The Blood is Love: A Dark Vampire Romance Read online

  “Who is she?” Skarde asked, keeping his eyes on the woman, with her dark eyes and dark hair and red lips and full breasts. Skarde was so hard now that it was physically painful, and he was being driven by this other strange urge, not just to fuck but to feed. To drink her blood.

  It made no sense to him but it didn’t matter, because he was being driven mad by the sight of her, the smell of her.

  She is the key, the creature said. And she is for you. Take her and take your place.

  Skarde approached the woman, keeping his eyes on her, not on the awful creature. The woman smiled, eyes heavy lidded, running her hands over her breasts, down her soft stomach, to the wetness between her legs.

  Do what you want, the voice urged him on. Take her, defile her, bleed her. Take everything she has and make it yours.

  Skarde didn’t want to hurt the woman, but he was no angel. He had killed several women in his lifetime, war makes people do things they don’t want to do, but need to.

  So he stood above the woman, his nose filling with the stench of death and sulfur, and he stripped off his clothes. Naked, his cock larger and harder than ever, throbbed painfully in his hand.

  The woman spread her legs for him, spread her folds with her fingers, beckoned him.

  He knelt down, salivating, and with one hard, brutal thrust, drove his aching cock deep inside her.

  The woman screamed.

  Not from pleasure, but from pain.

  Skarde stared at her in surprise but it was too late.

  He wouldn’t be stopped.

  Yes, the voice went on. Fuck her, drink her, eat her. Until there’s nothing left.

  Skarde’s vision went red with lust.

  He fucked her hard against the stone floor, her head banging against it, her screams echoing in the room, and those screams only ended up spurring him on more, making his blood dance and sizzle, like there was a fire inside him that would not be put out. The more pain he caused, the harder he got.

  The blood, the voice said from above him. The blood is life. The blood is release. Drink from her.

  Skarde continued to drive his cock inside her at a punishing pace, his orgasm close but never close enough. The thought of drinking her blood felt like it could bring the relief he wanted.

  And the vein in her neck was dark and rigid against her pale skin.

  Inviting.

  He leaned in and bit her neck. His canine teeth weren’t very sharp, dulled by the years, and it took a lot to break the skin. He had to snap his jaws shut, like a rabid dog, and move his head back and forth until the skin began to tear and the blood started to flow into his mouth. He swallowed it down in big gulps, all salt and copper and sulfur.

  Yes, drink me.

  But it wasn’t the woman talking. She wasn’t even screaming anymore. She was cold, lifeless, dead.

  It was the voice talking.

  The creature.

  Skarde stopped, the blood spilling from his lips and he looked above him at the creature, going against every instinct.

  The creature was smiling. If it could be called a smile. If that really was a mouth and not a hole to some Hellish eternity.

  Skarde looked back down at the woman.

  She was gone.

  There was no woman at all.

  Instead it was a tail.

  Leathery and dark and hard. Rough pebbled skin that had a small tear in it where blood flowed freely.

  The creature had tricked Skarde.

  There was no woman at all.

  There was only this beast.

  He had bit through its skin.

  He had drunk its blood.

  Now it is complete, the voice said. You will take your place here, you will have your eternal life. You will live with the darkness that you are and you will cheat death because you are death. Because death is all you’ll bring this world and the next and the next. You need to never fear death again.

  Skarde didn’t even have the time to feel disgusted because his body immediately started to change. It felt like his bones were breaking, his organs shifting, like his heart stopping pumping and the air left his lungs. His teeth fell out, rattling across the stone floor, and fresh, sharp canines painfully pushed through his gums.

  “What am I!?” Skarde screamed in horror, voice echoing in the room as his body transformed and contorted and became something inhuman.

  The creature chuckled.

  You are my son now, Skarde. And you will become hell on earth.

  1

  Lenore

  Present Day

  “Excuse me, miss. Are you okay?”

  Sure. I’ve just forgotten how to breathe, that’s all.

