The Vaempires: Zombie Rising Bloody Chunks Tour

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Bloody Chunks Tour!

I’m Thomas Winship, author of Vaempires: The Evolutionary War—a vampire series that explores the question: what if vampires evolved?

For this book tour, I decided to do something a bit different. Instead of sharing excerpts, reviews, interviews, and all the usual accompaniments, I’m giving you the book itself—piece by piece.

Or chunk by bloody chunk!

This tour is the only place where you can read Vaempires: Zombie Rising, the next chapter in the vaempires saga, before its official release!

The tale of The Evolutionary War resumes in Væmpires: Zombie Rising.

Væmpires have taken control of twelve major cities. Their leader, Vielyn, seeks the atomic weapons that will bring the rest of the world to its knees.

Vampire forces are reeling. As Linq and Ray race to the royal estate to rendezvous with Cassandra and Daniel, the princess is captured and Daniel falls.

With the fate of world shifting to their teenage shoulders, Linq and Ray must deal with tremendous losses while battling a most unexpected—and undeadly—new foe.

This tour wouldn’t be possible without the time and efforts of a very special group of people, beginning with Silvia and Franny at Dark Mind Book Tours and including everyone on the list below. Please show your support by stopping by, commenting, and spreading the word!

TOUR SCHEDULE

September 10th
Darkest Sins - Book Trailer Reveal

September 11th
Grave Tells - Chapter 1

September 12th
Mind Reader - Chapter 2

September 13th
Fictional Candy - Chapter 3

September 14th
Words In Sync - Chapter 4th

September 17th
Chapter By Chapter - Chapter 5 pt1

September 18th
Picked By Poison - Chapter 5 pt2

September 19th
Reader Girls - Chapter 6 pt1

September 20th
What's Beyond Forks? - Chapter 6 pt2

September 21st
Sweet Southern Home - Chapter 7

September 24th
TToria - Chapter 8

September 25th
Kindle & Me - Chapter 9

September 26th
S.M. Boyce's Blog - Chapter 10

September 27th
Happy Tails & Tales - Chapter 11th

September 28th
Darkest Sins - Reviews

I hope you enjoy Vaempires: Zombie Rising!

Chapter 2

  

 

Linq snapped his head to the left, but the motion wasn’t repeated. He peered down Seventy-Sixth Street. Nothing moved.

“What is it?” Ray asked, tensing beside him and finally displaying a hint of normalcy.

“Dunno,” Linq muttered. He kept his voice low, although they stood in plain sight. “Saw something.”

“Where?”

The aroma of vampire blood assailed Linq as all his senses went on high alert. So much had been spilled that it hung in the air like an invisible fog. Væmpire blood was there, as well—a pungent, spoiled scent that bordered on rancid—but it was nowhere near as concentrated. The sweet aroma of human blood wasn’t detectable in the immediate vicinity.

The morning was alive with the sounds of death and destruction. Sirens blared. Alarms brayed. Beings screamed. They composed a soundtrack that had been playing on repeat for the last twenty-plus hours. Linq was learning to ignore it.

They were being watched. Of that there was no doubt. He felt the weight of pure malice settle onto his bones, and identified the source.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the apartment building across the intersection. It was small, only a dozen stories, and not much to look at. While Orion was full of beautiful buildings, rich with style and ornamentation, that one was rather plain. It was a city block wide, but only half that as deep. Its weathered tan exterior was dotted with mid-sized viewports and cooling units.

The building’s only compelling features were exterior balconies that lined each corner of the building. The ones above the tree line offered nice views into the royal estate. While the majority of the balconies were open, sporting nothing but iron railings, some were enclosed with transparent walls.

One such balcony on the third floor drew Linq’s attention. The pane facing him was marred by a starburst of cracks and crimson streaks. A whisper of motion caused the teens to glance to the balcony above it.

A man strode into view—an older man, nearly as big as Linq, with overlarge features and a shock of bushy black hair. Although the balcony enclosure was polarized against the sun, vampire eyes made it easy to see that the man wore the all-too-familiar black night-fighter suit of the main væmpire force.

The man walked up to the enclosure wall, pressing one six-fingered hand against the smooth glass as he leaned forward to peer into the distance. His other hand was wrapped around the neck of a small child.

“Sonuvabitch,” Ray hissed through clenched teeth.

