Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle

by V M Black

  I blasted through two stop signs and a red light onto Baltimore Avenue, heading north out of town and away from the slow traffic of the city. I managed to talk myself into letting go of the steering wheel with one hand long enough to tentatively feel my back where the creature’s claws had slashed it. The skin was smooth and unbroken already, though my blood had soaked through my shredded shirt and hoodie.

  I had to call Dorian. Whatever he had done to me, he was the only one I knew who might be able to match the strength of the thing that attacked me.

  And he was the only one who would possibly believe me—even though I was certain that the attack was somehow ultimately his fault. I’d been alive for nearly twenty-two years, and supernatural creatures had never shown any special interest in me until I’d met him.

  Merging into traffic, I fumbled in my hoodie pocket for my phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  No. Oh, hell, no.

  I grabbed at my hoodie, squeezing the fabric frantically in one hand as the car hurtled down the overpass that crossed the Beltway.

  It was empty. The hoodie was empty.

  My heart accelerating, I dug around the seat, patting every part I could reach. I even bent to scrabble in the driver’s footwell.

  Nothing.

  The phone must have fallen out when I jumped into the car. It was gone.

  It can’t be gone. It just can’t. I risked a glance around the compartment, just in case I had somehow missed it in my blind groping. But it really wasn’t there.

  I looked up again just as I started to swerve out of my lane. Hastily, I jerked the wheel back.

  I was completely and utterly alone. What was I going to do now?

  The wind sucked the warmth through the broken-out rear window. The Ford’s heat was on high, but still I shivered, my blood-soaked clothes chilling me to the bone.

  And I had no idea what I was going to do.

  Beyond the Beltway, Baltimore Avenue turned into a highway that led past shopping centers and apartment complexes, then swiftly gave way to cornfields and nature preserves. Already, I was in the middle of one of the long undeveloped stretches.

  I couldn’t go home, that was for sure. I could try to find Dorian’s house, but I wasn’t sure of the address, and if my attacker had any friends, surely they’d be staking it out, waiting for me to reappear.

  Lisette? Geoff?

  No. It wasn’t right to put them in danger because of me.

  But why was I in danger? What was that creature, and why had she attacked me?

  I had no idea, but I knew that Dorian was at the root of it. He had to be. Which meant he’d changed far more in my life than my blood.

  WhatamIgoingtodowhatamIgoingtodowhatamIgoingtodo—

  I saw the red traffic signal too late to stop. I barreled into the intersection, slamming on my brakes as I bore down on a white panel van.

  Its horn blared, and I yanked the wheel hard to the right, sliding across the intersection and hitting the highway shoulder in a spray of gravel as my car came to a stop. For a long moment, I just sat there, my body trembling uncontrollably.

  Keep going, I urged myself. You have to go now. Get moving!

  But go where? My fuel light was glowing red—and I had no way to refill. My wallet was in the pocket of my winter coat back in the apartment.

  The shadows cast by the sinking sun were long on the ground. Soon, it would be dark. And cold.

  I saw the lights behind me then, blue and red, flashing in my rearview mirror.

  The police. I felt a wave of relief. Of course the police would help. That was their job, wasn’t it?

  Chapter Twelve

  The cruiser stopped on the shoulder twenty feet behind me, and a stocky uniformed man got out of the driver’s side, a taller one with the shoulders of a quarterback getting out of the passenger’s.

  I started to put the car in park and hesitated with a twinge of misgiving. Since when did traffic cops have partners? I tried to read the text on the side of the cruiser, but I couldn’t make it out from my angle.

  The stocky one had reached my driver’s side window already. He rapped on the glass with his knuckle as the big one stood casually at my passenger door.

  There was nothing for it. I rolled down the window.

  “Did you see the red light, ma’am?” the man asked in a tone of bored annoyance.

  “Y-yes,” I said.

  “Then why didn’t you stop?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. There was a creature, sir, you see.... That wasn’t going to go over well.

