From the Publisher: “With elements of Gothic horror, alchemy, sex magic, and science, Blood Ending chronicles the rise of master vampire Severin, his trinity of female vampires, and the obsessed love-sick alchemist Praetorious Biederbeck. As one century ends and a new one heads towards devastating war they find that the ‘old ways’ are no longer viable-the lure of sex and blood now competes with the lure of science. Assisted by the doomed vampire bride Justine, Biederbeck chases after Severin and the Trinity through the decades. And what a chase it is!
From an ancient school of black magic to the slave auction block in Syria; from the decadent vampire society of old Vienna to Berlin’s 1920s cabaret scene, a fetish club in London, the fires of Dresden, and ending in the streets of New York, these preternatural beings are affected not only by their own whims and foibles, but also by a world that is changing itself, and the state of magic, at a frenzied pace. If you’re seeking a pulse-pounding, blood-drenched vampire saga, quench your thirst with Blood Ending…”
More info About the Author: Michael McGovern received his BFA in Theatre from Point Park College and his MFA in Playwriting from Carnegie-Mellon University. While at Carnegie-Mellon he was a Schubert Fellow in Playwriting and won the Bud Yorkin Award for his play Ireland’s Shakespeare. His vampire play Carmilla’s Kiss was performed Off-Off Broadway at the 13th Street Theater and in the Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. His plays have been performed in New York at the Nat Horne Theatre and The Workshop Theater; in Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Bricolage, Prime Stage, The Edgar Allan Poe Theatre, and Rage of the Stage. When not involved in theater he performs his one-man show Stand-Up Horror. Blood Ending is his first published novel.
Book Party Don’t miss out: Michael McGovern will be celebrating the first year anniversary of the publication of his vampire novel Blood Ending on October 28!
Though published by Black Rise Writing on November 11, 2022, Michael missed the Halloween season last year and so is celebrating the anniversary a few weeks earlier.
He’ll be performing his one-man Stand-Up Horror show (a cabaret of characters and monologues of B movie humor and horror) with a special tie-in to his novel. After the show there’ll be a wine and cheese Halloween party with copies of Blood Ending available for sale.
STREETS OF NEW YORK 1947
People made way for the crawling filthy thing.
Her short hair was oily and matted against her scalp. Her black dress was ripped, worn, and stained. Fingernails caked with mud and debris. Her bare legs and feet were dirty from crawling along the sidewalk.
A few tried to ask if she needed help. But instinctively, most felt it better, safer, to let her be. She crawled on … lit by the occasional neon light of a bar or diner … oblivious to everything around her.
One man, dressed to the nines, finished with a late dinner and on his way to cocktails and jazz, decided something should be done. He found the nearest phone booth and called the police.
By the time he finished his call, the thing on the sidewalk had disappeared.
She crawled into an alley.
The smell of urine and garbage was almost strong enough to mask the aroma of blood. She could always smell blood. No matter what her condition. She raised her head. Looked around. Saw the source: it, too, was on the ground just like her, only it was at rest, slumped against the back wall of a building on a pile of bags under a fire escape. She dug her fingers and toes into the dank ground of the alley and propelled herself towards it.
The derelict man soaking in a pool of his own bodily fluids did not see her until she was right on top of him. The lower half of his body had become so numb over the course of the last few weeks that he could not feel her dragging herself onto him until she reached his chest and yanked herself up to his face.
He saw the closest thing he had ever seen to an angel:
Luminescent eyes
Pale face.
Those lips.
He was still enough of a man that he could fall in love with this face.
She smiled. He blushed.
Was it love that made him close his eyes and tilt his head back? Love, or something more primal. Whatever it was, he did not see her open her mouth and bare her fangs.
When her lips touched his neck, he felt a euphoria that he hadn’t felt in years … followed by sharp pain as she bit into his throat.
JUSTINE: AS ALWAYS, TEARS
(Dresden, Germany 1945)
She sat at the vanity mirror and insanity looked back at her. Of course she was insane. After all the horrors she had experienced, how could she not be?