  I lift my head and look over my shoulder to see a man in a heavy coat and unkept beard, a face marked by an unkind life. He’s staring at me in concern, which I’m not taking too lightly. For this stranger to be concerned about me means that I must look really rough.

  I give him a quick smile, even though I’m shaking on the outside, screaming on the inside. “I’m okay. Thank you.”

  Lies. All lies.

  He watches me for a moment, still staying in the shadows of the alley. I don’t know how I ended up so close to the Tenderloin district, I guess I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking. The moment I left the house, I was in a dream state, not caring where I was going, as long as I got to the water. For some reason I thought seeing San Francisco Bay would put my heart at ease and clear my mind and remind me that I’m still the Lenore Warwick I’ve known my whole life. That I’m still me, no matter what I am now, no matter what I’ve done.

  But my walk has brought me closer to areas in the city most people know to avoid, especially at night, and now I’m in the grips of a full-blown panic attack, frozen on the spot, leaning against a dirty building and trying to breathe. It doesn’t matter that I could technically go without air for an inhuman amount of time, thanks to my vampire blood. It doesn’t matter that I’m sure there’s some kind of spell that would ward off such attacks, thanks to my witch blood.

  Nope, all that matters is that right now it feels like I’m going to die. All rational thought has left my head, all I feel is fear, that choking, pressing horror that I’ll never take a deep breath again, that my heart is going to punch right through my skin, that I’m going to collapse to the needle-strewn ground. I don’t care that some homeless guy is watching me have a freak-out right here on the street.

  Okay, I care a little bit. It’s enough to distract my brain, to make me focus on him instead. Not that I’m scared of him, per se, but I am a twenty-one-year-old girl in the wrong neighborhood, conversing with a transient, and I’m clearly not at my best.

  I try to straighten up and push myself off the wall, feeling immense vertigo as I do so. I want to bring out my phone, jam my thumb on the digital button on the panic attack app I have and have it talk me through this, remind me that it’s all in my head, but I don’t feel like flashing an iPhone around.

  “You sure you’re okay?” the man says, shuffling forward.

  I nod quickly, pressing my lips together. I feel like I’ve troubled him and I need to make it okay. I reach into my crossbody purse and quickly rifle along the bottom, collecting the loose coins and some bills. I’m not sure how much I have but I take a step toward the man and hold out my hand.

  “Here, maybe you could use this,” I say.

  The man looks surprised and holds out his palms and I drop the money in it, mostly quarters and a five-dollar bill.

  Before he can thank me, I turn on my heel and walk swiftly down the street, letting the adrenaline carry me along.

  You see, you’re breathing, I remind myself, going over what the panic attack app mantras normally tell me. Trust your body to do the breathing for you. Your body is keeping you alive. Also, you’re really hard to kill.

  Okay, so it doesn’t say that last one. But it’s because I’m so hard to kill that I’m having these panic attacks in the first place.

  I make it to Market Street and block out the lights and sounds and crowds until I find myself beside the ferry building, leaning over the railing and watching the dark waves lap the wharf, the night sky stretching above. Even though it’s chilly out and the water is choppy, there’s something soothing about it, like the water is taking my bad energy and mixing it up, leveling me out a little.

  The adrenaline starts to leave my body, like a balloon slowly deflating. Soon, I’ll be hit with so much exhaustion that I’ll need to take an Uber home. Except the idea of being alone in a car with a stranger also feels panic-inducing.

  A month ago I was abducted by a vampire. Believe it or not, that was the second time I’ve been abducted by a vampire this year. His name was Yanik and he attacked me in broad daylight, as my father was driving me through Hayes Valley. We were only a few blocks from my parent’s house, stuck in traffic when it happened, and I can’t stop seeing his face. Can’t stop seeing the way that Yanik walked over to the car, and my father, my good-natured father, asked him what all the traffic was for, and then Yanik lowered his head so I could see him and…

  His eyes…his black, fathomless eyes, eyes that held only evil behind them.