  “I was at UMD, going to my dorm. A stranger just attacked me. I got in my car and used it to escape, but she attacked the car, too. I was still upset, I guess. I didn’t notice it until too late.”

  “At UMD, huh?” he said. The words were casual, but I noticed a slight shift in his posture.

  At his nod, his partner began to circle my car.

  “There was a hit-and-run at UMD earlier today,” the cop said conversationally. “Can I see your license and registration, please?”

  My heart sank. “I don’t have it. I was running away—”

  “Mike, we’re got blood here,” the second officer interrupted.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car, ma’am,” the first cop said.

  My hands tightened on the steering wheel. I still hadn’t even put the car in park yet. “I was attacked,” I insisted. “Look at my shirt.”

  I leaned forward so that he could see the back of the shredded hoodie, still soaked with blood.

  “You don’t look hurt,” the cop said. “Is that blood even yours?”

  Shit. My cuts had already sealed over. “It is. She tried to kill me—”

  “Ma’am, turn off the vehicle and get out.” He voice was slow and insistent.

  Still, I hesitated. It all seemed a little too neat, too coincidental. Was I supposed to believe that the creature had reported the hit-and-run? Or that there was an invisible witness to the accident who had called it in, perhaps someone from one of the apartments that overlooked the parking lot? And the cops had just happened to find me so quickly?

  If Dorian could have such an effect on my mind, what could another, less scrupulous vampire do to the cops?

  I looked in the rearview mirror again. Behind the hulking figure of the second cop, I could see the cruiser. And inside, I could just make out a silhouette.

  My skin prickled with visceral recognition.

  “Get out of the car.” The cop’s hand rested lightly on his gun.

  Cops weren’t supposed to do that when faced with an unarmed college student. I was sure of it.

  “Who’s that?” I demanded. “Who is that inside your car? Who’s with you?”

  The cop cast me a contemptuous look and pulled the gun from his holster, leveling it at me. “There’s nobody with us, ma’am. Now get out of the car before I have to drag you out.”

  The last of my uncertainties fell away. Cops were most definitely not supposed to do that.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, leaning to the side as if I were reaching for the automatic transmission knob to put the car in park. “Just give me one second. I just have to—”

  I lunged flat against the passenger seat and hit the gas. The gun went off above my head, and I thought my ears had burst as the car tore away.

  Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit. Straightening enough to see over the dashboard, I looked in my rearview mirror just in time to see the stocky cop lower his gun coolly, point it at my car, and fire again.

  I floored it, pushing as fast as my little car would go. The cops ran over to their cruiser. I tore around a curve, and they were lost from sight—for the moment. An intersection appeared ahead, a small side road winding off into the countryside. I took it, driving blindly, not caring where I went as long as it was away.

  The cop had tried to shoot me. He’d tried to kill me. I tightened my hands on the steering wheel to keep them from trembling. Whether the
y’d been under vampiric influence or not, I knew what that meant.

  I was now a fugitive.

  And I had nowhere to run.

  I had been so stupid, believing that I could just go back to my old life. Believing that I could strike some kind deal with Dorian.

  Believing that he was the only thing that had changed in it.

  I wouldn’t be left alone. Not by him, and not by whoever it was who had come after me. Even if I survived, there was no going back now.

  Not as long as there was a bond between us that made me a part of his world.

  I heard sirens in the distance, but they quickly fell away into silence as the night closed in around me. I pulled off my sunglasses. I recognized nothing, and without my phone, I had no GPS.

  I took turn after turn, the roads getting steeper and narrower. There was nothing out here, not even a house. Occasionally, I caught the glimmer of lights in the distance, but the road never led close to them. Finally, I turned down the nearest dirt road to one of those distant beacons, hoping it was a long driveway that would lead me to the building from which it came.

  It didn’t.

  When the gas ran out, the car didn’t sputter. It simply rolled to a stop halfway up a hill between two barren cornfields, and I threw it in park before it could roll back down again. The fan of the heater still blew warm air across me, but that would only last until the engine cooled.

