Morning of the Night

I thought I'd share a bit of my WIP.  Do you like the title?  It's a sequel to Sinners' Opera, which will be released by Double Dragon Publishing next year.  My current release from DDP is available at:  http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-978-4   I don't have a cover for Sinners' Opera yet, so I'll share the cover for Gemini Rising.

Chapter 1

            In six months, the pain should have subsided.

Yet grief and sorrow still gnawed at her heart.

Isabeau navigated the darkness along the path to the log cabin.  Minutes ago in the lighted barn hall, the hands on the ceramic watch she’d bought on sale pointed to nine o’clock.  In her jewelry box at home were three reminders of a life lost—two diamond watches and a ceramic Tag Hauer sport.  Now, she never wore any of them.

By eight, her mother would have would have tucked Eroica into bed.  She’d stayed too long with her horse, grooming and petting the white stallion.   On her twelfth birthday, a van company delivered a surprise.  The driver told them her father had won a contest, the prize a beautiful Andalusian horse.  The first of many gifts—most cloaked in a veil of deceit—from a godfather kept secret from Isabeau arrived.  To her jumping up and down delight.  In her wildest fantasies, she’d never expected to own such an expensive horse.

The five-acre property had a two-acre paddock.  For a month, Isabeau fretted that Bianco slept outside.  A barn was hastily erected.  The sandy area built for her riding had weathered the years.  Tonight, with moonlight sparkling silvery on the white arena, her ride with Bianco had been magical.   In those minutes in the saddle, she had melded, body and spirit, with her horse.

When she reached the cabin, Isabeau would steal into the room where she’d spent her childhood to kiss her own daughter’s soft cheek.

A month ago on October 11^th, a miracle was born.  Isabeau intended to breast fed her little Libra, but the baby had bitten her nipple, drawing blood.    Knowing who—what—Eroica’s father was, Isabeau decided to bottle feed a vampire’s daughter.  As Lucien St. Albans had predicted, Eroica looked like a female reproduction of her father.  She had his silken blonde hair, his captivating blue eyes.  Isabeau had rejected all Morgan’s calls, hadn’t opened his emails or the snail mail letters that arrived once a week.  He was trying to seduce his way back into her life.  If she’d heard his lilting voice on the phone or read the same cadence in the emails, she’d have lost her battle against him.

But God it hurt.

The swish and sway of the pines in the November chill drove home to her that tomorrow she’d drive back to Charleston.  She and Eroica would be alone in her echoing Orange Street house.  Her friend Kirsty would babysit any evening, but, except for the hours spent at LifeGen earning their living, she hated to be separated from her miraculous daughter.   Isabeau refused to touch the small fortune Morgan sent as child support.  That money belonged to Eroica and would, one day, pay college tuition and settle her comfortably for life.  She didn’t dress her daughter at the expensive children’s boutiques as her father would have done, but shopped at sensible department stores.

Isabeau’s life centered on Eroica—and the genetic puzzle of vampire DNA.  She longed for the state-of-the art lab behind Rover House, abandoned now for months.  In fact, she yearned for the idyllic life she’d shared with Morgan.  She’d been a princess, living in a fairytale spun by her beautiful lover.  But this was the existence Fate had dealt her—with help from her own hands.  Oh, but tonight she wished he were here to whisper promises—whisper madness—in her ear.

A shadow materialized from the trees.  Her heart chugged over a beat of fear.  She halted in her tracks, a shiver rippling the hair at her nape.  Who—what—lurked on the path ahead?  Her mother wouldn’t leave the sleeping baby.   Strangers didn’t notice the dirt and gravel drive to the cabin.  She would have called, “Who’s there?” but her dry throat tightened.

 

For a free read Vampyre Hunt, visit my web site at:  http://www.lindanightingale.com