Seth leveled his rifle at Rylie. He stared at her down the barrel, meeting her reflective golden gaze. She was a beautiful wolf, much more slender than Jericho, and more catlike than the one Seth killed earlier. Her shaggy mane was golden blonde and matted at the throat where Jericho had torn into her.
Something in her eyes was human. She recognized him. Her lip curled over her fangs.
He tried to get onto his knees so he could brace himself better, but it was hard to balance on one leg. And now he was starting to freeze. Seth could barely move. If she attacked, he wouldn’t be able to get away.
His finger tensed on the trigger, but he didn’t squeeze even though every instinct told him he should.
Seth could end the horrors of Gray Mountain if he killed her. She wasn’t Rylie anymore. The wolf had taken her, and she was evil now.
But still, he didn’t fire.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Rylie lowered her head and her lips slid back over her sharp teeth.
She turned and limped down the rocky slope toward the trees. Her left leg was mangled, and blood dripped onto the rocks from her throat.
Her back faced him. It was time to shoot.
But she hadn’t attacked him. Seth couldn’t pull the trigger. She wasn’t just a werewolf, after all—she was Rylie.
Seth lowered his gun. Rylie disappeared into the darkness.
The Day After
Seth’s brother called him early the next morning.
“Did you finally do it?” Abel asked.
“Yeah. I killed the werewolf and his pup,” Seth said, using an earpiece so he had both hands free for packing up his camp. He loaded his rifle onto his motorcycle and checked the straps to make sure it fit snugly.
“Awesome. My bike better be in one piece.”
Seth snorted. “Your baby is fine.”
“Better be,” Abel said. He wasn’t mad. He sounded proud.
Once his saddlebags were packed with the last of his clothing and supplies, Seth limped over to his squat tent and pulled up the stakes. After sleeping on the hard ground for three months, he was eager to get home, and the sorry state of his leg didn’t help. Even though Seth had made a rough splint from a sturdy branch and bandages, he needed to get to a doctor soon if he wanted to preserve his ability to walk.
“How are you feeling?” Seth asked. Abel had avoided transforming on his sixth moon after being bitten—unlike Rylie—but it was still a struggle every time the moon went full or new. It was a long, slow road to recovery.
“As good as can be expected.” He suddenly sounded exhausted. “Mom helped.”
“Sorry, man,” Seth said.
Pulling on a helmet, he rode down the trail to the mouth of camp. He kept to the side to avoid hikers and cars, but there weren’t any people left to avoid. He didn’t cross paths with anyone on his way down the mountain.
Abel cleared his throat. “How was the hunt?”
Seth paused on the motorcycle, planting a foot on the ground to maintain his balance. He looked back over his shoulder to the forest he was leaving behind.
Both camps had been emptied out within hours of sunrise, and nobody seemed sure if they would ever reopen. After the deaths of two counselors and a camper, he doubted it.
Once he splinted his leg, Seth had spent the day cleaning up the werewolves’ bodies and searching for Rylie. He kept looking until darkness fell again. He wasn’t the only one on Gray Mountain. Rangers were still looking for Jericho, Cassidy, and Rylie, all of whom were considered “missing.”
Seth found no signs of her. Most werewolves left telltale marks on their first moon, like dozens of dead animals, destroyed trees, and a bloodstain where they transformed. They could sleep for days after the first real change, so she should have been easy to locate.
Rylie left nothing behind.
He had, however, found a backpack in the ruins of the old outpost. Most of it was uninteresting. He didn’t care about the sandwiches, half-empty water bottle, or the trail mix.
But there had been one thing of note: Rylie’s journal. He had it in his saddlebags now. He wasn’t sure if he would ever read it.
He wanted to believe the werewolf hadn’t taken over, but he feared that the alternative wasn’t much better. Rylie’s throat had been torn out by Jericho. There was a very good chance she hadn’t survived.
Seth didn’t know what he would have done if he found Rylie anyway. While his family didn’t kill werewolves in human form, they wouldn’t welcome her with open arms. He missed his chance to shoot her as a wolf. He wouldn’t be able to do it if he came across her again.
Maybe it didn’t matter. They never would have worked out. Hunter and hunted—their relationship was doomed from the start.
Seth never should have let himself fall in love with her.
It took him too long to realize Abel was still talking. “Do you hear me, Seth? I asked how your hunt went.”
“Fine,” Seth finally said. “It went fine.”
Kicking off, he tore down the trail with a cloud of dust in his wake. The camps were empty and silent, as though in mourning for what happened the night before. Even all the animals seemed to have abandoned Gray Mountain.
