E.V.I.E.: 13 Slayers, 13 Missions
Page 38
The Touch of Snow
Fighting the Lies
Fallen for Shame
Shattered Fears
Hidden Pain
Stolen Choices
A Deadly Affair
The Power of a Myth – Coming Soon
Banishing Regrets – Coming Soon.
Other works
Easy Rumba – A Boudreaux Universe Novel
Sing with Me – A With me In Seattle Novel
Frozen Sector – Zombie World 2099
Oliver – Blaire’s World
Redemption – The Cavalieri
Zhànshì – A Sinister Retelling
Happily Ever Crowned – with Lexi C. Foss
Happily Ever Bitten – with Lexi C. Foss
Beauty’s War – with Claire Marta
Apollo’s Protection – with Claire Marta
Cursed Angels – with Dani René
See my website for more information: https://authorannaedwards.com
About Anna Edwards
Anna Edwards is a British author from the depths of the rural countryside near London. When she has some spare time, she can also be found writing poetry, baking cakes (and eating them), or behind a camera snapping like a mad paparazzo. She’s an avid reader who turned to writing to combat her depression and anxiety. She has a love of traveling and likes to bring this to her stories to give them the air of reality. She likes her heroes hot and hunky with a dirty mouth, her heroines demure but with spunk, and her books full of dramatic suspense.
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Immortal Hearts
By C.R. Jane
Crimson Love Book 1
Immortal Hearts by C. R. Jane
Copyright © 2020 by C. R. Jane
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
For permissions contact:
crjaneauthor@gmail.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Proof: Bookish Dreams Editing
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About Immortal Hearts
Olivia Miller was cursed, but some people would call it a blessing.
I lost everything in a fire. The flames licked and burned away at everything I knew until I was completely and utterly alone.
And then I met them.
Noah, Wyatt, and Ryan Masterson were my everything.
Until they weren’t.
They were killed, and I was left alone. Again.
That was when I entered a world I never knew existed. I found monsters hiding in plain sight. Monsters I could take my pain out on.
Becoming a slayer should have brought me peace and justice for the life I lost. But things don’t always go the way you want, and things aren’t always as they seem.
What if the past wasn’t what I thought? What if the vampires aren’t the monsters I thought they were?
I was promised a love that would last forever. I just didn’t know that the only hope for forever would be an immortal heart.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
About C.R. Jane
Other Books by C.R. Jane
Prologue
Today was the first day since I was eight that I’d woken up not wishing I was dead.
And I had no idea why.
A knock sounded on the door just then. I sighed and dragged myself off the couch that I’d been sleeping on for the past two weeks, while my case worker found a new home for me. It was either her couch or the homeless shelter down the street.
I guessed I’d picked the lesser evil.
“Five minutes and we’re leaving, Olivia,” Lorraine called through the door. Lorraine was the perfect name for a case worker who was burnt out but still pretended to give a fuck.
“I’m coming,” I called out as I looked around the room, trying to see if I’d missed anything. I had so few possessions that it would honestly be devastating for me to forget even one thing. I stared at the picture of my parents that I’d kept on the coffee table and wondered, not for the first time, if I should just stop carrying it around.
We’d been the perfect family.
Until we weren’t.
Until the day that Dad had come home early from work and found my mom getting screwed by the next-door neighbor while I was at school.
She’d begged for forgiveness. But she broke something in my father with her betrayal. He tied her to their bed that night, where she’d broken their marriage vows, and set the house on fire, uncaring that I was upstairs asleep in my room. A bullet in the brain for both of them ensured they wouldn’t feel the flames.
I only survived because the firemen showed up just in time to get me out. Five days later, after I’d recovered enough from smoke inhalation, I was a ward of the state.
I’d been reborn in that fire that night.
Six years later, and you would’ve never recognized me from the girl I used to be.
“Olivia,” Lorraine called from downstairs, frustration threaded through her voice.
Telling myself that I would throw the picture of my parents away later, I stuffed it into my thread-worn black duffle and headed out the door of the room without a backwards glance.
At this point, I was used to being shuffled from place to place.
It wasn’t enough to be known as the girl whose parents didn’t care if they burned her alive. I also had to be cursed.
I called it a curse, but others would call the weird things that happened to me a blessing, I suppose.
If they were psychopaths at least.
