Blood Heat

by Maria Lima

  Praise for Maria Lima’s Blood Lines series

  BLOOD KIN

  “A special romantic suspense fantasy on a par with the best works of Laurel K. Hamilton and Kelly Armstrong.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Maria Lima certainly knows how to keep her readers begging for more.”

  —Best Fantasy Stories

  “The truly exciting thing is Lima’s ability to top herself in each subsequent title in the Blood Lines series. Any novel I read and want the next in the series in my possession because I don’t want to leave the world that’s been created around me is truly amazing to me.”

  —Preternatural Reviews

  “With each book the world gets richer in texture and detail.”

  —SF Revu

  “Another top-notch paranormal thriller.… A complex plot, superb world building and phenomenal characters spin Blood Kin into a dark and sexy urban fantasy. Maria Lima is a great addition to the paranormal genre.”

  —Romance Junkies

  Blood Heat is also available as an eBook

  BLOOD BARGAIN

  “Maria Lima captures the essence of urban fantasy, mystery, and romantic elements in Blood Bargain.”

  —SF Site

  “A real pager-turner.… Ms. Lima has created a wonderful blend of paranormal, mystery and romance. She has a real knack for building characters you get to know and care about, and the setting she paints seems so real. She is also darn good at building suspense and keeping you guessing.”

  —Bitten By Books (5 stars)

  “Lima uses well-known tropes of the fantasy genre, yet gives them enough of a spin to make them recognizable to readers but keep them wondering if things will play out as expected.”

  —SF Revu

  “Urban fantasy fans are going to love this—especially the Kelly clan, an extended family of supernaturals living within human society.… A strong tale that fans of Kelly Armstrong and Kim Harrison will want to read.”

  —Worlds of Wonder

  “I couldn’t put it down. Maria Lima’s second Blood Lines novel is even better than the first, a fun and sometimes poignant paranormal treat.”

  —Fantasy Literature

  “Grabs you from the start and keeps you turning pages until you solve the mystery.… I certainly will be watching for more books by Maria Lima.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Ms. Lima spins a suspenseful tale and packs it with paranormal elements that will hold the reader’s attention to the end … fast-moving.”

  —Darque Reviews

  MATTERS OF THE BLOOD

  “Dark, seductive, and bitingly humorous.…”

  —Heartstring

  “Fast paced, take no prisoners action … grabs you by the throat from the go and doesn’t release its grip until you’re done.”

  —Preternatural Reviews (4 stars)

  “An absolutely spectacular addition to the paranormal landscape.… A classy, teasing tale riddled with intrigue and paranormal bliss.”

  —BookFetish

  “A complex plot with the requisite twists and turns of a mystery, the passion of a paranormal romance, and the unearthly elements of urban fantasy.”

  —SF Site

  “A great page-turner.…”

  —The Bookshelf Reviews

  “An excellent book, readable and gripping with varied characters.…”

  —Curled Up With a Good Book (5 stars)

  “A brilliant tale of supernatural power, revenge, and the excitement of newfound love.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “Refreshing … I loved the story’s vividly drawn rural-Texas setting.”

  —FantasyLiterature (4 stars)

  “Another kick-ass heroine enters the paranormal arena in Lima’s bloodthirsty whodunit. Feisty Keira narrates with a biting sense of humor.…”

  —Romantic Times (4 stars)

  “A superb paranormal whodunit with a touch of romance and with plenty of interwoven subplots … but the center holding this superb tale together is the likable Keira, who makes the abnormal seem so normal.”

  —Alternative Worlds

  Don’t miss the three previous adventures in the

  Blood Lines series by Maria Lima!

  Matters of the Blood

  Blood Bargain

  Blood Kin

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

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

  Copyright © 2010 by Maria Lima

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Juno Books/Pocket Books paperback edition November 2010

  JUNO BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Wildside Press LLC used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Julie Adams

  Cover design by Laywan Kwan

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6777-9

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6778-6 (ebook)

  This one is for librarians everywhere,

  especially to my sister and her lovely

  colleagues at the Rita and Truett Smith Public

  Library in Wylie, Texas.

  You-all rock!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, a very special thanks and shout-out to my beta readers, Carla Coupe and Tanya Kennedy Luminati. Though time was tight, you guys gave me some great feedback!

  To my brilliant editor, Paula Guran, who keeps me sane, kicks my ass when needed, and generally makes me write better. You are a Goddess!

  To friend and colleague Janna Marks for football data plus her patient support of my craziness … and thanks for the use of your maiden name and of your husband’s name. I hope he likes being a Texas Ranger.

  Thanks to Adrian Turner for details about hip pads, girdles, butt pads, and all those lovely masculine parts of a football uniform.