Distantly, somewhere beyond the lake, a mournful howl rose amongst the trees.
About SM Reine:
Hi everyone! My name is Sara, and I write urban fantasy novels as SM Reine. I collect swords, cat hair, and typewriters (which I do use for writing!). It's a good day when those three things have nothing to do with each other.
If you would like to know the instant I have a new book available, you should enlist in my Army of Evil! I'll only email you when I have a new release, which is generally no more than once a month. I can't write any faster than that. :)
More Books by SM Reine:
Seasons of the Moon
Six Moon Summer
All Hallows' Moon
Long Night Moon
Gray Moon Rising
THE CAIN CHRONICLES (completed)
New Moon Summer
Blood Moon Harvest
Moon of the Terrible
Red Rose Moon
Darkmoon
Of Wings and Wolves
Alpha Moon
THE DESCENT SERIES (completed)
Death's Hand
The Darkest Gate
Dark Union
Damnation Marked
Dire Blood
Defying Fate
Paradise Damned
Deadly Hearts (prequel short story)
THE ASCENSION SERIES (in progress)
Sacrificed in Shadow
Oaths of Blood
Ruled by Steel
Caged in Bone
Lost in Prophecy (coming soon!)
PRETERNATURAL AFFAIRS (in progress)
Witch Hunt
Silver Bullet
Hotter than Helltown (coming soon!)
TAROT WITCHES
(coming soon!)
SM Reine Newsletter
REIGN of BLOOD
Alexia Purdy
"Never tease anything that wants to eat you. My name is April Tate and my blood is the new gold. Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I'm just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise..."
In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she's willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in
trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. If you did not buy this e-book, please purchase your own copy.
Reign of Blood
Book One: Reign of Blood
Copyright © April 2012 Alexia Purdy
Cover Design by Stephanie Mooney
Cover photography contribution & © April 2012 Juan Manriquez
Edited by Michael K. Rose
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.
For my parents, Juanita and Alfonso
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, thank you to God.
I want to thank the following people who have stood by me and helped me every step of the way. I appreciate you more than I let you know. I’m indebted to you.
My brother Juan Manriquez-love you and thanks for the awesome photography. Amy Conley-your friendship and feedback is immeasurable. Scott Prussing-your continued support and encouragement are invaluable. JT Lewis- you’re the best beta reader ever! Thanks for pushing me to keep torturing poor April! Michael K. Rose- your advice has been phenomenal, thank you for all you have helped me with. Jenna Kay, Madison Daniel, Kyani Swanigan, Linna Drehmel-your friendship and prayers have been soul quenching. Madison, thanks for lending me your musical talents for the book trailer, you rock, literally. My family at Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, for being the best literary family ever, love you!
Chapter One
NEVER TEASE ANYTHING that wants to eat you. The ravenous eyes that bled death all around and peered from their windows drooled at the sight of us. The buildings loomed above as we rushed across the concrete and asphalt, hurrying to beat the sun as it set. They lurked in every window, shrouded by the shadow from the searing sun. The east sides of the buildings were crawling with vampires. They smirked and sneered their inhuman growls, hissing right at us as we jumped from sunbeam to sunbeam, racing to the awaiting van. Only the light kept them at bay. Only the light kept us from their sharp, gripping fangs.
Each block felt like it stretched longer and farther, growing with each of our steps. My mother ran hurriedly, as fast as she could with my little brother wrapped around her, molded to her chest, afraid to look up. I was dashing right next to her, afraid to get left behind and afraid to be first in any place. My backpack bounced on my back with each jump and step. I tried hard to not look up. To look upon them was to feel your soul drain of life, to wither away. Mom always said not to let them look into your eyes; they can steal your humanity and freeze you in your steps. But I did look, and I did study their red searing eyes. Even while running, I had glanced up into their pale, grey ashen faces. I waited for them to take my soul; I waited and discovered that I was immune. Immune to their mind control and their deepest desire. I wanted to smile and flip them off but I didn’t think that my mother would appreciate that. I wasn’t sure if she or my brother were immune. I wasn’t about to piss her off by admitting that I had given in to such a temptation and had stared eye to eye with monsters.
So for now, we ran. We ran to our awaiting van where mom tied my little brother into his seat and slid quickly into the driver’s seat, turning the ignition and slamming the gas as though our lives depended on it. Actually, they very much did. Soon the sun would fade, inhaled into shadows and we would be surrounded by monsters capable of draining our bodies of every little drop of crimson blood. They did not discriminate. They would rip even me and my younger brother to shreds. For now, they waited in their makeshift graveyard; the city’s dilapidated buildings and streets.
