No Guns, No Claws, Just a Man and a Woman

The following is an excerpt from my recently released novel, World at War: Revelation. The novel isn't all about guns and bombs, fangs and claws. It's also about a man and a woman vampire. It's my favorite part. You can buy Revelation at the Amazon Kindle store. Read on. 

Mike Hudson danced that dance with the mysterious girl. And they danced another, and another, and yet another. He savored her heat, scent, and feel. They danced slowly, her head on his chest, her breath warm against his shoulder. Above them swirled clouds of cigarette smoke, around them music, and on their feet twisted rainbows of light. Not the fairy tale kind, although Hudson believed in fairies and their tales, but the kind made by semi-cheap colored lights (a couple were out, Hudson noticed) reflecting off the spinning mirrored ball above their heads. The song, the fourth since he had met the dark-haired raven with the thin scar, ended. For another breath he held her and, to his surprise, she didn’t pull away. Girls like this always pulled away from guys like him, if not at first, then sometime soon thereafter. Girls like this went for the bad boys, the guys who smoked cigarettes, skipped class, and were expelled from school. Not that Hudson was Dudley Dooright. In fact he was quite the rebel, but really a rebel without a clue. He lacked the will to cultivate the bad-boy image. He was just Hudson, Mike Hudson, rebel without a clue, soldier.  But here she was, one breath, maybe two, and still warm against his chest.

He felt a hand on his arm. It was his Madonna look-a-like. The girl that any other night he would have killed to take home, but tonight…well tonight was a once in a young-life-time thing. He wasn’t one to hurt, but neither was he one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Either way, it wouldn’t matter. Madonna was a class act.

“I’m going to be going, Mike,” she said with a wink. She gave the woman a quick smile, and then looked back at Hudson. “It was great meeting you.” She turned, took a step, then turned back to him. “Thanks for the dance,” she smiled.

He nodded.

Ten minutes later he left with the mysterious raven-haired, thin scared beauty.

The city lights flashed through the windows of the ’67 Volkswagen as they drove. He bought the Beetle shortly after he arrived in Germany. No one brought their car from the States, the import tax was too high. It was much cheaper to buy a used junker, maybe even a little better than a junker, and drive it for the tour of duty, sell it, and move on. They drove in silence, and he stole as many glances as he could.

She was perfect... full, but not ridiculous, lips, a small, slightly upturned, nose, the thin, white scar on her jaw. The hair was so black that it was almost blue, and the lights flashed off it as if it were glass. She was fit, obviously athletic, but eerily pale. Does she have a strange terminal disease, he wondered. Maybe that was why she came on to him.

“No,” she whispered, her voice a sensuous alto. 

At first he thought he imagined the word. Then she turned her face toward him, waiting for an answer.

Lights flashed through the Volkswagen’s interior, illuminating the threadbare seat covers, playing across her beautiful face. “Pardon?” he queried.

“No,” she said. “I don’t have a terminal disease.”

Red light.

He braked to a stop. Cars cruised through the intersection. Pedestrians crossed, headed in the same direction.

“Did…did, I say that”

She smiled, never looking more alluring. “No, you didn’t” He stared for a moment longer.

“You’re green.”

“What?”

She kept smiling, “Your light is green.”

“Oh,” he shook himself, pressed the accelerator, didn’t give enough clutch, and the Volkswagen bucked. She laughed, perhaps the sexiest sound he had ever heard.

“You, you can read minds,” he stammered. She shrugged. “I could tell what you were thinking.” Another red light… they were out of sync with the lights now. He looked at her, she was still smiling.

The change of the light didn’t catch him by surprise this time. He accelerated smoothly, his heart racing to match the engine, and then they were at Hudson’s place, a seedy apartment on the west side of Birghoff.

Up the dimly lit stairs to the dimly lit hall. He slid the key in the lock. It clicked satisfyingly. She was quiet, but not a timid quiet. He could sense that there was nothing timid about her. Maybe dangerous, maybe tumultuous, but timid? He didn’t think so.

The bolt slid back, he reached around the jamb, patted the wall until he felt the light switch and then flipped it. Up? Down? He never knew which way to flip the toggle, he just knew it was the opposite of whichever way it rested. The overhead was none to bright, but that was okay, he didn’t like overhead lights, especially not glaring overhead lights. Glaring overheads bathed rooms in a stark reality that was misleading.  He stepped back, and swept his arm toward the living room. “After you. Ma’am.”

He was subtly ashamed of the apartment, but maybe not really. Privates weren’t rich; it was the best that he could do. She walked in, turning her head to take it in. He studied her eyes, looking for that Oh my, this isn’t what I expected look, but saw none of it. In fact, he saw the corners of her mouth bend into a small smile. She nodded, and added a single word, “Nice.” He nodded, looking first around the slightly disheveled room, and then again at her. Searching her face for a trace of sarcasm. There was none. She walked to the far end of the room.

Against the far wall was his prized possession, the Kenwood stereo. Speakers two feet tall, a 60-watt amp, turntable, cassette player, and beside it a rack of cassette tapes that would have done a music station proud. He dumped most of his check into cassette tapes, LPs, and books. Music and books were his loves…we’ll that and games. Some might call him a geek, he called himself eclectic. Maybe even a renaissance man. There was a couch on the other end of the room. Above it a small chiming wall clock. He loved the chimes, they calmed him, connected him with a past full of chiming clocks. To the right of the couch stood a lamp that he bought at the PX and a small end table. It was there he sat in the morning, the early morning, his favorite time of the day. Sipping coffee…always strong… he liked his coffee strong, and the beer bitter. And his women? He didn’t know. There wasn’t a certain type. Not necessarily blonde or brunette or anything between. It was a feel he got, and that feel came off this woman in waves.

She noticed the tapes, studied them. “Music is important to you.” He wasn’t sure if it was a question or not. He took it as a statement. “Yeah, it is.” He paused a moment. “And you?”  She nodded, “Yes, me too.” Her back was too him as she read the tapes and he put his hands on her shoulders, “May I take your coat?”

She laughed. He would have slain a dragon for that laugh, throaty, pure, and…and what? Perhaps knowing? Yes, as if she knew something he didn’t. Although he didn’t care what was funny, as long as something was, as long as something gave her cause to laugh, but he felt he should ask.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just not much of a coat. Just a hooded sweatshirt.” Sure, you can take it off.” Odd. Her accent was odd, not like the German accents that he normally heard. It was, however, more than her accent. It was the order her words flowed. The use of hooded sweatshirt instead of hoodie. He pealed back the thick gray fabric. What girl wore a gray hoodie to a bar? Granted, it wasn’t that nice of a bar, but still, it wasn’t like it was a dive. Her smell drifted to his nose from her t-shirted shoulders. She put her arms back, hands pointed to the floor, making it easy for him to peal it down her arms. Just past the elbows, she turned. Surprised, he dropped his hands from the peeling, and she clasped them in hers. She looked at him, looked at him hard, her eyes piercing, defiant, yet with a hint of question. She looked for no more than a second, and then her lips met his.

If you like my writing, you might want to check out my alternate-history-military adventure-with-paranormal-elements novel, World at War: Revelation. If you really, really like my writing you might want to help me come up with a less cumbersome name for the genre. If you do, leave it in the comments.