Chosen by A Rogue Vampyren: Dark Vampire Romance

by Seth Eden

  Chosen by a Rogue Vampyren

  Dark Vampire Romance

  Seth Eden

  Contents

  Join The Tribe

  Also by Seth Eden

  1. Crystal

  2. Crystal

  3. Crystal

  4. Mark

  5. Crystal

  6. Crystal

  7. Mark

  8. Mark

  9. Crystal

  A Message To My Readers

  Other Books By The Author

  © Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Join The Tribe

  Want to connect with Seth and join a thriving community of PNR readers? If so, then join Seth Eden’s Reader Group on Facebook! You’ll also get the latest news and updates on the Vampyren Invaders series and all of Seth’s future books.

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  Also by Seth Eden

  Download the FREE prequel to the Vampyren series – Arrival of the Vampyren:

  The Vampyren invaded Earth, coming from the places between the stars. They came to slake their most brutal appetites: For blood. For sex. For conquest. Within weeks their superior strength, technology and weapons turned Earth into a fallen battleground.

  But love can blossom in the most unlikely places.

  Stephanie was looking for food, for safety, and for her brother when the Vampyren patrol caught her on the blown-up streets of Las Vegas.

  Dray Fierro was one of the Vampyren, a hero who could take his pick of women to claim as his war prize. He wasn't looking for more than a woman to satisfy his needs for sex and blood.

  Neither was prepared for what they got.

  Click here to claim your FREE book: http://bit.ly/ArrivalSethE

  Synopsis

  I found him after an evil Vampyren prince tried to violate me.

  I escaped Drake… only to find myself into more trouble.

  Then I was handed over to Mark.

  Another rogue Vampyren, but much gentler.

  He’s the one who branded my neck.

  Impregnated me.

  It hurts to be separated from him… literally.

  I have to be by his side.

  Mark would do anything to protect me and his unborn child.

  Even if he has to fight Drake.

  Our lives are on the line in this battle between good and evil.

  How will it all end?

  1

  Crystal

  The buzzer sounded right in Crystal’s ear. The doorbell Jet had finagled blasted through a speaker next to her bed so she would hear it no matter the hour because potential customers meant potential income. Income, in this case, meant things rather than actual currency, which was still a bit up in the air economically.

  “Coming,” Crystal mumbled to nobody. Her cot was squeezed up against the window shaded with muslin, though the window was open to let the cool air in. Summer in Chicago was life-threateningly hot. But it was hotter inside than outside. Crystal slept under a single sheet in her tiny room packed with everything she had hoarded, some of it was actually valuable. She rubbed her eyes and reached over to press the button on the intercom. “Coming, coming.”

  Crystal sat up, grabbed a black tank top, and slipped it on before snatching up a cigarette and lighting it. Nobody made cigarettes anymore, and they were a hot commodity. Crystal had her own impressive stock and an addiction that her roommates lectured her about almost daily. She responded by blowing smoke in their faces. With the prospect of having your blood drained by alien vampires as s constant threat, the idea that smoking would harm her health just didn’t have the sting of reality that it used to.

  Pants? Crystal thought as the buzzer shrieked once again. It was too hot for pants. She was already sweating, so she grabbed a pair of cutoffs instead. She grabbed her taser and shoved her boots on her feet before heading out into the living room of the bombed-out condominium she shared with Jet and Nina. The place would have been prime property in its day, a stately home for some high-end lawyer. It sat right in the middle of Hyde Park which was now a bombed-out hellscape, though a few buildings were still standing like this one, that made pretty decent homes if you didn’t mind sporadic electricity. Crystal very much minded sporadic electricity. So it was a good thing they had a generator.

  In the living room, Jet and Nina were still asleep on a pile of cushions they’d heaped in a corner by a fan motored by homemade batteries. Crystal scooted around a tower of crates full of booze and went to the front door with its five locks and its little speakeasy door they’d cut into the top. She took a drag from the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and threw open the little shutter, squinting at the stranger on the other side.

  “Yeah?” Crystal said.

  “I heard you got vodka,” the stranger said. It was a man, about three times her size. She’d shoved her taser into the waistband of her cutoffs. It was charged up and ready. Her knife she’d left by the bed. Hmm. The taser would probably be fine if anything happened, and besides, Nina and Jet were in the room and would wake up if they heard something, not that they were… particularly useful in physical altercations.

  “I might,” Crystal said, taking the cigarette from her mouth. “It depends.”

  At least the guy was human. Vampyrens came along wanting to trade sometimes too. She was happy to do it. But it had an added element of risk, of course. Still, Crystal considered herself willing to trade with anyone if they had something she needed. That was the nature of survival in her book. It had taken her two long years to learn that lesson. Two years full of colonization, conquering, pillaging, executions, rape… Things had not been ideal.

  “It depends on what?” the stranger said, blinking dumbly.

  Crystal squinted at him and sucked on her cigarette. Oh, he was an idiot. She hadn’t really counted on that and now she wondered how he’d even found her.

