ONE

The three figures stood in the moonlight under a large palo verde tree alongside the I 10 on the Phoenix/Tempe border.

“I can’t believe you lost her!” 

Darius turned and glared at Tucker who had just made the statement.

“Man shut the hell up!  You called Harley, and I came as a favor to Enzo to make sure you don’t **** anything else up.  I don’t want to hear that ****.”

“Would you two just  put a ****ing lid on it!” growled Harley, a slender delicate female with dirty blond hair and piecing green eyes.

Pacing back and forth, Harley stared hard at the tall lean form of Tucker, his cowboy hat pushed back on his head in frustration, and Darius a short powerfully built african american dressed in sweats and what could only be a new set of signature sneakers.  A rolex gleamed on his wrist above a clenched fist.

The sneakers she understood, vampyres burned through them like nobody’s business, but the rolex?  What the hell did he need a rolex for on a hunt?  Hell, for that matter what did Tucker need the cowboy hat for?  As fast as they all moved he’d just be carrying it in hand anyway.  ****ing males.

“Enzo is going to be so pissed...” began Tucker.

“At you mother****, not us!” Darius interjected.

“Will you two shut the hell up!” hissed Harley, jerking her head in the direction of a large shopping mall across the freeway. “Kara is over there.  And if we don’t stop screwing around and go find her, there’s gonna be a huge mess.”

“Bitch should’ve just found someone to embrace when she first got the shivers.” growled Darius, his eyes turning a deep luminous red.

“Well its too late for that now.” muttered Tucker.

Darius was right, Harley reasoned. Even newly turned vampyres were taught about the shivers.  Every ten years or so a vampyre came down with it.  The shivers being what vampyres considered time to reproduce.  You didn’t resist it if you had even half a clue, to do so made a vampyre go feral and ran the risk of driving you insane or worse.  Kara was over 200 years old.  She should have ****ing known better.

When a vampyre got the shivers, the coterie chose members close to the vampyre to help with the selection for the embrace.  It didn’t help matters that Kara was basically a loner and every human embraced by her in the past hadn’t lasted longer than twenty years, either getting themselves killed by a hunter or by the coterie itself.  Neither were acceptable fates, the former being one caused by sheer stupidity and the second usually by arrogance in the face of a group survival mentality.

No coterie tolerated fools.

Why the coterie had chosen Tucker for the task Harley hadn’t the foggiest, though most likely it boiled down to the coterie being tiny in size, no one else wanting the job and the luck of the draw.

Harley had half a mind to request of the coterie that Kara just be put down.  She had gone feral after all and ferals sought only one thing, blood.  Whoever crossed Kara at this point was a potential victim with no thought on the part of Kara as to whether it would be a good choice or not.  That kind of reasoning went straight out the ****ing window once a vampyre went feral.

“She should be put down.” Tucker suggested, intruding on Harley’s thoughts.

“As if that’d happen man.” answered Darius, disgusted. “We ain’t got the age or position to request it.  Sides which, her sire is still around.  If anyone has the right to call for that bitch to get blasted, its William.  And we both know it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Guess he’s still waiting for that loving feeling he thought he’d get from her two centuries ago.” chuckled Tucker. “Only time he ever got any of her ass was probably when he embraced her.”

“For Christ's sake shut up Tucker. Lets just go find her.” sighed Harley, springing high into the night sky, landing effortlessly on the trailer of an eighteen wheeler then bounding from rig to rig across the freeway towards the distant mall.

None too pleased the two males leapt after her, their forms nothing but blurs in the darkness.

#

Kara stood in the shadows outside the mall’s cineplex, shaking like a junkie going through massive withdraws.  

Each passing individual presented themselves to her like a walking gourmet meal and only what little remained of her mind that hadn’t been consumed by the lust to feed and procreate resisted each offer.

Within her raged a battle between her symbiote, the one which had turned her, and the new symbiote which had been recently created by her own.  The two battled for the rights to Kara and the battle was costly.

Both demanded blood and a host, the demand wreaking havoc on Kara mentally and physically.

Once created the new symbiote demanded a suitable host, often times exerting it’s desires with painful reminders.

Her own symbiote craved sustenance in the form of blood but refused to share with it’s offspring.  This resulted in a desire to choose any host for the offspring just to get it out of Kara’s system.

The opposite polar tugs were slowly destroying Kara’s reasoning and wreaking havoc on her physiology.

There are so many potentials here, what was left of Kara’s mind told her, one of them had to suffice.

