Running Red

By Caro Walker

Running Red is an erotic fantasy novella featuring all the vampiric tropes you know and love with an additional, form altering twist. Follow the story of Veronica Chance, a girl whose life truly sucks, until she meets the mysterious and oddly charming Donovan Faraday who shares a secret with her that will make all her dreams come true... if it doesn’t kill her first.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caro Walker
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005730406

Caro Walker

Caro Walker is an erotic fiction writer based in the UK who specialises in novellas and short stories.

Book preview

Running Red

Caro Walker

Edited by RWA Services

Formatted by EK Formatting

Cover Design by RWA Services

Copyright 2022 Caro Walker

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 1

Veronica Chance (known as Nic to anyone she disliked less than most others) laid in bed lazily pawing at her phone. She could have been doing anything. She could have been out with ‘friends’, watching a movie, writing the next great horror fantasy bestseller but no. She was laid staring at her phone scrolling through pages and pages of useless information and all because of one inescapable reality: life sucked.

Her apartment, which she shared with two other girls, Melanie and Sophie, who were so boring to her they might as well have been framed, greyscale pictures on the wall, sucked. Each of them had a small bedroom that could be generously described as converted storage space, a small kitchen with only two gas hobs and a bathroom consisting of a toilet, a shower and a sink, with room for little else other than a single person. It was the best three perpetually broke post college girls could do without admitting defeat and running back home to their parents. All the same; it sucked.

Her job, which paid for her apartment and not much else, also sucked. She worked intermittent evening and night shifts as a waitress at The Gilded Pole, a ‘fine gentleman’s establishment’ (a strip club with delusions of grandeur) and as a result got nowhere near the same amount of tips as the ‘performers’ on stage but just as much of the sexual harassment from the lecherous clientele. She held no ill feelings for the girls on stage, understanding they were likely in the same situation as her and just happened to have prettier faces and bigger tits than she did, but all the same; it sucked.

Her private life wasn’t much better either. She’d severed most ties with what little family she had, or rather they’d severed ties with her, and as for her love life, it was about as dead as it could be. As far as she was concerned it had been practically taken behind the old barn and shot to put it out of its misery. She didn't quite have the heart to bury it just yet, but it was currently festering in the midday sun and had frankly started to stink. So that sucked too.

There was only one thing in her life that brought her much in the way of enjoyment and if she was being honest, it was probably just as well that it did. She adored anything to do with the paranormal, myths and mysteries and happily for her she lived in an age where so much fictional (and claimed nonfictional) material was available for her to indulge in in her spare time, which was usually all she ever did. The comfort she took in disappearing into other worlds that ranged from completely different to not so far from her own was one of the few things she took solace in.

In particular she loved anything to do with vampires. Werewolves were fine too, but she was drawn more to tales of dark, mysterious and alluring men and women who were hiding a carnal and predatory nature behind the trappings of normalcy and social acceptance. Plus she didn’t really find big hairy guys that attractive, so there was that too.

She’d read her fair share of vampire stories, from the classic godfather of the genre in Stoker’s Dracula to the more modern sensibilities of Charlaine Harris and Stephanie Meyer (although admittedly more the former than the latter). She’d watched as many films and TV series as she could stomach and had even roleplayed as a vampire at conventions and in fantasy role playing games wherever it was an option. She knew the tropes and the accepted lore inside and out but there was one thing she always came back to, no matter what she was reading, seeing or experiencing, one irrefutable fact in her opinion:

Vampires = Sex

It wasn’t that she found vampires sexy (although she 100% did) it was that she couldn’t create a disconnect in her mind between the idea of a vampire and the idea of sexual freedom. Regardless of gender, vampires were always dominant, alluring, and in search of someone they could be so beautifully intimate with regardless of societal norms or consequences. She wasn’t so enamoured with it all that she didn’t see the plain as day allegory that the actions of a vampire could be viewed as rape and sexual assault, but when she imagined someone exerting a kind of unfathomable control over her, regarding her with a hunger and lust for her body that was nigh unquenchable and eventually penetrating her body in a final act of carnal desire, it made her shiver in all the right places.

Despite all this she was ultimately a realist. The only monsters that existed out there were real men and women who did unspeakable things for reasons known only to them and the only vampires, in her opinion, were the rich and wealthy who stayed that way by draining the life out of the poor, expecting longer working hours for less money. She often regarded some of the clientele at the club this way, noting their well-tailored suits and eagerness to make the girls ‘dance’ by throwing their money around in an act that was just as much about showing off to the other men there as it was getting what they wanted.

She’d even been propositioned a few times herself despite it being clear she wasn’t one of the performers and had had to smile through her disgust as she politely declined their offers. Luckily things hadn’t gotten any worse than that as the one thing she would say positively about the club was that it protected it’s staff, even if she suspected it was only because they didn’t want their source of income getting damaged. In any case, the sight of the club's security flexing their muscles and giving a stern stare that screamed ‘try me, I dare you’ was normally enough to stop anything going too far.

So - vampires were great and life sucked. Kind of ironic really, she thought.

Chapter 2

Most of the day and the occasional journey to the kitchen to find food later, Veronica was still laid in bed. She had a night shift at the club ahead and whilst she would have ideally spent most of the day trying to sleep, she had always struggled to sleep in general, never mind in the middle of the day. She’d tried eye masks, ear plugs, sleeping aids, anything she could but they just didn’t do anything beyond making her feel even more like doing absolutely nothing. 

As this was something she’d dealt with from very early on in her life, she was fortunately well acclimated to it and found that she needed very minimal sleep to operate, no more than a few hours at most. It meant she always had a washed out look to her and dark rings around her eyes, but she kind of liked the Burton-esque look it gave her, like she was Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd but without any of Helena Bonham Carter’s other striking features.

Her dive into the internet had come to its natural conclusion and she was now reading vampire fanfiction, some spicy, some not as much. She tried to keep away from the spicier side of it if she knew she had a shift coming up but that was very rarely effective and oddly not very practical as most of it was very erotic and provocative. Multiple times this evening alone she’d caught herself casually playing with her nipples or her hand