"A hunky vampire and a luscious cop make work more fun."
Reviewed by Sabrina Marino
Posted February 22, 2010
Fantasy Urban
Melina Markowitz's life is definitely not normal. She
doesn't get to do any of the normal things a young woman
would do like date, go out with friends and enjoy a great
social life. Her problem, if you want to call it a problem,
started at the age of three when she fell into her family
pool and died. She was resuscitated and from that moment on
saw dead people, and could sense otherworldly creatures,
such as vampires, werewolves, fairies and other magical
beings. Now Melina works all night in a Sacramento hospital, plays
messenger for otherworldly beings during the day and finds
sleep in snippets of time when she can. Lucky for her she
does not require as much sleep as most of us. A luscious-
looking vampire doctor asks Melina to deliver an envelope
to a vampire who sits on the vampire council. As Melina
nears the home, Ninja guys drop from the trees and beat her
up, steal the envelope and disappear in dark SUVs. A martial arts expert herself, Melina doesn't recognize
their moves. After discussing this with her mentor, Melina
realizes something isn't right. She finds the SUV and
follows them to a Latino gang neighborhood, only to see
horrific creatures jump out of the SUV and attack the young
gang members, shredding and eating them. But Melina can't
drum up support from the vampires or the werewolves and
when an innocent baby is hurt in the mayhem, she starts to
investigate. Ted Goodnight, a beat cop, is investigating
too, and when Melina seems to always show up in the areas
he is investigating, he thinks he should investigate her,
professionally and personally. I really enjoyed the characters that Eileen Rendahl
created in DON'T KILL THE MESSENGER. Melina is hilariously
funny and I'm ready to be entertained by a series of Melina
Markowitz adventures. DON'T KILL THE MESSENGER is sexy,
witty and a great debut. I'm hooked.
SUMMARY
The first in a fantastic new paranormal series about a
messenger from the supernatural underworld.
Melina Markowitz is a Messenger, a go-between for paranormal
forces and supernatural creatures. Problem is, when a girl's
a go-between, it's hard not to get caught in the middle...
When ninjas steal an envelope from Melina, her
search leads her to a Taoist temple in Old Sacramento, where
the priests seem to practice Zen and the art of mayhem.
Melina learns from the handsome ER doctor (and vampire) who
gave her the envelope that it contained talismans created by
the priests to control Chinese vampires, who are attacking
gang members to spark a street war.
Although he may
look more like a surfer than a cop, Ted Goodnight is dead
serious about investigating the surge in gang violence. At
every turn he runs into Melina, a very attractive-and very
mysterious-young woman. Can Melina enlist his help to battle
something he doesn't even believe in without blowing her
cover?
ExcerptCHAPTER ONEI stood in
the early morning sunshine outside Sacramento City Hospital
where I
work my second job as a night filing clerk every Sunday
through Thursday
night of the whole blessed year (including holidays because
I get paid
double for those). I stretched my arms, breathed in deep
through my
nose and then nearly coughed my lungs out my mouth as the
fumes from
the ambulance bay mixed with the scent of freshly poured
blacktop and
damn near choked me.
“Gotta
watch that breathing thing,” a voice said behind me. “It’ll
kill
you.”
If
only it were that easy. I turned. His voice hadn’t
surprised me. I’d
known he was there within a few seconds of walking out of
the hospital
and onto the sidewalk. I can’t quite describe what it’s
like. It’s
not like a smell or a sound. It’s more like a vibration,
like a buzzing
that I feel in my flesh, a lifting of the hair on the back
of my neck.
A bit of a tingle.
To
be fair, that wasn’t the only thing that tingled and buzzed
when he
was around. Knowing he was there had a way of sending
electric shocks
up my nerve endings and down to places that a lady doesn’t
mention
in public.
I
wasn’t sure exactly why he wanted to risk being out here
after dawn
had broken on the horizon, but that was most decidedly his
business
and not mine. As long as I stayed in the sun’s path, it was
bound
to stay that way, too. I inched a little farther from the
shadows.
The
he in question was Dr. Alexander Bledsoe. Dr. Bledsoe was
six foot two
inches of broad shoulders and thick chest and long legs. He
had thick
black hair with a touch of gray here and there that he wore
swept back
from his face and a little tousled. I’d never gotten close
enough
to touch it and see if he had product in it or if it was
just naturally
hella sexy. I certainly didn’t plan to get that close now.
