Fantasy and Supernatural Novels by B.B. Walter

These Items will be Coming Soon from BBWalter!

(uh, just as soon as I finish writing them)

A Touch of Darkness

Book One: Abigail St. Michael Series

October 17th

            The morning mist was a thick gray that gave you the impression of a warm blanket covering the earth and structures in the Riverdale Cemetary, but the chilly early October air was anything but warm as it whistled past the monuments and tombstones and the small crowd of mourners that stood huddled around the open grave and golden colored casket of thirteen year old Daniel Roberts. 

I was huddled against the cold there watching the shivering and crying group, but I'm neither family nor friend.  I am a stranger to these people.  Even to the dead boy sealed for all eternity inside the small coffin.

            My name is Abigail St. Michael; I am a touch clairvoyant.  My only reason for attendance was to catch a murderer: someone standing right along that graveside with me.  Someone within my reach.

Sister Dark

Book Two: Of Shadows

The sorceress murmured disquietly in her sleep and rolled over, drawing one of the lush goose feather pillows to her body in a crushing blow of want and need.  Faintly, on the edge of her dream-laden sleep, she could hear the softest breath of her son sleeping in the cradle beside her bed, but it was her dream that drew her more than her cherished son.

            His long nimble fingers sought the lacing of her bodice and she felt a surge of desire flame through her body.  She began to tremble beneath his touch, and the man paused long enough to stroke her face tender.  She felt a tear slide down her cheek and she reached to wipe it away, but the man moved in quicker and kissed the sorrow from her face.  Then his lips trailed gently down her jaw, nipping ever so slightly as to raise chills on her flesh, and he licked playfully at her neck.

            Her delicious dream had her body raging with pent desire and had awakened an ache in her that she had not felt since before she’d given birth to her son, Tomas.  Deep in her mind, she rebelled at this phantasmal lover causing her to lose control of herself, but more over she thrilled with the excitement she felt in the dream.

            The man stood, brushing his blondish hair from his face, and began unfastening the hooks that held closed his breeches.  She felt her cheeks flame and lowered her lashes in humility, but she still watched through slanted lashes as the man’s slid his clothing from his body.  Her body trembled with curiosity as the layers peeled away from his stunning form.

            Lily moaned, feeling her own body responding to the dream.  She drew the thick pillows between her thighs and pressed herself upon it, desperately needing to release the longing she felt.

            Clad only as the Goddess had made him, the man, his green eyes burning hotly for her, touched her ankles and began to slid his hands up her body as he began crawling toward her.  She could feel the heat of his hands on her flesh and felt the responding heat of herself as he pushed up her dress, trailing kisses up her bare legs as he moved.

            The enraptured woman groaned loudly and stretched her whole body out to meet the intimate touch of her fantasy lover, her breath growing short with need.  On one level she realized that she was acting silly; there was no one in her chambers touching her.  But the realism of the dream, and the need it brought, were too strong to be denied.  Silly or no, she wanted to be ravished by this dream lover.

            The man’s hands had helped her shed her dress, and his body now lay over the top of hers.  He felt as warm and comfortable as a winter’s fire blazing in the hearth.  She could feel the length of him pressed against her, and she knew that the slightest movement would ease the thirst raging in her body for him.  Again the man’s hand came up to caress her cheek, his other hand cupping her shoulder.

            “Are you ready?” he whispered, his breath a hot fan on her already heated body.

            Yes, Lily wanted to scream desperately.  Yes, yes, yes!

            The woman nodded and wrapped her legs around him, opening herself wide so he could feel her readiness.

            “This will hurt; I’ll try to make it easy on you, my sparrow.”

            Lily’s back arched with desperation.  She could feel his hands on her shoulders; she could feel his weight on her bed as he leaned over her, even though she knew it to be a dream.

            “Please,”  she and the woman whispered in unison.

            The man’s mouth came down in a crushing blow as he entered her.

            Lily felt both the pain and delight her fantasy lover induced, and she cried out.

            “Mistress, are you all right?” a soldier asked uncertainly as he shook Lily from her fevered slumber.

            The queen’s sorceress opened her eyes, feeling her power crackling within their depths, and reached for the man hovering above her, his face masked by a play of shadow and moonlight.  She reached for the man she knew not to be her fantasy lover and tumbled him bodily into bed with her, wrapping her legs around his body much as she had done to her lover in her dream.

            “Oh, by the Goddess!” the man proclaimed as he tumbled into her arms, and Lily quickly claimed him.  She climbed bodily on top of him, her hands deftly undoing the laces of his breeches.  The man’s hands sought her naked waistline, as she rarely wore clothing while sleeping.  “Mistress?”

