Blood Possession
by Tessa Dawn
A Blood Curse Novel
Book Three
In the Blood Curse Series
Copyright
Published by Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
http://www.ghostpinespublishing.com
Volume III of the Blood Curse Series by Tessa Dawn
First Edition eBook Published April 15, 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Tessa Dawn, 2012
All rights reserved
ISBN-13: 978-1-937223-04-5
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher, is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Author may be contacted at: http://www.tessadawn.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
Acknowledgments
“Mersi.”
Lidia Bircea ~ Romanian Translations
Reba Hilbert ~ Editing
Miriam Grunhaus ~ Cover Art
Also, to my lifelong friend and cousin Carla, thanks for coming to my rescue; what a way to spend our birthdays!
The Blood Curse
In 800 BC, Prince Jadon and Prince Jaegar Demir were banished from their Romanian homeland after being cursed by a ghostly apparition: the reincarnated Blood of their numerous female victims. The princes belonged to an ancient society that had sacrificed its females to the point of extinction, and the punishment was severe.
They were forced to roam the earth in darkness as creatures of the night. They were condemned to feed on the blood of the innocent and stripped of their ability to produce female offspring. They were damned to father twin sons by human hosts who would die wretchedly upon giving birth; and the firstborn of the first set would forever be required as a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of their forefathers.
Staggered by the enormity of The Curse, Prince Jadon, whose own hands had never shed blood, begged his accuser for leniency and received four small mercies—four exceptions to the curse that would apply to his house and his descendants, alone.
Ψ Though still creatures of the night, they would be allowed to walk in the sun.
Ψ Though still required to live on blood, they would not be forced to take the lives of the innocent.
Ψ While still incapable of producing female offspring, they would be given one opportunity and thirty days to obtain a mate—a human female chosen by the gods—following a sign that appeared in the heavens.
Ψ While they were still required to sacrifice a firstborn son, their twins would be born as one child of darkness and one child of light, allowing them to sacrifice the former while keeping the latter to carry on their race.
And so…forever banished from their homeland in the Transylvanian mountains of Eastern Europe, the descendants of Jaegar and the descendants of Jadon became the Vampyr of legend: roaming the earth, ruling the elements, living on the blood of others…forever bound by an ancient curse. They were brothers of the same species, separated only by degrees of light and shadow.
Prologue
800 BC
“Napolean, run!”
The ten-year-old child stumbled backward, his eyes wide with fright. His father’s commanding voice shook him to his core.
“Run, son, go quickly!”
“No, Father. I don’t want to leave you! Father, please—”
“Go now!” Sebastian Mondragon clutched his stomach and fell to the ground. His hands and fingers curled into two twisted balls, and his body contorted in an agonizing spasm. The transformation had begun. Writhing in pain, the once fearless warrior panted the warning a third time. “Napolean…son…please, run! Hide!”
Napolean heard his father’s words as if from a distance. He wanted to flee, but he was frozen in place. Mesmerized by the horror that surrounded him, he swallowed hard and simply watched as the thick, inky fog swirled around his father’s writhing body. Long, skeletal fingers with hooked claws and knobby knuckles clutched at his father’s throat, raked deep gashes along his chest, and dug mercilessly toward his innards. Blood seeped from Sebastian’s mouth as, inexplicably, his canine teeth began to grow, assuming the shape of—
Fangs.
But it was his father’s unrelenting cries of agony that finally forced Napolean’s retreat.
Napolean ran like he had never run before, his little heart beating furiously in his chest, the need for air burning his lungs. He weaved through the morbid courtyard, dodging fallen bodies and clasping his hands to his ears to block out the endless wails. All around him, males fell to the ground, cursed, and moaned. Some died immediately from the shock…or pain. Others drew their swords from their scabbards and took their own lives. Still others succumbed to the brutal torture, helpless as the darkness embodied them.
They were being punished.
Changed.
Transformed into an aberration of nature by the ghostly spirits of their victims.
The Blood Curse was upon them.
Napolean focused his eyes straight ahead, never losing sight of his destination: the imperial castle, a would-be fortress. He and his friends had hidden there so many times in the past, playing hide-and-seek, avoiding angry parents, hoping to catch a glimpse of a member of the royal family. Napolean knew the grounds like the back of his hands, and so he pressed on, desperate yet determined to get there, resigned to hide as his father had bid him.
At last, he arrived at the familiar gray castle gate.
He scurried into a small hole beneath the fortified wall and drew himself into a tight little ball. He tried to become invisible. Although he could no longer see the carnage in the village, the haunting cries continued to batter his ears like thunder against a stormy sky.
Napolean shook, remembering the moment Prince Jadon had emerged from the castle, his dark onyx eyes glazed with fear. He had gathered his loyalists to his side to explain the pronouncement—their punishment—what was soon to become a new way of life.
