Queen of darkness blood.., p.1
Queen of Darkness (Blood & Fangs Book 3), page 1
Queen of Darkness
Blood & Fangs (Book Three)
A Soulbound Shifters Novel
Riley Storm
Queen of Darkness
Copyright© 2021 Riley Storm
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means without written permission from the author. The sole exception is for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
Edited by Olivia Kalb – https://www.oliviakalbediting.com/
Cover Designs by Jacqueline Sweet Covers
Table of Contents
Queen of Darkness
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter One
“Look out!”
At my shouted warning, Aaron ducked, dropping his shoulder and rolling underneath the tentacle-like arm of our Plant-Fae attacker. The green leaves twisting off the ends of the long appendage narrowly missed the master vampire, but its millions of tiny barbs left the barest of scratches down the back of his suit, shredding his fine Italian silk with ease.
I knew he’d be sour about that.
“How do we stop this thing?” he called back, dodging to the side as another leafy attack came whistling at him.
“Working on it,” I muttered as the Plant-Fae whirled on me and lashed out with two of its “arms.”
I flung myself away, anticipating the strike. The sentient tree-trunk-like Fae was dangerous, but it had a habit of giving away its attacks. Its four yellow, oval eyes blinked angrily at me from where they sat about eight feet up the trunk, and it tried to strike me again.
I grunted as the vine slammed into my stomach, knocking the wind from me while flinging me across the street.
“Ow,” I wheezed, getting to my feet as fast as I could.
I wasn’t fast enough. The vine snaked around my feet and up my calves, its barbs tearing at my skin, opening a million tiny cuts as it slowly tightened.
I reached around frantically for something, anything, to use, and my fingers closed around the slatted grates of the storm drain sewers at the edge of the curb. I gripped tightly as the Plant-Fae tried to haul me in closer, to where its shorter vine-tentacles could grasp me. I didn’t know what the whirling mass of them hid, but I doubted I wanted to find out either.
“A little help here!” I shouted at Aaron, wishing the vampire would hurry up and do something to distract our attacker.
“Working on it,” came his reply, uttered word for word like my earlier response.
“Very funny, but work faster! This thing seems rather determined to collect my stupid Blood Letter! I’d rather it didn’t.”
My fingers squeezed tighter around the sewer grate as the Plant-Fae hauled back, trying to pull me toward it.
“I don’t think so,” I growled, staring at it. “My life is my own.”
Although it was by far the weirdest thing to come after me in the past two weeks, it certainly wasn’t the first. A Blood Letter had been put on my head, and all manner of bounty hunters were out there trying to collect the reward for killing me and bringing proof of it to the Bounty Hunter’s Guild.
At least I didn’t warrant a huge bounty, thanks to being a relative unknown in the paranormal world. That meant I didn’t have to fear any of the truly scary bounty hunters. It simply wasn’t worth their time.
But this one seems particularly persistent, I observed.
Something heavy came flying out from the far side of the street, slamming into the Plant-Fae and causing it to loosen its grip on me. While it recovered from the attack of the flying landscaping stone courtesy of Aaron, I yanked on the sewer grate, lifting it. Then I scrambled a few feet away from the Plant-Fae.
“Take this!” I screamed, just as the creature started to tighten its hold on my legs again, and slammed the grate closed with every ounce of strength my mutant vampire-shifter heritage granted me.
The metal whipped down, slicing through the vine-like arms as it clanged back down.
The Fae went berserk, whipping vine-arms around everywhere, while tree-sap-like blood leaked from its severed arms, splattering everything and everyone.
“Ew!” Aaron exclaimed as he came to my side, trying to flick the sticky droplets off him. “That is not going to wash out.”
“Your suit is destroyed anyway. Stop bitching,” I said, untangling the dead ends of the vines from my legs and getting to my feet as blood dripped down my bare legs.
Thankfully, my own blood didn’t spur any reaction from my vampire heritage, or I would have been in a tough spot just then.
“How do we stop this thing?” I asked as the Plant-Fae recovered and turned toward us.
“Same way you deal with any weed,” Aaron said, brandishing a pair of hedge clippers he must have found alongside one of the abandoned houses in this section of my hometown of Seguin.
“I’m not sure that weed killer from the hardware store is going to be strong enough for this,” I said as we split apart, a vine whipping through the space between us.
Aaron became a blur as he moved, and the hedge clippers sliced down like oversized scissors, severing the vine.
“No need,” he said before breaking the locking pin that held the two pieces together and handing me one. “We’ll cut it out.”