Getting
close to Alex could be dangerous, even for me.
His
eyes were the rich brown of the dark chocolate roux my
grandmother uses
as the base for her jambalaya, and he invariably had a
touch of stubble
no matter what the time of day. Basically, every time he
walked through
the corridors of the hospital, he left groups of nurses,
techs, support
staff and a few patients swooning behind him, female and
male. Not me,
though. I’m not the swooning type. Plus, as I mentioned, I
keep my
distance from the not-so-good doctor. That doesn’t meant I
didn’t
notice, however. Dr. Bledsoe was very hard not to
notice.
He
was also a vampire.
On
the face of things, being a vampire and an emergency room
doctor might
seem incompatible. Not so. Dr. Bledsoe had easy access to
blood pretty
much whenever he wanted it with no questions asked. No one
even had
to die. People showed up at his doorstep and spurted blood
all over
him. If you were an accountant, that wouldn’t happen. At
least, not
literally. Generally, it didn’t happen in lawyers’ offices
either.
Not in schools or most offices. Dentists may get a little
blood but
not in nearly the quantity that it sprays around even the
tamest emergency
room, and how many dentists do you know who only work
nights? Nobody
at Sacramento City questioned Alex’s strange hours, weird
sleeping
habits, pale skin or generally antisocial behavior. He was
an attending,
after all. Honestly, given the perks, I don’t understand
why all vampires
don’t become emergency room doctors.
Oh,
yeah, there’s that pesky caring-about-people thing. Most
vampires
fall pretty short in that category in my personal
experience. Of all
the things that go bump in the night that I have to consort
with in
my “day” job, vampires are among my least favorite. They
give me
the heebie-jeebies, even Dr. Hottie McHottster with the
ever so chilly
skin standing over in the shadows right now. I’ll take a
troll over
a vampire any day, and you have no idea how bad the average
troll’s
breath is. They are totally not into good oral hygiene.
Granted,
my experience isn’t terribly vast at this point. I’m twenty-
six.
I wasn’t sure how old Dr. Bledsoe was. It’s really hard to
tell
with vampires. I’d guess in the three- to five-hundred-year
range.
Practically a baby, when it comes to bloodsuckers.
He
dropped a manila envelope to the ground and kicked it
toward me. It
slid out of the shadows where he stood and into the
sunlight a few feet
from me. It looked innocuous enough. I’ve learned over my
short but
eventful years, however, that looks can be deceiving.
“What
is it?” I asked, without making a move to pick it up. “And
where
is it supposed to go?”
“It’s
nothing. Just something that came through the ER that I
thought Aldo
should see.” He looked from the envelope to me with one
eyebrow raised,
but he didn’t move from where he leaned against the
textured concrete
wall. His sliver of shadow had narrowed a bit, but if he
noticed, he
wasn’t showing it. Then again, what did I expect? It wasn’t
like
a vampire was going to sweat.
“Aldo?”
I kicked the envelope back to him and felt a minute tingle
in my foot.
Aldo de la Tarantarina was the nominal head of the loose
association
that governed the local vampires. He was not my favorite
person. He
wasn’t even my favorite vampire. He’s officious, slimy and
a little
bit poncey to boot. Vampires give me the heebie-jeebies.
Aldo gives
my heebie-jeebies goose bumps. Besides, I don’t usually do
vampire-to-vampire
hand-offs. No one needs me to do them. One of the main
reasons anybody
needs a Messenger is to take things between different
groups that don’t
get along.
Northern
California is a melting pot. Or a tossed salad. Or whatever
they’re
calling it these days. Everybody on earth came here,
especially in the
1800s with that whole Gold Rush thing. With them, they
brought their
own gods and their own demons and everything in between.
The place started
to get crowded. Then, when you put a lot of prey in one
place, the predators—like
vampires and werewolves—come along, too. A lot of these
groups don’t
get along. That’s where I come in, generally. If a
werewolf, who typically
won’t be able to stand the smell of a vampire, needs a
message sent
to a vampire, I’m the go-between. With the emphasis on
between.
Since that’s where I seem to exist: between everything but
not really
fully in anything. “But he’s another vampire.”
Alex
made a hissing sound. “Take an ad out, why don’t you?”
Oops.