With so little time to prepare his men, Jadon had tried the best he could. Napolean had understood none of it, save one thing: The followers of Jadon needed to pledge their loyalty to the twin monarch as quickly as possible, before the transformation began, or they would meet a much worse fate.
Though Napolean’s father had served for years in the royal one’s secret guard, fighting to defeat the ever growing armies of Prince Jaegar, Napolean had been too young to join. Consequently, it had been imperative that he formally align himself with the right twin—for those who followed Jaegar were to receive no mercy.
And so, like all of the others, Napolean had knelt to kiss Prince Jadon’s ring—recited the sacred pledge of loyalty before it was too late—and braced himself against what was to come…
Napolean shivered, bringing his attention back to the present moment.
He wanted to be brave, but fearful tears stung his eyes.
Then all at once, he heard cruel, disembodied laughter, the sound coming closer and close
r, assaulting his ears.
“No. No. No,” he whimpered, drawing further into the hollow cavity for protection, quivering so hard his bones rattled in his skin.
The fog swirled into a miniature cyclone, rose up from the ground, and dipped low as if it had eyes that could see…
Him.
Hiding.
“You think to escape, child?” the ghostly aberration hissed, laughter ricocheting through the small cavity. Flames exploded from the center of the darkness. “Die, little one! And be reborn the monster that you are!”
Napolean screamed so loud the sound became a cosmic explosion in his ears, yet the fog kept coming. It wrapped itself around his meager body, entered his mouth, and descended into his chest.
And then the pain began.
The excruciating, unrelenting, unbearable pain.
Acid flowed freely through his veins. Fire consumed his internal organs. Bones reshaped. Cells exploded. His entire composition changed, transformed…died.
He heard his own shouting as if it belonged to someone else, someone wretched and pitiable. He clawed at his skin, hoping to tear it from his body. He bit through his hand and pounded the ground. He writhed, thrashed, and tried to crawl away, but nothing stopped the assault.
Dear Celestial Gods!
He prayed for death, but it wouldn’t come.
How much time had passed before the agony subsided, he had no idea. Had it been minutes? Hours? Perhaps days? It could have been a lifetime for all he’d endured before it had ceased…and the craving had begun.
A gnawing, all-consuming, primal thirst.
For blood.
It was the craving that had brought him out of the hole, crawling along the ground like an animal, stumbling through the darkness, searching for his father.
Now, as bitter tears stung his eyes, he absently wiped them away, only to find smears of blood on his hand.
Great goddess Andromeda, what had he become?
Finally reaching the village square, he staggered to a halt beside an aged stone well. As his vision adjusted to the darkness, he caught a shadow out of the corner of his eye: No, it couldn’t be.
Please gods, no!
The grisly scene unfolded in slow motion as Jaegar Demir, the evil prince, hunkered over his father’s body. The prince’s eyes were wild with insanity as he bent to Sebastian’s throat, tore into the flesh—as if it were mere parchment—and drank his fill of…blood. Napolean could neither move nor turn away as the macabre scene unfolded before him. As the evil prince drained his father’s already gored and tattered body of life.
And then…
Horrified, trembling, and defeated, Napolean watched like a coward as Prince Jaegar withdrew his sword and took his father’s head.
When at last the terror released him, he fisted his hands and howled at the heavens.
“Noooooooo!”
He shouted until his throat bled: “Father! Father! Father! Father…”
Buzzzzzz.
Napolean Mondragon hit the button on the alarm clock hard. He sat up and wiped the sweat from his brow. Great gods, not again. He swung his feet over the edge of the large canopy bed and rested his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
This was the third time this week he’d had the nightmare.
As the sovereign lord of the house of Jadon, the only remaining male living from the time of the Blood Curse, the memories occasionally plagued his sleep, but never this often. Hades, the nightmares must have been provoked by the sight of the male he had seen in the shadows just a few weeks back: the one who, impossibly, looked just like his murdered father.
The father who had been dead for twenty-eight hundred years.
Napolean rubbed his eyes and wrinkled his brow. Gods, he could use the sweet affection of the princess right now—the touch of her gentle hand, the gaze of her compassionate eyes, the warmth of her soft lips against his.
“Ah hell, Napolean. Why torture yourself?” He wrung his hands together and shook his head. Vanya Demir had been a bright light in an otherwise dark, unending life. Her presence in the mansion had brought song and laughter and joy to a heart that had known nothing but duty and solitude for twenty-eight hundred years. The attraction between them had been magnetic, undeniable. She had become the best reason he’d had for rising in the morning in centuries.
And that was part of why she had left.
That, and the invitation she had received to go live with Marquis, her sister, and their newborn baby. Family was everything to Vanya, and she was not about to pass up the chance to help raise her nephew…or to be with her sister. In addition, Napolean had begun to mean far too much to the female, and she had been afraid that she might fall in love with a male she couldn’t have—a male who was destined to only one woman in an eternal lifetime.