  This book would have been much less if it hadn’t been for my sister, Laura Condit, for her tirelessness in making sure I got to go to a Texas high school football stadium and refresh my memories of umpteen years ago. Her patience and careful planning for my Dallas trip ensured I really got to re-immerse myself in Texas.

  Thanks again to Amber Chalmers for her assistance with the Welsh language. Diolch yn fawr!

  To Charlie Higginbotham from the International Association of Chiefs of Police for information about deputy sheriffs and their conference. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use most of the data, but it was greatly appreciated.

  To Jessica Parsley, for al
lowing me to use her as a vampire.

  To Jane Miller, who donated to Doorways for Women and Families and became a character in the book.

  A very special thanks to Mark and Nick Ashkar, owners of the Plaza Deli in Arlington, Virginia, who aren’t werewolves … at least as far as I know. They do, however, make a mean milkshake and killer sandwiches. Sorry, Nick, that your name was too close to one of my ongoing characters, so I renamed you “Lev.”

  I borrowed the name of Hills and Dales, a great place for a good brew. The real roadhouse is in San Antonio, right off 1604 and near UTSA. Years ago, before La Cantera existed, we’d drive out to the then boonies to find beers you couldn’t get anywhere else.

  Note: the Brotherhood of the White Rock in this book is entirely fictional and has no connections to the Christian group The White Rock Fund, or any other actual group.

  I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.

  —Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

  The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

  —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

  Paid â chodi pais ar ôl piso.

  —Welsh proverb (Literal translation: Don’t lift a petticoat after pissing; English translation: Don’t close the barn door after the horses are gone)

  There’s tempting fate, then there’s giving it a lap dance.

  —Tom Bodett on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me

  Mais, hélas! qui ne sait que ces loups doucereux De tous les loups sont les plus dangereux?

  —Charles Perrault, “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge”

  PROLOGUE

  Old Joe

  NO ONE EVER REALLY knew where old Joe came from. Sometimes, he doesn’t really remember himself. He’s always just been around.

  JOE’S TRASH, proclaims the meticulously hand-lettered sign on the side of the ancient black Ford pickup. Worn wooden slats—once painted white, but now a soft charcoal—cage the truck bed, making a place to hold the stuff he collects. Trash, not garbage. He doesn’t take food, organic stuff. Most of the folks who hire his service use that for composting anyhow.

  He’s been doing this since he can recall, making the rounds every morning and every afternoon. To Leonora’s Beauty Shoppe, where the second “p” on the sign is a little crooked because Leo’s husband, Ray, got into an argument with her during the painting of it, telling her that plain ole “shop” was good enough for his ma and gran. How come it weren’t good enough for his wife? They ain’t never got round to fixing it and sometimes, if you squint at it at just the right angle, the sloppy “p” looks like one of them computer emoti-things that Ernie’s kids tried to explain to him one time. Like a scrunched-up face sticking its tongue out at you. No matter, though. The white paint on the sign is flaking and the red letters fading after years of scorching in the Texas sun. Ray keeps promising Leonora that he’ll fix the sign, touch it up, but since he’s been saying that for the past eight years, Joe reckons it’s just one of those things married couples say to each other; a conversation more habit than heard.

  Joe picks up old towels, empty plastic squeeze bottles, and all sorts of trash from Miz Leo’s. Even old plastic capes and used-up hair rollers and such.

  Next door to the beauty shop is the package store; just an eighteen-by-twenty hole-in-the-wall with a liquor license. Manny Hernandez owns the place and has Joe haul off all the cardboard boxes, packing materials, and other stuff that comes in shipping. Some he can resell, some he just uses to store things in.

  After the liquor store and the beauty shop, Joe goes around to several different houses, some in the subdivisions. Then it’s out to some of the outlying ranches. Those, he only hits about once a week or so. Ranchers are the best at separating out the trash from the garbage. Sir Andrew (who wasn’t really a “sir” but came from England, so the name stuck) and his wife, Carla, of the Coupe Ranch are his favorites. They’ve made up several plastic bins and labeled them: one for scrap metal, one for glass and bottles, one for cardboard and paper, and another for plastics. They’re always real careful sorting so Joe doesn’t have to.

  Joe takes his time going to and coming back from the ranches, stopping at scenic lookout points and wide areas in the road to pick up cans and bottles left by the day-trippers and the passers-through.

