Flash
Fiction
I love Halloween, and every year
I like to share my absolute favorite spooky story from my family’s arsenal of
scary tales. This one comes from my Irish grandmother, about her personal
encounter with a Banshee when she was a teenager. Enjoy!
Bumped by the Banshee
by Celia Breslin
… I lived in a
large two-story house with my parents, younger sister, and grandmother. It was
a cold, winter evening, nothing special or out of the ordinary. My family dined
together, then my sister and I cleaned up while our parents and grandmother
drank tea. We joined them at the dining table to do our homework, but my
grandmother said she was tired and went upstairs to bed. My parents followed
shortly after that, but my father paused on the landing.
“Maeve, it’s
going to be a cold night. Fetch us some coal, please.”
I abandoned my
homework, grabbed the empty coal bucket from the kitchen, and went down into
the cellar. I filled my bucket and returned to the stairs. I had one foot on
the first step when the temperature in the cellar, already cold, dropped
dramatically. Chills ran down my back. Behind me, someone moaned.
But how could
that be? I was alone...
Terror rooted me
to the spot. The keening grew louder. I dropped my bucket and covered my ears.
A cold wind bumped against my back. I stumbled forward as the shrieking wind
rushed over me and up the stairs.
But how could
that be? The cellar had no windows...
Above me, the
cellar door slammed shut. The sound broke me from my stupor. I screamed and ran
up the stairs and out of the cellar, through the kitchen and dining room, and
up the stairs to my room. My parents and sister found me under my bed, shaking
like a puppy lost in a snowstorm.
“Maeve! Maeve!
What is it? What’s wrong?” They asked me, while pulling me from my hiding
place.
“I
heard the Banshee wail.”
We stared at
each other in silence, all of us reaching the same conclusion moments later. We
hurried to my grandmother’s room.
She was dead.
(Copyright 2019,
Celia Breslin. All rights reserved.)
ORIGINS
Tranquilli Bloodline
Book 3
Celia Breslin
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Champagne Book Group
Date of Publication: September 9, 2019
Number of pages: 250
Word Count: 94,000
Cover Artist: Melody Pond
Tagline: The Chosen One is home. Bad little vampires beware…
Book Description:
In HAVEN and DESTINY, San Francisco nightclub owner Carina Tranquilli finds love and fights her vampire family’s enemies. Now, in ORIGINS…
En route to reunite with her estranged father in Italy, Carina is kidnapped by a human organization intent on vampire genocide. Beaten, starved, and forced to fight fellow captives, she finally manages to escape. Along the way, she encounters the group’s leaders—their identities shock her to the core.
Once home, Carina warns her family of this new threat, but dear old dad is missing. In his absence, the Tribunal, the governing body for all vampirekind, lies in disarray, with an old enemy making a bid for her father’s throne. What’s worse? The usurper wants her for his queen…and slave.
With a human-vampire war looming on one side and a vampire-vampire battle brewing on the other, Carina will have to rally her troops, take back the throne, and fulfill her destiny as the Chosen One. If not, her whole world will fall, taking everyone she loves with it.
The car stopped. I couldn’t convince myself to step out. What if this was a freaking, injection-induced hallucination? What if I was still back in the damn prison?
Besnik helped me out.
The mansion’s mammoth double doors eased open. The man illuminated in the doorway chased away the numbness, pumped my heart so hard it might pound right out of my chest. He opened his arms wide, calling me. My lips curled upward in the first true smile I’d cracked since the last time he’d held me in his arms. That man, my man, loved me more than any other on this whole damn planet.
“Alexander.”
I ran to him.
Alexander’s arms closed around me, his hold so tight I could barely catch a breath. Tremors ran through his hard body, again and again.
“Carina,” he croaked, voice sandpaper rough. “Carina.”
Nuzzling his neck, I planted fevered kisses along his tan, heated skin. He’d fed recently to be this warm under my lips. Temptation had me licking his pounding pulse, nipping at the vein. Couldn’t resist it. My fangs slid home.
Energy exploded between us, our mate bond bursting to life and tearing away whatever magical wall had separated us for far too long. My bite, the catalyst, his blood the cure. Awash in the force of our reunion, Alexander staggered then clutched me closer while I pulled out of his neck and laved the rapidly healing holes.
As our power continued to bubble and stitch us back together, he whisked us into the grand entryway, planted my ass on an ornate, antique cabinet, and devoured my mouth like a starving man. His hands roamed everywhere, searching, cataloguing, as if to reassure himself this wasn’t a hallucination, that I was really here, in his arms, relatively unharmed.
The more he kissed me, the more those wonderful, golden threads of our connection resurrected inside me, around me, between us, and I felt like freaking Sleeping Beauty awakened from her magical slumber by a kiss from her fated handsome prince. The silly thought made me giggle against Alexander’s seeking mouth, and then I was crying while my love cupped my face between his hands, wiped away my tears with his thumbs, and pressed tender kisses to my forehead, my cheeks, the tip of my nose…
“Alexander.” I fisted his shirt tight. Please, God, let him be real. “I… I don’t want to wake up.” Please, don’t let this end.
His smoky blue eyes bored into mine, his brown hair spiked in every direction, a bit longer than in my memory. It’s not a dream, baby. You’re here. You’re home.
Oh my God, I can hear you. I swiped some willful bits of hair away from his forehead, touched his full lips, ran my fingers along his strong jaw, taking in the whole handsome, bad-boy package. You’re back in my head. I’d never been happier to have someone inside my mind. Silence was seriously overrated.
And back in your arms.
About the Author:
Celia lives in California with her husband, daughter, and two feisty cats. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and has a particular fondness for werewolves, vampires, and the Fae. Her stories are action-packed and typically include one of the many varieties of romantic entanglements: fated mates, second chance, rescue romance, opposites attract, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, and more.
When not writing, you’ll find Celia exercising, reading a good book, hanging with her family, or indulging her addiction to Joss Whedon’s TV shows and movies, as well as everything in the Marvel Universe franchise. Of course!
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