Saturday Snippet - AFTERLIFE

[naomi_jay]

In addition to the Shoregrave Guide to the Undead and The Small World Guide to Shoregrave, I'm also going to be bringing you weekly (or weekendly?) snippets from AFTERLIFE over the next few weeks. Here's the first, so enjoy!

 

I hunkered down beside a huge stone cross, one of the many rising from the unkempt lawn of Black Rose Cemetery, and watched the vampire. It moved quickly but unsteadily, like a colt taking its first graceless steps. Pale-skinned and wild-eyed, it cast around, sniffing the air, hunting for the scent of human prey. It was only a few feet from me. Hatred fired through my veins. They were disgusting creatures, the Revenants. Brutes, deserving of nothing but brutality. This one had been a pretty woman in life. Blonde hair fell across her chalk-white face, framing high cheekbones and pouty lips. Death hadn’t completely destroyed her looks, but it had sharpened them, honed then into something hard and cold.

             If she fed well, some of her human wit would return, enough to make her aware of her vulnerabilities. Revenants grow more intelligent, more like their living selves, with each meal of human flesh and blood. They start to remember, start to think, start to understand what they’ve become.

            Monsters.