The sun had set on her old, hard life, and she only had beautiful sunrises to look forward to from now on.
“I love you,” Remann whispered.
She smiled. Remann’s words, and the man himself, would be hers throughout eternity.
Blood Ties
When ten-year-old Hannah Evans’s family was attacked and killed by a pack of feral vampires called Dissenters, she was rescued from death by a vampire named Nicholas. She didn’t see Nicholas again until she was a grown woman and dying. He stole the one thing she valued most, her humanity, saving her life but changing her into a half-blood vampire. She hates him for it.
Nicholas did the only thing he could to save Hannah’s life after her crushing fall from a horse. He paid a painful price when he shared his blood with her, changing her into a vampire. But his instinct was to protect her, regardless of the cost.
When they both receive mysterious photos showing a pocket of Dissenters, Nicholas and Hannah are forced to team up. As they fight the attraction that burns between them terrible secrets are exposed. Will they survive the truth, and the danger it reveals?
Chapter 1
Hannah cowered in her hiding spot, repeating the Lord’s Prayer in her head. The screams of her family had died away some time ago, but she was still too terrified to leave the sanctuary she’d found in the dark cellar beneath the kitchen floor.
Footsteps creaked above her. They were searching for her. She held her breath. Suddenly the door built into the floor above was thrown back and a tall figure, a giant in her ten-year-old mind, filled the doorway.
She bit back a scream of terror, and fresh, hot tears spilled down her cheeks. One of the demons had found her. Within moments, strong arms encircled her waist. She let out a piercing scream. Hannah wouldn’t go down without a fight, and fight she did—much like a wildcat’s cub pulled from its’ mother’s den.
Damp cotton sheets twisted around Hannah Evans’s body, and she kicked and thrashed against them. She cried out in frustration as her eyes flew open. The ceiling fan whirled above her in lazy circles, its blades drawing long-armed shadows across the ceiling. Its soft whine was drowned out by her ragged, shallow breaths.
She blinked against the glare of the lamp she left on each night. Darkness frightened her. She brushed away the hair that had wrapped around her face and spat an errant lock from her mouth. Looking toward her nightstand, she read the red digital display of her alarm clock. Three-sixteen AM. After flinging an arm across her face, she groaned.
The central air kicked on, and she stretched her arms over her head while yawning. Her tense muscles relaxed some as she relished the cold air that washed over her skin. Vampires ran hot, even half-bloods.
Reluctantly, she slid from the damp sheets and walked into her small bathroom, where she turned on the shower. After she adjusted the stream to cool, she stepped beneath the sharp spray of water.
She sighed. It was good to be home.
Hannah had spent the last week stalking a pocket of Dissenters, feral vampires that threatened to expose the existence of their species. She’d staked out an abandoned farmhouse the pocket had called home. A week spent crawling around in a dusty, old cornfield in Iowa wasn’t her idea of a vacation, but she’d been in worse places. An article in the small town’s local newspaper told the story at the end of the hunt: Local Abandoned Farmhouse Destroyed by Homemade Explosive.
The article further read that there were no injuries and authorities had no suspects. As a Hunter in the Order of Terminus, Hannah did her job above expectations despite having never taken human blood. As a half-blood she only possessed a portion of a vampire’s abilities, but she made up for it with smarts and stealth. She prided herself on the skills she’d perfected over the past hundred years.
Hannah leaned her face into the shower and allowed the water to wash away the final traces of sleep. The same nightmare had haunted her since before she’d been changed. It was a remnant of her childhood from when she’d lost her family. She scrubbed her skin with a bar of soap until the lavender-scented suds did their job.
The doorbell chimed, and she knit her brows together. Who the heck could be here at this hour?
She shut off the water and stepped from the shower, wrapping a towel around her body before cautiously approaching the front door.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
Silence answered her. Nothing moved outside.
She peered through the peephole at the empty front porch. Then she cracked open the door and peeked out.
A large manila envelope lay just past the doorjamb. After searching the dark, deserted street, she stepped outside. Not a soul stirred at such an early hour. She picked up the envelope and carried it inside. Turning it over, she searched for some sort of identification or an address, but saw nothing. Her curiosity piqued, she tore open the envelope to find two black-and-white photos.
One was of a group of four individuals, none of whom looked familiar. Frowning, she flipped over the photograph. Dissenter pocket #105211 was scrawled across the back.
“What the heck?” She blinked. Davis, her Contact, hadn’t given her a heads-up on any new assignment. And the writing was in a delicate calligraphy she didn’t recognize.
She pulled out the second photo, a close-up of one of the vampires in the first photograph. A young male in his late teens stared at her from the still shot. He was tall and youthfully lean, with features that would’ve filled out to be ruggedly masculine if he were capable of aging. He had a head full of black hair and a dark, piercing gaze that seemed oddly familiar.
She turned on a nearby lamp and studied the boy more closely. Then she flipped the photo over. Case belonging to Nicholas Black, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was jotted across the back. Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth.
Nicholas?
Her stomach did a flip-flop. She hadn’t seen him since she’d turned twenty-eight—over a century before—and she’d had no intention of laying eyes on the man ever again, not after what he’d taken from her.