            Lily’s mind only wanted to hear the echo of her dream lover’s voice, however, so she silenced the man with a harsh kiss as her hands exposed him to her.  She was pleased to feel that he was not undecided by her and she guided him nearer, letting nature find its way.

            “Oh, Goddess!” the man cried out as she began to move.

            Lily was on fire, her skin blazing with barely suppressed need that her dream lover had caused in her, and she gave over to the want that curled desperately at the core of her inner being.  Closing her eyes, she sought the source of her desire within her and found a raging inferno.

            The young mother, long unattended and much overdo, reveled in the dance of her mystery lover’s face in the fire, committing herself to the flames within herself and giving herself over to him.  His hands grasped for her, and his body pulled up against her, as he sought to quench himself inside her.  His tongue seared her body where he rained kisses upon her flesh.  Again and again her fantasy lover’s flames tasted her body and brought her complete satisfaction as the fire danced within her.  She caught herself releasing her need to the shriek of her body, and she cried out in pleasure.

Blood of My Blood

Jessie sat trembling, not outwardly, not visible enough for the rest of the soldiers in her unit to see it, but deep down inside the marrow of her bones, as she sat within the false security of her foxhole listening to the bombs and mortars whistling over her head and impacting with the earth all around them.  The rest of her men huddled around her in the foxhole, most of them sitting patiently with vacant, empty stares, waiting for the bombardment to cease or their reinforcements to arrive.  Their orders were clear; they would hold their current position until one of two things happened, they all died, or their men came in to save them.  That the former was more likely to happen first was a distinct possibility.  Nothing in this battle was going their way, but, of course, no one had really thought that routing the vampires from their daytime retreat would be an easy task, either.  The walking dead had had a long time to fortify their fortresses, and the human resistance had only had a short time to prepare for this attack.

            Her bosses, the commanders of the Humans Comeback Society, or HCS, pronounced "hicks", for short, had received intelligence from a supposedly reliable source within the fortress itself from one of the vampires own cows, or their human food sources.  The information had contained detailed schematics of the complex's layout, including blueprints and hidden entrances and exits, plus deadends and turnabouts.  It had also come complete with an intinirary of their deads' daily regime.  Apparently their all sticklers for detail and routine.  Guess several hundred years of meticulous planning of the rout of humanity can cause a monster to pay attention to detail.  Special detail and planning.

            Despite all of this information, however, and the cow's access cards into the complex, the HCS' soldiers were having a hard time breeching the perimeter of the complex.  The cow had reported that most of the walking dead within were old, but not nearly as powerful as they made out to be when in the public eye.  Most of their abilities were mind tricks and the result of careful planning and setup.  There were, however, several monsters that were several centuries old currently sleeping within those walls, and those few vamps could lend strength and ability to the lesser vamps.  They were the real obstacle; and they were currently the reason for the stalemate in the battle.

            So Jessie sat, along with her fellow human's at arms, waiting for the turret guns on the complex to run out and the good little monsters manning them to begin the reload process, then she and her unit would be able to fire back, hopefully nailing some of the bastards before they began firing once more.  A bomb exploded dangerously close to her position, and she felt her spine try to crawl out of her skin, as Marks, a private under her command, crawled toward her in the foxhole.  His young face was covered in soot and dirt from their trip through the ancient tunnels leading up to the complex.  Their plan for getting into the compound had depended upon the monsters' own emergency exit tunnels.  The monsters had equipped those same tunnels with sensors, however, and the resistance had encountered small fires and smoke grenades within the tunnels.  Thankfully, the insider had thought that the monster's might use the human's own lungs against them and had advised on bringing breathing apparatus.  Otherwise the battle would have finished before it had even begun, and the HCS would have lost a great deal of soldiers.

            “Report.”

            “Still too hot, sir, orders are to wait longer before engaging the enemy.”

            Jessie swore under her breath, but she caught Marks’ smile as he caught her explicatives.  “Why the hell should we do that?”

            “Command says so.”

            “Of course, it ain’t their damned asses in this hole, now is it?  WE can’t hold any longer.  We either engage or we die, it’s as simple as that.  Did you tell them that?”

            Marks just nodded as he answered.  “Answers the same.  We hold until reinforcements arrive, Leu.”  She was his leutinent, but Marks had never bothered to use her full title, unless he had a point to stress to either her or those around them.

