Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgments
The Blood Curse
Prologue
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
twenty-seven
twenty-eight
twenty-nine
thirty
Epilogue
About The Author
Books in the Blood Curse Series
Blood Shadows
by Tessa Dawn
A Blood Curse Novel
Book Four
In the Blood Curse Series
Copyright
Published by Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
http://www.ghostpinespublishing.com
Volume IV of the Blood Curse Series by Tessa Dawn
First Edition eBook Published
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Tessa Dawn, 2013
All rights reserved
ISBN-13: 978-1-937223-07-6
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
For Harold & Goldie, my celestial stars…
A special thanks to the following contributors:
Lidia Bircea, Romanian Translations
Miriam Grunhaus, Cover Art
Reba Hilbert, Editing
Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
Additional Credits
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)
“Unchained Melody” (1955), lyrics by Hy Zaret
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 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 destiny 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
Nachari Silivasi gripped the iron stakes on either side of his hands and shouted his pain as the harsh lash bit into his skin again and again. And again.
He would not beg.
He would not give them the satisfaction.
His body shook against the hard granite beneath him, and his back arched in unnatural contortions as his spilled blood pooled beneath his naked belly. It felt warm against the otherwise cool stone.
It had been three long months.
Three terrible months since he had descended into the Valley of Death and Shadows—and entered hell—in order to save the Vampyr king of the house of Jadon from a dark possession.
It had been three agonizing months since he had seen his brothers.
The lash struck again, catching him off guard on a violent exhale, and he almost passed out. His amulet, the one Shelby had given him, was cutting into his skin—it always did when they laid him facedown against the stone for his lashings—but he didn’t dare take it off. Once, a minion of the dark lord had tried to wrench it from his neck, and it had burned the demon’s hand like a hot branding iron.
As the lash struck lower this time, falling somewhere between his upper thighs and his buttocks, he heard himself whimper, and he cursed his momentary weakness. If only he could die. If only his brothers would renege on their promise to continue providing life support to his body until he returned. If only he could be free.
If Nachari could have laughed at the irony—which he couldn’t—he would have: In their desire to keep him alive, to hold him to the earth, his brothers were keeping him in a vampiric version of purgatory instead. As long as his earthly body remained safe and healthy, awaiting his spirit’s return to Dark Moon Vale, he could not fully die. Once dead, his corporeal body, which was holding his soul at bay, and his ethereal soul, which was projecting a corporeal form in order to sustain the endless torture, would merge. He would be one entity in one place, and the Dark Lord Ademordna could no longer enslave him.
Granted, he would be dead, never to return to his precious valley in the Rocky Mountains, never to see his Romanian homeland one last time, never to meet his destiny, but he would at least be at peace—for the dark lord who had taken him into the Valley of Death and Shadows could not hold him as one integrated being. His eternal soul would find its solace in the Valley of Spirit and Light where it belonged. With Shelby.
As the next stroke of the lash fell into the exact groove as the previous one, Nachari inadvertently bit his tongue: Great Celestial gods, how much more could he endure? Day after endless day. Knowing his body would regenerate again and again only to prepare him for more torture.
Unable to withstand another moment of his torment, Nachari chose to take the only way out available to him…however temporary. Indeed, it
was an escape he had taken one hundred times before. He threw back his head, his glorious mane of thick, raven hair spilling around his face and shoulders in wild waves of blood-crusted locks, and slammed his forehead against the stone.
The pain was indescribably profound.
Literally and figuratively stunning.
And then—mercifully—he collapsed against the stone, and the entire underworld went black.
Deanna Dubois knelt on her living room floor in deep concentration, rocking back and forth on her heels as she stared at the new set of drawings in front of her. She sighed in frustration and more than a little trepidation. The only reason she could call these drawings new was because she had drawn them last night—as opposed to the night before…
Or the night before that.
There was nothing new about her disturbing, ever-growing obsession.
She twirled a thick lock of ash-brown hair around her finger, noticing a particularly stark amber highlight, before turning back to the paintings.
