The Wicked After Dark Blog Hop

Thank you to Close Encounters of the Night Kind and Natasha Blackthorne for arranging this wicked blog hop! We have over 220 participants with over 220 giveaways!  I will be giving away an eBook of my novel Pulse and Prejudice (international), plus my special Halloween giveaway is a DVD of Bram Stoker's Dracula (sorry - US and Canada only). Just  Follow my blog or leave a comment telling me how you enjoy this excerpt to enter. Runs through November 1st.

Pulse and Prejudice retells Jane Austen’s classic love story from the perspective of Mr. Darcy but reimagines it with Darcy as a vampire.  The reader need only refer to Pride and Prejudice to gain Elizabeth Bennet’s point of view; however, as Miss Austen did not provide Elizabeth’s reaction after finding out his dark secret, I added a few scenes from her point of view to show her response.

In this excerpt, Elizabeth has just dined with Mr. Darcy and his sister Georgiana. During dinner, Miss Darcy entertained Elizabeth with stories of racing her brother through a hedge maze on the estate. Although it is night, and the moon is not quite full, Georgiana has convinced Elizabeth to go into the maze together....

 

“I suppose we should go back before they think we have become lost in here,” said Miss Darcy. “Now, do you think you can find your way back the way we came?”

“Yes, I think so," said Elizabeth. Are we racing?”

“Do you want to?” Miss Darcy asked eagerly with a gleam in her eyes. “I will go out a different way.”

With a broad grin, Elizabeth said, “I will see you back at the house then!”

“I have an advantage, although it has been a while, so I will give you a head start.”

Dauntless, Elizabeth took up her lantern and proceeded back from whence she and Miss Darcy had come. Giddy and her spirit light, she ran through the twists and turns and was certain she had reached the exit until she found herself back in the empty centre of the maze where she had left Miss Darcy. Breathless from running, she turned around in a circle and realized she did not know which opening she had come through just then or before. Her courage rising with the challenge of the adventure, she chose the opening she thought appeared most familiar and, walking now, retraced the path she believed they had taken only to return to the centre once more.

Elizabeth’s pulse raced, and her breath came fast from apprehension rather than exertion. She put her hand to her forehead to quell her sudden dizziness, perhaps the effects of the wine. She struck out through another exit, hastening her pace. As she turned a corner, she tripped and fell; she gasped as the flame in her lantern flickered out. Lying on the ground for a moment, she allowed her imagination to work on her and wondered if this were some sort of trick the Darcys were perpetrating on her. Some sort of vampire trap. She recollected how Mr. Darcy had plied her with claret and champagne.

She stood up and brushed off and began to walk through the maze with only the light of the moon. No, she thought, then why would Miss Darcy have brought me? Unless she knew that her brother is a vampire, and I am to be his victim! Her heartbeat increased with her fear, but she could not suppress dreadful thoughts. Could she be a vampire, too? Wickham had taken her away. Would he not have made her a vampire? A verse reverberated her in head—“No heart is beating in her breast.” Is that what they intend to do with me?

Cursing her own temerity, Elizabeth walked faster, to meet or to evade her destiny all the sooner, with the cadence repeating, “No heart is beating in her breast. No heart is beating in her breast.” Each corner taking her either to her escape or deeper into the cage. Heady and anxious, the hedges seemed to grow over her, consuming her. “No heart is beating in her breast.”

The moon momentarily obscured by clouds, darkness descended upon her. Her pulse throbbed wildly in her neck. She walked into a hedge then turned around violently and fell against Mr. Darcy with a sudden, sharp intake of breath, her clenched fists against his chest. He rested his hands on her shoulders, and the clouds drifted away, allowing the moon to illuminate him before her. She stared into his face, his eyes as black as midnight on a moonless night, and held her breath.

“Elizabeth,” she heard him say, but he could not have because his lips did not move. He leaned in towards her face, his mouth hovering over her own, and she thought he intended to kiss her. They stood thusly through several rapid beats of her heart.

Pulling her ever so closer, he lowered his head, his lips grazing the soft skin by her ear as he whispered, “Are you afraid of me now?”

Releasing a serrated breath, she said, “Should I be?”


The preceding has been excerpted from Pulse and Prejudice, the vampire adaptation of the Jane Austen classic by Colette L. Saucier. (Click here to view trailer  as featured on USAToday.com) 
Be sure to check out Nikki's 5-Spider review on Close Encounters of the Night Kind.


For more thrills and chills, please continue on the Wicked After Dark Blog Hop by visiting these next blogs and all the others on this Halloween hop:

• Cat Miller Books

• Kindle Hooked

• Whisper's Publishing

Enjoy~