Kim Bennett, a former dominatrix, is a very bent woman with a dark side for making men and women do things they’ve never done before. Blood Bar is a dark thriller about a woman’s struggle to fight a group of vampires, and to survive in the underground world of New York.
Expect a healthy dose of action: murder, sharp blades, carve in, carve out, blood spills, graphic, sexual.
Link to Amazon
Chapter 1
“I just killed you.” Erin leaned forward and placed a hand on his thigh. She glanced around the room and moved toward his ear. If anyone was watching it looked like they were kissing. She was warm. He was cold. She gave him a light kiss.
“Not feeling well? Problems swallowing, a bloody nose, you feel like death?”
Confused, Drach, a young role-playing vampire, was focused on every word she was saying. His face flushed. He wiped the sweat from beneath his hairline with the back of his left hand.
“What's happening? Say something to me! What did you do?”
The look on his face changed. Twitching, blinking, he couldn't breath. He undid the top button on his shirt. His head was spinning.
"What the hell,” he continued. "Talk to me, I didn't do anything…"
Erin leaned back. Sat quietly, a smirk on her face. She watched panic sink in before answering him.
At two in the morning, in a small half-hidden club in the Lower East side of Manhattan, The Haven resembled any other typical meeting place for a group of locals from the neighborhood. Maybe a trendy bar for the young and hip. Maybe a place to be seen. But not a blood bar. Only a modest glowing neon sign above the front door with the word vamp in red suggested that the renovated brownstone was an underground club for vampire role-playing and gothic-garbed men and women.
A metallic taste in the mouth was the first sign. The second was excessive saliva production. A splattering of crimson hit his arm when he coughed. Nobody noticed it, but as Drach sat at the bar he felt it. A trickle of dark moisture wormed its way onto his lip. He brushed at it, warm, wet, red. Glancing down, rubbed it between his thumb and fingertip. He lowered his white hand. It was swollen, bloated like an animal carcass. He had to hide it. Hide the blood. Drach chose his pants, wiping his fingers on his leg.
The room was moving, his eyes were rolling, his throat felt raw. Shredded. He knew this was bad.
Murder is easy to spot. Especially if it's bloody. But poison isn’t. Cyanide has a bitter almond taste. It stops cells from using oxygen. Enters the blood stream quickly. Drach thought he was suffocating. His abdomen cramped. Pain shot through his stomach like something chewing at him, it burned.
He had to get out, fresh air, away from Erin. Staggering off the bar stool, he felt unsteady. Dizzy. Then the third sign kicked in. Shortness of breath. His heart was racing. His eyes couldn't focus. Everything in the room went blurry. He reached out to balance himself. He grabbed for the nearest body. A female shoulder.
Erin smiled, “Scary isn’t it? Makes you wonder about life, death. Where you'll end up for eternity.”
She looked down at her watch. "Well,” she continued, “it's getting late. Time to go. You ready?"
Drach shook his head, his tongue twice its size and coated with froth made speaking difficult. His temples pounded. He felt a thud in his chest, he panicked, “Oh Christ, what have you done?”
Drach tried to speak, but Erin raised a warm finger to his lips. “Shhhhh, don’t bother.” The twinkling of her eyes, smile on her face and sweet tone were eerily out of place.
Erin Roberts was an attractive Irish girl from Bayonne, New Jersey, and at five-four and one-hundred and thirty pounds she appealed to most men. Her short red hair accented her flawless smooth skin, full lips and captive smile. Wearing a black dress that clung to her flat stomach and feminine curves, she was ready for an evening of doing the devil's work.
She reached out and poked at his pink skin. His cheeks. His lips, his neck. Oxygen was staying in the blood but not making it to the cells. Erin was surprised at how quickly he was dying and pulled him across the floor. “Follow me. A girl has to be careful leaving the clubs. You never know what kind of shitheads you'll run into.”
