Bloodline

Erin Aislinn

Description

Blood reveals its mysteries to those who dare... For Katarina Plavic, blood marks the beginning of a nightmare. She has to get him out of her mind. He isn't real. She hasn't accidentally released him from a grave half way around the world. He hasn't bitten her neck and said he'd follow her everywhere until she gives him the Roman coins. Now that he is free again, Darius Palladio will not allow a silly, hopeless woman to steal the only thing that's kept him sane. He'll invade her body, mind, and blood. He'll possess her in every way a mortal can be possessed. Why then does a taste of her blood haunt him? Why does he forgive her for calling a vampire hunter? How can she make him want things he hasn't wanted for centuries? When he finally unlocks the secret in Katarina's blood, will it be too late or will he at last fulfill a promise he once made?

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783331031
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
BLOODLINE:
The Legacy


A Novel By
Erin Aislinn
Paranormal Romance



Publisher Information
Bloodline: The Legacy published in 2013
by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Erin Aislinn 2013
The right of Erin Aislinn to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



One
Katarina ran from the grave. Everything had gone wrong in an instant. Everything had been wrong from the start.
The panting, heart-pounding effort to escape drowned out all other sound. If the burly gravedigger and his young helper were closing in, she couldn’t hear them. Getting the hell out of here as fast as her legs could carry her was challenging enough when all the elements stacked up against her. A persistent drizzle had softened the dirt path between the graves so she had to focus on every step or risk slipping. Slowed down by her mother’s heavy boots and a long down jacket that flapped ridiculously around her legs made her curse the reasons she’d come here in the first place.
She pressed toward the gravel driveway, welcoming the crunching under her feet. Gravel led from the dirt path to the wrought iron cemetery gates. The steady thud of the pursuers’ boots now clearly punctuated her awareness. Only a little farther and she’d be off the cemetery grounds. They wouldn’t dare follow her to the train station. They wouldn’t. Real world operated under different rules. It didn’t contain gravediggers and a blackened sarcophagus with large metal seals that contained perfectly preserved remains of a man with ancient gold coins in his hand.
The coins... Her gloved fist uncoiled from its death grip around the coins in her pocket. The coins were real. And so was the sarcophagus and the body decomposing in it. God knew how long he had been buried before her great-grandparents had been buried on top of him.
Katarina’s thighs threatened to buckle. Cold air burned her nostrils and her chest threatened to rip apart. The tiled roof of the train station came into view. It sat at the base of the hill that led up to the cemetery. Within sight of safety, Katarina stopped. A wash of adrenaline had turned her body into a buzzing mass of flesh she barely held under control. Doubling over, she dragged in fractured relief with every desperate breath.
As soon as she managed to draw in air that didn’t burn, she pulled herself straight, yanked the hood back into place, and sped down the path. This couldn’t be happening to her. Whatever it was that seemed to be happening to her. Like a dream that she couldn’t tell apart from reality but knew with absolute certainty couldn’t be real. Then she closed her palm around the coins in her pocket, and the line between nightmare and reality blurred into oblivion.
If she had the guts to look over her shoulder, she’d do it, but she knew exactly what she’d see. Not the burly gravedigger ready to rape and pillage in order to get the gold coins. Not even the lanky gravedigger ready to follow his buddy’s lead. What she’d see would be far worse.
She ran faster, panting so hard that the crisp air cut through her lungs like broken glass. She couldn’t look back. God, she wanted to prove to herself that no one was there and that this was all some strange illusion brought on by stress and surroundings.
She didn’t have time to look back. She had to make sure that every gulp and gasp forced her muscles to keep her body moving until she stood on the train to Sisak and watched the station platform glide out of sight.
Despite the wrenching ache in every step, Katarina pushed on. What followed from her great-grandparents grave was worse than any pain. It had no shape, no smell, no sound. It was neither a person nor a thing. She had no name for it because she didn’t know what it was. She only knew that it had been there when her great-grandparents coffins were dug up. She’d never believed in ghosts or any type of supernatural possession until a cold breath had passed through her and held her captive by the side of the grave.
