Today I have a very pretty cover to show you for Nikki Jefford’s new book. She’s the author of Entangled that I read and reviewed on the blog recently, and I’m excited to find out what she’s got for us in this new vampire slayer book. Have a look, read the opening scene, and enter to win a great prize pack!
Opening scene
Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, vol. 1, Transfusion
The fight broke out as I was passing the cafeteria. The expressions on passing students morphed from resigned boredom to anticipated glee. Aggression filled our eardrums. We surged forward—the sound like a rip-tide pulling us in.
If I’d gone to fifth period I would have missed the smackdown altogether. Instead, I’d spent the last hour tucked behind the back aisles of the library with the juniors. My new friends were easy to get on with. They didn’t care about things like college and grades or extracurricular activities.
Only one thing interested them. They liked boys who bit.
My steps slowed as I heard the first antagonistic shout leave the cafeteria. I veered through the double doors and stalked behind the students who sprang forward for a closer look. The gymnasium-sized room was surrounded by windows, which did nothing to help North High’s freeze factor. By all accounts, I should have been shivering. I’d left the house in a pleated miniskirt—much to my mother’s horror—not even bothering to mask the white ghost flesh that were my legs.
Every student in the area stopped what they were doing and gathered around the two boys whose taunts had turned to punching. The taller one got the shorter guy into a headlock and pounded his face.
I didn’t recognize either student. They were just two more nameless hooligans going about the motions, which at the moment involved swinging fists.
“Get him, Jason!” students cheered. “Harder. Knock that pansy to the ground.”
A month earlier, I would have walked in the opposite direction instead of pushing my way closer until I was at the front of the horde encircling the boys. But that was before I’d been locked inside a room with a drooling, snarling lunatic and forced to kill him.
“Stop!” the shorter boy yelled.
“Don’t stop! Hit him, Jason! Harder!” the crowd screamed back. This was followed by an obliging smack against the smaller boy’s face.
“Enough!” Shorty yelled.
“You sure? You learn your lesson yet?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. You can stop. Stop already!”
Jason pushed the boy forward and lifted his hands over his head in victory. His victim stumbled and nearly fell face first onto the squeaky cafeteria floor. The crowd began to disperse. I was planted to the ground, unable to move.
Something wasn’t right. A warning whispered up my spine.
A look of murder settled deep within the beaten boy’s eye sockets. He staggered upright then walked to the nearest table. Shorty didn’t look dangerous. He was small and moved slowly. But to see his expression… it was unmistakable.
He grabbed a fold-up chair and lifted it above his head as though it was no heavier than a textbook. Jason never saw him coming. The smaller boy approached silently from behind and slammed the chair over Jason’s head.
I heard nothing. Sound ceased to exist. Blood sprayed the floor, landing in round droplets. It stained the ground inches from my black Mary Jane’s. I looked up and saw Fane Donado, dark as doom, staring at the blood with an expression of enrapture. I should have been disgusted, but when I looked at the blood again I felt something stir inside me.
Jason lay flat on the floor. He wasn’t moving.
The collected student population was momentarily gagged. The boy started towards Jason, chair still in hand. He’d kill Jason. He’d kill him and no one would do a thing to stop him. But I could.
Sex and violence. They were my new specialties, after all, though at the moment I was looking far more forward to the violence.
I stepped in Shorty’s path and yanked the metal seat from his fingers. I threw it aside. Sound returned like the clash of cymbals when the chair clattered to the ground. Something snapped inside me. I grabbed the boy by the hair and kneed him in the gut. He grunted in pain. His agony filled my ears like a sweet melody. I turned and jabbed my elbow into his ribcage. My skirt lifted several inches as I twisted into the punch.
The boy howled. He couldn’t manage to fight back. He was too busy shielding himself from my blows. I pulled back a fist and socked him in the eye. Pain splintered across my knuckles, but Shorty was still standing so I aimed for the second eye. He couldn’t very well go back for the chair if both his eyes were out of commission.
Suddenly I was falling backwards, being yanked from behind. I struggled and slapped at the hands that had latched onto my midriff.
“That’s enough, young lady!”
I went limp and allowed myself to be dragged out of the room by the arm and led directly to the principal’s office.
The last thing I saw were the whites of Fane’s teeth as he grinned. A month earlier I wasn’t so much as a blip on that boy’s radar. Now he was everywhere, appearing at my worst moments, like Satan, witnessing my fall from grace.
Fane should have been the last boy I’d crush on. He was trouble and he wasn’t going anywhere in life. Then again, neither was I.
Not anymore.
At the beginning of the school year I’d been counting down the months till graduation; starting college on the East Coast; new friends and freedom. But, no. The agents said I could never leave Alaska. I might as well have died in that car accident because I was trapped in hell—one complete with monsters. Now the only friends I had were groupies of the undead and the only boy I could think about might very well be a vampire.
And if he was a vampire, I’d have to kill him.
As part of Aurora’s initiation as a vampire hunter, she’s thrown into a locked room with a rabid vampire. On a metal table inside is a choice of weapons. Which would you pick if you were in her shoes and why: Shotgun, ax, hunting knife, or the wooden stake?
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