Update: The winner of the $10 Barnes & Noble gift card is…Connie T!

Our next guest is very busy author Norah Wilson–Norah, thanks so much for coming by! I can’t wait to learn more about your vamps!

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First let me say I’m thrilled to be here during Cynthia’s launch of Angel Betrayed. Her paranormal romances rock out loud!

And I’m thrilled to share with you an excerpt from one of my own paranormal romances. Nightfall is the second in my Vampire Romance series. Nightfall really seems to be finding its audience, which makes me happy. Aiden and Sam might just be the best match I’ve ever made.

Here’s the blurb:
Aiden Afflack (a vampire) is as charming, sexy and easy-going as he is gorgeous. Unless you happen to be a rogue vampire, in which case he’s apt to be the last thing you see. Sam Shea is a wildly successful nature photographer whose prescient dreams lead her to some of the world’s most turbulent, awe-inspiring weather phenomena.

When their paths cross and Aiden discovers that his proximity to Sam warps her psychic power, causing her to hone in on vampire violence instead of violent weather, he knows he’s found a priceless tool in his fight to rid the world of rogues.

Sam has a deep-rooted aversion to having her powers exploited, but once her eyes have been opened to the lives she can help save, she can’t withhold her cooperation. But she can deny Aiden the other thing he wants from her, which makes her unique among women. And absolutely irresistible to Aiden!

***

And an excerpt:

She looked tired, he thought, as she swung the door open. Still beautiful, of course, but tired and nerved-up and edgy. Good. She’d been having the dreams.

“May I come in?”

“Good of you to ask, since we both know you could have been inside waiting for me.”

Oh, yeah, she was definitely feeling chippy. But she stepped aside and let him enter.

She locked the door and leaned back against it. “By the way, how did you get in here last time without setting off the alarm?”

“Second story window. They’re not wired into your security system.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re sure you can’t fly?”

He grinned. “No flying. But I can jump pretty high.”

“Of course. Jump two stories,” she muttered, then pushed away from the door and headed toward the kitchen.

Without waiting for an invitation, he followed. She must have expected him to, because she tossed her next words over her shoulder.

“I’m fresh out of O negative, I’m afraid, but I can offer you some tea or coffee, if you’d like.”

“How about a whisky?”

That brought her head around. “Really?”

“If you’ve got it. It doesn’t give me a buzz, unfortunately, but it still burns going down. I like that.”

Something flickered in her eyes — compassion? She bent to open a lower cupboard. “How about vodka?”

“That’s fine.”

She put the bottle on the counter and got two old fashioned glasses down from an upper cupboard. Guess that meant she was abandoning the aromatic tea steeping in the mug by the sink. Probably a good idea, given the conversation to come. No doubt she had an inkling.

She poured two neat vodkas and handed him one. “I presume straight up is good if you’re looking for the burn.”

“Perfect.” He accepted the glass and took a sip. Ah, the woman knew her vodkas. Ketel One made most everything else seem rough as jet fuel. He leaned back against the cupboard. “You look tired.”

She almost spewed her vodka. “Wow. Does that line work any better for the next-to-immortal than it does for regular guys?”

He grinned. “I didn’t know you wanted me to use a line on you. I can do better.”

She blushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. Can we sit down? I have some things I’d like to talk about.”

“Does this have anything to do with why I’m on the verge of asking my doctor for an Ambien prescription?”

“I think so.”

She sighed. “The living room, I guess.”

He followed her through. She took the same chair she had last time, he the same sofa.

“You’ve been having visions.”

She glared at him. “I have. Every night since you were last here, in fact.”

Her words carried a certain amount of venom, but he had no trouble cutting her slack. She hadn’t asked for this. He pulled a paper from the pocket of his jacket, unfolded it and passed it to her. Her fingers trembled, he noticed, as she took it.

She glanced at the sheet, then back up at him. “It’s a list of locations and times.”

“Do any of them mean anything to you?”

“Not the first one. Not the second.” Her finger paused on the third.

“Familiar?”

She looked up, her eyes huge. “What happened there?”

“Another homeless victim. The next one, too. Is that familiar? The locations are very close.”

Her grip tightened on the paper, wrinkling it. “Yes.”

“Keep going,” he urged.

“This one … Union Street in St. Louis?”

“There were two there, actually. A meth-addicted prostitute and yet another homeless man.”

The paper shook visibly now. “What about this rural one…?”

“Lexington area?”

“Yes.”

