Twilight Vendetta
Authors: Maggie Shayne
“My inspiration has always been Maggie Shayne and her Wings in the Night Series. Sexy, thrilling, a must-read!” ~#1
New York Times
Bestselling Author CHRISTINE FEEHAN
“Maggie Shayne’s books have a permanent spot on my keeper shelf. She writes wonderful stories combining romance with page-turning thrills, and I highly recommend her to any fan of romantic suspense.” ~KAREN ROBARDS
“Readers will feel as if they can touch the connection sizzling between the duo. This story will have readers on the edge of their seats and begging for more.”
~
RT BOOKCLUB MAGAZINE (Review of Twilight Fulfilled)
“One of the strongest, most original voices in romance fiction today.” ~ Bestselling Author ANNE STUART
“Creepy, chilling and compelling. Simply spellbinding!” ~ New York Times Bestselling Author SHANNON DRAKE
TWILIGHT VENDETTA
Copyright © 2015 by Maggie Shayne
Edited by Jena O'Connor
Ebook formatting and Graphic Design by Jessica Lewis
Cover Image: iStockPhoto
Cover Art by Jessica Lewis
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, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
E
mma Benatar wasn’t afraid of vampires. She wasn’t afraid of much of anything. She had swum with sharks in Marzipan Bay, armed only with a waterproof camera. She’d skied among the yaks in Manali and base jumped from the Kuala Lumpur Tower. She always took plenty of photos, and wrote books about them after each trip. It had provided her with a very nice living.
The reason she was shaking like a dead leaf in a high wind while piloting a small boat just off the Oregon coast had nothing to do with a fear of vampires. It had to do with people, armed, uniformed thugs who answered to no one and played by their own set of rules. Those very kinds of humans were out on the water tonight, too. And if they spotted her, she’d be in trouble.
The team of men speeding through the waves a few hundred feet farther from shore than she was, were clearly goops–shorthand for Government Operatives. The term had been coined by citizens like her, who were advocating for vampire rights. She was fairly certain, after a lifetime of research, that goops in the employ of the Federal Division of Paranormal Investigations had been responsible for her mother’s disappearance fifteen years ago.
The night she’d given birth to Emma, Diana Benatar had nearly bled to death. Her blood type was so rare there were no donors on hand and while Emma shared it, you couldn’t take blood form a newborn. But a beautiful vampiress had come to her in the dead of night, and given her what she’d called The Dark Gift.
From then on, she’d passed as a human with nocturnal tendencies, and had done such a good job of if that even Emma hadn’t guessed how different her mother was until she was twelve. But when Emma asked for the truth, her mother gave it to her. And then she’d gone to wherever it was she went to rest during the day and she’d never returned.
And those bastards out there, or some just like them, were probably to blame, Emma thought, staring across the waves at them.
She still didn’t think of her mother as dead. Somehow she couldn’t bear to do that. Her entire life had been devoted to searching for her. The extreme adventures were just an excuse to travel the world, the books just a means to fund her search. And in the process, Emma was learning all there was to know about vampires, and anonymously blogging truths about the Undead.
One day she would live among them, so she could write their story for the world. And maybe they would help her find her mother in return.
That’s why she was rowing out into the Pacific in the dead of night. Because
they
were there.
Emma’s father Oliver was a serious hacker–as in, the old definition of hacker. Not the kind who could break into your computer and steal your identity, but the kind who could probably tap into communications between the space shuttle and NASA, given the right radio equipment. He’d never given up on finding the love of his life. His involvement with the growing grassroots movement known as ERFU–Equal Rights for the Undead–gave him an outlet for his grief and pain. A focus.
Earlier, Oliver’s radios had picked up DPI transmissions suggesting that that the
Anemone
, a research vessel that had been pirated by a gang of vampires, had been sighted near shore, not far south of where Emma was rowing her boat. They’d been heading north and the goops planned to intercept them.
So she’d come out here in hopes of warning the vamps, and she’d continued monitoring transmissions on a small portable radio that crackled to life so suddenly she almost jumped out of her seat.
