Vampire Hopes and Dreams

One item on my (overly) ambitious list of writing goals this year is to release something in the Sons of Rome universe. I was having Nik and Sasha thoughts last night while I was at the barn, and remembered all over again that I haven't put out a book in that series since Golden Eagle in December of 2019. It's been almost four years 😭 I've got other projects waiting, but I would love, love, love to squeeze in The Winter Palace. 

Book five is going to be Lionheart, which I've done some work on, and which will require more research, more time at the computer, and more effort than any book I've ever written. It's one-third ongoing, contemporary storyline, one-third ode to Sir Robin of Locksley, one-third Richard I docu-drama. It's a big project, so big that thinking about it overwhelms me at times. One storyline I was going to include catches us up with Nik and his pack in Buffalo - but I decided it was a storyline better suited to its own, separate novella, which I have started, and will be inspired by a series of vignettes posted on the blog, filled out by new action. It's called The Winter Palace, and will address several major shifts within the pack. It won't follow the vignettes exactly, and some will be entirely rewritten, but the action of it will play out at Trina's family compound in upstate New York, and lead us straight into the action of Lionheart. 

Below is a sample of chapter one, but you can read the inspiring vignettes under the Scenes From Buffalo tag here on the blog. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Fingers crossed we get more vamps before the year's out! 

From The Winter Palace, Sons of Rome Book 4.5
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley 

Nikita lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of the old one. He dropped the last bit of the filter and crushed it beneath his bootheel. Took a long, long drag off the fresh one, and blew the smoke in a hard plume up into the air. The wind swirled it into tattered gray ribbons, carrying them off between the trees.

The familiar, acrid stink of Marlboros couldn’t cover the scents that clung to the sable collar of his coat: blood, old and new; wolf musk, Sasha’s. He imagined he could smell Dima’s cologne, and pastry flakes from a pirozhki someone had tried to press on him. Fancied Moscow still clung to this coat…that coat. The long black leather one that had kept him warm when he’d worked for men he’d hated; the coat he’d then hated in turn; the coat that Sasha loved, and that Nik himself was, slowly, embracing again.  

He tipped his head back, cig held away, coat collar no longer tickling his chin, and inhaled deeply. Scenting. The wind wasn’t in his favor, was in fact carrying his own scent downwind, but he was old and discerning enough that he could catch the smell of them, faint though it was: fine threads in the tapestry of the forest’s snow, and pine needles, and squirrels, and rabbits.

There were three of them. Vampires all, smelling of blood and youth. Newly made, at a guess – and his guesses usually proved fact.

Nikita propped a shoulder against a birch trunk and took another drag, settling in to wait.

A bright red cardinal landed on a branch just beside his head, and gave its particular, pealing cry, before fluttering off, a flash of berry-bright in the black and white of the late afternoon forest. He took another drag and swore it smelled of burning flesh and hair; only memory pressing up too close for comfort.

He hadn’t thought much of the snowy Buffalo landscape when they’d first arrived more than a month ago. They’d been exhausted, nursing wounds, and praying that Rob Locksley came through on the promise to keep the feds off their backs. Then had come the settling in phase. Then getting married. He still marveled that he’d had the balls to ask, and every time he glanced down at his left hand, and the white gold band there, his mind filled with the image of Sasha, snow melting in his hair, smile bright enough to drive back the darkest of clouds.

God, but he was sappy. Newlyweds were allowed a little of that, right?

But when things had finally, truly settled, and he’d had a chance to go traipsing through the deep snow, sometimes with Sasha beside him, sometimes with Sasha running happily ahead on all fours, and sometimes alone, he’d begun to feel the touch of the past. Not a tug – it didn’t drag him back into a dark headspace, not now, after everything, after allowing himself to be happy – but a light weight, like a cool hand pressed to the back of his neck. A reminder. Snow in NYC had just been snow, but here, hemmed in on all sides by wilderness, with views of frozen ponds, and dirty slush lining the walkways, he kept expecting to turn his head and find the pack – the original one – following along at his heels, man and wolf both.

