Category Archives: vampire romance

As part of my Paranormal Pandemonium 2011 Blog Tour, I have been posting chapters of my next release, Forbidden Blood.

Forbidden Blood is a dark vampire romance novel, and the first book in the Vampire Venators series, and will be released on June 18th 2011. I’ve already posted chapter one, chapter two, chapter three and chapter four. That means that today is the final chapter I’ll be posting, and with it I’m adding a little about the series.

Enter a dark world where humans live alongside nine species of demon without knowing it and a mysterious circle of ancient beings called the Sovereignty battles to protect mankind. For each of the nine species, Venators are chosen, hunters who are given the power of the Sovereignty and fight in their stead to defeat those in their species who seek to harm humans and demons alike. It is a world of vampires, werewolves, therianthropes, angels and other demons, each with their own distinct society and world they desire to protect–a world they desire to keep separate and hidden from ours.

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Forbidden Blood is book one in the Vampire Venators series and a dark, sensual tale of betrayal, revenge and a love that knows no bounds.

genre: paranormal vampire romance
length: 126000 words
rating: sultry
released: June 18th 2011
Book 1 in the Vampire Venators series

Amber woke slowly to an unfamiliar view. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, and could see the edges of the brown walls either side of her and the window behind her that formed another wall. She felt very calm, as though she had slept deeply. It surprised her. After what she had been through last night, she had expected not to sleep at all. She had drifted off waiting for the nightmares but felt as though her dreams had been pleasant, or non-existent.

Perhaps her dreams and reality had swapped places. She was living a nightmare and dreaming her old life now. The fear that had settled in her heart last night hadn’t gone anywhere. It was quieter now, lessened by the steps Kearn had taken to protect her, to make her feel safe, but it wasn’t going away. Deep inside her heart, a voice whispered that she should fear Kearn too, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to feel that way, not even when a part of her knew that there was something different about him.

It didn’t matter what he was. He was protecting her and she could help him. They needed each other. In order to swap her dreams and reality back around, she had to be strong and get through his, and she would, with Kearn at her side.

The quiet noise of the flat panel television built into the oak wardrobes opposite the foot of the bed filled the silence along with her breathing. She stretched. Kearn’s bedroom was soothing. She wanted to sleep here forever.

The bed was soft and warm, the room peaceful and quiet, and she felt safe.

Amber rolled onto her side and took a deep breath. The brown pillows smelt like Kearn. She hadn’t noticed it before. It was a warm smell. She smiled. Probably a very expensive warm smell.

There was no doubt in her mind that Kearn’s job paid well. The car, the apartment, and the terribly modern décor that gave it an air of something out of a perfect homes magazine, all pointed towards money.

Another smile touched her lips when she remembered him insisting on her taking his bed. Very chivalrous.

And then there was his brother.

They looked alike in some ways and the very opposite in others. She imagined Kearn with blue eyes and black hair cut short around the sides but longer on top. They would definitely look alike then.

His brother had a different personality though. He was open, playful, and seemed to take great amusement from saying things that Kearn thought weren’t suitable. If they hadn’t told her that Kyran was the older brother, she would have thought him the younger.

Kearn seemed so cold in comparison, and more distant than she had first placed him. His behaviour around his brother, the flashes of anger swiftly chased by sorrow that had crossed his face at times, and the way he had ended the night so abruptly, all of them increased her feeling that Kearn was hiding something. What did he want to conceal?

Kyran had said that he knew vampires and he knew what his brother did to them. What did Kearn do to them? She had been about to ask him when she had felt incredibly sleepy. The tension in the apartment had risen the moment Kearn had closed the bedroom door on her and then the front door had slammed. Had they argued? Because of her?

Amber sat up on the double bed and pulled the brown duvet to her chest, covering her bare breasts with it.

Why would they argue because of her?

Because Kyran had been too friendly or because he had said something he shouldn’t have?

Amber looked over at the bedside table.

And why were her clothes gone?

She scrambled across the double bed and peered down at the floor in case they had fallen off. They were gone. Her shoes were too. Only her black handbag remained.

Had Kearn taken them?

She blushed from head to toe at the thought of him coming into the room while she had been sleeping in his bed wearing only her knickers.

Her eyes widened.

He had even taken her bra.

Her cheeks burned now.

Amber wrapped herself in the brown duvet and shuffled carefully to the bedroom door. She opened it a crack and looked out into the main room. She couldn’t see Kearn. The television in the white dividing wall above the low rectangular open fireplace was off. The apartment was silent save the noise of the television behind her.

Kearn was gone.

She hitched her duvet toga up and went back into the bedroom, crossing it to the bathroom. There was a white bathrobe on the back of the door. She dropped the duvet and put on the robe. It was too big for her but it was better than walking around Kearn’s apartment in only her knickers.

She made the bed, turned off the television and then returned to the bedroom door and opened it.

There was no sign of her clothes in the living area, or in the kitchen in the right hand corner opposite it. The glasses and bowl were on the drainer, and Kearn’s bloodied shirt was gone. She picked up one of the glasses, filled it with water and drank it down in one go. Her stomach growled. Food. She hadn’t eaten in almost a day.

Amber checked the pale wooden cupboards. The first two being bare didn’t bother her, but after the fifth, she started to find it strange. When she had checked every cupboard and found only a few glasses and some other kitchenware, but not cutlery or plates, she was disconcerted. She approached the large white refrigerator with caution, fearing what she would find in it. Vampires drank blood. What if the fridge was full of bits of people or blood bags stolen from the local hospital?

She grabbed the refrigerator door and yanked it open.

A blank white space greeted her.

Her heart pounded against her ribs.

She was going crazy.

She had to stop being so suspicious.

Vampires killed people. Maybe he didn’t keep his food in the house. Maybe he ate street food of the vampire kind.

Amber shut the fridge door. She really was being stupid now.

Kearn hunted vampires.

Maybe he ate out all the time. There were people who did that. She had seen television programs where famous people had never used the expensive stove in their oversized kitchen. Kearn could be just like them.

Or he could eat blood.

She walked out of the kitchen, trying to distance herself from her thoughts as easily as she could distance herself from the refrigerator.

She stopped at the black front door of the apartment.

There was a note stuck to it, written in neat cursive script.

Do not even consider leaving. I shall return by the time you have showered and shall bring you breakfast. Kearn.

She tried the handle anyway. Locked. Some of the locks she could open from the inside, but one of them needed a key.

Well, that was considerate of him. He stole her clothes and locked her in his apartment, and then offered her a shower and said he would bring her breakfast. He was confusing her more every minute that she knew him.

Breakfast?

Amber glanced to her left, through the small study area to the bank of windows that formed the wall there. The sun was heading towards the horizon, casting a golden glow over the rooftops of London. He had a strange concept of meal times, but then he hunted vampires. It was probably a job he could only do at night.

She perused the books in the beech bookcase that lined the wall of the study opposite the open fireplace, her fingers tripping from spine to spine. There were many novels on the side nearest the front door, but closer to the wooden desk in front of the window, the books were all factual, and some of them were definitely not available in stores. Books on demons, vampires, werewolves and other creatures. All of them old and large, and leather-bound. None of them had authors or publishing houses on the spine. She took a thick, heavy tome on vampires, placed it down on the desk and opened it carefully to somewhere near the middle. Her gaze scanned the neatly hand written paragraphs on the yellowing page and stopped on a name she recognised.

She had to read it three times to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.

Earl Huntingdon.

She cast a quick glance around the apartment, her heart starting to race and tremble at the thought of being caught snooping in Kearn’s things, and then read the passage about the earl.

A vampire.

Kyran knew vampires. Was that why Kearn didn’t like Earl Huntingdon? Perhaps there were good vampires after all and that was why Kyran was friends with him.

Or perhaps not.

Amber read the page, enthralled by the things it said about the earl and his bloodthirsty ways. He sounded dangerous, the sort of vampire that people had written tales about centuries ago, like Vlad the Impaler. He sounded like the sort that Kearn should kill.

She went to turn the page and read on but stopped herself. Reading about the horrible things vampires did to people and to other vampires would only frighten her. She closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. She was better off not knowing. They said ignorance was bliss after all. When Kearn had caught the vampire, she would be going back to her life. Kearn wouldn’t be there to protect her from the scary vampires. She would be alone again and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life afraid, fearing that someone like Earl Huntingdon would somehow find her. She wanted to live life.

Dragging herself away from the study, she walked around the wide white dividing wall of the modern double-sided fireplace and stopped dead when she saw a black jacket and Kearn’s gun on the end of the long black couch against the bedroom wall. The setting sun glinted off the silver gun, luring her to it.

She stopped at the window-end of the couch beside the gun and stared hard at it, memorising the weapon’s exact position on the jacket so she knew where to place it so Kearn wouldn’t know what she had done. With her heart in her throat, she reached a trembling hand out to the gun and closed the fingers of her left hand around the grip. Her whole arm shook as she lifted it. It was heavier than expected and felt cold against her fingers. She kept it pointed away from her, afraid it would go off, and studied it. It looked like a gun from a movie, sleek and modern, and dangerous.

What kind of bullets did it take? They had to be special to kill vampires.

Amber tried to figure out how to open it, turning it one way and then the other, and even looking closely at the bottom of the grip. In the movies, people changed the clip so quickly she never saw how they got it out. She lifted her other hand, tempted to pull the top part of the gun back and then stopped herself. She didn’t know what would happen if she did that. If she blew out a window or made a hole in the white wall, Kearn would know that she had been messing around with his gun. Afraid of the consequences if that happened, Amber placed the gun back down in the precise spot and position she had found it, and stepped back from it. She didn’t like it.

Turning away, she walked back to Kearn’s bedroom and through it to the bathroom. Take a shower. Kearn had said he would be back when she had showered. She looked at the large white cubicle to her left. Take a shower she would.

She stripped off the bathrobe and her knickers, and closed the bathroom door. The clear shower door squeaked when she slid it open. She turned the water on and stepped under the jet, showering quickly and holding her hair up so it didn’t get too wet. It would frizz if it did and she didn’t want to look like a prize poodle around Kearn.

Amber shut the water off and stepped out of the shower. Her head spun. She closed her eyes and waited for it to clear. It had done that from time to time last night too. Was it the vampire trying to control her?

She shuddered at the thought. She didn’t like the idea that someone could control her and make her do things against her will. She unravelled the bandage on her hand. The cut across her palm was still raw and it was bleeding in places again. She washed it in the sink and then looked for a new bandage, finding some in the cupboard in the black sink cabinet. She carefully wound it around her hand, tight enough that it would stop the bleeding, and pinned it.

The vampire had wanted her to taste her blood but she hadn’t been tempted this time. Was his hold over her fading?

The sound of a door closing made her look up at herself in the mirror. Kearn.

She clawed her hair back into a neat ponytail, slipped the robe on, and tied it.

Kearn was in the kitchen when she walked out of the bedroom. He glanced over at her, his green eyes as impassive as ever. Not even the sight of her in his bathrobe fresh from the shower provoked a reaction. He crossed the room and held two large black paper bags out to her. There was a store name she didn’t recognise written on the side in a white cursive font. She peered inside the first one at the clothes. The second had a cardboard shoebox in it.