  It’s all I keep seeing in my head, then my father being attacked, then Yanik coming for me and I’m trying to escape and I can’t and I lose all consciousness. The world slips and spins and goes black, goes to that place of pure evil.

  Later, I would kill Yanik by setting him on fire with a power that I still don’t understand (and haven’t been able to conjure up since), but it’s that early moment when I was afraid that my father was dead, when I felt so hopeless and powerless and lost, that’s one reason I keep having panic attacks over.

  I was doing fine, too. I spent two weeks with Solon at Shelter Cove, his remote and very private beachside estate north of the city, bringing myself back to life, letting the slow life and the ocean waves and Solon’s arms heal me. Then we came back here and I officially moved into Solon’s room and…

  The panic attacks started. At first I was having nightmares, the kind where you wake up soaked in sweat, and then they started to morph into day terrors, like I was experiencing it all again, while awake.

  Suffice to say, things haven’t been all rosy for me. Not only am I trying to deal with what happened to me, but I’m also trying to deal with all the other shit that’s happened in the last few months. Trauma upon trauma. First, being taken by Solon and Ezra and held prisoner in their basement, then discovering I was a vampire, then going through The Becoming. That was all a piece of cake compared to my tussle with vampire slayer Atlas Poe, who then killed my best friend Elle. Then I found out that I’m the daughter of a famous evil warlock called Jeremias. Then there was my ex, Matt, whom I attacked in a fit of bloodlust and Solon had to kill him. Finally, Yanik kidnapped me on the behest of Skarde, the dark King of the Vampires, Solon’s father and sworn enemy, and I made him and the cloaked servants of the Dark Order go up in flames, murdering them all.

  So, yeah I’ve been processing a lot of shit, on top of the fact that my entire life has been a lie and everything I knew about my future has been forever altered. You don’t just discover you’re both a vampire and a witch and expect everything to go back to normal.

  It’s just…I want things to go back to normal. Badly. I love Solon, I really do, and I like Wolf and Amethyst and Yvonne (still not sold on Ezra). I love the feeling of found family in that house, as spooky as it can be at times. But I miss my parents, the parents that I knew them as, not actual witches, not people who murdered my birth parents. I miss living below them, I miss coming up to use their coffee, miss listening to my dad yammer on about his beard. I miss spending my weeknights studying about the art of ancient Mesopotamia, spending my weekends with Elle at The Cloister and getting shit-faced. I want to wake up with a hangover and head to Salt and Straw around the corner to get some strawberry and balsamic ice cream. I miss my damn tattoos. I miss being a normal human fucking being.

  And in a blink of the eye it’s all just…gone. I haven’t had any time to really process it and now, now that I’m back in the house, and my parents are okay, and I’m settling into this new life with Solon, a life as half of many things but never a whole thing, I feel like I’m scrambling to catch up.

  Hence, the panic attacks. Tonight I was having dinner with Amethyst (because my human side controls my appetite), while the vamps were in Dark Eyes club drinking with some bloodsucking buddies. Suddenly I felt like the dining room was closing in on me and I was drowning. I told Amethyst I was going for a walk, that I needed fresh air and time to be alone and she dutifully let me leave the house. All I knew was that maybe if I got to the water, if I got to the bay, I’d be able to breathe again.

  But even though I just wanted to be alone, I know I’m not alone.

  I know it because suddenly, the cold is at my back. Like icy wings brushing over my hair, my shoulders, my spine. The sign of a vampire, but in my case I know exactly who it is because the hair is standing up on my arms, and it isn’t from fear.

  Solon.

  My vampire.

  “I should be offended you keep running away,” his voice rings out, as cool as the ocean air wisping past.

  I sigh, staring out across at the lights on the Bay Bridge. “And I should be offended you’re still stalking me, everywhere I go.” I slowly turn around and eye Solon. “You know we’re in a relationship, right? You don’t need to keep tabs on me.”