I snagged the clipper handle in mid-air, looking at the eight-inch blade and then at the Plant-Fae. Then back at Aaron. “This is your grand plan?” I asked, spinning away from another attack even as the Plant-Fae came at us, its remaining six vine-tentacles preparing for an attack.
“You got a better one?” he challenged.
I didn’t, so we put the blades to work. Whirling and ducking, we avoided its strikes as best we could and hit back when the opportunity arose. Two more vines fell before the Plant-Fae screeched in alarm and began to retreat, its root-like feet carrying it up and onto the lawn, where they found better purchase, and it moved away faster.
“I think we encouraged it not to come back,” I observed.
“Time to make sure it doesn’t come back.” Hauling back his arm, Aaron held his half of the clippers like a javelin. Taking several steps forward, he flung it with all his considerable might.
The blade wobbled mightily in midair, but it stayed true, burying deep into the trunk of the retreating creature. It shrieked again, slapping at the embedded object with several vines until the clipper arm came free. Then it disappeared into the night, leaving the two of us to recover.
“Well, that was certainly a rush,” Aaron said, smiling broadly.
“It’s too much,” I said tautly, without any humor. “This can’t go on. As long as I still have a Blood Letter on my head, they’ll keep coming after me. The only one who can stop it is the Vampire Queen.”
“Jo …”
I stared at Aaron. “I’m going after her.”
Chapter Two
“Jo, we’ve been over this! Going after Elenia is madness. It’s crazy!”
“So is sitting around and letting bounty hunter after bounty hunter come to Seguin and wreak havoc! Eventually, someone strong enough is going to take notice and come for me. What then, Aaron?”
“This is madness,” the vampire growled, blue eyes flashing in the dusky light. “You can’t just go kill the Vampire Queen, Jo.”
“Why not?” I shouted back. “She might be immortal, but that’s not the same thing as being invincible. She can be killed, and I intend to do just that. This nonsense needs to stop! People are being hurt because of it. I can’t keep letting them put themselves in harm’s way for me.”
Aaron sighed, running
“You’re right about us not staying here,” he acknowledged. “We should go. Right now, they know where to find you. We should leave. I can hide you, Jo. I can protect you.”
Clenching my hands into fists, I turned away from him. Aaron had a major crush on me. Maybe more than a crush, I didn’t know. He wanted to claim me, whatever that meant as a vampire. I didn’t know, nor had I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. After all, I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I was a vampire myself.
All my life, I’d thought I was a shifter. As it turned out, my mother had passed on both wolf genes and blood-sucking monster genes. I was the lucky lottery winner of a life full of being a monster who needed blood to survive. Although I couldn’t deny that there was something between Aaron and me, romance wasn’t particularly high on my “give a shit” list lately.
I had bigger problems to worry about. Like the inner demon in me and the fact that the Vampire Queen had put out a virtual “wanted” poster on me, but without the “or alive” part. She simply wanted me dead.
“What is it, Jo?”
“What is it?” I asked, not sure he grasped the incredulity of the question. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m an immortal vampire-shifter. And also, I’m a woman. Thanks to your queen, that’s a combination that results in only one outcome. My gruesome death. A death she’s willing to stake a good amount of money on.”
“Jo …”
“I can’t keep running, Aaron,” I told him point-blank, letting him look into my jade eyes and see my resolve, my determination. Letting him see that I meant business. “Not anymore.”
“Going after her is insane.”
I shook my head. “Two weeks ago, I let you talk me out of going after her. That was what was insane. This could all be over now.”
“Or you could be dead,” he pointed out. “Which, I might add, is a far more likely outcome right now.”
“Thanks for your support.” I glared at him.
“If there were any hope of success, I’d be the first one to go,” he said hotly, angered by my insinuation that he wouldn’t be there for me. “But we already snuck into her palace once. Well, you did to rescue me, but the point still stands. She thought she was unassailable behind the walls. That she couldn’t be reached. Now you’ve shown her otherwise. She’s going to have pulled back her elites. The palace will be infested with them. Can’t you see that?”
“I can see that,” I said, nodding. “But I also know that I can’t just sit around, Aaron. I have to actually do something, and I need you to see that.”
“I’m saying we do something. We leave. Find somewhere she won’t find us. Hell, if Fenrir could hide for hundreds of years, so can we.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I have to stop it. I have to find a way. If I start running and hiding now, then I’m going to have to run for my entire life. This stupid Blood Letter will be hanging over my head for decades, centuries even, like the Sword of Damocles. Nowhere will be safe for me. Or anyone around me.”
