May 2024 WipWordSearch Excerpts Week 3

A hip spica cast encased her hips and the top of her right leg, and her arm and #nose were bandaged. A saline and blood drip hung at her bedside, the needle taped firm in her unbandaged wrist. She was alive, but she looked terrible.

There was #no way to hide the exhaustion from his friends. Heavy bags drooped under his hazel eyes, and his face seemed thinner and longer. He always looked half-dead these days.

Thomas stared at Lawrence. “That’s it? That’s all we get? That doesn’t explain anything. Everyone just accepts this #nonsense?”

The curse on us wants to spread, and to do that, it makes us tougher than #nails.

You’ve felt the hunger. You know the cravings. #None of it can compare to the thirst you get from a direct feeding.

“Apparently you Howlers . . . or should I say, former Howlers, were pretty good at finding #nests of blood junkies,”

The brief stench of sunscreen and a gagging mixture of rotting eggs, cabbage, and mothballs on the dawn’s breeze made her #nose itch.

There was also #no glimmer of his usual laughter that had made her want to talk with him when they first met. Something was plaguing him—probably the vampire who was making him stink.

“Same with Deva. I figured since none of us put much stock into that alpha #nonsense, we could do a counsel. If we all work together, we can get the entire pack on the same page.”

Thin light from the open door revealed a tall man with his hands soaked in blood up to his wrist, staining his trench coat sleeves, and his #nails were like blackened arrowheads.

He was the quiet, grandfatherly type, who spent the majority of his work hours reading gritty noir mystery #novels behind the counter, and he spent his breaks on the back patio smoking an old pipe and trying to solve the mystery before the book solved it for him.

“The war among the accursed blood suckers was heavy indeed. Yet a high price was paid to make certain #none of the eldest of their kin took note.”