Linq started at the sight, driven to action by the rage bubbling through his veins, but then froze. It was too late to intervene. While a lack of consciousness could’ve explained why the girl’s body dangled in the væmpire’s fist like a limp rag doll, a deeper inspection told another story.

It was a vampire girl, seven or eight years old from the looks of it. Her straw-colored hair hung in dry, brittle strands. Her greying eyes were open in an unfocused, lifeless stare that would surely haunt Linq’s dreams. Her face, withered and wrinkled like a centenarian human, was shrunken to her skull.

The dark-haired man had drained all the blood from the girl’s tiny body.

The væmpire looked down, spying Linq. The man who had killed a child in cold blood and the cold-blooded teen who vowed to kill him locked eyes for an instant, and then the man broke into a wide smile that displayed all of his fangs. He tossed the girl’s body aside like it were so much garbage, and launched himself at the protective enclosure. Glass exploded like a bomb as the man rocketed through it before falling toward the sidewalk.

“He’s mine!” Linq shouted, rushing to meet the dark-haired man. His short ponytail bounced up and down as he ran.

“I’ve got your back,” Ray replied.

Linq was halfway across the street when more væmpires spilled onto the balcony and leaped down behind the dark-haired man.

He cursed under his breath but continued forward. The quicker he and Ray dealt with this group, the sooner they’d get to the royal estate.

The dark-haired væmpire hit the ground as a shower of glass rained down on the sidewalk around him. Instead of attacking, he dove to the left, beyond Linq’s reach, and raced toward Ray.

Linq was surprised by the move, but he didn’t turn to give chase. Maybe the man thought the slender teen was the easier target, or perhaps he just had something against blonds—whatever the reason, the man would soon regret his decision. Ray was as deadly a fighter as Linq had ever seen, but what made him even more dangerous was that he didn’t share the common vampire-væmpire proclivity for hand-to-hand combat. Ray preferred hi-tech weapons.

As if on cue, the whoosh of a rifle sounded behind Linq. A column of superheated plasma streaked past, carrying with it a stench of scorched flesh and bone that signified the end of the dark-haired man. The plasma burned into the apartment building, missing another descending væmpire by the barest of margins.

Linq offered a silent prayer for the dead girl as a trio of thugs landed in rapid succession. They spread out across the sidewalk as if to outflank him, so he angled toward the one farthest left, cutting the væmpire off while offering Ray a wider line of sight.

His target looked like a businessman on his day off. He was clean-shaven, his sandy-brown hair gelled in place. He was dressed in a short-sleeved polo shirt, khaki shorts, and loafers without socks. All that was missing was a sporty cap.

If he had time, Linq would’ve wondered what the man had been doing before the attack. As it was, although the man’s eyes were glassy—a clear sign he was under the influence of something—Linq didn’t dare hope he was impaired in any way.

The man sneered at Linq. “I’m gonna kill—”

Linq cut the threat short by punching razor-sharp claws through the man’s esophagus. There was no time for banter. He ripped his claws free and, in one continuous motion, spun around to parry a blow from another attacker.

The businessman wasn’t dead, so Linq drove a foot into the man’s gut. The væmpire fell to the ground, doubled over and gasping for breath that whistled and gurgled through the holes in his throat.

Linq returned his attention to the second man. The væmpire was taller than Linq. In fact, everything about him was long. Long, greasy hair framed a long face adorned with a long, tapered nose and long, floppy ears. He had long, lanky arms that moved in awkward, herky-jerky motions that reminded Linq of a marionette. If the man had a nickname, it was probably Stretch.

Stretch tried using his longer reach to keep Linq at bay, but the teen slid inside his disjointed attack. In a quartet of rapid-fire combinations, Linq opened a series of slashes along the man’s forearms and face, putting him on the defensive and driving him back toward the apartment building. Warm blood dripped from Linq’s claws.

Before he could finish the taller man off, a handful of muffled thumps signaled additional væmpires landing on the sidewalk.

“No more party crashers,” Ray yelled, sounding more like his wisecracking self than he had in some time. “We’re late for another engagement.” He punctuated his statement with a flurry of plasma bursts. Most of them found targets—Linq heard the grunts whenever the shots struck home—and the air sizzled with ambient heat and the stench of barbecued flesh, but plasma guns lacked true stopping power when switched to rapid-fire mode, so most of the targets were down but not out.