Drach, feeling the effects of trickery and well beyond salvation, had no strength to resist. His right leg was numb. His foot was tingling. He dragged it along and followed behind her struggling to recall what happened.
“She is a donor, I accepted her gift, it doesn’t make sense.”
Taunting him, Erin looked over her shoulder and smiled, “Some fresh air Hon?”
His eyes were sore, bulging in his head. He mumbled something. By all appearances he was intoxicated and his date looked sexy as hell. No one would recall seeing him leave and no one would suspect Erin of murder. Pretty girls don’t do that.
They walked out the front door onto Avenue C. Erin shoved him. Her hand sat on the middle of his back. Drach felt it. She pushed him again. He stumbled along the sidewalk. She was impatient. There wasn't much time.
They walked two blocks. Sidewalk was busy. People were moving toward them. Two couples, laughing, joking. Erin put an arm around Drach and pulled him toward her. They moved past them, nobody looked. Turned right into a small dark alley. There was lots of trash. It was quiet. Drach could make all the noise he wanted. They moved further. It got darker. Surrounded by garbage, boxes and some old discarded furniture, they entered a loading area. Big steel doors. The cramping got worse. He staggered against the red bricks of the brownstone. Started to slide down but caught himself. Drach was dying.
Hunched over with his hands on his hips and vomiting, the pain forced him to his knees. Drach’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. She picked him up.
“You stupid ass," she said. "You're wondering why I did this, aren't you?”
Drach asked himself the same question and for a brief moment his mind cleared. He suddenly realized he had let himself be trapped by a good-looking girl and feverishly attempted to stumble away.
“Your kind killed my father.” She walked beside him. Pushed him. He vomited. She looked behind to make sure they were alone. Pushed him again. He slammed into the wall. She slapped the back of his head, “And I’m going to get every one of you bastards.”
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Drach glared at Erin, his eyes followed her hands as they reached down to remove a razor ring from his pocket. He was barely breathing and close to death.
With a grin on her face, Erin admired her painted fingernails for a few long seconds, twisted the metal knife onto the third finger of her right hand and made a fist. It was tight. “Do you know what I’m doing? I mean, do you have any idea what I'm going to do or is all this just too much for you?”
Drach, his face now bright red had an awkward expression. He was familiar with the ring. Knew what it could do to. Knew it could carve tissue. But couldn’t imagine what was about to happen next.
Drach didn't answer. She pulled his head back. Jerking it hard. Close up he looked puzzled. Not with it. Erin tilled his head. Exposed his neck, studied it, looked at it. The shiny metallic surface of the ring caught her attention. It would look good dangling from a chain around her neck, she thought.
Finally he managed to cough, “Why me?”
Erin moved close to his ear. She grinned, “Because you play with vampires, you idiot.”
He didn't answer.
Raising her right arm, she drew back. She swung. Felt the razor cut him. A cavernous gap opened up halfway between Drach’s collarbone and his chin. It sliced his neck. He stood still. Shock. She could see the white of his esophagus. Blood flowed out. His eyes blinked rapidly, his mouth shot open. She cut him again, more blood. And again. A sudden gush of blood erupted. His carotid was severed. He dropped to the ground and bled out in seconds.
Erin watched him thrash about as the color drained from his face. She stood above his lifeless body. Kicked his chest. He didn't move. She kicked his face. He didn't move. Her eyes followed the trail of red. It pooled under his head and on a discarded newspaper, The New York Daily News, and she knew what tomorrow’s headline would read. “One dead, poisoned and slashed.” It was then that the reality of the kill hit her, and she realized that stopping at one wasn’t an option.
Erin Roberts walked alone out of the alley and into the city. Her arms were swaying at her side. A smile was on her face and no one gave her a second look. She had become her father, Happy Roberts, a man who never smiled a day in his life except when he was killing somebody. Today she was killing vampires. Now more than ever her thoughts centered on the blood bar..!
