Reboot

Howdy. Bet you thought I forgot about you, or that... bah, let's dispense with the clever quips...

Posting on the blog has been on my to do list for three weeks, but  so have many other things. The other things have won out, hence the lack of posts. The book is done. On the other hand, the book is never really done until I put it up for sale. I finished EDITE something like three months ago. I then revised the book, then sent it to my most excellent editor. Even after, or perhaps because of, Norm's excellent edit, I had some niggling doubts. 

Doubt number one. I didn't think I sufficiently foreshadowed the plot twist at the end of the book. Don't frantically page through the blog. The end isn't posted. In fact, the final fifty or so pages reside on my computer. Doubt number one solved itself in a flash of inspiration three weeks ago. The flash was vivid enough to propel me to mass for two weeks in a row.

Doubt number two concerned Katarina. I used her rape as the vehicle that carried her through the final third of the book, fueled her hatred, and gave meaning to her actions. I was never really comfortable with that. Norm wasn't comfortable either. And then I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Uncomfortable changed to repulsed. I decided to never type the word rape in my novels. Nevertheless, I needed something to really piss her off. That something came to me shortly after the first flash mentioned above. Part of the rewrite the inspiration dictated is provided below.

[Yes, Stephen is written into the book earlier. As the passage notes. He is like family to Ramzke and Katarina.]

By the way. There's language in this. The characters portrayed are adults, in stressful situations. Language happens.

Katarina

“Ah, so the bitch is back.” Vader laughed, but Katarina didn’t. Unlike the previous visit, she was not standing defiantly, but rather strapped to a wheelchair. The straps had not been built that could hold her; at least, not when she was fed, but now? Well, Dan had explained that the straps were there to prevent her from falling out of the chair. Vader sat behind his desk, unmasked. A black Glock rested on the  uncluttered polished surface in front of him.

“I take it you aren’t an Elton John fan?”

Katarina ignored the question. There was no point in wasting the energy, something of which she had very little left. Vampires might be damn near immortal, but they were not without needs. And the primary need was blood. The lack of it would not kill her, but it would reduce her to a catatonic state her kind called Cel Somn, or The Sleep, a state from which they could only be revived with fresh blood.

“What do you want?” she asked. The dark witch stood nearby, eyes gleaming, a shadow of a smile toying with the corners of her full lips. I wish I thought everything was so damn amusing, thought Katarina.

Vader tapped his chin with a finger, feigning thoughtfulness. “Let me see, what do I want?” His face brightened into a smile and he held the previously tapping finger aloft. “Ah, I remember. I want sex, money, and power.” He pursed his lips, seeming to think. “Seems like I ought to add drugs in there, doesn’t it?” He looked inquiringly at Katarina. She managed a shrug.

“But you know,” Vader continued, “I really don’t do drugs, don’t drink much either. In fact, I don’t have any vices. Nothing that someone could use against me.” He laughed.

“Nothing like this need you have for blood.”

Katarina kept her silence.

“Doesn’t really matter how bad-ass you are, does it?” Vader continued. “I keep you away from blood, and you’re as weak as Superman in a Kryptonite coffin.”

Vader nodded at Dan, who stood behind her, and the heavyset man departed through a door set into the wall to her left.

Vader walked from behind his desk, moving until he stood in front of her. She locked him with enraged eyes. That was what she wanted to do, but her body wasn’t cooperating. Her eyelids drooped, and her eyes wouldn’t focus.

“So sleepy,” Vader chuckled and he stroked her chin.

Katarina jerked her face away from his hand and he slapped her. Hard.

The blow flashed stars in front of her eyes. She batted her eyelids, attempting to stem the hot, involuntary tears. “Fuck you, human.”

Vader laughed. “But your kind tells me they have no desire for humans.”

The hand returned to her chin. A caress and then he cupped the chin in his hand, tilting her head back, forcing her eyes to his.

She spat, laughing as the spittle rolled down Vader’s cheek. The man’s eye’s flashed and he stood, wiping the spit on the sleeve of his shirt.

If only I had the energy, she thought. I’d grab this bastard and pull his heart out his ass. But she didn’t. She was too far-gone, she needed blood too badly.

Vader sat on the edge of his polished desk, and picked up the flat black Glock.

That’s okay, thought Katarina, if he wanted to end it she was all in. Four hundred years is plenty for any woman. But ending her life didn’t appear to be on his agenda. He spoke.

“I’m thinking your lack of blood makes you delusional. You seem to believe that you have some power, some,” he pursed his lips as if lost in thought, “say, in this relationship.”

As if cued by the words, Dan reentered the room. It took all of Katarina’s energy to turn her head toward the jailer. And what she saw caused her heart to both leap in joy and sink in sorrow. There, stumbling in front of Dan was Stephen—her one-time lover, her life-long friend, as close as her brother Ramzke. Stephan shuffled in front of the guard, his hands cuffed behind him, lengthy hair stringy and unkempt, his face ashen, eyes dull. In one hand Dan held his scattergun, pressed against Stephen’s back, in the other he carried a plastic milk jug, filled not with milk, but blood. Dan shoved Stephan to the desk with the barrel of the gun, and Stephan stood submissively still, weakly swaying, looking as if he would collapse. Without a word Dan placed the jug of blood on the gleaming wood.

Stephen croaked one word. “Kat…”

Vader whipped him viciously across the face with the pistol, and Stephen fell to his knees, a gash opened on his cheek. No blood oozed from the gash.  

Vader turned back to Kat, his face impassive. “As I was saying, before Stephen interrupted me. Here I have the only say. I control everything. I know everything. For example, I know this Stephen is family to you.”

He glanced at Stephan, and Katarina followed his eyes. The site tore at her. Proud, strong Stephen reduced to a bloodless slave. “Looks like he needs some blood, no?

Katarina answered with a glare, but she knew blood was exactly that was what Stephen needed.

Vader lifted the milk carton of blood. “Would you like me to help him out?”

Of course she wanted Vader to help him. She wanted to help him. To give blood to the man who so often had come to the aid of both her brother and herself. What she wanted was to rip Vader’s throat, spill his blood for Stephen, but her body would not let her. It was too weak.

“If I help this Stephen, save his miserable, blood-sucking life, will you help me? Will you kill for me?”

            Her eyes burned. She killed for no man. Did no man’s bidding. But if she did not do this man’s bidding, Stephen would die. She was sure of that. She swallowed her pride, the taste bitter in her mouth, and whispered her answer.

“Yes.”

            Vader’s face swam in front of her eyes. “Yes is what you say?”

She nodded, even that small motion requiring a herculean effort from her bloodless body.

The Glock’s retort was deafening. Stephen, rather the corpse that had been Stephen, slumped to the floor, what little blood he had oozing from the crater in the side of it’s skull.

No! Tears—she didn’t think she had tears in her—blurred her vision. No!

          Vader placed the barrel, still warm from the bullet’s passage, under her chin, lifting her face. “Let me be clear. You have no fucking say.”