A Special Treat!

Da, da, da! Here's a special treat for all of you - finally! A very special, never-before-seen excerpt of the new novel by J.M.Levi MoonZeLent. Hope you all enjoy - oh, yeah, and to those who read and comment, they will receive a free copy of my eBook A Gift From Above (eBooks will be sent on July 24th). So, if you need some last minute summer reads... get to reading below, and get to commenting! 5 copies will be given away, so you have a good chance of winning. Ready... set... GO!

A certain routine set in my days along with rules I followed strictly. My daytime hours consisted of my classes and avoiding too much light, and the night hours became longer with the laboratory, among other things. I looked forward to Thursdays where I could feed. Happy that winter months neared since the days grew shorter and the nights longer, I prepared my new wardrobe glad the clothes covered me up and no excuses needed to be made for covering way up this time of year. Without sunlight, my skin grew pale and powdery.

~~~~~~

          I rarely saw Professor Truitt these days. His actions grew guarded and stranger than ever with each passing day, even Zee notice his odd behavior. The man never talked or had time for any one, not even his own students or his classes. Zeria told me that her father set up a makeshift laboratory in the basement of his home where he locked himself in for hours at a time. In fact, one day I went to the lab, flipped on the computer, and found all of the files pertaining to #302 and vampires deleted. I managed to find some journals the professor forgot about, and lately those files had become my main focus.


          At the request of the professor, I had taken over the laboratory monitoring every day, even weekends—adding more hours to my earnings. This Saturday the evening came quickly and the trek across campus arrived at a rapid pace. I took the responsibility in a serious manner and enforced the rules the way the professor wanted me to. Even though the man became eccentric in his actions, he held the key to my existence and figured the answers forthcoming. While leaving the doorway into the laboratory, an eerie premonition of impending doom loomed over my being for a moment, which I dismissed as gas or something realistic.

          The dim room lit only by a single, flickering computer monitor gave way to the unrelenting grinding of the wheels in the mice cages.

          I sat hunched over Professor Truitt’s composition notes trying to focus on the written scribbles. As I rubbed my eyes from the strain into the palms of my soft, unlabored hand, the semi-catatonic state from too much reading caused me to almost fall into a deep sleep.


          "Brinng, Brinng," the phone broke the midnight silence.


          I jumped to attention, almost falling to the floor and catching my frame on one smarting knee.


          "Jesus!" I shouted, grabbing for the receiver.



          "No, Jesus has nothing to do with this call," an unknown voice mumbled.


          "Who is this?" I questioned as I tried to recognize the almost familiar sound.


          "I am the voice of all that opens up from the pits of Hell," the voice continued as I rubbed the injured knee now paining and throbbing.


          The hairs stood up on the back of my spine, somehow the voice seemed to convey the truest form of evil. At this point in the game almost nothing surprised me, I regained my composure, and dismissed the caller as a fraternity prank. "Okay, guys, very funny..." continued, "Now..."


          The brash voice interrupted the upper-hand I thought I possessed. "This is no joke," the voice continued, "Tell Professor Truitt he better cease or he will erupt his own demise."


          "What the H--" I began as the telephone clicked silent.


          The oddest thing in the lab that night is every single mouse stood silent for a time. No grinding of the wheels, no chewing, and no scratching at the bottom of the cages. My instincts told me a presence beckoned in this room, a form beyond my wildest comprehensions. As I thought a shadowy figured stood before me in the darkness, the mass disappeared into gray.


          I turned about quickly, expecting a shadow to jump out and grab me. As I returned the receiver to its proper cradle, I noticed something odd. The phone cord was not plugged into the wall. In fact, the cord missed the part that plugged into the outlet altogether.


          That was not the only strange thing that happened to me in the past weeks. Even though I tried to go on and keep to my new routine, things had a way of happening. My determination to keep going and the drive of the unknown kept me focused. Although I might have dwelled on these things more in the old days—before vampires, the business at hand and finding a cure for what I had seemed none important to anything else, evil or not.

~~~~~

MoonZeLent will be released for sale summer 2011. You can follow the author on Twitter and you can check out more on J.M.Levi's website.