by V M Black
“Thank you, cara,” he said with his most charming smile.
The woman blinked, then handed over the phone. She seemed to shake herself slightly, and then she walked away as if she hadn’t just been standing for the past two hours in front of a bookstore.
Shoving on my sunglasses, I slid across the bench seat to get out onto the sidewalk. I slung my book bag across my back.
Cosimo handed the phone to me. “Call Dorian. Ask him. See what he says about breaking the bond. I doubt he’ll lie to you. It doesn’t agree with his philosophy.”
No, Dorian wouldn’t lie to me. But if he thought it was important enough, he would change me. I knew that now. And I couldn’t think of anything more important than this. I would have to confirm it some other way.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For telling me this. Even though I know you didn’t do it for me.”
He held out his hand. I didn’t take it, and after a moment, he shoved it into his pocket as if nothing had happened and said, “So nice talking to you, Cora. I hope you have a wonderful day. And that you make the choice that is best for you.”
“I will,” I said. I hope.
He ducked back into the car. “See you around. Or not.”
I watched his car roll away, and I realized that for the first time since I had walked out of Dr. Robeson’s office with my terminal diagnosis, I might have a real choice.
There might just be a way out.
The story continues in...
Blood Bond
Cora’s Bond – Book 4
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The bite of a vampire saved Cora Shaw’s life—but at the price of an eternal bond that gives him complete power over her mind and body. Dorian Thorne offers worldly riches, eternal youth, physical pleasure, and even a kind of happiness. But the vampire had already shown that he will change even Cora’s innermost thoughts when it suits him, so Cora knows she has everything to lose.
But Cora discovers that the bond may not be eternal, and she finds herself facing a choice: to break the bond and resume her old life—or to keep it and choose Dorian at the risk of losing herself.
The bond, once broken, can never be repaired, so Cora is playing for keeps with the most important decision of her life. But each choice comes with its own terrible price.
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Blood Bond
Cora’s Choice #5
by V. M. Black
Aethereal Bonds
AetherealBonds.com
Swift River Media Group
Washington, D.C.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.
Blood Bond Table of Contents
Blood Rites
Blood Bond
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Afterword
Blood Price
Chapter One
The bond could be broken.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, my phone digging into my palm as I grappled with the bombshell that Cosimo had just dropped into my life.
Free. Could I really believe that I could ever be free again?
I didn’t dare trust anything Cosimo said. I needed to be certain. Looking down at my phone, I realized that confirmation was just a call away. My hands shook as I pulled up the list of contacts. At the very top of my favorites, there it was:
“<3 Clarissa.”
I couldn’t guess why she’d added her number. A joke? A kind of winking reference to her role in getting my phone back? When I’d first seen her entry, I couldn’t imagine a situation in which I’d choose to dial her up. Clarissa might look young enough to fit in with my friends, but what kind of casual chat could I have with a creature who was probably five times as old as my Gramma and killed humans like me for their blood?
Or at least, humans like I used to be....
Now I gave a silent thanks for whatever whim had caused her to add herself to my phone, and I punched through the menu to call her.
For just a moment, I thought about what a ludicrous scene I presented�
�a college student, her backpack over one shoulder, standing on the sidewalk and dialing the number of a monster out of myth.
But a lot of things about my life had been ludicrous recently. This didn’t even make the top ten.
The phone rang—once, twice, three times. My heart had begun to sink when Clarissa’s musical voice suddenly answered, suppressed laughter in it.
“Cora! I didn’t think you’d really call. Do you feel like doing something outrageously girly? How about a spa day? I haven’t had one of those in an age, but we’d have to skip the tanning bed, if that used to be your thing.”
Yeah, it was Clarissa, all right. I thought out how to approach her so that she wouldn’t instantly call up Dorian and tell him what I was up to. She liked to give the impression of being flighty, but I was pretty sure that she was whip-smart underneath all the show. I needed her to confirm Cosimo’s story without raising any suspicions. And if what Cosimo told me was true, that would be tricky because it meant that Dorian had been deliberately hiding information about the bond that tied me to him.
“Sorry, Clarissa. I’m going to meet my boyfriend this afternoon,” I said. Geoff and I had never actually made it to a formal relationship, but I’d promised that we would if the leukemia treatment worked. Since I was now cancer-free, I figured it was close enough to true.
“Oh,” the vampire—the agnate—said, abruptly serious. “That’s really not a good idea.”
“Well, Dorian did say that he wasn’t going to force me to give up my old life,” I pressed on. “And my boyfriend’s part of that. On the other hand, Dorian did make rather...specific claims about my person.”
That I was his, forever, body, blood, and soul.
“I think a boyfriend is definitely out of the question now,” Clarissa said, unusually serious. “You really don’t want to be even thinking about that.”
But she still hadn’t said why. Why did she have to clam up now, of all times?
“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt Dorian’s feelings or anything, but you know, I saw an agnate at the party two nights ago who had two cognates, so I figured it might be okay.”
“It’s one thing for an agnate to have two cognates. But a cognate simply can’t have another relationship.” Clarissa’s voice betrayed her alarm.
“I understand if it’s just not been done before, but I figured that Dorian wouldn’t be such a prude,” I babbled, pressing onward.
“Doesn’t have anything to do with being a prude or not,” Clarissa said. “A cognate who has slept with another human wouldn’t be a cognate anymore.”
I rocked on my feet, a burst of something—elation? terror?—going through me.
It was true, it was true, it was true....
I had a choice. I could be free.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to give anything away in my voice.
Clarissa’s horror came clearly through the phone. “Look, you only get one shot at being a cognate. Once you’re converted, that’s it. You’re bound to that agnate and none other. If another agnate comes and tries to drink from you, you’ll both die. And if you sleep with another human man, you’ll stop being a cognate. You’ll start aging again, and you can get sick, and eventually, you’ll die. And there’s no going back because then you’d be poison to every agnate. Even Dorian.”