She stopped and doubled over once more. Almost there. She didn’t dare take more than a few breaths pause. Reaching for hidden strength deep inside her gut, Katarina summoned one final effort that carried her all the way to the door of the train station waiting room. Never had an old-fashioned door handle felt better than when she pulled the door open and felt the flush of warm air on her face. Warmth expelled the cold breath that had seized her. Warmth meant safety.
Stepping inside the waiting room, Katarina let out a sigh of relief. She was so tired that even the cracked yellow linoleum floor looked welcoming. Three babushkas with black scarves tied around their heads gave her the judgmental once-over. Katarina smiled. She was back in the real world for sure, such as it was. Soon, things would make sense. The nightmare would be left behind just like the miles of tracks that would lead her away from here.
Katarina aimed for the bench closest to the potbellied stove against the rear wall. A crack around the heater’s door revealed a shimmering golden glow. Katarina sank onto the wooden bench, pulled off the gloves, and reached into her left pocket.
The pristine lines of three gold Roman coins presented a mystery she wanted to solve. Her Latin lessons and love of Roman history could finally be put to some practical use. Lifting the coins for a closer inspection, she deciphered the letters surrounding the engraved male profile. A tremor of recognition shook her hand before her brain could even sound out the name. A fresh dose of adrenaline turned her once more into a jangle of raw nerves. Her heart began to pound.
The name printed around the engraved profile on the coins spelled Marcus Aurelius. In perfectly-minted gold that looked as if had never even been circulated. Found in a sarcophagus beneath her great-grandparents, in the hand of a corpse that hadn’t yet decomposed. Technically, they belonged to her. Technically, the sarcophagus and the corpse in it belonged to her as well. If she wanted nothing to do with any of it, she shouldn’t have taken the coins. Except that she couldn’t leave them behind.
She glanced around the room. The three babushkas chatted away in Croatian. The sound of their voices in a language she’d heard growing up spread like a veil that once again made her question reality. One of them had gotten out her knitting. Katarina watched the steady motion of the knitting needles, pulling on string of red wool that stretched from the satchel on the bench next to the round, white-haired woman. Katarina closed her eyes. Everything would make sense just as soon as she got home.
She imagined Redondo Beach. The gun-steel grey of the Pacific on an overcast day. The sea-gulls lined up on the sand, waiting for sunset. The bright spaciousness of Los Angeles. Even traffic on Pacific Coast Highway promised the safety of the familiar.
A cold breath oozed down her spine. A sense of hollowness followed, as if a keen awareness had snuck inside her head and decided to hang around for a while. Every inch of her skin prickled. Instantly straight as a board and ready to bolt, Katarina glued her stare to the door, frozen in uncertainty of whether to sit or run.
Something watched and waited for her next move. From inside her mind.
* * *
He ran through the rain, the thud of stolen boots odd against his feet. He ignored the oddness. He ignored everything but the woman. When he’d mesmerized her by the grave, he’d captured her scent and unlocked her memories. She thought only partly in Croatian, which he’d been overhearing for centuries and had already absorbed into his being. The bulk of the woman’s thoughts unfolded in English. He spoke several older versions of that tongue and had heard enough of the current variant to understand that she was about to take his coins to North America.
Even now, he could imagine the gold in her hand. If he hadn’t given her a mental push to escape the melee between the greedy gravediggers, the coins would have been scattered in three directions by now. Without the coins firmly in his grasp, freedom meant nothing. He had to get them right now, while she remained close enough to track by feeling, scent, and thought.
He could feel her turbulent emotions as she tried to interpret the events of the day. She might be disappointed to learn that her temporary possession of the coins had nothing whatsoever to do with her or her ancestors.
Pressing his speed as hard as he could, he tested the limits of his regenerating body. The faster he moved, the more blood flowed to his extremities, awakening dormant channels and filling them with the thrill of the night. He couldn’t fly as of yet, but half a dozen more feedings and his full power would be restored. As he didn’t have time to hunt anyway, he listened to the voices and thoughts that filled the ether and allowed the images of humanity to flood his mind.
Cars, indoor plumbing, television, radio, cell-phones, portable communications devices, conveniences and luxuries of every conceivable design. On the surface, so much had changed during the twelve hundred years of his entombment, but deep down, in the guts of mortal existence, hardly anything had changed at all. P