From my alter ego ELLE JAMES, I have an excerpt from my first NOCTURNE CRAVINGS. It's written in first person from the point of view of my kick-ass heroine, Katya Danske. Hope you like it!
by Elle James
BLURB:
Rookie
cop Katya Danske didn't ask to become a member of Manhattan's
Paranormal Investigative Team or to be partnered with a sexy-as-hell
demon. Then a zombie literally drops into her lap and she's recruited to
help Blaise Michaels battle an impending zombie outbreak.
Blaise
is as exasperating as he is arousing, but while Katya's head tells her
she should keep her distance, her body wants something else entirely.
Forced to work closely together, their investigation takes them into the
darkest shadows of the Manhattan underworld and makes their attraction
impossible to deny. But with the zombie threat rising, their hot nights
together may be their last...
EXCERPT:
It started out as a typical late, summer night in the city. The weather
had yet to really warm up enough to call it summer, but I chose to sit out on
the deck. Well, I call it a deck, but it’s really the fire escape landing, a
tiny postage-stamp stretch of wrought iron outside the living room window of my
closet-sized Manhattan
apartment. Anyway, I was minding my own business, thinking through a crappy
night on the job as a cop with the 5th Precinct in Manhattan. I’d arrested no less than three
prostitutes, two indecent exposures and chased down—and caught—one mugger, all
before midnight and shift change. And after all that, what did I get? Grief on
the way to the locker room.
I came into this job with five years experience on the Chicago Police force—not a friggin’
cake-walk. But that didn’t seem to mean a thing to the other officers. At best,
they’re condescending pricks, patting my head as if I was a favored pet cocker
spaniel. No respect. At worst…well, at worst, they reminded me of why I left Chicago. Today, I took
down the guy who patted my ass. Slammed his face into the concrete floor before
he knew what hit him. Caught hell from my super for that, but the bastard
deserved it.
It’s no secret why every guy in the precinct and every jerk-wad on the
street thinks I’m a powder-puff light-weight contender. I’ve been cursed with
light blond hair, big boobs and the kind of curves most porn stars would die
for. Hell, they could have them.
Anyway, back to the story. I was
coming down off the adrenaline rush of the job, having a glass of cheap wine, trying
to wind down so that I could get a wink or two of sleep before the next round
of Manhattan
nightlife. About the time I thought I had the adrenaline high licked, a smell
reached my nostrils, a stench so powerful I couldn’t escape it. I pressed my
hand to my nose, my stomach roiling, waiting for the smell to pass, only it got
stronger by the minute. When it became too much, I pushed to my feet, and glanced
around.
Did I tell you I had a super sniffer? I could sniff out dead bodies
from a half of a mile away. I’d always considered it a curse, never more so
than at that moment. Because this one wasn’t a half mile away, which meant the
smell was so strong I nearly choked on it. A scream from the landing above me
made me glance up. I leaned over the railing, trying to see what the heck was
going on.
Another scream was quickly followed by a woman shoving a man out her
window. He thumped onto the landing one up from me. What the hell was going on?
I slipped back into my apartment to get a weapon. My service revolver would
have been my first choice, but it was buried in a pile of clothes. Digging it
out would take too long. On the other hand, my special butcher knife I used to
chop vegetables with was right there on the kitchen counter, the long stainless
steel blade gleaming in the night lights of the city.
I had just stepped back out on the landing, prepared to climb up the
ladder to the floor above me, when the man tipped over the edge of the railing
and slid down the fire escape on top of me.
Trapped in the ladder enclosure, I struggled to get out from under him.
The knife, knocked from my hand, lay a couple feet away from me. They guy had
to outweigh me by a hundred pounds. The stench of rot overwhelmed me,
triggering my gag reflex. I swallowed hard on the bile rising up my throat and
shoved my way out from beneath him, rolling across the metal mesh, stretching
toward the knife.
The man grabbed my ankle and yanked me back, his hand cold like death.
I rolled onto my back and kicked him in the face, shaking free of his grip long
enough to grab the knife.
I sat up at the same time as he lunged for my throat. With little time
to aim, I plunged the blade into his neck, expecting to be drenched in blood.
But none fell and neither did big-bad-and-smelly.
The knife wedged in his throat, he hesitated only a moment before
coming at me again. With my hand still on the handle of the butcher knife, I
ripped it to the side with all my strength, severing my attacker’s head from
his odoriferous body.
Instantly, he went limp. Like a deadweight, he fell on top of me, his
head rolling to the side, held only by a thin strap of skin.
We slammed backwards onto the metal mesh floor, knocking the wind out
of me. When I got my breath back, I shoved and pushed, struggling to breathe in
air so polluted by the stench I thought I’d die before I finally rolled free. I
scrambled to my feet, tugging my T-shirt up over my nose, hoping to muffle the
aroma as I stared down at my attacker.
His blue-gray skin wasn’t natural for a man freshly killed. I bent to
touch my fingers to him, drawing my hand away as if it had been burned. The guy
was icy cold. The head had wedged against the railing, the eyes staring up at
me through a milky film. There was still no blood. This guy had been dead far longer
than the few minutes since I’d sliced through his throat. How in hell had he
attacked me?
I didn’t believe in supernatural phenomenon, but something about the
situation stank, more than the rotting corpse.
Other authors participating in Snippet Saturday:
Megan Hart:Read in bed!
Rhian Cahill
Eliza Gayle
Jody Wallace
Mandy M Roth
Lissa Matthews
Mari Carr
McKenna Jeffries
Myla Jackson
Taige Crenshaw
HelenKay Dimon
Shiloh Walker
Lauren Dane
