Here Be Dragons

Night Call #2.5

by L.J. Hayward

PLEAE NOTE: This book is not an MM story.

A day in the life of Night Call—Matt Hawkins, vampire-slayer extraordinaire and Mercy Belique, vampire femme fatale. From the whacky, to the mundane and back again in twenty-four hours.

After successfully completing one job—killing the angry, ugly rat thing was the aim after all, no matter what else may have gone wrong… er, happened—Matt Hawkins settles in for a nice, quiet day at home. If you ignore the neighbour trying to come to terms with his new boat. And the ringing phone. Matt does neither. The former brings him some satisfaction and the latter, a new job. Which is all well and good, until he actually gets to the local waterway and comes face to face with a creature he’s never seen before.

Navigating between cranky scholars, moody vampires and a monster straight out of myth, Matt might just find himself in uncharted waters and “Here Be Dragons”.

Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Vampires

31 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 30, 2015

About the author

L.J. Hayward has been telling stories for most of her life, a good deal of them of the tall variety. She loves reading but doesn’t seem to have enough time between wanting to be a more disciplined writer, being the actual erratic writer she is, and working for dollars in a dungeon laboratory. She also lives on the Gold Coast in Queensland, but rarely sees a beach and can’t surf, though she thinks living on a houseboat might be fun. At least then she’d have an excuse to get a cat.

Reviews

[Graeme Rodaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cool little vignette that was over all too soon.

Sad to say it - I've completed all the Night Call books. Well, I'll just have to console myself with some Harry Dresden stories, or some such...

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome short story of dragons

An unusual story of finding a species that turns out to be a type of dragon. The problem is how to get rid of them before they disrupt the other animals living in the area.

[J. Gowin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun short story, which makes good use the Night Call cast of characters. While reading I felt like it wanted to be fleshed out as a full novel. This is why I rated it three instead of four stars.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dragons! Who doesn't love dragons? Matt Hawkins. Idiot. Thank goodness for Mercy. It's been a few month since their last adventure and Mercy the vampire has been growing into her own personality, her own humanity if you will, just as Ambrose told Matt she would. As a fellow Primal, if Matt was willing to use that word, Ambrose knows what he's talking about, if Matt was willing to listen.

As Brisbane's resident 1-800-WEIRD Matt gets called in to the Parks Services when a ranger finds hundreds of little iridescent dragon eels in a dying pond. It's true that they have made a little bit of a stinky mess with their eating habits but Matt's first thought of extermination is extreme. Men! The park ranger is on the fence but does let Matt take one home for murderous study. Mercy instantly falls in love with her fellow inhuman beauty and sets off to save them.

Here Be Dragons is a short entertaining story that has me looking forward to Rock Paper Sorcery.