  “Um, it depends on what you can trade?” She said, not even pretending to hide her condescension. “Do you have anything good?” She spoke to him like he was a five-year-old and not a very bright five-year-old.

  “Oh.” He nodded and bit his lip, apparently thinking hard. He was a lummox of a man with a big bald head and apparently, he really was somewhere in the vicinity of “not very bright five-year-old.” Crystal blew through her lips, leaning on one foot and sucking on her cigarette. She was not feeling hopeful about this trade. There was no way this guy had anything good. “Well, I have a lot of medications.”

  Crystal made a little noise like a surprised chirp. Her long, straight black hair stuck to the back of her neck and, pretending she wasn’t suddenly extremely eager, she reached back and tossed it away from her sweaty skin and raised her eyebrows.

  “Medication?” She said. “Yeah? What have you got?”

  Penicillin, Crystal thought. Wow, that would be amazing. And Cipro! Morphine, Vicodin, Naloxone… Dilaudid maybe…

  “I got a bunch of uh, that Nalo… Nalo something?” The big brute scratched his head, frowning at her, trying to remember his own stock of treasure. “I got a lot of things that end in cillin? I got Cipro—"
>
  “Cipro,” Crystal whispered. She tried valiantly to control herself. “Alright. Yeah, I think we can make a deal.” It took her a solid five minutes to unlock the door and by then, Nina and Jet were stirring awake. “My name is Crystal. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Mickey!” The big guy shook her hand when he walked in. His hand was clammy and her smile was tight as she tried not to give anything away.

  Oh boy, she was going to take this guy for a total ride. It wasn’t even going to be hard. She almost felt bad about it.

  But medications had the honor of being the hardest as well as the most important thing to come by these days. Things were improving… sort of. But truly functional hospitals were few and far between, never mind doctors’ offices. Crystal knew a few doctors who practiced out of their places or in abandoned office buildings. Things like licenses really had no meaning anymore. Happily, she supposed, neither did health insurance. That didn’t exist either. But the doctors had the hardest time getting a hold of much-needed medications and the shortlist was always at the top of Crystal’s mind.

  On the not so bright side, this wasn’t going to get her any money. As much of a mercenary as Crystal considered herself to be, she couldn’t justify the necessary amorality of selling medications to doctors, not when people were dying for nothing. The only need that kind of galled her was the need for Naloxone. While needed meds were difficult to find, opioids still seemed to be as popular as ever depending on the region. If the vamps didn’t get you or disease or starvations or even the Lucian that were rumored to be springing up here and there (unless it was all rumor, she still wasn’t sure) then an overdose might.

  Curse me and my soft heart, Crystal thought.

  On the other hand, she would definitely screw this guy over. But if he didn’t know he was getting screwed over, did it really count?

  “I have many fine spirits today, my good man,” Crystal said, sending him a wink. Her demeanor was not as smooth and refined as she would have liked as she noticed now that she hadn’t zipped or buttoned her fly, her black lace underwear peeking out the top of her cutoffs. It was kind of a sexy look in the right circumstance but she still grimaced even now as she cleared her throat and zipped herself up.

  Mickey nodded. “Spirits. Like booze? That’s spirits, right?”

  “Yes,” Crystal said slowly. “Like booze. I’ve got three crates of Absolut. I got Patron, I got fucking Hennessy, baby. You want it, we got it. I’ll even throw in some liquors I found in this bombed-out bar on The Loop. What’ll it be?”

  “Hey Crys,” Nina said, and she glanced over to observe Nina stretching. She had taken to wearing black bodysuits with shorts on her lithe body and she stretched like a cat, falling back against the wall. The living room was crowded with boxes and tubs and piles of what would have been disposables years ago like takeout containers, plastic tubs, and glass bottles. “Is there more tuna?”

  “Yeah,” Crystal said with a wave of her hand. “We have some salmon too. From that fancy grocery store, everyone missed. Tons of it. Second bedroom.”

  “Mmmm! Salmon!” Nina skipped off to the bedroom, her two messy blonde pigtails swinging and her diminutive boyfriend, Jet, ran after her. She squealed happily when he found her in the other room and Crystal heard the sound of wrestling because Jet always like to tackle her to the floor.

  “You have tuna?” Mickey said with wide eyes.

  “Ah—"

  “I love tuna.”

  Crystal had to cover her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh out loud at the man who was about to trade things like Cipro and Naloxone for fucking tuna. But it was his life, after all. Who was she to stand in between him and his desires?

  “I think we can make that work,” Crystal said, feeling like a snake. “Let’s barter, baby.”

  “Whoa,” Jet whispered, as yet another box of Cipro was wheeled through the door.