I stared out the windows of the van and hugged my knees to my chest. Mom had her serious and stern face on. Sometimes I wish I could see her smile again, like the old days, before any of this happened. Before foraging for food had become an absolute for survival. Before running was a daily occurrence. Seeing her hair streaked with grey was not something I thought I would see so soon. She wasn’t that old.
Times like these, even I felt old.
We left the city limits well before sunset. We were safer in the rural areas, where vampires feared to tread, too far from the shelters of the concrete jungles. I learned early on that some part of their humanity must still be intact because unlike the stories and movies I had heard and seen about vampires, these ones hated to sleep in the dirt. Oh, and all that crap about mirrors and garlic? Definitely not true. Stake to the heart? I had found that it did work but decapitation was a much more successful option. Missing the heart was too easy a mistake. Crosses and holy water? Well, that does work but you must be a believer for it to work as intended. If you did not believe, well, let’s just say you might as well be throwing plain water at them.
An arsenal of swords, crosses and faith was pretty much all I needed. It had been just a year since the virus had turned more than three quarters of the population of the Americas into blood-seeking walking dead. Most died within days of contracting the strange ailment. I’d had all the practice I needed for a lifetime in learning how to kill vampires. It definitely made for an interesting life but I would give anything for my old one. Nothing beat a cold soda and movie on a Saturday night. High school issues seemed petty compared to the ones I had now. Stability, security, all gone. Staring out the dusty windows of the van as the trees grew thicker and the dusk seeped into the sky, I felt nothing but numb. Everything was all but gone.
Chapter Two
MY NAME IS April. I live in a bunker, somewhat hidden in the sparse forests surrounding what is left of Las Vegas, Nevada. I wish I could say that the nights would bring bright lights, slot machines ringing and an endless party, but that would not be so. The valley is a graveyard, black as pitch at night and a ghost city in the day. All that is left of a city that never sleeps.
My mother Helen and my younger brother Jeremy live with me in this makeshift home buried in the side of the mountains. It’s pretty cool considering we could be out in the open where the vampires roamed at night. It was simple; we had found a door in a mountain cabin to what would’ve been part of a basement that led down a long hallway and into a cemented-in bunker. Located deep inside the bowels of the forest near Mt Charleston, this had become our home. It was ventilated somehow, had stores and stores of non-perishable food lining shelves and storage areas in a separate room.
Gallons of water sat in drums as big as me and a filtration system was set up for recycling the water that we did use. The place was wired with solar energy and generators if needed. The sleeping quarters were in a corner of the first room and consisted of three beds lined up next to one another. My mother and I took turns keeping watch during the night while Jeremy got to sleep the whole night. It wasn’t much, but it was home.
The luck we had felt when we found this place was overwhelming. It was more than we could have hoped for. By chance we had searched the plain log cabin that sat atop the bunker and discovered this entombed sanctuary. Whoever had built it had had some money to burn and probably had been some sort of apocalypse-paranoid survivalist. It didn’t matter in the end; it had not helped them any more than any money could’ve have helped in the end of times. The owners hadn’t made it back here and it had remained untouched until we’d found it. I often wondered who they had been. It wasn’t like they had lived here much, there had been no family photographs displayed across the walls or sitting on the coffee table. Nothing to mark it as lived in at all, like an abandoned and forgotten place, a just-in-case sort of place.
I hadn’t always been so physical, but since I’d had it out with a vampire or two already, I had insisted on watching tape after tape of martial arts and weapons training after those near-fatal attacks on me and my family. My mother participated in these training sessions with me, too. Our slender muscles proved our dedication. We were femme fatales. I liked it that way. Delicate flowers were for the dogs.
The days went by slowly. Some weeks we didn’t venture out at all, some weeks we explored the city every day. My mother really didn’t want to go all vigilante and kill the hives of vampires we tended to find. I had killed some smaller ones, but my thirst to extinguish them grew with every kill. I spent my days sharpening my knives and arrows. I’d spend hours in the hunting stores, running my hands over the variety of weapons, guns, crossbows, all sorts of contraptions. I would settle on some shorter swords, machetes, daggers and crossbows. I had guns of course, but they were loud and tended to awaken the hives around us, getting them stirring earlier than we like.
Destiny's Dark Fantasy Boxed Set (Eight Book Bundle) Page 186