Embrace the Magic (The Blood Rose Series Book 2) (2 page)

She’d already interviewed a fae female and a male troll. She was hoping one of the elves would show up. She really didn’t want to talk to a vampire and the shifters in particular seemed very aggressive. Two had been thrown out already this evening for improper display of fur on the premises.

At least the club had rules, which apparently needed enforcing constantly. For instance, there was no blood-sucking allowed, but one of her classmates, Mary, had happily agreed to donate and was doing so across the room.

Samantha could see her seated on a vampire’s lap, just barely visible through the throng of dancers from Samantha’s vantage point. His name was Tom.

She shook her head.

Tom, the vampire.

It just didn’t sound right somehow.

Leaning her back against the bar, she sipped her cosmo slowly. Her gaze shifted from one specie to the next, from the quick-footed trolls who moved like beautiful maniacs, to the lithe elves, taller than most other realm-folk, who swayed elegantly when most of the dancers jerked, twisted, and bumped, then finally to the male shifters who all looked like they could work at Chippendales.

But mostly, she avoided watching the vampires. She could at least admit she found them strangely attractive and it didn’t help that most of the males were over six feet and each carried a lethal air.

From her studies, she knew the basic structure of Bergisson, that a Mastyr Vampire ruled the realm, though each of the towns and hamlets were incorporated and had governing councils. She also knew about the enemy, the Invictus, which never travelled past the access points, at least not that she’d ever heard of.

The Mastyr of Bergisson, therefore, had built up a Guard of over three hundred vampires and as she glanced at the several inching closer to her one-by-one at the bar, she’d bet each was a Guardsman. She didn’t think any of them were under six-three.

She could feel their eyes on her and she could sense their hunger as though their well-known craving for blood became a kind of vibration in her bones.

She huffed a sigh, scoping out where she could go next to get away from the leeches. At least she didn’t feel in any immediate danger. The owner of the club had a staff of shifters who were quite happy to tangle with the vampires and throw them out if they misbehaved.

For that reason, she knew it was only a matter of time before Tom-the-Vampire and her classmate, Mary, got in serious trouble.

The music blared, couples bounced up and down, strobes flashed. A shifter walked by, his fingers turning furry then returning to normal a couple of times as his human date squealed her excitement over this absurd trick.

She rolled her eyes.

One more male just looking to get laid.

She turned once more toward the dark corner where she could just see Mary’s white thighs above her black boots, her butt cheeks almost showing beneath a short red skirt.

Sitting sideways on the vampire’s lap, Mary wasn’t exactly having sex, but giving up a vein to a pair of fangs was about as close as you could get. Her body moved in a back and forth, slow seductive rhythm, as the vampire sucked steadily.

The movement, very familiar in a sexual way, reminded her just how long it had been since she’d been with a man, been in a relationship, even been interested for that matter. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her, that she couldn’t seem to sustain a long-term relationship with a man.

But as she watched the couples getting to know each other and all the touching, the excitement of dating, she realized part of her would be okay with a one-night anything.

Just not with a vampire.

She released yet another sigh. Okay, so she missed sex, but this wasn’t exactly her idea of a pick-up bar. On the other hand, maybe she’d start making an effort to date again, if only she wasn’t so easily bored with the men she usually went out with.

Samantha scowled into her drink.

The movements in the corner became more pronounced and this time, more was showing than Mary’s skin. Tom’s hand now pushed into one of her butt-cheeks. Donating in public anywhere in Shreveport was strictly forbidden. But what else could she expect from realm-folk at a low-life club like this one?

“Come here often?” The vampire to her left finally made his move.

Samantha’s scowl deepened. Had she really just heard those words?

She couldn’t help herself. Laughing, she turned and met the vampire’s gaze straight on. “You gotta be kidding me? Can’t men, despite the species, invent a better line than,
Come here often?
”

But the vampire wasn’t in the least deterred. He blinked a couple of times and his nostrils flared. “Sweet Goddess, but you smell good.” His chin quivered.

