by L. A. Banks
After a moment, the elderly gnome gave a curt nod with his bald head which was enough to signal the captain to lower the drawbridge.
“Only you,” Garth said, addressing the queen.
Queen Cerridwen nodded and lifted her chin as she gracefully glided forward. “As I would only expect. But I thank you for your limited hospitality, nonetheless.”
Her ice-heeled shoes clicked against the bridge, ringing out in the deafening silence as garrison archers kept their deadly arrows trained on her. The moment she was on the other side of the bridge, anxious guards quickly drew up the only access to the castle. Then just as quickly, a phalanx of guards surrounded her.
“Your wand, Your Majesty,” Garth said in a suspicious tone, then grudgingly gave her a courtesy bow before holding out his hand.
She calmly gave her muff to the closest guard beside her and then carefully reached into her flowing left sleeve with two fingers to produce a crystalline ice wand. Garth nodded and silently dispatched a runner to alert Sir Rodney as he cautiously accepted the queen’s instrument of death.
“I will show you to the War Room,” Garth said in a dignified tone.
Queen Cerridwen tilted her head with an amused expression. “But I was so hoping you’d show me to his private bedchamber.” She released a melodramatic sigh with merriment in her eyes as the old gnome drew back, clearly shocked. “No matter, we’ll wind up there sooner or later. You know Rodney almost as well as I do, and some of his notions of détente should be predictable by now even for you, dear Garth.”
CHAPTER 1
Elder Vlad stood by the desecrated mausoleum, peering down at the charred male corpse. Blue blood slowly blackened beneath the visible, pulsing veins in the paper-thin skin of his bald head while his black irises completely overtook the whites of his eyes. The vampires around him were quiet and still under the blue-white wash of moonlight in the cemetery, awaiting his permission to investigate. Fury threaded through his body like dark tendrils of hatred, although the ancient vampire remained stoic.
“Who did this?” His rhetorical question was uttered between his fangs with deadly calm. He already knew the culprits; his angry query was simply a command for external confirmation. Elder Vlad glanced up, holding his top hunter lieutenant’s gaze and impatiently waited for an answer.
“We believe it had to be Unseelie Fae, Your Excellency. Just like the others.” Caleb dropped to one leather-clad knee, allowing his long spill of platinum hair to flow over his shoulders as he more closely examined the vampire ash. The black leather coat he wore dusted the ground, billowing out around him from supernatural fury.
“Undoubtedly death by daylight invasion,” Caleb said, suddenly looking up and baring fangs as his rage kindled. “I suspect that Monroe Bonaventure went to ground, sleeping here in his mausoleum for fear that, since the mansions of so many others had been recently overrun, that his might be as well. But they found the poor bastard anyway.”
“He was my sixth and last viceroy in the region.” Elder Vlad paced away with silent footsteps, beginning to levitate from his unspent anger, and then he turned quickly to speak in a burst of rage to the assembled hunters. “We are of the cast Vampyre! We are the eternal night! That we fear anything is sacrilege! We are the definition of fear in the supernatural world! It is our kind that has always been at the top of the food chain for millennia! By all that is unholy, I vow that there will be merciless redress for this offense. Tell me, dear Mara, what clues have you uncovered, before I formally declare war? Transylvania will want to know why and I shall give them indisputable proof.”
Mara traced the edges of the broken door hinges and locks around the opened crypt with her fingers. Only her long brunette hair moved in the gentle night breeze as she stopped for a second to peer at Elder Vlad, remaining momentarily, eerily still.
“This metal was fractured by sudden freezing . . . temperatures so cold that a mere tap would have shattered them,” she finally said. Her smoldering dark gaze beheld Caleb’s ice blue stare for a moment before returning to Elder Vlad. “Our local Seelie Fae do not work with such extreme temperatures,” she murmured, her voice sounding like a seductive forensic expert’s. “Nor do the wolves.”
Elder Vlad narrowed his gaze and looked off into the distance. “No, they don’t, do they?”
Mara shook her head. “Sir Rodney is many things, but a fool he is not,” she said with a low hiss between her fangs.
“Your orders, Your Excellency?” Caleb asked, rising to stand with his head bowed before the ancient leader of the North American Vampire Cartel.
“Fix this,” Elder Vlad murmured. “Make sure the Unseelie have a list of names for which we demand blood restitution. And do be sure to let Queen Cerridwen of Hecate know how very displeased I am.”
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CRIMSON MOON
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BAD BLOOD
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BITE THE BULLET
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UNDEAD ON ARRIVAL
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CURSED TO DEATH
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MINION
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THE AWAKENING
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THE HUNTED
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THE BITTEN
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THE FORBIDDEN
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THE FORSAKEN
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THE WICKED
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THE THIRTEENTH
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