Bloodgifted
Bloodgifted
Book One of the Dantonville Legacy
Tima Maria Lacoba
Copyright © 2013 Publisher Name
All rights reserved.
ISBN: XXXXXX
ISBN 13: XXXXX
Library of Congress Control Number: XXXXX (If applicable)
LCCN Imprint Name: City and State (If applicable)
“Bloodgifted is an intriguing, intricate and absorbing read. I’m already fascinated to know where the series will progress.”
Lindsay J. Pryor, best selling author of the Blackthorn Series, Blood Shadows and Blood Roses
All the characters, events or residential establishments in this book are entirely fictitious and from the author’s imagination. They bear no relation whatsoever to anyone with the same name or names and the incidents depicted are pure invention.
Except for use in any review, no part of this text is to be reproduced, either whole or part, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
This book cannot be sold, traded, lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without prior consent of the author in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover Artist Rebecca Campbell, Trance Designs
Acknowledgements
To my wonderful family and friends, this is a big thank you for persevering with me when all I could talk about was my book. A big hug to Pam, Jackie and Pauline, and my dear sister-in-law Sue. You were there when I needed someone to listen to my ideas and proof read my latest pages. A special hug goes to Claudia, who also gave up endless weekends to help create the Bloodgifted trailers, redesign my website and who took all those fabulous pictures of, The Abbey—the heritage listed house which serves as the Lebrettan mansion in the book.
And to the talented ladies in my writers group, who faithfully each week listened as I read the latest instalment of my manuscript; patiently critiqued, edited and provided suggestions that transformed my embryonic scribblings into a living, breathing entity. This is to Decima, Siobhan, Lily, Jill, Connie, Jo, Colleen, Libby and Silda and Anne and Annie from Umina. You turned a fledging writer into an author. Also, to my friend and fellow writer, Lindsay—big hugs for your encouragement on this wonderful journey on which we’ve embarked.
Thank you to my long-time friend Dr Carolyn, who over a delicious morning tea provided me with her medical expertise
And, of course, to my mum, my best friend, who kept me fed and watered on those days when nothing else existed beyond my laptop and Laura and Alec’s world; who was there for me all the way, and kept me sane throughout the entire process.
You’re the best!
Lastly, I’d like to thanks Lewis Carroll, whose wonderful book, Alice In Wonderland, inspired me to write in the first place.
This book is dedicated to all of you, and those who still believe in fairy tales.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 My Birthday
Chapter 2 Surprise
Chapter 3 Servitude
Chapter 4 Meeting A Vampire
Chapter 5 Past and Present
Chapter 6 A Secret Share
Chapter 7 Just Coffee
Chapter 8 The Boyfriend
Chapter 9 My Girl
Chapter 10 The Ritual
Chapter 11 Friends and Other Creatures
Chapter 12 Vampire Ball
Chapter 13 Trials of a Princeps
Chapter 14 Breakfast
Chapter 15 History Lesson
Chapter 16 Family Matters
Chapter 17 Into the Garden
Chapter 18 Mess Up
Chapter 19 Safe and Familiar
Chapter 20 Departure
Chapter 21 Decisions
Chapter 22 When Things Go Wrong
Chapter 23 Taken
Chapter 24 A Hunting We Will Go
Chapter 25 Maris
Chapter 26 Concealment
Chapter 27 Betrayal
Chapter 28 Night Watch
Chapter 29 Not Over Yet
Chapter 30 Jean
Chapter 31 Business Arrangement
Chapter 32 Family Ties
Chapter 33 Memories
Chapter 34 Interrogation
Chapter 35 Bonding
Chapter 36 The Pledge
Chapter 37 Coming Home
Chapter 38 Precious Jewels
Chapter 39 Human or Vampire
Chapter 40 Bargain Sealed
Chapter 41 Curiouser and Curiouser
Chapter 42 Hidden Doors
Chapter 43 Past Loves
Chapter 44 Declaration
Chapter 45 No More Secrets
Chapter 46 Blood Lines
Chapter 47 Unfinished Business
Chapter 48 Aftermath
Chapter 49 Goodbye
Chapter 50 Eternity
Epilogue
Chapter 1 of Bloodpledge
List of Characters and Places and Terms
PROLOGUE
Villa of Antonius Lugdunensis, Gaul
AD 263
I always believed I’d die in battle. It certainly would have been preferable to the way my life did end. One day, a soldier in the service of Rome, the next a creature from my worst nightmares.
Demon. Bloodsucker. Vampire.
It was meant to have been just a routine patrol. A search, destroy and retrieve mission—search out the Pictish raiders who were attacking Roman settlements south of the Wall, destroy them and retrieve any captives they may have taken.
Straightforward. Instead, it turned into the day from hell.
We were attacked and one of my men wounded. Nepos. I sent him back to the fort with another of my men, Melander, to make sure he got back safely. Then the rest of us got back on our horses and tracked the raiders to a small village deep in Pictish territory, north of the Wall.
