle, he kills him in self-defense, only to discover that he has stepped right into the middle of a feud between two vampires and that now he is a target of the blood drinkers as well. On the upside, he now has a new best friend in a creature of the night, and Jim vows to repay the debt he owes to a mortal.

The following is an excerpt the third book in my vampire horror trilogy, BIG CRIMSON 1:THERE’S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, where my main protagonist, Kyle, has his first encounter with the Undead late one evening after enjoying a beer on his back porch.

An excerpt from BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE’S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN:

With the knowledge that nothing could be accomplished before daylight and with sleep out of the question, Kyle got up and ambled back into the kitchen to fetch another beer. His head was in the refrigerator when there was a loud, metallic crash from the back-yard. Kyle instantly forgot about grabbing another bottle of Budweiser and rushed out the door, hitting the wall switch for the back-yard spot-light on the way. Outside, in the middle of a pool of light, Kyle found the prone figure of a young man—face down in the dirt—arms and legs splayed out, next to the overturned barbeque grill. It appeared as if he’d been running full tilt in the darkness and hadn’t seen the grill right in front of him.

The young man let out a groan and tried to push himself up from the dirt. “Hey, buddy, looks like you forgot to put your high beams on,” Kyle said, standing over the intruder. “And wherever you were going, this ain’t the short-cut to there.” He reached down to offer his hand and the young man gripped it tight. Kyle found himself staring into the face of a kid not more than seventeen with a gash ripped over a swollen right eye. Purplish colored blood seeped from the cut and flowed into a rivulet down the side of his face.

“Please, sir, have pity and let me come inside your house,” the kid pleaded. “I’m dead if Locke gets me.”

Kyle had no idea who Locke might be, but the rest he understood on instinct. The swollen eye told him everything, for in his short time at the Harlow Correctional Facility he’d seen more than a few inmates sporting identical wounds and knew they didn’t come from walking into a cell door. “Guess you pissed off the wrong one, dude,” Kyle said as he pulled the kid to his feet. He was quite sure he now understood why the young man was jumping over fences and racing through darkened back-yards. “Who the hell’s this Locke? Her father? Her boyfriend? You’re really screwed if it’s her husband.”

“Please tell me I can come inside, I need to hear you say the words.” Fear was painted on the kid’s face—the kind of fear Kyle had seen in the exercise yard when one of the fresh fish had gotten on the bad side of some muscle-bound Aryan Brotherhood wanna-be.

“Hell, yes, you can come inside my crib, if saying that’ll make you feel—”

His words were cut off by a low snarl, coming out of the darkness beyond the back fence; it instantly put Kyle in mind of the pit bulls his Uncle Roy raised in a pen out behind his house in the woods near Dawkins, West Virginia. No one in the family ever said anything out loud, but it was no secret that Kyle’s uncle made some good scratch selling the pit bulls to dog-fighting rings down in Tennessee.

But it was no dog he was hearing now, of that Kyle was sure. Whatever was making that noise on the other side of the board fence was way bigger than anything on four paws. In and out, a hoarse croaking wheezed in a bellows-like rhythm as one second fell to the next; and all the while, Kyle listened in fascination for something that might give away the identity of whomever or whatever was making such a racket. If I walked over there right now and peeked over the fence, would I be face to face with some Big Ugly that looks like the Predator’s cousin?

“Oh shit,” the kid whispered in a tone laden with dread. “He’s got my scent…again.”

The words were hardly off the kid’s tongue before a shadow flew out of the darkness, arcing through the night air so high it almost collided with the oak’s branches before coming down to earth only an arm’s reach in front of them both. In the glow from the spot-light, Kyle saw a man, six feet in height if he were an inch, a head ringed with black curls atop broad shoulders the length of a fence post. But what seized Kyle’s attention most was the tombstone white face, with two eyes like blazing hot coals, glaring out at them from sockets as deep as a Kentucky mineshaft.

Locke had caught up with his prey.

“Got you now, little cheating cockroach,” said a voice that ground like rusted gears, “and I’m going to stomp you till your guts ooze out.” A huge fist seized the kid and threw him to the ground as if he were a rag doll, then Locke proceeded to raise a huge booted foot and bring it down dead center on the small of the kid’s back. “Hurts good, don’t it,” he said. “And when I’m done, I’m going to take your head.” Beneath him, the kid whimpered like a beaten hound as Locke ground the boot heel into the boy’s spine.

Not wanting to see the kid pummeled to death right in front of him, Kyle reached down and snatched up the empty beer bottle lying at his feet, took a step back, and hurled it with all his strength point-blank at Locke’s head, striking him in the temple with such force that the bottle shattered into a hundred glistening brown pieces. Kyle had heard enough of his daddy’s barroom exploits to know that Locke should have been knocked flat by the impact of a 12-ounce glass bottle to the cranium.

But the results of his actions were far less than desired.

Instead of crumpling to the dirt, as expected, Locke merely brushed away a few stray bits of brown glass from his curls as though batting away a fly, then he turned his full attention on Kyle. “Well, you smell awfully ripe,” he said and stepped forward, taking his boot off the kid‘s back. When Locke opened his mouth and rasped, “And I’m awfully hungry,” two ravenously long fangs gleamed.

Get started on my horror trilogy at BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
https://bit.ly/47dOR5N

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv