Black Sunshine: A Dark Vampire Romance

Playlist

Music is a huge part of my life (and my past life as a music-journalist), and a major component of my writing process. Here is a list of songs that were either featured in the book or what I was listening to while I wrote. Some are eerily on point with this book (such as “Bitches Brew” by my man Chino Moreno), others were inspiring.

You can also find the playlist on my Spotify here, though it may shuffle them out of order.

“Bitches Brew” - +++ (Crosses)

“Nothing Matters” - Tricky feat. Nneka

“Black Sunshine” - White Zombie

“All the Good Girls Go to Hell” - Billie Eilish

“Dead of Night” - Depeche Mode

“Telepathy” - +++ (Crosses)

“Corrupt” - Depeche Mode

“Parenthesis” - Tricky

“Change (In the House of Flies)” - Deftones

“Waiting for the Night” - Depeche Mode

“Red Right Hand” - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

“World in My Eyes” - Depeche Mode

“Vampyre of Time & Memory” - Queens of the Stone Age

“The Space in Between” - How to Destroy Angels

“A Girl Like Me” - PJ Harvey, Desert Sessions

“My Strange Addiction” - Billie Eilish

“Closer” - Nine Inch Nails

“Hand of God” - Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

“The Poet Acts” - Philip Glass

“Lovely Creature” - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

“Tear You Apart” - She Wants Revenge

“Your Skull is Red” - Team Sleep

“The Perfect Drug” - Nine Inch Nails

“Blood in the Cut” - K.Flay

“Red-Headed Devil” - Moderator

“Loverman” - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

“The Becoming” - Nine Inch Nails

“This is a Trick” - +++ (Crosses)

“The Hand That Feeds” - Nine Inch Nails

“Tomb of Liegia” - Team Sleep

“My Witch” - Moderator

“Red Riding Hood” - Elysian Fields

“Bury a Friend” - Billie Eilish

“The Blood is Love” - Queens of the Stone Age

“Imagine the Fire” - Hans Zimmer

“Blood, Milk and Sky” - White Zombie

“Total Falsch” - Bohren & Der Club of Gore

“Beside You in Time” - Nine Inch Nails

“Let Love In” - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

“The Epilogue” - +++ (Crosses)

“We Don’t Die” - Tricky

“Dream a Life” - Slowly Rolling Camera

Prologue

Orcas Island, Washington State

Nineteen Years Ago

It’s the snapping of a branch that gives them away.

Elaine Warwick immediately winces as the sound ricochets through the forest—a mix of cedar, Douglas fir, and alders that should have muffled the noise, in theory. But Elaine knows better.

Up ahead, Jim stops running, shooting his wife a harried look over his shoulder. He knows better too. The expression of pure disappointment mixed with fear threads through his eyes, but Elaine can only nod at him to keep going.

They’re so close.

And now they’ve lost their advantage.

The Virtanens will hear them coming.

Even isolating yourself on an island in the Pacific Northwest, withdrawing from society in some sort of penance for your many sins, doesn’t take the amplified senses out of the vampire. Once a vampire, always a vampire, until you die.

Which is why Jim and Elaine are here tonight.

To find Alice and Hakan, the famed Virtanen vampires, who inflicted centuries of pain upon people before they decided to have a change of heart — “retirement” as some in the guild called it — and put them to death.

It’s going to be nasty work, and there’s a chance that neither Jim nor Elaine will survive this, but it’s personal. It’s been personal for years, since Alice killed Elaine’s sister. The guild doesn’t even know that the Warwicks are here on a vengeance trip. They long ago said it was best to concentrate on vampires that were still doing damage, but Elaine hasn’t forgotten, and the damage is never going away. She knows that since the guild didn’t sanction this kill, there’s a chance they could get in trouble for it.

Executed, even.

Then again, what the guild doesn’t know, can’t hurt them.

Besides, they might die here anyway.

That snapping branch didn’t help.

They continue running, as soundless as possible. They’ve trained most of their lives for moments like this. How to be quiet and quick, especially against predators who are faster than they are. Predators who must know they are quickly approaching the property.

Elaine feels her knife burning at her calf, the energy coming off it seeping into her own skin, her own skin feeding back into the knife. The vampires won’t know that knife is there, protected under a cloak of spells, buried by the sigils and fire agate threaded into her black pants. Slayers have evolved to try and trick their prey, just as their prey have evolved to try and trick them.

Jim’s silhouette in front of her gets clearer, the trees tapering off, night sky peeking through. There are so many stars that it steals Elaine’s breath for a moment. The moon is full, shining so brightly that her eyes burn, but even though she worships the moon, lets it influence everything she does, tonight she has the sinking, damning feeling that the glowing orb isn’t on her side.

Focus, Jim’s words come into her head. We need to pull this off.