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LOOK FOR REVIEWERS FOR VAMPIRE CLONE - A GENRE-BENDING SCIENCE FICTION ACTION THRILLER
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VAMPIRE CLONE is a 487-page genre-bending, fast-moving screwball-comedy-cum-road-movie, a science-fiction horror story thriller starring a gorgeous half-alien vampire, V, and her dreamboat pal, molecular engineer Alex Wolf, as they head off, across a desolate dystopian America, in headlong lethal pursuit of a stunning Nobel Laureate billionaire, Sabrina Jacobs, who dared create, years ago, from V’s stolen DNA, a new half-alien lethal vampire, now a ravishing, totally insane 14-year-old Clone, imprisoned since birth in an armored glass cage.
“I am going to kill them both, Sabrina and the Clone,” V declares as she straddles and nuzzles and kisses Alex in a small sordid sweaty motel room.
Hurdling across the USA and then deep into the South Pacific, V stirs chaos everywhere she goes, gobbling up, Big Boy, a bloated Bible-thumping gangster pimp, saving from servitude Helen of Troy, a horribly mutilated stripper, evoking her trickster Avatar for some spectacular additional mischief, and staging, with Helen of Troy, a fabulous role-reversal, gender-bending feminist striptease, and, finally, in the South Pacific Sulu Sea, hunting down, in a steamy jungle, desperate, isolated half-naked blood-soaked Sabrina.
And, while V hunts Sabrina, and Sabrina hunts V, evil sadistic Russian oligarch, Dmitry Pavlov, stalks Sabrina and plans to inflict upon his dazzling former lover an unbelievable act of grotesque and hideous revenge.
ASIN: B08PQ19D32 FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED. $9.99 Kindle. Also in paperback. I am at gilbertreid.com
EXCERPT BELOW
CONTEXT V is a prisoner, gagged, manacled to a wall of steel, inside a cage of steel, inside the hold of a giant transport aircraft heading for the Virginia HQ of Andromeda Corporation whose CEO Sabrina Jacobs has sworn she will enslave and lobotomize V. Freddy is a 17-year-old guard. This is his first summer job. He has been left alone in the old of the aircraft with the prisoner because it is "impossible for her to escape."
Ten minutes after takeoff, Freddy’s curiosity got the better of him. He tried to catch the prisoner’s eye. He waved at her timidly.
She was gagged, of course, and couldn’t talk. But her eyes instantly focused.
She blinked, staring directly at him. Her eyes, pools of darkness, bored into his soul – and he heard her say – heard was the only word for it – he heard her say, inside his head: “I’m awfully sorry, Freddy, but I’m not feeling especially friendly right now.”
Awfully sorry …
He heard her speak – in his head.
And with a classy British accent, or so it seemed to Freddy.
Awfully sorry … Awfully sorry, Freddy …
Freddy … How the hell did she know his name?
That had been 15 minutes ago.
Doctor Toni Anderson, an Andromeda Corporation molecular biologist, came into the hold. She was a real pretty lady, cute, pert, friendly. She had short blond hair and the bluest eyes. She paced back and forth in front of the cage, staring at the woman. She turned to Freddy. “Amazing, isn’t it, really amazing!”
“Amazing?” Freddy stared. What was amazing?
“She’s not human. But look at her – so real, so beautiful, and so seemingly human!”
“Yeah, yeah, I see.” Freddy didn’t see at all. Beautiful, yeah; but not human – what did that mean? She sure looked human – 150% human!
A few minutes later, Tom Riley sauntered into the hold. Riley, in Freddy’s humble opinion, was a total jerk. He started teasing – no, torturing – the prisoner.
Riley was one of Andromeda Corp's so-called psychologists. But he was a bully, an asshole. He called Freddy “kid,” twisting the word into a taunting sneer. He told off one of the junior guys in a really nasty way – in front of everybody. How this idiot could be a psychologist – for Christ’s sake! Why he was allowed to work for a classy company like Andromeda Corp, Freddy for the life of him couldn’t figure out.
Riley scraped a metal cup along the bars of the cage. Clack, clack, clack! The idiot was taunting the woman.
“You’re an animal!”
“Just a total animal!”
“A she-devil, that’s what you are!”
“The beast, the beast!” Riley laughed and clattered the cup: clack, clack, clack …
Freddy blinked at the man. Was Riley drunk?
“Stop that, Tom!” Toni laid her hand on Riley’s arm.
Riley shook her off. “You’re a sniveling idiot, Toni. You’re a stupid dreamer. This beast will be a real happy camper when I give her an injection of this little silver bullet,” he said. He held up a needle. “Silver nitrate! Triple dose! She won’t even be able to whimper!”
“Cut it out, Tom!”
“It’s a thing, not a person!”
“Tom!”
“Did you ever work with the thing’s Clone? I mean, talk about animal! The Clone’s a pure raging animal, an obscenity, no mind at all.”
“That’s not true, Tom, the Clone was brilliant – it’s just that –”
“It’s a mindless savage beast, a killing machine, like its mother here! Hey, you! Hey Thing! You Thing, hey!” He smashed the cup against the bars.
WHAM!
“Come on, Tom, for Christ’s sake! She does have a mind, you know.”
“You are a softie, Toni. You’d cuddle a rattlesnake! When I give the little beastie a shot of this, she’ll be a rubber doll, unable to think her way out of a paper bag! Isn’t that right, Thing?”
“God damn it, Tom!”
Riley edged close to the cage. He grinned and held up the needle, squirting it to see that there were no air bubbles … and that was when …
That was when …
That was when … Freddy was really mad. Why the hell would even an asshole like Riley tease somebody who was helpless, particularly a woman?
… and that was when he saw a sort of blur in the cage … and …
That was when …
The “woman” turned into a sort of … reptile … a she-demon, a thing.
Christ!
“Hey!” Freddy dropped the electro Maxim magazine, gripped his pistol, and jumped out of his seat.
WHAM!
Metal flew everywhere.
The thing burst out of the manacles. It rushed straight at him, like a bolt of lightning, through – through – the bars of the cage. The bars disintegrated, pieces went flying. Bits careened like shrapnel, cutting chunks out of the fuselage.
Air whooshed out.
One of the bars, Freddy saw out of the corner of his eye, cut Doctor Anderson in half – Jesus! Her body went flying, in two pieces!
The thing twisted Tom Riley’s neck right around – it was a blur – Riley must have been dead before he knew what hit him.
Vampire Clone