“What is it?” She looked at Kearn.

“Your outfit for tonight.” He dropped another similar bag on the couch facing the window and she looked in it too. Her own clothes. He had taken them to a store and, judging by the bags, it had been somewhere expensive.

Kearn held a small brown bag out to her.

“What’s this?” She took it from him.

“Breakfast,” he said without any trace of emotion, his eyes not leaving hers. “Coffee and pastries. I asked the woman what you might like.”

Amber frowned. What she might like? As though a stranger would know such a thing. Couldn’t he have judged for himself? Maybe he didn’t know what food tasted like. Maybe vampires didn’t eat anything other than blood.

Maybe he just didn’t eat pastries. She had known men in her past that didn’t touch sweet things. He could be like them.

“What about you?” She placed the clothes bags down on the couch beside the other one and eyed him closely, studying his face.

“I ate when I was out.”

Amber stared at him. He stared back, colder than ever. He really wasn’t very talkative. The effort of trying to make conversation with him was exhausting.

Kearn walked around her and along the length of the couch beside the wall to the far end of it. He leaned over and paused with his hand just above his gun. He kept his back to her as he picked it up.

“Do not ever touch it again,” he said and went into his bedroom, closing the door.

A few minutes later the shower was running and Amber was still standing in the middle of his apartment feeling guilty for snooping and wondering how the hell he had known she had touched the gun. It had been in exactly the same place as he had left it.

He was an enigma.

He had no food, a lot of money, and treated her coldly even though she was helping him. She looked at the clothing and the food that he had bought. She couldn’t figure him out at all. She had never met anyone so distant either. Was it his work? Maybe he was just unused to company. He hadn’t been that at ease with his brother too.

Maybe he wasn’t human.

She couldn’t push that thought away. Whenever she gave it a chance, it came back.

Amber walked over to the kitchen island and placed the brown paper bag down on the granite top. She sat on one of the black and wood stools that followed the curve of the island, and opened the bag, removing the white paper cup of coffee. She took off the lid and scooped up some of the foam with her finger. Cappuccino. Just the fix she had needed.

There were a lot of different pastries in the bag. Covering his bets?

The bedroom door opened and Amber looked over her shoulder at Kearn. He rubbed a brown towel against his wet hair. Water dripped from the ends of the long silver strands and rolled down the bare strip of chest and stomach visible between the two sides of his black shirt. His body was delicious. Just what she wanted to eat for breakfast. His muscles shifted and bunched with each move he made as he dried his hair, a feast for her eyes only. She stared, unashamed of what she was doing. If he was going to put it out there, then she wasn’t going to shy away.

Kearn tossed the towel back into his bedroom, ran his fingers through his hair, and then walked over to the jacket on the couch. He picked it up and placed it over the back of the couch facing the window. Amber sipped her coffee and kept watching him, or at least his body. He ruined her fun by buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his black trousers.

He came over to her and looked at the paper bag. She took another sip of her coffee and drank her fill of his face, putting to memory the curve of his lips as they parted and the way a line formed between his dark silver eyebrows when he frowned. He was undeniably good looking and was starting to creep back into sexy territory.

“Want one?” Amber offered the bag, part of her doing so out of politeness and the other part wanting to test him.

His green eyes shifted from the contents of the bag to her hand that was holding it. Blood was seeping into the bandage again.

“Take it if you want it,” she said and his eyes met hers, incredulous and searching. It was the first sign of something other than cold calculation in them today. He almost looked shocked.

“No, thank you.” Kearn pushed the bag back at her. “You should dress. We need to arrive at the club before everyone else so we do not look as though we are together.”

She took a long leisurely sip of her cappuccino, unwilling to be rushed by him, and then slipped down off the stool.

When he had said they would go to a club, she had expected them to be together the whole time. The thought of being alone when the vampire could be stalking her was frightening but she had promised to play bait for him. She picked up the bags of clothes from the couch. What sort of bait did Kearn have in mind? The clothes would give her a hint.

She walked into his bedroom, kicked the door closed, put her coffee and pastries down on the side cupboard and dumped the bags on the bed.

Refusing to hurry, she ate a croissant and drank half of her coffee, and then devoured another pastry.

Amber pulled the large shoebox out of the first bag and opened it.

She tipped the contents of the other bag out on the bed beside it.

Her eyes widened.

“What the hell!”

That’s the final chapter of my sneak preview for Forbidden Blood, but you don’t have to wait long to get your hands on this book now. It’s released on June 18th, just next week! Have you all enjoyed the book so far?

As part of my Paranormal Pandemonium 2011 Blog Tour, I have been posting chapters of my next release, Forbidden Blood.

Forbidden Blood is a dark vampire romance novel, and the first book in the Vampire Venators series, and will be released on June 18th 2011. I’ve already posted chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three of this long novel, and now here’s chapter four. Just one more to go after this and I hope you’re all enjoying it so far.

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Forbidden Blood is book one in the Vampire Venators series and a dark, sensual tale of betrayal, revenge and a love that knows no bounds.

genre: paranormal vampire romance
length: 126000 words
rating: sultry
released: June 18th 2011
Book 1 in the Vampire Venators series

Kearn led the way up through his apartment building. With all of the stores closed until morning, he would have to wait to visit the club and see if he could attract attention with Amber and her blood. He had hoped to end this tonight and take her home, ridding himself of both the temptation she presented and his unending mission to capture the man, but fate had never been kind to him. For now, he would battle his lingering hunger for her and bide his time. Tomorrow, he would buy her some clothes to wear to the club, and together they would hunt down the vampire. He didn’t have much experience of dressing women, but was sure someone at the shops would be happy to assist him, especially since money wasn’t a factor.

Humans and vampires were very similar in that respect. Money could buy you anything and the more you had, the more people were willing the crawl on their bellies for you.

Amber’s fatigue flowed through the connection between their blood. It wasn’t the only feeling that he could sense in her. Her emotions were steadily turning towards fear again. Perhaps it was a good thing that they had been unable to go to the club tonight. She needed to rest. All he had done since meeting her was push her into doing things his way. The man he sought would be cautious tonight. Going to the club wouldn’t have produced any results. Tomorrow was a different matter. The vampire would want to find her. He would come out hunting and Kearn would be waiting for him.

There was another reason for him to take things more slowly. Pushing her now, when she was tired and afraid, would only lead to him losing her. She had locked him out of the car tonight and she hadn’t done it out of fear of the vampire. She had feared him. He needed her to remain with him. His instincts whispered that he could force her to stay, at least until her blood was completely absorbed into his. No. No good would come of it. His mission was to protect humans, not prey on them. Not anymore. If it came down to it, he would confess that her suspicions were correct.

He was a vampire.

“So did they hurt when you had them done?”

He stopped just short of the black door to his apartment and turned to face her.

She looked nervous. Her heart was racing, sending her blood to the surface. It filled the white hallway with the sweet enticing scent and caused his fangs to itch. Her blood had tasted so delicious. His stomach ached, hunger to taste her again causing it to cramp, and he struggled to hold his fangs at bay. It was just the remnants of her blood affecting him still. The effects were already wearing off. He just needed to hold it together for a few more hours and then he would be free of the haze induced by her blood and she wouldn’t be such a temptation. His gaze slid to her neck and his throat burned. He closed his eyes when the hallway brightened, signalling a change in his irises, and clamped his teeth together. It was just her blood in him. It would pass. He told himself it repeatedly but it didn’t ease the tight ache in his gut. He wanted her blood, and it went deeper than a craving for another high.

“Kearn?” she whispered and he drew a long, steadying breath, and then opened his eyes. The hallway was dim again. He looked up at her.

Her gaze fell to his hand.

His did too.

He raised his right hand and her eyes followed it, fixed intently on the silver marks that covered it to his fingertips.

She seemed fascinated by them. He had caught her looking at him countless times since meeting her, and several of those she had been staring at his arm, her gaze tracing the marks that flowed over it from his shoulder to his hand. He was surprised that she hadn’t asked him about it before now. Twice she had seen it activated. Now she was asking him whether the marks had hurt, as though they were just a tattoo, rather than asking what they did and what he was.

Didn’t she want to know?

Or was she trying to pretend that she hadn’t noticed, and that he was only human?

Perhaps she wasn’t as strong as he had thought and was having trouble believing everything and taking it all in after all. Kearn reminded himself that she was human. This was probably some strange dream or nightmare to her. There had been moments when her blood had conveyed that she trusted him, and wanted to remain with him. Was her denial of the truth standing before her all because she wanted to continue to trust that he would save her? If he told her that he was a vampire, would she want to leave? Would she fear him then and see him as she saw the man—a beast and a monster?

Part of him didn’t want her to feel that way towards him.

He would never harm her.

He only wanted to protect her.

He opened the door to his apartment while considering what to say about his arm and whether to tell her about himself. It wasn’t a good idea. The moment the door swung open, he drew his gun and aimed it at the person standing in the middle of his home.

His brother raised his hands in an act of surrender and smiled.

“What are you doing here, Kyran?” Kearn holstered his gun and walked into the apartment. Only one of the lights in the kitchen was on, leaving the rest of the large room in near-darkness.

Amber followed him. When she stepped out from behind him, Kyran’s dark blue eyes were on her.

“He cried like a baby when they put those marks on him.” Kyran smiled broadly, his gaze assessing Amber.

“I did not.” Kearn closed the door. It was unusual for Kyran to drop by unannounced to his apartment. His brother knew how much he hated it.

“It isn’t like you to bring a girl home, Kearn.” Kyran’s blue eyes remained locked on Amber and he inhaled deeply.

His gaze slid to Kearn. The look in his eyes and the connection they shared through a familial bond asked a question. Was she Source Blood? Kearn refused to answer. His brother didn’t need to know and wouldn’t be able to tell from Amber’s scent alone.

“Don’t tell me you are planning to go a little rogue? The old habits die hardest, don’t they?” Kyran said with a wicked smile.

Amber stared at Kearn.

Kearn glared at his brother. He wasn’t intending to take Amber’s blood. He knew the law and he wasn’t going to break it by using her blood purely to get high. He had only taken a small amount for testing purposes. That was as far as it went. This wasn’t the same as back then. He hadn’t known he was breaking the law. He hadn’t known she was tainted.

It was typical of his brother to bring up his past. Kyran had always found it amusing to make him uncomfortable but that trait had turned vicious since Kearn had become a Venator, to the point where Kyran took intense pleasure from saying things that would get him into trouble. He was convinced that his brother did it to see him suffer, to make him pay for the things that had happened between them centuries ago, so he bore it as punishment for his sins against his own blood.

He bore it in the hope that one day they would finally move past what had happened and would be able to forgive each other.

“Why are you here?” Kearn looked hard at his older brother and then moved back to the door of his apartment. It wasn’t like Kyran to hide in the dark and he could smell blood other than Amber’s. The flat dull smell of vampire blood. It all smelt the same, not unique like human blood. He turned on the ceiling spotlights. “And why are you bleeding?”

