Alexandra Sabian 2 - Blood Secrets Read online

  Praise for

  BLOOD LAW

  “Another new voice makes a compelling debut in the urban fantasy genre.… Holmes gives every indication of being a promising new talent with a great future ahead!”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews (4 stars)

  “Fast-paced and full of action, the story never flags, from the discovery of the first body to the exciting [and violent] finale. The characters are fascinating and well developed, but plenty is left for the future: this has excellent potential as a series.”

  —Booklist

  “The author maintains a high level of suspense and nonstop action throughout the narrative.… Urban fantasy fans will savor this wonderful new addition to the genre, and this reviewer eagerly awaits the sequel, Blood Secrets.”

  —Bitten by Books

  “A page-turning debut thriller with a strong female lead—who happens to be a vampire—Jeannie Holmes’s Blood Law is a unique and compelling paranormal police procedural, spiced with believable relationships, a wholly original vision of the vampire, and a strong statement on crimes of intolerance. Whether you like police procedurals, paranormal thrillers, or just a damn good read, you’ll love Blood Law—and develop a blood-craving for the next book in the series.”

  —KELLI STANLEY,

  award-winning author of Nox Dormienda

  and City of Dragons

  “The Southern Gothic atmosphere in Blood Law seductively pulls you into a sultry world of vampires, ghosts, and bonds that run deeper than death. Holmes’s original take on the vampire mythology will leave you hungry for the next book.”

  —REBECCA CANTRELL,

  award-winning author of

  A Night of Long Knives

  “Blood Law shimmers with the mystical, dark energy of the undead—passionate, violent, and sexy as hell.”

  —LAURA BENEDICT, author of Isabella Moon

  “Alexandra Sabian, a take-no-crap Enforcer with the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation, battles racist humans, angry vampires, and enigmatic ghosts in her quest to bring a vampire killer to justice in this delightful debut. Scary, funny, and sexy, Blood Law is worth sinking your teeth into.”

  —BEKKA BLACK, author of iDrakula

  BY JEANNIE HOLMES

  Blood Law

  Blood Secrets

  Blood Secrets is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Bantam Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Jeannie Holmes

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-42333-1

  Cover design: Jae Song

  Cover illustration: © Kris Keller

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  For Mom

  acknowledgments

  No matter how much we want to delude ourselves into believing writing is a solitary practice, no writer is ever truly alone. Most have at least some form of support system that acts as both a cattle prod and a security blanket as necessary. I am no exception. With that in mind, I would like to thank the host of usual suspects.

  Thanks to my fabulous agent, Marian Young, for her enthusiasm, encouragement, and unwavering support. I can’t properly convey her awesomeness in this limited space.

  A thousand thanks to my editor, Shauna Summers, for her sparkling personality, keen eyes, and boundless patience. Words can’t express my gratitude for all your hard work. Many thanks to all the hardworking individuals at Ballantine Bantam Dell who helped make Blood Secrets a reality. I may not know all of your names, but I’m humbled by your support and passion.

  Extra-special thanks to Vicki Pettersson for being a good sport and letting me immortalize her in the pages of this book.

  I’ve made no secret of the fact that the past year has been a difficult one, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have survived had it not been for the dedication and love of some very special people. My eternal thanks and love always go to my family and my friends who kept me from completely losing my mind. There are a few special people to whom I would like to pay special thanks because they went above and beyond to help me keep it together and see this book published: Carolyn Haines, Michelle Ladner, Alexis Lampley, Kelli Stanley, Rebecca Cantrell, Ron O’Gorman, Theresa B., Debi, Miki, Raven, Skitty, and Theresa A. All of you saw me at my best and my worst, and you stuck by me. Mahalo.

  Finally, to my husband, Mark … You’re still here, and you amaze me. I love you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  prologue

  NO MOON SHONE IN THE SKY WHEN HE DUMPED THE body. He hardly recognized the mangled mess before him as the vibrant young woman he’d known, even though their affair had been brief. Hair the color of darkest flames turned black with dried blood. A dull silver film encroached on the sparkling blue of her eyes.

  Her jaw was marred by a dark smear as he traced its gentle curve. He pulled back and stuck his thumb in his mouth, coating his tongue with her blood. An electric charge jolted his spine. Memories that were not his own flickered through his consciousness, playing scenes from her life on the movie screen of his mind, until the film stopped in a crimson moment of violence.

  The rags he’d used to wipe down the trunk and hide his fingerprints fell from his hand and greedily absorbed the blood pooling beneath the remains. Using his elbow, he slammed the trunk closed, blotting the macabre view from sight.

  A falling star streaked across the glittering sky. He closed his eyes and made a wish he’d made a thousand times before. The vision of his wish coming true filled his mind.