We rode in, cornered and killed them. Search and destroy accomplished. But as we searched for the Roman captives, the native women emerged, dragging their bound prisoners after them—terrified women and children—and slit their throats.
‘They were sacrifices to our great goddess,’ one of them screeched, a large, flame-haired woman with the beauty of a goddess.
I heard the quick indrawn breaths of my men. In other circumstances I’d let them toss for her, but all I wanted was to slit her own lily-white throat. Those captives had been Romans.
I dismounted, pulled out my sword and strode over to her. ‘I would have spared the lot of you. Not now.’
‘Kill me Roman, and you’ll incur the wrath of the goddess, Melusine.’
As she spoke, people streamed out of the huts—mostly the old and infirm, and children. They stood behind her. Silent. Waiting.
‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking I fear your gods. I don’t. You should fear me, woman, for sending your warriors into Roman territory and taking our people for your disgusting, savage rites.’
‘Your people and mine aren’t so different,’ she said. ‘We sacrifice to honour our gods, but you kill in your arenas for entertainment. Which one of us is the real savage?’
I was in no mood for a debate and raised my arm to give my men the signal. One good turn deserved another, I figured.
‘Would you slaughter the innocent?’ the woman cried.
‘Innocent!’ I pointed to the murdered Romans. ‘They were innocent. Take a look! See the blood?’
‘We sent them to the gods!’
‘And you’re about to follow!’ I lowered my arm and my men slowly started
forward.
The children screamed and hid behind the women’s skirts.
‘Then hear me first, Romans.’ She raised her arms upward and looked at each one of us in turn. ‘You dishonoured our gods this day and took the blood due them, so their curse is now on you. Human blood will be your food. As beasts that kill only in the night, so you too will walk in darkness. Sunlight will be your enemy. And you’ —she pointed to me— ‘will pass this on to your children and they to theirs for as long as the moon circles the earth.’
The bitch cursed us!
My men hesitated and looked to me. Even though I didn’t believe her gods to be any where near as powerful as our Roman ones, we were in their territory and her words made the hairs on my arms stand up. My wife, Gallia, was several months pregnant. What if…? I felt a sudden rush of fear.
I raised my sword and pressed it to her throat. ‘Retract it, woman, and I’ll spare your lives.’
‘Only to sell us as slaves in your market places? It’s better to die free! I am Eithne of the Prythyn, servant of the great goddess, and all I’ve said will surely come to pass.’ She spat in my face.
Without hesitation I plunged my sword into her throat. My men finished off the rest. That’s when the Curse began to take effect. Our skin started to blister and our eyes—which had turned the colour of Phoenician purple—watered even in that weak northern sun.
The horses shied and bolted. We had to make our way back to the fort at Vindobala on foot. Within two days, our incisors had lengthened. We couldn’t keep food down. Instead we developed an insatiable craving for blood.
As the days passed, or rather nights—since we couldn’t travel by day any more—we made our way back drawn by the smell of human blood. It was strange how we could pick up the scent of humans from several miles away.
Then we made another discovery, this one almost as if in compensation for all our afflictions—we could run at incredible speed. We actually caught up with our horses, drank them dry, and I found I could crush their bones in my hands as if they were straw.
We had the strength of the gods—powerful—and ravenously hungry to the point of madness. I saw through a haze of red.
Finally we arrived back at the fort. The sentries on the walls didn’t stand a chance. Nobody did. Trained men were no match for us. We attacked and sucked them dry, leaving their empty carcasses on the ground in our hunt for more.
That night we killed twenty-seven men.
Just as the sun came up, we ran and hid from its deadly rays in the nearby woods. I hated what we had done and hated the witch who did this to us. Yet, there was nothing we could do about it. The Thirst was uncontrollable and the next night we returned to do more of the same. At this rate we quickly decimated the fort of all its soldiers; men who were our friends and brother-soldiers.
Worst of all, Nepos and Melander were among those we killed. We had become demons, like the evil lamia—the bloodsuckers of legend.
My men raged at the gods. Calixtus, Sempronius and Appius tried killing themselves, but no matter how deadly, the wounds they inflicted on themselves simply healed again.
We weren’t even allowed to die.
For the next few days we hid, doing our best to avoid human settlements. I was desperate to control this thing inside me. We decided to feed from the wild animals in the forest, rest in the daylight hours and rise at night to find a priest of Mithras, our god of the Legions, who could lift this wretched curse.
Eventually we found one, who didn’t run off in terror. The bag of gold we offered readily overcame any fear he may have felt at our approach.
He sprinkled us with holy water, sacrificed a bull and called on the god.
We waited but felt no change. Either Mithras wasn’t listening, or—as Calixtus suggested—we’d offended him in some way.
In desperation we sought out a soothsayer. ‘Only the one who uttered the curse can lift it,’ he said. ‘Smear her ashes onto your eyes, ears and lips then offer some of your blood and call upon her spirit. Speak nicely to her!’ he added for good measure. ‘A spirit will not respond to anger.’
Be nice! I wanted to go down to Hades and kill her all over again.
