Prologue

On edge after having another disagreement with Wendy, his fiancée, over finances, Dane Edmonton arrived at the popular Wilding Club, a vampire club, late that night in a Dallas, Texas suburb where Lucilla, a rogue vampire, often visited. He watched the establishment, waiting for her to leave. He was sitting in his black pickup, the rain coming down hard on the windshield as he conducted surveillance of the red brick building, disco lights flashing through the windows. Vampires and blood bonds were mostly going inside. Occasionally, a couple of people would leave the club.

The police had verified that Lucilla was killing homeless men, and as a hunter assigned to the case, it was Dane’s job to eliminate her. She was known to often have a couple of male vampires with her, but his informant, only known as Green—a blood bond that Lucilla sometimes fed off—had said she was leaving the Wilding Club—going downtown alone again tonight, just before midnight. When she went alone, it meant she was hunting prey.

The blood bond also was an informant to four other hunters—Van Olson, Moose Warner, and cousins, Flynn and Felix Freeburg—but Green swore he always shared information with Dane first, when he knew a rogue vampire needed to be taken down.

Yet, Green had seemed more nervous than usual. Maybe the vampiress had learned he was an informant, and he was afraid she would kill him. Dane could certainly understand Green’s concern.

Then Dane saw Lucilla leave the vampire club and head downtown alone in her black Nissan coupe. He knew he had his chance to eliminate her without any interference from her friends. She was evil to the core and until a hunter terminated her, she would continue to prey on the innocent.

Most vampires paid for a blood bond’s blood, a mutually acceptable arrangement between humans and vampires, but she liked to hunt for potential victims too.

Dane assumed she was going to target someone downtown where her other victims had been, and he had to stop her before she murdered anyone else. He parked his black pickup down the street from where she cut her car’s engine. She was wearing a long flowing black gown as if she was going to a formal ball, but it made him think of a large black raven, fluttering its wings when it went to kill a small mammal. In her case, a male who lived on the streets.

The police department had hired him to eliminate her, paying the usual bounty that hunters received for taking down menacing rogue vampires. Humans within the police department couldn’t successfully deal with the bad vampires, normally. Though there were some Van Helsing human hunter types who took on the missions and risked their necks in this life-or-death business. They didn’t have the superior strength that hunters and vampires had, so they were truly at a disadvantage. But they wanted the money and loved to live dangerously. More power to them, Dane figured.

Some hunters did serve as homicide detectives in some police departments. But most police departments hired hunters to do their dirty work because most hunters didn’t want to do anything but work for bounties. As homicide detectives, they would have to work other kinds of cases, not just rogue vampire-related ones.

Lucilla spoke with a woman sitting next to a grocery cart stacked full of her treasured possessions. If she attempted to kill the woman, she would be changing her MO. She had only killed men in the past. Any age, race, it didn’t matter. She didn’t discriminate, except that she didn’t target women.

Dane was following her, his sword out, keeping to the shadows, making sure she didn’t hear or see him approaching. The vampire’s hearing was as good as a hunter’s, and hunters were just as stealthy as a vampire. And they had the same kind of strength, healing up quickly from injuries suffered.

She had to know she would be on a list for termination. Unless she was so arrogant that she thought no one knew who was killing the homeless men.

Then she slipped into a dilapidated building, and he hurried after her, afraid he was going to lose her. As soon as he did, two male vampires hiding in the darkness attacked Dane. Damn, he hadn’t expected that.

Worried that he would alert Lucilla that he was after her, he swung his sword at one of the vampires, and the other cut him in the shoulder. Hell. He ignored that vampire because the one in front of him was defending himself and wasn’t as good a fighter. Dane suspected he might have been more newly turned. Dane quickly penetrated the vampire’s heart and swung around to fight the other vampire who was just trying to strike him again. Dane slammed his sword into the vampire’s sword, sweeping it away, nearly making the dark-haired vampire lose it. The vampire quickly lost his composure, his jaw dropped, his blue eyes wide. What did he think? Just because he cut the hunter once, he would win the battle?

