Volenna

Sam M. Dennis

Description

Immortality means more than losing everyone you love, but what if ?more? means killing in your sleep and being hunted by a forgotten enemy?

Matt Garrison's beautiful wife cusses in Russian when she drinks, but because of amnesia does she not know why. Matt's sultry muse speaks French. Maybe his two women are why he sleepwalks.

When Sara Garrison meets the new Anthropology professor she has a feeling her life is about to change, and maybe not for the best.

Anthropologist Barry Phillips has returned to Houston to die.

FBI Agent Kristi Faulkner has been called in to investigate a series of bizarre vigilante murders happening in Houston over the past five years.

Rosalinda has come to Houston hunting a Volenna she has stalked since the 1800's. Volenna are genetic blood drinkers despised and hunted as abominations by "real" vampires.

Father Elliot Verdi has come to hunt Rosalinda, and his Volenna lover. When they all come together in Houston, Texas mortals are not safe day or night.

Sujets

• Rosalinda
• Daywalker
• Immortality
• Horror
• Collette
• Fiction
• Vampire

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780595832934
• Langue: English

Extrait

VOLENNA
A Novel
Sam M. Dennis
iUniverse, Inc.
New York Lincoln Shanghai
Volenna
Copyright © 2006 by Samuel M. Dennis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:
iUniverse 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com 1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN-13: 978-0-595-38915-5 (pbk) ISBN-13: 978-0-595-83293-4 (ebk) ISBN-10: 0-595-38915-5 (pbk) ISBN-10: 0-595-83293-8 (ebk)
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
DOUBTING TIME  
BETRAYALS  
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS  
HUNTED TURNED HUNTER  
CLOSE TO HOME  
INNOCENCE LOST  
DUBOIS ESTATES  
OLD MEMORIES  
LIFE GOES ON  
TRUE FRIENDS  
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES; SAME SOUL  
ON THE TRAIL  
CONFIRMATIONS  
MEETING OF THE MINDS  
EPILOGUE  
 
