A snippet

Sorry to be so late posting and not to have posted at all yesterday.  I’m not feeling really well, and I’m not sure what the problem is.  However, writing ANY nonfiction seemed entirely beyond my power.  Still does. 

You know I hate to flog my own stuff, so don’t think of it that way, but here to amuse you (I guess) is the opening of the short story Blood Ransom which has lent its title to the little anthology of short stories just brought out by Naked Reader (link on side bar, if you really must.)

This is one of those characters who’s been clammoring, and there’s an entire series with her, sort of hard edged procedurals in a world divided evenly between vampires and humans.

Blood Ransom

Sarah A. Hoyt

They stood at my door, in the last light of the dying day, side by side, looking like they would like to be invited in, but I wasn’t that stupid. One of them was taller than the other by a good two inches, but other than that, they might have been twins: identical dark hair, cut very short, identical broad shoulders and a suggestion of muscles beneath the identical black suits, identical mirrored sun glasses.

They also both smelled like Immortals: the suggestion of corruption beneath a floral scent and what – even if one knew they’d never been near a funeral parlor – one couldn’t help thinking of as embalmer’s fluid.

I saw myself in their sunglasses: a faded middle-aged woman with indifferently brown hair, indifferently brown eyes and a multitude of freckles, wearing my gardening jeans and t-shirt. I wiped dirt from my hands to the legs of the jeans and said, “How may I help you, gentlemen?”

It took them a moment to respond. Perhaps they’d gotten used to deference in that new world I’d left behind as surely as if I’d been a nun.

“Ms. Bretenes?” the tall one asked.

“Yes.” Surely it couldn’t be that hard to find me. There wasn’t a farm or even another house for two miles around. And suddenly that thought turned around on me. There were two immortals at my door, and there wasn’t a farm or a house for miles around. No human who would come to my aid.

My hands felt clammy with sweat and the pulse on the side of my neck beat frantically. All of which was stupid of me. After all, the immortals were now civilized, part of the established order. They would no more want more humans turned than any rational being wants his food supply diminished or turned into competitors. It hadn’t been just political correctness renaming them from vampires to immortals. They had become citizens and been, in a way, defanged.

“We…” The short one said and hesitated. “That is, may we come in?”

“No.”

They inclined their heads in unison. When the tall one looked up, he said, “We have come to ask your help.”

“My help?” I echoed, sounding half witted, which was a compromise. I held back the words Do you know who I am and how many of you I killed?