  “Soon.” His whisper sliced through the silent night like a blade. Without a second glance at the trunk-turned-tomb, he walked away.

  one

  November 17

  ALEXANDRA SABIAN SEARCHED THE HALL OF RECORDS for clues that would lead her to a killer. The only problem with her search was that she had no suspects, no witnesses, and the body had been buried for forty-one years.

  Her father, Bernard Sabian, had been murdered in the spring of 1968, when she was only five. Someone had left his staked and beheaded body in a cemetery near her childhood home.

  Simply because he was a vampire, like her.

  At least that was her theory.

  In the two weeks since she’d discovered she could access the Hall of Records—a metaphysical storehouse for the memories and experiences of every man, woman, and child who’d walked the
face of the earth—she’d been searching through the records, trying to locate her father’s. She hoped once she did that she would uncover the clues she needed to find his killer.

  It wasn’t an easy task she’d set for herself, considering her father was a lost soul, one of the wandering spirits who roamed the neutral zone between the physical and spirit realms. He claimed he’d chosen his fate, had traded his passage to the spirit world in favor of remaining in the Shadowlands. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t accept that her father would willingly condemn himself to an eternity of unrest and was determined to give him the peace he deserved.

  And her quest began in the Hall of Records.

  Crystals housed in a black granite access terminal projected the large screen before her. Names scrolled by in one column while the adjacent column held a series of numbers showing the location of a door that led to that person’s memory.

  She hadn’t actually tried accessing anyone’s memory yet. The thought of viewing a stranger’s most intimate recollections made her skin crawl. It was a violation of the worst order. However, if it helped find her father’s killer, it was an issue she was willing to work around.

  The screen flashed from white to red and bold black letters appeared: ACCESS DENIED.

  “Damn it,” Alex muttered and dropped her head into her hands. Every time she sought her father’s name she met the same result. Varying the combination of search parameters hadn’t worked either. Perhaps his records truly were lost.

  Sighing, she looked around the Hall. It had transformed since the first time she’d entered as a result of her experiments to manipulate this “reality.” What had been a single endless hallway had become a huge ornate multi-level rotunda. Countless doors lay hidden in shadows on each level of the massive round building. Large golden Corinthian-style columns supported each level, and she craned her neck to count ten floors before darkness consumed the topmost levels. Although moonlight streamed through a circular opening in the apex of the rotunda’s unseen dome, none of it reached the lower levels. The only light came from the screen in front of her and the softly glowing crystals beside each door.

  “All I need are some crickets chirping in the background,” she said to no one in particular. She turned her attention back to the screen, ready to try a different approach to her search.

  Somewhere in the distant shadows overhead, a door opened and closed.

  Alex jerked, reaching for a sidearm she didn’t possess. While she’d known others could access the Hall, she’d never been present when it happened. Forcing herself to relax, she waited to see if someone appeared or if she heard footsteps.

  No noise broke the silence. No one showed themselves.

  “Hello,” she called. “Is someone there?”

  Only her echoed voice answered.

  Frowning, Alex peered into the gloom overhead. Had she imagined it? No. She could feel unseen eyes watching her and sense a presence lurking in the darkness. A feeling of familiarity tickled her mind like a forgotten dream dancing at the edges of awareness.

  A persistent, steady beeping sounded from her wrist. She checked her watch and sighed. It was time to leave the Hall behind and return to the real world.

  Casting a final glance toward the hidden observer, she rose from her seat and headed for a simple wooden door nestled in a tiny alcove. A series of grinding noises behind her signaled the access terminal’s dissolution. It had taken several trips for her to become accustomed to the terminal’s disappearance when she was ready to leave. Without looking back, she knew the terminal and chair had dissolved and once more melded with the stone floor, leaving only smooth granite throughout the rotunda. Dim light filled the alcove as she opened the partially concealed door and stepped through.

  The moon had reigned over the Hall’s interior, but once outside, Alex found a sun low on the horizon and the creeping gloom of twilight. Gravestones stretched to either side in endless rows, casting elongated shadows over soft spring grass. Looking over her shoulder as she walked away, the Hall’s door appeared as the entrance to a small mausoleum, what may have been a family name worn away long ago.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered and then smirked at the reference to Alice in Wonderland, one of her favorite childhood books. Sometimes she definitely felt like Alice chasing the rabbit.

  Parting the Veil, the thin sliver of psychic energy that separated the physical and spiritual planes, required concentration and wasn’t a task she’d fully mastered. If she wasn’t careful in melding her consciousness with her physical body, a dozen nasty fates awaited her, the least being death.

  Her physical body lay in a hotel room in a meditative trance. To an observer, she would appear to be in a really deep sleep. However, waking someone in such a trance could be deadly. Separating the consciousness from the body was a risk, but it was one she was willing to accept if she could find clues to solve her father’s murder.

