haven’t got much to say today, so I thought I’d put up a teaser. Here’s the first few lines of Bound to Shadows….

I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m a guardian. I’ll even admit that I enjoy hunting down those rogue supernatural elements who prey on human and non-humans alike.

But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t times when I absolutely hate my job.

Getting a call-out at three AM on a bitterly cold winter night was definitely one of those times. Especially when the call sent me to an area rapidly gaining a reputation as the ‘it’ spot for blood whores–which was the common term for humans hooked on the pleasures of a vampire’s bite.

Normally I didn’t have a problem with people getting their kicks any damn way they pleased, but for humans–and it only seemed to afflict humans, not the rest of us–becoming addicted to a vampire’s bite was definitely one of the quicker ways to court death. They simply didn’t have the strength, the speed, or even the will power to battle a vampire if things went wrong. Hell, many supernaturals didn’t, either.

And while most vampires were generally law abiding and only took enough to give the addicted his or her hit, there were always some abusers who pushed for longer, stronger rushes, and there were always vampires willing to oblige.
And sometimes that meant death.

It had become such a problem in recent months that the government had set up a think tank to find ways of curtailing the growing numbers flocking to the vampire bars. There were even calls to outlaw the practice–though how the hell anyone was going to police that I had no idea. It wasn’t like ordinary cops had much hope of tracking down and arresting vamps, and there simply weren’t enough of us guardians. Not if they wanted us to do our real job.

Personally, I think they had about as much hope of stopping this craze as they did stopping all the designer drugs that were constantly hitting the streets. If a junkie wanted his fix, then he’d find it no matter how difficult or how illegal the government made it. And at least all the whores were of legal age–the vampire ‘pushers’ were careful about that. They had to be, because otherwise they had to deal with the Directorate. Regular drug dealers just got jail time, at worst…

Sorry, that’s it! (hehehehehe!)