I'm pretty damn excited today for two reasons... One, it's Friday. What is it about this day of the week that makes me want to sit outside and sip on a margarita?
And second, I get to share a small excerpt from my WiP, Soul Avenged (Sons of Wrath, #1). You'll finally get to meet Ayden, the badass who's been going fist-to-fist with some of the other MC's in my head.
This won't be very long, just enough to give you a taste of what I've been up to while locked away in my crazy secret laboratory. So find a comfy chair, grab your drink of choice and have a read. Comments are welcome.
Most of the musical inspiration for this series came from Paramore and NIN, but I had to include this song as it fueled the excerpt and the scenes that followed. I recommend turning down your speakers...
Ice water.
The frigid sensation sliced through Ayden’s veins, leaving a numb trail in its wake as she stepped through the remains of the abandoned factory - one of many havens for the crack addicts and prostitutes.
A vile stench assaulted her nose, a potent blend of piss, sex and rotted meat, as garbage crunched beneath her boots. Foundation had collapsed all around where she stood, crumbled as if the building would fold into the depths of hell.
Graffiti spattered the walls, giving the impression that gangs were the real threat - ‘We don’t die, we multiply.’
Right. Like gangs own any part of this city anymore.
The old Packard Plant - a ghostly haunt for tormented souls. Shitholes were cropping up everywhere, much more rapidly than ever before. Detroit once a thriving city, brought to ruins. Grey and lifeless like the suffocating overcast that loomed during daylight.
A Beretta, loaded with silver bullets and a silver parrying dagger rested at one of Ayden’s hips, a silver bullwhip at another, as she moved past comatose bodies and decaying corpses.
Feeding grounds, like a bait pile.
Deadened eyes, zombified, slowly tracked her movement in the darkness, squinting, as though craving the light that hers didn’t need to see. Humans so strung out on drugs, they failed to recognize the half-eaten carrion were once their own kind.
Not that knowing would stop them. They’d apparently chosen to face danger rather than kick their addiction, roaming the streets every night in search of their next high.
Lambs.
They were already dead. Death just hadn’t come to collect yet.
The blissful sigh of a hopped-up junkie reached her ears. She snarled her lip. “Enjoy it while it lasts, asshole.”
It’d be one thing if they were homeless. Hell, she might’ve fired a warning shot to evacuate.
The homeless didn’t come here though.
Neither did the police - making it the perfect spot to get wasted and hustle some money. Shots fired would’ve been nothing more than a momentary distraction before their minds slipped back into their ignorant state of euphoria.
Screw ‘em.
For any other girl, the place promised very bad things - an opportunity for a sadist to live out wild fantasies without ever getting caught.
But for Ayden? Humans posed no threat. Their fragile bodies would shred like paper dolls against the work of her hands. Lucky for them, she sought something else to sate her thirst for bloodshed, something far more threatening than their most psychopathic criminal - and she’d tracked it here to the surrounding cornucopia of human flesh.