Blood Vengeance

Chapter 1:
He looked off to the west, where the last traces of the sun fell

below the horizon, leaving just a trace of orange lining the

edge of the sky where it met the land. The light was dim and a

slight mist gathered, warning of the fog that would coat the

city in grey and shadow under what he knew would be a full

moon tonight. He could hear the music from Bourbon Street

drifting down the alley where he was walking, the alley

commonly called Pirate’s Alley. The alley where the girl had

been found earlier in the week. Found bound and gagged, her

dead eyes wide open in fear and her throat cut from ear to ear.

The work of some madman that Vincent Adcock was sure

would kill again.

It always happened that way it seemed. One girl would turn up

dead and then another and another. Some strangled, some

tortured in other ways, almost always they would have been

violated in some unimaginable way. Even after close to two

hundred years, Vincent still didn’t understand the mentality,

the mental defect, the warped mind behind the madmen’s

eyes. So he did what he could, he hunted. He hunted until he found the madman and then he

wreaked his own type of punishment upon those perpetrators

of horrid crimes against helpless women. Vincent loved to

hunt, he loved to chase his prey and toy with them just as they

toyed with the women that they hunted. It was his one

redemption for being what he was. A soulless man in a body

that would not grow old. A vampire.

He stopped in front of the Faulkner house, once home to the

author William Faulkner, now a bookstore with living quarters

above. He remembered the days when the author was in

residence and how he and his artist accomplice played havoc

on visitors to the Quarter. Now, the bright yellow exterior held

his shadow as he stood there in the growing dimness. The fog

filled the night air, and he lifted his head. Inhaling deeply, his

sense of smell was much more effective than that of a

bloodhound. He smelled the leftover scent of food, something

that he only ate in public to keep questions about his nature to

a minimum, as he really had no need for anything other than

the blood he thirsted. A slight breeze slipped through the

alleyway and upon it he smelled the odor of excrement and

urine, probably that of some dog or cat who had come through

this way recently. Generally, Vincent would take the time to enjoy the city at

night. He loved New Orleans; he had loved it at the turn of

three centuries now. He had been a young, virile man when

the city got its first group of refugees from Haiti. Quite a

mixture of people he remembered. Whites, free blacks, and

slaves. With them came the French language and voodoo.

Then there had been the War of 1812 when he saw the British

defeated by the troops led by Andrew Jackson, among those

troops were the privateers that were recruited by the pirate, Jean Lafitte. Not

long after the defeat of the British at Chalmette, his life as he

knew it was forever changed by the loss of his lovely wife and

the arrival of the woman who had made him into the monster

he was. He never should have seen the turn of the next century

or the one after that. He saw the coming and going of the Civil War, the city being

occupied and claimed early in the battle by Union troops. He

watched as slaves were freed and political changes came to the

area during the Reconstruction. He saw hurricanes come and

go, flooding, the building of levees, more hurricanes and

flooding yet somehow the city always survived and held onto

to the rich history that seemed to live there. Only during the

last hurricane, the one named Katrina, Vincent became aware

and appalled of what humankind was willing to do, that

people were sometimes less human than himself.

Finally he smelled the scent he was seeking, something on the

air that was unlike anything that a normal human could detect.

Sickeningly sweet and verging on decay, the odor of madness.

He recognized it, the distinct smell that he wished he had

noticed that night in 1815 when the woman who had made

him showed up at the doorstep of his plantation house outside

of the city. She had been mad, sick with the need for blood

and tortured with the lust for male companionship. She had

pretended to be destitute, running from a husband that had

abused her in his drunken rages. He had invited her in,

something one must never do to a vampire. For once they are

invited in and cross the threshold to your home; you become

their prey, their victim. And now, Vincent was doomed to live

for the rest of the years that the earth existed and maybe even longer. Nobody really knew.

