CURSED BY HER BLOOD
C. J. Brookes
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
About the Author
CURSED BY HER BLOOD
Copyright © 2021 by Calle J. Brookes/C.J. Brookes
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All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For information contact:
www.callejayebrookes.com
[email protected]
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Book and Cover design by C.J. Brookes
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PREVIOUSLY TITLED: The Healer’s Heart
Copyright ©2013 Calle J. Brookes
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ABOUT THE DARDANOS SERIES:
The Dardanos Paranormal series originated in 2012. In 2018, CJ pulled all titles down to revise, update, and expand the original storylines.
DARD6212021
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The DARDANOS Series of Paranormal Romance
RELAUNCHING 2020
FATED TO HER VAMPIRE (The Seer’s Strength)
TAKEN BY THE KING (The Blood King)
CAPTURED BY THE HUNTER (Live or Die)
STOLEN BY THE WARRIOR (The Warrior’s Woman)
BOUND TO THE DEMON(Awakening the Demon’s Queen)
RELAUNCHING 2021
CURSED BY HER BLOOD (The Healer’s Heart)
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& Brand-New Title:
FATED TO THE WOLF (Rebecca & Matt’s story)—coming late 2021.
* * *
LOOK FOR MORE TITLES RELAUNCHING IN 2022!
1
Her photo haunted him. Barlaam Dardaptos, second healer of the vampiric Dardaptoan Kind, stared at the four-by-six snapshot. The blond female was beautiful. Young. Human.
A reminder that he would never be a part of sanctioning the deaths of innocents like her again. Three of the girl’s cousins and her elder sister had almost died at Dardaptoan hands. That they hadn’t was a miracle brought only by the goddess of his people.
Instead, the four once human females had been converted into bloodsuckers. Their humanity stolen from them because of the sins of their own grandfather.
Her grandfather was a murderer, and the Dardaptoan high court had ruled that his bloodline was to pay for his sins.
Four females, barely in their adult years, had been the ones chosen.
It sickened him.
He had taken her photograph from the files he had been forced by his brother, the king of his Kind, to gather. He’d told himself he’d taken it as a reminder that he would never act in such a despicable way again. But Barlaam knew the truth.
He had taken her photo because, once he saw it, he could not let it go.
He had prayed to his goddess with every drop of faith and strength he possessed that this mischievous blonde would not be one of the females chosen to die.
His prayer had been answered. Her sister and three cousins had been chosen instead.
Now it was time to put her photograph away and get back to the task that had been put before him.
He was the Second Healer of his tribe, and it was his task to find why his people were dying out. It wasn’t just the actions of those girls’ grandfather, though the old man was responsible for almost two thousand Dardaptoans losing their lives.
It was something else. Something to do with the Curses. Legend had it that the Dardaptoan females were not always as weak as they were now.
It was only three thousand years ago that Dardaptoans had begun to change.
Barlaam had to find out why.
He and Kindara, the First Healer of their people, had been working on the task for more than twenty years now.
They had yet to find a single answer. Or even a place to start. Except for with the newly turned females.
The older sister of the girl in the photo had nearly been killed by Lupoiux werewolves just days ago. She had survived, but there had been strange antibodies he had never seen before in her blood.
Antibodies that intrigued him.
Someone knocked on the door, and he called out for them to enter.
His assistant, Jannen, stood in the door. “Barl, I…have news you must hear!”
Barlaam hastily slipped the photograph into his pocket.
He sighed. Jannen was young, perhaps as young as the girl in the photo. Slight, pale, and nervous—with the mind of a genius. And a truly strong healing gift. But her anxiety kept her from doing the great things she was meant to.
She was still young. And she had some of the greatest teachers of their Kind to help. “Jannen?”
“Have you heard?”
“Heard what?” It was late; what could have happened between the last time he had seen his brother and now? Rydere had been injured, along with one of his female’s young cousins, just mere days before. “What’s happened?”
“Kindara and Ji…” She wiped at tears.
Barlaam tensed. This wasn’t just her nerves. It was more. He stood quickly. “Tell me.”
“They’ve disappeared. Someone has taken them.”
Barlaam swore. He grabbed his keys and cell phone. “Let’s go. Tell me everything on the way.”
