Her Yearning for Blood
Read Her Yearning for Blood Online
Authors: Tim Greaton
| Her Yearning for Blood |
| Episode [1] |
| Tim Greaton |
| Focus House Publishing (2012) |
17-year-old Kayla Windless has been dreaming of Evan Groacher for over two years, but it isn't until some other boys from Groacherville High School in Maine use explosives to access an abandoned military base that the pale, standoffish boy notices her. As their budding relationship forms, the two teens are forced to share a terrible secret: Kayla is becoming a vampire...and Evan has been one for quite some time. Unfortunately, neither could possibly know that some of their schoolmates will soon die at the hands of a ruthless Boston vampire clan that is intent on finding Evan. Tempered in the fires of tragedy, Kayla and Evan's relationship is destined to last til death.
Dripping with romance and suspense, "Her Yearning for Blood" presents a truly unique and brutal twist on the dark world of vampires.
One
Under-Heaven
reviewer says, "Tim Greaton's fans will follow him to Hell in gasoline raincoats...."
You're invited to find out why.
Tim Greaton lives in Maine with his beautiful wife and three amazing children. They share seven acres with one dog, two cats and a population of ducks that varies with the weather. He is a full-time corporate writer and novelist. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in forums all around the globe. You can find his novels in paperback and ebook formats at all quality book retailers.
Sometimes referred to as "Maine's Other Author" (TM), he prefers just Tim.
Her Yearning
for
Blood
F
rom
“Maine’s Other
Author”
TM
Tim Greaton
ALSO BY TIM GREATON
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Contact Tim at
Read Tim’s Blog at
Her Yearning
for
Blood
from
“Maine’s Other Author”
TM
Tim Greaton
Copyright
2012
by Tim Greaton.
Published by Focus House Publishing on Kindle
This is a work of fiction. The names and the characters are fictional. Any resemblance to living or dead individuals is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, including digital or audio sampling, internet display or download, or any other form of digital or physical display or transfer, excepting only brief excerpts for use in a literary review, without expressed written permission from the author.
Published by Focus House Publishing
Her Yearning for Blood
Cover graphics by Wizards Prism Art & Media
Her Yearning
for
Blood
F
rom
“Maine’s Other
Author”
TM
Tim Greaton
Focus House Publishing
Wilton, Maine
Her Yearning f
or Blood
Episode One
1
Three loud explosions
sent dust
spew
ing
up
like a sooty volcanic plume
above
the
abandoned military base.
I
gritted
my
teeth and
rushed a
s fast as
my
leg brace
and crutches would allow a
cross the
endless, cracked
expanse of
concrete
. The acres of hard, bleached concrete was all th
at
remained
of the
military buildings
that
had
been
torn down and hauled off
when the town council had
forced
the
US Army
out of
town
fourteen
years e
arlier
. Far ahead,
the
distant tree line
towered over sparkles of afternoon sunlight
that
reflect
ed
off the windshields of
several
parked
cars
at the overgrown entrance
.
Glancing back,
I
saw
a
dark haze filling the sky.
Another
explosion
vibrated the
ground
beneath my feet and
sent
s
omething
whizzing p
ast
my
head
. Ducking and twisting sideways, I caught
one of my
crutches on the rough
concrete
. For one terrifying second,
I thought I
might
fall
and re-shatter
my
right
knee. Fortunately, fate and
my instinct to shift
my
weight
to the opposite crutch k
ept
me
upright
even as
the
padded aluminum stabbed into my
left armpit.
I gasped with pain and drew in a shuddered breath.
The air smelled like a mixture of burnt rubber and diesel exhaust
. I
coughed,
pulled
myself
upright and rubbed
under my arm and
along
sore left ribs as
I
tried to get
my
bearings.
I was no longer sure I
faced the cars, and t
he filthy cloud had already filled the sky making it impossible to see the
treetops
ahead.
Tiny
specks of black began to fall like ash from a nuclear winter.
It terrified me to think what the
boys
might have
done
.
A dozen teenage girls scream
ed
somewhere
behind
me
.
Their male counterparts
yell
ed
from someplace further off
.
I couldn’t believe that I had willingly
let myself
become part of this catastrophe.
“Rachel, Amanda
!
”
I called out
.
When neither
friend
responded,
I
hobbled
toward
what
I
hoped was
Amanda’s car.
The screaming
faded
as
I
swung
through the flat, murky landscape.
Soon, the only sounds I heard were the soft thud
of my
crutches
touching down and the swish of cloth as I swung forward
again
.
Thud, swish.
Thud, swish.
I had only been to the base a few times
but
had
noticed
that
concrete-sealed
manholes dotted the edge of the military base every few hundred feet.
