A Feast Before Dawn

By Christopher Howard Lincoln

Are vampires real? It's a question young college student, Yuki Yamamura, is about to find the answer to the hard way. In a city plagued by a rash of gruesome killings, a late-night lapse in judgement puts Yuki in harm's way. Even with the aid of a mysterious stranger, an ally she never knew she had, it's a night of terror she might not live to see the end of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Howard Lincoln
• Release date: Jul 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533733153

Book preview

I

The sky was cloudless, and the stars were out, glittering faintly, competing with the dull orange glow of a drowsing metropolis. Yuki Yamamura shivered. The night air held a pre-winter chill, and her thin coat did little to protect her from the gusting wind that funneled down between New York City’s skyscraper canyons. It was sometime after 2:00 AM, and the streets were deserted in the part of the city she was traversing. The sound of her high-heeled shoes, clip-clopping against the uneven sidewalk, echoed eerily off the surrounding cliffs of brick, glass and steel.

Yuki knew she shouldn’t be out on the streets at such an hour by herself—knew she should have left the club much earlier along with the rest of her friends. If she had, she would be safely ensconced in her dorm room on the college campus by this time, nestled in the warmth of her bed, getting a good night’s sleep for tomorrow’s (today’s!) mid-semester exams. But no, she had stayed, dancing her cares away—letting off emotional steam, relieving the accumulated pressures of academe. And now, she was here, walking briskly between shuttered storefronts on the one hand and small mounds of plastic garbage bags littering the gutter on the other, her course punctuated by empty cars and the occasional street lamp.

She felt, suddenly, very isolated and alone. Yuki pulled her coat tighter to ward off the chill she felt and quickened her pace. Long strands of her sleek, black hair fluttered out behind her as she bent into the cutting wind.

Out of the corner of her eye, Yuki caught an unexpected movement near a parked van—a thing, quick and furtive, angling rapidly toward her from the side. It coalesced into a dark, flapping shape in her peripheral vision, and her first impression was one of someone wearing a cape or trench coat.

Its speed startled her, and before she could turn to look, something slammed into the side of her head, causing a flash of light to explode across her vision. She staggered sideways into the steel shutters of one of the closed shops that she had been passing. Pain felt like it was pouring into her skull from the point of impact. Dazed, she didn’t think to shout for help, her thoughts scrambled into a state of confusion by the blow. Her mind was only able to form simple questions: what was happening, and why?

She tried to turn again to see what had hit her, managing to get partway around, and caught a glimpse of someone—a young man in dark clothes, a pale face, an upraised fist—before she was struck again. The man’s fist connected with the left side of her mouth. The savagery of the blow knocked Yuki facedown onto the sidewalk. Her vision became blurred, her eyes watering; she tasted the warm saltiness of blood on her tongue. She was temporarily stunned and left numb for an instant. In that instant her mind became momentarily clear, sharp and comprehending. With a deep sense of dismay, she realized what, exactly, was happening: she was being assaulted.

Yuki intended to sit up, to scream, to yell for help, to fight or run as the case may be, but the instant of numbness ended; pain came flooding back into her, hot and burning, destroying her momentary clarity of thought. Her entire body went rigid in agony. She inhaled sharply, sucking down air as if she were in danger of drowning in the rush of sensations, and her attempt at any useful vocalization died before ever having a chance to issue from her blood smeared lips.

From her vantage point, the light from nearby street lamps seemed to dim; darkness was creeping into the edges of her perception. Yuki hovered somewhere at the edge of consciousness, terrified. The effect was paralyzing. She discovered that she couldn’t move, her limbs unresponsive. The rigidity of her taught muscles suddenly gave way, slackening, becoming limp and equally useless. Distantly, she could feel herself being rolled onto her back.

Yuki could see her attacker clearly now: yes, a young man as she had first glimpsed, pale and thin, with unnaturally black hair; no, not a cape, but a long, black trench coat, expensive looking, open and lined in red satin. The rest of his outfit was also black, seemingly tailored to fit his slim body.

He moved swiftly and purposefully, as if what he was doing was natural, a routine. After situating himself at the head of her prone body, he stooped over her, hands reaching down. For a brief moment, Yuki was able to study his face. There was a gaunt, hungry look about him that frightened her more than she already was. His mouth was set in a grim line, and his eyes, glittering and bloodshot, were filled with hate.

Grasping her shoulders, he pulled Yuki into a sitting position. He then slid his arms around her, beneath her armpits and across her chest, and locked his hands together, intertwining his fingers. With a grunt of effort, he stood up, heaving her up with him, and shuffled backwards toward the street, dragging her.

Her head throbbed, aching, agonizing, and her body still would not respond to the impulses from her brain: she was unable to get her feet underneath her, unable to stand. Her heels scraped along the sidewalk, and one of her shoes slipped off. Again, Yuki tried to scream, but the cry only came out as a low moan, almost inaudible. All she could do was stare dumbly at her errant shoe, resting, as it was, askew on the sidewalk.

The sound of an engine starting up directly behind her reached Yuki’s ears, followed almost immediately by the low rumble of a van door sliding open. Within moments, she was being hoisted through the side opening of the van she had only been partially aware of at the onset of her attack. An additional pair of hands helped to lift her dead weight quickly up and over the edge of the door’s frame. She was dumped haphazardly in the rear of the van, which was completely empty save for a piece of roughly cut carpeting that covered the bare metal floor.

Her attacker’s helper, also a pale young man clothed in black, swiftly moved through the interior of the vehicle, slipped into the driver’s seat, and put the van into gear.

The man who had first knocked her down, once inside the van, reached out and clasped the handle of the van’s side door. With a mighty heave, he slid it shut against the momentum of the moving vehicle as it pulled away from the curb.

Just before the door closed completely, Yuki thought she heard a distant voice, shouting, coming from further down the street. It was faint but distinct, and she