  He doesn’t smile. I didn’t expect him to. But there is a faint twinkle in his blue eyes as he appraises me. I appraise him right back. As usual, I’m struck dumb by how otherworldly beautiful he is. I know that’s what every girl in love thinks when they look at their lover, especially when the relationship is shiny and sparkling new, and it’s also what someone thinks when they’re staring at a vampire, particularly one that looks like him.

  From his gray wool overcoat, and expensive dark suit underneath (his standard uniform when he’s entertaining at Dark Eyes), he looks insanely put together, a picture of class and strength, with that carnal hint of elegance in the way he carries himself, like he’d be able to pounce on your jugular before you could open your mouth to scream. His brows are black and arched over his eyes, creating shadows, making the blue of his irises seem sharper, his gaze unforgiving. His hair is black, long-ish, always falling perfectly around his face, showcasing a broad forehead, sublime nose, strong jaw and chin, and full lips that have the ability to make your eyes roll back in your head when he’s putting them to good use.

  At the moment though, he’s keeping his distance. In a way it’s hard to believe that this man is in love with me. I don’t mean that in the oh woe is me, how could this ridiculously hot, smart, deadly centuries-old vampire be in love with little ol’ me, I’m just your average college student from the Bay Area, kind of way. I mean in it in that while he’s told me he’s in love with me, he’s not the type to say it all that often. Not that I was expecting to have him shower me with declarations of love over the last few weeks, because that’s really not his style, but even so…there’s a wall that’s up that wasn’t there before.

  Or maybe it was always there and it’s something he actually has to push down, with effort. Maybe being in love doesn’t come naturally to him, maybe it’s something he has to keep working at.

  He raises his hand and delicately taps his fingers against his temple, his eyes searing me. “You’re thinking too much,” he says in a low voice, in that mild accent that flits between British and American.

  “Why is your accent British?” I ask him, changing my thoughts before he has a chance to read them. He can do that sometimes, and the last thing I want him to know is that I’m analyzing whether he loves me or not. Our relationship is new and I’m sure the last thing he wants is me coming on too strong. God, what a normal thing to worry about.

  He tilts his head slightly, like a bird. A bird of prey. “My accent?”

  “Yeah. I thought it would be Scandinavian or something.”

  “I spent a lot of time in England,” he says after a moment. “I told you as much.”

  “How much time is a lot of time? You mean, like how Madonna moved to London and six months later had an accent or…?”

  “Two hundred years,” he says simply. “Enough to pick it up.” He pauses, gaze flitting over my features. “Why did you run from me?”

  “I didn’t run from you,” I tell him, folding my arms against the night air and leaning back against the railing. “You were downstairs. I just had to get out of the house.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “I’m not going to tell you every time I go somewhere,” I tell him, though part of that is because I’m stubborn. “You don’t trust me?”

  “It’s not a matter of trust, my dear.”

  “Just plain old being possessive then?” I ask, my tone more angry than it should be. I just wanted some air, damnit. A chance to be alone. You’re never alone in that house, there’s always someone there, and even when there isn’t, either the paintings on the walls are watching you or you’re surrounded by ghosts. Sure, I can’t see them, but I know they’re there. It’s the crack house for the supernatural.

  He gives me a steady look. “A little of that, yes. But surely you can’t expect me not to be worried about you.”

  “You shouldn’t be worried,” I say, though it sounds like a lie. For levity I add, “And don’t call me Shirley.”

  His forehead furrows. “I beg your pardon? Who is Shirley?”

  “Oh, so you’re totally immersed in Sesame Street, but you’ve never seen Airplane?”

  He continues to stare at me and I’m this close to explaining how his favorite vampire, apparently, is Count Von Count from Sesame Street when he shrugs. “Just because you have all the time in the world, doesn’t mean you’ve seen every film known to man. Regardless,” he says, taking a step toward me in a rather menacing way that makes butterflies coast up my spine with icy wings, “just because you escaped from Yanik, doesn’t mean you’ll be so fortunate the next time.”