by Tessa Dawn
As for Marquis? Since the male was as scholastic and curious as he was socially inept—the male spoke twenty-one languages fluently, had studied numerous ancient civilizations, and was particularly well-versed in Romanian culture—he would appreciate the gift on more than one level. Placing a strong, rugged hand over the ancient parchment, he closed his eyes and absorbed the energy.
At the same time, Princess Vanya reentered the room, placed a silent hand on Keitaro’s shoulder, and squeezed it, still trembling. She sat back down on the hearth and sighed. “Keitaro…” There was nothing else to be said.
Not by any of them.
If Ciopori was to elaborate, she would likely do it later…in private.
And as for Marquis?
Keitaro and his eldest son were best friends—they always had been. Their bond transcended language.
The flames beyond the hearth flickered and danced, swaying from side to side, as if caught up in the vampires’ emotion, and the silence in the parlor was golden: companionable and serene. Keitaro allowed the moment to linger for the space of several heartbeats, and then he turned his attention to Kagen and Arielle: his son, the healer, and the daughter of his heart who had nursed him back to health—and preserved his very soul—over countless days and nights in a gods-forsaken slave camp.
“Kagen, Arielle.” He spoke softly, reaching once again into his oversized pack. “These are for you.” He handed each of them a separate gift: Kagen’s was in a decorative silver bag, and Arielle’s was tucked inside a black velvet box.
Kagen’s rich brown eyes lit up, and his mouth dropped open as he peeked inside the bag. And then he laughed aloud. “You didn’t…” Reaching into the sack, he retrieved an old wooden receptacle full of ancient, rusted implements; small, corked vials, their lids looped in twine; and several medieval-looking drawings. “It’s my first alchemy kit, the one I played with as a boy.” He ran the pad of his forefinger along several of the aged utensils. “I can’t believe you kept this all these years.”
“Of course I did,” Keitaro said, his voice resonating with satisfaction. “There’s a story behind every one of those containers.” When Arielle raised her eyebrows in question, he shook his head. “Another day…another time.” He gestured at the black velvet box with his chin. “Open it.”
Arielle wriggled in her seat like an excited schoolgirl as she slowly pried open the lid, and then her features grew slack and her expression inscrutable. “Father…” she whispered softly, running her fingers along the string of ancient jewels. “How old is this necklace?”
“Very, very old,” Keitaro said. “It belonged to my wife, Serena.”
Arielle audibly gasped, and her eyes clouded with tears. “Keitaro…no…I can’t accept—”
“You can, and you will,” he interrupted, feeling positively smug. “Arielle, you truly are the daughter of my heart”—he surveyed the rest of the room with an apologetic glance—“not that each and every one of you doesn’t have a very special place in my soul. You do. But Arielle and I have such a special history…” His voice trailed off, and he recaptured her gaze. “Serena would have wanted you to have it.”
Arielle brushed a tear from the corner of her eye and nodded.
And Keitaro understood: The female would cherish it always.
“Can we see it?” Nathaniel asked, his gaze growing soft as if he were reliving a memory, perhaps recalling his mother wearing the necklace.
“Of course,” Arielle said as she passed it along. “Thank you so much, Keitaro, father of my heart. I love you to the moon and back.”
Keitaro bit down on his lower lip and tried to shake it out. If he spoke now—even one word—he was going to lose his composure and cry in front of his sons. Not that he was too manly to do so, but he wanted to get through all the gifts. He winked at Arielle instead, and her answering smile told him she understood.
Thank the gods for the knapsack.
An immediate distraction.
Keitaro reached into the bag, yet again. “Kristina…” He extended a long red case in her direction, and waited as she rose from her chair, clipped across the room in her five-inch heels, and took it with a cute imitation of a curtsy. “Thank you, Papa,” she said, mimicking the grandkids’ term of endearment. She strolled back to the chair, sat down, and opened the case.
At first, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
It was a gorgeous Romanian dagger, and her eyes swept over every detail, from the tip of the hilt to the bottom of the blade, as she studied each nuance carefully. At last, she narrowed in on the cross guard, and her mouth began to quiver: An artistic black-and-red insignia, shaped like a shield, with the constellation Canes Venatici, was painted on the armor. “Is that…” She had to stop and catch her breath. “Is that what I think it is?”
Keitaro Silivasi nodded. “It is. The Silivasi family crest with the celestial god Venatici engraved in the armor. Venatici was Timaos Silivasi’s Blood Moon, the first in our family line. Each of my sons has a dagger just like that one.”
Marquis, Nathaniel, Kagen, and Nachari nodded, their expressions reflecting approval.
“You are family now, Kristina. Always and forever a Silivasi.”
