Min's Vampire
Min’s Vampire
Stella Blaze
Copyright 2012, 2016
Previously published as Dark
Surrender
Smashwords Edition
Edited by
Nicole
Bailey
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Prologue
On the night her world ended, Katarina
Boccherini flipped the “closed” sign over against the glass of the
shop door and turned off the front window display lights. A lock of
her wavy salt and pepper hair fell out of the bun she’d pulled it
into and dropped to tickle her nose. Absently she pushed the hair
back behind her ear and picked up some misplaced books to reshelve.
She needed to balance the cash register and fill out the slip for
the night deposit. She also wanted to check the online special
orders and sweep the floor.
But by the goddess she was
tired.
Running a magic shop was more work than
anyone would guess. She felt lucky that both her girls, Min and
Andy, had gone into the family business with her. She’d be thankful
when they got back tomorrow from the supplier
convention.
She went behind the counter to take a
look at the sales ledger, and gazed for a moment at the photograph
of her girls that hung on the wall right above the cash register.
It showed the two of them arm in arm, smiling ludicrously, both so
young, so beautiful.
My girls.
But she could feel the remnant
energies, the mere shadow of a spell that still clung to the
photograph, and it made her sad. It hid a secret, one that was now
mixed in with all she loved most, which made it all the more
important. Would she ever be able to tell them the truth? Or would
they all be better off if the lie went on forever?
As if on cue her question was
answered.
The door to the little shop
blew open and banged against the wall, and the bell attached over
it clanged madly. She turned and gasped, knowing the moment the
cold, wintery air bit into her flesh that everything had just gone
straight to hell. It was July, and the city of Augusta, Georgia was
in the middle of a heatwave. That meant only one thing:
she
was coming.
Katarina turned to run. She cried out
in surprise as she bumped into a display table with her hip. Jars
of scented oils crashed onto the wooden floor. She stumbled but
caught herself, her breath already showed in frosty, labored puffs.
The air was so cold that the act of breathing hurt. She slipped
through the beaded curtain and into the backroom. She slammed the
heavy oak door shut and threw the deadbolt. The act of locking the
door was the trigger for her extensive battlement of wards, and
immediately she felt them spring into place, strong yet pliant, and
lethal.
She’d no more taken one labored breath
when the ice began to slide down the length of the door. The
temperature in the room dropped as a gale of frozen air poured into
the room from under the door. Katarina’s defenses hadn’t even
slowed her down.
Should have known they
wouldn’t.
This was not her home. There was
no threshold for the wards to feed from. She gulped in a lungful of
air and backed up as the ice flow spread into the room and
encroached on her fast.
Only one chance…they’ll need
help.
In a desperate rush she circled
around her desk and reached into one of the drawers. She pulled out
a silver dagger carved with ancient runes, a language no mortal was
ever meant to read. In the gleam of the blade she saw the greenest
eyes she’d ever seen looking back at her. A heartbeat later they
were gone. She set it gingerly on the top of her desk and whispered
one of her daughter’s names.
“
Min
…”
She darted back around the
desk and stood straight and tall as she steeled herself. She was
ready to fight, but knew it would be pointless. She had to endure
what was to come.
And not tell the
cold-hearted bitch a damn thing
.
Frozen mist billowed from under the
door. Soon the room was lousy with it, obscuring her sight. Frost
formed on her lips and eyelashes. Out of the mist came a smooth,
chillingly close voice. “This doesn’t have to be
unpleasant.”
Katarina chuckled, though just the
sound of that inhuman voice made her entire body shake
uncontrollably. Maybe she was in shock; it had to be well below
freezing in the little room.
The voice whispered in her
ear. “I know you’ve helped hide it from me.” The voice fulfilled
its angry potential, biting into her mind. “That you helped
her
hide it from
me!”
Katarina recoiled in pain. “I-I don’t
know what you’re talking about…I’m just a—”
“
A witch!” the voice
snapped, and glass jars all through the room shattered. Katarina
covered her ears. “And in my cousin’s service.”
“
I’m not—”
“
I could make you mine,” the
cold air taunted and blew against her body like rough, uninvited
hands. “Force you into
my
service.”
The simple truth of that statement tore
through her body, and nearly made her scream with panic. Gasping
for breath she pushed away the thought that she could just give in
and tell her what she wanted to know, that she could end it. That
the months of hiding, of the pressure she’d lived with every day
since she’d made the pact, could be over.
But just the thought of betraying one
she loved so greatly filled her with fiery strength. She would
never tell the bitch what she wanted to know. She would never
betray her girls.
Never.
“
I serve no one.” She held
onto the table she’d backed into, and though she couldn’t see it,
she knew everything that was displayed on it. She turned and
reached out for a pot filled with cellophane wrapped,
pastel-colored balls of bath salts. She swung back around and tried
to pull off the cellophane wrapping when a hand materialized from
the mist and grabbed her wrist. It pulled her arm up at a painful
angle; so strong, so very strong.
