Snare: Novellas and Short Stories
By Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
()
About this ebook
When Elliot Iverson, a municipal employee responsible for paperwork pertaining to New York City's vampire population, knocks on the door of the Gramercy warren, he wants only to resolve a clerical error. But a sudden snowstorm, a new friendship, and an ill-advised threesome force Elliot to make some big choices about his own life and death.
This story was previously published by Torquere Press, June 2016.
Erin McRae
Racheline Maltese can fly a plane, sail a boat, and ride a horse, but has no idea how to drive a car; she's based in Brooklyn. Erin McRae has a graduate degree in international affairs for which she focused on the role of social media in the Arab Spring; she's based in Washington DC. Together, they write romance about fame and public life. Like everyone in the 21st century, they met on the Internet. Sign up for Erin and Racheline's newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/65dMz Learn more at their website: http://Avian30.com
Read more from Erin Mc Rae
The Anniversary Gift: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlpha Bodyguard: A Forbidden Omega Story: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Hart and the Hound: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Omega's Reluctant Alpha: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Self-Publishing for Perfectionists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOff-Kilter: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLake Effect: A Summertime Gay Wedding Romance: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoom 1024: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Chances: Novellas and Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Snare
Related ebooks
Wilderwood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTongue & Groove Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoldilocks and the Bear Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Serpent of the House of Hua: Those Who Break Chains Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Orc and a Gentleman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHavesskadi Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTeam Phison: Team Phison, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDithered Hearts: Dithered Hearts, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Chronicle of Monsters: A Fantasy Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCoup de Coeur Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpen Skies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Patchwork: Tales From Long Lily, #1.5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaking Flight: Celtic Myths Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueer Weird West Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShe Steals Justice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChristmas at the Wellands Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vampire's Pirate: The Immortal and Illicit Duology, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5His Lord's Soldier: Great War, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScary, Lovesick, Foolish: A Halloween Romance: Crazy, Sexy, Ghoulish, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArc 2: Everybody's Missing (Somebody): Stake Sauce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dionysus in Wisconsin: Wisconsin Gothic, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChains of Light Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlooded Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUgly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHawthorne Manor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Uses of Illicit Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeny Me, The Nightshade Boy: The Heartwood Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsToo Hot! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConcealed in Sage: Nightbreak, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Paranormal Romance For You
Flames of Chaos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chased by Moonlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eternal Bonds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Entreat Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sheltering Rain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Hunger Like No Other Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Witches of New Orleans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shadows of Fire (The Shadow Realms, Book 1) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Dweller on Two Planets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Oxford Year: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masked by Moonlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fighting Destiny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lothaire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wish Out of Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lassiter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Siren: Rise of the Drakens, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Modified Volume 1: Modified, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kodiak's Claim: Kodiak Point, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scales and Sensibility Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warlord Wants Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fortuna Sworn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Savior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood of the Pack Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Silver Under Nightfall: Silver Under Nightfall #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreams of a Dark Warrior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lover Arisen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Snare
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Snare - Erin McRae
Snare
Novellas and Short Stories
Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
Published by Avian30, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SNARE
First edition. November 11, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
ISBN: 978-1537861548
Written by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Snare
Also By Erin McRae
Also By Racheline Maltese
Snare
When Elliot Iverson is in the third grade, he learns about life, death, and the various legal statuses in between. The information comes in civics class, sandwiched between the checks and balances inherent in the three main branches of the U.S. federal government and the history of the country’s citizenship laws.
He doesn’t pay as much attention as he should. After all, he lives in California, and all the vampires live in New York, ostensibly confined to Manhattan Island by the rivers that surround it. Mrs. Sanchez tells the class that vampires are very tricky and that’s why hundreds of years ago they gave the city their money to help fund the building of bridges and tunnels that would let them escape. The plan failed, however, because the city simply installed checkpoints and trained dogs to make sure only the living could come and go as they pleased. But the vampires’ failed plan has still made New York the greatest city in the world.
And in that great city there are even humans who, although alive, apply to be declared legally dead so they can live the way vampires do.
Why would anyone want to do that?
a curious Elliot asks.
Mrs. Sanchez explains that although these people are limited in movement, and may have no legal identity or bank account, they are under absolutely no legal jurisdiction: federal, state, or otherwise.
It’s a type of freedom,
she says. "The official term for those people is Dead, with a capital D — the little d is for the biologically deceased — but they’re also called rabbits. The communities in which they live alongside vampires are called warrens."
