by Liz Meldon
Claude stood on the porch as they passed, hands in his pockets. There was no dramatic wave this time, none of the playful farewells of the past. Instead, Delia watched him in the rearview mirror, her gaze becoming steadily blurrier. Before long, the forest swallowed them—and Claude was gone. Leafless trees filled the mirror, and Delia doubled over, crying softly into her hands.
When the van came to an abrupt stop, she sat up, eyes wide and searching, and found them loitering at the edge of the Grimm estate, the road a few feet ahead. Overhead, a full moon shone through the branches.
“Delia, I don’t know how to do this,” Arthur said. He was white-knuckling the steering wheel so tight that even the slightest shift of his fingers made noise. “I’m not a hunter. I’m a desk guy. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You think I do?” She gave a hollow laugh when he looked at her. “Arthur, I do patrols. I sit in cars, on rooftops, and film vamps. Sometimes I got to bring in low-level criminals with a team, and they usually made me drive.” Another laugh, this time sounding a little more high-strung. “I was on Team Alpha on the raid because someone above the High Council ordered them to put me there, not because I was good enough, and the grocery store thing was a huge stroke of luck. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing on a good day, and this… This is not a good day.”
His hands fell from the steering wheel to his lap. “Oh.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know we need to make sure a group of insane vamps don’t start the apocalypse,” she told him, her head back against the headrest. He cleared his throat, face screwed with confusion when she glanced at him. “I know we need to find other hunters who are good at this kind of stuff. I know we can’t stay by ourselves. And I know we need to keep people safe.”
In her peripherals, she saw him nod slowly. “Okay.”
“And I’m going to keep you safe,” Delia said. “And before long, you’ll be just as good as me with a stake.”
“Something we don’t have.”
“Something we will get tomorrow when the sun’s out,” she told him, and then drew a deep breath. “One problem at a time.”
How did she turn into the rational one here? Couldn’t he see that she was a huge mess?
“D’you promise?” he asked, and when she looked to him with a slight frown, he cleared his throat again. “To look after me.”
“Yes.” Delia reached across and touched his arm, giving it a squeeze when she felt him trembling. “Arthur… I’m going to make sure no one hurts you.”
It took some gentle persuading to get him going again, and as soon as they crossed off the Grimm property, Delia officially felt her heart break in two. But she swallowed her cries, shoved her hands against her eyes to hold back the tears, and focused on her breathing.
She needed to keep a semi-level head here. Once they were somewhere safe and secure, she could let it all out. Now wasn’t the time.
Because when she sat up, Delia noticed behind them, in the rearview mirror, a set of headlights steadily growing larger. Delia’s brow crinkled, taking a few seconds too long to understand what she saw, then turned in her seat to confirm it. It was rare to see another car at any point driving on these backcountry roads.
“Arthur,” she said, forcing her words out calmly, evenly, as she faced backward, “you need to drive faster.”
“Hmm?”
Suddenly the vehicle, some huge four-by-four, was about a car’s length behind them, and Delia grabbed Arthur’s shoulder hard at the thunderous revving of an engine.
“Go!”
THE QUEEN
It’s the end of the world as Delia Roberts knows it,
and she is absolutely positively not fine.
Enjoy an unedited snippet of the prologue, then snag the book next year.
The Queen: Prologue
“Claude?”
Harriswood’s former vampire king lifted his gaze from the wall-mounted television. At the sight of Elov loitering in the doorway of his study, he sat up, the stiff leather couch creaking beneath him, and muted the news. Every day he watched the morning and evening cycles. Still no word on America—nothing new, anyway. There’d been nothing since the entire country went dark, cut off from the rest of the world in every sense of the word.
“Yes?” Claude stretched an arm out across the back of the couch as his right-hand man hurried in, noting the stack of file-folders in hand. He barely noticed that Elov hadn’t used his formal title—because in Switzerland he wasn’t a king. Hell, in America he wasn’t a king either. The two vampires were equal, yet Elov’s loyalty had never once waivered. He continued to work for Claude, tirelessly and ceaselessly, from the day they loaded the clan onto Gregor’s private jets to this very moment.
He wasn’t sure what he had done in a past life to warrant such unwavering loyalty. Some days—most days—he felt as though he didn’t deserve it.
“Xavier and his human—”
“Tracy,” Claude said absently, an image of her neon coordinated outfits flashing across his mind. Elov faltered, looking up from the folders in his hand, and nodded.
“Yes, Tracy.” He cleared his throat as Claude’s gaze wandered back to the TV screen. Nothing of interest this morning. Not even a whisper of America’s situation. “They’ve been accepted into the Bucharest clan. All their paperwork just cleared. Anton’s man called to let me know they can move into the manor this weekend.”
Claude’s head bobbed up and down on its own accord, the screen shifting in and out of focus as he stared. “Good.”
While he might not have sounded enthusiastic, each time a member of his clan was accepted into one of the old European vampire families, it was like one more weight could finally lift. He had fought for their placements from the moment he arrived in Gregor’s lavish Swiss palace. After all, there were nearly a hundred members in the Grimm clan—plus the humans who fled Warwick’s “new America” alongside them. Gregor’s palace quadrupled the size of his old home, but Claude couldn’t ask him to host so many extra mouths for long.
