Bad Blood Read online

  Faith Everly

  Bad Blood

  A Reverse Harem Paranormal Tale

  Copyright © 2020 by Faith Everly

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  For my husband,

  who has always treated me

  like a queen.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Also by Faith Everly:

  Handymen Special

  Fixer Upper

  Full House

  The Complete Handyman Series Box Set

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  Prologue

  It was a nightmare. It had to be.

  Vampires didn’t sleep, however. I hadn’t slept in more than two hundred years. One of the things I missed about my human life.

  One of the only things.

  So, no nightmare. No hallucination, either. There was no means of explaining away the madness, the horror before me.

  In my centuries as a vampire, I’d shed a great deal of blood. Gallons of it.

  I’d never regretted it until this very moment.

  The woman gurgled one final time, the wound at her throat allowing one last pump of blood to flow out. It joined the rest now pooling around her on the floor.

  A pool that included her husband’s blood, as well. There was no telling where hers ended and his began.

  My mind was doing this to me. Spinning stories, flailing about helplessly while two humans breathed their last before me.

  Humans I’d destroyed.

  “Dominic.”

  The voice behind me was Jessabelle’s and it wasn’t. Bloodlust left her sounding more like a starving, slobbering animal than the sophisticated beauty she normally presented to others.

  “Stay outside.” It was a bark, revealing the animal I’d become in the frenzy the night had devolved into.

  Damn it all. This was supposed to be simple. An easy case of removing the girl from her bed before her parents knew she was gone. Even if they woke while I was in the cabin, I’d reasoned, I could wipe their memories clean of the situation.

  Who did I think I was? What did I imagine gave me some special ability to navigate a situation this important?

  At the end of the day, I was nothing more than what I was. A vampire who’d succumbed to my primal instincts the moment I’d felt the slightest bit threatened, challenged. The doubt I’d wrestled with in the days leading up to this ill-fated mission had manifested in sudden, blinding violence.

  I’d lost control of my better nature and reverted back to the monster I’d been in the early days of my second life. My eternal life.

  “What have you done?” Kristoff reached my side. Jessa must have decided to remain outside, while Gabriel was somewhere in the area. Keeping watch.

  “What does it look like?”

  My cousin shook me hard enough to make my head loll back and forth like that of a rag doll. “How? You were the one who insisted you do this on your own, that if more than one of us descended upon the cabin we would be detected.”

  “I remember.” And I had never detested myself, my nature, more than I did at that moment.

  “Where is the girl? Where is Sophie?”

  “Not here. I already checked her bedroom,” I added when it was clear Kristoff was about to search the cabin as I had. “It’s no use. I can’t pick up her scent. Can you?”

  “To be fair, all I smell at the moment is…” He waved a hand, indicating the carnage before us.

  “Jessa? Do you smell Sophie nearby?”

  “No.” It was a grunt. She still fought the natural reaction we all experienced when blood was in the air. I’d glutted myself on the blood of the man, Sophie’s father.

  This would crush her. I wasn’t so far removed from my human life that I couldn’t remember what it meant to have parents.

  “We have to search the area for her, immediately. I won’t return to the manse without her.” I stormed out of the cabin, unable to look upon what I’d done any longer.

  How had I lost control? I, Dominic St. Germaine, who’d prided myself for so long on being somehow above baser creatures. It had to do with my father’s influence, the way he’d held himself above all others over his lengthy existence. He expected nothing less from the children he sired.

  If I’d proven anything tonight, it was how shallow and stupid that attitude was.

  My visit with Magda came rushing back.

  Could she have been wrong about me? About us and the role we were meant to play in Sophie’s life, in her rule? Gabriel, Kristoff, Jessabelle, me. We were meant to be her advisors, her consorts.

  I couldn’t even manage to secure her, to bring her into the fold in time for the Summit.

  There wouldn’t be another Summit for ten years.

  “Does it have to be now?” That was Jessa, staring out into the night from the porch, arms wrapped around her slim body.

  “You know it does. Lucian was clear on this. He said—”

  “He might be wrong. That is possible. I know you worship him, but—”

  “Worship? Don’t be disgusting.”

  “Just because he wants to present her before all of the attendees and turn her into one of us before them, so there won’t be any question as to her legitimacy, doesn’t mean it has to be so. She is only fifteen.” Jessa scoffed, turning her face toward me. “Naturally, when I raised this concern and asked whether she has the emotional maturity to accept this huge role, he practically patted me on the head and sent me on my way.”

  “Yes, that sounds like him.” Frustration threatened to tear me in two.

