Take Two

My wife inadvertently replaced my first chapter with a polite but decidedly negative comment about the content of my writing =) I am rectifying that situation with a reposting of the original text.

Chapter the First
The night was dark, and stormy. Wind swirled into the antechamber through the open window, bringing with it noises from the courtyard below. Hounds bayed, horses reared and whinnied, and their handlers shouted to one another as they struggled to calm them. In the distance, the howls of a wolf pack, and fainter still, the guttural scream of the unicorn they sought. The sound brought gooseflesh to Ryck's neck.

He tried to ignore it as he gazed at the three women before him, one blonde, one brunette, the third a redhead. They stood in a semicircle before him, their blazing eyes locked onto his, their lips parted expectantly. He cleared his throat, and began to speak. "I'm not sure what to say," he began slowly. "It's not every day you're approached in such a manner by three lesbian vampires." The three lesbian vampires threw back their heads in unison and spewed forth peals of laughter, which sounded (to Ryck's amateur but nonetheless well-trained ears) for all the world like a scale played on an out-of-tune xylophone by a blind Calcuttan seamstress with no thumbs.

Ryck wasn't sure what to make of their laughter, but it seemed to have no warmth, like a hearth that once had a fire in it, but the fire has burned down to nothing, leaving not even glowing coals; nothing but cold, damp ash remained of what had once been a roaring, life-giving presence - such was the state of the lesbian vampires' laughter. He shuddered to think that if he played this wrong, he, too, would have a laugh like cold, gray, unremarkable ashes.