DOUBTING TIME  
“ Bonsoir, mon cher .” Her crooked smile floated out of the blackness of his sleep.
Mathew twitched at his muse’s voice. I’m only dreaming.
Her tousled, light-red hair and her seductive smile looked genuine, but her deep, gold-brown eyes betrayed her intentions. “Mathew, amour , what was that?” she purred evilly, and he could imagine one corner of her mouth going up in a smirk.
He tried to ignore her. Normal people slept through the night, but creative people often used the late night hours to look at their darkest fears. But, Mathew reminded himself, normal men didn’t have imaginary women taunting them.
I should be using this time to lay out my next novel. I think I will develop the hyper engine from…
“It sounded like screaming, Mathew, cher . I think you had better wake. Someone is in the house.”
Matt lay still, listening. The late night silence was suffocating. I’m not awake—you’re a dream. Maybe the engineer on the ship should be like Simone…
Her face twisted in derision; her eyes flashed. “Mathew, I know you hear me. Petit lâche ! I hear your mind racing you little coward!” She was all but screaming in his head.
Mathew jolted. He was also picking up French from her little tirades, and no, he was not a little coward, and he would not escape her by pretending not to hear. Sweat glistened on his forehead as dread settled heavily over the back of his neck. The warm cocoon of his blankets felt confining. He wanted to open his eyes, to banish her image, but at the same time he dreaded admitting to her that he was awake. He did not want to face another sleepless night in sweating anticipation of…what?
He could not fight the dark mood she had set. What had made that noise she’d talked about? Had there even been a noise?
He had named his imaginary muse Simone, but naming her did not help to banish her. He always wound up just as he was now, lying in bed and imagining all sorts of demented things. Maybe he was supposed to make her a character in his next book, but he could think of nothing in the works that might involve a sensual, cruel French woman.
“A scream?” Her sultry voice spoke volumes of desire and lust.
He looked beyond her full lips to the thick, light-red hair curling against her softly freckled neck. She seemed so real that he imagined he could smell the slight cinnamon scent of her skin.
You don’t exist! You’re a figment of my imagination. I couldn’t hear anything through these thick walls. Someone could be murdered next door, and we’d never know. This condo was built right. The noise had to come from within the house!
She smiled, teeth flashing. “Wrong answer, Matt, old buddy.”
Don’t open your eyes. You’re dreaming. Don’t open your eyes…
Thunder rumbled in the distance as a storm closed in on the city. Forty stories up, the wind sang a duet with the thunder. But the storm outside hadn’t caused the voices and sounds inside Matt’s condo.
This is childish. What am I listening for, a bogeyman in my closet? What do I have to be frightened of? I’m a freaking English professor!
Simone’s beautiful, full lips parted as she wetted them with her tongue. “What, then? Maybe it was you screaming. Maybe you are only hearing things, cher . But maybe— maybe it was the scream of a madman in a killing frenzy!”
Stop that! How could she look so feminine and beautiful but be so cold and cruel? Why did she speak French? When had he ever learned—hell, ever even read—any French that he could imagine such foul words from her mouth? Keeping his eyes firmly closed, he kicked the covers off his sweaty legs.
He hated this time of night—his “doubting time” when he awoke in a cold sweat, his imagination running wild. Lying awake and alone in the dark, he was a child again, hiding under the blanket from monsters. Every small problem grew into a world-shattering crisis. This was the time of night when he awoke with a toothache and knew for sure it was cancer of the jaw and not just a cavity. When Tanya, his daughter, awoke sick in the night, it was never because she had eaten too much candy before she went to bed. But his muse’s unrelenting presence in his mind, whispering doubts and preying on his fears, did nothing to comfort him.
Ah, the curse of being creative—and maybe a little off my rocker! The last time I did this was…a month ago? Yeah, we had that large tax bill due on the condo. What are we going to do for tax money next year?
Shit! I didn’t read over the stuff the accountant sent!
Did I miss our monthly meeting?
Why do we have to take Tanya to the doctor all the time? What if something is seriously wrong with her? I don’t even know how much our health insurance pays.
Before he married Sara and before Tanya was born, he had never worried about anything—hell, he had pushed the envelope of adventure. Hadn’t he met Sara in the hospital in Alaska because he was there with a broken leg, and she was finally recovering from a serious injury that had resulted in a coma? Now, he had quit watching horror movies to prevent feeding his creative paranoia. He never watched the news anymore and had contemplated giving up the newspaper. Despite these precautions, he still awoke in a cold sweat, listening for strange noises, his imagination running wild like a child’s. And all this anguish was fueled by his imaginary muse.
After Tanya was born, Simone began haunting his doubting time. He was blocked from writing his latest novel, and his lack of progress was causing tension between him and Sara. Simone had appeared one night in his dreams and coaxed him into discussing his latest work with her. He was amused and never questioned the French accent and terminology. Initially, Simone was very receptive and understanding. He thought he had invented a confidante to work through his problems with. She would ask questions he had not thought of until things made sense, or suggest a different angle to a situation. But it wasn’t long before she turned cruel.
Her first angry comment caught him off guard. “You are weak,” she had snarled one night. “If you were not such a petit conasse, you would figure things out for yourself.”
From that moment, their relationship grew more antagonistic. Simone seemed to take delight in feeding his fears as she had done tonight. Now she sneered, “If it was a man screaming, you do not want to hear it again. A man’s scream is worse than a woman’s. Maybe it was a rampaging bum from the street.” She was prodding him to answer.
Damn it! Stop! His subconscious told him that his family was much too precious for him to ignore Simone.
“What’s the matter, cher ? Why hide and imagine that monsters and villains from movies are invading your home when you could just get up and look?” Her sharp sarcasm sent chills up his spine.
Despite his shuddering fear, Mathew doubted Simone’s assertion about invaders in their home. Living in this part of Houston, inside Loop 610 could be dangerous, but surely not in a penthouse condo. His mother had lived here alone for a long time after his father died and had felt perfectly safe. Before she died, she encouraged Mathew and his family to move in because the condo was close to everything and was quite secure. Mathew definitely felt safer up here above the city than on the beachfront in Galveston. A thief not only would have to get past security, but also would have to come all the way to the top of the building even to get close to Mathew’s family.
We have no invaders! The security alarms aren’t going off, and they go off at anything.
“What if the alarms have been disabled?” Simone came back.
He caught himself looking over at the alarm control panel on their bedroom wall. The lights were all green. God damn it! Leave me alone! Besides, Sara is sound asleep. Wouldn’t her woman’s intuition make her jumpy if we were in danger?
“What if Sara’s intuition does not work while she sleeps? Besides, a killer worth the name would break in by climbing down from the roof and come in through the balcony. Or, even better, he would have the alarm pass codes and walk in anytime he chose. But then again, what self-respecting ax-murderer thinks of memorizing alarm codes?” Simone was not going to give him any peace.
Patio furniture clattered and clanged as the wind clutched at the cushions. He would lose another set of cushions this season…typical. The noise frustrated hi