I
always assumed the
y were old
wells or maybe
vents to the soldiers’
septic
system
, but the boys
at school
had been
convinced they were
entrances to all manner of
underground
military secrets.
When I heard they
had
planned to find their way in
to those vertical tunnels
, I imagined pry bars and sledge hammers, certainly not
explosives! Any fool should have known better
, especially if the
rumors
of
secret laborator
y catacombs
and stockpiles of weapons were true
. E
xposing them to explosives
should have been the last thing anyone wanted to do.
I never should have come.
Thud, swish.
I
stopped to
massage
my
aching
side
and felt pretty certain I had
cracked a rib
. At th
is rate, I
would
be in a wheelchair before
senior year even started.
“Rachel, Amanda!”
It was getting hard to breathe and the smog burned the inside of my nose and throat. Covering my
mouth with
my blouse
collar
, I
inhaled
several
semi-clean
breaths.
T
he cloud of grit
continued to drift and swirl downward, making it
impossible to see.
How had
I
let Amanda talk
me
into
this
?
B
ut even as
I
asked the question
, I
knew the answer
:
I
had
hoped
Evan would be here.
Stupid!
I’d
already
crippled
my
self for him, and still he didn’t—
No.
I
would
not allow myself to
complete the thought.
Idiot
!
“Rachel, Amanda!”
I
yelled
. I
w
ait
ed thirty seconds and yelled again
.
The last
I
knew,
Amanda had been flirting with
a
football player
near one of the
concrete
manholes
and Rachel had been
with the new boy
who
had
moved in
to the low-income apartment complex where she and her
grandmother
lived.
That left me alone
to wander in hopes of finding
Evan
who,
of course,
would never have
come here.
He
hadn’t hung out with any of
us
since
third
grade, the year his father died.
I
remembered the event clearly because
my
grandfather had also been found dead in the woods that same day. The police claimed it was a passing serial killer, but no one in Groacherville
had
ever believed that.
The ex
plosions
seemed to have
stopped but
rather than thinning
,
the
molecules in the air grew
denser
,
b
lack
and
clotting like an airborne cancer. I c
ould barely see
my
outstretched hand
in front of me
.
Anxious to get
free of the smo
ke
before I
suffocated
,
I
took several more
inhalations
through
my
collar then
h
eld my breath and
swung forward a
s quickly as
my crutches would allow
until I had to stop and suck air
through
my blouse
again.
A
healthy person might have
crawled
across the ground where the air w
as probably b
etter,
but
I couldn’t even bend my knee forget
crawl
on it.
S
e
veral
panicked
voices surged toward me from the right
.
“
This
is the wrong
way,
Sherrie!
” one
girl
squealed
. “We should have seen the
cars
by now
!
”
“
It’s not my fault,”
another female
snapped. “
I
t’s
not like
I’m
a ranger or anything.”
She
coughed. “
Let’s
g
o right.”
Cough. “The cars must be that way
!
”
I
probably should have
call
ed
out
,
but
I recognized the voice of our head
football
cheerleader.
Sherrie
Tepper
would have been
more likely to steal
my
crutches than
wait for
me
. Besides,
she and her gaggle
sounded
as lost as
I
was.
I drew more tainted air through my shirt.
Suddenly, fear of dying on a concrete pad at the end of a dead end road seemed entirely too possible.
Shaking the thought from
my
mind
,
I pressed
forward
.
I
had only moved a dozen steps when
the
faint
sob
s
from Sherrie’s group
faded completely into the cloying
smog
behind me.
F
eeling as though a death shroud had been thrown over the
abandoned military site
, I fought
my
rising
panic
and
forced
myself
to keep going.
Thud, swish.
Thud swish.
My rhythm faltered when the tip
of one
crutch
slid forward on a loose patch of sand.
I
gasped and managed to
stop
the slipping rubber before something terrible happened, but as I
pulled my crutch back into position
I
silently curs
ed
the murky air. Even in clear conditions, the sand, c
racks and loose chunks of concrete
made
using
crutches tricky. I
n the
black smog
, they were downright treacherous
.
I sucked air through my collar and tried to calm the
dread
that had been rising inside of me since the first explosion hit.
I
knew that once I
reach
ed
th
e
edge of the
concrete,
I
w
ould
be able to
follow
the
border
to Amanda’s car
. Unfortunately, the
growing
pain in my
side and the
feeling that I might not be going in a straight line
made
me doubt I
w
ould
ever
get there
.
I breathed in
several lungfuls of acrid air
then
, praying
the smoke would settle
soon, set out
once again
in the dark haze. A
fter
stopping several more times
, my
side
ached
and
my
lungs
burned.
My
world
had
bec
o
me a nightmare of
pain and fear
. But each time I wanted to give up, I
convinced myself that
it wouldn’t be much further, that the cars and my friends were just ahead.