  Just how tough was the not-quite-human that I’d become? I wondered bleakly. Tough enough to survive a winter night in a car without a rear windshield, wearing a torn, wet shirt?

  I might need the car battery later. I vaguely remembered seeing a survival show where the host used a battery to start a fire. I wondered how he did that. I had no idea.

  I twisted the key in the ignition to kill the power and leaned the seat back in the sudden darkness. The winter air was sharp and thin in my lungs. My headlight-flooded vision cleared, and the cold, clear sky slowly bristled with hard points of light, many thousands more than I had ever been able to see with my merely human sight.

  I started to shiver. That was good. It would be bad when I stopped.

  It was, quite literally, the end of the road for me. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t cry. There didn’t seem to be a point. I just sat with my hands jammed into my hoodie pockets and watched the galaxy spin slowly overhead.

  I thought about Lisette and the chaotic Christmas dinner she must be having with her exuberant family. I thought about Geoff and the promise that I might never keep. I thought about Gramma.

  I’m sorry, I told her. I tried. I really, really tried.

  And then I thought about him. Dorian. And some part of me that I couldn’t name ached at the thought that I’d never see him again.

  He was the reason I was out here. He had to be. He’d promised to save my life, and instead, he’d destroyed it. I hardly knew him, and I hated the hold he claimed to have over me.

  But I mourned him no less keenly for all that.

  The winter silence was so complete that the chattering of my teeth and the shaking breaths seemed to be the only sounds in the world.

  Until I heard the cars.

  The wheels ground slowly along the dirt road I was on, the crunch of them as loud as a shout. A look in the rearview mirror revealed three distinct pairs of headlights moving up the hill, spaced close, one after another.

  I considered running, but I had nowhere to go, and I was shivering so uncontrollably I knew I couldn’t make my muscles obey. Whether the cars brought the police, the creature I’d hit, or another vampire, they’d have little trouble catching me in this state.

  I didn’t even consider the possibility that they hadn’t come for me.

  I unbuckled and opened the door, standing to face the approaching vehicles. The slope on which the car had finally rolled to a halt meant that I could see for nearly a quarter mile back where I had come, so the bouncing headlights of the vehicles were visible for half a minute before they stopped a dozen yards behind my car.

  I tried not to flinch in the light even though it blinded me. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. If I’d had anything to use as a weapon, I would have grabbed it.

  I tried to form a fist around the keys, leaving the sharp ends sticking out, but with my student ID and keycard on my lanyard, the best that I could do was to grip them so tightly that the edges of the plastic cards cut into my palms.

  A figure stepped from the driver’s side door of the middle vehicle. I squared my shoulders, determined to go down fighting.

  “Hello, Cora. Merry Christmas.”

  The story continues in...

  Bad Blood

  Cora’s Choice – Book 3

  On Sale Now

  Want to find out what happens next? Read the next book right now.

  Then sign up for the newsletter at AetherealBonds.com to get exclusive access to not-yet-published content—for free! (We have lots of other goodies for subscribers, too.)

  Cora Shaw bonded to the vampire Dorian Thorne to save her life, but now she’s in more danger than ever. Dorian has enemies as powerful as he is, and they want Cora dead.

  Cora finds herself thrust into the midst of a terrifying new world. But the greatest danger of all may still be Dorian, for she learns that her duties as his consort are more terrible than she ever imagined....

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  Out of the Darkness (Taken by the Panther #1)

  by V. M. Black – Just 99 cents!

  A panther’s quest to save the woman he loves from the beast within....

  Curvy Tara Morland has always known there was something different about her, but she never knew why. Then one day, the panther took over her mind and transformed her body, and her world was forever broken.