“Migrant workers. Two of them in the same night.”

She swallowed hard, but kept her eyes on the paper. “Was there something involving a train? I can’t think of the place….”

“Warrensburg?”

“That’s it.”

He whistled. “I wasn’t sure about that one. Modern-day train hopper found at the bottom of a gully. I figured it could have been an accident. It’s a dangerous hobby.”

She laughed, a short, sharp bark of a sound. “More dangerous than he knew.”

“Yes.”

She folded the paper and tossed it on the coffee table between them. When she lifted her gaze to meet his, he saw that her eyes glittered. “Okay, Aiden. Why?”

“Why?”

She rubbed at her right temple. “Why is all this vampire crap coming to me now? Until I went to St. Cloud and bumped into you, all I found at the end of the line were tornados and anvil clouds and dust storms. What’s happened to me?”

“Were you in Montreal recently? Say about four weeks ago?”

Her eyes widened. “An exhibit opening at a gallery on St-Paul. They were showing some of my stuff.”

“Is that where you had the St. Cloud dream? The one that sent you to Chief Michaels’ house?”

She’d paled. “Yes.”

He held her gaze. “I was there, too, in Montreal, to see a friend. He’s the one who asked me to straighten out Chief Michaels’ thinking vis-à-vis his stalking habit.”

She was still looking at him, but her eyes had lost focus. He could almost hear her thoughts tumbling, see the puzzle pieces falling into place.

“So we were both in Montreal when I had the St. Cloud dream. And both in St. Cloud when I dreamed about the second location there, the riverfront.”

“Yes.”

She focused in on him again. “And you’ve been here in Sioux City these past two weeks, haven’t you?”

“I have. At Edgar Salazar’s place just down the street, actually.”

She leapt to her feet. “It’s you! Dammit, you’re the reason this is coming to me!”

He resisted the urge to stand, lounging further back into the sofa’s cushions. “I think so, yes.”

“Then the solution is pretty straight-forward, isn’t it?”

She moved closer to loom over him, fists clenched, tears of anger ready to spill. Like one of her rain clouds, he thought.

“Sam—”

“Just stay the hell away from me! That’s all you need to do.”

“I could do that,” he agreed.

“Could do? You will do it. I won’t have my life highjacked like this. I won’t!”

“But what of the victims?”

The tears spurted. “What about me?”

“Sam, I caught up with the rogue who’d been cutting a swathe through Missouri last night. Even with computers and access to databases that are supposed to be off limits, it took me that long to sift through the reams of information to put a pattern together.But if we’d been working together, I might have been able to stop him after the first night.”

“It’s not my—”

“Fault? No, it’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault but the killers’. But we could stop them.”

She pressed her hands to her temples. “I can’t.”

“Do you want to know how old that prostitute was in St. Louis?”

“Oh, no. Please, Aiden. Don’t.”

Her eyes begged him not to tell her, but he couldn’t afford compassion. “She was sixteen. A runaway. Granted, the meth-amphetamine addiction probably would have killed her in a few years anyway, but as long as she was alive, there was always the possibility that she might get off it.”

A moan escaped her.

“And the second homeless victim? He would have been twenty-one next month. The migrant workers? They had families, Sam. Wives and children and one of them with a baby on the way.”

She covered her face with her hands and cried silently, her shoulders shaking.

Jesus, she was killing him.

He stood and pulled her into his arms. He half expected resistance, but her arms went around him and she pressed her face into his chest. His heart did a weird tripping thing.

Oh, Sam.

He put her away long enough to shrug out of his jacket, then pulled her down with him onto the couch. She turned fully into him and cried, dampening his shirt. He shushed her and stroked her hair and otherwise did what he could to provide the proverbial shoulder.

But dear God, all he could think about was licking those exquisite, salty droplets away, which would lead to nuzzling her earlobe, then her throat where her pulse throbbed. And then his unsheathed fangs would be buried deep in her delectable neck and she’d be writhing beneath him in a sexual bliss such as she could never imagine.

A moment later, the sobs subsided, but she made no move to draw back.

“I hate you for this.”

He stroked her hair, ignoring the unexpected pang under his breastbone. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She pulled away, wiping her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.

He fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

She moved further away on the sofa’s cushions to finish the mop up operations. “So, what now? How do we … work together?”

***

Thanks for checking out the excerpt!  Now…for the prize…want to win a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card?  Then tell me what you like most about vampires. Or, if you aren’t a vamp fan, then what supernaturals do you enjoy?  

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