This is a different kind of Writing Guide article. To understand how it affects your writing, you need to first know how it influences you on a personal level. So you’ll forgive this first segment of self-exploration.
Tag: Margot Vance
Bad Blood – Chapter XII – Super Friends
Doesn’t take a genius to see the ritual’s draining the life force from these upstanding super-scientists. But where is it going? Margot thought to herself as she carefully approached the ritual circle. She was surprised no one had noticed it. She turned around as saw people heading straight towards it and turn away at the last moment, their eyes glazed and unfocused. Repelling charm, has to be Sylvia.
Margot carefully regarded the two Fixers. Warren, like all Grauzuls had shiny, almost polished, dark brown skin. She knew the Fixer could take a bullet and not even shrug. Adding his superhuman strength, the cockroach-man was a one-man army. His wife had speed and countless gnawing mouths and piercing eyes over her body. Knightmares see through everything and eat everything. Virtually unstoppable. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter XII – Super Friends
Bad Blood – Chapter XI – The Man with the Golden Eyes
Margot tensed at the sound of Roberto’s voice and the double-barreled shotgun cocking. She felt it on the back of her head, but felt no bloodlust coming from the hunter. He was detached, dispassionate. Just doing what needs to be done, is it? She thought to herself, but didn’t dare say it aloud.
Margot didn’t waste time grimacing. She knew if he fired, it would all be over quickly, so she just looked ahead, calming herself, lamenting everything she would leave behind unfinished. It wasn’t the case she cared about, though it nagged at her, but the bonds she had yet to mend, the vengeance she had still to savour. “Not going to beg? They usually beg at this point.” Roberto’s voice brought her back to the present.
“What’s the point?” She said without glancing back. “If you’re gonna do it, just do it.” She said, fighting to hide the shivers and shakes of fear from her voice. I’ve never let fear command me, not in public anyway, not about to start now. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter XI – The Man with the Golden Eyes
Bad Blood – Chapter X – The Bad Blood
Margot sat in the back of another Leftover jeep, leaning on the door, her eyes closed but still alert. Just resting my eyes…head hurts still. What was that in my mind? Weston needs to answer for this.
“You okay back there?” Albert shouted over the grinding of the old engine and the bumpy road.
“Yeah!” Margot shouted back. Don’t make me kill you Violet…don’t stand in my way. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter X – The Bad Blood
Bad Blood – Chapter IX – Old Friends, New Enemies
“Let me in…” a man’s voice drifted in from outside the Leftover tent. Margot woke up to familiar surroundings, covered in the skins of animals with names she couldn’t even pronounce. The Underworld is home to ancient predators, but necessity and hunger make everyone prey. Margot checked around and saw her mended suit folded neatly in the corner, though it still looked tattered and torn. She lifted the covers, feeling the night air on her naked body and took a moment to check herself. There were cuts, bruises and sutures all over her frame and she winced with every movement. I can still move, and my head isn’t pounding. I’ll take it as a win, she thought to herself as she stood, crossed the tent and slowly put on her clothes. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter IX – Old Friends, New Enemies
Bad Blood – Chapter VIII – Six Feet Down the Rabbit Hole
“Wake up.” A familiar voice said. Margot opened her eyes, expecting them to hurt along with the rest of her body, but she felt fine. No pain anywhere and her senses drew a blank. Something’s up. “There certainly is something up, now move it!” John William Spencer said and Margot scrambled to her feet on recognition.
“J.W.?”
“In the flesh!” He grinned. “Or your mindscape equivalent at least!” Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter VIII – Six Feet Down the Rabbit Hole
Bad Blood – Chapter VII – Where the Wild Things Live
Margot drove behind the Leftover jeep, saw them look back at her, turn back and gossip. She grinded her teeth in frustration. If I didn’t need you I would’ve smacked you by now…teens. She thought to herself, breathing deeply to vent, to not let it get to her. She could feel their curiosity, their admiration and it made her skin crawl. Sorry, kids, I don’t do fans.
They were so focused on her they didn’t pay attention to their searchlights, the only source of light in the deep darkness of the wildlands. If they had, they would’ve noticed the trail of upturned earth that moved alongside them and would have time to react before the barkhound burst from the ground and tore through their jeep, its sharp wooden claws tearing metal and teen to ribbons. Margot swerved violently to avoid the debris and, knowing there was nothing she could do for her companions, drew the magnum from its holster, opened the chamber and loaded the hellfire rounds, making sure she kept her eyes on the hound and the road and her TK on the wheel. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter VII – Where the Wild Things Live
Bad Blood – Chapter VI – The Leftovers
Just as every society has its slums and its outcasts, so do all slums have its exiles, those that don’t function under the rules of their ruined civilisation. The Underworld is a place of greed and betrayal, where survival comes before friendship, love and family. So those that don’t abide by those rules, those that form mutually beneficial arrangements, they are quickly disposed of. Leftovers, they call them. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter VI – The Leftovers
Bad Blood – Chapter V – Homecoming
Every city has slums, home to the dispossessed, the downtrodden and the derelict. Makai has several, each built on top of the other. The Underworld is the lowest, a place where despair strips humanity away, where the hunt for food and heat is constant, where eating your neighbour isn’t a crime but just the next meal. This is the place where Makai’s nightmares are born, its people joining experiments for that one chance to escape, be it to the outside or the release of death.
The Underworld gave birth to Psyclones. Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter V – Homecoming
Bad Blood – Chapter IV – Dead and Buried
The Mapmaker had a new lead, just not the one Margot expected. “How did you find this?” She asked, looking up from the crumbling parchment in her hands, meeting his eyes with a dubious glance.
“You asked me to find places of power, so I did…” He leaned on the stall’s counter, and pointed at the parchment. “I started with the usual places, the big bad power-zones, where the big and really bad live and I noticed it.”
“The blackout.”
“Precisely.” He nodded, his brow furrowed. Starting to look like you worry, J.C., Vance thought to herself, making sure it didn’t show on her face. “Those places are bright, Vance, they shine on the maps, all those powerful beings. But now the light’s dimmed, cut off and died out. It’s…”
Continue reading Bad Blood – Chapter IV – Dead and Buried