Read Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession Online
Authors: Michele Hauf
Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (26 page)
ISBN-13: 9781460338964
Beyond the Moon
Copyright © 2014 by Michele Hauf
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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As her Protector, he was bound to oblige her every desire.
A rogue group of human-hating vampires have overtaken London. But the elite immortals who own much of the city may have found the key to protecting their territory: Madison Chase, an American newscaster investigating a story about missing teenagers. If she can convince someone to help her infiltrate the dangerous faction, she just might stem the bloodletting and find her brother in timeâ¦.
St. John can't escape his dark family legacy. But the instincts that keep him from being fully human also make him the rogues' worst enemy. His desire for the ethereal redhead is immediate, all-consumingâand forbidden. And as the investigation escalates, Madison must discover if St. John is her trusted Protectorâor if she's being seduced by a monster.
A sensual game of Russian roulette.
“You're alone?”
“Not anymore,” Madison replied over her shoulder. “Though you might want to choose a better line.”
St. John hadn't been fully prepared for the deepness of her voice, or that it might rival her sultry exterior. As the surprise washed over him, he grinned.
“Also, there's a rule about having to dance while on a dance floor,” she said, swiveling side to side so that her hips lightly brushed against his thighs.
His reaction to the unexpected touch came in the form of a jolt of pleasure that streaked through his body. Her life, her energy and all that fire in such a fragile body, were heady draws that, for a fleeting moment, made him remember what it was like to be a man, aroused.
Books by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Harlequin Nocturne
*
Red Wolf
#81
*
Wolf Trap
#83
â¡
Golden Vampire
#110
â¡
Guardian of the Night
#137
â¡
Immortal Obsession
#192
*Wolf Moons
â¡Vampire
Moons
LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM,
author of contemporary and historical paranormal romance
novels, writes for Harlequin Nocturne. She lives in the West, juggling teaching,
writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a
resident muse who sings so loudly she virtually funds the Post-it company.
Eventually Linda hopes to get to all those ideas.
Visit Linda at her website,
www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com
, and the Nocturne Authors'
website,
www.nocturneauthors.com
.
IMMORTAL OBSESSION
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Dear Reader,
Vampires. Tall, dangerous, gloriously sexy immortals with enough worldly and otherworldly experience to knock your socks off. What's not to love?
Immortal Obsession
is a continuation of the Vampire Moons series about a special group of centuries-old immortals called the Seven. In London this time, we meet gorgeous Christopher St. John, who's still attending to his original vows in the current century, and also the feisty American woman who manages to steal his heart.
We see that parts of London are ruled by a sect of ancient vampires called the Hundred, who own more property than the queen and take their acquisitions seriously. And that one of those ancients has become a traitor no longer interested in keeping peace with the human population.
London has need for a
Protector.
I truly believe that I have paranormal in my genes, because I love that special kick of adrenaline a gorgeous immortal male can provide. Males who go above and beyond the norm to remain loyal to a cause and to the women they desire. So if, like me, you adore magical words like
danger, sexy
and
foreverâ¦
this book is dedicated to you.
Please do check out my website at
www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com
.
Cheers for now, and happy reading!
Linda
To my family, those here and those gone,
who always believed I had a story to tell.
Chapter 1
D
eath was coming in the form of a cold, hard blackness.
Christopher St. John looked for it with his eyes wide open.
He gave the woman down the block a cursory glance, drawn to the shivering gleams of silver coming off whatever she wore as she passed beneath a streetlight, sensing something else about her that he had no time to explore. Though intrigued by all that shine on a gloomy night, no unnatural darkness floated in the woman's wake, so he couldn't afford a second look.
Where was death hiding?
The air he breathed carried an odor of old boots and had the slimy feel of an oxygenated oil slick, as if something nasty had left an indelible imprint. Alerted by that, St. John turned his head and caught sight of an ooze of movement so subtle, human eyes would have missed it.
He watched the shadow pass into the alley on his left. Tuning in, he fired up his senses to determine that shadow's status and to name and categorize the anomaly, which was just another thing that shouldn't exist, but did, hanging on to darkness as if it needed, ate, breathed, required the worst part of a day. Midnight.