Dear God, what was wrong with her?
She needed help.
And it was getting harder and harder to deny it.
She reached for the thin, lightweight computer beside her, drew it on top of her lap, and used the mouse to enlarge the webpage she had opened—and left open—almost two weeks ago: Psychiatric Clinics in New Orleans.
Just pick one, Deanna, she told herself. You need help!
She glanced once again at the pictures before her and tried to see them in a new light, maybe, with an eye for self-analysis—it was time for some serious introspection. Setting the laptop aside, she laid the drawings out in order, sort of like a progressively animated comic strip, and then sat back and studied them.
On the far left was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a tall, incredibly well-built Adonis with deep green eyes and a face so utterly perfect she wasn’t sure God could actually create such a being—let alone endow her with the ability to draw it. His hair was unnaturally thick and silky, and there was a strange air of confidence swirling around him even in the drawing—not quite arrogance, but definitely pride—a regal-like quality. He was simply breathtaking. Actually, more than that: He was arresting…almost disturbing in his appeal.
The next sequence of drawings was more benign, and she drew them the same every time: pine trees, rock outcroppings, skies filled with dark, mottled clouds, and endless miles of forest. Nothing especially interesting or disturbing there. They reminded her of pictures she had seen of Colorado.
She turned to the next drawing, the one immediately to the right of the last forest picture, and she shivered. In this frame, the ground had opened up beneath the handsome man, and he was falling into a dark, endless hole, being sucked into some evil netherworld. The hands that were reaching up to grab him were skeletal and demonic; and, of course, this is where the metaphorical comic strip began to deteriorate and her own mental health came into question: In the subsequent set of photos—the largest sequence that she drew night after night—the ungodly beautiful man was depicted in all kinds of horrific scenarios and positions being tortured.
And by tortured, she meant hideously tormented in ways that no stable human being could possibly come up with—let alone draw in such brutal detail—unless that artistically disturbed woman was seriously going insane.
She rubbed her face with her palms as if she could scrub away the anxiety and stared apprehensively at the farthest picture to the right. Something in her gut turned over as her eyes connected with the images.
It was as if it were real.
As if it were happening right now.
As if, right this second, the man was lying facedown against a cold stone, bound by four heavy lengths of chain, with diamonds—of all things—embedded in the links. And God almighty, was he writhing in pain as his flesh was literally torn from his body by a spiked lash. Yet never—not even once in all of her drawings—did the guy beg his tormentors for mercy. For lack of a better term, he took it like a man.
A man forged from iron.
Whoever her phantom captive was, he clearly had the heart of a lion.
Deanna reached out and swept the drawings into a haphazard pile, purposefully disturbing the order in a desperate attempt to erase the madness that had become her nighttime—and more and more often, daytime—obsession.
“Who are you?” she whispered, pleading with heaven-knows-what for just a moment’s peace. “And why are you haunting me?”
One of the earlier-sequenced drawings seemed to rise to the top as if it were trying to answer her question by floating above all the other images…speaking in some cryptic, metaphysical way. “It’s just random, Deanna,” she reassured herself. “From the way you messed them up—you are not She emphasized the last five words while momentarily squeezing her eyes shut. And then she began tapping the back of her foot nervously against the floor in a frenetic, repetitive rhythm as she cringed. “What’s wrong with me…what’s wrong with me…that crazy!” what’s wrong with me?”
She continued to stare at the most prominent drawing.
“Fine,” she finally spat, reaching for the picture and lifting it up to study it more closely. “I’ll bite. Show me some great hidden meaning, then.” Shaking her head, she whispered, “Show me just how psychotic I am so they can lock me away forever.”
As she turned the drawing over and over, observing it at different angles, she began to notice a strange pattern in the sky: There was something hidden within the shadows of the dark clouds, the ones that loomed ominously over the forested valley, the place from which the man always fell into the black hole. And the hidden pattern wasn’t something Deanna had added to the picture; rather, it was a deliberate omission—white space that remained empty, uncovered by pencil marks.