Samantha didn’t like the way a pinkish sheen came over his eyes as he shifted his shoulders in her direction, licking his lips. She thought of Little Red Riding Hood and other warning tales from childhood.

She tried to move to her right, just to get out of range, but she bumped into another vampire, this one in jeans with lots of chains attached. His nostrils worked like bellows, which really freaked her out.

Did human women smell different from vampire females?

She pushed away from the bar and felt a hand on each arm apparently intent on stopping her, but just as quickly, the same fingers fell away, which was a good thing, because she would be all too happy to start shouting for the club’s owner.

She turned to glare at each of the men, but found that neither was looking at her. Something else had caught their attention and each now scanned the crowd at the front entrance to the club.

The music stopped abruptly and to Samantha’s great surprise the entire club fell silent.

She had no idea what was going on until a deep, booming voice filled the air. “Where are you, Tom Brignall. I’ll have your head for this.”

Samantha stood very still as she watched the crowd part, realm-folk moving back swiftly, dragging surprised human partners with them, until the new arrival came into view.

A vampire.

A big one, with wild, honey-brown hair, long and somewhat curly, that flowed away from his face, most of it trapped behind in what she knew to be a woven clasp that a lot of the Bergisson Guard wore.

Then time slowed to a halt.

She blinked as a tremor ran through her head-to-foot. She’d never seen a man like this before. He had to be six-five and built, with shoulders that went on and on. He wore a traditional Guard uniform, similar to the outfit Mary’s vampire wore, a black leather look that seemed to loosen Samantha’s knees.

As he moved past her, she caught a scent, something wild and pungent, almost erotic, yet tough, like it grew on rocky hillsides. She shook her head, trying to clear her head because the vampire’s scent was doing something to her, affecting her ability to reason, and warming things down low.

She felt a profound and quite irrational instinct to follow after him and shove her hair away from her neck.

She realized that her heart had started to pound, hard and heavy until even her throat ached.

She reached back for the bar to steady herself.

Then strangely, her vision shifted as the strobes softened and the light rose so that she saw him as if in late afternoon light, the kind when the shadows were long and the air golden. But how was it possible she could see him like this?

Right now, though, she didn’t care.

He was a beautiful man, yes that was the word that came to her.
Beautiful.

He had a soft indentation at his chin, high cheekbones, straight eyebrows that sat in a scowl over his brow. His eyes were smoky brown, like gray and light brown combined.

The uniform, she decided, was sexy as hell with leather boots that climbed his thighs and silver buckles down the sides. He wore a soft woven maroon shirt beneath a leather, sleeveless coat.

But it was his hair that struck some strange deep chord inside her, a long curled mass, pulled back by the clasp but hanging almost to his waist. She knew the Guardsmen in particular wore their hair long, a signal maybe to their enemies about their military status in the Bergisson Realm.

Her gaze slipped past him to the realm-folk who watched him sweep by. What she saw startled her because most of them appeared to be in awe, while a few low-lifes were downright scared shitless, and some of the fae women held deep lust in their eyes.

Samantha knew she must have looked like that as well, hungry for the man, a reminder that she’d been alone way too long.

She forced herself to look away from him as he headed to the far wall, setting her cosmo on the bar behind her with trembling fingers.

She drew a couple of deep breaths then heard Mary crying out, “What are you doing to him? Stop it. Oh. Oh, Mastyr Ethan, I’m…I’m sorry, but what did he do wrong?” Mary wasn’t the brightest woman around.

Mastyr Ethan had come to Club Prave? The ruler of Bergisson Realm? What did this mean?

As quickly as Ethan had disappeared into the crowd, he returned hauling his prey by the thick collar of the Guardsman’s coat. The vampire looked wobbly from feeding, his eyes sunken, his fangs glistening red. “Ry won’t stand for this.”

“You know the rules.”

“Ethan, we’ve got him.” Another male voice sounded through the club.

Samantha turned to her right, in the direction of the entrance, and at least six Guardsmen created a new flurry of excitement as they marched in.

They were an amazing presence in matching uniforms and had the females in the club panting. The foremost, with shocking red hair, hurried forward and grabbed the prisoner by the arm.