That was, at best, indiscreet. At worst, slips of the lip
like that
could wind up with Alex sporting the latest in stakes in
his heart or
me possibly locked up in a padded room, most likely the
latter. Nobody
really believes in vampires anymore, not even the idiots
who pretend
to be vampires on the Internet. It was a stupid
mistake. “Sorry,”
I said.
He
kicked the envelope back toward me with a sigh. “Take the
envelope
and zip it, okay?”
Fine.
I deserved that. Still, I was curious. “Why can’t you take
it yourself?”
Alex
sighed. “We’ve had . . . a bit of a falling out, Aldo and
I. I think
that he would prefer not to see me face-to-face for a
while.”
I
turned back into the sunshine, in part because I was cold.
The hospital
is way over air-conditioned and the air outside still held
an early
morning chill. The sun felt good. I also turned so Alex
couldn’t see
me smile. His frequent fallings-out with Aldo and the
others of his
kind were some of the things I liked best about Alex. I’m a
sucker
for bad boys. Just ask my mother. Trust me, you’ll get an
earful on
the topic. Plus, Alex is not quite like the other vampires.
For one
thing, he washes his hair a lot more. He has a much more
human idea
of appropriate personal hygiene than most of his fellow
bloodsuckers.
Maybe it goes with the medical training. “What was this
little tiff
about?”
“Nothing
you need worry your pretty little head about, Melina. All
you need to
do is do your job and deliver the package to Aldo.”
It
sounded like Dr. Bledsoe was getting a bit irritated. I
glanced back
over my shoulder. No wonder. His protective shadow was
getting narrower
by the second. In a matter of minutes, he’d be cut off from
the entrance
to the hospital by a rather large swath of sunshine. I
sighed. He was
right. He was just asking me to do my job. It wasn’t his
fault that
it wasn’t one I’d chosen myself and had a lot more pitfalls
to it
than my night job. When I file, I run only the risk of a
nasty paper
cut. Nobody is generally supposed to mess with me during my
day job
either, but not all the things I deal with have great
reasoning capacities
nor are they the best rule-followers on the planet. Case in
point: vampires.
They’re as bad as those creeps that try to cut around
traffic jams
by driving down the shoulder.
“Can
it be a daytime drop?” I asked. Aldo’s place was creepy
enough in
the daytime. I much preferred to avoid it completely at
night.
“It
can be straight up noon and you can deliver it in your
teeth while you
walk on your hands, for all I care.” He looked down at the
envelope
and up at me again. Then he smiled. “Although I might pay
to see that.”
Damn
his already eternally damned soul, he’d broken out the big
artillery,
that damn grin of his. It transformed his whole nearly
wolfish face
with a boyish charm so potent there should be an amulet to
ward it off.
I took a step toward him in the shadows, my heart beating
like Travis
Barker on speed, and only managed to pull myself back with
a giant dose
of willpower. I wondered what quotient of my daily
willpower allotment
I’d used up with that move. I’d probably end up eating
three hot
fudge sundaes tonight. Damn him anyway.
“Come
on, Melina, do it for me. I’m not that bad, am I?” His
voice was
low and rough and sweet, like a piece of aural sandpaper
that scratched
in all the right places.
It
was true. He wasn’t bad. He was, however, evil, but it’s
not like
it was his fault. Vampires are just built that way. I
didn’t hold
it against him. I knew all about not getting to choose how
you were
built.
I
reached down with my foot, carefully keeping it in
sunlight, and slid
the envelope toward myself. “Fine, then. I’ll take it.” I
picked
it up. The vibration I felt in my foot when I’d come in
contact with
the envelope was stronger now. Whatever was inside the
plain manila
wrapping had some kind of mojo on it. I wanted it in my
hands as little
as possible. That stuff can be like cooties, infectious and
hard to
wash off.
Alex
was already slipping his way along the wall back toward the
hospital
entrance. I didn’t blame him. I’d seen what even a few
seconds of
sunlight could do to vampire flesh. I’d want to make sure I
was back
into the artificially lighted, windowless hospital interior
before the
sun exposed the rest of that wall, too, if I were
he. “That’s my
girl,” he said as the automatic doors slid open and he
darted through
them.
Good
thing he’d saved that one until I’d already agreed to take
his stupid
envelope. I started to snarl, but he was already gone,
which left me
with nothing better to do than fume as I went to my car. I
may well
be his Messenger, but I damn sure wasn’t his girl.
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