He’d find his brother and get answers.
Kindara was his closest friend. Her daughter was like a niece to him. And the last thing the two of them needed was this.
He bit back another curse as he pushed the fear aside. Kindara had been abducted many times before. So had Barlaam. Healers of the Dardaptoan Kind were extremely rare. Many of the other Kinds thought nothing of stealing Dardaptoan healers for their own use.
Abductions were not all that uncommon in the world of the Kinds. Most ended with financial negotiations. Some weren’t even all that unpleasant. There had been a female Druid who had had him abducted two hundred years ago so that he could heal her young daughter after her mate had abandoned her.
He hadn’t minded at all. They still kept in touch.
But for Kindara, an abduction of her and her daughter would be particularly traumatic.
He shoved thoughts of the once human girls aside. There was nothing he could do to change what had happened to them.
But he migh
t be able to find Kindara and save her in time.
2
Something didn’t feel right. Something bad had just happened.
Jade tightened her hands on the wheel and kept driving. She was miles away from the family vacation home and would be there in just a few minutes. Hopefully, no one would be there except the security guards her father insisted patrol every Taniss property. Her father was a bit of a worry wart when it came to safety.
But then again, after what had happened recently, Jade couldn’t blame him.
Her breath hiccupped out in a barely suppressed sob. Her sister…her cousins…no one knew where they were.
And when her father and cousins told her that Joselyn, Mickey, Mallory, and Emily were safe, she knew they were lying. Just like she had always known things.
It had been bad, whatever had happened. To her sister and her missing cousins.
That nightmare had had Jade screaming so loudly in her room that her roommates Loren and Mara and her cousin Becca had all come running.
Jade had convinced herself it had been a nightmare. Until she’d made it home the next morning and realized her sister and the others were missing.
And Jade knew she was supposed to be here at the vacation property right now to find out why.
No one in her family had ever said it, but they all knew. Jade had something extra that gave her feelings when something good or bad was about to happen.
Emily’s brief phone call three days ago wasn’t going to change that.
Jade’s feelings were never wrong. The extent of that fact was a secret that not even her family was fully aware of.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the vacation home came into sight. She entered the access code into the gate, then identified herself to the security camera.
Usually, someone answered right away. This time, they didn’t.
Jade said a word her father would have chided her for, then entered the second code to open the gates anyway.
She’d get settled into the suite her family had always shared on the third floor and just wait. See just why she was supposed to be there now, after all.
See why she just knew that whatever had taken her sister and three of her cousins wasn’t human.
And figure out why they—he—were coming for her.
3
He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours when the note arrived.
It went to Kindara’s brother first. No doubt she had given her abductors the information they needed to determine just where to send the short, sarcastic missive to achieve the maximum effect.
Cormac was beyond furious. Aodhan, the second-in-command of Barlaam’s brother, was both angry and bemused. He could not kill the offender, not without hurting his new female.
The human responsible for abducting the First Healer of their tribe was now Aodhan’s brother-in-law, twin to Aodhan’s new female.
That he was the grandson of the Dardaptoans’ sworn enemy wasn’t helping matters. Barlaam was fighting off the urge to find the male and kill him. Even though he was a healer and prized all life, the son of Taniss blood deserved to pay for what he had no doubt done to Kindara and her daughter.
Both had been taken by Leo Taniss thirty years ago and tortured.
It was a miracle either had survived.
And now the two were in the hands of Leo Taniss’s grandson.
It sickened Barlaam.
“We have no choice but to comply,” his brother said. Rydere’s own anger radiated from him. Barlaam, as healer, could read the emotion easily, though Rydere showed no outward trace of how he felt. “Find me everything you can on this Rand, Barl, Aodhan. We will meet them at this address tomorrow.”
“With two of the females?” Cormac asked, furious. Barlaam frowned; Cormac needed to be with his female. She had been gravely injured just five days earlier. She did not need to be separated from her male so soon. “Which two? Joselyn can’t. She’s already refused. Not that I would allow it, anyway.”