Kyran touched a gash on his face. It wasn’t the only cut. A myriad of thin red lines covered his face, neck and hands. He grinned.

“I was playing with Earl Huntingdon and Marchioness Montagu. You know what they can be like.” Kyran’s grin widened. His blue eyes shifted back to Amber. “Although if I had known you had such sweet company, I would have come here earlier.”

Kearn crossed the room, grabbed Kyran’s arm, and led him over to the small dining area in the far left corner of his apartment. He didn’t relinquish his grip on his brother.

“She does not know what we are.”

“Kinky,” Kyran whispered and raised a dark eyebrow in Amber’s direction. “Do you intend to reveal it during the act?”

Kearn tightened his grip on his brother’s arm, bringing his attention back to him. Kyran frowned down at his hand and then into his eyes.

“She is a lead on a case. Bait.” He kept his voice low so Amber didn’t hear him. He wanted to tell his brother that he wasn’t interested in drinking from Amber, or anything sexual, but couldn’t bring himself to lie. His eyes threatened to stray to her, to take in her beauty, but he kept them fixed on Kyran.

“A Source Blood?” Kyran went to look at Amber again but Kearn stepped into his path.

“If you reveal what we are—”

Kyran slapped a hand down hard on his shoulder and smiled. Kearn could see straight through it. Whatever his brother was going to say, it was a lie. The look in Kyran’s eyes screamed trouble.

“I will not say a word out of place.” Kyran removed Kearn’s hand from his arm and was past Kearn before he could stop him.

Amber still stood by the door, an air of hesitation about her, as though she had noticed the tension between him and his brother and didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire.

“I have been unforgivably rude.” Kyran stopped far too close to Amber for Kearn’s liking. “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Kyran, and I am Kearn’s older brother.”

“Amber,” she said and then peered around Kyran to him. “Brother? You don’t really look alike.”

They had looked alike before he had become a Venator. His hair had once been black like Kyran’s and his eyes had been an equally deep clear blue. In terms of stature and build, they had remained much the same, and he could see himself in his brother’s face. His eternal torment.

“Kearn looks like our father.” Kyran’s tone was sharper than razor blades. Kearn could sense the hate and the hurt in him. It was never going away.

Kyran should have been Venator. It was the tradition in the Noble and Lesser Noble families. The eldest son carried on the duty of their father as Venator. He had wanted it to be that way, because Kyran had thought of nothing but becoming a Venator since they had been children. Kearn had fought the Sovereignty, had tried to convince them to give the duty to his brother, but they had given it to him regardless. Kyran had hated him ever since. A part of Kearn still hated his brother in return for his role in what had happened, but the pain of what he had gone through was nothing compared to the fact he had stolen his brother’s dream.

Time had healed some of the breach between them, but sometimes Kearn got the feeling that nothing had been forgiven or forgotten. No matter how much progress they made with each other or how they tried to get along, the past would always stand between them.

The countess would always stand between them.

There was something akin to concern in Amber’s eyes as she looked at him. Why? Because of his silence or because of the mix of sombre and fiery feelings that accompanied his thoughts? She would be able to sense them if she tried. The connection her blood in his veins caused between them was open and transmitting the emotions in his blood back to hers.

Kearn reached out to her through their connection and felt the concern in her. He closed off his emotions and monitored her in case the vampire tried anything.

She forced a polite smile at Kyran.

“You mentioned an earl and a marchioness. I’ve never met anyone who knew fancy people like that.”

Kyran looked over his shoulder at him, his black eyebrows raised again. Kearn shook his head a fraction, enough that only his brother would notice the answer to his silent question. No. He hadn’t told Amber about them and their family and he wasn’t going to let Kyran mention it either. It was best she knew as little as possible.

“Kearn doesn’t approve of Earl Huntingdon. He believes him a bad influence. Don’t you, brother?”

Kearn left the dining area and came to stand near Amber in the open space between the four areas of the main room of his apartment.

“Because he is.” Kearn held his hand out, indicating the living area beyond the wall of the open fireplace. “Perhaps we should sit down since Kyran seems to have no intention of leaving soon.”

“Sounds like a wonderful idea.” Kyran flashed a smile and held his arm out to Amber. “Shall we?”

She hesitated, looking unsure of what she was supposed to do, and then slipped her arm around his brother’s one. Kearn glared at his brother’s back as he led Amber to the couches, his eyes shifting to red for a moment and the world sharpening with it. Kyran would feel the threat. Hopefully, it would improve his behaviour.

Kearn turned away and went into the kitchen area, trying to clear his head. What was Kyran playing at? Of course he despised Earl Huntingdon but Amber didn’t need to know that, or about anything to do with the sordid man. Earl Huntingdon was an animal. His family had always relished power and embraced the myths surrounding vampires, and had always been the most blood-soaked and violent because of it. Sometimes Lesser Noble families had no sense of breeding.

He took a fresh glass from the cupboard and filled it with water.

Kyran wouldn’t talk to him about what had happened during his century of exile from their family, but he knew that Earl Huntingdon had invited him into his home and treated him like a brother. The earl was young, almost the same age as them, and had taken the role as head of his household when his parents had died around two centuries ago. He had been only one hundred and fifty at the time, the equivalent to a human fifteen year old, but he had been bloodthirsty and ruled in violence with his sister.

Kearn carried the glass with him across the room to the living area and rounded the black couch that faced the window. Kyran was sitting on the one against the wall, his legs crossed, revealing a rip in the knee of his black tailored trousers. Had Kyran been out killing tonight with the earl and marchioness? The three of them were prone to such acts of debauchery when together. He couldn’t smell human blood on him, but it was difficult with Amber in the room. The heavenly scent of her blood drowned out everything else, filling his mind with the need to take more.

His gaze roamed to her where she sat on the couch that faced the window, staring out of it. Forbidden. Why did that word only make her more tempting? He placed the water down on the coffee table in front of her and she looked up at him.

“Thank you.” She smiled and then it melted away into a frown. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Does your brother know what you do?”

Kearn flinched internally at that question. He could feel Kyran’s eyes on his back, boring a hole through his chest as though he wanted to rip out his heart with thought alone.

“Yes,” Kearn said in a tight voice and sat beside her. She shuffled over to give him room and then sat with her hands in her lap, her body angled towards him and his brother.

He tried to think of something to talk about that wouldn’t give Kyran an opening to hate him, ridicule him, or reveal anything about them and their family.

“I think Kearn has some more bandages if you need some.” Amber smiled in Kyran’s direction. She toyed with the cream crepe bandage around her hand.

“Did something happen to you?” Kyran sat forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. He reached a hand out to Amber.

Something inside Kearn said to knock his hand away and not let his brother touch Amber again, but he kept still. He didn’t have any claim to her and his brother was behaving himself. If he stopped him, the next thing his brother said would probably be something about his penchant for blood drinking. The introduction had been bad enough. Permit me to introduce myself? He might as well have said—I’m a ridiculously portrayed vampire from a cliché low-budget movie.

Amber placed her hand into Kyran’s. His brother cooed over it in a way that made Kearn want to hit him.

“This is terrible. You poor thing. What happened?”

It would have been more convincing to Kearn had his brother not been drawing a deep breath the whole time, trying to catch the scent of her blood.

“A man attacked me. A vampire, actually.” She eyed Kyran closely.

“Damned vampires.” He rolled his eyes.

Kearn did take her hand away from Kyran now, and gave his brother a dark look for good measure.

“I take it you know about them?” Amber put her hand back in lap and started toying with the bandage again. Kearn kept a close eye on her, concerned that the vampire’s hold over her might not have faded completely. Since it was the vampire’s blood in her body, and not the other way around, he would still be able to find her using the lingering connection between them until tomorrow night, or even beyond that, but Kearn had expected his ability to control her to have left her system by now.

He picked up the water and offered it to her with a smile. A delightful blush stained her cheeks. She had reacted the same way when he had smiled at her earlier tonight. Did she like it? He smiled again and she took the glass, running her fingers around the rim of it with her eyes downcast. Shy?

He could feel Kyran’s eyes on him. Watching. It wasn’t illegal for him to study a human and Amber fascinated him.

“I know all about vampires,” Kyran said in a tone as black as an abyss. Kearn looked at him when Amber lifted the glass to her lips. Kyran blatantly ignored the silent command not to watch her by staring at her throat while she drank. Red briefly ringed his irises. “I know about them and the terrible things that Kearn does to them.”

Amber choked, coughing and spluttering, her hand over her mouth. Kearn quickly took the glass from her. She stared at his brother with wide eyes. He didn’t like the question he could see in them. She didn’t need to know what he did.

He touched her shoulder and used the connection between them to give her feelings a slight push. Not too much influence over her thoughts. More of a suggestion than a command. He wouldn’t control her as the other vampire had.

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I feel tired.”

“It is late.” Kearn placed the glass down on the square coffee table, feeling Kyran’s glare on him the whole time. “Perhaps you should rest. You have had quite a night. I will stay on the couch. Please, make yourself at home in my room.”

“Really? I couldn’t.” Her beautiful hazel eyes met his, full of warmth and honesty. They backed up the message her blood sent to his. She felt bad for taking his bed.

“I insist.” He took her elbow, bringing her with him when he stood. Kyran was still staring at him. He led Amber past him and to the bedroom, and turned the light on for her. “The bathroom is just through that door. The control for the blinds is on the bedside table, as is the remote control for the television, in case you feel uncomfortable sleeping without background noise tonight. I will be here if you need anything.”

She nodded and he closed the door. The moment it clicked shut, his eyes changed to red and he looked at Kyran. Scarlet eyes stared right back at him.

Without a word, Kearn walked to the door of the apartment and opened it. Kyran stood, stalked across the room, and stopped toe to toe with him.

“That was uncalled for. I was merely making conversation.”

“I did not like the direction your apparently innocent conversation was heading.” Kearn’s red eyes locked with his brother’s ones.

“Do you really believe the lie you are telling yourself when you say she only needs to know as little as possible?”

Kearn frowned.

“It is a lie, brother, and a shallow one. You do not keep her in the dark about your true self because you believe she doesn’t need to know it in order to play the role you have assigned her.” Kyran stepped past him but remained facing him, his back to the hall. “You do so because you are afraid of what she would think of you if she found out what you are… a vampire no different to the one who attacked her… a fiend lusting for her precious blood.”

Kearn curled his fingers into a tight fist at his side and gripped the door hard with his other hand.

Kyran stepped back into the hall.

“She will find out, little brother.”

He was gone.

Kearn growled under his breath at the truth in his brother’s words.

It was only a matter of time before Amber saw past the façade.

For some reason, he didn’t want her to see him for what he was.

He didn’t want her to fear him.

Hate him.

Not even when it felt inevitable.

Kearn cursed and slammed the door.

Not long to wait now until the book is released! Final sneak preview chapter next week! Is everyone excited?

As part of my Paranormal Pandemonium 2011 Blog Tour, I have been posting chapters of my next release, Forbidden Blood.