Kristina scrunched up her nose and fashioned a truly unattractive frown. “Damnit, Papa!” she groused. “Why’d you go and do something like that?” Her voice cracked, and the waterworks began to flow. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Rising noiselessly from the hearth, Keitaro Silivasi glided across the room and pulled Kristina out of the chair. Then he wrapped his strong, loving arms around her and held her close to his heart as the skinny redhead cried. “Never alone again,” he whispered in her ear. And while he only knew her story from what his sons had told him, he felt the breadth of her relief in his bones. When, at last, Kristina wiped her nose with the back of her hand and smeared it across her dress, the rest of the family chuckled, and he was able to let her go.
Keitaro took the opportunity to step out of the parlor and retrieve his final present, a gift for Nachari and Deanna. When he walked back into the room and set it in front of the fire, there was a collective gasp throughout the parlor, and then a permeating silence.
One could have heard a pin drop.
Nachari bowed his head and closed his eyes for an interminable series of heartbeats. Then he came from behind the settee, strolled across the parlor, and knelt in front of the portrait, pressing one hand against the canvas and grasping his amulet with the other: the amulet, according to Marquis, that Nachari’s twin, Shelby, had given him one fateful night in the Chamber of Sacrifice and Atonement; the amulet Shelby had crossed dimensions to impart to his beloved brother.
Keitaro placed his hand on Nachari’s broad shoulder to steady him. “I don’t know if you remember that trip to France. You and Shelby were only ten years old, but a local artisan painted your likeness as the two of you sat together on a bench—Serena and I were saving it for when you had a son of your own. Only, since I wasn’t there at the time, I was waiting for the next-best moment.”
Nachari tightened his fist around his amulet and took a slow, deep breath. He traced Shelby’s ten-year-old features with a graceful, reverent touch and whispered, “Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, twin of my soul…” His amulet began to glow, and he closed his eyes, once more, in gratitude. “Thank you, Father.” There was nothing more he could say.
Keitaro knew the moment would need some…gentling…so he returned to his knapsack, withdrew a window-box, and handed it to Deanna. “This is one of the brushes the artisan used to paint the portrait.”
Deanna was an artist, and that made the gift precious beyond measure. She studied the antique implement with the eyes of a craftsman. “Keitaro.” She gave him a heartfelt hug, then padded to her mate’s side, bent down, and wrapped her arms around Nachari’s shoulders, showing him the paint brush.
Nachari squeezed her hand.
A moment of silence later, Ciopori cleared her throat, breaki
ng the tender tension in the room. “I feel positively abominable, Keitaro—we have nothing for you.” She held up her hand in apology. “We foolishly believed you when you said, ‘No gifts.’” She winked at him and smiled. “Alas, we should have known better.”
Keitaro grinned from ear to ear.
The “gift exchange” had turned out exactly as he’d planned.
He reclaimed his seat at the top of the hearth, reveled in the warmth of the fire, and waited for Nachari and Deanna to finally return to the settee. Once all were seated and quiet, he glanced into the flames. “When I was a boy growing up in the ever-evolving house of Jadon, I could have never imagined this moment, or envisioned this valley, the way it is today. I could have never foreseen that I would one day have such a beautiful, noble family. To think that I would one day be so blessed by the gods—Draco, Cassiopeia, Auriga, Perseus, and Orion—would have simply been unimaginable. But I was. And now, Aquila, Perseus, Pisces, and Ophiuchus have blessed me again. My family is everything to me.” He turned away from the fire and faced his amazing children. “You are everything to me. And this human holiday—while it does not reflect our own sacred and ancient traditions, our deep veneration of the earth, the stars, and the elements—it certainly has its merits. It has given me an opportunity to say something we are often too busy to stop and say.”
He made a fist with his hand and placed it over his heart. “The Blood may have cursed our ancestors and sent us into the night like dark, soulless vagabonds searching for a new salvation, but together, we rose from the ashes: as warriors, as healers, as wizards…as family. As Vampyr. And what we have created—what we have endured, survived, and overcome—will live on forever in our children, in our name, in our house…and in our blood. We have created brotherhood, sisterhood, loyalty, honor, and love. And the only thing I am prouder of than being a son of Jadon is being this family’s sire. I am honored to be your father.”
In a show of veneration typically reserved for the Vampyr king, Keitaro Silivasi’s sons rose from their seats one by one, dropped to one knee, and placed a fist over their hearts. Bowing their heads in veneration, they spoke his name in unison: “Keitaro.”
