Untitled Post-Apocalyptic Erotic Vampire Novel
an excerpt

Night had just fallen, and Amara had just finished her dinner of scrambled eggs, zucchini and fried tomatoes. She had done the washing up, and was relaxing in her chair in front of the fire, sipping tea that reminded her of the bedtime drink that her mother used to make her, of chamomile flowers and raspberry leaf. She thought that maybe she should miss her mother, but she didn’t. Nor did she miss her two older brothers, or her father, or any of the people she’d left behind in her birth village. They had been dour, humourless, hard-working people, with no love of books or nature like Amara had. They had not been farmers, like most of the other people in the village, living off the land and feeding themselves. They had lived in the village proper all year round; Amara’s father was a blacksmith, making knives and pots and hinges, and her mother was a potter, making utilitarian things like the crocks that Amara used to store her provisions over the winter. They traded with other families for their food. Their indoor lives had prevented them from seeing the wonders of nature and experiencing the things that made Amara’s life in the wilderness so pleasurable, and they had become pale and unhappy by the time Amara left. She thought, too, that perhaps her mother would have been different if she hadn’t been forced to marry such a dour man, but like every girl in the village, she had no say in who or when she would be married. Every girl and every boy had a marriage arranged for them by the village elders at sixteen and eighteen, respectively, and there was no arguing with them. If you did, Amara thought, you ended up like her. Exiled. She hadn’t wanted to marry the pock-marked, sullen boy they’d chosen for her, either. The only difference between Amara and her mother was that Amara stood up for herself, and her mother had not.
Even though she missed the company of people, she decided, she was pretty happy in her life. She had her animals and her books to keep her company.
Amara, lulled by the warm tea and the hypnotic effect of the fire, had nearly missed the sharp sounds of twigs breaking under footsteps outside the door. Once she realized what she was hearing, though, she was immediately on guard. Her huge wolfhound, Greyson, roused himself and immediately seemed to pick up on her tension, growling low in his throat with his eyes on the closed door. Amara herself reached into the periphery of the fire and grabbed a flaming log by the cool, unburnt end, preparing to smack whomever it was in the face with it. No one had ever approached her cabin, but given her status as an exile, it was unlikely that the person was friendly.
Creeping closer to the door, Amara called out in a voice that belied her terror. “Who’s there?”
“Sounds like a woman,” said a male voice, much closer than she’d expected. She tightened her grip on her fiery weapon. Greyson let out a few warning barks.
“Sounds like she’s got a bit of a beast in there, too.” That speaker was female.
“Pfft. Nothin’ we can’t handle. Wee doggie’ll have his neck snapped, I get my hands on him.” A third male voice.
Steeling herself, she pushed open the door and peered out into the darkness. “I said, who’s there?” Her voice rang out into the darkness, the tail end drowned by Greyson’s increasingly more excited barks. She held the log in front of her, hoping to cast more light onto her yard. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the river, ten paces in front of her. But judging from how close the voices had been just before, she should have been able to see the speakers by now.
Then a trio of pale faces appeared so close in front of her that she nearly dropped her weapon.
“Wh-What do you want?” Her tone was stern, but her hand shook, and she knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.
“She hasn’t heard of us.” The woman sounded amused. Amara could see the female speaker now - she had a short shock of black hair and a rather plain face, but her skin was so pale that it seemed to glow and reflect the torch’s light all at the same time, giving her a strange alien luminescence.
“Who the hell would come out here to tell her about us? She’s obviously been kicked out of the nest or somesuch. No other villages around for miles.” The third male voice again.
Grayson was by this time barking in a constant string of angry yelps, but Amara had hesitated to sic him in case the people were friendly. But there was something about the unnatural way their voices carried right into her ear, even above her dog’s racket, that made her completely sure that these were not any friends of hers.
Her free hand made the “get it” motion they had developed while hunting together, while the hand with the flaming brand swung across in a backhand that caught the man on the left square in the jaw. Greyson simultaneously leap at the woman’s throat. The man should have staggered back in pain with the force of that blow, but he just looked calmly back at Amara; his eyes, Amara saw in the livid light of the brand, were green.
“Knock her out. Let’s take her with us. She looks like a fine specimen, and no one will miss her.” The man she had struck hauled back and struck her dog across the muzzle, seemingly with less force than Amara had employed. But her eyes widened when she saw Greyson go flying three or four paces and lie, unmoving, on the green grass in front of her cabin. The cabin that had been home for the past six years. The home that she loved.
As the green-eyed man reached over and wrapped his hands around her neck, she only had time for a quick last glance around at her idyllic abode before it all went even darker than the night and she sank to the ground, insensible.