  She sighed and closed her eyes, pushing aside the random thoughts that crowded her mind. Once awake, she would be groggy and disoriented, like someone coming out from under anesthesia. In order to shift her consciousness from the Shadowlands and back to the real world, she had to remember details of the room.

  Gradually she recalled the feel of the bed beneath her, the coolness of the air, and the hum of machinery from the nearby elevators. The sensation of a pit yawning beneath her made her stomach roll. She’d learned to keep her eyes tightly shut against the kaleidoscopic whirlwind of colors and shadows as she passed through the Veil and returned to the physical plane.

  Alex slowly awoke from the dreamlike trance and alarms immediately sounded in her mind. Her skin prickled under the gaze of an unseen watcher.

  Darkness cloaked her surroundings. Disoriented, she searched with her senses, probing for signs of life. She steadied and measured her breathing as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The greenish glow of a security light bathed the window beside the bed on which she lay and cast strange shadows on the wall.

  Without turning her head, she looked around the small hotel room, trying to make sense of what she saw. One of the shadows in a far corner shifted and her focus narrowed on it. She eased her hand beneath her pillow, reaching for her loaded Glock G31 .357-caliber pistol.

  The shadow detached from the wall and moved toward her.

  Alex sat up quickly and aimed her pistol at the shadow as it launched itself onto the bed. Her finger found the trigger.

  The shadow landed beside her with an inquisitive warble.

  “Damn it, Dweezil,” Alex whispered, jerking her finger from the trigger as the large Maine coon cat swished its tail over her bare legs.

  Dweezil head-butted her empty hand and purred.

  She chuckled and scratched behind his large tufted ears with her free hand. “Don’t scare me like that. I almost shot you.”

  His eyes flashed iridescent green in the light filtering through the window. He winked at her, as if to say, “Gotcha,” before moving to her still-warm pillow and curling into a tight ball.

  “You sure are jumpy,” a voice announced from near the window.

  Alex gasped and aimed her Glock at the newly perceived threat.

  “It’s me, damn it!” A man’s silhouette raised his hands and the scent of sandalwood and cinnamon wafted toward her.

  Recognition stopped her finger from pulling the trigger. She lowered the pistol, her breath leaving in an explosive puff.

  Varik Baudelaire—Director of Special Operations for the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation, her ex-fiancé, former mentor, and current lover—cautiously approached the bed and took the pistol from her. “Fucking-A, baby. What the hell’s got you so worked up?”

  “Sorry. I’m not used to someone being here when I wake up.”

  He placed the Glock on the bedside table. “Well, it’s little wonder if you make a habit of trying to kill your lovers.”

  She moved Dweezil from her pillow. “Oh, fuck you,” she spat and pulled the covers over her
head.

  The bed shifted with Varik’s added weight and his arms slipped around her. “That sounds like a fabulous idea,” he growled and nipped at her ear with his fangs.

  Alex giggled and rolled to face him. “Is sex the only thing you think about?”

  “No.” He kissed her neck. “Sometimes I think of food. Especially whipped cream.”

  “Whipped cream?”

  He pulled back enough that she could see his dark eyes had shifted to the color of molten gold. “It’s very versatile and has many uses.” His hand slipped beneath her University of Louisville T-shirt to cup her breast. “It’s especially good with melons.”

  She laughed and shoved him away. “You really are a French pig, aren’t you?”

  He captured her, pulling her close, and brushed his lips against hers as he whispered, “Le oink, le oink.”

  His mouth covered hers, and his tongue lazily traced the curve of her lips. He rolled her bottom lip between his teeth, teasing her with the possibility of piercing her flesh. A warm tingle blossomed low in her belly when his tongue finally darted between her fangs, exploring and gliding alongside hers.

  Alex entwined her fingers in his black hair, reveling in its thickness and the way it slipped over her skin like warm silk. Since taking over as Jefferson’s official Enforcer, he’d found having hair to his waist to be impractical and cut it, a decision with which she wholeheartedly agreed.

  An upbeat techno song played, and Varik growled when she broke the kiss.

  “Your phone is ringing,” she muttered.

  He kissed the scar along the left side of her neck, making her shiver. “Ignore it.”

  “It could be important.”

  “It can wait.”

  The beat cycled to the beginning, and she sighed. “Varik …”

  Groaning, he rolled onto his side, reaching for his cell phone. The music died as he answered. “This had better be damn good.”

  She could hear the distinctive bass rumble of Damian Alberez, Chief Enforcer for the FBPI and boss to both of them. Rather, he was Varik’s boss. She was cooling her heels on the Bureau’s shit list because she’d turned rogue a month ago and abandoned her oath to uphold the law.