Cursed Blood (Harvesters Prequel #1) | Audiobook

Lilly braced herself as best she could in the sideways wreck of her car and fumbled for the seatbelt release. There was a low growl from behind, the vampire’s rumbling threat audible despite the sounds of traffic and car horns nearby. She got herself situated and managed to keep from falling when she unbuckled the seatbelt.

Rustling from behind. The light trickling of shattered glass falling.

Lilly shifted one leg free, thinking to try to kick the windshield out.

Someone dropped down onto the concrete guard rail just ahead from god knew where—a well-built black man. She didn’t have the faintest idea who he was, but the speed and poise with which he landed set off her internal alarm an instant before his dark eyes lit with red fire.

Behind, the bearded vampire from the parking lot was watching from the opening he’d torn into the rear of the car.

“Take her,” he said, his voice bored and entirely too human-sounding.

The burly black vampire leaned forward, his upper body disappearing from Lilly’s view. The driver’s side door ripped free from beside her with a groan and a crack, and then the vampire was there on top of the car, hauling her out by an arm and a handful of her shirt. 

Lilly screamed.

Around them, dozens of cars were stopped now, their drivers all transfixed on the freakish scene in front of them. Some were getting out of their vehicles. A few took cautious steps forward.

“Help!” Lilly screamed. “Help me!”

The vampire cuffed her over the head. 

The windup looked almost dainty, as if he were being careful to avoid breaking something fragile. But then his hand hit, and Lilly’s world exploded into a swirling dance of floating spots and throbbing pain. 

Something jostled her, and when the world started making sense again, they were back down on the pavement, beside the car, and the vampire had her effortlessly tucked beneath one arm.

“Hey, asshole!” someone yelled.

The vampire turned, and Lilly caught sight of a thickset guy stepping forward from the gathering crowd, a pistol in hand and raised like he knew how to use it.

“Put her down and back away,” the gunman called.

The beginnings of hope fluttered in Lilly’s chest.

Then the vampire laughed.

Ahead, the gunman dropped to his knees, eyes wide and mouth trembling. He placed the tip of the barrel against his own head.

“Wh-wh-what the fuck?” he managed through a tight mouth.

The vampire continued shaking with laughter.

“Hurry it up, then,” said someone behind them—the bearded vampire from the parking lot, she realized. “He’ll be waiting for our lovely little witch.” 

Lilly had no idea who “he” was—probably another vampire—but she realized what was happening, why her would-be-rescuer had gone spontaneously suicidal.

The vampire holding her must have taken his mind. 

“Fine, then,” the mind-jacker mumbled.

Ahead, the captive gunman tensed his arm, finger reaching for the trigger that would end his own life.

“St-stop!” he cried. “No, stop!”

Lilly closed her eyes, telekinetically flipped her mind cloak off, and threw herself into her extended senses. Her captor tensed against her, sensing the sudden mental bonfire of presence, but she was already channeling the energy. 

Her car might be dead, but the battery wasn’t. She formed the link in her senses and let loose, becoming an open conduit that swapped electrochemical potential for boiling hot vampire skin. She tried to keep her target refined to the vampire’s arm and the back of the hand holding her, hoping to avoid burning herself. She felt the heat anyway, but it was mercifully distant, immersed as she was in her extended senses.

The vampire, on the other hand, felt the heat with crystal clarity.

He gave a hissing growl and tossed her away.

Lilly came back from her extended senses just in time to hit the pavement, head reeling with channeling fatigue and disorientation and, a moment later, the dozens of fiery pains left across her body by her car wreck and subsequent pavement dive.

She rolled around in time to see her valiant gunman regain his senses and level his gun at the vampire who’d just tossed her like a hot potato.

The gunman pulled the trigger.

Thunder cracked once, twice, three times.

For each shot, the burly black vampire jerked as if hit, and yet he didn’t go down, didn’t trail streams of dark blood. Didn’t even cry out in pain.

He just laughed.

The gunman managed three more shots before the bearded vampire came sailing through the air in an impossibly long leap and landed directly in front of him. The gunman, to his credit, reacted with calm coolness, adjusting his aim to the new target. Just not quick enough.

The bearded vampire caught his gun hand and drove a flat palm into the guy’s chest hard enough that he dented the car a few yards behind him at the end of his flight.

He hit the ground with a sickening thud, unmoving.

“I told you to watch out for her tricks,” the bearded vampire said as he turned back toward Lilly.

