WastelandRogue

Brenda
Williamson

When gorgeous vampire Rye is left
for dead in the postapocalyptic wastelands, she’s at the mercy of the sexy man
who saves her. With her life in the balance, she voraciously drinks his blood. And
while it heals her, his blood also triggers her inherent carnal lust.

The moment Sevrin finds Rye naked
in a ditch, he’s intrigued. After letting her gorge on his blood, he experiences
strange, spellbinding sexual urges. Then he tastes the succulence of her lips
and he’s lost to the need thrumming between them.

As Rye and Sevrin embark on a
steamy journey, indulging in every need, they also race to stop a villainous
corporation from developing a poison that could wipe out the remainder of
mankind.

Inside Scoop:
This
apocalyptic world is a rough and sometimes untamed place. Rye deals with some
hard times, including sexual assault, before this vampire gets her lustily ever
after.

A
Romantica®
paranormal erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

Rye Sanborn woke from her unconscious state to the stream of
cool moisture rolling down her hot back. A prickle of pain in her flesh and the
scent in the air suggested it was her own blood gliding along her feverish
spine.

Blurry-eyed and semi-coherent, she gazed at a glint of light
reflecting from an object wavering in front of her face.

“Ah, the vamp bitch is awakening, I see.” The croaky voice
of a man drew her attention.

Who was he? Why did she feel satisfied by her situation when
it all looked wrong? How had she gotten there?

Rye’s head throbbed. The familiar opaque red tint to her
vision scared her. She blinked rapidly, attempting to clear her eyes of the
crimson gossamer but to no avail. Without clear sight, she’d have to use her
other senses and they too were not working in a normal manner.

A blade of metal, oddly shiny and very thin, mesmerized her.
From the man’s tone and the menacing way he wielded the item, she surmised it
was important. She forced herself to focus.

Her throat burned with a dryness she had trouble swallowing
past. “Who are you? Where am I?” she sputtered.

He moved just far enough to be out of her line of diminished
sight. She heard his heavy breathing to her left. She tried turning her head
but lacked the strength. Nor did she understand the stiffness in her neck or
the dull ache in her joints.

The shadowy image of her abductor moved in front of her. He
continued to wave the unusual knife-shaped object near her face.

“It’s called a straight razor,” he explained, using a
foreign word for the unfamiliar gadget. “Some brainy fellow traded it for a
sack of allium.”

Allium, a blood poison her species avoided at all costs. Was
it near her? The apocalyptic wars had devastated most continents, leaving
little plant life. Allium was the worst of all surviving vegetation. Had he
forced her to ingest it? Her racing heart said
no
. Allium would slow
it—stop it—kill her.

“He told me,” the man continued his story as if she cared,
“that centuries ago they had these special bladed knives made just for scraping
off whiskers. The crazy things people invent, huh?” He laughed a coarse,
cackling sound, apparently finding amusement in his words. “But then, every
generation has its quirks. If the Century Wars hadn’t happened, no telling what
fandangle objects we’d be seeing people use.”

Rye didn’t want to discuss the ancient tool. Nor did she
care about the antiquated grooming habits of men. Especially since the man
before her obviously didn’t believe in engaging in any kind of hygienic care.
The stench of his body odor made her gag.

“I gave it a try, though.” The man continued rambling on
about his gadget. “Nicked me a dozen times until I sharpened it. Now it’ll skin
a big ol’ lizard with the ease of a few swipes. Also slices flesh real good
too.”

Even though the man had her tied and cut up, he was somehow
important beyond that. Unfortunately, comprehension failed her. Withdrawing
into herself, she pushed all her energy toward healing instead of dwelling on
the new wrinkle in her life turning it to feces.

Foremost, she had to improve her cognitive skills. In her
decimated world, self-survival was the norm. Since her parents’ death, she had
never had someone to rescue her from the evils she encountered. If confronted
by trouble, she had to be the strong, reliant one. Even Shay relied on her. A
sliver of a dream always followed her that maybe she’d meet someone to cherish
and protect her.

For a second, she let the idea of that someone corner her
thoughts. He’d be handsome and strong, forgiving and loyal. Most of all he’d be
a kind and loving man whom she belonged to heart and soul.
Yes,
she’d
like that.