  “Magda never spoke of him.” It was a whisper tinged with uncertainty, something else I wasn’t accustomed to hearing from my composed cousin. “Surely, she would have mentioned him if he played a part in her future.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “That it doesn’t matter what he wants, damn it. What he feels is right. We are the ones meant to support Sophie’s rule, not him. We are the ones who are meant to help her solidify the peace among the supernatural species. Not Lucian, no matter what he wants to believe. Why does any of this have to be on his terms?”

  “He doesn’t even know I went to Magda. He has no idea where she’s holed up.”

  “Nor should he. There has to be a reason why she went into hiding, and it isn’t because she trusts him. They’ve been at odds since the beginning.”

  This was all very nice, but it didn’t change what I’d done. “She’ll never forgive me for this. How are we going to explain this to her one day?”

  “One problem at a time. Gabriel. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Somewh
ere around here. I’m glad he didn’t see this.” He would never let me live this down. Our relationship was contentious at best.

  Kristoff joined us. “We can either wait around until she comes back, or we can get the hell out of here now and try again.”

  “It would be a mercy to wipe her memory,” Jessabelle offered. “Otherwise, she’ll carry this with her for the rest of her life. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  She made a good point. “Yes. That’s what we’ll do.”

  And it would have been, too.

  If sirens hadn’t sounded from the road leading to the cabins.

  The woman had screamed. Just once.

  But loud enough to be heard elsewhere. Loud enough that someone had called the police. It was a wonder whoever made the call hadn’t joined us yet—though perhaps they’d been too worried about running into trouble, too. Perhaps they’d thought the police could step in, then they could come along and pick up whatever pieces were left.

  Perhaps.

  There was no time to find out.

  Jessa clutched my arm. “We have to get away. Now. Before they see us.”

  “What of Gabriel?”

  “He’ll know what to do once he hears them. He might already have gone home.”

  “Dominic, she’s right.” Kristoff cast one last look inside the cabin, where the door stood open. So much blood. So much waste. “We could handle wiping one or two humans, but a slew of police cars…”

  I looked around, desperate to find Sophie. To smell her blood in the air. Blood unlike even her mother’s, though she’d been the one to pass on the marker which set Sophie apart from the rest of the world.

  Which was what made her even more special, the fact that the marker in her blood, the marker that made her one of us even if she didn’t know it, had revealed itself again after centuries of lying dormant. Going unnoticed in one after another of Aurelia’s descendants.

  There was nothing. Only the night air and what had begun to congeal on the cabin floor.

  “Dominic! Now!” Sure enough, blue and red lights had begun sweeping over the towering trees.

  I followed my cousin’s urging, staring down at my ring and for one brief instant considering a return to Magda. To ask her what to do now that I’d hopelessly bungled what was only the most important task I’d ever set out to accomplish.

  “Come!” Jessabelle made the decision for me, grasping my hand and taking me to the manse along with her.

  Where I would face my father’s wrath.

  Wrath which in no way compared to the blame I heaped upon myself.

  Sophie. You deserved better. Forgive me.

  One

  SOPHIE

  “They murdered your parents.”

  Four words. Six syllables.

  Strung together like that, they had a much bigger impact than any of them did on their own.

  They murdered your parents.

  My parents. Their throats ripped out. Eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling.

  That was all I remembered with any sort of clarity. Their eyes. I remembered wanting to see their eyes, pushing and shoving my way through the cluster of cops who’d tried to keep me outside.

  I’d kicked one of them in the shin and slipped through, determined to know whether they were really dead or not, like the massive pool of blood that had spread around them and begun to congeal wasn’t proof enough.

  Would it ever be proof enough for a kid whose entire world had just crashed down around her?

  Then I’d run outside, screaming, before throwing up all over the place. Mom’s spaghetti and meatballs. It had reminded me of what I saw inside, all red and squishy, and I’d thrown up again.

  All I remembered after that was waking up in the county hospital.

  They murdered your parents.

  That horrible night was the only time in my entire life that I’d ever fainted—not counting the times I’d been touched by a vampire and knocked unconscious.

  Until now.

  No wonder my therapist had harped on me about processing the past. Moving through it rather than building walls between me and what happened ten years ago.

  I was so sure back then, and it wasn’t even that long ago that I last sat in her office. I had taken it as a personal insult, like she thought I wasn’t strong enough to handle my shit.

  I could’ve killed her for it. For pushing me. For acting like she knew me. For every time she’d warned me there would come a time when it all came crashing down. That when it did, it would crash hard.

  Damn it. She wasn’t wrong.

  Could I have been more full of myself? What was that saying about pride going before the fall?