From the start of my journey as an orphan, things had happened.
Bad things.
Like after my first foster father had snuck into my room that first night, he’d fallen down the stairs and broke his neck after he left.
Like when Diedra Park had stolen my only doll and had an allergic reaction at dinner that night, forcing her to spend the next week in the hospital.
Like when one of my foster mom’s had beaten me with a belt and then lost her job and her house within the next day.
Things just happened to people that did me wrong. Things that I had no control over and didn’t cause. Obviously, no one could ever prove that I was behind all the bad things that happened, because I had nothing to do with it, but it made it so my stays in my various foster homes were pretty short.
So as I said, I was cursed, but some people would call it a blessing.
“Are you listening to me?” Lorraine sighed.
“I’m running out of options for you. You’ve got to make this one work,” she admonished me, her frizzy orange curls bobbing up and down like little worms were wriggling on her head as she spoke.
“I’ll try my best,” I told her half-heartedly.
My heart did a weird little skip though just then. It had been doing that since I’d woken up. It was almost like I was excited.
I almost laughed at how preposterous that was. Olivia Crawley didn’t get “excited.” Morose…maybe. Sarcastic…sure. But excited?
That was impossible.
Lorraine chattered throughout the drive, but I was a master at blocking her out at this point. I probably should’ve been grateful that she’d somehow decided to stick with me despite everything, but I’d long ago stopped caring what happened to me and I didn’t understand when people like Lorraine pretended to care.
I sat up straighter in my seat when I realized that we’d exited the slums and the houses we were passing were steadily growing larger and larger.
I’d only ever fostered in the slums and my family had been solidly blue collar before that, so it felt a little bit like I’d entered a new world as Lorraine turned onto a street guarded by a full-on black iron gate and security building.
I looked at Lorraine like she had lost her mind. “Is this some kind of motivation tool you’re trying? Drive into a rich neighborhood and tell me that I too could live here if I just expend some effort?”
She rolled her eyes at me while looking strangely excited as she gave her name to the guard, dressed in a legit uniform, who had come up to our window.
That weird feeling I’d had all morning…it was only getting worse. The butterflies raging in there had turned into a freaking flock of seagulls.
“What are we doing here?” I hissed at her as we proceeded through the gates. Lorraine loved to give pep talks and inspirational lessons and examples, but she was taking this one a little bit too far.
We winded our way through the neighborhood that was filled with houses I’d only seen in magazines. If Brad Pitt suddenly walked out the front door of one of these places, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The houses were that nice.
She stopped at a white washed colonial mansion complete with Corinthian pillars, and I was tempted to take off running. Right after I threw up.
“I want you to give these people a chance,” she cautioned me. “This family just started fostering, so they don’t know about your…colorful past.”
I snorted, eliciting a frown from her. “I mean it, Olivia. I checked these people out personally. I think this could be the place for you.”
It took a lot for me not to roll my eyes. I’d heard this speech before. Every new foster family was “the one” according to Lorraine.
She was wrong every time.
The butterflies in my stomach seemed to strangely believe her this time though.
I grabbed my bag and dutifully followed Lorraine up the drive and then up a narrow sidewalk towards the imposing nine-foot-tall double doors that looked like they belonged on a castle. I tried to keep the negative self-talk that I was so good at out of my head.
I won’t be disappointed no matter what happens because I don’t have any expectations, I told myself. It was the same speech I always gave. And just like the one that Lorraine always gave, it was a lie.
Lorraine straightened her too tight pantsuit and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, the huge door was thrown open, making me jump back in surprise.
Two excited faces peeked out from behind the door. One was a stunningly beautiful woman with vibrant, kind, brown eyes and perfectly coiffed blonde hair. The other was a handsome man with salt and pepper black hair and piercing blue eyes.
I’d never had one person, let alone two, look so excited to see me at the door.
Something that felt oddly like hope leaped around my stomach.
“There she is,” the woman all but squealed. “Our new daughter!” The man smiled at me reassuringly.
That urge to run hit me again. Something told me that once I stepped into this house, I would be ruined for good if I was forced to leave. My already ruined heart wouldn’t be able to handle it.
I tugged on Lorraine’s blouse, prepared to beg her to leave, but she ignored me as she eagerly stepped inside the mansion.