Rye grimaced with pain as her abductor slashed the fantasy
from her thoughts. The razor, as he called it, cut sharply into her flesh. The
sting faded across her collarbone. As she relaxed, her vision began to clear.
Then she saw his arm rise.

The scent of blood on his sleeve grabbed her attention. It
wasn’t hers and it wasn’t
lamian
. It was human. From the earthiness, it
was old. The potency still motivated her senses.

Corpuscles of red rushed into the pupils of her eyes. Human blood
triggered the trait of making a
lamian
see red. What direct purpose it
served remained a mystery but she believed it had something to do with telling
the two species apart.

How long had she been unconscious? Where was she? Surely
they hadn’t crossed the Mississippi Canyon.

She tried concentrating on the other smells around her.
Thick with dust, the musky air suggested they were still in the Missouri
Wastelands. Had they traveled far from the Taum Sauk Mountains, north maybe,
where she had heard allium grew in abundance? Fear of coming in contact with
the poisonous plants had always been the best reason for her and her sister,
Shay, not to travel too far from Taum Sauk when they went scavenging.

Shay.
There was an importance in her sister’s name.

Rye cringed at the sting in her upper arm. Other spots on
her skin also burned with pain. This wasn’t the first cut. Her torturer had
carved others on her back, her belly and her legs. Nevertheless, it would take
more than a few stabs of steel to kill her. However, the bloodletting had taken
its toll, draining her of the required energy to fight back.

While Rye wasn’t a weak-kneed child or a sniveling human,
she still had a strange, unexplainable earth-shattering fear immobilizing her
mind. Hung by her wrists, she helplessly listened to the constant drip of her
blood landing on the floor. When had her abductor started his methodical
carving of her flesh? How did she sleep through that first slash or the
subsequent slices he had made into her regenerative body?

Zapped with a burst of memory, she quickly drew a morsel of
information from the hazy fog around her thoughts. It led to the reason her
sister Shay was significant to her imprisonment. Rye had let the man grab her.
It made her sick to remember why.

Once a year, she and Shay traveled down from their safe and
peaceful place in the Taum Sauk Mountains. After the snow melted and the
weather warmed, they journeyed to the rim of the wasteland. There they salvaged
supplies left behind in abandoned shelters. Tools, clothes or whatever trinket
caught their interest was theirs for the taking. During their last outing,
someone had gotten the better of them by locking her in the mineshaft and
kidnapping Shay.

After Rye’s escape, she had relentlessly gone from one
vacant camp to another, hoping to find her sister or the man who took her.
Desperation drove her to the point of making herself vulnerable to capture. Not
such a great plan in hindsight but it had become her last resort.

“I want you to die a slow death, you bloodsucking bitch.”
Her abductor hissed. His spit sprayed her face.

Did he have a grudge against females in general or her
specifically? She didn’t recall crossing paths with him before. While she could
be mistaken, she thought she’d never forget him after today.

“Do I know you?” she asked, curiously.

Tears mixed with the blood as she thought of her sister
having to endure this lunatic’s tortures. Was this what happened to Shay?

“I want all your kind to die,” he answered almost
cryptically.

Nevertheless, she got it. It wasn’t her or females in
particular who he loathed but her species—
lamians
.

Homo lamias
had evolved during the two-hundred-year
span following the near destruction of all life forms in the Century Wars. And
while
Homo lamias
and
Homo sapiens
were quite similar, they did
not socially mix well. Humans often disliked her kind, mostly because humans
were a dying breed.

“We didn’t do anything to you,” she argued, although she
didn’t expect to change his way of thinking.

After the Century Wars had ended, the ecosystem had broken
down. Floods from melting glaciers and scorching heat from the sun had made
parts of the planet near intolerable for any living creature.

Survival had become a struggle as food sources vanished.
Many parts of the world became uninhabitable for humankind. The soil, unable to
sustain plant growth, forced people to dig below the surface. Where they once
mined for minerals, metals and gems, they turned to searching for food in the
subterranean caverns. They harvested roots and fungi and eventually decayed
bodies. The changes prompted nature to create a new breed, one tolerant of
hardship. One enduringly self-sustaining.

Since her abductor complained more about his miserable life
and how all
lamian
s needed destroyed without offering up his personal
reason, she was afraid that directly questioning him about Shay might provoke
him into acting rashly. She didn’t want to waste time on idle chatter but it
seemed the best course if she was to get any answers to where Shay was.

