Tony knew the voice issuing from the giant. He understood intimately the new set to the creature’s shoulders, and the straightness of his back.
They had found The True One.
“You were stitched together,” Tony said. “Built from the parts of many of your children.”
The giant laughed. “How very… cyclical.” He examined his hands again. “And ironic.”
“The modern mundanes would call your state ‘meta’,” Tony said.
The One chortled. “Mundanes and their ridiculous hackneyed murder of language.”
As vampires, they did understand murder, hackneyed or otherwise.
The One stretched his massive neck. “It was like a dream, being among the vampire dead.” He snapped his fingers. “Waiting.”
Tony also stood, and Tony also wiped remains from his person, though his were of beetles and bugs. “I did my best to facilitate your speedy recovery.” He nodded toward the brambles. “There is another with a body like this one. He, too, is a sum of his parts. He allowed your return.”
The giant nodded before placing his hand over the Dagger. Like Tony, he could not touch the wood. He humphed and the entrance point vanished under a layer of ash.
“We do not truly die a second time,” Tony said. “I knew you would await my call.”
The giant laughed again, then gripped Tony’s shoulder in much the same way Tony had gripped Ivan’s earlier.
Tony would not wince under his brother’s painful grip. “I knew, when I heard the rumors,” he said. “I asked myself, ‘Who would an idiot scientist dig up and use as a base for his best work?’”
The giant formed and reformed the ash around his body, first as a nice business suit, then as a Victorian gentleman’s outfit, then as the armor Tony remembered from his days riding under his brother’s command against the Ottoman Empire.
“I no longer have mine,” Tony said, as he pointed at the ash-formed Dracul crest over the giant’s semi-beating heart.
“I do believe my true armor would no longer fit.” The giant laughed again. “This… construction… is fascinating.” He stretched out his arms and the armor contracted, once again, to a business suit.
This time, the giant clasped both of Tony’s shoulders. “Thank you, little brother,” he said. “Thank you for believing in the sanctity of our family.”
Tony would no longer allow the elves of Alfheim to call him Tony Biterson, nor would he feign thankfulness for their benevolence. No, he now had what he needed to build a true vampire empire—and to finish the task he and his brother had started long ago.
The vampire no longer called Tony had pulled from The Many the True One, the master vampire, the man whose willpower had given the demons of The Land of the Dead a purpose.
He had returned Vlad the Impaler to The Land of the Living.
Radu the Handsome held his head high. “You are welcome, my brother.”
Vlad laughed once again. “Come, Radu,” he said. “Introduce me to your friend. Ivan, is it?” He walked toward the passage between the trees.
In the moonlight, Ivan blinked and bowed, and Vlad clasped his hands behind his back. “Such a lovely world,” he said, then he stretched to his full height. “Shall we make it ours?”
Word of mouth and reviews are vital to the success of any author. If you enjoyed Monster Born please consider leaving a review. Even one sentence would be useful for other readers.
Thank you!
Join Frank Victorsson and the rest of Alfheim in Vampire Cursed….
Chapter 1
She told me her name was Ellie Jones and that I wouldn’t remember her in the morning. She smiled a small, sad smile when she said it, one of those knowing smiles that made me believe she had lost hope. Ellie Jones believed that no matter what happened, come morning, she would be an afterthought.
Magic wafted around her like thin wisps of blue, purple, and green smoke. Not strong, organized magic, but where she walked, subtle sheets of Aurora Borealis energy trailed.
All of which meant she spoke the truth.
I didn’t have to like it.
“I will remember you,” I said.
I’d come to this side of my lake—through the woods of the peninsula to the span of water out of view of my home—looking for my lost dog.
I found him, and he’d found Ellie….
Pre-order Vampire Cursed today.
The Worlds of Kris Austen Radcliffe
Genre-bending Science Fiction about love, family, and dragons:
Fate – Fire – Shifter – Dragon
Games of Fate
Flux of Skin
Fifth of Blood
Bonds Broken & Silent
All But Human
Men and Beasts
The Burning World
Smart Urban Fantasy:
Northern Creatures
Monster Born
Vampire Cursed (coming soon)
Elf Raised (coming soon)
Hot Contemporary Romance:
The Quidell Brothers
Thomas’s Muse
Daniel’s Fire
Robert’s Soul
Thomas’s Need
Andrew’s Kiss (coming soon)
About the Author
As a child, Kris took down a pack of hungry wolves with only a hardcover copy of The Dragonriders of Pern and a sharpened toothbrush. That fateful day set her on a path traversing many storytelling worlds—dabbles in film and comic books, time as a talent agent and a textbook photo coordinator, and a foray into nonfiction. After co-authoring Mind Shapes: Understanding the Differences in Thinking and Communication, Kris returned to academia. But she craved narrative and a richly-textured world of Fates, Shifters, and Dragons—and unexpected, true love.
Kris lives in Minnesota with her husband, two daughters, Handsome Cat, and an entire menagerie of suburban wildlife bent on destroying her house. That battered-but-true copy of Dragonriders? She found it yesterday. It’s time to pay a visit to the woodpeckers.
Connect with the author:
www.krisaustenradcliffe.com
[email protected]
Monster Born (Northern Creatures Book 1) Page 19