But since we had no choice, we did as he said.
We sped through the night, back to the Pictish village, found her body where she had fallen, rotting and putrid along with the others whom we slew.
My men gathered the bodies and burnt them, scattering their ashes to the wind, but her body we placed on a separate pyre and as the flames rose, cut open our wrists and let our blood drip onto her corpse.
I prostrated myself and called on her spirit.
She appeared. ‘Why summon me, Roman?’ she asked.
‘To beg for mercy.’ I clenched my jaw.
‘As you had mercy on me and my people?’ she retorted.
‘We don’t deserve to be punished this way. Your people killed mine. Isn’t that the truth?’
‘My people did so to survive as you Romans took more and more of our land, stole our cattle and sold our people into slavery or to fight in your arenas.’
‘We brought you civilization!’
‘At the cost of our freedom!’
‘Then take your hatred out on me and not on my men,’ I offered.
‘Your men are not innocent. They knew what they were doing.’
‘Then spare the children who will be born to me,’ I cried in desperation as I thought of Gallia.
‘As you spared mine?’ she cried.
‘But they’re innocent!’ I pleaded.
‘As was the child in my womb. For that deed alone I damn you!’
Until that moment I still harboured a faint hope for a chance of reprieve. Now? Not a snowflake’s chance in Hades.
Behind me, my men groaned.
Then she spoke again. ‘What has been done, cannot be undone. But this one thing I can grant. As one of my children escaped your sword, while hunting in the woods, so will I spare one of yours. Your wife will give birth to twins: Children of Light and Dark. The boy shall be as you, a drinker of blood, when he comes of age. But the girl will not. She will walk in the light.
‘Unnatural length of life and youthfulness will be granted her and her descendants. They shall be known as Children of Light and their blood shall sustain the Child of Darkness.
‘And you, Roman, shall live all through the long ages ahead till one born of your house—a Child of Light and Dark—willingly bears a child to one of Prythin blood, a descendant of my house, and born on this spot.
‘Only then the curse will be lifted, for the child shall bear the mingled blood of Roman and Prythin—one race, one blood. At that time you will be given a choice—to remain as you are or become human again. But know this, the longer you remain in this form the faster will you age should you choose the latter. All your long years will come at once and death will be your release.
‘This is my mercy.’
From the Private Journals of Marcus Antonius Pulcher, Praefecus Equituum of the First Cohort of Frisians, Vindobala
Chapter 1
My Birthday
The Present
LAURA
Thou shalt not fear birthdays, has been my motto for the past few years. And I saw no reason to change it, regardless that this year I was turning that much-dreaded big Five-O.
For anyone else that may have been daunting enough, but for me it’s even more so since my family’s pedigree is unique, even weird. It appears there’s something in our genetic makeup that decreases the rate of aging up to forty percent. With me, it’s more like fifty. Lately, it’s become even harder to convince people my unnatural youthful looks have nothing to do with any nip and tuck or a fabulous moisturising crème. And it’s interesting the way women in particular, scrutinise me with almost X-Ray vision trying to spot any evidence of cosmetic surgery. Good luck to them! For one thing, I’m an absolute chicken when it comes to sharp and pointy objects and needles of any kind slip into that category.
&nbs
p; But I can understand. Who wouldn’t mind looking twenty-something in their fifties?
I keep a photo from my twenty-fifth birthday in the top drawer of my dressing table. When I turned thirty I took it out and compared the face in the photo to the one staring out at me from the mirror. They were the same. I felt chuffed. Who wouldn’t?
I put that photo away till my fortieth, when I again did my little facial self-examination, and then this morning on my fiftieth. There was no change. But just to be absolutely sure and prove to myself I wasn’t on some delusional trip, I took my picture on my mobile phone and sent it, together with my twenty-fifth birthday photo, to my aunt Judy, my father’s sister. She and I share the same genetic anomaly and like me, her biological age lags far behind her chronological.
Although approaching her centenary my aunt appears to be no more that her mid fifties, still slim, little grey, few lines and the picture of health.
It didn’t take long for her to ring me. ‘Happy Birthday Laura, dear. Will I see you at your parents’ tonight?’
‘Of course! They’re expecting me. I couldn’t possibly disappoint. Besides, it’s tradition!’ I laughed. ‘Now, I assume you received my text. Tell me I’m not delusional and the photos are the same.’
She laughed lightly. ‘They are the same, so there’s no need to question your state of mind.’
‘That’s a relief. So, how long am I going to look like this? Not that I’m complaining mind, but this is really getting strange and just a little… you know, inconvenient.’
I actually gave up travelling overseas as I could no longer handle the suspicious looks I received from hypersensitive customs officials, not to mention the interrogations and strip searches in little back rooms, all because my passport photo doesn’t match my chronological age. After the last experience I decided it was best to holiday at home, or resort to finding a disreputable solicitor who could provide me with a false birth certificate.
‘Exactly what I’d like to talk to you about,’ my aunt replied.
‘That sounds ominous.’