“Did someone in particular upset you?” she asked,
encouraging him to keep talking.

“The whole fucking world upsets me.” His raspy voice oozed
with pure anger. “A thousand years ago, humans were the majority and vampires a
myth, a horror story to tell children.”

“We are
not
vampires.” She held back her anger. “You
should think about letting go of those childhood terror tales your parents made
up to scare you. We’re not undead minions of an evil higher power.”

She whined through clenched teeth at the sharp jab of the
razor in her left buttock.

“You use magic to heal yourselves by feasting on humans.” He
moved in front of her and waggled his odd weapon in her face as he spoke. “Your
males gorge themselves on the blood of children, while females like you seduce
men for breeding.”

“They’re just stories,” she said, not letting the danger he
presented keep her silent. “We’re the result of progression, you fool.
Homo
lamias
evolved from
Homo sapiens
to survive the changes on Earth.
The inevitable development started long before you or I were born. Those
stories of us eating humans are exaggerations of fact. If anyone is guilty of
gorging on human remains, it’s humans. They’re the ones who went looking for
nourishment beneath the soil and ended up devouring corpses in graves long before
Homo lamias
came into being.”

“Maybe that’s so, but you eat the living, drinking all our
blood. You want us gone from—the—face—of—the—Earth.” He repeatedly stabbed her
in the belly, punctuating his last words.

Rye jerked from the pain when he yanked the knife from her
gut. Nausea churned within her butchered belly. She coughed and blood spewed
from her many wounds. Again, the idea that her sister had also gone through
this brutal persecution made her want revenge.

Regardless of her incapacitation, she thrashed toward the
low-life scum of the earth before her and spit out her wrath with a low snarl.
“I’m going to kill you.”

Blood from her mouth spattered his face. Red droplets clung
to his scruffy whiskers. He wiped the back of his hand over it, spreading the
stain down his beard. His cold gaze locked to hers. He seemed to study her in
silence. Had her bravado stunned him? She didn’t dare to hope it scared him
into releasing her.

He proved it hadn’t when he grinned. “I like red,” he
sneered, circling her slowly while dragging the knife across her skin so the
thin cut tickled instead of hurt. “But I like coin more,” he said, suddenly
stabbing her in the back.

She cringed, fighting off the natural reaction to yell. If
she did nothing else, she’d deprive him of hearing her cry out.

When he flattened his hand against her spine, the contact
startled her. It was the first time she felt his touch—his flesh upon hers.
Suspended by ropes tied to her wrists, she couldn’t move from his caress
smearing blood over her skin. She strained to get her footing but her toes
slipped in a puddle of liquid. She imagined it was her own blood on the hard
floor. Although hanging from her arms left her little stability, she managed to
get her weight back on her toes.

Anger pushed her to do whatever was necessary to find Shay,
even if that included keeping up the semblance of a normal conversation with
the man until she grew stronger.

“What’s your name?” she asked, returning to her first
question when she became consciously aware of her environment.

“Not that it should matter but they call me Hamner. You
remember that, bitch, when you take your last breath. Hamner is the one who
caught you. Hamner is the one who outsmarted another vamp.”

She flicked her head back, sending straggly locks of her
hair away from her eyes. From the moment she had heard the splatter of her
blood on the floor, she knew she had to be somewhere that had a firmly formed
base instead of dug-out dirt. The surroundings seemed structured too—not carved
Earth or chipped-away rock.

Nothing in the dark, dank space made her think of any mining
shafts in the wasteland where she had foraged or taken refuge. She swung her
head to move the dirty stands of hair away again and her body rocked into a
wall. The flat coldness suggested cut stone.

She remembered the one time her father took her to a sizable
human encampment. Ozar-Columbi sat to the northwest of Taum Sauk. The people
there didn’t impress her. Stingy with their wares, they displayed a greediness
that had made her feel they cheated her father for each of his purchases. She
figured out then that humans didn’t like
lamians
.

After her father had died, she had taken on the role of
supporting herself and her sister, Shay. She’d taken to scavenging instead of
bartering to avoid humans. She’d found deserted camps abundant along the
northwestern rim of wastelands. With no one around, she and Shay had everything
they needed without giving anything up or facing the prejudices against her
breed.