That was not a surprise to Barlaam. The pair had been mated long enough for the bonding of their souls to have already taken place. She needed to be kept calm. Having her male far from her would not keep her calm. Not with the way Dardaptoan pairs mated. Their souls had become one the instant Cormac had claimed her as his female.
Nothing short of death would sever that bond.
“Mine is going,” Aodhan said. “She’s angry at her brother for this. Not the response I was expecting.”
No. No doubt Aodhan had expected his redheaded female to leap at a chance to escape him. The two had not yet fully bonded.
The girl was highly reticent to the idea.
Barlaam didn’t blame her. What his brother, Cormac, Aodhan, and the final male, Theo, had done to those four human girls was beyond what the goddess of their people would have felt acceptable.
Barlaam certainly didn’t.
But then again, how could he blame the four males for taking their females for their own the instant they realized who the females were?
A male’s mate was the most prized creature on earth. There was nothing a Dardaptoan male would not do to secure the female the goddess had chosen for him.
To fight the Rajni bond was damned near impossible. A male’s mate…she was all that he lived for from the first moment he hit puberty. By the time the male had come of age, hopes for the female were all that kept him going through the oftentimes bleak centuries before he found her.
Barlaam had gone four hundred years knowing she waited for him somewhere. Four hundred years.
That was a long time to be alone.
“I’m going with you,” he told his brother. “I’ll make certain Kindara and Jierra have not been harmed.”
And if they had…well, the sword Barlaam carried at his side wasn’t just for show. He knew how to use it.
He had killed in his four hundred and sixteen years on the earth. Sometimes, killing one’s enemy was necessary.
Barlaam always did what was necessary.
4
She couldn’t find anyone except about a dozen of her father and cousin’s security team. None of them would talk to her, other than to say her father was out on important business.
That was it. And then two of them took up posts outside the front and back doors like sentries. Guarding her.
It made her feel claustrophobic.
She flat out couldn’t breathe.
Something just wasn’t right.
She was sitting on the middle of the bed where Joselyn, her elder sister, always slept when she heard the sounds of voices.
Jade hurried to the stairs.
She saw a familiar pair of faces—and two women that she didn’t recognize at all. “Rand?”
Her cousin turned to her and swore. “Jade, what in the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Denver with Becca.”
“I…had to come. Something told me I need to be here. And Becca’s not in Denver; she left yesterday. Who are they?” Jade took a moment to study the other women. They were beautiful. Taller than her by a few inches, but thin. One had strawberry blond hair and reminded her a great deal of her cousin Mickey. The other was paler, with gold eyes and a sad expression that had Jade hesitating on the stairs. “What is going on here?”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Rand glared up at her. Jade just stared right back.
Her eldest male cousin didn’t intimidate her in the least. “Well, something told me I should. So here I am. Who are they? Why are they here?”
“Get your things together. You’re leaving here first thing in the morning.” Rand shot a look at Rathan. One filled with meaning.
Jade smirked at her cousin, then turned the same expression on Rand’s best friend. Rathan had never doubted her feelings about things. Far from it. He’d always understood. He knew she hadn’t revealed the depth of those feelings to anyone. And he had never questioned. “Not unless you are. Something’s happening, guys. And I’m supposed to be here for it.”
Rand swore again, causing the strawberry blonde to jump and eye him warily.
She looked so frightened. Jade hurried down the stairs and smiled at her. She wasn’t much older than Jade, she didn’t think. “Hi. I’m Jade. Rand’s best cousin. You two look exhausted. Did you have car trouble?”
They looked like they’d been walking through the woods for days. Both could use showers and, she suspected, a good night’s sleep.
So could she. She hadn’t slept well since she’d realized her big sister and three older cousins were missing.
No matter what Rand had told her—Joselyn and the rest wouldn’t just up and disappear. Not without telling her and Becca and Cass what was going on.
“Come on. There are plenty of rooms upstairs. And more than enough hot water.”
“Jade…” Rand had a warning tone in his voice.
“Can it, Rand. I’m not going anywhere. You want me gone, you have to make me go.”
Rathan snorted. “Has anyone ever made you do anything?”
“My father gave up trying years ago.”
Jade took the strawberry blonde by the hand. “You can use Mickey’s suite. She’s always leaving her clothing behind when we come here. Something should fit you.”
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