Authors: Astrid Cooper
Tags: #dark fantasy, erotic romance, vampire, shapshifter
BloodImmoral
Seduction is a deadly game…
In Adelaide, the city of churches, it’s the night of the hunter’s moon and the Blood-kin venture out to play. But things aren’t what they seem. Mirrazan is caught in a deadly confrontation with Ric, the cop, and a band of rogue vamps. Things can’t get any worse. Wrong! Ric is not the man he appears to be, and the Law of Blood Immoral has been broken. So what starts out as a pleasant night of carousing, turns to dark and dangerous and the game of seduction takes on a whole new meaning of deadly when succubus and cat-shifter lock hearts, souls and bodies in the duel of love… All hell breaks loose.
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Blood Immoral
Copyright © 2013
Astrid Cooper
ISBN: 978-1-77111-466-0
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by eXtasy Books
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Blood Immoral
By
Astrid Cooper
Chapter One
“Darling,” Mirrazan said, twirling her long black talon around his navel, “if you can’t be good, then you have to be bad and I’m definitely bad.”
Centuries bad
. She lifted her chin to look at him, along the length of his naked torso. “If you wanted to fuck an angel, then you shouldn’t be here with me.”
He laughed. “We’ve been fucking for hours, and still you want more. Are you
on
something? If you are, then I want some of it, too!”
“No,” she said, rising on her knees, straddling him, her heat bathing his rigid prick. “But I’m on something now.” She plunged down and his cock slid into her, gliding as smooth as silk until she reached his uttermost length. She pivoted her hips and he groaned. “You like this?”
His glazed expression made her smile. He moaned as she twisted back and forth, his nails imprinting her buttocks. She leaned forward, her body covering his. Her mouth rested at the base of his throat, where his pulse beat wildly. She bit and the blood flowed into her mouth, a blistering, salty tide that was ambrosia, this human elixir that tasted as no other. And as she drank, he died.
Mirra pulled back, horrified. He had endured, no—exulted in her lovemaking, matching her greed as best he could, demanding, taking, receiving. But this simplest of exchanges had killed him. Why?
Placing her palm against his now inert chest, she
read
him and sensed a shattered artery from an imperfect heart.
* * * *
“But I killed him, Sula!” Mirrazan said.
Sula waved her hand dismissively. “He was a beast of the field, no more, no less. Humans kill and consume without compunction, they—”
“I have a choice.”
“So do they.
They choose to kill for food. In
the act of destruction, they give no pleasure.
Ironic, isn’t it. The myths of this world call us monsters. In reality, it is they who are the monsters, because they take and never give.”
Sula leaned forward and tapped her red talon against Mirrazan’s wrist.
“Have no sympathy for them! Play with them, fuck them, use them, but when you do, never let kindness enter your two hearts.
They are not worthy of our love. If it’s love you seek, then return home and mate with a Blood.”
“I like it here,” Mirra said. “Australia is such a land of contrasts. Age and youth.”
Sula snorted. “You are a romantic. It will be your downfall.”
Mirra sighed. This discussion with her mentor had often occurred over the years and always ended with the same result. She went away feeling unclean, and determined never to have another human—male or female—just for the taste. Resolutions were made to be broken and she eventually broke them all, despite her fiercest resolve. But this latest death was her first and it must be the last.
“You care too much, Mirrazan.” Sula shook her head. “It is your greatest fault.”
“It is a fault I live with, then. They call us succubi,” Mirra said. “Demons consuming for own pleasure. How little they understand. I wish…”
“And they love it. Never forget that! For what we give them, the taste of the immoral, they kill without conscience. And if some of them die with our pleasuring, what does that matter?” Sula leaned back and frowned, studying with amber eyes. “You need to hunt again. Your energy aura is pink. It ought to be red. You know that. How long has it been since you fed?”
“When…that man…”
“That was two weeks ago. Feed and live, or starve and die. That is the only law you should recognise. It is our birth right. Now, go! I have my own hunt to prepare.” She paused, her gaze glowing. “Perhaps you ought to hunt with me tonight? I’m going to
Gothika
.”
Mirra snorted.
Gothika
…the bar where many Blood Hunters chose to gather, where they assumed a persona to lure their human prey. The humans didn’t even realise it was a game, where they were mocked, observed, and devoured.
“I hate
Gothika
!” Mirra studied her sister-mentor. With her ebony hair to her arse, her cream skin and large red lips, Sula was a natural for the place.
“Yes, you’re right,” Sula said. “You’re too petite and pale to be welcome there. Where are you going to hunt? If you don’t feed tonight I’ll know and I’ll bring a man to you. You decide, now, while you still can.”
“Thanks for nothing.” Mirra pushed herself back from the table.
So, in Adelaide, the city of churches, Mirra hunted that night, and for several weeks of nights, indiscriminate, taking the first man who crossed her path. A blur of shadowed faces and tastes, bodies straining, screaming with ecstasy.
* * * *
In the dark alley, something was dead. Mirra rarely hunted in alleyways, but some of the others did. Especially the vampires—no accounting for taste there, Mirra thought. Vamps enjoyed the twisting shadows, the concealment, the certainty of cornering one’s prey.