As Elliot listens rapt, his teacher notes that while some say this system fuels New York’s crime and lawlessness, it has also made the city a mecca for artists and nonconformists, the seeking and the strange. All of it has given New York a vibrant culture that most only experience on television or at the movies. Trapped in the vast and boring inland wastes between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Eli decides that one day he is absolutely, positively going to move to New York.
WHEN ELLIOT IS TWENTY-three, he does. As if foreshadowed by the civics class that set his heart on the city, Eli’s move comes with the world’s most boring job. He gets a position as a clerk in one of the City’s seemingly infinite offices of municipal record keeping. Most days he works deep underground, where the least useful paperwork imaginable — the records of the Dead — is kept. But it is the days he must rise to the surface he finds most annoying; it means someone has made an error he must track down and resolve in person. It’s not, after all, like the Dead have cell phones. Those require contracts, which require credit cards, and both of those things are at least difficult to obtain without being part of the breathing and banking world.
His colleagues tease him as he hustles out of the Greek revival building that’s so much prettier on the outside than the inside. They all claim they stopped caring about their jobs after the first week, but Eli is up to nearly four months and is still armed with an enthusiasm his peers don’t just deem absurd, but unnecessary. Eli flips them off as he goes.
It’s winter, and ’a storm is coming — the type that’s bad enough to make the city actually shut down the transit system. Eli’s been told that’s a three-day nightmare. It takes a day to turn it off, a day to weather the storm, and a day to get it back up and running. He’s more than happy at the prospect of getting some t’s crossed and i’s dotted before beating the rush to the grocery store and then hunkering down in his ratty studio to watch movies and listen to the wind for days.
Eli grabs the 6 at Canal and tries not to gag at the heavy scent of mildew and rot that comes from the tracks. It’s been a wet winter already, and many of the stations are filled not just with drips and leaks, but, down on the tracks, streams and creeks. To Eli, who continues to consider the possibility that he’s just a tad too sensitive for this city, it’s a cause for irritation, and in the newspapers it’s been a cause for at least minor controversy.
All the articles have been in that no-man’s-land part of the metro section between the classifieds and the sports news, but the question of what constitutes a natural body of running water is actually interesting when so much of the city has been built over land reclaimed from the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers. The rot in the subways is, as far as Eli is concerned, perhaps New York’s greatest reminder that its wealth and power lies entirely in its infrastructure and its Dead. While Eli sometimes dreams of Europe, he is happy to take the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nature of New York over the strangely colored cement ugliness of the mid-twentieth century California from which he’s come.
When he gets off the train at Union Square — because the MTA is dreadful and has declared that all 6 trains are now running express — he finds the snow has begun in earnest. The wind drives it into his face, and it has the dry, too-cold feel of the impending blizzard. The colder the temperatures, the more snow any given storm produces. It has something to do with the shape of the ice crystals in every flake, he’s read.
By the time Eli reaches 20th Street, his face stings from the snow. His glasses are covered with it, and the only reason he hasn’t turned around to go home is that the ten minutes it will take to resolve this will, at least, come with shelter from the wind if not actual warmth. Also, Gramercy Park is beautiful. He didn’t know but realizes he should have assumed. New York may be status obsessed, but the whole world wouldn’t want a key to the park if it weren’t stunning. He can’t help but feel that the universe has been just slightly kind to him, letting him see its wrought iron, old trees, and ivy in the snow this early in the season and so soon after he’s moved here.
The numbers on the square confuse him, and he walks the full perimeter until he finds the building he wants. Even from the outside it looks like a warren, between its dark red brick and black trim and its fantastical architecture — turrets and half-octagon bay windows seem to jut at random from nearly every floor. The front door is deeply recessed and up a flight of stairs, and Eli is happy to climb them to get some shelter from the storm.
He looks for a bell to ring as he stands in front of the shiny black door, a giant golden knob embedded right in its center like a plug in a wound. But there is no bell to ring. Eli runs his fingers through his hair, swipes at the moisture on his face from both the snow and the way the cold has made his eyes and nose run, and rubs the back of his hand over his glasses to clear off some of the melting snow before he grabs the knocker and drops it against the door a couple of times. It’s so cold, he’s half-surprised when his hand doesn’t freeze to it. He really should have worn gloves. He clutches his messenger bag tight in front of his chest as he waits for someone to answer.