Forbidden Blood is a dark vampire romance novel, and the first book in the Vampire Venators series, and will be released on June 18th 2011. I’ve already posted chapter one and chapter two of this long novel, and now here’s chapter three.

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Forbidden Blood is book one in the Vampire Venators series and a dark, sensual tale of betrayal, revenge and a love that knows no bounds.

genre: paranormal vampire romance
length: 126000 words
rating: sultry
released: June 18th 2011
Book 1 in the Vampire Venators series

Amber kept her eyes fixed on the man. The passing streetlights flickered across his face as he drove. He was a mystery and, for some reason, she wanted to crack him. She hadn’t witnessed one trace of emotion in his eyes. At least nothing that had been real. Sure, there had been feigned feelings, but she had seen straight through those. The whole time he had been talking to her about her blood and tracking the man and keeping her safe, the whole time they had been together, his green eyes had remained empty and dark. If it weren’t for them, for the sense of iciness that he radiated like a barrier around him, she would have thought him sexy.

He held rank at handsome though, and she couldn’t deny that he was attractive. His longish silver hair and vivid green eyes were unusual, but only added to his masculine beauty, and his body pushed the bar and threatened to break him back through into sexy territory, regardless of his detached air. It could easily grace the cover of a male fitness magazine—all compact muscle without a trace of fat. Her eyes roamed his face, over his fine dark silvery eyebrows and down his nose to the curve of his dusky lips that had tempted her more than once this evening, to the defined line of his jaw. He was definitely handsome, but the edge to him, the invisible walls that he didn’t bother to hide, stole something from his looks and warned her away.

Perhaps his profession made him so cold and distant. It was difficult for her to understand his role or even the effect it might have on him. She had never known anyone in the police force or military. She looked at the gun in the holster under his left arm. How many people had he killed? Not people. Vampires. He killed vampires and protected people, and now she was playing bait so he could catch the man who wanted to kill her, and no doubt kill him. Was that the reason he seemed so heartless and distant?

Was that why he lived alone in that building?

She wasn’t blind. Even with that vampire’s blood sending her crazy and controlling her, she hadn’t failed to notice that his car had been the only one in the garage and that there was no sense of life in his building. He was alone there.

Did he live that way in order to protect humans like her from the vampires that might come after him, or for different reasons?

Her gaze slowly fell to his chest. The black buttoned shirt didn’t stop her from remembering how good his body had looked. Her eyes shifted to his right hand on the black steering wheel. Or the strange tattoo that covered his entire right arm. She hazily remembered it from when he had rescued her. It had glowed blue. Had that been real or just the effects of the vampire’s blood on her?

She shuddered with the thought that the vampire’s blood was still in her, crawling around in her veins, and looked down at her bandaged hand. Could he still control her? She felt normal again now, back to herself, almost. Her mind was playing catch up and computing everything that had happened, making it all seem like some surreal dream even when she knew that it was reality. She was with a vampire hunter en route to kill the demon who wanted her blood. It should frighten her, she knew it should, but whenever she looked at the man beside her, her fear faded away.

“I’m Amber,” she said, not only to break the steadily turning oppressive silence but because she wanted to know his.

“Kearn.”

Amber presumed that was his name.

“So… you’re a Venator.” She felt silly the moment she said it but she had to do something to start a conversation with him.

He sped over a crossroad and then turned left at the next. They were heading back to where he had rescued her. She felt uneasy about returning to the area and leading Kearn to the factory, but he had assured her that he would keep her safe, and she was determined to believe him, if only to stop herself from feeling scared.

“I am.”

He wasn’t very talkative. She had hoped that he would turn out to be a talker so she could chip away at his hard exterior and see what lurked beneath.

What could she say to get him talking? His distance wasn’t going to deter her. If they were going to be working together, then they at least needed to be on talking terms. Perhaps he wasn’t used to company. If his building were empty as she suspected, it would make sense that he hadn’t had much practice at making idle conversation. Her apartment building was full of people of all ages, and most of them stopped in the corridors to talk about trivial things like the weather, work and where they were going to or coming from. She’d had plenty of practice at making conversation. He would just have to catch up.

“Must be a pretty lonely job.” She regretted her choice of words when he looked at her out of the corner of his eye and a strange sense of hurt filled her. It wasn’t in his eyes, they were dark and narrowed, but something about him gave her the impression that he was lonely. “Sounds more interesting than my job though.”

“And what is your profession?” He had a very formal way of talking at times, speaking with a regal edge to his deep voice.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it my profession, but I’m an analyst.”

His expression turned thoughtful. “An analyst? That could be useful in finding the man who is after you.”

Amber laughed and he glanced at her.

“Only if he needs his numbers crunched. I’m more like an account… not the sort of analyst you’re thinking of.”

“I apologise.” He frowned at the road. “I do not know much of offices and such.”

Amber smiled. “I got that impression.”

Kearn didn’t say anything. She picked at her bandage again. Her hand still hurt but the bleeding had stopped now and the pain was lessening.

“Where is the building from here?” he said and she realised they were in the side street where the men had attacked her.

Amber directed him towards the building, leading him through the maze of one-way streets. He pulled the car to a halt around the corner from the gates of the old redbrick factory and looked across at her.

“Stay here. Under no circumstances are you to leave the vehicle.” The hard edge to his voice made her nod in agreement even when she wanted to say that she was coming with him and he had no right to tell her what to do.

He turned off the engine and then stepped out of the car. The moment the door clicked shut, she felt on edge. With Kearn around, she had felt safe from the vampire. He had been a talisman that had kept the dark thoughts and her fear at bay. What if the man was in the building? Would he try to control her again if he knew that she was here? She didn’t want to be his pawn in whatever game he was playing with Kearn, and she didn’t want to die.

Amber stared at Kearn’s back as he walked away from her in the beam of the headlights, her sense of safety leaving with him. He reached across and removed his gun from the holster. It flashed in the white light. He looked menacing dressed head to toe in black, his silver hair dancing in the night breeze and his gun in his hand. A fitting look for a man who hunted vampires. At the corner, he looked back at her and then he was gone.

She went to curl up on the black leather seat and then thought the better of it. Judging by the way people had stared at it during the journey here, the car had to be worth a hundred grand at least. She couldn’t go putting a dent in the leather or scuffing it with her heeled work shoes.

The empty road was too quiet, increasing the creeping chill inside her. After a few wrong choices, she found the button for the radio on the black console and it came on, illuminating the dashboard. She kept the volume low, afraid that it would attract the wrong kind of attention if it were louder, and then tried to figure out how to turn off the headlights. She couldn’t find the switch for them but she did find one that locked the doors. This car was nothing like any she had driven before.

Someone walked past the end of the road ahead of her and she froze, cautiously watching them until they disappeared from view.

What was Kearn doing? Had he gone into the building to find the men who had attacked her?

Vampires. It seemed incredible that they existed and she felt as though she shouldn’t believe it even when she did.

Was Kearn going to kill them?

She didn’t like the thought of him killing someone because of her, but she wanted to be safe again and go back to her life, and she knew that wouldn’t happen without the vampire dying. Did France have vampires too? Kearn had said that once he had captured the man, she would be safe. No one else would know about her blood. No one except Kearn at least. Would he keep her secret for her? She wanted to escape London more than ever now, wanted to go somewhere new, where no one knew her, but she wasn’t sure if she would ever feel safe again. Vampires would constantly be on her mind. Maybe she could ask Kearn for some self-defence lessons in return for helping him. She would feel a whole lot safer if she knew how to kill a vampire.

Amber pushed her wavy brown hair out of her face and then tied it up into a ponytail. The building to her left was dark. Would Kearn find anyone in it? If the vampire had known he was a Venator, then surely he knew that Kearn would come after him. He wouldn’t have remained in the building.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she swore she heard someone saying her name. She looked around the streets but no one was there. The feeling came again, a notion that someone was calling to her. Was it the vampire?

She reached over to turn the radio up in the hope of drowning out the feeling and stopped dead when a loud cracking noise echoed around the streets. She had seen enough movies to recognise the sound. A gunshot. Kearn.

Without a second thought, Amber left the car and ran to the corner. No one was in the narrow road. She hurried on, heading for the gates. Another gunshot rang out and she flinched, instinctively hunching up to make herself small in case the bullet was coming her way.

She was about to move when a man landed in front of her, close enough that she stumbled backwards and fell, jolting her coccyx. He glanced at her with red eyes and then ran off. A vampire? Where had he come from?

Amber looked up the three-storey height of the building and wished she hadn’t.

Kearn was falling out of the sky.

She screwed her eyes shut, not wanting to see him die. A warm breeze washed over her and then silence. She had expected more of a commotion when someone hit a pavement from a great height.

“I told you to stay in the car.” Kearn’s sharp voice cut the silence and she cracked an eye open. He stood over her, not a scuff on him, looking as though he had just walked along the street to see her rather than dropped from the heavens. She glanced up at the top of the building and then back at him. It wasn’t possible for someone to fall like that and survive without a scratch.

The vampire had done it.

So had Kearn.

His green eyes narrowed, darker than usual.

Amber opened her mouth to explain but fell silent when he extended his right hand to her. It was glowing blue, the marks on it shining so brightly they were dazzling. Just what was it? Just what was he?

Her hand shook as she slipped it into his. His fingers closed over hers, the glow lighting her skin and washing all colour away, and he pulled her up off the ground. He didn’t release her hand. He led her back to the car at a brisk pace and opened the passenger side door.

“Get back in the car,” he said and she didn’t hesitate or protest.

He slammed the door and ran off.

Amber breathed hard and tried to shake the image of him falling from the sky and his arm from her mind. How could he do that? Was he like the vampire? She kicked off her shoes, locked all the doors, and huddled up on the seat, afraid of Kearn coming back.

She lost track of time as she stared at the road in front of her, trying to make sense of everything and wondering why she was suddenly frightened. Kearn had never said that he was human but he hadn’t mentioned that he was anything like the vampires he hunted either. Who was she to think that made him bad? She shared a gene with vampires, making her like them too. Perhaps he had found a way to use the power in that gene as the vampires did. Perhaps he was a vampire. Why did it frighten her if he was? He was still trying to protect her.

But he was keeping things from her.

And she didn’t like it.

Her eyes widened when he stepped into the path of the headlights. They threw his shadow out long behind him. He holstered his gun under his left arm and walked towards the car, all glowering darkness that reminded her of the vampire who was after her. Was Kearn one too? She wanted to ask him but was too afraid of the answer.

His eyes bore into hers and she couldn’t look away. She stared straight into them, still trying to decipher what he was hiding behind their impenetrable emerald shield.

He stopped at the driver’s side door and tried to open it. Twice. Amber dropped her gaze when he bent over and looked at her through the window.

“I am sorry if I was rude. I only wish to keep you safe,” he said, as though he honestly thought his somewhat arrogant attitude had forced her to lock him out of the car. She made herself look at him. There was no darkness in his eyes now, only a touch of confusion that was real. He smiled and she expected to see fangs but only saw normal teeth. “Apology accepted?”