She halted, scenting the alley. This dead thing had nothing to do with her, but instinct, a compulsion—something—drew her down the narrow lane. She cursed as she saw the spreadeagled body. This was a complication she did not need.
Mirra bent over the prostrate figure and gently turned it. The woman was dead, beaten and shot. And raped. But none of these had killed her. The woman’s throat had been torn apart and she had been drained of blood. A messy killing, no finesse, just flesh ripped open, peeled back like a tin can and the contents devoured.
If one had to kill, then it should be done cleanly.
This was a butcher’s work. If it wasn’t for the after-scent, and the psychic vibration in the alley, Mirra would have said that the woman had been human-killed. But that tendrils of aura wafting around her wasn’t human. A Blood had been
there. But not
just any Blood. A rogue vampire.
“Just what I need!” Mirra whispered.
The victim was cold, but her killer’s taint was starkly fresh. As Mirra probed the energy currents she sensed that somewhere nearby, the rogue vampire fed, ignoring all restraint.
But worse, the vamp had ignored the one rule that bound the Blood Hunters—never leave a victim to be found. By so doing, humans, with their increasingly sophisticated forensic science might begin to suspect the truth and that truth was dangerous. Deadly to all Blood-kin.
The vampire who had fed was shockingly vicious. Mirra had seen frenzied killers’ handiwork before, but this was by far the worst she had encountered. His taint was impaled through the battered flesh. He’d fucked her properly, his blood and seed saturating his victim. All these in combination meant that the woman would resurrect in the worst possible way. Mirra retreated. She had to get away. Fast. A creature that did this to his prey would have no compunction about chewing on a succubus. Succubus sex-magic was coveted by the vamps, when they could get it. She wasn’t about to go on any damn menu. She looked down at the twisted body and shuddered, swallowing against the gorge rising in her throat.
“Don’t move!” a male voice shouted behind her. “That’s right. Now real slow, you stand up, turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Mirra obeyed, curiosity overcoming caution because she liked his voice. A deep voice, harshness hiding the gentleness. A voice of contrasts, like the man—this she knew in a moment. So, she obeyed.
She heard his footsteps on the pavement and looked over her shoulder. A man, dressed in black leather, dark hair, a gun…a Colt Python levelled at her. She hated guns. They were clumsy, killing tools for cowards who didn’t want to get their hands bloodied. The moonlight highlighted him, and the gun—large and lethal, like its owner.
As he glanced down at the body, she saw his jaw tighten. His gaze lifted to Mirrazan.
“Up against the wall, face first. Don’t make me use this.” The gun waved her forward.
His hand pressed her hard against the bricks, her cheek scraping the rough masonry. She gagged at the mouldy stench. It filled her nostrils and her mind, the uncounted grime and disease of generations of thieves and scum who had used the alley, done unspeakable things,
leaving their psychic imprint before moving on…
His hands moved quickly. With a sharp snap, heavy cold metal was fastened around her wrists. She was pivoted around to face him.
She tested the handcuffs. She could easily break them, but for the moment, only for a moment, she would indulge him. Bondage was a game she enjoyed, but she was never the one restrained. And she preferred to use silk cords and ribbons, occasionally a strand of pearls, but never anything as coarse and barbaric as handcuffs. She twisted her wrists, the metal chafing. Interesting. But now wasn’t the time to be thinking of sex games. Handcuffs might be something for the future, though…on her prey’s wrists, never her own.
She watched as he knelt beside the figure, a finger caressing the dead woman’s cheek. His touch was one of familiarity, of love. Mirra frowned. He knew the victim, she realised. Sorrow filled him, but was quickly replaced by burning fury. He pushed himself to his feet, all whipcord and anger.
He dug into his leather jacket and flashed a wallet before her eyes. A police badge… Oh great! A cop. Trouble of the worst kind. She stared at the gun.
“You’re no cop!” she challenged.
“No?” He frowned, his gaze intense.
“Adelaide cops don’t use a Colt Python. Against the rules.”
“I make my own rules.
I’m Detective Ric Rodrigeuz
and I’m arresting you for murder.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“I can explain.”
“Yeah, you can
try
.”
She glared at him. Hell’s Great Gates. Had she lost her mind? Tell this man that she had just fled from a vampire blood orgy and stumbled into a renegade slaying? Every full moon she and her kind left their underworld enclaves to head topside for fun and games. The lure of the blood-moon was irresistible. The vamps and the others were feasting with abandon…the fang-boys and girls just never knew when to stop, and she was caught in the mess. What a bloody awful, fucking mess. Explain it she would—in her own way and he’d understand, but be none the wiser.
Mirra carefully stretched out her aura to him, lapping his flesh with colours only she could see. She enveloped him in blue, to soothe. He shivered and for a moment his concentration wavered as her aura caressed, tasting him. His essence was of danger and dark lies and even darker truths. A man of rare contradictions. Intriguing, this man, and that was dangerous—for them both. She swept her tongue over her lips and took a step towards him. She halted, scenting the air. More humans nearby.