“Shade,” St. John said, disgusted.
Shades were evil suckers. Unable to possess actual physical form, they couldn't be touched or destroyed by regular physical means. It took cunning, guts, and a whole lot of properly functioning know-how to take down something so substantially unsubstantial. And like flies on a fetid carcass, the presence of this Shade meant some poor fool had died in that alley, probably minutes ago.
St. John's fangs dropped, pressing threateningly against his tongue. He worked his jaw to relax himself. It was imperative that Shades and creatures like them were kept away from London's human population, and that they remained underground. He'd have to follow this one and do his bit to mop up the danger before anyone found out.
Taking a step toward the alley, he paused, his attention disturbed by a sudden prickle at the base of his neck. Cutting his eyes to the left, he saw another shadow hugging the building beside the alley. Then he saw a third.
His fangs began to sharpen automatically, chiseling into lethal points as if they recognized danger all on their own and were getting ready to face it. In this case, the fangs were harbingers of doom. Three Shades in the area meant three dead bodies, since Shades were entities uninterested in sharing their spoils. Three dead bodies in a row suggested the presence of vampires. Probably more than one. These Shades had likely been attracted to leftovers.
Death tonight had manifested in the form of a bloodsuckers' blood fest, a vile breach of etiquette in London's trendy West End. Most vampires here, unless newly made, knew better than to trespass on ground owned by their older immortal cousins. The careless vamps heralding the Shades were either really stupid, had been freshly bitten, or they had a death-after-death wish. Same difference in terms of the results.
“Too damn close to mortals to be excused.”
St. John again glanced down the street, to where he had seen the shapely woman in silver walking alone. He looked at the row of lights announcing the first of the West End's string of nightclubs, thinking as he always had that these clubs and the people they attracted had become too tempting for the city's extended list of subterranean inhabitants.
The lights were, in essence, like big neon arrows pointing the way to an all-night buffet. But this particular grouping of night creatures currently flouting the rules were truly on the wrong path if they assumed they'd get away with leaving corpses in alleyways so near an immortal's domain. Especially his. Nobody liked gore on their front steps.
Closing his eyes briefly, St. John again felt death's dark touch, a blackness he knew intimately. In a distant part of his subconscious, he pinpointed the nearness of the other uninvited creatures in the area. Vampires, yes. Rogues, giving off signals of rage and insatiable hunger, things he had long ago mastered, though his fangs were empathetically aching.
Something else nagged at his attention besides the five young vampires emerging from the far end of the alley sporting haughty expressions and exhibiting no evidence of their recent kills. Some other warning had caught hold of him, mixed up in the brief gleam of a woman's silvery light.
Shaking that warning off, St. John watched the tight group of young vampires, reminiscent of a group of wild animals on the prowl, boldly cross the street, heading for the biggest club on the block. The same one the woman in silver stardust had entered.
Striding past the queue of waiting guests, the rogues looked the club's controller up and down until that man stepped aside, but not before he'd sent St. John a silent signal of alarm that rippled across St. John's skin in the form of a really good chill.
St. John nodded his head to the man in reply, wondering if perhaps these ignorant fanged parasites had also seen that dazzling young woman and had been attracted. Scavengers, like crows, loved anything that glowed.
Or maybe they were just trolling for dessert.
A wave of apprehension rolled across his scalp. Keeping tabs on the ever-increasing hordes of fledgling vampires would have been a full-time job for a small army. Keeping them out of his own territory was a personal necessity.
Drawing his hands out of his pockets, St. John pressed his lips over his pulsing, aggression-seeking incisors.
“Wrong road, wrong night, boys,” he said aloud, adding in honor of whatever Shades were lurking nearby, “I'll be back for you.”
Thinking of what a bunch of unrepentant, openly visible monsters might do to an unsuspecting woman like the one in the intriguing silver getup they were no doubt salivating for, and knowing that
mercy
wasn't a viable word in bloodsucker vocabulary, St. John set his shoulders, squinted at the club's lights and started off in that direction.
He wasn't called the
Protector
for nothing. And that woman, still very much on his mind after only a glimpse, didn't have any idea of the extent of the trouble about to strike.