“What is this about? Who would’ve sent this to me?” Hannah asked aloud.
She stared at the photo of the young man. Something familiar in his features tickled the back of her mind—his slightly aquiline nose, full lips, and harsh, penetrating eyes. She ground her teeth together in concentration.
Then it clicked.
It was just after midnight on her tenth birthday. Her aunt, uncle, and two young cousins were visiting her parents’ Nebraska homestead for her party later that day. A noise had disturbed her sleep and she sat up in bed, searching the darkness. Only her two little cousins, Freddy and Edith, were in the room sleeping soundly on a cot nearby.
The demons, savage and hellish, appeared from the shadows, attacking her family while they lay in their beds. Hannah managed to scramble, unhurt, through the blood and gore to the cellar under the kitchen floor. She hid beneath the canning shelves with her hands clamped over her ears, trying to deafen the screams of her family and the growls of the demons. She stifled her own sobs, terrified that she’d be discovered.
Before her escape she’d seen one of the demon’s faces—a slightly aquiline nose with full lips drawn tight over sharp, bloodied teeth. Its hard, black eyes had darkened to an awful red color in their sockets.
She sucked in a sharp breath. She was holding a photograph of one of the Dissenters who had murdered her family. She’d searched over the years, but hadn’t been able to catch a solid lead on the pocket of feral vampires that had stolen them from her. Now only one man stood in the way of her revenge.
Hannah would have to make the trip to Oklahoma City and face the man who’d passed on this curse to her, tying himself to her in blood. Forever.
* * * *
The photographs had been slipped beneath Nicholas’s office door sometime during the night. He sat at his antique oak desk and leaned back in the matching leather chair. He laced his hands together on top of his head.
It was Christopher, no doubt about it.
One of the photographs showed a group of four Dissenters, one of whom was his brother. The others had their backs to the camera. Two males and a female he couldn’t recognize from their positions. His little brother still looked so young and…alive. Forever seventeen, the age he’d been when he’d been changed.
Seeing the picture of the boy broke Nicholas’s heart. He’d sworn to protect Christopher after their father passed away at sea and their mother became too distraught to care for him. It was natural for Nicholas to take the role, since he was fifteen years older than his sibling.
After following more dead ends than he could count regarding Christopher, Nicholas finally had his brother in his grasp in the mid-eighteen hundreds but had been unable to destroy his own flesh and blood. His moment of weakness had led to Christopher joining a pocket of Dissenters who murdered the family of a ten-year-old girl. The memory of the child with the wide, hazel eyes he’d found cowering in a cellar still haunted him to this day. Her straw-colored hair had hung in limp, dark red tendrils, and her face was streaked with dirt, tears, and her family’s blood. Having tracked the pocket that included his brother to the Nebraska homestead, he had been too late to save six of the seven family members.
For a moment, he wondered how Hannah was doing. He had left the child with his close friend Thomas to act as her foster father. Nicholas had kept close tabs on her as she’d grown into womanhood, making it a point to keep the girl at a distance, especially when she’d grown into a striking young woman. He didn’t have room in his heart or his life to let someone close, not since the loss of his wife.
A brief note included with the photos stated that his brother had joined a Dissenter pocket located in an abandoned mine in southern Montana. As a Contact for the Order of Terminus, he was used to receiving anonymous tips, but there was something familiar in the delicate calligraphy of the note. He studied the handwriting, but was unable to place it.
Nicholas clenched his fists at his sides and closed his eyes.
A knock on the door a moment later brought him from his thoughts. It was three o’clock, and his new client had arrived. Working as a private investigator served as a cover for his job as a Contact. His newest client was a man who suspected his wife of cheating on him with their stockbroker. He sighed. He’d had too many similar cases lately.
“Is anyone faithful anymore?” he asked aloud to no one. He rose and stretched his tensed muscles before going to answer the door.
* * * *
It was nearly six that evening when another knock rattled Nicholas’s office door. He knit his eyebrows together. He wasn’t expecting another client, and certainly not so late. With a weary sigh, he rose from his desk and made his way to the door.
“Who is it?” he called out.
His answer was another round of urgent pounding.
He placed one hand on the door handle and positioned his body off to the side in case the person banging planned on barging into the room. His vampiric senses told him a fellow vampire was paying him a visit. He tensed his muscles and flung the door open.
Nicholas’s eyes popped open, and his jaw dropped.
“Hannah?” He stared with disbelief into the wide, hazel eyes he knew by heart.
“What the hell is going on here?” She shoved a photograph in his face.
Nicholas stepped aside to allow her to enter the room. He took the photo from her hand and was surprised to see it was one of the same photos he’d been given. The close-up of Christopher.
Shit. His gaze darted to Hannah’s emotion-filled face. He’d kept his brother’s involvement in the murder of her family from her because he hadn’t wanted to explain that her family’s deaths were his responsibility. He could’ve stopped it from happening if he’d done his job as a Hunter. That failure was the reason he’d chosen to become a Contact.
* * * *
Hannah stared bitterly into the face of the man she’d sworn to hate for the rest of her life.
