Moran Publishing Presents a sample from Blood and Water - a novel by the newest author at MORAN PUBLISHING - Briana Morgan. I hope you enjoy the sample. If you do and want to know more about Briana's debut YA novel - click the cover photo to visit the Amazon page. In addition to being available at Amazon.com - you can get a signed copy of the paperback from Briana at her website. The paperback will be for sale in my online marketplace soon. I'll will keep readers updated and let you know when it's available. Enjoy the fiction sample! |
A SAMPLE FROM BLOOD AND WATER
A NOVEL
BY BRIANA MORGAN
A NOVEL
BY BRIANA MORGAN
There was blood in the sink.
That wasn't unusual.
But Jay hadn't been home all day, so it couldn't have been his. That was the furthest thing from usual.
He reached down to scratch behind Samson's ears. The fat orange cat was purring, which meant there couldn't be an intruder in the apartment, right? Did cats even care if intruders broke in, like dogs, or were they apathetic about that, too?
Samson was apathetic about everything but food and ear scratches.
“Hello?” Jay ventured.
No response. Of course not. If there were an intruder in the house, he wouldn't respond. What had he expected, someone to jump out and go boo? Melanie would say he'd seen too many horror movies. Sean would argue with her that he hadn't seen enough.
As much as they loved each other, they seldom agreed. Still, besides the homeless people, they were all he had left.
He had just gotten home from his volunteer shift at the homeless shelter on the other side of the river. Though its numbers had dwindled, they were still in desperate need of volunteers. Jay had been helping out there since moving to London three years before. He'd been thinking about how much things had changed and trying to fill a glass with water from the sink when he looked down and saw the blood.
He'd been coughing up a lot of blood lately, but where had this stuff come from?
Samson meowed. Jay stooped to pet him. The cat purred as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened while Jay was gone. Useless thing.
“Was someone here?” he asked Samson.
The cat blinked in response. Okay, so that was silly, too. Of course Samson couldn't tell him. He was going to have to investigate the apartment himself.
Samson rubbed against Jay's jeans before venturing down the hallway.
Jay peered down at the blood in the kitchen sink. Dark, thick, red. Then, he went to the drawer in search of a knife.
In a world racked with disease, it was hard to imagine that crime was still an issue. Weren't there more important things to be concerned about? Tragedy was supposed to band people together. Why kick one person when the whole world was down? Still, there were riots. People got murdered almost every day.
Just last week, he'd seen someone get stabbed right outside of Hyde Park. Jay wished he'd had a weapon to protect himself. Luckily, the killer hadn't come after Jay—he took the man's wallet and ran into a tunnel.
In the present, Jay's reflection was a flash of brown skin on the blade of the knife. He wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs, and then he closed his fingers around the black rubber handle.
Whether he wanted to or not, it was time to search for the intruder.