He followed the trail of the scent out into the street, walked

across the lawn of St. Louis Cathedral, stopping for a moment

to envy those who could enter. He had been in the Cathedral

several times as a child and remembered the peaceful look that

passed over his mother’s face each time they had entered. To

him, it had just been a place where a young, active boy had to

be quiet for much too long, and now he regretted not being

able to enter the building as an adult. Vincent could not enter a

place of worship; he was banned forever from going to one of

the places where others could go for solace and an infusion of

faith. He shook his head and got back to the task at hand,

hunting. The scent wafted throughout the lawn around the cathedral,

growing stronger at times then fading away to just a hint on

the breeze. He continued to follow it back out to Chartres

Street and across the street from the cathedral. He stopped

briefly, listening with ears that heard things that sometimes he

didn’t care to hear, and looked to the right then the left. Then

he heard it. The distinct sound of a frightened heartbeat,

fluttering in terror of what was to come. In a flash, so quickly

that the human eye could not detect his movement but might

feel a trace of chill as he passed, he was upon the sound at the

rear of a house that still had plywood covering the windows,

evidence of the wrath that Hurricane Katrina had brought to

the city a few years back. There, by a haphazardly placed

dumpster, the animal had his hands on a young woman.

Wide, blue eyes bespoke of the terror the young woman must

be feeling. She was crying but could not make a sound because of the gag in her mouth, her hands and

feet were bound and she writhed to get away from her

attacker. Vincent felt the rage rise in his throat, and then the

thirst hit him. With his superhuman speed, he came to stand

behind the girl’s attacker. The monster had not heard him,

Vincent never made a sound. Vincent’s nose turned up in distaste at the overwhelming

stench of the man. Stale cigarettes, perspiration, and sex

permeated the air surrounding the two men. Reaching out with

his pale, cold hand, he grasped the shoulder of the man and

turned him around in the same motion and with the same

speed that he had reached the scene. “So, you like to torture

and rape and kill pretty young girls, do you?”

Releasing the young woman, the man’s fist shot out in an

attempt to hit Vincent in the jaw, but Vincent was too quick

for that. He laughed at the man’s efforts. “Not so easy when

you pick on someone your own size is it?” The man lunged at

him again but was met with empty space as Vincent had

quickly moved behind him. The man stumbled and about lost

his footing before Vincent cleared his throat, causing him to

turn again. This time, Vincent threw the man against the wall

of the abandoned house, laughed again when the man’s head

made a hollow, thumping sound against the wood siding and

then fell to the ground where he laid, out cold from the blow

to his head. Vincent turned to the young woman, her blue eyes wide with

panic. “Do not fear, I am not here to harm you and I will not

allow this animal to harm you.” He stooped down to where

she laid on the weed choked, beer can littered yard and gently

undid the ties that held her feet. “I am going to get you away from here.” He focused on her eyes

and used his own mind to calm her. The way that his maker

had calmed him before she had turned him into the thing that

he was. The thing that he hated to be.

The girl stopped wriggling and he snapped the ropes around

her wrists and removed the gag from her mouth. He knew that

she wouldn’t scream out in the night, she wouldn’t even

remember how she got back into her own bed when he took

her there. “I need to get your address so that I can take you

home and put you safely into your own bed. Tell me.”

She mechanically recited the name of a hotel in the French

Quarter and gave him the room number. It was an outside

room overlooking the courtyard, so it would be easy for him to

jump up and open the window from the outside. And he had

been invited in the hotel many times, so there was no problem

getting her back in her room and into her bed. He tossed the

limp body of the girl over his shoulder and moved with his

superhuman speed to the hotel.

Once he had her in her room, he reached into one of the

suitcases lying on the chair and retrieved a nightgown. “Take

this, go into the bathroom and clean up and put it on and come

back in here.” He started pacing as he waited for the girl to do

what he told her to do. He listened as he heard the shower go

on and he smelled the fresh fragrance of her soap. Lavender.

