Crimson Storm
Page 1
Crimson Storm
A YOUNG ADULT VAMPIRE ROMANCE
Amy Patrick
Contents
ABOUT
1. Reece
2. Abigail
3. Bullies
4. Out of Time
5. A Favor
6. You Owe Me
7. Hunger Strike
8. The Smell of Blood
9. Hope for the Future
10. Blood Lust
11. Danger Ahead
12. Too Late
13. Calling a Friend
14. Something You Should Know
15. Long Haul
16. Friends Don’t Cuff Friends
17. Dangerous
18. Men’s Room
19. Spooning
20. Slow Night
21. True Nature
22. Scene of the Crime
23. A Rather Significant Detail
24. A Thing for Vampire Girls
25. Beyond My Expectations
26. Sisters
27. Calling in the Cavalry
28. Soup’s On
29. One More Look
30. Mistaken Assumption
31. What Other Reason
32. A Wise Choice
33. Charity Call
34. No Kool-Aid for Me
35. A Lovely Trip
Epilogue
Next in Series
Afterword
Also by Amy Patrick
Also by Amy Patrick
About the Author
ABOUT
Crimson Storm
Abigail Byler is a resolute pacifist. And a vampire.
Believing she can never be with the guy she loves and knowing she doesn’t fit in at the Crimson Court, Abbi has left the hills and caverns of Virginia for California and the Human-Vampire Coalition where she hopes to make the best of the unexpected turn her life has taken.
* * *
That’s easier said than done when her heart still longs for her first love, Reece—and when tensions between humans and vampires in America are rapidly increasing.
* * *
The last thing Abbi intends to do is return to the Bastion—it’s too dangerous for her there—in every way. But when her life takes another shocking twist, she may have no other choice than to make the perilous cross-country journey and face the vampire who turned her—and the one she still loves.
* * *
This time, though, she won’t be alone. And the vampire queen of the Crimson Court is not going to like it when she finds out who’s coming to dinner.
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* * *
The Crimson Accord Series
Crimson Born
Crimson Storm
Crimson Bond
Crimson Crown
The Hidden Saga
Hidden Deep (FREE DOWNLOAD)
Hidden Heart
Hidden Hope
The Sway- A Hidden Saga Companion Novella
Hidden Darkness (The Dark Court #1)
Hidden Danger (The Dark Court #2)
Hidden Desire (The Dark Court #3)
Hidden Game (The Ancient Court #1)
Hidden Magic (The Ancient Court #2)
Hidden Hero (The Ancient Court #3)
Hidden Heir
1
Reece
My brothers and I darted from the shadow of one historic building to the next in Charlottesville’s deserted open-air downtown mall, tracking the rogue vampire.
She’d hit the University of Virginia campus hard, slaughtering four students in one dorm before escaping into the night.
We weren’t sure if she was a student herself. All we knew was what we’d heard on the police scanner—a young white female had been seen running from the dorm, covered in blood, and judging from the victims’ wounds, they suspected the perpetrator had been a vampire.
Not good.
My fellow Bloodbound soldiers and I loaded up into a dark, nondescript van and speeded for the city that was far too close to the Bastion for comfort. We needed to neutralize the rogue quickly before she could call any more attention to herself—or to us.
Her trail had been easy to follow. She was a newbie for sure and had most likely not been educated at the Bastion. If she had been, she’d know how to feed on humans without killing them, or at least without making such a public mess of it.
My guess was that she was a student and had been attempting to feed on animals instead of drinking human blood after being turned. That was a sure path to crazy-town and incidents like this one.
I should know.
“There. Just to your north,” I whispered into my comm, alerting Kannon, who was closest to the rogue’s location. “She’ll come out of the alley in about two seconds.”
“Affirmative,” my friend said. “This sorority girl has just been to her last human kegger.”
Sure enough, the hint of movement I’d spotted in the dark alley was our target. The instant she stepped from between the buildings onto the main brick-lined thoroughfare of the pedestrian shopping area, Kannon tackled her and strapped her arms.
“Whoa, she’s got some kick to her,” I heard him say into his comm as I jogged toward his location with two other Bloodbound flanking me. “She must have really gorged herself on blood.”
We arrived just as Kannon flipped the girl over. Her eyes were wild, her blood-stained teeth gnashing as she struggled against the restraints.
My guess about her identity had been correct based on her attire—a dirty frat party t-shirt and a pair of tiny athletic shorts. She wore a pair of small diamond studs in her ears. Her feet were bare. The toenails were painted, as were her fingernails, so her animal-blood-induced delirium was probably a recent development.
