Hi everyone,
Today I have a snippet from Legally UnDead by Margo Bond Collins. It sounds like a lot of fun,
so here it is –
Legally
Undead
A
reluctant vampire hunter, stalking New York City as only a scorned bride can.
Elle
Dupree has her life all figured out: first a wedding, then her Ph.D., then swank
faculty parties where she’ll serve wine and cheese and introduce people to her
husband the lawyer.
But
those plans disintegrate when she walks in on a vampire draining the blood from
her fiancé Greg. Horrified, she screams and runs--not away from the vampire,
but toward it, brandishing a wooden letter opener.
As she
slams the improvised stake into the vampire’s heart, a team of black-clad men
bursts into the apartment. Turning around to face them, Elle discovers that
Greg’s body is gone—and her perfect life falls apart.
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Legally
Undead – Snippet.
The worst thing about
vampires is that they're dead. That whole wanting to suck your blood business
runs a close second, but for sheer creepiness, it's the dead bit that gets me
every time. They're up and walking around and talking and sucking blood, but
they're dead. And then there's the whole terminology problem--how can
you kill something that's already dead? It's just wrong.
I was twenty-four the
first time I . . . destroyed? dispatched? . . . a vampire. That's when I found
out that all the books and movies are wrong. When you stick a wooden stake into
their hearts, vampires don't disintegrate into dust. They don't explode. They
don't spew blood everywhere. They just look surprised, groan, and collapse into
a pile of corpse. But at least they lie still then, like corpses are supposed
to.
Since that first kill (I
might as well use the word--there really isn’t a better one), I've discovered
that only if you're lucky do vampires look surprised before they groan and fall
down. If you're unlucky and miss the heart, they look angry. And then they
fight.
There are the other usual
ways to kill vampires, of course, but these other ways can get a bit
complicated. Vampires are notoriously difficult to trick into sunlight. They
have an uncanny ability to sense when there's any sunlight within miles of
them, and they're awfully good at hiding from it. Holy water doesn't kill them;
it just distracts them for a while, and then they get that angry look again.
And it takes a pretty big blade to cut off someone's head--even an already dead
someone--and carrying a great big knife around New York City, even the Bronx,
is a sure way to get arrested. Nope, pointy sticks are the best way to go, all
the way around.
My own pointy stick is
actually more of a little knife with wood inlay on the blade--the metal makes
it slide in easier. I had the knife specially made by an old Italian guy in
just about the only ratty part of Westchester, north of the city. I tried to
order one off the internet, but it turns out that while it’s easy to find
wood-inlay handles, the blades themselves tend to be metal. Fat lot those
people know.
But I wasn’t thinking
any of this when I pulled the knife out of the body on the ground. I was
thinking something more along the lines of "Oh, bloody hell. Not again".
Here’s the Amazon link –
About
the Author
Margo Bond Collins is the author of a number of novels,
including Waking Up Dead, Fairy, Texas, and Legally Undead (forthcoming May 27, 2014). She lives in Texas with
her husband, their daughter, and several spoiled pets. She teaches
college-level English courses online, though writing fiction is her first love.
She enjoys reading urban fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends
most of her free time daydreaming about vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves,
and other monsters.
Connect with Margo
Be
sure to add Legally Undead to your
Goodreads bookshelves: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18366353-legally-undead
Thanks
for stopping by.
Nicóle
xx
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