The vampire tried to recover, but he couldn’t swing his sword around fast enough before Dane attacked and killed him with a sword to the heart. Both vampires had dropped to the ground when they were mortally wounded and remained in the same physical state as when they were alive—so they were more newly turned. Ancient vampires would turn to dust when they died.

But where was Lucilla? That’s when two more male vampires came after Dane and Lucilla made her appearance. She had blood on her mouth and Dane was certain she’d found her victim. She didn’t look surprised to see him and he figured she’d lured him here to his death. The male vampires attacked, and he was fighting from one to the other when she suddenly was behind Dane and bit him on the right side of the neck. For a moment in time, he wondered if his informant had known that this was a setup.

He expected Lucilla to drain him dry like she did with her victims, though he was trying to shake her loose, while swinging his sword at the male attackers. Yet they weren’t going in for a kill. No, they were working with Lucilla to keep him under control. He sliced at one of the vampires, cutting his arm, and he howled. His dark brown eyes turned nearly black, and he tried to cut Dane this time, even if it wasn’t what Lucilla wanted. Then to Dane’s horror, he was afraid she meant to just turn him. He was trying to fight back, his vision blurring, his strength waning when she released him and he sank to his knees, trying to rally his strength, knowing if he didn’t, he was going to die. He smelled her blood then as she bit into her arm and the males held Dane’s arms while she pressed her bloody wound against Dane’s mouth. He shook his head, trying to get away from her, knowing that if he tasted her blood, the mutual exchange would have been made.

One of the vampires reached over and pulled his chin down and Dane tasted Lucilla’s blood. “You’re here because a hunter you know made it happen and so did someone close to you.”

“Who?” He had to know which hunter would set him up. And who was close to him who would do this horrible deed. Green? His informant?

Dane was doomed. He couldn’t kill her. She had turned him. And now he was going to be a hunter turned, owing allegiance to the vampiress. He would rather have died in the battle between good and evil this night.

Worse, she wouldn’t tell him who the hunter or the other person was who had sabotaged his career, his life, and turned his world inside out.

* * *

Jacqueline Anderson had thoughtthe mission she was going on would be easy. The vampire was known to eliminate blood bonds he had recruited after they riled him. She often didn’t know why the vampire who she was hired to eliminate went rogue or targeted some type of person. But in his case, the trigger seemed to be when the blood bond refused to do anything for Moulson, and then in his eyes, they became disposable. Once they had become one of his blood bonds, he owned them.

He often recruited blood bonds at a human club, so she’d been staking it out for nights until she finally saw him. He left the building at two in the morning, wearing black boots, a black satin shirt, and blue jeans, leading two new potential blood bonds outside on the rainy Dallas night that spring. The two men looked like they were in their mid-twenties, wearing jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts. She didn’t know when Moulson would snap and kill the blood bonds, so she didn’t want to leave him with them for any length of time and discover he’d left more victims in his wake.

He got into his van and the potential blood bonds hesitated. Not a good idea when faced with a short-fused vampire. Then they reluctantly got in.

She started her car but didn’t follow Moulson. She knew where his house was located, and he always went there after he visited a club. Before he arrived at his Spanish style estate, she was waiting curbside at a house down the street. She saw his van drive past her vehicle, a black sedan, and then he parked inside the garage. The two humans and the vampire left the van. He told them to enter the house. He was hostile, probably still annoyed because they hadn’t gotten into the van right away near the club. Anything would set him off.

These guys were already in trouble.

Jacqueline got out of her car while the three of them went into the house, the garage door still open. She rushed toward the open garage and slipped inside and hid behind the van when the door leading into the garage opened, and someone pushed the button to close the garage door.

