Penname: Tami Veldura

Her skin felt too hot. But it was nothing compared to what waited for Elidee. Nariah shuddered to think of the terror her friend was going through. Elidee was a strong person, both physically and mentally, but this fight was spiritual. Spirit was like gravity, it didn’t care about belief or understanding, it simply was.…

Nariah was wearing heels. Blue suede, tall, stiletto. They were beautiful. They showed off her calves nicely. She was very annoyed that she had to wear them. They were useless for running and Nariah tended to get caught in things that required running. The shoes matched her dress, a gift from Varrien that she wasn’t…

Nariah Boyd marched through the woods behind her house without her usual cheerfulness. The afternoon was bright, the breeze pleasant, and the birds were singing, but Nariah frowned as she watched her steps over scrabbling rock. Instead of a water bottle, she carried a sturdy stick, and instead of enjoying the afternoon, she threw a…

Nariah Boyd was not a social woman. She lived in an isolated cottage backed up against national forest and her only companions were a parade of animal spirits no one else could see. She worked with bones, precious gems, and the dead. It left her rather lacking in interpersonal skills. None of these facts deterred…

Nariah Boyd, bone witch and leader of the Resistance Against Vampires, was generally not one to accept an invitation to a blind date. And certainly not one on Valentine’s day, arguably the worst day to go out to dinner for any reason. Nariah was aromantic, aro for short, and she simply didn’t find any of…

For Nariah Boyd, final delivery for a client was always tangled in conflicting emotions. The satisfaction of a creative work well done butted up against the knowledge that, for her client, this moment was a gut-wrenching reminder of what they’d lost. There were usually tears. Nariah… didn’t handle tears well. Especially other people’s. And other…

Before the Rise of the vampires, Turquoise Boyd had donated blood perhaps a handful of times. When the Red Cross needed her type, when her daughter’s Girl Scout troop ran a blood drive for their silver award project, things like that. She filled out a form, sat in a recliner for a half hour or…

Nariah squeezed her little car into parking between a dually truck and a camper van painted with world war two fighter jet-style eagles on one side. The van was outfitted with solar on the roof and probably housed a couple of nomad vampires hiding from the last rays of the afternoon. Nariah didn’t intend to…

Nariah tied a colorful headband over her forehead and pressed it gently back to contain her tightly coiled hair. The chill in the night air prickled along her bare arms, bringing an electrifying awareness along with it. There were spirits on the rise. Just over an hour ago Nariah had felt the call, a pressure…

Nariah absently rolled a loc of her hair and squinted at her textbook. “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee… what?” It wasn’t even old English, it was like, Greek trying to pass as English. Badly. She propped her head up and…