A woman who wasn’t her.
Vanya was not Napolean’s true destiny, and she had lost too much in her life already to risk losing once again.
Napolean shrugged, forcing his thoughts elsewhere. What difference did it make why Vanya had left?
She was gone.
She wasn’t coming back.
And that was that.
Rising from the bed, he headed toward the shower and turned on the water. No, he would not obsess over the princess again. He had far too many pressing concerns with the recent discovery of the Dark Ones’ colony. With the recent string of dead—no, murdered and drained—human bodies showing up all over the place in Dark Moon Vale.
And hell and brimstone, if that damnable nightmare was not beginning to unnerve him. Why now, after all these years, would his memories come back to haunt him so? Would he never be free of the guilt? Would he always feel ashamed of the day his father died?
And just who was that male he had seen in the shadows?
one
Brooke Adams smoothed her pencil skirt, flipped a wayward lock of ebony hair out of her eyes, and turned back to her PowerPoint presentation. It was Friday morning, the last day of the weeklong sales conference, and this was her moment to shine.
Her eyes scanned the audience.
Good. Tom Halloway seemed visibly impressed, and he was the one she needed: the CEO of PRIMAR, Professional Image & Marketing, International. Jim Davis, on the other hand, was noticeably confused, but what was new? He was in way over his head in the department anyhow, and there was no way to explain such a complex—and if she dare say so herself, brilliant—marketing strategy to the likes of Jimbo, a name he had chosen for himself. And Lewis, well, Lewis was…distracted. His beady eyes bounced back and forth between the large, drop-down screen and Brooke’s breasts like an out-of-control yoyo—up, down, drool; down, up, drool; drool, stare, drool…
Annoyed the heck out of her, really. But the presentation was far too important to interrupt now. She had put too much time and energy into this moment. She didn’t dare break her rhythm to chastise Lewis-hit-on-everything-with-legs-Martin. Not today. Unless, of course, he raised his hand.
Which he just did.
Seriously?
Raised his hand?
What was this, kindergarten?
“Yes, Lewis?” She put on her best professional smile.
His beady eyes narrowed, and he licked his lips. Probably had some drool to catch. “Could you unbutton your blouse?”
Brooke gasped. “Excuse me?” Her eyes darted around the room, waiting, as she fully expected one of her male colleagues to come to her rescue, snatch Lewis up by the collar, and escort him out of the meeting—that’s if Halloway didn’t fire him right on the spot first.
No one moved.
In fact, no one seemed even the least bit offended by Lewis’s request. What in the world? She swallowed a lump in her throat. Apparently, it was up to her. Squaring her chin, she gave Lewis her best I’m-gonna-mop-the-floor-with-you sneer and nearly snarled. “I beg your pardon, you little jackass, imbecile, son-of-a—”
And that’s when her alarm had gone off, mercifully ending the nightmare.
<
br /> For the love of Pete, this presentation was going to be the death of her.
Brooke wrapped the soft, Egyptian-cotton towel around her head and swallowed an aspirin: Such strange dreams always gave her headaches. Or maybe it was just the anticipation of the actual presentation. She glanced at the bright blue numbers on the digital clock. In less than one hour, she would be standing in that hotel conference room, all eyes focused on her, as the annual event came to a close, pitching the largest marketing proposal she had ever dared to envision to the entire PR department, head honchos included. And Tom Halloway, the company’s CEO, would be sitting right there in the front row.
Good Lord, what if Lewis really did ask her to unbutton her blouse? How would she handle such an unexpected hiccup?
Yeah, right. Get it together, Brooke.
She reached for her cell phone and punched in the number of the most reasonable person she knew, her favorite coworker and trusted confidante—who also happened to be her best friend for the last ten years—Tiffany Matthews.
Tiffany picked up on the second ring. “Hey. What’s up, Brooke.”
“I think I’m completely losing it, Tiff. I had a dream that I was in the middle of the presentation when Lewis asked me to unbutton my blouse.”
Tiffany’s laughter echoed through the phone. “Sounds about like Lewis.”
Brooke frowned and peeked out the hotel curtains to check the weather: cool but clear. A perfect day for her presentation. “Tiff, it’s not funny. I swear, I think I’m caving under the pressure.”
“You’re not caving, Brooke. And you’re not going to cave.” She sounded amused.
Brooke bit her lower lip, a nervous habit that just reinforced her point. “How do you know?”
Tiffany sighed. “Because you’re the best presenter we have, and other than some insane, repressed paranoia you tend to harbor, you never bomb on anything. Miss perfect? Are you kidding? Halloway is gonna love your idea, and hey—if for some reason, he doesn’t, your dream already told you what to do.”
“Huh?” she asked, confused.
“Unbutton your blouse!”