DEAR READERS:
I originally planned to do this as a standalone novella like my original Vampire Wardens and Werewolf Society series, but as I got to writing this world again and these two characters, I wanted more for them. So, I hope you will be pleased to know that while yes, you have to wait just a bit—not long—you will get a full story, that dives deeper into the past and the future!
Much love,
Lisa
CHAPTER ONE
Eli
THE PAST—1924
Ivy and I walk arm and arm down a New York City street, the chill of a September eve in the air, with the promise of more cold weather soon. Tonight was her birthday celebration, complete with dinner and a show, and when we get back home, there’s her favorite pineapple upside-down cake waiting on her, compliments of my mother. My mother has always loved Ivy. My father was another story. To him, she was beneath our status. A farm girl who came into the bank begging for help to save her family property. He’d declined her. And she’d run out of the bank and smack into me.
I’d been enamored.
And I turned a no into a yes.
“What are you thinking?” she asks, brushing her hand over my jaw.
“I remember the first time I met you,” I say.
“You were my hero, Eli,” she declares, snuggling in tighter under my arm.
Not that day, I think, of me being her hero, but soon after. My father can be a stubborn old bat, but in the end, she won him over. I married her a year later. Her parents passed a year after that, a month apart. I’d promised her then that she would never be alone. It’s a promise I will keep for the rest of my life.
Our carriage awaits with a lantern and a driver, and I help her into the rear passenger seat, pulling a blanket around her and giving Cam, my buddy who is playing driver tonight after our real driver bailed on me, a thumb’s up once we’re loaded. Cam’s family owns the carriage company that operates across most of the country.
“You look good in that seat, Cam,” she teases.
He winks at her. “Anything for you, my lady.”
And he means it. Ivy has a way of winning over everyone she meets with nothing but pure charm and kindness. I’m not sure any of us knew how much we needed that in our lives until she showed up.
Cam sets us into motion into the darkness and Ivy and I talk about the evening, about a party we’ll attend this coming weekend, and about her new horse, Cassandra. “I still can’t believe you named your horse Cassandra.”
“It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful animal.”
“And what will you call our daughter?”
“We aren’t pregnant,” she says. “And since we’ve been trying for two years, we both know we’re not going to be pregnant.”
“God works in mysterious ways,” I assure her solemnly. “When the time is right, the time will be just that—right. We’ll have our baby girl.”
“Or boy,” she reminds me. “A boy to be like his daddy. I’d like that.”
The hope in her voice with these words has me in full agreement. “Or a boy,” I concur, hoping for the sooner than later of this equation. She needs family, our family. She snuggles in close to me, under my arm, and sighs, pulling her journal from her skirt pocket. “Always writing,” I say.
“I am,” she says, showing me what she’s been working on most recently. To my surprise, it says, “The story of Eli and his sons and daughters.”
My heart swells with this entry in her feminine script that tells me her hope, and head is still exactly where mine is when it comes to starting our little family. I cup her face and lean in, our lips close. “It will happen. Wait and see.”
Suddenly, we halt with a shout from Cam. Ivy and I jolt upward, and I find Cam holding his shotgun. Adrenaline surges and I grab the weapon under my seat and place myself in front of Ivy. I blink in shock as Cam is literally ripped from the front of the carriage in what can only be a wild animal attack. Desperate to save him and protect Ivy, I begin shooting into the darkness. Ivy screams from behind me and I reach for her, but she’s gone.
I turn toward the sound and a man lands on the seat above me. He snarls like an animal, fangs protruding from his mouth. I shoot him and shoot him again. The bullets do nothing to him, nothing at all. He grabs me, yanks me to him and those fangs dig into my neck. Pain pierces my body and a moment later, the world goes dark.
CHAPTER TWO
PRESENT DAY
For most people, sunset is a time of calm and rest. For those like me, it’s about the pulse of life, about sex, satisfaction, blood, and war. Because like all vampire wardens, we are the line between humanity and the monsters humans believe to be a myth. Tonight, this vampire is all about poker. I’m in the rear of a downtown Denver bar in a private room at a table of twelve, two of which are my vampire warden blood brothers, Cam and Rocco. Blood brothers in the way of the vampires, born of one maker. Humans can’t understand this bond. On any level. They see me with light brown hair and blue eyes, Rocco with dark hair and brown eyes, and Cam with blond hair and green eyes, as different.
Humans and vampires are different. Me and my brothers are not.
Cam tosses in his cards. “Busted. Fuck. When do I get better at this game?”
Rocco grins. “When I don’t play.” He flips his cards to show off a killer hand and all of us, vampire and human alike, groan.
“I’m out,” I say, standing, feeling the claw of hunger. Maybe my month is closer than I remembered. No. This is early and unlike me. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe I just need a fucking hit, and why wouldn’t I? Today is Ivy’s birthday and no matter how long it’s been since a vampire ripped her throat out, I feel her loss every single year.
“You want company?” Cam asks, no fool when it comes to my state of mind.
He knows I’m fucked in the head right now, but I wave him off and not because I don’t love the hell out of Cam. We’re tight. We would have died as well if Marcus, our warden in charge, our maker, hadn’t saved us and given me the chance to kill the vampires that slaughtered Ivy. Because there was no saving her. She was dead before I was ever bitten.
He gives me a worried look followed by a chin nod, and then I’m gone.
I walk through the bar where the music rocks the walls with an oldie but a goody: Van Halen’s “Back in Black.” I swear music has shifted from better and then worse, then better, then worse, so damn many times in my lengthy lifetime, the bad part of the curse of being over a century old. My body never ages, but sometimes my head wants to explode with the stupidity of the newest decades of young adults. The eighties were a favorite, though, mostly because of the music, and on that, I can agree with more than a few humans.
I pass on through the last of the thick Saturday night crowd and exit to what would be a chilly September evening, but then, the weather doesn’t affect me. Not anymore. I can’t even remember what it was like to be human and vulnerable.
Cutting left, I start walking, with nearly a mile ahead of me to reach my apartment at the top level of the Ritz Carlton, a luxury location me and my three brothers chose for many reasons. Obviously after a century of living our retirement, luxury is a reward worth paying for, but we don’t get such things from our warden salaries. It’s about how we manage the dowries we’re given by the council upon being awarded warden status. We invest, just like humans invest their money, and many of us are Apple and Amazon financial winners. I get closer to the hotel, walking up a side street, avoiding humans, even as that clawing need for blood grows strong. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m halfway there when I round another corner and a woman slams into me. Instinctively I catch her narrow shoulders, her long brunette hair catching in the wind, lifting. The scent of her, the feminine natural scent that a human could not capture flares something raw and primal in me, the hunger for blood, her blood, roaring in every part of me. And I know why.