A More Perfect Union

prologue

    It really was a dark and stormy night.
    Samantha stepped out of the ramshackle hotel building she laughingly called “home”. The flickering yellow streetlights cast a waxy, anemic glow into the Memphis alley. Her black heels clicked unevenly on the broken, wet pavement as the rain pattered against her umbrella, the cloth flapping away from one of the thin metal ribs in the wind.
    Samantha stayed to the side of the alley until the smell of the trash bins, full of rotting seafood from the restaurant next door, forced her to move into the middle of the trash-strewn alley. It was a rancid, sour-sweet smell, sickening and dead, but still powerful.
    Suddenly a young man lunged from behind the trash bin, his torn shirt soaked to the skin. He was thin, with sandy-brown hair and the haunted eyes of someone who had spent too much time crying of late. He held up a wooden cross with a shaking hand. “Back, you fiend!” he shouted. “You will not harm any soul tonight!”
    “Oh, please.” Samantha rolled her eyes. “Not again.”
    The young man was resolute. He held the cross in one hand and a long wooden stake in the other. It still had some varnish and a bit of scrollwork from the chair leg from which it was made.
    Samantha trudged forward slowly, her umbrella flapping badly in the wind. The young man held the cross out in front of him like a shield before his widening eyes as Samantha walked directly up to him.
    Samantha reached out and wrapped her fingers harmlessly around the cross. “See?” she said wearily. She yanked it away, letting it clatter to the ground.
    The young man stumbled backward, reaching inside his coat. He came out with a small flask of water, which he threw in Samantha’s face.
    She started a moment, water running into her eyes. “You ruined my makeup,” she grumbled, wiping the holy water from her face. Then she continued her slow walk forward.
    The young man retreated farther up the alley, still facing her.
    “Are you going to go away?” Samantha asked.
    “You…you are a spawn of Satan, and you must be destroyed,” the young man said in a thin, frightened voice.
    “Grr. Argh.” Samantha made her hands into claws and scratched at the air in front of her. “Now go away.”
    The young man looked down at the stake in his hand and raised it half-heartedly.
    Samantha stared into his red-rimmed, terrified eyes and reached inside him. She knew his name was Richard and a thin blonde girl had left him two weeks before. She rolled him under easily, letting her calm fill his troubled mind. His frightened eyes grew cool and his trembling fingers stilled. Samantha stepped closer and easily took the stake from his nerveless fingers.
    For a moment, he tempted her. She leaned toward his neck where the blood flowed warm and thick beneath the tender skin. She smelled the thin spice-scent of his fear and the roiling salty warmth of his blood…and planted a light kiss on his cheek.
    Samantha snapped the stake in two and walked past Richard down the alley to the stage door of Nocturnal Urges. When she looked back over her shoulder, he was still standing there, frozen in the rain. She broke the link gently, and he fell to his knees in the water.    After a long moment, he looked over at her.
    “Mwah!” she called, waving and making a kiss-kiss face at him from the stage door. He stared at her, then scrambled to his feet and ran away into the rain.
    Samantha smiled and went to work.
Coming Sept. 14 from Ellora's Cave Publishing!

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