“Hold still,” Kannon ordered, attempting to strap her ankles.
Kneeling, I held her legs so he could complete the job. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’ll get you some help. Don’t be afraid.”
Unable to kick now and most likely unable to understand me, the rogue bucked her body and screamed. She followed that up with a powerful head butt to my ribcage.
I glanced back over my shoulder to the pair of Bloodbound standing behind me—staring at their phones. “A little help here guys? I mean, I heal fast, but cracked ribs still hurt like hell.”
“Sorry,” said Michael, the younger of the two. “I was checking my feeds. Reception at the Bastion sucks.”
He squatted and pressed down on the girl’s shoulders while the other soldier, Rick, sneered. “Why do you waste your time on that garbage? I was checking my stock portfolio.”
He drew a roll of black duct tape from his pack and placed a strip over the rogue’s mouth so she couldn’t use her teeth as weapons against us. Her bite wouldn’t kill us, but it would leave evidence of vampire blood here in the mall, and I really didn’t feel like spending the rest of the evening scrubbing the brick walkway.
Completely immobilized now, the female vampire finally gave up the struggle. Kannon let out a loud breath then looked over at me and laughed.
“Well, that was easy.”
My laughter joined his. “Please tell me I wasn’t this bad.”
“Worse,” he responded with a good-natured grin.
Kannon and his team had hunted me down and captured me in an operation much like this one—only I�
��d spent several weeks on the run after turning instead of a few days.
And I’d done far more damage.
The memories haunted me. How had Abbi managed to stand being around me? I was little better than a rabid animal when they’d dragged me to the Bastion and thrown me in a medical holding cell where I’d refused treatment, refused to even speak to her.
And still she’d returned each day, spending hours on end talking to me, reading to me. Her sweet voice had reached inside my muddled brain and latched onto my last remaining shred of sanity like a lifeline.
She might have been the only person on earth who could have pulled me back from that abyss. It was a good thing there had been bars between us because my body and soul had responded to her so powerfully I’d wanted to grab her and drag her off to the cavern’s remotest corner where I could keep her all to myself forever.
I’d actually been a little afraid for her to be around me. But her quiet courage seemed to know no bounds. Neither did her sweetness. She was hands down the bravest, kindest, most beautiful person who ever lived, and I loved her beyond reason.
And there it was, the sweet pain that wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed like a boa constrictor anytime I let myself think of her. Which was far too often.
The torment of her absence was only slightly better than the agony of her presence. Having her close but always out of reach would have driven me mad.
I would have eventually caved to the temptation and gotten us both beheaded.
So it was good she was gone.
Really, it was.
I was just sad about the way she’d left. I knew Abbi didn’t understand my decision to take the Bloodbound vows and pledge myself to Imogen for eternity.
But even if I hadn’t gone through with the ceremony, even if Abbi hadn’t left, I would still have lost her. Because Imogen would have told her what I did.
There was no way Abbi’s love for me could survive that.
Kannon and I lifted the rogue vampire between us as our brothers kept watch. Moving toward the van parked nearby, we passed under a streetlamp, and I caught the glint of a ring on the girl’s left ring finger. It was a silver band with an eternity knot design. A promise ring.
Another spasm gripped my heart. I’d given Abbie the vampire equivalent when I’d handed her that pendant necklace containing my blood. It was a stupid thing to do, but I hadn’t been able to bear thinking of her out there in the world, moving on with her life and forgetting about me entirely.
She’d probably tossed it in the garbage by now—as she should. It had been over a year since she’d left the Bastion with her friends, Kelly and Heather, and gone to Los Angeles to work for Sadie Aldritch, the leader of the Vampire-Human Coalition.
She was better off there. There was certainly nothing left for her here.
Though it killed me to think of her with some other guy taking moonlight strolls along the Southern California beaches...
Stop thinking about it
Though it killed me to picture her with someone else, I did want her to be happy. I wanted her to be safe.
I couldn’t guarantee she’d be either of those things if she was here with me. And so I would try—once again—to let go of her memory the way I’d let go of her hand that night.
Maybe one day I’d actually succeed.
2
Abigail
I missed butter. The hand-churned kind Mamm used to melt and pour over kettle-cooked popcorn back when I was a kid.
Back when I was human.
Rubbing a palm over my stomach to dismiss the phantom hunger pangs, I watched the guard in his tower shove his hand into a bag of the microwave kind. Each time he brought a handful of popcorn to his mouth and chewed, the glowing tip of his specially outfitted ultraviolet assault rifle bobbed up and down.
