(He's Pretty Serious)
*****
“Evgeny, side of the house. Something from the window.”“Tracking.”
It was big, bigger than a man and on the ground with a crouching movement, like a big cat hitting the ground. Even though they were several blocks away, Hauck had to fight the urge to draw his gun. It was up and moving so fast toward the back of the house that it left one screen and shot onto the other as quick as Hauck could turn his head.
“Shestapolov,” shouted Hauck. “To your right.”
Shestapolov and Rodin turned simultaneously, pivoting on their heels and bringing their pistols around. A fury of bright movement was on them before they could fire and Hauck heard a vicious, triumphant snarl that flooded him with fear. Light swirls smeared with something dark spiraled across the screens. A cry from Rodin that sounded like “mother,” but must have been something else.
“Evgeny?” called Hauck.
Above the snarls and snapping and howls, he thought he heard the slap of bullets and Shestapolov's terrified cursing. Either Shestapolov or Rodin was down and the other tried to sprint across the yard, but it was on him and dragging him toward the fence line faster than Hauck could believe.
“Evgeny,” he called again.
"On the move."
A fat finger jutted into view before the monitor. One of the back windows of the house was glowing. Smears of furious light bled into the night. A quick, sharp blast rocked the speakers and Hauck stepped back against the immovable figure of his watcher. The man snorted and pushed him away, but bent over suddenly as he did so as though in pain. Hauck ignored him and stared at the monitor. Flames and sparks shot out the windows as though the house were a fireworks display. excerpted from "Tainted Blood," by Ferrel D. Moore
*****
There are some people who make you a little uneasy. You're not sure if you should add them to your guest list without doubling up on your home owner's insurance policy. Rasputin falls into that category. A charismatic wild man steeped in scandal and secret plots- yep, a perfect character for the novel I'm writing.
Born January 22, 1869 in Siberia, he rose from a simple peasant upbringing to the level of advisor to Tsar Nicolas II and his Tsarista Alexandra. He was such a bad influence on them, that many historians consider him a major contributing factor to the fall of the Romanov empire.
He was sexually promiscuous, mesmeric and charismatic and lived for plots and counterplots. His influence of the Tsarista Alexandra was so complete that many suspected them of being lovers enslaved by passion.
Yet, he was a great comfort to the family, as only he seemed to have the power to dismiss the incredible pain suffered by their hemophiliac son. Physicians seemed to do nothing much at all compared to this mysterious man.
The church fathers considered him steeped in sin because of his alleged involvement in the khylsty sect, whose services reportedly resulted in physical exhaustion and orgies. The ritual known to the khylsties as "rejoicing" involved group sex which, the khylsty leaders felt encouraged members to turn towards God after yielding to temptation. If people did not first sin, they thought, why would they ever turn their eyes heavenward for forgiveness?
And, he was reputed to be the hardest man ever to kill. He enemies (notably Prince Yusupov), fed him enough cyanide to kill several men, then shot him in the back, came back and stabbed him and shot him again when he was still up and getting really upset, then reportedly castrated him and threw into an ice cold river. An autopsy report showed that he took water into his lungs before finally dying- which meant that he was still alive when thrown into the water!
Later, his body was stolen and burned, but observers were horrified that while burning, Rasputin's body sat bolt upright in the flames. I started my werewolf novel over from scratch when I started thinking that the reason Rasputin was so hard to kill was that he was actually a werewolf. So I began researching the topic, started from scratch again, and, 10,000 words later, I'm hard at it again. Sometimes you just have to find the antagonist.