Linq waded into the sea of væmpires, hoping to make short, swift work of the wounded. His boots ground broken glass into the sidewalk, producing a grating, splintering sound that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. He sensed Ray closing in behind him.

The teen duo proved more than up to the task of dispatching the unskilled væmpires. They sliced and stabbed, and blocked and parried, managing to be a microsecond quicker and to stay a nanosecond ahead of their opponents. The væmpires may have been larger and stronger, but the teens had been in combat training since they could walk. Heads separated from bodies. Hearts beat their last beats. One by one, Linq and Ray whittled down the number of væmpires until two remained.

Ray battled a bruiser whose arms sported a multitude of colorful tattoos, as Linq squared off against the sandy-haired businessman, whose neck perforations had long since healed.

They circled each other, seeking an opening. Linq waved his claws. “Are you sure you want to test your luck again?”

The businessman scowled. “You and your friend might’ve taken down the lot of us, but it’s nothing compared to how many of you we put down.” He spit on the ground at Linq’s feet. “Or how many more we’ll put down.”

The væmpire’s words struck home. Images and feelings crowded at the edge of Linq’s perceptions, a tsunami of them—all of them related to the horrific events of the last twenty-four hours, all of them clamoring and vying for attention. He held them at bay, because distraction meant death, but their intrusion caused his body to relax and his claws to retract.

Sensing an opening, the væmpire attacked, coming straight at Linq in a full-frontal assault.

Standing his ground, Linq swept the væmpire’s claws to the side with his left hand. With his right, he clubbed the vaempire on the side of the head, a thunderous shot that drove the businessman back three steps.

Linq moved in to follow it up with a decisive blow, his senses already searching for new threats. Claws stained black from spilling so much blood extended on impulse and flashed toward the væmpire’s neck.

They slashed nothing but air as the sandy-haired man dropped into a forward roll.

Linq let him roll by, and turned with a sigh. It was almost too easy. The man had obviously received no instruction in hand-to-hand fighting, or else he’d know that you never turn your back on an opponent.

The væmpire came out of his roll and jumped to his feet. He realized his mistake—he had rolled past Linq, but was facing the wrong direction—in time to flinch as Linq’s claws separated his head from his neck.

Crimson blood spurted as the body and head fell in opposite directions. Hot væmpire blood that smelled like rancid meat hit the sidewalk in uneven splatters, reminding Linq of a drunken man urinating in a back alley.

Then two things happened at once: he sensed a væmpire—yet another new arrival—drop in, while Ray yelled, “Watch out!”

Before he could react, Linq was grabbed from behind. Strong arms encircled him—hot, sweaty væmpire arms that felt like steel pincers. Linq’s own arms were pinned to his sides as his adversary squeezed him like a vise.

The pressure was tremendous and Linq panicked, throwing his head back in an attempt to crush the væmpire’s nose. He knew it was a mistake as he did it, but his reaction was quicker than his thoughts.

The væmpire dodged the blow, and then did the unthinkable: his head flashed forward and he sunk his fangs into Linq’s exposed neck.

Every cell in Linq’s body erupted in unmitigated pain. Nothing in his training, nothing in his imagination—in his nightmares, perhaps, but not his imagination—nothing in his experience or education had prepared him for such pain.

His eyes rolled back in his head and his jaw snapped shut, his fangs slicing deep into his tongue. He didn’t even notice.

Then the væmpire drank. 

Thomas Winship was born in Middletown, NY (USA) and still resides in Orange County. He holds an MBA in Management from St. Thomas Aquinas College, where he serves as an adjunct professor of courses in English Composition, Communications, and Business. He also spent fifteen years working for a global pharmaceutical company, specializing in organizational development, talent management, and training. Tom writes in his spare time. His first novel, a mystery/legal thriller entitled Temporary Insanity (a.k.a. Case Closed), was a 2008 finalist in a national contest but failed to garner industry attention. His second novel, Væmpires: Revolution, was published in October and a follow-up novella, Væmpires: White Christmas, was published in December. He is an avid collector of books, comic books, music, and movies. His interests are diverse: on any given day, Tom is likely to be found watching a horror movie, attending a hard rock concert, or enjoying a Broadway show. He is currently working on the next installment of the “Væmpires” series, which is scheduled for a 2012 release. 

Where to find Tom  

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