His old friend had welcomed them with open arms. At nearly nine centuries old, Gregor Leutzinger had been the one to turn Claude all those years ago. Struck with a fated illness—cancer, as he now realized—and on death’s door, Claude had been saved by the vampire, a family friend and the only legitimate cure possible at the time. Since then, he’d felt indebted to the man, yet to Gregor, Claude was like a son. He’d opened his home to the Grimm clan without question when they’d fled Johnathon Warwick’s wrath.
But Gregor’s generosity didn’t extend to every Grimm-aligned vampire. From Christmas a year and a half ago to now, Claude had been petitioning various European vampire clans relentlessly. He’d traveled across the continent to speak on behalf of the vampire or two he wished to integrate into the clan. American clans were quite fluid, all things considered. European lines dated back to the ancients. They were very particular about who joined their elite houses. Those who were fortunate enough would live in comfort and safety, physically and financially, for the rest of their days. Clanless European vampires had to fend for themselves—hence the European Leagues.
While Leagues in America persecuted his kind, the Europeans worked alongside government agencies to hide vampires without hunting them. Jobs were secured. Housing was devised. Blood was procured. For vampires welcomed into the hundreds of old established clans, there were officials within the clan to do all that for them. In Europe, vampires did not exist to the general public. Everyone, from the highest member of a clan to the lowliest office worker in a League, shared that singular vision for the protection of the species. Rogue vampires were a threat to all and were treated as such by human and sane vampire alike.
Claude refused to let a single one of his people become a clanless drifter, relying on government assistance to exist. He fought hard for their placements, putting his reputation, his money, and his name on the line in order to see their futures secured.
And how could he not? He was the reason they’d been run out of their homes in the first place.
“Xavier was the last.” Claude looked to him sharply, Elov’s words creeping through the dense fog his exhausted mind had been in for the last few months. His friend nodded, the edges of his mouth twitching up. “Well, besides myself, but I—”
“You will always have a home here,” Claude insisted. If his heart could pound with excitement, now would have been the moment he’d feel it hammering against his chest. “Xavier is the last… Do you mean…?”
“They’ve all been placed,” Elov told him, hugging the files to his chest. “Every last member of the Grimm clan has a new family. You’ve done your duty.”
It hit him harder than he thought it would. All this time, all these many months, he’d been fighting so hard for his people; the guilt drove him to it, naturally. But there was another guilt gnawing at him, one that he felt in his bones, in his very soul.
Delia was still in America—a nation under vampire rule, or so the rumors went. A nation with no media, no international transit. Like Russia behind the Iron Curtain, no one knew what went on within its borders.
And she was there, his little huntress. He’d left her behind to save his people, as much as it killed him. Claude had admired her drive to stay and help, foolish as it might have been, but the moment his plane left American soil he’d known he should have just thrown her over his shoulder and dragged her kicking and screaming from the conflict. She’d had no idea what she was up against, what sort of collective entity had formed with rebellious clans across the country. There wasn’t a less safe nation in the world to be a vampire hunter—and Claude had just left her there.
Why? Because she’d sounded reasonable that night? Because he’d thought her desire to avenge her fallen comrades seemed noble, like it was the right thing to do? He’d been a fool, blinded by a desire to make things right, to give her something to cling to that awful night—hope, passion, anything. He’d handed her a credit card and some coats and his minivan and just sent her off into the night. He’d left her to the wolves.
And now he had to find her.
Thanks for reading!
Thank you so much for reading! You’re awesome. Seriously. Go treat yo’ self for being such a fabulous human being.
If you enjoyed this novel and want to support the series, feel free to leave a review at the retailer of your choice, including Goodreads. I’ll read each and every word ten times, I promise.
The Queen, second and final full-length novel in the Games We Play duology, will be released in 2017, so keep an eye out for updates! If you are interested in receiving an advanced review copy of The Queen, please mention that in your review and sign up for my monthly newsletter (sign-up on my website). Newsletter subscribers get lots of exclusive first-access deals and giveaways, and will be offered my limited ARCs first.
Best wishes,
Liz
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About the Author
Liz Meldon is a Canadian author who grew up in the Middle East. She has a degree in Bioarchaeology from Western University, and when she isn’t writing about her own snarky characters, she is ghostwriting romance novellas, working on her fanfiction, loitering on social media, or taking care of her many animals.
As a freelance ghostwriter, she has written eleven romance novellas, eight of which have been published and are doing well. She loves writing realistic characters in fantastical settings.
More from Liz Meldon:
Lovers and Liars – a Paranormal Romance Serial
Manhattan (2014) – Book #1
Vancouver (2015) – Book #2
Westwick College (2016) – Book #3
Tuskin Island (2017) – Book #4
Lovers and Liars: Immortal Wars Series – a fantasy and paranormal romance series based in the Lovers and Liars Universe
Court of the Phantom Queen (2017) – Book #1
Apollo’s Priestess (2018) – Book #2
It Begins Here: An Anthology (2015)
‘Til Death (Lovers and Liars Prequels, #1)
It Ends Here: An Anthology (2016)
Do Us Part (Lovers and Liars Prequels, #2)
Games We Play – a Paranormal Romance Duology
The Fool (2015) – Prologue
The King (2016) – Book #1
The Queen (2017) – Book #2
Erotic Short Shorts – an Erotic Short Story Series
Happy Hour (2016)
Bliss (2017)
Captive (2017)
