Praise for
the Blood Coven Vampire Novels
“You’ll get bitten and love it.”
—Rachel Caine, New York Times bestselling author
Night School
“An action-packed story with appealing characters, dark humor, and a new spin on both the worlds of the undead and the fae. Though primarily targeted to a YA audience, this novel will appeal to adult fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as the Harry Potter series and the Twilight novels.”
—Library Journal
“Another thrilling installment to Rayne and Sunny’s story!”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Fifth of the Blood Coven Vampire series takes a darker turn…[an] engaging young adult urban fantasy. It is entertaining watching the twins mature through this fast-paced series that packs enough twists and humor to hold readers’ attention to the last page.”
—Monsters and Critics
“This book has it all! Vampires, vampire slayers, and faeries, what more could you ask for?…a fast-paced book from start to finish. I can’t wait to read more about Sunny and Rayne’s adventures. This is a must read for anyone who enjoys paranormal fiction and a good story.”
—Night Owl Reviews
Bad Blood
“A vampire book so worth reading, with dark humor, distinctive voice, and a protagonist clever enough to get herself out of trouble…A great ride.”
—Ellen Hopkins,
New York Times bestselling author
“Mancusi writes with a wicked sense of humor and keeps readers turning the pages, eager for more.”
—Novel Reads
Girls That Growl
“An amusing teenage vampire tale starring a fascinating high school student…Young adults will enjoy growling alongside of this vampire slayer who has no time left for homework.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A fast-paced and entertaining read.”
—LoveVampires
“A refreshing new vampire story, Girls That Growl is different from all of those other vampire stories…a very original plot.”
—Flamingnet
Stake That
“A fast-paced story line…both humorous and hip…A top read!”
—LoveVampires
“Rayne is a fascinating protagonist…readers will want to stake out Mari Mancusi’s fun homage to Buffy.”
—The Best Reviews
Boys That Bite
“A wonderfully original blend of vampire/love/adventure drama which teens will find refreshingly different.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Liberal doses of humor keep things interesting…and the surprise ending will leave readers bloodthirsty for the next installment of the twins’ misadventures with the undead. A ghoulishly fun read.”
—School Library Journal
“A tongue-in-cheek young teen tale starring two distinct, likable twins, the vampire between them, and a coven of terrific support characters who bring humor and suspense to the mix…Filled with humor and action…insightfully fun.”
—The Best Reviews
Berkley titles by Mari Mancusi
BOYS THAT BITE
STAKE THAT
GIRLS THAT GROWL
BAD BLOOD
NIGHT SCHOOL
BLOOD TIES
SOUL BOUND
BLOOD FOREVER
BLOOD FOREVER
MARI MANCUSI
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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. The publisher does not have any control over
and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianne Mancusi Beach.
Cover photo by Shutterstock. Cover design by SDG Concepts, LLC.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
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BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mancusi, Marianne.
Blood forever : a Blood Coven vampires novel / by Mari Mancusi. — Berkley trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After making a deal with the devil, Rayne and her twin sister Sunny
have been given the chance to go back in time to prevent that fateful night
when Sunny was bitten by vampire Magnus from ever happening.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61133-3
[1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4. Time travel—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M312178Blo 2012
[Fic]—dc23 2012011766
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
To my wonderful readers. I couldn’t do this without
your support and encouragement. And to Jacob, the
most supportive husband imaginable—thanks for all
the dinners on deadline days. And to baby Avalon—
this is the first book I’ve written with you in my
life. When you’re older, I’ll let you read it!
BLOOD FOREVER
Table of Contents
My Name Is Sunshine (Sunny) McDonald…
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Epilogue
My Name Is Sunshine (Sunny) McDonald…
…and if you’d have asked me a year ago, I would have described myself as a normal, everyday high school sophomore, living a normal, everyday
life in normal, everyday suburban Massachusetts. Like many girls my age, I loved English, abhorred math, played varsity field hockey, and auditioned to take part in the school production of Bye Bye Birdie. (Mainly to get up close and personal with senior hotness and leading man Jake Wilder, my ultimate normal, everyday crush.)
Back then, just one year ago, I accepted the world exactly how it had been presented to me since birth: normal, logical, and not the least bit supernatural. In fact, if you had asked me to swear on my life that vampires, fairies, werewolves, leprechauns, and other creatures of the night didn’t exist (at least outside Stephenie Meyer novels and HBO shows), I’d have happily sworn.
