Dead Man’s Trigger: A Max Maguire Vampire Novel
Kat Huddleston
Publication date: October 5th 2026
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
Who Knew Immortality Could Be So Short?
When high school history teacher Max Maguire begins to suspect one of his brightest students is in trouble, he ends up walking down the wrong alley. Suddenly, he’s staring down the fangs of a beautiful, powerful, and utterly merciless vampire named Jade.
As Max’s life takes a dark turn he’s forced to learn how to survive in Jade’s twisted world. But if Jade thinks her hostage is going to play nice, she really should have read his resume. This former Special Forces sniper might just have to dust off some very lethal muscle memory.
While Max plots exactly how to kill the most dangerous predator on the planet, he discovers there’s another group of vampires that have their own plans for Jade. Before he knows it, Max is caught in the crosshairs of a vampire war that neither side can afford to lose.
And there’s one thing neither side knows… Max has a secret of his own.
CONTENT WARNING: This is NOT a romance. The novel contains mature content intended for readers 18 and older. This is a gritty, fast-paced genre hybrid combining vampires with dark urban fantasy, tactical military thriller action, and sarcastic humor, with a wisecracking protagonist at its center. There is explicit sexual material, including non-consensual sex, graphic violence, torture, adult themes, and visceral horror elements. In other words, my vampires don’t sparkle.
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EXCERPT:
Max Maguire just got a brutal lesson from his captor, Jade, after his arm was exposed to the sun. He’s left burned and sick. The only one who can help him is the vampire who hurt him.
Max faded in and out of consciousness for hours, as the pain from his arm and the demands from his hunger took turns pounding through him like two enormous drums vying for attention. When he felt the sun leave the sky, the hunger reared up.
He tried to sit up, but his body started to shake. He felt like he was going to die, even though he figured a vampire wouldn’t die from a little sunburn. But he didn’t have any control over his body and every time he moved or touched his arm, pain seared through him. Eventually he stopped trying to get up or move and decided to wait it out. And suddenly there she was, Jade, looking down on him like an angel… or at least an angel from hell.
“What’s wrong with me?” Max asked.
“It’s sun poisoning. You’ll feel better after a bite.”
He closed his eyes as his body began to shake again. Max knew that she could bring him one of his former students at that moment and he’d kill them. His body would take over, the desire ripping right through his heart. And just as Max was focusing every ounce of his being on hating Jade, she sat down on the bed next to him and pulled him into her arms. Tenderly, almost lovingly, she rocked him like a mother would a sick child.
“It’s going to be okay. Drink me, Max,” she said.
He looked up at her surprised. Jade laughed.
She leaned down to kiss him on the forehead and then turned her head to the side, exposing her neck for him. Max’s body took over and in an instant he wrapped his hands around her and crushed her into his body, his fangs sinking into her neck. His mind went blank as he drank her deep and hard, extreme pain mingling with intense pleasure driving his senses to places he’d never been before. Better yet, he could feel her pleasure in his act.
When his mind came back to him, Max kept waiting for her to push him away, but she didn’t. When he finally stopped, he lay back wiping the blood from his mouth. She watched him with her cobalt blue eyes, like a curious cat wondering what he might do next. She’d gone from being pink and warm to pale and cool.
“Do you feel better?” she asked.
Max nodded. “Thank you.” It was a kind of twisted logic that would have him thank her for helping him considering she hurt him in the first place. Regardless he’d go with it. He had to make Jade believe she owned him body and soul, and there was no time to start like the present.
He was still in some pain, but Max felt much, much better. He rolled over to look at her, resting his head on his good arm. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you’re an idiot.”
“Okay,” he said.
“When I was holding your hand, you could have twisted out of the sun. You could have screamed, begged me to stop. Any number of things. But you didn’t. You just endured the pain. Why?”
“If I had done those things, would you have stopped sooner?”
“Probably not,” Jade said.
“Maybe I was trying to impress you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think… you weren’t going to let me beat you.”
“You’ve already beaten me,” Max said as he played with her long, blonde hair rubbing a strand over his lips.
Jade laughed and shook her head. “Not yet. But I will… Do you want to continue with lessons on the Saracen Lance?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Why is more like it.”
“I don’t think learning how to handle myself in this environment will hurt me.”
“It might not help you either… You’re a very interesting former human. Not always too bright though.”
“Somehow I don’t think being bright is a requirement for this job.” Max let his eyes run down the length of her body. She was wearing the T-shirt and jeans from earlier. He really wanted to take them off.
Jade touched his chest and her power flowed through him like an electric current. “I suppose not.” Jade pushed him onto his back and Max stopped talking. He didn’t want to think any more. He just wanted to let the feeling of her power flow through him. At that moment he didn’t even have the energy to hate her.
Author Bio:
Kat Huddleston has never met a perfectly ordinary day she couldn’t improve with a vampire, a monster, or an alien invasion.
The result is Dead Man’s Trigger, the first book in her Max Maguire Vampire series, about a former Special Forces sniper turned high school history teacher turned vampire. He has military training, a talent for sarcasm, and a complicated relationship with being dead. Or is it undead?
Kat likes her supernatural creatures intelligent, her heroes complex, and her humor dark. Her vampires don’t sparkle.
A Chicago-based writer, teacher, and award-winning artist, Kat spent a couple of decades writing about sci-fi TV and movies for the Syfy Channel’s website and Sci Fi Magazine. She’s also written short stories and screenplays, taught fused glass, and created artwork that can be found in several galleries. Occasionally, she pretends she can concentrate on one thing at a time.
When she’s not writing, painting, or melting glass in the name of art, Kat lives with her two cats, Jax and Nicky. They provide moral support, quality control, and unsolicited keyboard supervision. So far, neither has offered to help with marketing.
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