Embrace the Magic (The Blood Rose #2)(3)
Author: Caris Roane

Samantha didn’t like the way a pinkish sheen came over his eyes as he shifted his shoulders in her direction, licking his lips. She thought of Little Red Riding Hood and other warning tales from childhood.

She tried to move to her right, just to get out of range, but she bumped into another vampire, this one in jeans with lots of chains attached. His nostrils worked like bellows, which really freaked her out.

Did human women smell different from vampire females?

She pushed away from the bar and felt a hand on each arm apparently intent on stopping her, but just as quickly, the same fingers fell away, which was a good thing, because she would be all too happy to start shouting for the club’s owner.

She turned to glare at each of the men, but found that neither was looking at her. Something else had caught their attention and each now scanned the crowd at the front entrance to the club.

The music stopped abruptly and to Samantha’s great surprise the entire club fell silent.

She had no idea what was going on until a deep, booming voice filled the air. “Where are you, Tom Brignall. I’ll have your head for this.”

Samantha stood very still as she watched the crowd part, realm-folk moving back swiftly, dragging surprised human partners with them, until the new arrival came into view.

A vampire.

A big one, with wild, honey-brown hair, long and somewhat curly, that flowed away from his face, most of it trapped behind in what she knew to be a woven clasp that a lot of the Bergisson Guard wore.

Then time slowed to a halt.

She blinked as a tremor ran through her head-to-foot. She’d never seen a man like this before. He had to be six-five and built, with shoulders that went on and on. He wore a traditional Guard uniform, similar to the outfit Mary’s vampire wore, a black leather look that seemed to loosen Samantha’s knees.

As he moved past her, she caught a scent, something wild and pungent, almost erotic, yet tough, like it grew on rocky hillsides. She shook her head, trying to clear her head because the vampire’s scent was doing something to her, affecting her ability to reason, and warming things down low.

She felt a profound and quite irrational instinct to follow after him and shove her hair away from her neck.

She realized that her heart had started to pound, hard and heavy until even her throat ached.

She reached back for the bar to steady herself.

Then strangely, her vision shifted as the strobes softened and the light rose so that she saw him as if in late afternoon light, the kind when the shadows were long and the air golden. But how was it possible she could see him like this?

Right now, though, she didn’t care.

He was a beautiful man, yes that was the word that came to her. Beautiful.

He had a soft indentation at his chin, high cheekbones, straight eyebrows that sat in a scowl over his brow. His eyes were smoky brown, like gray and light brown combined.

The uniform, she decided, was sexy as hell with leather boots that climbed his thighs and silver buckles down the sides. He wore a soft woven maroon shirt beneath a leather, sleeveless coat.

But it was his hair that struck some strange deep chord inside her, a long curled mass, pulled back by the clasp but hanging almost to his waist. She knew the Guardsmen in particular wore their hair long, a signal maybe to their enemies about their military status in the Bergisson Realm.

Her gaze slipped past him to the realm-folk who watched him sweep by. What she saw startled her because most of them appeared to be in awe, while a few low-lifes were downright scared shitless, and some of the fae women held deep lust in their eyes.

Samantha knew she must have looked like that as well, hungry for the man, a reminder that she’d been alone way too long.

She forced herself to look away from him as he headed to the far wall, setting her cosmo on the bar behind her with trembling fingers.

She drew a couple of deep breaths then heard Mary crying out, “What are you doing to him? Stop it. Oh. Oh, Mastyr Ethan, I’m…I’m sorry, but what did he do wrong?” Mary wasn’t the brightest woman around.

Mastyr Ethan had come to Club Prave? The ruler of Bergisson Realm? What did this mean?

As quickly as Ethan had disappeared into the crowd, he returned hauling his prey by the thick collar of the Guardsman’s coat. The vampire looked wobbly from feeding, his eyes sunken, his fangs glistening red. “Ry won’t stand for this.”

“You know the rules.”

“Ethan, we’ve got him.” Another male voice sounded through the club.

Samantha turned to her right, in the direction of the entrance, and at least six Guardsmen created a new flurry of excitement as they marched in.

They were an amazing presence in matching uniforms and had the females in the club panting. The foremost, with shocking red hair, hurried forward and grabbed the prisoner by the arm.

“Finn, what are you doing here?” Mastyr Ethan asked.

“Just thought we’d drop by, scope the scene.” His voice held a teasing note.

Ethan didn’t seem pleased, however, but Samantha had no idea why. “All right. You can take care of him, but I want him locked up for this.” He then flung Tom in the redhead’s direction, the one called Finn, sending the offender sprawling. The Guardsman picked him up off the dance floor. Another of the Guard grabbed his other arm and without missing a beat, they hauled him back to the entrance, then outside.

Ethan, now opposite Samantha, appeared ready to leave as well. He even stepped forward then stopped dead in his tracks.

His nostrils flared, just as the vampires had done on either side of her just a few moments ago.

She felt uneasy suddenly, like she was walking the railroads tracks and she could feel the vibrations of a train coming right under her feet but she couldn’t seem to move to safety.

She also became painfully aware that her heart still pounded as she watched Ethan, and not out of fear or even desire, but out of a need to give him her most essential life-force.

What the hell was happening to her?

*** *** ***

Ethan smelled the woman first, a scent like crushed raspberries mixed with wine, like something he could lick with his tongue and savor for a lifetime.

He had meant to follow right after Finn and the other men, but the scent stopped him. Beneath that fruit-laden aphrodisiac, he caught another layer of scent: The woman’s blood, and it was like nothing he’d ever smelled before, like she had rivers of it and it was meant for him.

That one thought, rivers of blood meant for him, made him turn toward her and stare hard.

A recent memory surfaced, of Mastyr Gerrod, a fellow mastyr vampire, who had been ready to tear Ethan to shreds for touching a woman like this one, a woman with rivers of blood, a woman in his realm-world known as a blood rose.