Until that fateful night, that is. The night my dear twin sister, Rayne, dragged me to the oh-so-tacky, Goth haven they call Club Fang—and my sense of normalcy was irreparably shattered forever.
Yes, yes, Sunshine and Rayne. I don’t like it any more than you do, so save the jokes. At least the names fit. You see, unlike normal, everyday me, my sister has always embraced the darker side of life. She’s basically your typical Goth girl, though she hates being labeled as such. Or labeled at all, I guess. Still, I say, if the Doc Martens fit…In any case, she’s always been all about dressing in black, listening to morbid music, hanging out in graveyards, wishing she were dead…
Or undead, as the case may be. Little did I know, while I was busy flirting with Jake and scoring goals, Rayne was occupied getting her vampire certification by taking night school classes at the local coven. She’d been on a waiting list, gotten blood-tested, passed her final exam—she was good to go. And that fateful night at Club Fang I mentioned? That was supposed to be her undead birthday—the day she was meant to be bitten by her vampiric blood mate and become a creature of the night forever.
Ah, romance.
To her, it was a dream come true. Immortality, riches beyond belief, a hot vampire boyfriend, and best of all, no homework. But if you asked me? I’d rather be bogged down with biology any night of the week than sacrifice my tan for all eternity.
Unfortunately, as you may have guessed by now, I didn’t get that choice. Due to a bloody bad case of mistaken identity, the vampire in question, Magnus, who was supposed to be Rayne’s blood mate, accidentally bit me instead.
Looking back on it now, I can accept the fact that it was an honest mistake. I mean, Rayne and I are so identical even our mother can’t tell us apart. So what prayer did Magnus have of discerning our subtle differences? Especially since Rayne made me don that ridiculous Bite Me tank top before heading to the club so I’d better fit in. Which, I guess, worked, if not a little too well.
But though I can accept it now, at the time I was plenty pissed off. Just imagine being told you’re on your way to being morphed into a vampire—a species that, up until now, you thought was simply a by-product of a dead Victorian author’s perverted imagination—one week before prom! So not part of my five-year normal, everyday plan, let me tell you!
But luckily for me it didn’t stick. The vampire Magnus was able to make good—figuring out a way to reverse the transformation—and just in time, too. And through our journey together, I ended up realizing he wasn’t so bad, under all those fangs. In fact, he was pretty special. And way better than that boring old normal, everyday Jake Wilder of drama club fame.
You gotta understand—while I’m still no fan of bloodsuckers in general, I am a fan of sweet, loyal, protective guys who happen to be former knights in shining armor and now resemble a cross between Ben Barnes and Orlando Bloom. The harder I tried to resist his charms, the more he melted my heart. Today I can’t imagine life without him by my side.
In any case, you’d think at this point it’d all slide into some sickeningly sweet happily-ever-after, the end, right? But for us, not so much. You see, Rayne, who still wanted to become a vampire more than anything in the world, suddenly found out from our drama teacher, Mr. Teifert (who, in addition to instructing young thespians, also serves as vice president of an organization called Slayer Inc.), that she was destined to become a vampire slayer. Yes, the girl voted most likely to become a vampire was now officially commissioned to kill them for a living. And she couldn’t turn down her destiny either, thanks to a dormant nanovirus the powers-that-be had injected into her bloodstream at birth. Pick another path and BOOM! Bye-bye, Rayne.
But don’t worry. Slayer Inc. isn’t as evil as their name makes them out to be. If anything, they’re more like a police force for vampires, voted in more than a hundred years ago to uphold the laws and protect those who followed them, only taking out vamps who broke the rules and became a danger to others. Like Maverick, the first evil vampire Rayne was assigned to slay. He’d planned to take over the coven by creating a deadly virus. My sister, with the help of Blood Coven general Jareth, was able to take him down and save the day. And afterward? She finally got her wish. She became not only a vampire, but Jareth’s blood mate for all eternity. (And still a slayer, too! The girl wears many hats, let me tell you.)
