Pretty When She Dies
By Rhiannon Frater
When she began to stir from her deep slumber, she had no idea she was buried under several feet of moist, dark earth. Curled into a tight ball with one hand over her face, she shivered as her brain slowly switched on. Flashes of random memories full of distorted images burst through her mind.
Time to wake up, a voice whispered.
Her eyelids fluttered.
Before she could fully awaken, her body was seized tight in a spasm of pain, contorting in on itself as her hands trembled around her face. The seizure released her and, slowly, she opened her eyes.
Darkness greeted her.
Trembling, she strained to see into the blackness that enshrouded her. She could barely make out the outline of her fingers curled over her face. Something heavy and moist was pressing down on her.
Suddenly claustrophobic, she thrust her left arm upward in a desperate attempt to throw off whatever was covering her.
Dirt poured into the tiny space around her face and filled her mouth and nose. Terrified, she plunged her arm into the earth, trying to push it away. She tried to roll onto her back and shoved upward with her other hand. Warm, wet earth pressed down all around her body.
For a horrible moment, she had no sense of up or down and feared she was frantically tunneling deeper into the ground. Shoving fear aside, she clawed at the dirt, desperately trying to free herself.
To her relief, her hands and arms broke through the soil and into the empty space above her. Managing to get her feet under her, she shoved her body through the earth. She broke the surface of the forest floor and stood, blinking in the moonlight, standing in what was left of the hole that had been her prison. She raised trembling hands to sweep back her raven hair. Her blue-gray eyes blinking hard, she tried to take a deep breath. She choked and gagged, then fell onto her hands as she threw up streams of muddy liquid. Coughing, she wiped her mouth with her dirty fingers and let out a whimper.
Around her, the night whispered softly. Tiny animals scurried through the underbrush around her. An owl hooted in a tree nearby. The moon shone down brightly, its full face glowing in the sky. Falling onto her hip, she lay in silence for a long moment.
Try as she might, she could not draw her thoughts together. She wasn't even certain of her name. How she had come to be buried alive in the forest was beyond her comprehension.
Pulling her legs slowly out of the grave that had entrapped her, she lay on the ground shivering.
Her long, milky-white fingers clawed at the ground beside her and she looked at her hand in dazed confusion.
Need to go home, she thought.
Pretty When She Dies
by Rhiannon Frater
Published November 24th 2008
Synopsis:
Amaliya wakes under the forest floor, disoriented, famished and confused. She digs out of the shallow grave and realizes she is hungry...
... in a new, horrific, unimaginable way...
Sating her great hunger, she discovers that she is now a vampire, the bloodthirsty creature of legend. She has no choice but to flee from her old life and travels across Texas. Her new hunger spurs her to leave a wake of death and blood behind her as she struggles with her new nature.
All the while, her creator is watching. He is ancient, he is powerful, and what's worse is that he's a necromancer. He has the power to force the dead to do his bidding. Amaliya realizes she is but a pawn in a twisted game, and her only hope for survival is to seek out one of her own kind.
But if Amaliya finds another vampire, will it mean her salvation... or her death?
Pretty When She Kills
by Rhiannon Frater
Published September 5th 2012
Synopsis:
Amaliya Vezorak never believed in happy endings…
When Amaliya harnessed her necromancer powers to defeat her greatest enemy, she believed she had finally found a happy ending with Cian, her lover and the master of Austin. That happiness is short-lived when the vampire ruling over San Antonio attempts a takeover of Austin in order to capture Amaliya and use her power for his own devices.
To make matters worse, Samantha, Cian’s ex-fiancée, is seeing ghosts, the untested vampire hunters of Austin are running scared as a supernatural war looms, a mysterious man is hunting Amaliya with the help of her one time lover, Pete, and Rachoń, the Summoner’s favorite progeny, appears to be out for revenge.
When Amaliya’s grandmother, a powerful medium, experiences terrible visions that reveal there is another necromancer vampire and she is crying out for help, Amaliya realizes happy endings do not come easily…
Pretty When She Destroys
by Rhiannon Frater
Publication date: August 27th 2013
Amaliya Vezorak always believed she was destined to live a failed life in obscurity until she was brutally murdered by an ancient vampire named The Summoner and reborn as a powerful vampire necromancer. Now it is up to her to save the world…
Rhiannon Frater is the award-winning author of the As the World Dies trilogy (The First Days, Fighting to Survive, Siege,) and the author of three other books: the vampire novels Pretty When She Dies and The Tale of the Vampire Bride and the young-adult zombie novel The Living Dead Boy and the Zombie Hunters. Inspired to independently produce her work from the urging of her fans, she published The First Days in late 2008 and quickly gathered a cult following. She won the Dead Letter Award back-to-back for both The First Days and Fighting to Survive, the former of which the Harrisburg Book Examiner called ‘one of the best zombie books of the decade.’ Rhiannon is currently represented by Hannah Gordon of the Foundry + Literary Media agency. You may contact her by sending an email to rhiannonfrater@gmail.com.
2 comments:
Awesome excerpt!
I need Pretty When She Destroys.
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