But he was the only one wearing a long, black leather coat now.

And he was expecting company.

Ahead, just up the hill, a twig snapped. Snow crunched.

Nik suppressed a growl as the scent of three strange male vampires swirled toward him on a sudden backdraft of snow-touched wind.

He heard their breath, their heartbeats – they weren’t trying to be stealthy – and then they tromped down out of the shade of a pine stand and approached him.

Nik held his position, bringing his cigarette slowly to his lips for another lazy, unbothered drag. They halted two yards away, and he let the smoke out slowly through his mouth, so it curled up before his eyes, obscuring them in a quiet display of strength. You don’t scare me. When the smoke cleared, he took stock of them.

They might have been brothers, all three with blunt, unremarkable features and short, military haircuts. Well-muscled, and dressed in winter time hunting camo: coveralls and gloves and boots. Their breath plumed white in the cold, and they held their chins at that low angle, heads tipped, gazes intent in a manner he’d only ever seen in immortals.

But Nik could sense apprehension, and smell it, too; a metallic note of anxious blood sweat.

“Afternoon,” he greeted, accent carefully masked. He had a little golden lapel pin on his collar, one Trina had found for him on eBay, a double-headed imperial eagle. But if they could see it, he doubted these youngsters would understand its meaning.

The two on the right looked to the leftmost: their leader, obviously. He said, “You can smell that smoke a mile off.” He nodded toward the cig in Nik’s hand.

“Can you really? I know it’s potent, but that must be some sense of smell you have there, friend.”

The other vampire shifted, confusion coloring his gaze, briefly. “You trying to attract attention to yourself?”

“Am I what? I’m just having a smoke in my own backyard.”

The second one leaned forward, back bowed up, jaw clenched tight. “We know who you are.”

The first one gave him a backhanded smack in the chest, and a low, reprimanding growl.

“Do you?” Nikita let his true accent bleed through, thick and unmistakable. The second and third vamps’ eyes widened, hearing it. “I’m at a disadvantage, then, because I have no idea who you are.”

The first one sent the other two a warning look; the scent of apprehension and anxiety wafted off them, swirled by a sudden eddy that lifted snow into the gap that separated them. “We’re concerned neighbors,” he said, and Nikita could feel the lie of it vibrating between snow-dusted tree trunks. “You attract trouble wherever you go. No one around here wants that – maybe you don’t either.” His head tilted to a threatening angle.

He took one last drag off his smoke and dropped the butt to the snow. They’d talked of this conversation – this confrontation – for several days now, just him and the wolves. It was Fulk, surprisingly, who’d come to Nik about it first. They stink of military, he’d said, teeth bared in a rare, lupine display he normally avoided in his human shape. They’d debated: kill them, and risk a visit from a larger force? Or send them on their way with a warning?

They’d opted for the safer approach.

“If you know who I am,” Nik said, “then you’ll know it’s smartest to leave me alone. I don’t want trouble with anyone – but I will finish whatever you start.”

The third vampire lowered his head, shielding his throat, and growled, fangs flashing. “It’s three on one, old man.”

The first one sent him a warning look, but Nik could smell his mounting aggression and impatience. He would only hold his men back for so long; he too wanted a fight.

Well. In that case.

In his calmest, coolest captain voice, Nikita said, “Old man? Your numbers won’t save you, child. What were you before you were turned? Army? Special Forces, even? You know nothing of war. I have done things that would send you whimpering back to your human mothers.” He spread his arms. “If you want a fight, then let’s fight and be done with it.”

He'd projected his voice at the end, his words echoing off the tree trunks, off the hillside. Sasha had heard it; sent a ripple of worry through their bond. Nikita sent soothing thoughts back. I can take them. Don’t fret, bratishka. 

In truth, he didn’t think they would attack.

He didn’t get the chance to find out, though, because the second vampire’s head exploded in a fountain of blood, bone, and gray matter. It shattered like a hammered watermelon, and it was only after that the booming crack of a Mosin-Nagant registered.

Trina.