I hovered just outside the doors while the couple expectantly watched me. Maybe I could just run away, live off the streets.
I knew how stupid the idea was, but I was terrified of this new unknown. Taking a deep breath and acknowledging I probably would be dead in a day if I tried to make it on the streets, I stepped inside.
My jaw dropped again as I looked at the large two story entryway I found myself in. Two winding staircases were on each side of the room. The floor was made of a grey marble tile set up in a herringbone pattern, and straight ahead, in between the stairs, was a hallway that led into what looked like a living room that would be right at home in the White House.
Who were these people?
After I’d absorbed my surroundings, I reluctantly dragged my gaze to the two people in front of me who were practically bouncing up and down with excitement as they stared at me.
Lorraine was standing by them with a smug look on her face, as if she knew she’d finally done her job well.
“Olivia, these are the Masterson’s,” she said proudly.
I shifted awkwardly on my feet. “Hi,” I muttered.
With the way their smiles grew, you would have thought that I’d just recited the Iliad from memory instead of mumbling a greeting.
The woman stepped forward, wringing her hands together in a way that was actually comforting, because it showed she was nervous too.
I’d never had a foster family be nervous to have me. I was just another paycheck to them, so what was there ever to be nervous about?
This woman didn’t seem to have gotten that memo as she continued to walk towards me. I made myself stay in place.
She held out a trembling hand, her brown eyes locked on me warmly. “Olivia,” she said softly. “I’m Rachel Masterson. We’re so excited to have you here.” Her eyes started to tear up, so I quickly extended my hand to shake hers, alarmed at her tears. I didn’t do well with tears.
The man, Mr. Masterson I assumed, quickly walked forward and put his arm around his wife comfortingly before extending his hand. “Forgive Rachel. We’re just so excited to have you here. As soon as we got your file from Lorraine, we just knew you were the piece of our family we’ve been missing all this time.” He cleared his throat as his eyes glistened alarmingly, just like his wife’s. “I’m Daniel.”
Letting go of Rachel’s hand, I shook Daniel’s hand. I searched both of their gazes, trying to see what ulterior motives were hiding within their depths.
“Well, isn’t this wonderful,” chimed Lorraine, shaking us all out of the reverie we’d just been under as we stared at one another. “I’ll just be off now. I have two other appointments to take care of today. I’ll check in on you all in a few days.”
I pulled my hand from Daniel’s warm grip, panicked. I may not like Lorraine, but she was familiar. I’d never panicked at her departure before, but I was panicking now.
“Are you sure you don’t need to stay any longer? You haven’t even seen my new room,” I told her in a high-pitched voice.
But she was already halfway out the door, throwing me a hurried wave as she all but sprinted back to her car. Evidently, she had read me and wasn’t going to give me a chance to make a scene.
It was just me and the Masterson’s now. “Can we give you a tour?” Rachel asked brightly, gesturing towards the room I could see beyond the stairs.
“Sure,” I answered in a tone that I hoped sounded friendly. These people were freaking me out with how nice they seemed.
Daniel took my bag, and I again quelled the panic that vibrated through
my body at being without my only belongings. “I’ll have Jared take this to your room.”
“Jared’s our house manager,” explained Rachel. “He helps run the household so we can worry about our business.”
My eyes must have been wide at her explanation, because a faint blush rose up on her cheeks. “Y-You’ll love him,” she stammered.
I was really bad at this whole thing. The tour stayed awkward for the rest of the duration. I’d never been in a house that had an indoor and an outdoor pool, two kitchens, three living rooms, a bowling alley, a gym, and a theater room. I shouldn’t have been shocked when we walked into the indoor full-size basketball court…but I was.
“This was the boys’ favorite part of the house when we walked through it,” Daniel remarked with an amused laugh.
“The boys?” I asked curiously, my mind temporarily taken off the fact that this house tour was like a real-life episode of MTV Cribs. I mean really…what did these people do for money? And why in the world did they want to bring a foster kid into it?
Rachel frowned. “Did Lorraine not tell you anything about us?”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t ever really tell me much.”
“How many homes have you been in, honey?” she asked softly as she reached out her hand to touch my shoulder.
I flinched back, and a sympathetic look grew in her gaze.
“A lot.” I responded stiffly. “And I’m sure this won’t be the last.”