She tried to free herself, but the hand
only grasped her harder and became more solid as a shape
materialized in the mist. A face came into sharp relief only inches
from Katarina’s.
The Queen of Air and Darkness, Monarch
of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, stood before her. Her long black
hair was like writhing shadows; her lips were the color of frozen
mulberries, and her skin as smooth and white as ice-coated snow.
But it was her eyes—the pale blue of a winter sky, cold and
inhuman, their irises vertical slits like a cat—that made her look
monstrous.
Katarina pushed back the tears that
welled up in her eyes and the screams that wanted to tear from her
throat. She would give the faerie no such satisfaction. The
disembodied face smiled, closed her eyes and pulled Katarina
near.
A whimper escaped Katarina’s lips an
instant before they came in contact with the Queen’s cold, blue
lips. She tried to take in a breath, but instead what air she had
in her lungs was sucked from them. Her body flash froze and her
life force, her very soul, passed out through her lips.
All fell black, time stopped, and the
world went away.
Chapter 1
Min rubbed her thumb and
forefinger at her exhausted eyes, and closed yet another thick,
overwritten and musty tome. She pushed the worn leather-bound book
away. What was this, the third or the fourth book she’d read cover
to cover this week? She was sick of these godforsaken books. The
rancid, moldy smell, the abrasive feel of the pages, the endless,
cryptic,
utterly useless
words they held, not one of them delivering the
answers she required, or the cure she needed.
It was well past midnight
already, and she needed to get back to the store early the next
morning. Even though her sister, Andy, would open tomorrow, she
still needed to contact the druid in Paraguay who had the copy
of
Pathways Through the Ethereal
Mists
up for bid on eBay. She needed it.
Not to mention she needed to get on their supplier’s butt about how
long it took for special orders to come in that month. It was
ridiculous.
Another book sat inconspicuously not
even an arm’s reach away, its cracked, green leather binding called
out to her. It promised nothing, but there was always the chance
that what she looked for, a cure for her mother at last, could be
held within those tattered bindings.
Her body ached to go home, to fall into
her bed and sleep. But her guilt was a force of nature. She needed
to find out everything and anything that the book could tell
her.
Just one more...
She’d reached out to pull the book to
her when she heard a woman scream from outside the shop. Min rose,
grabbed her coat, and rushed to the front door and pulled it open
with a clamor of tiny bells. Well into January, the cold air bit
into her flesh and forced her to hug her arms about her. She pulled
her coat around her better and looked down to one end of the
street—nothing. She turned the other way and a blonde in a long,
thin, black trench coat ran into her. The blonde’s purse fell to
the ground where its contents scattered over the concrete of the
sidewalk.
“
I’m so sorry,” the blonde
sputtered.
Min was about to tell her to watch
where she was going when she caught the look of terror etched
across the woman’s face.
“
Are you
alright?”
The blonde was scared out of her wits,
and when Min knelt to help her gather the spilled contents of her
purse, she sensed a wave of nauseatingly cold energy moving in fast
toward them.
Min let her power taste that cold
energy—vampire.
~*~
For three hundred years Luca had given
in to the monster within him. He let himself enjoy the slaughter,
to revel in it. And that was all he was now: a killer. Then five
months ago something called to him: first, the scent of blood so
potent and delicious that his beast went wild with bloodlust;
second, a whispered promise on the wind.
Peace…completeness…an end to
your suffering.
He followed the elusive aroma across
the country to Augusta, Georgia. The smell so intoxicating he could
practically taste it. Once there, though, the smell went from
permeating the entire city to vanishing altogether. Yet every time
he tried to leave, the damnable scent would flare up again and his
beast would hunt all the harder for its source.
Luca didn’t like this city. It was less
populated than he preferred, and his prey less willing. He liked
those humans who invite death to them, who call shadows and loss to
hover around them like a shroud.
And he was hunting on that cold January
night.
Luca heard the girl’s heartbeat quicken
as she ran down the rain-slicked street. Her blonde hair was piled
atop her head, whipping about like liquid fire; her high heels
clicked a desperate rhythm as she ran away from him. She stank of
fear—he didn’t blame her, she should be afraid.
Luca’s beast liked them that
way.
It loved the taste of fear, how it lent
spice to the blood. Fear imbued even the most mundane victim with
the sweetest ambrosia. And the way adrenaline made the heart thump,
one could drain a victim in seconds with no trouble at
all.
The blonde was scared out of her wits
and had been running for nearly two blocks. She was ripe with what
he and his beast wanted most. And so young, barely twenty, her face
smooth and lineless, her hair its true color, her body firm and
supple and voluptuous. To take her would be a pleasure to treasure.
But he knew he would feel remorse if he just ate her, sucking her
dry in a flash to quench his hellish thirst.