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The apocalypse has begun.
Death stalks Sara and not in a metaphorical way. More like the literal, move out of your house and get a restraining order kind of way. When Sara reveals she has the ability to see him, he becomes fascinated. Unfortunately, Death shows his interest by trying to kill her. Repeatedly. Each failed attempt only increases his enthusiasm.
Sara soon realizes the news reports of werewolves, zombies, and plagues can mean only one thing: The Heavenly Seals in the Book of Revelations have been broken.
All this happens just when her wasteland of a love life seems to be showing signs of improving. Matt, the cute cop who responds to her 911 calls, gives her fantasies of a happy future. Maybe one that involves handcuffs. Before she can build a new life, she has to survive Death’s infatuation and stop him from unleashing the End of Days, Biblical style.
Adult language, some violence, and gore.
Excerpt:
~~~***~~~
Chapter ONE
And
the Lamb Broke the Fourth Seal
~~~***~~~
Some people thought the world would
end in a zombie apocalypse. They would swear their friend’s
sister’s boyfriend was eaten by a zombie. It would take more than
some fifteen-year-old’s shaky phone video to convince me. Don’t
even get me started on vampires or werewolves causing the End of
Days. Just because there was a meme or news story on some website
didn’t mean it was real.
It might look like a duck and quack
like a duck but I wouldn't call it Daffy. Take, for example, the
vampire who currently sat outside my door and was begging me to
invite him inside. I could have looked at him and thought, Huh,
my cheating husband was
turned into a vampire tonight. Vampires have taken over the world.
It’s the End of Days.
Except he looked like a man playing
a vampire. David’s razor-sharp teeth and the blood on his face
looked real enough, but he was the embodiment of a bad actor with
poor timing. His director—the dude in the yard who wore what looked
like a black dress and a smirk on his face—sat astride a pale
horse. At first glance, you’d think he was cosplaying Death, but
something told me he was the real deal. The monsters on the news were
merely the opening act for that guy.
"Please, baby, I need you to
let me in," David said. His whiny voice grated on my nerves, but
it was a good move on his part. I mean, it might have worked on me
before. I would have welcomed the thought of eternity with the man I
loved, my soulmate. We could have gone off into the night, biting and
loving, la la la. But
the douche-viper had left his cellphone at home when he went off
tonight to his 'business meeting.' Mandi, a blonde he worked with,
had texted him to say she couldn’t make it to dinner, but she would
meet him at the hotel later. *Kiss
kiss*
A bottle of wine, a whole lot of
tears, and a couple of hours later, he’d shown up at our door. One
glance at his current dead—or rather, undead—state, and the fact
that he looked and smelled like he had been dumpster diving in his
favorite power suit, led me to believe he hadn’t made it to the
hotel for their rendezvous. At least the garbage covered up the smell
of smoke permanently ingrained in the Armani Exchange suit he’d
bought at a fire sale shortly after the store literally had caught on
fire and burned half their stock.
"Sara, we can be together,
forever, young and beautiful lovers eternal."
Really?
His promise to be faithful to me hadn’t even lasted ten years of
marriage, and he was talking about eternity?
"Screw you, your blonde tramp
on the side, your little costume-wearing friend back there, and the
sickly-ass horse he rode in on."
Not accustomed to my standing up for
myself, David stood there with his mouth open. Throughout our
marriage, I'd sacrificed everything to make him happy. I’d worked
overtime at a job I hated to maintain the lifestyle he wanted, sucked
up to our snooty neighbors because he thought I needed to make more
of an effort to fit in with them, and I’d even moved away from my
only friends to this town so he could get the job he had wanted.
This was what I got in return. I was
distracted with disgust at myself for letting people walk all over me
all my life, so I'd missed when the Horseman went from looking at me
with a startled expression at the end of my driveway to standing
right in front of my door. I yelped and stumbled back when I noticed
him.