What if she let him in and he tried to drink her blood, just as the other man had? She reasoned that he was helping her, and he did genuinely want to keep her safe, even if it was only so he could use her as bait to lure out the vampire. If he was like the vampire and wanted to kill her for her blood, he probably would have done so back at his apartment.

And she was safer with him than by herself.

A sense of calm flowed through her as she stared into his eyes, chasing back the darkness and the fear. Even if he was a vampire, he was her only protection against the man. She needed him. She couldn’t fight the man herself.

She unlocked the doors and Kearn opened it, slid into the seat and stared at her.

“Did you find anything?” Her voice was a tight squeak and he frowned. “You seemed quite intent on chasing that man.”

Intent enough to jump off the roof of a building and survive unharmed.

“Vampire,” Kearn said and started the car. “And no, there was nothing in the building besides some bloodstains on the floors. Whatever they were doing there, they have moved location now that I know about it. I only managed to catch that one vampire.”

“What happened?”

Kearn didn’t say anything. He pulled the white Audi R8 out into the road and drove to the junction at the end of it.

He stopped the car at the line and his grip on the black steering wheel tightened.

“The next time I tell you to remain in the car, do just that. Unless you want to get yourself killed.” The hard edge was back in his voice and she saw a flicker of how he had looked in the street.

His arm had been glowing. Human arms couldn’t do that sort of thing. Could a vampire’s?

“What will you do now? Was this your only lead?” she said rather than asking him whether he too had fangs and hungered for blood. She stared at his eyes, wondering if they might turn red, and then told herself to stop overanalysing things. He had bandaged her cut hand without so much as a hint of wanting her blood and the vampire Kearn had been chasing had red eyes and the other had fangs. Kearn had neither of those things.

“No,” Kearn said and she almost jumped. Her eyes darted away from his face when he looked at her. The dashboard of an Audi was very interesting. She stared at it, frowning at times, doing her best to look fascinated by it and not him. “There is a club where we might get some answers.”

“A club?” She looked down at her neat black trouser suit. “I’m not exactly dressed for that sort of place.”

“I will handle that.”

Amber’s eyes drifted back to him when the car pulled away, accelerating along the wide tree-lined shopping street.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to Kearn than met the eye, that he hid the real him behind a mask to keep the world at a distance. Why? The bright streetlights flashed on his face.

If he was a vampire, would he hurt her like the other one wanted to?

Or was there such a thing as a good vampire?

Are we enjoying the story so far? Can’t wait until June 18th when the book is released?

As part of my Paranormal Pandemonium 2011 Blog Tour, I’m going to be posting the first FIVE chapters of my next release, Forbidden Blood. I posted chapter one last week.

Forbidden Blood is a dark vampire romance novel, and the first book in the Vampire Venators series. I’ll be posting more information about the series closer to the release of Forbidden Blood. In the meantime, here’s chapter two, and here’s a link to the previous chapter: Chapter One

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Forbidden Blood is book one in the Vampire Venators series and a dark, sensual tale of betrayal, revenge and a love that knows no bounds.

genre: paranormal vampire romance
length: 126000 words
rating: sultry
released: June 18th 2011
Book 1 in the Vampire Venators series

Kearn closed the door to his apartment behind them and locked it. It wouldn’t stop the man from entering if he wanted to reclaim the woman, but it would make her feel safer. He walked past her where she stood in the middle of the large white open plan room holding her black leather handbag and pointed towards the living area to his right beyond the modern fireplace that divided it from the study near the door. She followed him and stopped near the back of the long low black couch that faced the wide bank of windows, setting her bag down on the cushions. She stared out of the windows, her hazel eyes bright with fascination. He had grown bored of the view of London from his apartment a long time ago. He rarely looked out at the rooftops now.

He looked at her instead. She reached up and removed the band from her messy ponytail, freeing her long brown hair. It fell down in loose waves over her shoulders and blended into her black suit jacket. Its rich shade contrasted against her pale face. The colour was gone from her skin, the only visible sign of her ordeal. She placed the band around her wrist and then stood with her left hand clutching her right, the palm of that hand turned upwards, crimson staining it. She remained still and he frowned after a few minutes. Had she slipped into shock? He couldn’t sense it in her.

She seemed incredibly calm considering everything that had happened to her and her situation. A little too docile for his liking. He studied her. It wasn’t normal for a human to be so unafraid after everything she had experienced. He had expected her to put up more of a fight about remaining with him and coming up to his apartment.

The man had given his blood to her. She was under his influence. It would explain why she was so at ease and why not a trace of fear laced her scent. The man wasn’t afraid, so she wasn’t either.

Kearn kept his guard up and approached her. She wasn’t herself and wouldn’t be until her body had eradicated the man’s blood from her system. She had flitted between afraid and angry during the journey here and in the garage. The man was using his blood to control her.

“Make yourself comfortable.” He stripped off his holster and then his white shirt.

Her gaze moved to him. It roamed unabashed over his body. He headed back to the door and tossed the ruined white shirt onto the floor of the beech wood kitchen. When he turned around, the woman didn’t take her eyes off him. She continued to stare at his torso. He touched his ear and then frowned at the blood on his fingers. Without looking at the woman, he crossed the room to the bedroom door and opened it. He dropped the holster and his gun onto the deep brown duvet covering his double bed to his right and then flicked the light on. The dark earthy walls and low lighting in his bedroom soothed his tired eyes.

Kearn touched his ear again and walked straight through the gap between the foot of his bed and the built-in wardrobe, heading for the door across the room. He flinched when he turned the light on in the en-suite bathroom. He needed to put a dimmer one in at some point but it always slipped his mind. The white tiles bounced the light around, making it too bright for him. He looked into the large black-framed rectangular mirror that occupied the wall above the wide black sink cabinet in front of him. The cut had already started to heal but he still needed to help it along, if only to stop it from bleeding down another shirt.

He washed the blood off his neck and chest, watching the red swirl down the drain of the white oval sink. The cut began to bleed again. He took a small dark brown hand towel off the side of the black cabinet, dabbed his ear to dry it, and set it back down. Before his earlobe could bleed, he spat on his index and forefinger, and rubbed the saliva into the nick. It stung. The man hadn’t been aiming at the woman. He had wanted to use her distracting him as a chance to kill him.

He should have realised sooner that the woman was under his control.

Kearn stared in the mirror, through his bedroom to the main room of the large open plan apartment. The knife in his car would yield nothing. Only her blood had been on it and the man had been wearing gloves. The woman was his only clue, and the best one he’d had since he had started hunting this man three years ago.

He looked at his reflection and cursed the sight of it. It was still strange to him. Not himself staring back at him but someone else. He hadn’t seen himself in the mirror for over one hundred years, and he never would again.

He crouched, opened the two doors on the sink cabinet, and took out anything that would help a human heal. There wasn’t much. He could only offer bandages.

Or he could help her heal.

Kearn shoved that thought away.

It wasn’t going to happen. The woman was a lead and that was all. Her wound would heal with time. He didn’t need to interfere. If she were a Source Blood as he suspected, then drinking from her would be dangerous.

He grabbed a fresh black shirt from the built-in oak wardrobe in his bedroom and then walked out into the living room. The woman looked up from the couch facing the window, her hand still held in front of her. It was bleeding badly, filling his apartment with the sweet scent of blood.

Kearn stopped beside the couch that lined the wall between the living area and his bedroom.

He wasn’t sure what to do with the cut or with her. He had never worked with a human before nor had this sort of contact with one. Normally they were dead by the time he met them. The thought of tending to one was disgusting, but she was the lead he had been searching for. He was sure that the man who had attacked her was part of the group he was after, if not the leader. They had been testing her in the side road, and the man had been powerful enough to control her and make her try to drink her own blood even at a great distance. He would have to be a Lesser Noble or a Noble to be able to determine through their connection alone whether she was a Source Blood.

The woman continued to look at him, a dull edge to her hazel eyes. The man’s blood was still affecting her. Kearn scanned the separate areas of the room. There was nothing she would be able to reach before him and use as a weapon, and she was only human so the furniture posed no threat. She wouldn’t hurt him if she used her fists, although she had done a good job with her knee back in the garage. He placed the bandages down on the large square wooden coffee table in front of her.

Her gaze followed him across the room, unmoving from his back as he went into the kitchen. He filled a clear bowl with warm water and placed it down on the black granite work surface while he unravelled a wad of paper towel from the roll. He crossed the room back to her and placed the bowl and paper towels down next to the bandages. She watched intently as he put his black shirt on, leaving it unbuttoned, and then looked at her hand when he came to sit beside her.

This close to her, the smell of blood was overwhelming.

Kearn clamped his teeth shut and held the change at bay. It had been too long since he had smelt anything like her and it pushed at his control. He had been able to subdue the effect of her scent when he had been at a distance from her, but he couldn’t contain it now. His gut clenched and twisted, saliva pooling in his mouth and his fangs itching to extend as hunger to taste the blood that went with the divine scent tore through him.

“Keep still,” he said from between his teeth and soaked some of the paper towel.

Kearn took her hand in his and forced himself to focus. Her skin was warm and soft, and he used his senses to see how much vampire blood was in her system. Enough to keep her under control and stop her from answering his questions. He had promised that he would make her feel better. He only had one way of doing that and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go through with it or not.

He wiped the blood from her hand. It mixed with the water and covered his, ran down his arms in beautiful rivulets, soaking into his shirtsleeves. He slowed without thinking, fascinated by how her blood blossomed on the surface of the cut and savouring the warm alluring smell. He swallowed the burning ache in his throat and focused. She inhaled sharply when he wiped the blood away again and he grabbed the bandage. He wound it around her hand as quickly as possible and pinned it on her palm. The smell of blood lessened but it was all over his hands. He licked his lips. The fiery thirst in his veins begged him to quench it. Did he really want to do this?

“Why did he make me do that?” she whispered and Kearn looked at her. There were tears in her eyes as she stared at her hand. They trembled on the brink of falling. Her feelings travelled through their joined hands, filling him with a sense of fear and confusion. He released her fingers and sat back.

“There is a reason he made you drink his blood. It will help him find you, which is why I need to keep you with me.”

She didn’t seem shocked by what he had said. He had expected her to react with disbelief or horror. Perhaps the blood in her veins and what she had witnessed was enough to make her believe him.

“Why did he cut me?” She raised her hand and toyed with the bandage. The blood was already soaking into the edges of it.

Kearn looked down at the scarlet ambrosia coating his hands. “Your blood may be of a type which is valuable to his kind.”

He curled his fingers into fists. They shook.

“I must wash my hands.” He stood and headed straight through his bedroom and into the white and black bathroom. He stared at his hands. The blood looked even redder against the white sink beneath them. They trembled uncontrollably.

Did he really want to do this?

He needed answers and to get them he needed to eradicate any control the vampire might have over her.

Kearn lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed the blood. It smelt strong and enticing. His mouth watered. He took a deep breath followed by another two, trying to prepare himself. This could be a grave mistake.