  At the end of the month, after everything is sorted, he makes his trips into Cedar Springs to the recycling center and drops off everything that can go there. Two days a week he’s at his roadside stand: JOE’S TRASH, the sign reads, just like on the truck. From hubcaps to cabling to mysterious boxes of assorted odds and ends, the stand pretty much has something for everyone. He mostly gets tourists in the summer, stopping to ask for directions or to ask where the nearest toilet is. He’s got an outhouse out back of the shed, but he doesn’t let ’em use it. Makes ’em go next door into Hills and Dales. Man has to have some standards. Tourists usually drive up in monster SUVs, all decked out in multiple coats of shiny paint, screaming to anyone who looks that they’ve got more money than them crooks at Enron and less taste than a drunk after a bottle of cheap tequila.

  If they do stop to buy, the men’s gazes just slide right past his ebony face; he can almost hear them thinking “boy” or the word his foster mama taught him never to say. Sometimes if it was dusk, they’d miss him entirely, his deep dark face blending into the shadows, his soft white curls cut tight to the scalp. Just another shadow, he’d think to himself. Like I always been. Just another shadow boy. Don’t know where he come from, don’t know who he is. Just been here all along. He watches them peer into the dim shed, then smiles, white teeth flashing, startling each and every one. They’d always buy something then, usually some stupid-ass piece of tourist crap that someone else had already thrown out. Guilt, fright, whatever. Got them every single damned time.

  He’s old enough to remember Pappy Joe, no relation, sitting in the same rocking chair, making nice to the stuck-up bastards from the city as they tried to cheat him out of a dime or a quarter for some piece of stupid-ass junk as they drove up in their swooping huge Chevys, Fords, and Olds. Pappy Joe would just laugh and laugh after the tourists left, telling the younger Joe that the bigger the car, the smaller the dick. Joe used to get all heated up about it, angry at everyone, but time passed and eventually so did Pappy Joe, then all of a sudden it was just him, on account of Pappy Joe left him the business.

  He’s mellowed now, decades and decades later, doing what the old man had always done before him: collecting, reusing, refurbishing, and selling. Occasionally finding small treasures among the detritus of other people’s lives. Now he is the old man, joints creaking almost louder than the door of the truck, tipping an imaginary hat to his lady customers, joking with the local folks. Sometimes just sitting there in the rocking chair, waiting. For what, he isn’t sure. But it’s certainly coming.

  When he finds the tied-up bag at the side of the road, back near Bear Creek, he thinks he’s hit it. Jackpot. Some rich bitch tossing out her furs. It isn’t until he opens the bag wider that he begins to retch.

  CHAPTER ONE

  HOME. WHERE THE heart is. Where they have to take you in. Where the prodigal child returns and gets the fatted calf.

  My question: What if said prodigal had been a vegetarian? What then? Did they slaughter the fatted soy curd?

  Not that I am vegetarian. But I got neither cow nor curd when I was a prodigal returning. No biblical best robe, ring, or sandals, either. It was more Let’s just go on about our business and hope the prodigal can figure out her own damn way, ’cause she is mighty, mighty flighty than celebratory.

  My home used to be where my family was—my Clan, my kin, people of my blood—smack in the middle of the Texas Hill Country, in the so-small-it’s-not-on-the-map town of Rio Seco. (I didn’t live there during my first se
ven years, but I don’t count those years when considering family. Nope, not at all. Like a certain boy wizard from a famous tale, I got rescued from uncaring relatives and found that I had a loving family and magickal powers.) After high school, I left for university in England, came back, traveled, left again due to heartbreak (his, not mine), and then, quicker’n a scalded cat, I scooted home hoping for tea and sympathy or, at the very least, a good talking-to followed by hugs and love.

  Instead, I found my family on the verge of moving to Canada.

  Stubborn child that I was, I refused to go with them, staying to lick my own damn wounds, thank you very much.

  Two and a half years later my cousin and sole responsibility was murdered. This was followed about six months later by the attempted rape/murder of my best friend. Hot on the heels of that tragedy, I was gobsmacked by the revelation that I was heir to the Kelly Clan, and I found myself back in the bosom of aforementioned family in Canada, training my ass off, learning how to be the proper successor to the Clan leadership.

  Now, after not quite three months of heir schooling, I was back in Rio Seco, still learning how to be the eventual ruler of a powerful family of immortal supernaturals that mundane humans didn’t even realize existed, except in legend and fiction. Our array of Talents range from shapeshifting to weather sense to healing, and as heir, I got them all instead of the usual one or two.

  The stubborn child has done some growing. Instead of being the frog I’d always suspected I was, I turned out to be a princess of sorts. I’d even found my Prince Charming.

  I’ve found out home is the people you love, your family, no matter where they are.

  I’ve also discovered you—particularly if you are a prince or princess—have to be prepared to fight the Big Bad if it threatens your home, your people.

  Only I’m not even acquainted with all my people, and I don’t know what or who the Big Bad is—at least, not yet.

  CHAPTER TWO