Today’s tease comes from the book Bewitch, which is the fifth book in my very popular Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series and is available now from Amazon Kindle, Apple iTunes, Kobo Books and other retailers. Read on for your Tuesday tease from…
He reached the bottom of the stone steps and the crowd immediately swallowed him. Women dressed in very little tossed provocative looks his way and his incubus side purred from their attention. He wanted to tamp it down but his vampire side had a tendency to show when he forced it to the fore to obliterate his incubus hungers. He couldn’t risk them seeing he had a dual personality.
Payne preened his long fingers through the dirty blond spikes of his hair and the women hissed at him and disappeared in a flash, teleporting out of his presence. Fairly standard behaviour for a succubus when it saw an incubus. He grinned to himself, remembering how Chica had reacted to him in such a way when she had first come to the theatre. Succubi were weaker than incubi, and it had led to the incubi taking advantage of them more than once, and trying to kill them too. It seemed both sides of his genes had trampled on the feelings of other species without remorse.
He found his first street sign at a junction between four shops all selling herbs that stung his nose. Each plump female owner stood outside, trying to outshout the others. Payne covered his sensitive ears and glared at the wooden post in the middle of the busy crossroads and the boards pointing in different directions.
Just as he had expected. He was shit out of luck.
He didn’t recognise any of the symbols on the wooden boards. He jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and not just because he was frustrated. He had been bumped more than once and he was damned if he was going to have his wallet nicked. That would be the turd icing on a crap cake.
A woman with milk white skin and hair the colour of snow approached him, the crowd parting to allow her through. Her starlight coloured robes flowed ethereally around her, revealing more than they were concealing. She looked like a ghost. Payne stood his ground, his vampire senses sparking high alert, and steadied himself. Every instinct said to roar and scare her away.
Phantom.
He had never seen one before but he had heard that a phantom’s touch could make a man incorporeal. A phantom too. It was the only way for one such as her to mate. She needed to make her male as intangible as she was. When he had first heard that, it had sounded as though it might be fun. Then he had learned that once a phantom, always a phantom. The male never got his corporeal status back and was destined to roam the world as a hollow husk when the phantom cast him aside. No way was he signing up for that.
Her palest silver eyes slid to him and she held her hands out.
Payne reacted on instinct, his eyes darkening to crimson and his pupils turning elliptical. He bore his lengthening fangs at her and growled. She halted and even moved back, but she didn’t leave. She stared at him and her white lips moved. No sound left them but he heard her words in his head.
Unfortunately, he didn’t understand most of them. He caught fae words for ‘fated’, ‘bond’, ‘blood’ and ‘death’.
Before he could ask her in English what she had said to him and what it meant, she swirled into smoke and disappeared. He looked around at the people now staring at him, his skin crawling from their attention and the way they were looking at him as though the phantom had just announced his death sentence. He let his fangs recede and his eyes change back to dark grey, and then singled out one of the witches who had stopped to stare.
“What did she say?â€
The woman frowned at him, turned her back and went about her business. Just great. It seemed their looks of horror were because he had flashed his vampire nature. No one else had heard what the phantom had told him and he was damned if he could remember what she had said to repeat it to them.
He didn’t need this shit on top of everything else.
Payne stared at the street sign and decided to go left. He was feeling in a sinister mood after all.
He reached another crossroads and was in the process of deciding which route to take next when a huge cloud of sparkling grey dust exploded into the air off to his right. People ran from that direction, pushing past him. He braced himself and frowned over their heads. There was a shape in the dust, small and curvy, and she wasn’t alone. Four larger shapes surrounded her.
That didn’t seem like a fair fight to Payne.
Did you enjoy the snippet?
Bewitch is available now at Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Kobo Books and other retailers!
If you haven’t had a chance to read any of the books in the Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series yet, they’re all available at major ebook retailers and in paperback, and you can find the links and samples of the books at my website:
Covet (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #1)
Crave (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #2)
Seduce (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #3)
Enslave (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #4)
Bewitch (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series #5)
Caris Roane is also posting a Teaseday snippet, so be sure to check out her blog and read it! http://carisroane.com/2013/01/22-gates-of-rapture-3/