"You can see me?" From a
distance, I thought he could have been related to me, with the same
dark-brown hair and eyes and Asian flattened nose, but up close, I
realized there was nothing average about this Rider. We shared some
features, but while my eyes were brown with flecks of gold, his were
one solid color: black. If eyes were a window to his soul, he must
not have had one. This guy oozed darkness.
I remember you.
Where the hell did that thought come from?
"Hello?" I said. "Not
blind here. Yes, I can see you."
"That is not possible. No
mortal can see past my veil."
He was handsome and self-assured,
usually an attractive quality in a man, but looking at him made my
knees weak, and not in the good way.
"Veil’s lifted, buddy.
Rose-colored goggles disappeared a few hours ago with a text message.
Now get the hell out of here and take your little puppet with you."
His astonishment at my being able to
see him was the perfect opportunity to slam the door in their faces.
I started to close the door, but stopped out of reflex when my
husband tried to stick his hand in to stop me. His fingers were
frozen at the threshold. He looked like a mime trapped by an
invisible wall.
Huh.
Guess the CDC had been right when they had said the monsters hunted
at night and couldn’t come in unless invited. I wasn’t really
sure why invitations would matter to a monster, but seeing David's
current state added a ring of truth to the government’s claims they
were actually humans on some new illegal drug, hallucinating and
becoming violent when they thought they had been turned into zombies,
vampires, werewolves… and I think the latest was a Yeti. They
called the drug Draino, because when you used it, you and everything
around you got sucked down the drain.
Most of mainstream America bought
into the government’s spin of a new drug on the scene, but I wasn’t
fooled. Knowing this didn’t really help me with the problem on my
doorstep though.
"Sara, baby, please? Let me in.
I love you. Nothing happened, I swear. She didn’t mean anything to
me."
He was pathetic in his rumpled,
blood-stained suit. He still wore that stupid skinny tie that made
him look like a wanna-be hipster. The fingernail scratches on his
cheek hadn't been there when he'd left the house. God, there was even
lipstick on his collar. Even as a vampire the bastard couldn’t put
me first. He’d already fed off someone else. I hoped it was the
bitch he’d gone off to meet.
"Fuck you, you unfaithful
prick. I bent over backward to make you happy. No more! At least I
won’t have to file for divorce since you’re all vamped out. I’ll
save a shitload of money in lawyer’s fees."
A pink VW Bug with daisy hubcaps
pulled into my driveway. There were flowers and butterfly stickers
all over the hood and a familiar blonde behind the wheel. She damned
near hit the horse, who looked to be on his last legs anyway.
She screamed before she unfolded her
long, thin legs out of the car. "I knew it. You stood me up for
her. How could you do this to me?" I couldn’t decide if her
voice was more a whine or wail. Either way, she didn’t sound happy.
Not that I really cared. She had been screwing my husband, after all.
Who knew a man’s taste could vary
so much? We were polar opposites. She was tall, thin and could only
be described as cute. Almost perky. I’d hated her from the first
day I’d met her, ten years ago in his office.
I saw the moment when the Pale Rider
realized what was happening. He looked at her, then at David, and
finally to me. "Three women? He must have been quite the
Lothario."
Lothario, cheating bastard.
To-may-to, to-mah-to.
Wait, did he say three?
I shoved that tidbit to the back of my mind.
"He loves me. We’re
soulmates. He’s leaving you. We’re going to be together for
eternity, bitch." Mandi-with-an-i still hadn’t figured out
something was amiss in her little fairytale life. This might be fun
to watch.
The Rider turned from me and looked
at my husband. It was as though the Horseman reached out and gave him
a little shove. David turned to Mandi, and I realized I had to warn
the little ditz.
"Mandi, get back in your car
and drive away. He’s a vampire. He’ll hurt you."
