My vampire novel in the Bloodsport Vampire Charity Collection is called ‘Cure the Enemy.’ Below is the first page.
There is trouble brewing in Dirth, a brass city where the smog from factories drifts through the streets, and dreams belonging to wild dreamers rise to the bright wishing stars. This trouble is between two supernatural creatures, the vampires and the werewolves, who prowl unnoticed into the night. But they won’t be unnoticed for long. Not if the war that threatens their peaceful days truly unfolds in the forest that surrounds the tall factories whose gears grind from dusk until dawn.
“Isobella, your deadline has passed,” Romaine Silver mumbles behind her, disrupting her thoughts. The vampire coven leader has been lurking there, watching her work from the shadows of her crypt – her home. He hovered when she made the cure for vampires against sunlight, too, and it had annoyed her just the same.
The gears – both large and small – of all her inventions grind in the cluttered space, and the fire that fuels them heats to a stifling temperature. Isobella Baxter ignores him in favor of impenetrable concentration and swipes at the sweat beading on her temple. The gears she can block out, but his gravelly voice is rather difficult to disregard. How is she expected to work if she continues to be bothered?
The heel of his leather boot clicks against the stone floor as he invades her space. “Are you listening to me, love?” Placing a hand on her bare shoulder, right next to the hem of her leather vest, he squeezes her skin.
The gesture halts her fiddling with her instruments, and he turns her to face him. A concoction of chemicals bubbles in a flask, licking the side of the sloped glass while trying to free itself. Steam rises from the top, the scent of sweet roses and cold steel mixing with the crypt’s stale air. Below, the flame strokes the flat glass bottom, cooking the contents to the exact temperature she needs to make the elixir she’s been tasked with.
Romaine watches the steam rise from the lip of the beaker and into a brass tube that travels and winds to the smallest vial he’s ever seen. Some might say it’s a potion bottle, but Romaine doesn’t like to indulge superstition even though he’s a vampire himself. As the steam travels through the tube, it turns back into a liquid and slowly drips into the vial, blood red in color. It’s his favorite color.
D. Fischer 