“Finn, what are you doing here?” Mastyr Ethan asked.

“Just thought we’d drop by, scope the scene.” His voice held a teasing note.

Ethan didn’t seem pleased, however, but Samantha had no idea why. “All right. You can take care of him, but I want him locked up for this.” He then flung Tom in the redhead’s direction, the one called Finn, sending the offender sprawling. The Guardsman picked him up off the dance floor. Another of the Guard grabbed his other arm and without missing a beat, they hauled him back to the entrance, then outside.

Ethan, now opposite Samantha, appeared ready to leave as well. He even stepped forward then stopped dead in his tracks.

His nostrils flared, just as the vampires had done on either side of her just a few moments ago.

She felt uneasy suddenly, like she was walking the railroads tracks and she could feel the vibrations of a train coming right under her feet but she couldn’t seem to move to safety.

She also became painfully aware that her heart still pounded as she watched Ethan, and not out of fear or even desire, but out of a need to give him her most essential life-force.

What the hell was happening to her?

*** *** ***

Ethan smelled the woman first, a scent like crushed raspberries mixed with wine, like something he could lick with his tongue and savor for a lifetime.

He had meant to follow right after Finn and the other men, but the scent stopped him. Beneath that fruit-laden aphrodisiac, he caught another layer of scent: The woman’s blood, and it was like nothing he’d ever smelled before, like she had rivers of it and it was meant for him.

That one thought,
rivers of blood meant for him
, made him turn toward her and stare hard.

A recent memory surfaced, of Mastyr Gerrod, a fellow mastyr vampire, who had been ready to tear Ethan to shreds for touching a woman like this one, a woman with
rivers of blood
, a woman in his realm-world known as
a blood rose
.

Gerrod had met a human named Abigail, who had relieved him forever of his blood starvation.

Sweet Goddess of Life, the woman standing alone at the bar, with vampires moving away from her on either side of her, was a goddamn blood rose.

His stomach cramped hard in anticipation of taking from her.

She must have registered his desire because she lifted her hand and pressed it against her neck as though trying to hold her vein steady. He could feel her blood singing for him, a soft vibration that forced another cramp through his stomach.

She shook her head and he could see she was bewildered. She had no idea what she was or why he, and every other vampire in the place, leered at her.

He knew the crowd was still there, waiting on him. The moment he’d entered the club, the owner had cut the music. Yet for a long, terrible moment all he could do was stare.

The woman was tall. He liked that. Shapely. Nice breasts. She wore her thick black hair straight and to the shoulders with a slight upward curve at the ends. Her eyes were the lightest blue he’d ever seen, almost unearthly. She wore jeans and a short-sleeved purple blouse, nothing fancy or even welcoming. He could smell her sex, though, her desire for him; she couldn’t disguise what she felt, what she was experiencing.

Sweet Goddess, a blood rose in Shreveport, right next door to the Bergisson plane.

He walked toward her but only because he couldn’t seem to help himself even though he could see from the way she wrinkled her nose that she wasn’t exactly happy about what was happening.

Well, he wasn’t either.

Maybe Mastyr Gerrod of Merhaine had found bliss with his blood rose, but Ethan wasn’t interested in this kind of liaison. He’d watched Gerrod become possessive and lose himself in the woman, the last thing he wanted to do with any woman, human or otherwise, yet still he moved toward her.

“What’s your name?” he called out.

She glanced around, growing more uncomfortable by the second. Everyone in the place stared at them both. He was used to that kind of attention; being in charge of an entire realm did that to a man, but she looked ready to run away.

Then she got mad. He saw it in the glint in her eye as she lifted her chin. “Samantha Favreau. And you’re Mastyr Ethan.”

“I am.”

“What do you want here?”

“What do I want?” His voice boomed once more. He glared at her now, angry that her body offered what he was unwilling to take, yet something he hungered for.

He was about to force himself to turn on his heel and leave her the hell alone, when he saw something in her eye, not just a flash of anger, but this time a flash he’d often seen in the eyes of powerful fae women as they slipped into a vision.