            Again, Jessie swore, this time not so quietly as the last.  “Marks, you go to the rest and tell them that when those railguns stop spitting we’re heading up the hill and to the outer wall.  The freaks won’t fire on their own outer defenses.”

            “Command won’t like it.”  His response was calm, as were his green eyes, and he never betrayed a hint of anything he might be feeling about her statement, or the HCS’ orders.  Marks was her best soldier, Jessie knew.  He never questioned and he followed orders to the letter.  It was just a good thing for Jessie that he followed her orders more often than he followed command’s.

            “Command can kiss my sweet Georgian peaches for all I care!” she swore profusely.  Marks’ eyes never left her face as he awaited her confirmation of orders.  “Get talking to the men, Marks; my orders stand.”

            He grunted lightly and crawled away from her, leaving Jessie alone at the foremost position in the foxhole.  Another mortar whistled over head and impacted somewhere just beyond the hole she and her soldiers currently huddled in.  The rounds were getting closer.  The monsters on the wall were narrowing down the targeting on their groups out in the forest line.  Jessie and her unit wouldn’t get to wait for the calvary to ride to their rescue, they’d be mush before anyone even got to them.  They had to move and move soon.  Command was just going to have to except her battlefield decision.  And if they didn’t then she’d just have another slip of paper added to her rather thick file as it was.  Sometimes hse thought that command tried to bury good soldiers in paper, but she understood the need for control amidst an organization comprised of vagabond humans and armed lycanthrope militants.

            Marks was gone less than a total of ten minutes before he made his way back to Jessie’s side.  He knelt in the dirt beside her, checking his weapon absently.  “The team is ready to move on your signal, Leu.”  Jessie nodded and mimicked Marks, checking her weapon for the millionth time since they’d become pinned down.

            Jessie carried the same weapon as everyone else, pretty much whatever they could find.  Jessie carried an over and under twelve guage shotgun with the stock cut off and the barrel trimmed to a foot.  Yeah, it could be overkill she knew, but it did have the stopping power she wanted. She also carried several knifes, all in assorted shapes and sizes, in various places on her person, plus an old military canteen full of white phosperous.  A person could hack a monster to bits and pieces, at least really old ones, but they’d just get back u once they regenerated.  The undead bastards were highly flammable, however, so a canteen of phosperous, capped tightly with red, had become standard carry for an HCS soldier.

            “You know what you’re doing, Leu?”  Marks’ question was so quiet that it could barely be heard over the clicking of his weapon as he checked and rechecked it.

            “Do I ever, private?”

            Marks grunted, the smirk playing at the corners of his mouth once more.  “Guess not, but at least tell me that you have a vague idea this time.”

            Jessie turned and gazed at the thick wall in the distance up the hillside.  “Sure,” she said softly, “I give the order and we run like hell.  I figure we try not to get shot while doing it.”

            Marks snorted his laughter.  “And once we get there, Leu?”

            “Haven’t really gotten that far in the plan, Private.”

            “Good to see you’re still relying on that feminine instinct, Leu.”

            Jessie turned and flashed him a brilliant smile.  “Well, of course, so get ready to move that sweet tush up the hillside.  I’ve been counting rounds, and the boogeymen are almost out.”

            “Counting railgun rounds, huh?”

            “Something like that, yeah.”

            “Ya know, Leu, you’re my kind of girl,” he laughed as he slapped his clip back into his M-16.  He readied the weapon around his neck once more and moved into a crouch.  Jessie followed his lead and moved into a tense crouch.

            “Don’t you know anything, Private, it’s not PC to call me a girl anymore.”  She sprang up before Marks could respond as she heard the last railgun start spinning without ammo.  “Move, hicks, move!” she screamed.  She didn’t glance back as she made her way up and over the mound of dirt that had been protecting them, but she knew Marks was at her back and the rest of her unit just behind him.

            Mortars still sailed through the afternoon air, impacting the earth and kicking up some serious dirt storms, but her soldiers knew where they were going.  They were less than one thousand feet from the interior wall.  They’d all studied it closely for the last hour and a half.  Jessie’s feet seemed to have a mind of their own as she moved.  Like her soldiers, they had been given a command and would follow that command until she gave them another.  She hurdled fallen debris and maneuvered around areas that appeared boobytrapped or dangerous.  Jessie was grateful that her body functioned so well independent of her conscious mind because her entire thought process was set on instant replay of the death of her family.  Whenever she went into battle, the only thoughts that ever entered her gray matter was of her family.  Every battle was a new way to avenge her sister and father.  Every dead ghoulie was a piece of their souls freed from limbo.  She would see her family restored to the glory of Heaven, even if she had to kill every last creepy crawlie on the face of the planet.