“So it’s permanent,” I said. I had to be absolutely sure. My future was riding on it. “Once you’ve turned back human, you can’t ever become a cognate again.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Stay away from that guy. Whatever he was to you, he’s not your boyfriend anymore. Even if you don’t mean to, if it goes wrong, you’ll lose everything, Cora.”
I’d lose everything except for the life I’d originally wanted to save.
“That’s awful.” I hoped I sounded like I meant it, because I had no idea yet what I thought. “Thanks for telling me. I didn’t want to bother Dorian with it because, well, I wasn’t fully sure how he’d take it.” No kidding. “But now that I know, I’ll steer clear of trouble.”
“Give it a year or so and you won’t even have to worry about it,” Clarissa said, cheerful again. “You’ll be strong enough by that point that no mere human—or two or three, even—could overpower you if they wanted to. Of course, you’ll never be anything like as strong as us agnates, but at least you won’t have to worry about humans anymore.”
That was another revelation. What more would change, given enough time?
“Thanks,” I said. There was nothing else to say. “I guess I’ll see you at Dorian’s New Year’s Eve party?”
“Possibly,” Clarissa said breezily. “You never can tell, with Dorian.”
No, you couldn’t.
“Bye, then,” I said.
“Goodbye.”
I hung up.
I could be free....
I tried to savor the thought of it, but my head was filled with shadows of Dorian. His rare, true smile, the phantom of his hands on my shoulders, my face, my breasts, the memory of his mouth on mine and the words that he murmured in my ear.... All echoes of the bond that bent my will to his desires, that narrowed my future to the path that had been laid out for his cognates since long before I was born.
I could get rid of it now—break it once and for all. And the memories and shadows would be gone, I was sure, along with the craving that gnawed at my very bones.
I was sure.
I had to be.
Taking a deep breath, I headed for my car. If I left now, I’d get to the Mall at Columbia only a few minutes after I’d agreed to meet Geoff and my best friend Lisette. And then I could let things play out as they would.
Ever since my cancer diagnosis three months ago, my life had turned into a narrow corridor with nothing but dead ends at the turnings. I could choose to try an aggressive drug therapy—or I could die. When that failed, I could agree to Dorian Thorne’s dangerous, experimental treatment—or give up on my life. Everything was posed as a choice, but there really had been no choice at all.
Now, for the first time in months, I had one.
I turned the key in my Ford Focus. It growled temperamentally to life, nothing at all like the honey-smooth hum of Dorian’s cars. I backed out of the parking space and turned onto the street, heading for the Beltway.
I had gone to Dorian’s house a willing subject for his experimental research. I had no way of knowing then his real purpose, which was to identify the humans most likely to be turned into cognates by a vampire’s kiss rather than dying as most did. The cancer cure that I was seeking was nothing more than a side effect of that change, of the bond that now tied me to him and gave him power over my mind.
I had already learned that he would change me consciously if it was important enough to him. And I knew that he changed me unconsciously, subtly but inevitably, every time I was with him.
I bit my lip as I took the exit for the Columbia mall.
For now, I still had enough of my will left that I could make a choice. Soon, I feared, all that would be gone.
Because I wanted him, even now. I wanted him and missed him like I imagined an amputee missed a limb—an aching absence that was as much a part of me as anything else.
Time was running out.
The mall was swamped with the post-Christmas shopping crush. I had to park far out from the entrance to Marble Slab, where we’d agreed to meet. I locked the car and zipped up my coat, settling my sunglasses more firmly over my eyes as I headed toward the ice cream shop, my head down against the stiff wind.
“Cora!”
Lisette’s squeal made me look up. She was running toward me, a huge grin on her face. And behind her, at a more restrained pace, came Geoff.
Chapter Two
“Hey, guys,” I called back. “You could have waited inside.”
“We were,” Geoff assured me. “Lisette saw you from inside and had to run out.”
Lisette flung her arms around me in a sof
t, warm embrace, and I hugged her back, hard. It seemed like forever since I had seen the two of them, but it had really only been a week and a half, and I’d been unconscious for five days of that.
I looked at Geoff. He had a slightly goofy, slightly shy grin on his face.
It sure didn’t take long to turn my life upside down, I thought. But maybe I could still put it right side up again.
“So, you’re really better?” Lisette demanded.
“I checked my lab results this morning, and my lymphocytes are down to 15,000,” I said.
“That’s good?” she prompted.
“Well, they were at 200,000, so yeah,” I said.
Lisette squeezed me again.
“That’s great,” Geoff said. “Do I get a hug, too?”
“Of course,” I said. I disengaged myself from Lisette and gave him a quick, one-handed squeeze, ignoring the jolt that went through me—guilt at betraying Dorian, but also a sudden, desperate relief at how warm and strong and human he felt.
Geoff and I had started a relationship long before Dorian had entered the picture, I reminded myself. If anyone had been betrayed, it was him.
“Let’s get inside,” said Geoff.
He hooked an arm around my waist and the other around Lisette’s shoulders and started herding us into the mall entrance. I welcomed the trickle of self-consciousness that made me look straight ahead at his touch, too studied to be as casual as he pretended. Whatever else Dorian had done to me, he hadn’t killed what I felt for Geoff.
And I began to truly believe that I might be free.
“I’ve got to get a couple of pairs of jeans,” Lisette said as we stepped through the double doors. The mall was still decked out in all its Christmas glory. “And some business clothes because I’ve got that receptionist gig at my uncle’s law firm in the spring.”
“Nepotism,” I grumbled good-naturedly.
“Yep,” she said smugly. She led us quickly past the storefronts.
“Got any other openings?” I asked.
