Today’s #1lineWed theme is Memory. Since I don’t really have a WIP going at the moment, but I did have the Nightriders file open, I did a quick search for the word. And these two bits showed up. The first one is from Gravedigger’s story. Or at least, it’s about him, in his POV. It’s gleaned from a passage about twice as long.
My nose flared as more scents wafted in the closed air—frustration, its acrid sulfur reminiscent of matches struck and blown out, and the hot pepper sauce of determination. Every man in this room was an Alpha Wolf. Not one of them would hesitate to fight to the death.
Another fragrance tickled my consciousness, a teasing memory not even ten years could repress. Violets and brown sugar. I shoved thoughts of her away. I had no time for what-might-have-beens. My brothers and I were in a life-and-death fight. Too many innocents had already been hurt. Even if I knew where to find her…I severed that train of thought, grimacing as the stench of rotten eggs—my own guilt—washed over me.
Easy’s gaze cut to me, his brows pulled together. I gave him a headshake to divert his focus. Carolina. She might as well be dead to me. It had been my fault. All of it.
The Russian caught my attention. Time to do my job as club enforcer. I raised my fist. “We ride. We hunt. We kill. Nightriders forever. Forever Nightriders.” A hundred voices echoed my challenge.
My name is Gravedigger and I come by it honestly.
And this one, which is just a bit of flash fiction that I’m not sure in which book or to which character it belongs, but I’ll admit I think it’s a nifty bit of writing. 😉
Anticipation shattered my concentration, a cold, wicked master fisting my psyche, squeezing, wringing, sucking out life until only dust was left behind to scatter on the wind.
Fear, stinking of ammonia and fevered sweat, fogged the room. My lungs labored to fill, nothing but sluggish bellows in the fetid air.
Sooner. Later. Time didn’t matter.
Creeping in on kitten paws or stomping on shattered hopes in hobnail boots, they would come, demanding sacrifices from the weak, the innocent, the foolish. Inescapable as death, as age, as sleep itself. No place to hide. No refuge from the relentless, roiling amorphous shadows of memory.
Dreams would come.
Morpheus would see to it. The bastard.
And those are my Words for Wednesday today. How ’bout y’all? Any words to share?
Silver James 
Woohoo! Fun words! Love ’em.
Here’s a bit from Fertile Ground – SCIU#2:
“Do you have any idea how many serial murders there are in this geographical area? Detroit, Flint, Toledo, Gary? I’m just glad Chicago hasn’t been thrown at us, too. And in the face of all those deaths, rape gets shunted aside.”
Teri opened her mouth to protest, but Jensen held up a hand. “Don’t start. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying the way things end up being. Death trumps rape.”
Death trumps rape. The words played over and over in her head like a skipping record and she wanted to scream about how death would sometimes be preferable to living day after day with the memories of…
“Who’s been working this so far?” she said, trying to break away from that train wreck of thought.
Dang, woman! I want this book like now! That’s an awesome bit of writing there. 🙂