“What are you looking at leech?” he barked when he noticed me. “Keep moving. And stop staring at me.”
He probably thought he was clever for calling me a slur I’d heard at least a hundred times before.
I shook my head and strolled along the perimeter of the yard. The man acted as if I was the one with the deadly weapon in hand, as if I could mesmerize him with just a look.
Of course that was ridiculous, one of the many bits of misinformation that had been spread about my race. At least it kept the guards here at the Merced Safety Center from getting too close to us.
Unless you counted Gatlin. He liked getting a little too close to the female vampires being detained here—especially during daylight hours when we were nearly catatonic with sleepiness. I did my best to stay as far away from him as possible and off his radar.
At the moment, he patrolled the western perimeter of the exercise yard, walking back and forth just outside the twenty-foot-high electrified fence that separated the humans from the vampires, the wide brim of his ever-present Outback hat shading his smug face from the bright overhead security lights.
He was fond of tipping that hat in mock respect whenever he noticed one of the elder vampires looking at him.
“Top of the evening to ya,” he’d say and sneer in that mean way of his, perhaps unaware that the oldest among us were often the most dangerous.
Luckily for Gatlin—and all his fellow prison guards—the vampires in this place were more likely than not pacifists, the very last among our kind who’d bite them or even want to.
That was how we’d ended up here—we’d come along peacefully when we’d been told our sudden arrests were “just routine” and would be “resolved quickly” and that our property and personal belongings would be restored to us “with all haste” after it was confirmed we weren’t part of the violent vampire resistance movement.
All lies, sadly. I’d been here for the past month without so much as a meeting with the facility’s administrators or a lawyer or judge or anyone else who might answer my questions, take my statement, or let me go home.
My situation wasn’t unique. Nathaniel Bradford, an ancient vampire who’d arrived at the Safety Center a week ago, told me he’d simply been going for a stroll outside his Beverly Hills mansion when the police slapped platinum handcuffs on his wrists and forced him into the back of a cruiser.
He’d been growing increasingly frustrated as the days passed with no resolution. Like me, he paced the perimeter fence tonight, trapped and afraid.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said to Gatlin through the electrified chain link. “There has been a mistake. I’ve committed no crime. I demand to speak to the administrator.”
The guard laughed. “Well you’d better stop demanding or what you’ll get is one of these solar bullets in your cold, white ass,” he shouted.
He needn’t have yelled. Nathaniel could have heard the slightest whisper clearly. We all could.
“You can’t hold me here for no reason,” the elderly vampire informed him. “This is America. I’m an American citizen. I’m entitled to due process. I fought in the Revolutionary War for Heaven’s sake.”
The guard looked more rattled than I’d ever seen him. He took a step back. “Well then you’re old enough to know better than to argue with the business end of a UV rifle.”
“I doubt you even know how to handle that weapon,” Nathaniel taunted. “Your hands are shaking like those of an untested youth. In fact, I’ve fought alongside fifteen-year-olds who quaked less. If we’d had cowards like you in our ranks, the Revolution would have failed, and you’d be speaking with a British accent, which I must say in your case would be a vast improvement.”
The guard shouldered his rifle, pointing it at Nathaniel’s face. “I’ll show you how I handle my weapon, you blood-sucking parasite.”
Gesturing to one side with the gun barrel, he said, “Now shut your mouth and get back to your area before I light you up—permanently.”
The ancient vampire’s fangs emerged from between his lips.
Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good.
It wasn’t a purposely threatening expression or even one o
f thirst. It was simply a natural vampire reflex, a reaction to the bald aggression in the other man’s voice. I’d had to work hard to hide the automatic response in myself at times when I’d been taunted and insulted by the guards here.
Gatlin backstepped farther from the fence, still training his rifle on Nathaniel.
“Get back. Don’t think showing me your fangers is gonna get you in to see the warden any sooner. You think you’re so smart—I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out by now... you’re never getting out of here. None of you stiffs are.”
A growl rumbled in Nathaniel’s throat, but his voice remained calm. “I’m afraid that answer is unacceptable.”
His fangs slid fully from their sockets, their ultra-white color gleaming in the moonlight as he approached the fence, stretching his hands toward it as if to rip the steel links apart.
Maybe he could. I’d never met a vampire as old as him. I wasn’t sure what they were capable of. Maybe the electric current wouldn’t affect him as it did the younger members of our race.
His pale fingers contacted the metal. And nothing happened.
No blue spark, no buzz of high voltage. Nothing to keep Nathaniel from scaling the fence and jumping to freedom on the other side.