“And how do you propose I accomplish such a feat?” asked his companion in a low rumble.

The bearded one rolled his eyes and strode toward them. After a couple steps, he paused and glanced back at the horrified crowd of onlookers. 

As one, they flinched at his crimson gaze.  

“You should all run now, by the way,” he said.

Most listened wholeheartedly. Those who remained backed away slowly, their gazes darting from Lilly to the vampires.

“Go!” she shouted.

They hesitated a moment longer and turned tail to go join the growing traffic jam crowd on the other end of the overpass. 

For now, it was just Lilly and the vampires. 

The bearded vampire watched them go, chuckling, then started toward her at a leisurely stroll. “Who knew you’d be such a valiant little flower, Lilly?”

The sound of her name from his mouth was like a kick in the gut. 

They knew. And if they knew who she was, they probably knew about her family, including where to find them. 

Sirens blared in the distance.

She needed to move, to run. To escape. But how? How the hell could she get away from these things that could outrun cars, tear them apart with their bare hands, and shirk off bullets like flies?

“It’s kind of rich, isn’t it?” the bearded vampire asked, still coming toward her. “You do what you did to us. You—you—”

His hands clenched to fists with violent suddenness, and he whirled with a wordless roar to kick a car he was passing. The kick landed with a loud crack, and the car tumbled through a couple of crunching sideways rolls before slamming to a halt against the overworked guard rail, narrowly saved from a fall to the train tracks below.

The train tracks!

It was a long shot, but if she could keep them talking…

“What is it?” she croaked, scooting herself back to lean her weary body against the guard rail. She didn’t have to put on an act to appear pathetically slow and weak. Every inch of her was on fire, from her pavement scraped knees and hands to her whiplashed neck and back. “What did I do to you?”

“Do not think to toy with us, witch,” the burly black vampire said in a low rumble.

“Maybe she needs a reminder.” The bearded vampire stopped a few paces away and jutted his chin upward, giving her a good look at the network of sickly black lines working their way across his skin. “Remember laying any blood curses lately?”

“I didn’t…”

But there was no good denying it, was there? They’d clearly pieced together at least the gist of what had happened.

“You were hurting people,” she said quietly. “Hiding in plain sight, killing and pulling strings as you pleased. I couldn’t let it go on. Not after you killed my friend.”

He frowned down at her. “Your friend?”

“Ren. He was a good man, and you bastards killed him.”

He glanced back at his burly companion, who shrugged. 

Was it her imagination, or was that a faint rumble in the distance? 

“Yeah…” The bearded vampire shook his head and turned back to her. “You’re gonna have to be more specific than that.” He flashed her a chilling grin. “Lots to keep track of, what with all the killing and pulling strings as we please.” He pointed to his neck. “But first, you’re gonna come with us and fix this bullshit.”

There. Definitely a rumble. And it was getting closer.

Talk. She needed to keep talking.

“Why?” It was the first word that came to her lips, and she fumbled to keep going. “Why would I fix it? You’re just going to kill me anyways.”

The bearded vampire held a hand up and crossed his fingers, still grinning that murderous grin. “Promise we won’t.”

“Enough of this tallying,” the black vampire said. “Master will deal with her himself.”

The bearded vampire sighed. “Fine.”

He started forward, reaching for Lilly. 

The approaching train was clearly audible now, but it was still too far. 

She raised her hands, preparing to fight with telekinesis and whatever else she could manage. But the vampire flinched back, snarling at her hands, his eyes coming aflame with with red light. To his side, the black vampire reacted in much the same way.

She glanced at her hands, wondering what on earth she’d done, and saw nothing but scrapes and blood. Her blood. That was it.

They were afraid of her blood. 

She could have laughed. 

In truth, it should already be too late for them. Imbibing more infected blood probably wouldn’t radically accelerate the course of their sickness. But they didn’t need to know that.

The train was nearly to the overpass now. She couldn’t see it from her stoop against the guard rail, but she could feel it. Five seconds. She couldn’t hesitate.

“That’s right,” she snarled. “Come and have a drink. Let’s see which one of us hits the floor first.”

The vampires exchanged an uncertain glance.

“This is ridiculous,” the black vampire said. “She has already wreaked as much havoc as she is capable. Master will see to it that the damage is undone.”

He stalked forward, and Lilly could see it in his glowing eyes that there would be no hesitation this time.

So she gave him the best telekinetic chest punch she could spare, then she turned to the guard rail, gathering as much juice as she could. 

And she jumped.