Still … her reflection—so lovely: a wide mouth with full lips, a straight perfect nose (inherited from her mother), sultry dark eyes—the eyes of a naughty saint a poet once told her. She darkened her eyebrows then brushed her auburn hair, which curled delicately around her face down to her shoulders—making her angular features more alluring. She was a beautiful young woman, cultured, long of leg, slender, and scarred.
So very scarred.
No matter how she dressed, what material she wore, she could never hide them all. It was easier, decades ago. when dresses and gowns were closely fitted and flowed down to the floor hiding her legs, when she could cover her arms under long gloves. She missed the high necks and corsets, though the current style of wearing the hair down was more flattering to her neck—vampire bites healed and disappeared. Her scars, alas, were forever. These days she had taken to wearing her scars the way she wore the latest fashions she saw in that new magazine Vogue. She always made sure she was dressed in the height of fashion and in this era she enjoyed the skirts and blouses, slacks and sweaters, nylon stockings, and the shoes—so many styles of shoes!
She did not cover the scars with make-up. She showed them off in a way that made her look intriguing, dangerous. There was, she learned, a certain attraction to flawed beauty, knowing that made it easier for her to lure victims.
She finished applying red lipstick—opened wide her mouth—wiped traces of lipstick off her fangs.
Justine stood away from the mirror and walked about the room lighting more candles. After all these years, she had never grown comfortable with electric light. In her room, at least, she could live solely by candle flame. She stopped to pet the head of a large marble dog sitting in a corner. A gift from a sculptor who fancied inhabitants of the night.
As a little girl she loved dogs and they flocked to her. The house she grew up in was full of them. But ever since she became a monster, dogs no longer loved her. They sensed something about her was not right, they growled and ran away, and so she had to content herself with statues and pictures.
She gathered her lace nightgown about her and sat on a dark purple sofa placed before the bay windows that looked out onto the beautiful city of Dresden. From a side table, she picked up a small glass filled with blood. She sighed; she was comfortable, glad that Biederbeck agreed to settle here.
As Justine sipped, she gazed at the streetlights along the edge of the river. Then she focused on her reflection in the window—she was not surprised to see tears welling up in her reflected eyes.
Within moments, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She licked at them as they reached the corners of her mouth. As always, tears. She was tired of crying. Her eternity had become one of tears. It was not supposed to be like this. She would never have accepted the Eternal Night if she had even suspected …
Eternity was supposed to be full of forbidden love, blood sipped from crystal glasses, passionate embraces, glorious music, poetry, flights of fancy, the beauty of dark streets and carriage rides at midnight. She was supposed to be a queen. Like Astrid in Vienna. “Soon vampires will kneel before you, a queen of the undead,” Severin promised her. It was a promise made the night he left her alone at the castle. With them.
A sharp knot in the pit of her stomach caused Justine to double over. She forced herself to stand in order to dispel it. It was a familiar pain, one that accompanied all thoughts of those horrible final hours at the hands of The Trinity.
She paced the room, her tears, now flowing freely, mixed with the moisture forming along her upper lip and seeping from her nose. She willed herself not to keen … the tears were bad enough. Sometimes, when she fell into despair her scars would cry as well. Tonight, thankfully, they remained dry. She had to use two of her best handkerchiefs to wipe her face completely clean of teardrops and streaks of make-up.
She lowered herself onto the brocaded bench placed before the vanity. One of Justine’s great joys as a human, and subsequently as a vampire, was gazing into a mirror. On one of her many trips to the cinema (how she loved “the silver screen”!) she saw a movie that was based on a supposed vampire novel called Dracula. What disturbed her most was the notion that vampires did not have reflections.
How much more unbearable would eternity be if she was denied the simple pleasure of admiring herself?
Although at this particular moment, she felt there was little to admire. She stared at herself, and thought, “ghastly.” Smeared make-up from the tears, red splotches on her cheeks, fangs—usually hidden—jutted over her quivering lower lip. It was a reflection of the wellspring of her pain.
This excerpt is published courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted or used without permission.
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