Valentine Lux: A Serial Novel

Valentine felt like a guest at some demented dinner party waiting for the post-prandial game of charades to begin, and it didn’t surprise her in the least that the humans had gravitated toward each other in this awkward tableau. Daniel stared dully into the fire, nursing his drink, Jesse perched on the arm of his chair like a watchful chihuahua, every muscle alert and quivering under her thin, pale skin, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble.

Daniel King sat drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon and making a list. Spread out on the wooden bar of his Aunt Marina’s tavern, the Rebel Moon, were pens, loose pieces of scrap paper, and half a dozen notebooks.

Daniel woke up with the same feeling he had the day after his plunge into the East River. Only less hungover. His head ached and his body was stiff both from the abuse he’d taken from their vamp neighbors and a night spent in half-sleep on the cold stone floor of the anchorage.

Just as Daniel was about to give up trying to open the Dingo’s door it suddenly popped free and India and Ransom came flying through, landing on him in a tangled pile before the door was slammed shut again. He almost pissed himself before he realized it was them, but there was no time for catching up because India was so limp and pale and the air so close that, still scrambling and trying to hug them and also keep them from squashing Marina he rose up out of the mess and popped the hatch with no effort at all.

Daniel leaned against the red brick foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge, rivulets of hot sweat cooling against his skin in the night air, trying to catch his breath and will himself to accept that what he had experienced in the last twenty-four hours was reality, when what it actually felt like was being high and drunk and on the worst acid trip of his entire life.