Kara could literally smell and hear the physical conditions of the passersby, her senses razor sharp.  Heartbeats and breathing told her circulatory conditions, odors what they had been eating and the amount of toxins in their bodies.

The new symbiote refused to accept any she had sensed thus far and her own host raged inside her, pressuring her to take anyone within reason.  The conflict was maddening.

Kara knew that a crowded movie complex was hardly the place for an embrace.  Publicity was not something any Vampyre relished.  Her state however, demanded release now, without deviation.

Kara could sense the three other vampyres closing fast and she knew, as well as the battling symbiotes did that being taken now would be disastrous.  There was no time left for delays and being hauled back to the coterie to have her condition discussed was not something that Kara would survive.  Her descent into possible madness was close at hand and to resist the need to embrace now would only insure it.

A strong steady heart rate snared her attention.  Her nostrils flared honing in on the scent of the potential victim.  The war within her ceased briefly as though analyzing the data being received.

Whoever it was, they smelled good. 

Kara’s incisors elongated and a moan escaped her, her body moving quickly through the large parking lot, following the scent, oblivious to everything save the scent and the heartbeat which sang to her.

Though the embrace was often sexual in nature, it never had to be.  Still, as the distance between predator and prey lessened, Kara couldn’t help a growing sense of intense sexual arousal.

Four rows away she at last caught sight of him.

Tall, dark-haired and physically imposing.  There was a gentle calm and joy beneath his rugged good looks and somewhere deep within Kara she felt a momentary regret that was shut down nearly immediately by the two symbiotes within her.

The choice had been made.  Had she acted upon the need to embrace when it had initially set in, the choice of victim would have been hers.  Now it was out of her hands.

Without the ability to resist, Kara moved with blinding speed, covering the distance to her prey in but a second or two, slamming into the male with enough force to lift his 230 lb. frame off the ground, their bodies slamming into the side of a SUV, her incisors buried deeply into his carotid artery.

A high pitched scream sounded far away, too far for Kara to care, her hunger had its grip on her like a vise.

The embrace was completed almost instantly the moment her incisors pierced the victim’s flesh, the younger symbiote traveling through those self same incisors to take up residence in the male, killing then resurrecting him in seconds as something wholly not human.

Seconds passed, all in which time Kara drank deeply of the life sustaining blood, her own symbiote demanding it’s fill after near starvation for weeks. 

The rapture of the embrace was immense, almost total, her body shuddering from the pleasure of it, her victim’s body responding in kind unable to resist the estacy of the act.

Kara moaned deeply as she felt her body growing warmer with the infusion of blood, she could feel herself drowning in the pleasure of it all.

Two pairs of strong hands tore Kara from her lethargic victim and the world round her rushed in, smashing the moment of pleasure to bits.

With a snarl, Kara returned quickly to her senses, trying to toss her assailants away but finding even her own enhanced vampyric strength unable to do so.

A sharp slap across the face bought her further into focus and she found herself face to face with Harley, a furious look upon her face.

“You stupid bitch!” Harley spat, grabbing a handful of Kara’s thick red hair and turning her head in the direction of the screams which had but seconds ago seemed so far away.

A young girl, perhaps six or seven in age, stood screaming, her eyes locked in fear at Kara.

“Mine...” Kara growled.

“Never family!” hissed Harley. “Never!”

“We gotta ****ing bail Harley!” Darius growled, releasing Kara’s arm and hoisting the unconscious male over his shoulder with no apparent strain.

“Get them back to the coterie.” stated Harley with obvious disgust. “Tuck you drag her sorry ass back there if you have to, I’ll deal with the child.”

“No don’t!” Kara protested.

“Go!” Tucker roared, dragging Kara along with him at a blinding pace.

The sounds of concerned movie goers and shoppers drew closer and Harley knew she had to act fast otherwise her own exit would be impossible to miss.

Putting on a soft smile, Harley turned to the girl and began pumping out massive amounts of calming pheromones.  All vampyres had gifts and while Harley thought hers a bit redundant seeing as all vampyre’s possessed the pheromone ability, not all possessed the hypnotic qualities of Harley’s.

Harley knew it would take a lot to affect a child suffering through a traumatic experience and as curious voices grew closer she knew she’d have to work her magic fast.

Hello all!

I've finally taken the plunge into writing for mass market after years of merely writing for my own personal enjoyment.

Being new to the process I was hoping for a little guidance from you all.

I'm about 120 pages into my book and was wondering at what point you start looking for critiques on a professional level and who you contact for said critiques.

Also, when allowing others to read your work, what steps do you take to protect it?

Is there a way to put a sample up here so I can get some feedback from group members?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Keep Writing!