At twenty-eight, she’d had a riding accident and been crushed beneath her fallen horse. Her adoptive father, Thomas, the kind-hearted vampire with whom Nicholas had left her, had respected her wish to die human. She’d feared losing her soul more than losing her life. She didn’t want to become like one of the demons who had killed her family. Yet Nicholas had appeared at her bedside, and as she’d pleaded with him to let her die, he’d taken her blood and passed his own to her.
She searched for her old feelings of anger, but instead found herself unexpectedly struck by his overwhelming masculinity. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a toned, muscular physique, he had a body meant to catch a woman’s attention. His raven hair was a little long and unruly, shadowing a rigid, angular face. His most definable feature were his eyes. Onyx in shade, they sliced into Hannah. She sucked in a breath and took an involuntary step back. His scent, a pungent male musk mixed with a spicy, vampiric odor, left her a bit dizzy.
Nicholas’s gaze returned to the photo. Walking back to his desk, he threw it on top of some papers. Then he turned, leaned against the heavy oak desk that dominated the room, and gripped its edge.
“Where did you get that photo?” Nicholas asked, his voice the familiar baritone Hannah remembered from her youth. It sent an unexpected shiver down her spine.
Suddenly feeling awkward, she darted her gaze down only to have it rest on his groin. Her face flushed hot, and she moved her attention to an abstract painting hanging on the wall. Nicholas cocked a curious brow.
“I found the picture on my…” She licked her dry lips and forced a steely edge into her voice. “...on my doorstep last night.” Feigning confidence, she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “Is this your case?”
Nicholas didn’t answer.
Her temper flared. Good. Anger, I can use. “Damn it, Nicholas!” she shouted. “You do realize who’s in the photo, right?”
Something dark flitted over his features. His hands tightened on the desk, and his nostrils flared.
“Who’s in the photo, Hannah?” he asked. The deep pitch of his voice did funny things to her insides.
“Don’t play games with me!” She clenched her teeth, then sucked in a breath. Anger was an asset as long as she could control it. “That vampire is one of the Dissenters who attacked my family.”
A lump formed in her throat, and she drew her bottom lip between her teeth. She blinked rapidly, looking down as unexpected tears threatened to spill over. The idea of crying in front of Nicholas horrified her, but she was fighting a losing battle.
His light touch to her upper arm made her start, and she lifted her eyes to find him beside her. He gave her arm a gentle squeeze.
“Hannah, I’ll take care of it. Go home.” His voice was as gentle as his touch. She stepped away from him, and he let his hand drop.
“No,” Hannah said, disliking the quaver in her voice. “By all rights, this is my case. I deserve to be the Hunter on this one.”
Nicholas shook his head. “I’ll take care of it, Hannah,” he repeated more firmly.
She sniffed. Pity lay in the dark depths of his gaze. That gave her strength. She hated pity.
“I’m not letting this go, Nicholas. He’s mine.”
Nicholas frowned and laced his fingers through his hair. His hands came to rest on the top of his head. He gave her a stern look.
“This isn’t up for discussion, Hannah.”
“No,” she agreed. She placed her hands on her hips. “It isn’t.”
Chapter 2
Nicholas drove his SUV hard. He wanted to get to the old, abandoned mine before the Dissenter pocket had time to harm anyone or leave the area. In their blood-driven madness, Dissenters had a nasty habit of leaving behind a trail of fear and carnage. It was something most vampires found abhorrent. They preferred to live peacefully and secretly among humanity.
Hannah had dozed off some time ago, her breath slowing to soft, even gasps. She looked so peaceful in the silvery
light of the full moon that shone through the SUV’s windows. For the umpteenth time, he reconsidered his decision to allow her to come with him. Of course, being too stubborn for her own good, she would have followed him regardless. At least this way he’d be able to keep her out of danger.
Hannah resented him for changing her, but he couldn’t have stood by and watched her die. Her body had been mangled and crushed, and she’d been unable to swallow the screams of agony that had reached his ears long before he’d gotten to her bedside.
She mumbled in her sleep, snapping him back to the present.
“Nicholas.” His name was but a whisper on her lips.
He darted his gaze to the passenger seat. She moved restlessly, as if she were about to wake, before settling into a more comfortable position. Her breathing resumed its deep, steady rate. Sleep was something Nicholas missed. Since becoming a full-blood, he didn’t sleep, and he missed the reprieve it brought.
All at once, Hannah let out a horrendous scream that shattered the quiet air inside the SUV’s cab. Shocked, Nicholas overcorrected and the vehicle jumped the median before coming to an abrupt halt.
“Hannah!” Nicholas shouted.
She continued screaming, her eyes wide in terror. She thrashed about and banged her head against the side glass. He reached across the console and grasped her shoulders, trying to calm her movements. She was lost in some sort of nightmare.
“Edith, no. I can’t get to you!” Hannah said in a ragged wail.
“Honey, wake up!”
Her hands came up and she clawed at his fingers, digging so deep one of her nails snapped back. She stared at him, a lost expression on her face. Then she blinked, seeming to recognize him at last. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
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