  Crystal felt like her heart was going to pound right out of her chest and she had to work very hard to stifle her glee The trade had been even better than she had predicted. Yet somehow Mickey considered it all to his benefit. Which she supposed it was, really. She wondered if she was a little jaded to be considering this a swindle. In fact, she was trading away some valuable stuff for meds which she wouldn’t ask any money for. Wasn’t she the one getting swindled? On the other hand, she’d scavenged the stuff, to begin with, so there was that. Anyway, it would put her in good stead with the doctors around town and that could be useful, especially if she ever got hurt or sick.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, my friend,” Crystal said, shaking that big sweaty hand. “Gentleman and a scholar, what-what. Pip pip! Cheerio!” She tipped an imaginary hat and Mickey frowned at her, seeming confused. “Sorry,” Crystal muttered. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay,” Mickey said. “Thanks!” Crystal helped him load up the last of his tuna and vodka on a dolly and then he was gone, the door shut behind him with the clicks of five locks.

  Crystal spun around and smiled slyly to herself. Yes, that had been good. She lit herself a second cigarette. They were a finite resource, but she thought she deserved it.

  “Damn, Crys,” Jet said, clinging to Nina as they shuffled into the room where a new tower of meds had sprung up. She’d checked bottles from every single box to make doubly sure she was not, in fact, the one getting cheated. “You cleaned up.”

  “Well, the doctors did, anyway,” Crystal muttered to herself around her cigarette. Her stomach rumbled, and she grimaced. “Where are those crackers? And that fake cheese stuff? I want some salmon on crackers and…” She grabbed a bottle of vodka from one of the crates that had not been traded that morning. “Breakfast of champions.”

  Minutes later, the three of them were sitting around the small TV hooked up to a DVD player, all running on the generator since the electricity was being a dick today.

  “Can we watch Batman?” Jet said. He and Nina sat cross-legged on a blanket, a tray in front of him full of delights; salmon, crackers, fake cheese, freeze-dried strawberries, gummy bears, a jar of sweet pickles.

  They always asked her permission to watch things. They asked her permission for everything. She was the de facto leader of the condo. That was probably because she had found the place, knew how to sniff out food, and how to avoid rogue vamps. She was generally savvy. She had survived this long, after all. They trusted her. That was a relief. If they hadn’t, she would’ve had to whip them into shape and that could be tedious.

  “Which Batman?” Crystal said, around a mouth full of crackers. They had a big shelf of DVDs. The Batman collection was mostly for the benefit of Jet and Nina, both of them huge nerds. At night when nobody could sleep because they heard fresh rumors that “the Lucian were on the move,” Nina and Jet told old comic book stories they remembered from childhood in the dark while Crystal was still up, logging everything she’d traded and marked on detailed maps where she had found what and who lived where. It was her obsessive hobby. Now, because of their insomnia, she knew all about A Death in the Family and Knightfall and A Court of Owls.

  “Um…” Jet bit his lip and blinked at her. If she didn’t know him, it could be hard not to write him off as another Mickey. But Jet wasn’t stupid. He was actually brilliant and so was Nina. As far as tech and engineering went. Despite Crystal’s position as leader of the group, she knew very well she wouldn’t have gotten this far without them. “Animated Series.”

  “Anything with Harley Quinn,” Nina said, leaning on his shoulder. “I love Harley Quinn.”

  Crystal pretended this was a great hardship because it might mean she warranted a favor later and said, “Alright. Alright, fine. But just two episodes.”

  They both clapped their hands and Crystal crawled over to the shelf and found the DVD and minutes later they were feasting and watching Batman. It was not the worst way to spend the quasi-breakfast hour. Or perhaps, Crystal thought, they could call it brunch. There was no ice, tragically. They had a freezer they only used for
emergencies, but it did a number on the generator and power from the grid was still too unreliable to bother with the luxury of ice for cocktails.

  But Crystal knew she wouldn’t care about that once she was buzzed. She crawled over to the crate of canned tomato juice and after rooting around for a couple of minutes, she found the dried horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.

  “Yesss,” Crystal hissed. The Bloody Mary was spicy and a little disgusting when warm but sure enough, after a couple of sips, really didn’t care. Probably because it was mostly vodka.

  “That’s gross,” Nina said, nodding at her drink as she spread salmon on a cracker.

  “I’ll have you know this drink contains all the essential vitamins and nutrients someone needs,” Crystal said before stuffing the cracker in her mouth.

  “Like what?” Jet said, around a mouth full of cheese.

  Crystal swallowed and said, “Eighty proof, my friend. Eighty proof.”

  Nina wasn’t so discerning as to make herself a mixed cocktail. Instead, she poured herself just a finger of vodka and took a small sip, her face twisting up in disgust before she took a second. “Bleh!”

  “No one said it would be easy,” Crystal muttered.

  “Are we taking the meds to the doctors then?” Nina said.

  “Yeah,” Crystal said. “And we gotta get around before dark. For sure.”

  There were different ways to get around Chicago at night and some were safer than others. Crystal knew the sewers and sometimes they were a good option if things were particularly dangerous. When word came around that the Lucian might be coming (for sure, this time), Nina insisted on getting around by sewer.