            First she’d start with Jonathan Martuo, head vamp and CEO of Unico Pharmaceuticals.  The complex they assailed was his.  Somewhere deep inside was the monster who had helped destroy human society.  Martuo had invested millions of dollars in vampire terrorist organizations that were the sole cause of the technological crash of ’99.  Those same groups had been quietly herding humans of their choosing into isolated, secure communities for a number of years.  Then they set up the bombings.  Every major city in the good ol’ U.S. of A. had been lit up like the fourth of July.  All uncooperating humans in and around those cities had been destroyed.  Those that had managed to escape had split into two groups.  Humans who sided with the safety that the vampires offered in their gated communities; and humans who sided with the vengeance that the HCS had offered.

            After learning of her sister’s and father’s death, she’d chosen vengeance against the bloodsucking bastards who had made her family’s last minute decision to travel to her aunt Macy’s in Atlanta a death sentence.

            Jessie knew she was yards out ahead of her unit, and she should really wait for them to bring up her rear, but she seemed unable to stop her forward momentum.  That was the only downfall of her ability to disconnect her brain from her body during firefights.  Her body rarely listened to what her brain was telling it when she wanted it to listen.  She knew when the monsters had reloaded their guns mounted on the walls.  Something instinctual just clicked inside her warning her of danger.  She whirled to shout commands at her soldiers a moment before the cows opened fire once more.

            “Cover!” she shrieked.  She did a quick duck and roll after flinging herself to the earth, tucking her shotgun as she did so, and brought herself up against the low brick garden wall that was the last bit of cover between herself and the interior wall of the compound.  Jessie could hear the men behind her, good soldiers every last one of them, following her order.  The only problem was that not all of them had cover to get to in time.

            Only two minutes had passed, but the monsters had expended more than half their ammo.  Actually, they had shot three hundred and twenty-three bullets so far, Jessie knew.  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told her second, Marks, that she’d been counting shots.  She really had been.  It had always been a special ability of hers; she could just count things at an extreme rate.  Kids had teased her for it at a young age, so she’d learned to stop telling people about her ability but it had increased as she’d aged.  She’d also been good at other things, like knowing what kind of metal an object was made out of, but the counting had been one of the things that had stood out most.  Now she wished she oculd shut the ability off.  Her men were firing back whenever they got the chance, but that meant that she knew exactly how many rounds each man had left.

            “Avery, 12; Jones, 7;  Cherry, 9; Marks, 14…”

            Fuck, Marks was firing his weapon, too.  Her squad was going to expend half their ammunition firing uselessly at air.  They would need their ammo  once they reached the compound!  Too bad no one could hear a single command she was screaming at them while the railguns whizzed overhead.

            Well, explicitives were still commands.  Right?

            Didn’t matter anyway.  There were three railguns mounted to the walls of Martuo’s daytime retreat.  Each railgun held anywhere from 200-500 rounds apiece.  Four men manned each gun; one to fire the weapon, with three to constantly change out the power packs every five minutes.  Once the cells were depleted they were useless.  Each gun had two power ports; one for the active power cell firing the weapon, and a secondary power port for the next power cell to be installed just prior to the active cell being depleted.  Jessie only knew this much because detailed plans of the guns that were going to be used against them had come with the intelligence that the HCS command had received from the vampire’s cow.  The plans hadn’t come with the knowledge of how many rounds each gun contained, but the first barrage against her squad had given Jessie that information.

            The bad guys on the walls were coming close to running out again, then they’d have to reload the drums.  Problem for them was the fact that the drums contained lead shot.  Lead weighed quite a bit when you put it all in one container.  Two hundred and four shots left to go, then her men could move forward again.  The fact that some of those men wouldn’t be moving forward after this last barrage with next to no cover bothered her more than she’d like to admit.

            137,136,135…Jessie waited, listening to her men firing back at the people they’d never be able to hit.  It was desperation that caused them to do it, she knew.  All the men were desperate at hicks headquarters.  If they couldn’t pull off an assault on one of the compounds that they had detailed schematics for, then what hope did they have of crippling the vampire’s hold over humanity?

            82, 81, 80, 79…Railgun three died on the furthest most side of the wall from her position. 

            Jessie refused to thick about exactly what it would mean if they failed in their objective here at Martuo’s daytime retreat.  She was too stubborn to allow herself to believe that she wouldn’t achieve her mission.  It just, unfortunately, not the same mission that her men were trying to achieve here today.