She actually stuck a hand in the air
and shook her head back and forth before she said, "Talk to the
hand, 'cause the head ain’t listening. He told me about you. You’re
the only vampire here. You’re always nagging him and sucking the
life from him and spending his money. He would be successful if it
wasn’t for you ruining his life. The only one who sucks around here
is you."
My mouth opened, but no words could
form. Me? Sucking the life from him? Was she kidding? My salary paid
the bills. His job was all commission and he hardly made a sale
throughout our relationship. If it hadn't been for my working my ass
off to pay the mortgage, he wouldn’t have been able to go to school
and get that insurance sales job where he had met the little home
wrecker.
So, yeah, I would like to think it
was shock and hurt that stopped me from warning her again, but I have
to admit a small part of me wanted that bitch to get what she really
wanted: Him. He walked over to her… no wait… yuck, he glided,
like some cheesy vampire in a B movie.
She squeaked, "Baby!"
before she threw her arms wide open for him, but then she jerked away
in horror when she saw his fangs.
I didn’t want to save the
traitorous bitch who’d slept with my husband. Sure, I felt bad for
her, just not bad enough to risk my neck, no pun intended. I mean, I
had tried to warn her about him. She was the one committing adultery
with David.
But did she deserve to die for her
sins? My conscience nagged at me.
David yanked her to him. Her arms
flailed uselessly. She screamed but was unable to stop him. He sank
his teeth into her neck.
Damn it.
Her little whimpers were too much. I had to do something.
I looked around for a weapon, and my
eyes settled on the iron cross on the wall. We had bought it more as
an art piece than for religious reasons; it went really well with the
rustic decor of the room. I ripped it off the wall and held it up in
front of me before I stepped out the door.
"Get off her, asshole."
I tried to keep from turning my back
on the Horseman who hadn’t strayed far from my door, but I needed
to get closer to save the little idiot. To my surprise, when I turned
the cross in his direction, the Horseman disappeared and ended up
back on his horse.
I swung the cross back toward my
husband, and he looked up and hissed at me. The man was a walking,
breathing—okay, not so much any more—punchline. Mandi’s body
made a surprisingly loud thud on the driveway for such a little
thing. Silicone must be heavier than I thought. Her whimpering let me
know she was still alive.
"Mandi, get up. Put your shirt
on your neck and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Do it, now."
Kneeling down, I reached out for
Mandi with my left hand while the right held the cross up high. I
didn’t dare take my eyes off my husband or the Horseman, who now
looked almost bored at the end of my driveway. Hopefully, she had
listened to me and wasn’t bleeding out all over the place.
Miraculously, she was still alive
and able to stand. She clung to my hand like we were besties out for
a day of shopping, and we backed toward the house.
"I thought he loved me,"
Mandi said with a pathetic whimper.
"Yeah, join the club. Now shut
the hell up and get into the house." I yanked her hand, and we
stumbled up the steps.
"You can’t escape me. I will
be back for you. You are mine. Our love is eternal." The man
tried, he really did try to be threatening, but in his disheveled,
stinky and clichéd shape, he just wasn’t.
"You talking to me or to her?
‘Cause you know, your eternal love seems to be going around."
I was so on with the snappy comebacks tonight. Usually the snarky
replies came to me hours too late. I felt for the doorknob behind me
and shoved Mandi through the door, nearly tripping over her in my
haste to get inside.
Mandi yelled, "You used me, you
bastard. I hate you! Stay the hell away from me. I hope the sun comes
up and fries you in your sleep."
Whoa. Mandi had a mean streak. Who
knew the little blonde had it in her?
"No need to wait for the sun.
He’s useless to me since neither of you would succumb to him. One
out of three." He ruefully shook his head. "Usually I
collect all, but I’ll see you again. Time to face Hades, David."
The horse reared and a burst of flame flew from the Horseman’s hand
toward my now screaming husband.
He was on fire. Song lyrics popped
into my head, one of those old disco songs from the seventies: burn
that mother down. That
was all I could think while I watched the unfaithful bastard I had
married turn to ash.
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