Lavender reminded him of his lovely Lisette with her dark

eyes and hair the color of ebony. Had Lisette become sick

before he was what he was now, he could have saved her. But

instead, she rested in the cool, damp earth beneath the oak tree

on the small knoll beside his plantation home. Her place

marked by a simple, stone cross bearing her name. Although the property

was still owned by Vincent, it was not his home anymore; the

plantation was a museum of times gone by that strangers

walked through each and every day. His staff over the years

had ensured that there were adequate caretakers to keep the

looming French Creole home his father built for his mother

and to which he had later brought his beautiful bride Lisette.

He remembered the day he brought Lisette home from

Natchez. Her eyes widened at the sight of the oak lined drive

and the colonnades that held the roofs of the upper and lower

galleries. He smiled as he remembered the question in her

eyes as she asked him the question that would forever be

engraved on his mind for eternity. “Whatever did you see in

the daughter of a prostitute after coming from this?” Her

hands swept the landscape and then the house which sat along

the Mississippi River banks with vast fields of cotton and

sugar cane as far as she could see. He had kissed her tenderly

and lifted her into his arms as he carried her up the steps and

across the lower gallery to the door of his home. “I saw an

angel brought to me by God’s hand.” And the angel that came

to him by God’s hand was taken from him by the same hand

only three years later.

The girl returned to the main part of the hotel room and came

to stand in front of him. “Who are you?” She murmured softly

through a pair of perfectly bowed lips. “You came to help me,

you saved me. I owe you my life.” She reached out to touch

Vincent. “He came up from behind, I couldn’t stop him. I felt

the shock and then I could do nothing.” An involuntary shiver

passed through her small frame. Backing away, he shook his head. “No, you don’t owe me

your life.” He couldn’t understand why his effort to block her

memory of the evening’s events was not working. One of the

things that vampires were able to do was erase the memory of

humans. It was a necessity for a vampire to be able to do that

so that they could feed upon a human and leave them with no

memory of the event. He reached out and put his cold, dead

hands on her shoulders. “Look at me, look into my eyes.”

The girl obeyed and her blue eyes locked with his gold ones.

“Your hands are so cold. Let me warm them for you.” She

reached up to cover his hands with her own. “Tell me who you

are.” Pulling his hands against her heart, she gazed at him,

bewilderment crossing her delicate features for a brief

moment. She cocked her head and a lock of her fragrant hair

fell across their hands, cool and damp from her shower.

“Don’t.” He commanded as he continued to gaze into her

eyes, his mind trying desperately to reach into the confines of

hers. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to enjoy the feel

of her warm hands on top of his. The vibrant feel of her heart

beating, her blood pulsing through her body. He mentally

chastised himself for the thought of bedding her right then, at

that moment. Oh, how it would feel to have her slender body

wrapped around his. To feel the heat from her body as he slid

his manhood inside her. Stop it, you fool, you have work to do

right now! She blinked her eyes in confusion. “What did you say?” She

gripped his hands tighter and stepped toward him. “Who are

you and how did you know where to find me?”



Here is my review:

4 of 5 stars
bookshelves: paranormal-romance

Read on December 28, 2013

I received this book in exchange for my honest review...

I don't even know where to start with this book. OMG this was so good I swear I don't know where to begin my review.
In this story we are introduced to a group of vampires and a girl who has dreamed of all of them helping her find her sister. Abigail is in New Orleans looking for her missing sister Riley, while looking for her sister she happens to be attacked by a stranger but recused by Vincent( OMG SUPER HOT MYSTERY MAN) Vincent saves her and takes her back to her hotel room, he clears of her mind of their events (or so he thinks)

Abby goes looking for Vincent because she needs his help and the help of his friends. Abby gets Vincent to help her as well as falls in love with him.
This is some really hot intense scenes in this story

This story is amazingly awesome and I can not wait for the next installment. I am so glad I read this book and now the only thing to do is wait for the next installment (please don't make me wait too long)