            61, 60, 59…Colonel William Hills had come to Jessie three days before the assault on Martuo’s compound had been scheduled and given her a side objective to the mission.  Jessie was to allow herself to become captured by the vampire’s forces and imprisoned within their human processing center.  She could recruit one other squad member to do the same.  She’d chosen Marks to assist her in getting captured.  Once getting into the processing center, Jessie would be contacted by a human servant inside that would get her released into the general population of one of the “gated communities”.

            Gated community were how she and other members of the HCS referred to the city-sized strongholds each Master vampire kept his herded humans living inside.  These communities were suburban dreams come true.  Neighborhoods, shopping centers, malls, schools, parks, and even fully functioning hospitals made up life for the chosen food source of the vampires.  Humans lived ordinary lives, secure in the knowledge that they would always be well cared for.  At least, they were cared for provided the fact that they didn’t mind being munched on every so often.  All humans living within these gated communities had to be willing to be donate blood twice a month to one of the many blood banks in the city. 

            Jessie hadn’t exactly been happy with the ordered mission, but Colonel Hills had explained that other information had come into the hands of the HCS.

            HCS Command had an objective within the city.  It seemed the walking dead had been busy engineering a few more things other than technological advancements.  The dead had taken to tinkering with the human genome, apparently.  Reports had been extremely sketchy, but the HCS had decided that they had enough information to send in a couple of soldiers to attempt to collect more data.  Jessie was their poster girl for military go-to-it, apparently, so she’d been the first name on top of the pile.

            13,12, 11…It was time.  The second railgun had already run out, so now all she waited on was the last gun.  Already, it had been to fan out it’s remaining shots since her soldiers had began moving forward when the other two guns depleted themselves.  It was good for her soldiers that the gun only had a limited swivel capability.  The problem with railguns was that they were damned hard to keep and twice as limited as other heavy weapons.  Jessie wondered why Maruo even used them in his outer defenses.  Other than that they were flashy in the fact that they were top of the line in military technology, they were damned inconvenient.

            Marks, huffing and puffing, sidled up beside her, his gun tucked close to his chest.  Jessie sneezed.  He’d kicked up a small amount of dirt as he’d slid into position beside her at the garden wall. 

            “Ready, Leu?”  His green eyes held more of a question that his comment had contained.

            Jessie felt her head moving from side to side in a distinct no movement, but she answered, “Sure, why not?”  She readied herself, moving into a crouch so she could stand and jump the wall in a single movement.  “4,3,2,1…”she rattled quickly just as the gun clicked empty on the wall.  Marks and she sprang up and over the wall.

            Marks matched her pace as she moved.  Of course it wasn’t difficult for him to, either.  They were of the same height.  Jessie had always been tall for a girl, standing strong at five feet eleven inches.  It was another issue that had gotten her noticed as a child.  Jessie shifted as they slammed themselves against the solid brick of the interior wall.  Marks slung his rifle and withdrew his C-4 in one fluid motion, a motion that was born of long military training, and within moments he’d planted the stuff on the steel door that only opened from the inside.  Jessie mimicked Marks by moving down the wall in the opposite direction of the door as the explosive did its job and blew the door wide.  Without hesitation they moved in through the smoke.  The inside was pretty much what they’d expected.

            Twenty soldiers surrounded Jessie and her second as they moved in through the door.  All twenty were armed; all twenty looked determined.

            “Drop your weapons!” one of the guards shouted.  It was a woman, through her voice was muffled behind the masks and goggles they all wore.

            Jessie hadn’t even realized that she’d leveled her weapon to fire on the guards, but now that she did she was reluctant to drop her stance.  Knowing you need to be captured is more than a little different from actually allowing yourself to be taken by the people you felt to be wrong with every fiber of your being.

            “Last time!  Drop…your…weapons!”

            Marks looked to her for confirmation, even though he knew the plan as well as she.  Jessie didn’t like it but nodded for him to obey the command.  Both he and she lowered their weapons at the same time and knelt slowly, laying their weapons on the ground before them.

            “Fingers laced in the air above your head!” the female soldier ordered again. 

Jessie and Marks followed the order.  They both felt the soldiers move up at their back.  Jessie had a split second to tense before she felt the metal tip of the stun rifle touch her back.  Her vision exploded in stars before her before everything turned black.  The last thing Jessie heard before passing out completely was the sound of Marks’ body hitting the pavement and the jingle of someone’s jewelry as they moved towards them.

Silver, they were wearing silver.