Books in the Blood Curse Series
Blood Genesis (prequel)
Blood Destiny
Blood Awakening
Blood Possession
Blood Shadows
Blood Redemption
Blood Father
Blood Vengeance
Blood Ecstasy
Blood Betrayal
Blood Web ~ Coming Soon
Christmas In Dark Moon Vale (Novella)
Also by Tessa Dawn
Daywalker - the Beginning (A New Adult Short Story)
Dragons Realm (Dragons Realm Saga, book 1)
Zanaikeyros ~ Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons, book 1)
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A sneak peek from Blood Destiny
(Book #1 – Blood Curse Series)
Jocelyn lifted the canteen from the weighty, navy blue backpack and took a long drink of water. She checked her compass once again, glancing furtively at the sky to determine the position of the sun. She was making great time. There was plenty of daylight left, more than enough to reach the cave before sunset. Placing the canteen back in the pack, she adjusted the weight evenly on her shoulders, her mind continuing to analyze information as she headed deeper into the forest.
Jocelyn knew that she didn’t have permission to move on the tip her informant had given her. She wasn’t supposed to be there. And if anything went wrong, she was on her own. But she also knew that it couldn’t wait. Human trafficking. Ritualistic killings. The entire case was so bizarre.
As an agent of ICE, a highly specialized department within Homeland Security, Jocelyn Levi had been investigating one particularly shocking human-trafficking ring for months. Unlike more typical rings that forced young women into sexual slavery or sold children into forced labor, these victims were being taken for much darker purposes—to be used as sacrifices in ritualistic killings.
But by whom?
Jocelyn shook her head, carelessly tucking a handful of thick brown hair behind her ear. Over the last two months, her unit had discovered three freshly discarded bodies, each one showing signs of the same hideous brutality. The sight of the mutilated corpses had been abominable, but they were close to finding the head of the ring, or at least finding the man who was selling the women. Still, they had no idea who was doing the actual killings: what kind of cult could be behind such gruesome acts of evil. They had never managed to uncover an actual crime scene.
Jocelyn sighed, hoping that today would be a major breakthrough. If the information her source had given her about the cave was correct, then she was about to make a huge discovery.
Her informant had assured her that she was not walking into a danger zone, that the site he had told her about was no longer being used by the ring. As always, they changed locations frequently, moving around to avoid detection by the authorities. Unfortunately, this meant that there would be no fresh forensic evidence, but the information Jocelyn hoped to uncover was of a different kind anyway.
Jocelyn slowed her pace as a series of tall, reddish rock formations appeared in the distance, strangely shimmering into view like a desert mirage on a hot day. An eerie chill swept through her body, raising the hair on her arms, and a deep sense of foreboding settled into her stomach. She shivered and stared ahead. There was something about the peculiar canyons that shook her to her very core.
Although most people would have turned back, most people would not have been there in the first place.
Jocelyn was not most people.
Solving difficult crimes was her life. Stopping the really, really bad guys. And she was very good at it. She had always had a sixth sense, an uncanny ability to stay one step ahead of the criminal mind. It wasn’t like she was psychic or anything. She just had a way of feeling things. Walking into a crime scene and knowing. As if the very essence of the place whispered secrets to her of the people who had been there.
Now, after months of dead ends, she finally had a reliable lead; and she had no intention of letting the information go to waste.
Jocelyn drew in a deep breath of crisp mountain air, her lungs working overtime to adjust to the altitude of the Eastern Rocky Mountains. The beautiful, expansive territory ran along the Front Range of North America, full of hidden canyons, dense forests, and towering, majestic peaks; under different circumstances, it might have been an idyllic place to vacation. Her sense of dread grew stronger with every step she took, so powerful that it almost felt as if there were an invisible hand holding her back, something warning her away. She shook her head in an effort to clear her mind as she pushed forward against the invisible barrier.
She had come way too far to turn back now.
The faces of the victims, their broken and tortured bodies, continued to replay in her mind like a gruesome, private slide-show, reminding her of just how much was at stake.
Picking up the pace, Jocelyn headed deeper into the canyon.
PURCHASE BLOOD DESTINY NOW
About the Author
Tessa Dawn grew up in Colorado, where she developed a deep affinity for the Rocky Mountains. After graduating with a degree in psychology, she worked for several years in criminal justice and mental health before returning to get her master’s degree in nonprofit management.
Tessa began writing as a child and composed her first full-length novel at the age of eleven. By the time she graduated high school, she had a banker’s box full of short stories and novels. Since then, she has published works as diverse as poetry, greeting cards, workbooks for kids with autism, and academic curricula. Her Dark Fantasy/Gothic Romance novels represent her long-desired return to her creative-writing roots and her passionate flair for storytellin
g.
Tessa currently splits her time between the Colorado suburbs and mountains with her two children and “one very crazy cat.” She hopes to one day move to the country, where she can own horses and what she considers “the most beautiful creature ever created”—a German shepherd.
Writing is her bliss.
For more information:
www.TessaDawn.com