An outline emerged in the absence of color.
Frowning, Deanna leapt up from the floor and went to get her magnifying glass in order to take a closer look. As she held the drawing beneath the lens, she bent way over to study the vacant space…and froze.
What in the world?
The spaces were letters.
And the letters spelled very distinct words.
Wondering if she wasn’t about to open Pandora’s box—and whether or not she might be better off leaving well enough alone—Deanna reached for her pencil and flipped over another drawing in order to transcribe the letters on the back, one at a time.
DARK-MOON-VALE-CLINIC.
She sat back and stared at the words, and then she picked up the magnifying glass and verified each one a second time, making sure she hadn’t overlooked anything. Yep, that’s what they said all right: Dark Moon Vale Clinic.
She set down the magnifying glass and shrugged. At least they hadn’t spelled out Sybil or Three Faces of Eve. At least they hadn’t spelled out Redrum, Redrum, Redrum over and over and over: “All work and no play makes Deanna a very dull girl,” she whispered, shivering at the inappropriate reference to The Shining—a terrifying book written by Stephen King in the 1970s that was later made into a movie. That was later remade at a remote Colorado hotel…
Near the Rocky Mountain National Park…
Just outside the Roosevelt National Forest.
Deanna swallowed a lump in her throat, set the magnifying glass aside, and slowly reached for her laptop again. This time, she ignored the intimidating list of local psychoanalysts in favor of trying a different search: Colorado Clinics. When she didn’t find the one from her drawings, she began to breathe easier. Okay, this is good. The clinic isn’t real.
Even as she thought it, an uneasy feeling grew in her belly, and she continued to try various word combinations in the search engine, absently seeking to discern whether or not the place was real, even if the clinic wasn’t.
And there it was.
Right beneath Mountain Hotels and Accommodations: Dark Moon Vale Lodge.
Damnit! she thought, her trepidation growing. It was time to research the place in depth.
Despite
some frantic voice screaming deep within the recesses of her mind, Stop! Don’t go any further. This is one of those forks in the road—one of those ominous moments in life from which there is no turning back—don’t do it! she was helpless to stop herself.
Because something far deeper within her, something far more fundamental and compelling than fear, was spurring her on, inexplicably drawing her to the suffering man in her sketches. To the haunted eyes of that masculine figure.
And nothing in this world—or the next—was going to keep her from solving the mystery…if, in fact, it could be solved.
Even as Deanna clicked on the link and prepared to read further, she already knew she was headed for Colorado: She was going to Dark Moon Vale.
Somewhere…the victim in her drawings did exist. And she was going to find him even if it killed her.
If she had harbored even the slightest doubt before, it was now completely gone: Deanna Dubois was absolutely—certifiably—insane.
one
Dark Moon Vale
The sterile room in the private clinic was as orderly as it was disheartening. Kagen Silivasi dragged his chair closer to his brother’s bedside and rested his elbows on his knees. He let out a gentle sigh and stared at Nachari’s peaceful face, wishing Nachari would open his eyes. “How are you doing today, little brother?” he whispered, knowing there would be no response. “Everything seems to be in order…at least physically.”
Kagen frowned. Nachari had been like a vegetable for three months now: His vital signs were good; his heartbeat was steady; and his complexion remained vibrant and flawless—albeit lacking the young vampire’s customary lighthearted smile—and his eyelids rested gently closed over his typically vibrant green eyes. Wherever he was, whether in this world or the next, he appeared to be at rest.
At peace.
Kagen rubbed his jaw in contemplation, wondering for the millionth time what had gone wrong the day Nachari had traded his immortality to follow their sovereign king beyond the realm of the living, to save Napolean from the Dark Lord Ademordna, who had possessed the king in a plot to impregnate and destroy the king’s destiny. Had Nachari followed the evil being into the Valley of Death and Shadows? Had he chosen the afterlife over his ceaseless existence on earth? Or had he been derailed in some other horrific fashion?