QSFer Amir Lane has a new queer paranormal historical box set out (demi, gender-fluid, trans FTM): Heavy Metal Blood collection.
An Algerian corsair, betrayed by the man who hired his family to fight the Spanish during the Anglo-Spanish war. A Romantic-era violinist and ballet dancer, abandoned in a foreign country and struggling to survive, awaking in ashes and consumed with bloodlust. A samurai seeking to destroy a man with a more violent agenda than his own. An unwilling sniper embracing being a monster when his partner is killed.
Four stories of blood, love, and vengeance tell the origin stories of heavy metal’s most famous vampire musicians. This collection includes four historical vampire novellas, and four bonus stories.
A Rhapsody of Rapiers
And what fate befalls the undead?
When his older brother needs a new cartographer during the Anglo-Spanish War, Elyes jumps at the opportunity. Working under the command of English Captain Westmont, Elyes and his crew make easy work of the Spanish fleets.
Until inhuman, blood-drinking monsters board the ship and slaughter most of the crew.
There’s no time to mourn. Elyes’ brother and captain are dead. Elyes must take command and assemble a new crew to continue fighting.
As Westmont threatens to hunt down every member of Elyes’ new crew, he must become just as ruthless as his pursuer. Knowing that he will never see his family again, he sets on a path that will alter his life forever.
A man with nothing to lose is a dangerous creature, and Elyes has everything to gain.
A Waltz of Witchcraft
Beauty is in the eye of monsters.
Abandoned in a foreign country, Romantic-era violinist and ballet dancer Jean-Étienne Petit is struggling to survive. A dark entity has taken an interest in him, following his every move between ensembles and patrons, killing anyone he gets close to. Moving from city to city isn’t enough to shake it.
The stalking escalates until the night a fire breaks out in a backstage dressing room, and Jean-Étienne meets a violent death.
In the aftermath, he awakes in the ashes, traumatized and consumed with bloodlust. Escaping onto the streets of Seattle, he battles against the hunger overtaking him. Now, Jean-Étienne must find a way to regain his humanity before he loses it all for good.
A Beat of Honour
Go into battle expecting to die…
Born and raised as a samurai, Tetsuro Saito expected to die in battle. He didn’t expect to rise again.
Waking up in the middle of a bloodbath, Tetsuro is horrified to discover he’s been turned into a vampire by a man with a violent agenda. Unless Tetsuro can find a way to stop him, Maxwell Osborne will continue to create an army of immortals. Fighting the bloodthirsty urges now burning through his veins, Tetsuro vows to kill Osborne and spare the world fate he has in store for it.
Everything he once stood for has been ripped away. The life he once had is gone. Will Tetsuro be strong enough to defeat his maker while starving his new impulses? Or will victory demand he lose himself to the darkness rising within him?
A Verse of Vengeance
All is fair in blood and war.
Brys Tuck never wanted to be a soldier, much less a sniper, but when he’s drafted to fight, he doesn’t have much choice. Four years into The Great War, Brys learns the monsters on the battlefield aren’t just metaphorical; His spotter, Gwilym, is a vampire. When Brys is hit by an enemy sniper, he begs Gwilym to turn him before it’s too late.
The war is over, and Brys is adapting better to his new life a little too well. The comfortable afterlife comes crashing down when Brys and Gwilym are ambushed by vampire hunters. Gwilym is killed, and Brys barely manages to escape.
Heartbroken and angry, Brys takes his revenge on everyone he blames for his pain. All he wants is to find and kill the hunters, even if it turns him into the monster Gwilym was afraid of him becoming.
Warnings: Violence, blood, implied abuse, implied sexual abuse
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Excerpt
The sun burned Elyes’ skin. White blisters spread across the places not covered by what was left of his clothes. He screamed and retreated into the shadows, half-dragging himself through the blood and guts and fluids splattered all over the deck. The reek of death and decay, stale blood and piss and shit, rotting carcasses cooking in the heat, brought bile up to the back of his throat.
Two years at sea, and he had never seen anything like this. Had never smelled anything like this.
Ya Allah, the smells!
He could smell everything.
Breathing through his mouth didn’t help much. With a shaky hand, he pulled his scarf up around his face. It was soaked in blood.
His blood.
The fabric brushed across the raw flesh of his shoulder. He flinched away from it and scrambled to adjust the scarf.
He couldn’t stand enough to climb down the stairs leading below deck. He managed to drag himself almost halfway down when the boat lurched. The steps disappeared beneath him, reappearing as he slammed down against them. Clawed hands scrambled for any purchase he could get. The blister on his exposed skin popped. Milky white fluid mingled with the blood beneath him.