  Gabriel caught me before I could hit the floor, held me steady. “Easy, now. You can swoon later, once we’re out of here. I don’t think we have more than a few minutes. Get whatever it is you need and let’s get moving.”

  It wasn’t so simple. I was dizzy, breathless. “I might be having a heart attack,” I managed to gasp. Sweat rolled down my temples, the back of my neck. My chest felt all fluttery and pained.

  He was so fast, pressing an ear to my chest. “You’ll be fine. Panic, probably. Rapid heartbeat, but steady and strong. Now. Upstairs, get your things.”

  When my feet refused to move, he threw me over his shoulder with a grunt and charged up the stairs. “Go. Move. Dress yourself, for the love of the gods, unless you want your intestines draped around the neck of a lycan within the next ten minutes.”

  Somehow, that colorful image was what got me moving. I grabbed a shirt and jeans from the armoire and didn’t bother telling him to leave the room before stripping off the dress with my back turned. It puddled around my feet.

  I wanted to set it on fire. It and everything having to do with those asshole St. Germaines. “They have the nerve to act like they’re the good guys.” I shoved as much as I could fit into a backpack I’d planned on using to go hiking.

  “It might surprise you who ends up on the side of the so-called good guys and who doesn’t. History is written by the victors, as they say.”

  “Why did they do it?”

  “Must we discuss this now?”

  “I still have to put my shoes on, so yeah. Start talking.” I chose hiking boots, since I didn’t have the first clue where we were going and figured I had to plan for the worst.

  Was I seriously doing this? My hands moved on their own, without my telling them what to do, no matter what my brain thought about it. Like my body knew better and had decided to take over unless I wanted my guts used as accessories. I pulled on socks before jamming my feet into the boots.

  The world was ending all over again, and somehow I was still functioning. Go figure.

  He spoke while watching from the window. “I was with them. That’s how I know. This was before we parted ways, before I was ostracized. We came at Dominic’s insistence. He was the leader of our little bunch, the one who’d planned how we would take you.”

  “Take me?” My voice was sharp as a rifle’s crack.

  “Please. One thing at a time.”

  “You’re the one who said it.”

  “And I regret it most grievously. Suffice it to say, you weren’t here at the time.”

  Somehow, I managed to get up from the side of the bed. I managed to stand without shaking too hard. “They died because I wasn’t here that night?”

  “I am afraid so, though there’s no telling. There was a fight—I wasn’t here for it,” he added when I whimpered. “I’d been assigned as a lookout.”

  They must’ve been so scared. Absolutely horrified.

  Dad would’ve fought. Mom, too. They’d been strong, fierce parents. No pushovers.

  But how long could they have possibly lasted against vampires? It was no contest.

  I hoped it was over quick. For their sake. It was all I could think over the pain of my heart being crushed. My fault. It was all because of me. They could still be alive if it wasn’t for me.

  �
�I returned when I heard the police on their way, but my family had left by then. I saw what he’d done.” He turned away from the window, piercing me with his intense stare. “For what it’s worth, I believe he would’ve tried to work things out with your parents if he hadn’t felt cornered and surprised. He might’ve wiped their memories of his and Kristoff’s and Jessabelle’s presence, but things went bad before he could manage. I can say that about him, though I don’t have many other good things to say. Too much bad blood between us, no pun intended.”

  “I’m glad you think this is hilarious. You’re telling me my parents’ throats were ripped open because of me, and you’re making awkward puns while doing it.” My voice broke near the end. I looked at the toes of my scuffed boots.

  “Would it make a difference if I asked your forgiveness?”

  I glanced up. “No.”

  “Which is why I won’t bother.” He glanced over his shoulder, out the window. His profile was striking, sharp. I wished I wouldn’t notice things like that, especially at a time like this. “We need to move. Now.”

  “You haven’t told me where we’re going.”

  “Would that make a difference?”

  “I deserve to know. I have a right to know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You won’t be satisfied until they’re loping up the stairs to get at you. We’ll go to Philadelphia for now. It’s where you’re familiar, and where I have a penthouse where you might hide out until we come up with a better plan. I have connections in the city, inroads to the entire supernatural underworld.”

  “Philly has a supernatural underworld? Why am I not even surprised?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “You’ll be surprised. I guarantee you that. Very few supernatural creatures are even aware of the extent of the underground. Not only there, but in all major cities.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” It seemed I had a lot to keep in mind, didn’t it?

  Like how I couldn’t trust Dominic, or Kristoff, or Lucian. Jessabelle could kiss my ass in general, so there was no love lost there.

  They murdered your parents.