She studied the shoes of the wearer. White sneakers. It was one of the humans. As soon as he shut the door to the house—glad it didn’t squeak—she moved quickly to that door and listened. She heard voices deeper in the house, and with her sword out, she quietly opened the door. Thankfully, it wasn’t locked though she had a lockpick she could have used too but it might have alerted the vampire that she was trying to gain entry into the house.

She entered the house and saw that the short hallway was clear. She carefully closed the door to the garage. A laundry room was off to the left, the door open to it, and then the hall opened to another hallway. The voices were off to the right. Before she could make a move to eliminate Moulson, a knock at the front door made her heart skip a bit.

Now what? Please be a pizza delivery, not another vampire. She never knew how blood bonds would react either. They usually left the fight to the vampires and the hunters, but sometimes they were so loyal—or brainwashed, they would fight on the vampire’s behalf.

She ducked into the laundry room off the short hall as she heard footfalls—one person—heading for the door. She so wanted to peek to see who it was—Moulson or one of the blood bonds—but she was afraid she would be caught at it.

Still, if the person at the door was another vampire, she could be in trouble. One could be hard enough to take down on her own.

She made the decision, good or bad, and checked to see who it was. It was Moulson. But she couldn’t trust that the person at the door was someone like an innocuous delivery guy and not a vampire. She quickly moved to take Moulson out, praying that the blood bonds wouldn’t come to his aid. She couldn’t look and see how they were reacting, but at least they were quiet and didn’t alert the vampire. Maybe they didn’t really want to be his blood bonds after all.

Moulson whipped around when he spied her move in behind him. It was too much to ask for that she could just swing her sword and take his head. She tried, but he leapt at her with a vampire’s flying leap and hit her with such an impact that he knocked her flat on her back on the marble tile floor. Not a good position to be in for a hunter who was fighting a powerful vampire. She couldn’t use her sword in such close quarters and instead, she yanked a dagger out of its sheath and cut into his chest. But she didn’t reach the vampire’s heart. Damn it.

He screamed in pain and anger. “Open the front door,” Moulson said to the humans, but neither moved from wherever they stood, maybe afraid if she killed the vampire, she would take them out next.

When Moulson turned his head to growl at the humans again to make them do his bidding, he made a fatal mistake. She stabbed the vampire in the heart, and he looked shocked right before he disintegrated on top of her. An ancient vampire, arrogantly believing the huntress he’d taken down was done for the count.

Then the front door burst open and a man—who looked like Moulson—saw Jacqueline getting off the floor, throwing aside Moulson’s clothed, wizened body. He appeared aghast. Oh, no. This man looked like Moulson’s twin brother. Even though she didn’t know he had one. And she hadn’t been hired to kill him, though if he attacked her, she had every right to defend herself because she had been in the right where Moulson was concerned.

Like Moulson, this guy swooped in, and it appeared that he was planning on using the same maneuver, plowing her down and forcing her onto her back. But she quickly sidestepped him and being ambidextrous, she swung her sword with her right hand, cutting him in the arm, her dagger still ready in her left hand and she cut into his chest, but nothing fatal. It only made him angrier.

The two humans—appearing to think this was the time to make their escape before whoever was the victor decided their fate—dashed for the front door, still standing wide open. They stumbled over each other, trying to get around Jacqueline and the vampire, hoping to avoid the fight. But as she moved back to get her stance to thrust her sword at the vampire and strike his heart this time, they bumped into her and threw her off balance completely. It was time enough to give the vampire the advantage. He grabbed her shoulders and rammed her against the wall, then bit into her shoulder before she could stab him with her dagger.

“No…no…no…no…no.” She tried to pull free from the vampire’s vicious bite. She attempted to stab him in the heart with her dagger while he was drinking her blood, but she was losing too much blood, and she was afraid she would pass out soon.

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, coming to, tasting blood in her mouth—his blood—and she knew that the exchange had been made. She was no longer just a huntress, but one of them. A vampire. Worse, she couldn’t kill the one who made her no matter how much she wanted to. And then he smirked at her and vanished.