“So, what, you’d rather go and die just to do something? Is that it?” Aaron asked, his temper quite visibly fraying. “You’d rather just leave me?”
I frowned at him. “Is that what this is all about? You think I’m doing this because I don’t want to be with you? That I don’t want to go off with you?”
“It certainly feels that way.”
“Argh!” I shouted, clenching my fists so tightly that my fingernails started to jab into my palms. “You arrogant, idiotic moron! I can’t let myself be with you if I’m always going to be looking over my shoulder, fearing that someone will come after me. How am I supposed to let down my guard if I have to always watch out for an attack that I can’t see coming?”
Aaron didn’t have a response to that.
“Three bounty hunters have come after us in the last two weeks, ever since Bianca died,” I said.
Bianca, a mage imbued with considerable power from an elder god, had been the first hunter to come after me. She’d only been stopped through a lot of luck and the sacrifice of more good shifters than I cared to think about. The funerals had only finished two days ago.
“And we dealt with both of them,” Aaron pointed out. “The two of us.”
“Yes, we did. But we won’t always,” I said, quietly but firmly putting my foot down. I was done arguing. “Eventually, someone will come for us that we can’t deal with, Aaron. That’s why I have to go to her. That’s why I have to find a way to end this now, while I still can. Even if that means she has to die.”
“Jo–” he started to protest, but I shook my head, short hair bouncing everywhere.
“No, Aaron,” I said, my voice dull, flat. Devoid of emotion. “I’m going after the queen. I’m putting an end to this. If you can’t support that, then you’ll just have to stay here.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I turned on my heel and walked away. Before I left, I would have to pay my respects to the Alpha and let him know I was departing. His town, and my pack, would be safe now. No more attacks would come their way.
As I walked, I pulled up my memories of Queen Elenia’s throne room from my first visit to Madrigal, the city of vampires. I pictured her sitting there, tall and lithe, her dull reddish hair falling down her back, black eyes alert and aware.
I’m coming for you, I snarled at the memory. And I won’t stop until one of us is dead.
Chapter Three
My anger began fading as I approached Aldridge Manor, the home of our pack leader and the pack’s central hub. Replacing it was a burning sense of purpose. I finally had something to direct my energy and anger toward, something that could actually result in some good coming into the world.
Good that would combat the negative of what I’d become. A monster who had to feed for all eternity. My fingers played with one of the vials of blood I kept on me at all times to ensure that I wouldn’t cede control to the Hunger and go off the rails.
Aaron has been doing this for who knows how long. The rest of his team has been doing it for centuries as well. If they can do it, so can I.
Maybe. But that didn’t mean I liked it.
The three-story manor house sitting at the top of a slow-rising driveway from the road was no longer the dark, imposing thing it had been under our former Alpha. Now, it was bright and almost welcoming. Lights were on everywhere, and some people even wandered the grounds talking quietly amongst themselves.
Johnathan really has come into his own, I observed, my lips quirking upward. I certainly hadn’t expected it of him, but when his father was killed and the torch passed to him, Johnathan had well and truly stepped up to the plate.
I exchanged nods with a pair of guards making their rounds and headed up the wide stone steps to the front door, letting myself in. Turning left, I strode down the hallway, the thick runner rug covering up the rich hardwood underneath, dulling the sounds of my boots.
“Is he still working?” I asked a shifter while I passed his desk.
“Hey, Jo. Um, yes, he’s in there.”
I paused. Something in the speaker’s tone rang like a warning bell. “What is it, Kyler?”
The other wolf shifter sighed, biting his lip before looking up at me. I nearly gasped at how young he looked. We were the same age, but his face was full of a youth and exuberance that I didn’t see when I looked in the mirror.
And innocence. This one hasn’t seen what you’ve seen, journeyed where you’ve been. He hasn’t felt death like you have.
Good. I hoped he wouldn’t have to. I didn’t wish what I’d been through on anyone. Nobody deserved to find out they were a monster.
“There’s something you should know,” the young-looking shifter said at last, having made up his mind. “But you didn’t hear it from me. I know Johnathan was going to tell you himself.”
“What is it?” I growled, growing impatient with waiting. Whatever it was, it was bad news, and drawing out the delivery would only make it worse. Just rip the bandage off and be done with it.
“We lost two more,” Kyler said quietly. “That plant thing ripped through a house on its way in.”