We’ve had a ton of adventures since then. Like when Rayne had to figure out a way to stop a pack of rampaging werewolf cheerleaders from destroying our hometown. Or when I had to save Magnus from a super sneaky redheaded spy who pretended to be in love with him while spilling coven secrets to her real vampire boyfriend back home. But our biggest adventure of all? Well, it had nothing to do with vampires whatsoever, but rather our parents, who one day broke the news that we weren’t normal, everyday humans at all, but rather fairy princesses. Crazy, huh? And let me tell you, Rayne was so not psyched about the glittery pink uniform.
Which brings us to our most current conflict. The one where Magnus and I stopped a fringe group of slayers known as the Alphas from creating an army of vampire-fairy hybrids, using my sister’s blood, and letting them loose on the world. A mission impossible that should have made us heroes in the end. But instead we were cast out of the Vampire Consortium for insubordination. Mostly because we had decided that saving vampire kind was more important than playing by power-hungry House Speaker Pyrus’s rules.
To make a long story (somewhat) short, we were accused of treason by Pyrus and forced into exile. We hid underneath the streets of New York City, in fear of our lives.
Unfortunately we weren’t as safe and sound as we thought we’d be.
Which brings us to where we are today.
Or should I say…when.
Prologue
“Bertha…please…don’t!”
Rayne’s desperate cries echo through the dark, dank tunnels of the New York City underground as the slayer throws her to the ground, scrambling on top of her and digging her nails into my twin’s already bleeding flesh. My sister struggles to free herself, but Bertha’s got her pinned between muscular thighs, and this time there’s no easy escape. I watch in horror, frozen in place, as the slayer rips a wooden stake from its holster and raises it high, ready to bring it down on my sister and steal her away from me forever.
Noooo! I don’t even realize I’ve made the move. But somehow I find myself wrestling Bertha from behind, latching on to her long brown hair and yanking her backward as hard as I can.
“No one stakes my sister, you bitch!” I cry in a voice that doesn’t even sound like mine. I grab her arm and slam it against a nearby cement support beam over and over, until her hand opens and the stake goes clattering to the ground. All I can taste is blood and I realize I must have bitten my own tongue while taking her down.
In the background, I see Rayne struggling to get up, to regain her balance. But she’s wounded and woozy and I can tell for a fact she’s not ready to jump back into the fray just yet. It’s up to me to be the strong one this time. To save my sister as she has always saved me.
Using all my strength, I drag the slayer away, putting distance between her and my twin. If I can only give Rayne enough time to recover, I’m sure she can finish her off. But time is a luxury we don’t have. And even with my fairy powers, I don’t have the strength to stave off a vampire slayer for
long.
Sure enough, with a raging scream, Bertha manages to break free from my grasp, leaving me with nothing more than a handful of nasty hair extensions.
Disgusted, I drop the hair and raise my fists to fight. Bertha grins evilly, my sister forgotten, and makes a deliberate step in my direction. I lunge with all my might, hoping to be able to knock her out somehow. But as I crash into her, she’s like solid rock, and a moment later I feel something burning at my forearm. Did she cut me? I can’t afford to look down. Instead, I dig my thumbs into her neck as hard as I can, a desperate attempt to cut off her air passageways—something I learned in a self-defense class a long time ago.
My sister joins the fight now, wrestling Bertha away from me. I try to watch, but I’m overcome by dizziness. It’s then that I see the knife in the slayer’s hand. The one I realize must be made of iron—a deadly substance to fairies. I dare glance down at my arm and see the cut I already guessed was there. A small one, barely visible to the naked eye, but I know, in my heart, it’s enough. The poison swims through my veins in dancing blue lines and I find myself falling backward onto the subway rails, just as my sister takes out the slayer once and for all, spilling her blood all over the ground.
“Rayne,” I cry, my vision growing spotty. Oh God. I’m going to die. I try to reach for my sister, but my arms have become useless and broken. I can vaguely feel Rayne above me, begging me to hold on as she attempts to suck the toxins from my wound. But it’s too late. My body convulses as the poison consumes me and a chill seeps through my bones.
“I’m so cold, Rayne,” I sob as my sister pulls me into her arms, rocking me close as bloody tears stream down her cheeks. “So…cold.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs. But I know, from the hoarse tone of her voice, that she’s lying. It’s not going to be okay. This is it. My final moments. When my eyes close, they won’t open again. My thoughts flash to Magnus and I wonder, fleetingly, if he survived the fight back at the base with the werewolves, realizing I’ll probably never know. The thought hurts worse than the poison.