Closing his eyes, he tentatively reached out towards his fingers with his tongue. The moment the blood touched it, a jolt rocked his body. She was definitely a Source Blood. He hadn’t tasted forbidden blood since becoming a Venator but he hadn’t forgotten the effects.

He licked his finger and swallowed. The jolt became an intense buzz and his fangs extended. His eyes shot open and familiar red ones looked back at him from his reflection, a fragment of the real him that he didn’t often see. He grasped the edge of the cabinet with his other hand to steady himself and then licked the blood off his other fingers, gaining pace. He needed more. Just a little more, so he would be sure of his ability to command her and clear her blood of interference. That was the only reason he had to suck each of his fingers clean. It had nothing to do with the delightful way her blood made him tremble, made his breath stutter and his heart beat faster, at an almost human speed.

He went to lick the blood from his palm and stopped himself. Unpeeling his fingers from the edge of the cabinet, he forced himself to turn on the tap. The water ran fast and hard down the drain but he couldn’t bring himself to put his hands under it and wash the blood away. He only wanted a little more. A warm pulsing feeling relaxed every muscle in his body and his head felt light. His eyelids fell to half-mast and the warm buzz became a hot inferno in his blood, an ache to feed and give in to his animal instincts. His breath shuddered. Just a little more.

No.

Stop it.

Kearn forced his head under the water instead of his hands but it did nothing to stop the hunger gnawing his stomach and the hard ache in his trousers. He groaned under his breath and kept his head under the freezing water, begging it to clear. He didn’t want to remember.

High laughter. The scent of sex. The mindless lust. The painful betrayal. The blood on his hands.

He didn’t want to remember any of it.

He didn’t want to feel that way again.

Kearn squeezed his eyes shut and shoved his hands under the water the moment he pulled his head out of it. The scent of blood instantly diminished and his control came creeping back. He focused on it, trying to expel the effects of her blood on him. It was difficult. Her blood was more potent than what he had experienced before. He had never had blood direct from a Source, only diluted from another’s veins. He closed his eyes and kept his hands under the water, gradually clawing back a sense of calm and shutting his rampaging feelings down.

The cold water numbed his hands. He kept them there, not trusting himself. If any trace of her blood remained on his skin, he would be tempted to lick it off, and it would undo all the work he had done to regain some control over himself. He grabbed the bar of soap from the side of the basin and washed his hands with it, erasing every drop of crimson on his pale skin. When he had been washing them for nearly ten minutes, he turned off the tap.

He glanced at himself in the mirror.

His eyes were still red.

The colour of blood.

Kearn focused on thinking over everything that had happened tonight. The woman was lucky that he had been patrolling the area and had smelt the blood. It had been the vampire’s blood that had caught his attention, carried on the night air in a rich vein that had been easy to detect. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use its scent to recognise the man. Vampire blood all smelt the same. Heavy and strong.

Human blood was a light fragrance. He resisted the temptation to take a deep breath and see if he could smell her blood. He was almost in control again.

The knife, the vampire’s blood, the man’s appearance, none of it was the break he needed.

But she was.

He looked at himself in the mirror again. Green eyes welcomed him back, cold and empty, familiar in their darkness. He turned away from them, hating the sight, and walked back through the bedroom to the living room.

The woman was still fraying the ends of the bandage around her right hand. Her gaze fixed on him and she frowned. Water dripped from the jagged tips of his silver hair and soaked into his black shirt. He raked his hair back, picked up the bowl and paper towels, and walked past her to the kitchen area. Her eyes followed his every move, her focus intent on him. She could look all she wanted. She wasn’t going to figure him out, not even with her blood in his veins.

“Are you feeling any better?” Kearn ignored the warm sedated buzz in the depths of his bones that constantly switched between whispering hungry words to him and making him want to smile. He felt normal. There was no reason to get ideas about her blood. He was in control and she was nothing but a lead.

Not dinner.

He couldn’t kill a human.

“Just now.” Her voice ran as deep in his veins as her blood, teasing his senses. The soft sound of it wrapped around him, caressing him and making him want to look at her. He ignored it too. It was just her blood affecting him. “My head feels clearer.”

That was what he had wanted to hear. It was difficult to use her blood in his veins purely to control the effect of the vampire’s on hers rather than controlling her, but he would keep it up for as long as he could. Soon her blood should have cleared enough that the vampire wouldn’t be able to control her at any great distance.

Kearn filled a glass with water and carried it back to her. He placed it on the coffee table in front of her and then sat beside her again. The smell of her blood drifted on the air and flowed down into his lungs with each breath he drew, pushing at his restraint. He had never smelt anything as alluring and tempting.

The connection between their blood shattered.

“What was he?” she said without any hint of trepidation.

“I’m sorry?” He tried for confused while he struggled against her blood and the vampire’s. The bastard was pushing for control.

The woman scratched at the bandage. Kearn kept an eye on her. If she made any move to open the bandage, he would stop her and restrain her. Until then, he would keep fighting the vampire’s hold over her.

“I’m not crazy, and I know what I saw would make me sound as though I am, but I wasn’t imagining it.” Her hand left her other one and settled on her thigh.

He made the mistake of looking at it. There were damp spots on the black material of her trousers. Blood. Delicious, fragrant, blood. Diverting his eyes before they changed again, he stared out of the window.

She leaned forwards into view and frowned at him. “That man had fangs. They couldn’t have been fake. It all felt so real. He wanted to drink my blood… I felt it inside me. Some dark hideous hunger. He had some sort of power over me. Now either tell me I’m insane and heading for a spell at the nearest asylum, or tell me the truth. He’s a vampire.”

Kearn’s silver eyebrows rose. There was no point in lying to her if she had already figured out what she was up against and believed it.

He nodded.

She gasped and grabbed his hand. The contact sent a sharp jolt through him and pushed at his control. Her blood called to him. The same dark hideous hunger she had sensed in the man. He fought his desire to look at the smooth column of her throat, knowing that if he did he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from licking it and acting out his desire to sink his fangs into the soft flesh and drink his fill of her.

Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on her face and was struck by a different sort of hunger.

She was beautiful.

He had never paid much attention to humans. They had been nothing more than a mission to him for centuries and only a meal before that, but now he had stopped to look at one and some part of him wished he hadn’t because she mesmerised him.

Her wide round hazel eyes were fascinating. The overhead lights of his apartment played on them, highlighting the flecks of gold and green. Long wavy brown hair caressed her face, cascading over slender shoulders. Rosy lips spoke to him and he didn’t hear a word they said. He watched the way they moved and the sensual shapes they made, and the tiny flash of soft pink tongue against straight white teeth.

“What’s a Venator?”

That question broke his reverie.

“Me.”

“You?” She stared blankly at him. No, through him. She was trying to remember something. “I knew that word. I wanted you to kill that man and then I wanted to stop you. I knew you. There was something else too. I wanted to taste my blood.”

She sounded as confused as she felt.

“The man desired to test you to see if you were a Source Blood.”

“Source. I knew that word too and that it meant something different. You said my blood is valuable.”

“It is.” He picked up the glass and offered it to her. The water would thin her blood and lessen the vampire’s control over her, but it would weaken his too. It was a risk he had to take. “It is very valuable on the black market but also extremely illegal. My job is to find those who dare break the law by attempting to purchase, sell or harvest the blood.”

No fear touched her features but he could feel an underlying sense of nerves in his veins that belonged to her.

He studied her blood and the strength flowing through it surprised him. Her blood within him, and the vampire’s within her, was enough to convince her that she wasn’t going insane and that everything that had happened tonight was real. She understood and accepted it, and had even found some sense of resolve to face it all. He had expected her to be more fragile and sensitive, to panic and plead him to protect her. Her calm acceptance of the situation made him reassess his earlier thoughts about her. It wasn’t the vampire’s blood in her veins that made her unafraid. It was her own natural strength, and it only added to her beauty.

“Why is it worth so much? Are all humans Source Bloods to vampires?” She took the glass, tilted her head back and drank some of the water.

Kearn refused to look at her throat.

“No. Source Bloods are very rare. It refers to a specific gene in your blood that affects vampires. Vampires believe that millennia ago, they branched away from humanity and evolved separately. At that time, the same gene in their blood was stronger. Over the generations, it weakened to what it is today and has remained that way.”

She frowned and lowered the glass. “So I share a gene with vampires?”

He nodded. “Your bloodline did not evolve and gain the ability to use the power that gene gives you.”

She swallowed and a sense of unease ran in his veins. Her blood. It was potent. He was constantly aware of it and how it mixed with his, stirred it to a frenzy of hunger and need. Kearn shifted his focus back to her, using all of his strength to keep it pinned on her and not his blood.

“I’m like a vampire?”

“No, you are human, but different. Special.”

A hint of colour touched her cheeks and she dropped her gaze. He raised an eyebrow at her reaction and cocked his head to one side. Her blood whispered warm words at him, teasing him into submitting to her. She had watched him earlier when he had removed his shirt and sometimes her pupils dilated until they darkened her hazel eyes. Desire? Was she attracted to him? A human? As though he could desire such a weak creature in return.

The colour on her cheeks deepened, sending a gut-tugging jolt through his blood, and his lips parted. He swallowed when she shyly raised her eyes and looked at him through her dark lashes. His body burned with the desire to sweep her into his arms and taste her again. Kearn forced his eyes down to the floor. It was just her blood commanding him to do as she wanted. It wasn’t his desire.

It couldn’t be.

He cleared his throat and frowned, trying to make sense of the feelings running riot in him. Not all of them could be hers. Some of them had to be his.

“Do vampires only drink from people like me?” Her voice shook and he was tempted to touch her hand again to reassure her, but restrained himself.

If he did such a thing, he would have a hard time resisting pulling her against him and slaking his growing thirst for her. Taking her blood had been a mistake. He had less control over himself than he had anticipated. He had forgotten how potent Source Blood was.

“Vampires gain sustenance from all human blood. Source Blood is different. It is a drug to vampires. Most only drink enough to produce a natural high that makes them giddy and removes their inhibitions.” He battled his need to look at her throat. “Others are seeking something more sinister. In a large enough dose, it temporarily restores the strength in the shared gene, enhancing them and reinstating the devastating power they once commanded. With enough Source Blood in their veins they would become living gods.”

His gaze slid to her neck and he turned away, cursing himself for tasting her. He had needed to be sure that she was a Source Blood though and needed to calm her enough to get answers.

“That man knew I was a Source Blood and that’s why he followed me?”

“No.” Kearn shook his head, as much to clear it of the whispered command to feast on her as to answer her. “Source Blood is difficult to detect if the human is not bleeding. You said he gave you his blood. He was seeking to turn you compliant so he could kill you. When his blood joined with yours, he realised that you were different. Your blood saved you.”

“It doesn’t feel as though it saved me. I feel as though it damned me.”

Would she rather be dead than in this situation? He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t sense any fear in her, but there was an edge to her eyes, a look that said she was desperately trying to be strong but everything was beginning to take its toll on her.

“I will protect you,” he said and felt her look at him. He couldn’t meet her gaze, not yet, not until the need to look at her throat and taste her blood had passed again. “If you help me, we can find the man who hurt you. I have been searching for him for three years. If we can capture him, you can go back to your life. No one else will know what your blood contains.”