Elyes landed hard at the bottom of the stairs. For several long seconds, he didn’t move. He lay there, trembling and whimpering from the searing through every inch of his skin.
It took several seconds for Elyes to realize he was not alone down here.
The sound of several stuttering heartbeats reached his ears. There was an odd tick to them. Ba-da-dum. Ba-da-dum. Ba-da-dum. It was the same odd tick his own heart had.
The hairs on his arms and neck stood on end. Whoever — or whatever — was approaching him made almost no sound, save for their heavy breathing. The wood boards beneath their feet barely creaked. Their heart beat in that irregular, triple-beat rhythm.
Elyes stiffened, coiling his muscles tight until they were close enough that he could lash out. His clawed hand caught flesh, scraping the top layer of skin.
A sharp hiss was followed by a blow to Elyes face.
Elyes curled in on himself and used his momentum to launch himself at the attacker. It was a shock to realize the second hiss came from him.
He landed on top of the other. Before he could pin them — her — down, she twisted beneath him and caught her leg around his neck. With surprising force, she flipped them over. Her chest pressed perpendicular to his, bursting another blister, digging against the burns, and pressing into the broken rib. He gasped and wheezed for breath. A claw on his left hand caught in a hoop earring and pulled hard enough to tear it out. Bitter-smelling blood stung his nostrils.
“Elyes!”
He knew that voice.
He knew that voice, he knew that voice, he knew that voice.
Tears welled up in his eyes. His throat was thick. His tongue seemed to take up the majority of his mouth. Swallowing only helped so much.
“Fatima.”
His voice broke around the whisper.
Fatima shifted above him to pull him up into a tight hug. Her headscarf was missing. The light filtering in from the open door leading above deck made her eyes shine. She pressed her face to the side of his neck. Her shoulders shook. For the first time in the two years he had known her, she was crying.
Though the pressure against his injuries made every inch of Elyes’ body burn, he hugged her back, clutching at the tatters of her shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut.
They weren’t the only ones down here. Of the hundred-something crew members who had been alive when they’d docked in Marseilles, he could make out maybe fifteen separate beating hearts. Every single one of them had that same, steady ba-da-dum, ba-da-dum, ba-da-dum rhythm to it except—
Except the two — no, four — no, seven — no, twelve beating hearts above deck. Each of those had a regular pattern of ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
Each of those belonged to a human.
Elyes pulled away from Fatima. She must have noticed the newcomers too, because she was staring up at the deck as well. Her blood-stained teeth were bared. Both her upper and lower eyeteeth were sharper and longer than they should have been.
He touched his tongue to his own eyeteeth and found they were longer as well. His nails, which he’d always kept meticulously short, were curved into long claws that extended beyond his fingertips.
Low growls rumbled through the floor. They weren’t the only ones who had noticed that they were no longer alone.
“Is anybody still alive?”
The words sounded strange to Elyes’ ear. Fatima furrowed her brow in confusion.
English.
The words were in English.
“Hello-o? Come now, you can’t all be dead.”
The sound of Captain Westmont’s voice made Elyes’ stomach lurch. Bitter, acidic anger filled the back of his mouth and dripped past his lips.
He stood and whirled around to face the direction of Captain Westmont’s voice, snarling with his teeth bared. The motion made his broken rib dig in deeper. He inhaled sharply, and found it easier than he expected it to be. Had he imagined the puncture in his lung? He must have. If his rib had actually broken through that far, he would be dead.
Except—
He was dead, wasn’t he?
He’d felt his heart stop beating, which meant he had died. And yet, it was beating now.
The sun had burnt his skin, worse than he had ever been burned before. He could have walked through fire and it would have hurt less than he hurt now.
“Looks like they all killed each other, Captain. Sun must’ve burnt up the rest of ‘em,” a second man said.
Elyes didn’t recognize this voice. He blinked a few times and counted his own heartbeats to steady his breath. He dug his claws into his palms. The sharp pain pulled him from whatever animalistic state he had nearly fallen into.
Author Bio
Amir Lane writes supernatural and fantasy with LGBT+ characters. From the frigid and mysterious land of Northern Canada, Amir is obsessed with loud music and black magic. They spend most of their writing time in a small home office or doing the circuit of local coffee shops. They live in a world where magic is an every day occurrence, and they strive to bring that world to paper.
When not figuring out what kind of day job an incubus would have or what a necromancer would go to school for, Amir enjoys visiting the nearest Dairy Queen, getting killed in video games, and watching cat videos.
| Author Website | https://amirlane.com/ |
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| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/amirlaneauthor |