  Former SEAL and panther shifter Chay “Beane” Bane has made a career of rescuing other shifters in difficult situations, secreting them in his vast compound far from the prying eyes of the government. But when rescues her from a military facility, he isn’t prepared for what he finds. Tara is a twenty-four-year-old, older than any natural-born panther shifter should be.

  But to find answers, Tara will have to learn to control the beast within herself. And Chay must grapple with discovering what he thought he’d never have.

  Excerpt

  “Miss Morland,” the professor called, looking down at his seating chart. “Miss Morland,” he repeated, “you seem to be having quite the lively conversation. It must be about the topic at hand, so please explain to the class the significance of the Glorious Revolution on British Parliamentary history.”

  Tara jerked her eyes to the front, processing what Dr. Butros had just said. The chairs of the lecture hall rose up in ranks around him so that Tara, at the top of the hall, was treated to a view of his shiny scalp through his thinning hair as he bent over the roster.

  She’d done her reading the night before, but this morning, it was like nothing had stuck to her brain. She cleared her throat, looking at Sylvie, as if the answer were written on her friend’s forehead. But all she could remember were the words she’d just said.

  I feel kind of funny. Like something’s not right.

  Sylvie had replied, Do you think you need to go to the health center?

  And Tara had said, No, I just feel kind of funny. Like something’s not right. Or maybe...like it is, or it’s going to be and it isn’t yet ....

  And then the professor’s voice had cut through their whispered conversation, stridently calling her name as he asked a question about the Glorious Revolution.

  “Please stand up, Miss Morland,” Dr. Butros said. “Class rules, yes?”

  Slowly, Tara stood, feeling every eye in the lecture hall on her and hating the crazy professor and his crazy rules. What kind of college course had a seating chart, anyway? She looked down the t
iers of seats, all the other students’ faces turned up to look at her. She opened her mouth.

  “The Glorious Revolution.”

  She stopped. She’d just been telling Sylvie how she felt. Kind of funny, she’d said. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d said. Not sick, exactly, but like she was looking at the world through a water glass or maybe through someone else’s eyes. Now her own voice sounded strange to her, hollow and distant. And the other students just stared, a girl tittering down near the front.

  “The Glor-i-ous Re-vo-lu-tion,” she said again. The words slurred and tangled.

  “Yes, Miss Morland, the Glorious Revolution,” the professor said impatiently. “Now, Miss Morland, if you please.”

  Dr. Butros seemed suddenly very far away and very close all at once. A student dropped a pencil near her, and the clatter sounded like a gunshot.

  Revolution. Revolution.

  “The Revolution,” she said. Her head was swimming, and she raised her hands to her cheeks as her face flushed hot, then cold. Her hands didn’t feel right. Under her skin, they didn’t feel like they belonged to her. The bones—they were changing, even under her fingertips as her muscles slid across them. She felt them growing broad and heavy, and she jerked her hands away and hunched her shoulders—no, her shoulders weren’t hunching, they were moving forward as her chest deepened. She held out her hands and watched her fingers shrink back toward her palms as hair, thick and black, sprouted from the backs of her hands.

  From somewhere, she heard shouts and a high-pitched keening noise that she realized was coming from her own throat. She realized then that it wasn’t hair growing from her skin, it was fur, and her hips shifted under her weight, dropping her forward onto her hands. She tried to reach out for Sylvie for help, but her friend was screaming, screaming, and the hand that Tara extended ended in claws, and the sound coming from her mouth was a hideous yowl as her throat stretched and changed. Her clothes were so tight she thought her bones would break—and then they were gone, torn, falling from her sleek black body in shreds.

  All around, people were running, scrambling up and down the tiers of desks and pouring toward the exits. Tara wanted to escape, too, escape this terrible thing that was happening to her. She gave a mighty push with her back legs, and she felt her new claws catch against the carpet. She flung herself down the tiers of the lecture hall, toward Dr. Butros, who stood motionless with one hand on his laptop and his eyes bulging out. He was in charge—he could help, some lingering part of Tara’s brain thought. He had to help. That was his job.