“Strike Team Two, be advised, six individuals have left the ship and are in the water. Repeat, six in the water. Proceed with S & D.”
Six in the water? Six what? Vampires?
Emma leaned forward, snapping up her binoculars to search the waves, as the radio transmitted another message.
“Strike Team One, stay with the ship. She’s heading west by northwest from last location.”
Emma set the binoculars down and went back to rowing, but continued to search the horizon for the
Anemone
or any vampires. All she saw was rippling black water touching a midnight blue sky. Where were they?
The
Anemone
had been in the news ever since vampires had boarded her, taken her over, and sent her crew heading for shore in lifeboats.
Strike Team Two confirmed they were now on S&D for castaways. Emma translated the S in that little code to mean
search
. And she couldn’t think of anything the D might stand for other than
destroy
. Which didn’t make any sense. Even bigoted DPI thugs wouldn’t just hunt them down and kill them. Would they? Arrest them, yeah, but
kill
them?
She didn’t want to believe that was possible, because if it was, then the chances she might someday find her mother alive were not very good. So it couldn’t be possible.
Could it?
A rifle shot cracked the silence of the open sea like a lightning strike. Emma jumped so hard her boat rocked sideways and water sloshed over and onto her feet. She yanked off her headset, and spotted lights speeding across the distant waves. The speedboats of Strike Team Two. Another shot split the night, reverberating in her chest.
She quickly pulled in the oars and grappled for her binoculars. Then she peered through, and what she saw made her stomach heave.
Goops were using long poles to pull limp bodies out of the ocean. First one, and then a second.
“They did it. They just shot them on sight. My God.”
She put the binoculars down and fiddled with the dial of her portable radio, jumping nervously when it crackled, and remembering belatedly to put the headset back on.
“We got two of them, Captain.”
“Dead?”
“Yessir. Point blank, center mass, no question.”
“Descriptions?”
“One male, one female. Dark hair. Similar in appearance. Possibly siblings. Apparent physical age....sixteen to eighteen human years, but with them, who the hell knows?”
Oh, God. Two dead. Two teenagers shot dead. Executed. And for what? Just for being vampires?
Emma’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. She knew the DPI was out of control, but she’d had no idea they were sanctioned to commit cold-blooded murder.
“Strike Team Two, there were six splashes picked up on sonar. Any other targets sighted?”
“Negative, sir.”
Emma was staring off in their direction while listening in, so the odd ripple in the water caught her eye right away. It was like a wake without a boat. And it was heading toward her, disrupting the water like a torpedo might do. She tensed as it drew close. And then it sped past.
What the hell was that? Something below the surface, moving rapidly and heading north. A high speed submarine? Or a vampire escaping execution?
The radio came to life again. “Jesus! Sir, they’re waking up–they’re not dea–mayday maydaaaaiiiieee–”
The scream sliced her eardrums, and she yanked the headset off wide eyed, as another speedboat headed for the one with the two apparently not-so dead vamps onboard.
But how could they not be dead? They had been shot point blank in the chest, according to what she’d heard. Center mass.
There were shouts, shots, scuffling as she sat there, riveted, unsure what to do. But then the two boats began heading for shore, one towing the other. She had to get closer, she couldn’t help herself. It was risky, yes, but she was human. Humans had constitutional rights. If caught, she’d play dumb. No one had yet connected her to the anonymous ERFU blog. As far as anyone knew, she was just a risk-taking adventure writer. Not a vampire rights activist.
So she turned her boat around and headed for a spot on the shore where she would blend in with the trees and rocks along the wild Oregon coastline.
There were lights and a lot of activity out on the water as those speedboats moved toward shore. She tried to row faster. She’d gone out a long ways, but if she used her motor, they might hear her. If their sonar had picked up the splashes of vampires jumping overboard from a stolen ship, they’d hear a boat motor. And if they spotted her, she could end up in a cell.
That’s ridiculous. They can’t arrest humans without cause, only vampires. If they spot me, I’ll just dump the equipment, pick up the fishing pole, and make like I was out for some midnight fishing and wandered stupidly into a government operation. Simple. Besides, they’re in chaos. They’re probably not even monitoring the sonar anymore.