“What will happen to him?”

“He will be sentenced.” He looked at her now, trusting himself not to change and frighten her. She wasn’t likely to help him if she knew that he was also a vampire.

“Are you a cop? Is that what a Venator is?”

“No—sort of. I have to carry out the sentence on the people whose names are given to me by my… bosses.” He had never needed to explain his position before. It was difficult to put it into words that didn’t sound medieval or make him a murderer. He hunted those the Sovereignty deemed had broken the law. He sentenced them to eternal darkness. Usually they knew the name of the law-breaker. This time there wasn’t one. There had only been a location to start looking. “Will you help me?”

He didn’t really need her to answer. Either way he wasn’t letting her leave. He needed her and she was going to help him, although he would prefer that she did so of her own free will. Forcing her wouldn’t solve anything but he would if she left him no choice.

“He’ll come after me.” She looked down at her hands, playing with the bandage again. Her pulse began to pick up pace and he sensed her rising panic. Was she remembering what had happened to her? Her blood inside him whispered of fear and death. She looked up at him, blinked away her tears and nodded. “I’ll help you if you promise to keep me safe.”

“It is a promise.” Kearn tried to think of how humans made deals. He held his hand out to her.

She slipped hers into it and shook it a single time, and then her hand lingered in his.

And his eyes fell to her neck.

“Do you remember anything else?” he whispered, those words distant to his ears as he perused the gentle sloping grace of her throat.

Her hand left his and he dragged his eyes away, forcing them up to hers. They were watching him again, giving him the impression that she was looking for a secret or trying to see past his exterior and down to his heart. It wasn’t going to happen.

Kearn stood and walked around the square coffee table to the windows. He placed his hands behind his back. The rooftops of London stretched into the distance, lights twinkling in the darkness. It was barely past midnight. The night still lay before him.

“The man was in a courtyard. They’re always cleaning it with disinfectant in the morning. The other two, the ones who held me, were there too, carrying black sacks over their shoulders.”

Kearn frowned.

A storehouse?

He turned to face her.

“I need you to show me this place,” he said and she nodded. “And we need to lure the man out. The man will want to finish what he started and test your blood. He will come looking for you. I will keep my promise and see to it that nothing happens to you. Would you be willing to act as bait?”

She didn’t look so sure now. She was silent and a myriad of emotions flickered in her hazel eyes.

A sense of resolve laced his blood. Her resolve.

She nodded.

“If it will get rid of that man, I’ll do anything. Just keep me safe.”

Kearn nodded.

He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

A voice deep inside him said that it wasn’t only because he needed her as bait. There was something else at work here too.

She really was beautiful.

But she was forbidden blood.

And he had tasted her.

Enjoying the story so far? I’d love to hear what you think, so don’t be afraid to leave a comment.

As part of my Paranormal Pandemonium 2011 Blog Tour, I’m going to be posting the first FIVE chapters of my next release, Forbidden Blood.

Forbidden Blood is a dark vampire romance novel, and the first book in the Vampire Venators series. I’ll be introducing you to a whole new world and a whole new type of vampire, and I hope that you’ll enjoy the book and want more in the series.

Forbidden Blood
Felicity Heaton
In a dark world where vampires exist and where Source Blood, a rare human blood type, can bestow godlike powers upon them, the vampire Venators of the Sovereignty fight to protect the humans by banishing those who drink it to the endless dark.

Exiled from his family and with only his duty to sustain him, Kearn has been on the trail of an elusive Source Blood abuser for three years. When he saves a beautiful human female from the vampire’s grasp, it turns out she’s the lead he’s been waiting for. Amber is a Source Blood and the perfect bait, but for who?

As they race to catch the vampire and survive the cruel games he plays, Amber is pulled deeper into Kearn’s world and discovers the painful secrets he hides behind his handsome but emotionless exterior—hurt that she has the power to heal if she is brave enough.

Forbidden Blood is book one in the Vampire Venators series and a dark, sensual tale of betrayal, revenge and a love that knows no bounds.

genre: paranormal vampire romance
length: 126000 words
rating: sultry
released: June 18th 2011
Book 1 in the Vampire Venators series

She shouldn’t have looked.

Amber hurried through the dark side streets of central London, heading for the nearest Underground station. She glanced back over her shoulder. The man from the courtyard of the redbrick factory building stood on the other side of a busy road. The hood of his black coat obscured his face but Amber could feel his eyes on her—intent and cold.

She turned away, huddled up into her thin black suit jacket, and carried on walking. She could feel the man still staring at her.

The courtyard flashed across her mind. Two men with sacks and another sweeping disinfectant out into the street. She had never seen the wooden gates open before, but there was always a puddle of disinfectant outside in the mornings. What did they have in those bags? What were they trying to wash away?

Car headlights snapped her out of her thoughts. A white Audi sports car purred past her, rear lights flashing bright crimson in the darkness as it stopped at the junction ahead and then turned and roared away.

Amber undid the button on her jacket and one on her white shirt, hot from her leaving party and panic. She had to get a grip. She glanced back again, shifting her handbag on her shoulder. No one was there save a few Londoners making their way home from the pubs or going to nightclubs. She hated walking around the city so late at night. It always got her jittery and the few drinks she’d had with her work colleagues at the pub weren’t helping.

It wasn’t far to the Underground station. If she focused on thinking about good things, she would be there before she knew it and then she would feel foolish for being so nervous. She smiled when she thought about her leaving party. She had worked for the company for years, but it was time for a change and she couldn’t wait to start her new life. In only a few weeks, she would be working in Paris. She would be able to see her brother more often and would be able to soak up a different culture. It seemed like a dream and she was so caught up in it that she didn’t care about all the work she still had to do—the crash course in French, even though it was a British firm she was going to work for and there would be English speakers there, all the packing and things she had to arrange.

Amber turned down a narrow one-way street. A light on the wall of a building above her blinked on and off. Footsteps rang out behind her, echoing along the road. Pleasant daydreams about her future life in Paris disappeared. She walked faster, her heart beating quicker now as fearful thoughts crowded her mind.

She had almost reached the other end of the road when two men appeared, walking towards her. She went to cross the road to avoid them but they split up and motioned to each other. Her hazel eyes shot wide when she recognised them from the courtyard. She turned to go back the other way.

The hooded man stood at the other end of the street.

Amber searched for a way to get past him. Why had he followed her? Her heart beat harder. Long heavy black sacks. Pink disinfectant.

Bodies?

Blood?

A hand around her wrist sent a jolt through her and she tried to pull free. One man twisted her right arm behind her back and the other grabbed her left wrist. They pulled her backwards into the shadows.

Amber kicked her legs and opened her mouth to scream. A heavy gloved hand covered it. The smell of leather filled her nostrils and she breathed hard through her nose, staring wild-eyed at the man in front of her. The hood obscured his face but she could see his jaw, see the hint of a smile on his lips.

He nodded to the two men behind her and their grip increased. Amber flailed, desperate to escape. It was impossible. She stamped on their feet, kicked their legs, wriggled with all of her strength, but they wouldn’t let her go.

The man motioned to one of the others holding her. The moment he removed his hand from her mouth, another covered it, keeping her silent. She tried to call out anyway, her eyes darting between her attackers and the street. The hooded man smiled at her, as though amused by the muffled sound and her panic.

Amber stilled when he reached inside his long black coat and pulled out a knife. Her eyes went round and her heart raced, fear thundering in her veins.

He was going to kill her.

She shook her head and didn’t stop, not when the man took another step back and not even when he raised his left hand and drew the knife down the palm of his leather glove, cutting into his flesh beneath. Not a trace of pain showed on what she could see of his face. Was he trying to frighten her by showing how strong he was? She was already petrified. He stepped towards her and she redoubled her fight against the men, kicking with all of her might.

“Hurry,” the man to her right said in a low voice as her heel connected with his shin. “Get to it already.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks and a chill swept in constant waves over her skin, stealing her strength. She shook her head again and begged the man not to hurt her, but the other man’s hand over her mouth turned her words into nothing more than a frightened murmur. Futile.

The hooded man stepped up to her, balled his cut hand into a fist, and raised it towards her face. What was he going to do? She kept her eyes fixed on the knife in his other hand, afraid that he would stab her if she dared to look away from it.

She gasped when the man holding her mouth released it but didn’t have time to call out for help. He pressed his fingers into her cheeks, forced her mouth open and tilted her head back. Her gaze snapped to the hooded man’s hand. He held it above her and drops of blood trembled on the edge of his black glove.

He was going to make her drink his blood.

She tried to move but couldn’t. The men’s grip on her increased again, fingers pressing hard into her arms, bruising her. The drop fell, landing on her tongue, and another quickly followed it. The hooded man tightened his fist and more dripped into her mouth. She tried not to swallow, didn’t want to taste his blood. It slid down her throat, one drop after another, until she wanted to be sick.

And then she felt strange.

A hollow feeling opened inside her and her mind emptied.

His hand hovered above her, feeding her blood, and it no longer felt repulsive or frightening. It tasted good. Thick, heavy fog rolled into her mind, weighing her head down. She closed her eyes and then struggled to open them again.

The men behind her released her arms.

Amber stood there facing the hooded man, her shoulders relaxed and her head tilted to one side. He wavered in her vision as he raised the knife and licked the blade. It didn’t scare her. Her handbag slid down her right arm to the crook of her elbow as she raised her hand. She held it out to him, palm up, and blinked languidly.

He took it in his, so gently that she smiled, and ran the knife over her palm. The sting of pain was pleasurable, flooding her with hazy warmth from head to toe, awakening blissful awareness of his touch and his hungry intent.

The man lifted her hand towards his mouth and dipped his head. Was he going to kiss it better? She continued to smile, amused by his chivalry.

What a nice man.

His tongue came out. White lights flashed across him.

They blinded her and she flinched away, afraid of the bright light that drowned out the world. The man released her hand and was behind her in an instant. Her handbag dropped to the floor and she tried to blink away the white spots in her vision and they multiplied.

The sound of footsteps echoed in her mind and she cursed the other men for fleeing. They would pay for leaving her here to deal with this Venator.

Her hands tightened into fists.

She couldn’t risk fighting the Venator but she had to taste the blood. She raised her hand towards her mouth. This was an unexpected twist but she could work it in her favour. First, she had to be sure she was a Source, and then she would take care of the Venator.

What was a Source?

She stopped with her hand mid-way to her mouth. Blood pooled on her palm, black in the low light.

What was she doing?

The door of the white car opened and Amber looked at it. It was the Audi. A man stepped out and she moved back. Damn interfering Venator.

Amber frowned at her thoughts. What was a Venator? What was going on? She tried to remember but her thoughts became tangled with others, ones she didn’t understand. They didn’t feel as though they were her own.

She turned towards the hooded man. The car lights shone on the lower half of his face, highlighting his jaw and mouth. A tilt of a smile touched his lips. She needed to taste the blood.

“Get in the car,” a male voice said behind her, deep and intense.

