Blood Kiss Read online

  Blood Kiss

  A Novel of paranormal Romance

  Evangeline Anderson

  Blood Kiss

  Evangeline Anderson

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Evangeline Anderson Books

  Copyright © 2017 by Evangeline Anderson

  E-book License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the e-book retailer of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  *Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model*

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  *Author's Note: This is one of the first novels I ever wrote, way back when I was first getting started. You may noticed a few differences in writing style--I was still finding my way back then. But I hope you will still enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I can still remember my joy as the words poured out and I saw Kate and Michael taking shape in front of me. If there is a better drug than writing, I haven't found it. ; )

  Hugs and Happy Reading!

  Evangeline 2017

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

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  Chapter One

  He died right in front of me and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save him.

  It all started on a Wednesday night about half past midnight. I was sitting in the back of the Tampa General ER waiting my turn, wondering why it always took so goddamned long to get seen.

  Of course, it wasn’t like I was in mortal danger. I wasn’t having a heart attack or a stroke or convulsions, like the poor guy in the bed beside me. (I had seen him thrashing through the thin sheet-like curtain that separated my cubical from his.)

  No, I wasn’t about to die, I just needed stitches. Directly above my thumb on the inside of my right wrist was a deep, nasty bite.

  A vampire bite.

  The Komodo dragons of Indonesia, the largest lizards in the world, have a bacteria in their saliva that makes their bite deadly. They don’t even have to run down their prey. They just have to get close enough to get one good mouthful and within a few hours, the bacteria has done its job. The prey drops dead and the dragon has lunch.

  A vampire’s bite is like that. It’s orrendo—unclean both physically and spiritually. I had already disinfected the wound twice, once with holy water and once with rubbing alcohol.

  It was a toss up between which hurt worse.

  Instead of bacteria, vamps carry a virus in their blood and saliva that works to instantly kill or turn any human they bite within hours of being bitten. Ninety-nine percent of those bitten will die of the bite and the other one percent is awakened to darkness.

  In other words, they become a vamp themselves.

  But either way, like the prey of the Komodo dragon, even if a vampire doesn’t drain you dry, you’re still dead the minute they sink fangs into your flesh.

  By my calculations I had been bitten exactly three hours before in a show-down with a nasty little leech from the bottom rung of the Valerio family. I’d been after their Elder, of course, but right before I’d taken my shot, a suck-head I’d thought was down for the count had popped up and ripped into my arm like it was an ear of corn. The minute I took care of the Elder, the leech was ash, but his bite lingered to remind me to be more cautious in my killing next time.

  And there was always a next time.

  So why wasn’t I writhing in agony or lusting for blood myself? That’s easy— I’m a giustiziere de morto—a Slayer of the Dead or Death Slayer for short.

  Because that’s all vamps are—the walking, talking, biting dead.

  To the Holy Roman Church they’re a sacrilege—an offense against God. To a girl like me, a slayer of the line of Cosenza, they’re just cockroaches to be wiped out. Luckily I have a genetic immunity to their nasty bite so I wasn’t about to turn or die myself. But I was going to keep on losing blood until I got myself sewed up.

  I cursed the bad luck that had lost me my last doctor—a great old guy who still made house calls and didn’t ask questions. Unfortunately, our frequent meetings had been noted by a pack of vampires from the Andretti family that wanted to wipe me out. They missed me but ended up turning good old Doc Somersby.

  I’d had to stake him myself and that had been damn hard—I’d known him since I was a little girl when the mark of the Cosenza clan had first appeared on the inside of my right thigh. The cross-shaped birthmark, paler than the rest of the skin around it, proved my immunity to vampire venom and pre-ordained my destiny as a slayer.

  And to think when I was five I just wanted to be a ballerina.

  “Hi there, Mrs. Cosenza, I’m Doctor Moran.”

  The deep, friendly voice interrupted my brooding and I looked up to see a fresh-faced intern smiling down at me. He was probably around the same age as me but the clear green eyes that were looking into mine had an innocence about them I envied.

  “It’s Miss Cosenza. See?” I wiggled the fourth finger of my left hand at him, showing the absence of a gold band.

  I could have been a real hard-ass and told him to call me Ms., but really, what’s the point? I’ve never gone for any of that pseudo-feminism crap. When you do what I do for a living, you don’t need any extra ego stroking to know you’re the equal or better of any man on the planet.

  “Sorry about that.”

  He sat on the bed beside me, still smiling, and brushed a strand of blondish-brown hair out of his eyes. He had a nice even tan all over that had to be his natural skin color. I knew most of these guys, interns I mean, didn’t get out in the light often enough to do much sunbathing. Mostly they were in the hospital twenty-four hours a day— married to their jobs.

  I knew the feeling.

  I noticed that Doctor Moran wasn’t wearing one of those sterile white lab coats you see a lot of medical personnel in. He just had on a pair of slightly rumpled pale green scrubs that looked like they had seen better days.

  In fact, everything about him looked slightly rumpled from the laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes to the thick tousled hair he pushed carelessly behind his ears. It wasn’t a fashion statement—he just needed a haircut and probably didn’t have time to get one.

  The hair coupled with the natural tan and the impressive muscles that were visible beneath the scruffy scrubs, made him look a little bit like a Viking you might see on the cover of a romance novel—if you read that kind of thing.

  Soldier of Fortun