She refused. She had to taste the blood and then leave. She raised her hand and poked her tongue out. A taste was all it would take. Then she would know.

“Now!”

Amber jumped, startled by the volume of that word. She looked at her palm, horrified by what she had been about to do, and then at the hooded man. He continued to smile at her and she felt compelled to do as he silently wished.

“Car, now!” the man behind her said. He was right. She had to get away from the man who had cut her but she couldn’t move.

Her thoughts became strange and distant again, and no matter how many times she told herself to run, her feet wouldn’t cooperate. She wanted to go with the hooded man, even though she knew he would kill her.

Her head spun.

She took a step towards him, her mind heavy and thick again.

Someone grabbed her arm from behind and then a bright blue flash burst out of the corner of her eye. She stared at the silver handgun beside her head and the strange blue marks on the man’s hand. They glowed. Shiny. Amber reached out to touch them.

The new man moved his arm away from her and pulled her back, so she was almost behind him. She tried to focus on his arm and the gun. The fog descended on her mind again, swamping everything, turning her numb and empty. Her gaze moved of its own accord, shifting to the man’s face. Silver hair. Green eyes. Damned Venator.

She struggled against his grip, clawing at his hand.

“Calm down.” He glanced at her and then back at the hooded man. “Lower the knife and come peacefully.”

“Peacefully?” She yanked on her arm in an attempt to free herself, twisting her wrist in his tight grip and not caring that it hurt. She had to get away from him. The silver-haired man turned her way, his vivid green eyes bright in the car headlights and boring into hers. She sneered. “I will never come peacefully, Venator.”

“Let her go,” he said and she shook her head.

Amber kept shaking it, trying to clear the weird dull feeling and get her mind into order. How did she know this man? The knowledge she sought shifted and evaded her grasp, as though it was a living thing and could anticipate her. The haze in her head lifted long enough that she saw the silver-haired man clearly at last. His eyes were cold as he stared into hers, pupils narrowed and an edge of darkness about his handsome face.

“I said, let her go.” He turned to the hooded man.

Amber looked there too. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel his eyes on her, and could feel him inside her head and her body. She scrubbed her throat with her hand, her mouth, trying to get him out of her. The silver-haired man held her tighter. What was he waiting for? Shoot him. He had tried to kill her. He had put something inside her and now she felt strange.

The silver-haired man started to pull the trigger.

“No!” she screamed and knocked his hand away. She stared at his raised gun and her outstretched hand. What the hell was she doing? She wanted the man dead, so why had she stopped him?

The man holding her shoved her backwards and then ducked away from her. A silver streak shot past her wide eyes. The knife clattered to the floor a short distance behind her and a thin dark line flowed down the man’s neck from his ear, soaking into his white shirt. He raised his gun again but she grabbed it and pulled it around to point at her.

He froze.

The hooded man laughed.

Amber’s gaze shot from the barrel of the gun to him. She stared at his mouth.

Fangs.

He grinned and it felt as though he was looking straight through her. Whispered voices filled her head, clashing with each other so she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She tried to focus on one of them but couldn’t. The clamour in her mind rose and a deep sense that she wasn’t alone washed through her. Someone else was in her head with her. The hooded man’s smile widened. Him. How? One of the voices rang out above the rest and her questions fell away, leaving her docile again. He knew something about her that she didn’t. Something important. She had to know too.

She took a step towards him and he was gone, leaving the street empty in front of her. Why? She went to walk after him and frowned when her arm lagged behind her, held fast by something. Her eyes drifted to her wrist and the hand tightly grasping it.

“Are you all right?” the silver-haired man said and her head suddenly felt lighter.

Her gaze ran up his left arm to his shoulder. A trail of blood stained his white shirt and she followed the drips and dashes downwards to the black holster around his shoulders. His gun was in it but not secured. If she made a lunge for it, would he reach it before her? Amber shook that thought away. This man had saved her. Why would she do such a thing to him? Because he was dangerous. She didn’t want to go with him. She wanted to find the man. The feeling ran deep in her blood, flowing through her veins, compelling her. She needed to find the man.

This Venator would be her downfall.

Amber shook her head again and the haze in her mind dissipated for long enough that she felt her normal self again. Her panic and fear returned full force, crashing over her. What was happening to her? She kept thinking about things she wasn’t familiar with, like Venators and Sources, and wanted to do things that went against her nature, like injuring someone.

The man held his bleeding ear with his right hand. There were pale tribal markings on it. They wove down over his wrist and under his white shirtsleeve. Those markings had glowed ethereally earlier. She couldn’t have imagined it.

“You need to come with me,” he said, and before she could take in what was happening, he dragged her to the white Audi R8 and pushed her into it on the passenger side.

He closed the door, picked up the knife and her handbag from the pavement, and rounded the car. Amber sat there, thoughtless and empty, her eyes fixed on the spot where the hooded man had been. She should have gone with him.

No. She shouldn’t have. She didn’t know what she was thinking anymore.

The car moved and she became gradually aware of the man next to her. Her gaze slid to him. He was handsome, his green eyes fixed on the road now, shadowed by a frown of concentration, and the messy finger-length strands of his silver hair brushed back out of his face. He didn’t look old enough to have such white hair. He seemed barely five years her senior.

Venator.

It echoed in her head, as though something inside her knew it applied to him even when she had never heard the word before tonight.

“What is your name?” His deep voice soothed her, easing away some of her tension even when she felt she should be on alert, or escaping.

Amber didn’t reply. Her eyes dropped to the gun tucked under his left arm when he clipped the leather strap over it, securing it in place. It unnerved her but not as much as the fact that she wanted to use it against him, or the fact that his arm had glowed blue and the other man had fangs. None of that made sense, even when she felt it did.

The man looked at her and she glanced up, meeting his gaze. The streetlights flashed on his face, stealing all colour and warmth from his eyes. They were so cold that she couldn’t tear hers away. She stared into them, chilled by the detached air that he emanated but fascinated by him at the same time. Was he as empty inside as his eyes? She had never met anyone who looked as hollow and emotionless as this man did. Something terrible must have happened to him to make him look this way.

She remembered the way his arm had glowed.

Inhuman.

Her head spun.

Venator.

She wanted to get away from him. Her priority was to escape, not fall under a spell.

They pulled to a halt at a set of traffic lights and her hand went straight for the door. She shoved it open and the man grabbed her, pulling her back against him. The door slammed shut without her touching it and the locks clunked into place. She elbowed the man in the ribs, struggled out of his grip and lunged for the door again, frantically tugging on the handle. It wouldn’t open. Her eyes darted over the moulded leather of the door. No way of unlocking it. The Venator would stop her before she could find the button on the dashboard that would unlock the doors. She spat out a curse. Never mind. If she couldn’t escape, she could at least taste her blood.

“You cannot leave. You are in too much danger out there.”

Amber stared down at the cut on her right palm. It had bled all over her trousers.

She had to lick the blood and taste it.

She raised her hand but the man caught her wrist.

“What happened?” He frowned at the cut.

Amber tried to get her hand back but his grip was vice tight. Interfering Venator. She gritted her teeth and twisted her arm. He didn’t let go. Her stomach turned when she saw the blood on her palm and her vision distorted. She stopped struggling and looked at the man. His expression was soft, silently reassuring, and the longer she stared at him, the calmer she felt, until the sense that she wasn’t in control of herself disappeared again.

Amber tried to remember what had happened to her hand but it slipped through her fingers every time she came close, as though she didn’t really want to recall it.

“He gave you his blood, didn’t he?”

That memory popped to the forefront of her mind and she nodded. The man had made her drink his blood. It had been disgusting and she could feel it inside her.

“Hold on.” He released her hand, put the car into gear and roared off the white line.

Amber did. She grabbed the edge of the seat with her left hand as they raced through the streets of London so fast they were a blur. She couldn’t take her eyes off the road and the cars as they swerved around them, barely missing each one. Her heart lodged in her throat, her right hand trembling where she held it out in front of her. What was happening? It felt as though she had slipped into some dreadful fantasy world and she wanted out.

He turned the car around a corner so sharply that the tyres screeched and she slammed against the door, and then they were going down a slope towards an underground garage. The car spun around in the brightly lit space, coming to a halt facing the exit, and the engine cut out. A grey shutter slowly rolled down, eclipsing the world outside.

Amber stared at it, still trying to catch up.

The man had given her blood, and then he had cut her. She needed to taste her blood before the Venator stopped her. She was about to lick her palm when the door beside her opened and he pulled her out of the car.

“Damned Venator!” She kneed him in the groin and ran for the garage door.

He reached it before her and stood in her path, his eyes darker and colder than ever. He glared at her and drew his gun.

“Let her go,” he whispered, voice strained.

She grinned, satisfied by the pain in his voice.

“No.” Amber tried to pass him.

“You do not want to leave, woman. You do not want to do as he bids.”

Amber stopped. “As who bids?”

The strange feeling inside her grew worse, something telling her to keep going and not listen to him. She had to get past the man and drink her blood. That was all that mattered now.

“Listen to my voice.” He put the gun away and stepped up to her.

The moment his hands touched her shoulders, Amber felt different. She stared into his eyes and her thoughts fell into better order, enough that she could recall things clearly again.

Her heart pounded.

“The man made me drink his blood… I saw him in that place with the gates and the disinfectant and then they were after me. He cut me.” She held her hand out and it trembled between them, fluttering in time with her heart. “I just want to go home. I want this nightmare to end. Please? I can’t take this. Please?”

The man stepped back, his eyes still fixed intently on her face, the frown not leaving his.

“The man will come for you.”

“Fangs,” she whispered and her eyes widened. Her heart missed a beat and then slammed painfully against her ribs. “He had fangs. He was going to drink my blood.”

“I will not hurt you. You must ignore your instincts and listen to me. I will not allow him to harm you. You will be safe here,” he said, so calmly and softly that the deep waves of fear surging through her eased to gentle ripples. “He will find you if you leave. I can protect you. I will not allow the man to harm you.”

Amber looked at the closed garage door and then back at him.

There was honesty in his green eyes and her options were limited. Either she stayed here with him, or she ventured outside where there were monsters. If she did that, and the man found her, she wouldn’t escape him a second time. He had fangs. He had been about to drink her blood.

Something inside her said that she would be fine outside, and that she wanted to find the hooded man again. She wanted him to taste her blood. Desired it more than anything. This man was lying to her.

No. Amber closed her eyes, battling the compulsion to leave, and then looked back into the silver-haired man’s eyes.

The other man had wanted to kill her and drink her blood. This man had saved her. He said he could protect her.

“I will bandage your hand and make you feel better if you come upstairs,” he said in a low voice, one that soothed her ears and quelled her fear. The desire to escape him drifted away, replaced by a need to remain.

“Will you tell me what’s happening to me? I feel strange.”

He held his hand out, pointing to his left. “If you come with me.”

Amber looked at the dark grey metal door far to her right across the empty garage and then back at the man. His gaze held hers, cold but honest, and she ignored the voice inside her that was screaming for her to leave and taste her blood.

She nodded and went with him.