by Jacey Ward
BLOOD PROMISE
BY: Jacey Ward
Copyright 2017 by Jacey Ward @ Stiletto Publishing- All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Something in the Shadows…
Chapter Two: The Girl in the Gutter…
Chapter Three: The Mate
Chapter Four: An Undeniable Attraction
Chapter Five: A Night at the Bar
Chapter Six: A Killer is Free
Chapter Seven: A Night at the Fair
Chapter Eight: All the Walls Come Down
Chapter Nine: Broken Hearts and Hard Truths
Chapter Ten: The Testing of Boundaries
Chapter Eleven: The “Sacred Sixth”
Chapter Twelve: The Ritual
Prologue
BLOOD PROMISE
Chapter One: Something in the Shadows…
It watched from the dark shadows provided by the thick, dense wooded area it was hiding in. It watched and it waited. Two bright, blood-red eyes blinked slowly from beneath a low branch of a large tree. A long, snake-like tongue emerged from its mouth, licked its upper lip and then receded back into a large, fanged mouth.
The dim light of the new moon cast a pale glow over the shimmery silver paint of the Silverado pick-up truck that was parked nearly 50 feet away from where it was standing. It watched the young couple in the open bed of the truck patiently, attentively, and intently.
The young curly-haired brunette was stretched out on her belly, lying on top of a thin green blanket. The blonde-haired young man was lying next to her sipping light beer out of a small can.
“I thought you said you had, booze, Bryan!” the young woman said, reaching across the young man’s back and grabbing a can of beer from behind him.
“Beer. Booze. Same fucking thing, Kelly,” he stated bluntly, before taking another long sip.
“Well, when you said booze, I figured you’d swiped a bottle of your stepdad’s whiskey from the locked liquor cabinet in his den,” the young brunette replied, rolling her eyes at her date’s nonchalant attitude.
“Naw, the bastard hid the key in a different spot, this time,” Bryan explained. He let out a long, loud belch.
“Gross!” the brunette sputtered, fanning the air in front of her face. Bryan laughed as he set his beer can down on the edge of the truck bed.
“What movie is this again?” he asked as he draped his arm around Kelly’s bare shoulders. He was asking about the movie, but his eyes were looking at the way his date’s large, pert breasts were squeezed together in her tight pink halter top.
“Grenade’s Revenge, I think,” Kelly replied and gulped down a mouthful of beer. She turned her attention back to the large outdoor movie screen.
Bryan began to nibble on her neck. She started to giggle and tilted her head back a bit. He moved the hand that had been resting on her left shoulder and slid it beneath her, cupping her left breast in his hand. She giggled again and turned her head to kiss him on the mouth.
She let out a soft moan as his tongue entered her mouth and intertwined with hers. They kissed passionately and Bryan moved his hand beneath her top and ran the tips of his fingers across her nipple. His mouth muffled Kelly’s moan as her nipple hardened against his touch.
“Mmm, Kelly, you’re so sexy,” he mumbled against her lips. He moved his hand from beneath her halter top and slid it slowly down the small of her back until it found the curve of her ass, covered by the thin, sheer fabric of her yellow silk skirt. He gave her left buttock a squeeze and then attempted to slide his hand under her skirt. That’s when Kelly suddenly stopped him.
“Come on, Kels! We’ve been dating for almost a whole entire year! How much longer are you gonna make me wait?” he pleaded.
His hand was still on her upper thigh and her hand was on top of his, preventing it from sliding any further up her skirt. Kelly sighed and pushed his hand away.
“Bryan, we had this conversation already. You know how important my virginity is to me. I want my first time to be…special, you know? And I want it to be with someone who loves me.”
“You know I love you, Kelly. I’ve told you a million times!”
“I know, Bryan, but, I just want things to be…you know…right.”
Bryan, clearly annoyed, let out a defeated sigh of disappointment and sat up.
“I’m gonna get something to eat. You want anything?” he asked dismally.
Kelly shook her head and reached for her can of beer. She didn’t even bother to watch as he started walking toward the area where the other vehicles were parked. They had purposely parked further back than the rest of the cars because they had snuck alcohol into the drive-in and didn’t want any of the other patrons to notice.
Suddenly, Kelly heard a weird noise, like a low growl coming from a dark corner of the wooded area to the left of where she was parked. She sat up quickly and looked over in the direction of the sound.
Was that some kind of animal, she wondered silently. She held on to the side of the truck bed and peered over the side. Again, there was a low growl.
It has to be some kind of animal. A wolf? A coyote? Squinting her eyes into narrow slits, she swore she saw something move under one of the trees.
Hear heart started beating faster and she began to wish that she’d gone to the snack bar with Bryan. Or perhaps it could be Bryan over in the woods playing some kind of sick joke?
“I-Is someone there?” she called out, stammering over her words. A shiver of uneasiness ran down her spine.
Humans! Such a waste of life, the creature thought.
Its bulbous eyes glowed with its hatred toward humankind as it glared at the young woman. It realized that an opportunity had finally presented itself and it moved swiftly and purposefully, closing the distance between itself and the bed of the pickup in less than two seconds. The young brunette named Kelly didn’t stand a chance against the creature’s superhuman speed and herculean strength. She barely had a chance to open her mouth to scream before it was immediately muffled by a huge, almost beast-like hand that closed around her neck with almost enough brute force to snap it half. Kelly’s body went limp and her doe-like brown eyes closed. She was snatched from the bed of the truck and dragged off into the night.
--
Kelly opened her eyes groggily, and struggled to adjust to the dim light of the room she was in. She immediately realized that she was completely naked and that her hands and feet were bound. She was tied to some kind of weird contraption and she could barely move at all. Her mouth was tightly gagged with some type of restraint that all but stifled her whimpers and cries of utter terror.
Immediately, her heart began to pound so hard it felt as if was about to explode from her chest. Tears of panic started filling her eyes and goosebumps spread across her completely exposed body.
A grizzly, guttural, evil-sounding laugh filled her ears and she turned her head to the left. What she saw caused her eyes to widen in horror.
“That’s a good girl,” it spoke with a deep, gruff, croaky voice. “I wanted you to be awake for this. It’s so much more enjoyable when you struggle.”
The creature was draped in a long, dark hooded cloak. It stood nearly seven feet tall, staring down at her with the largest, blood-red eyes she had ever seen. She couldn’t make out the rest of its face in the darkness, but she knew there was no way this thing could possibly be human.
The creature moved in closer to her and a long, green forked tongue slid slowly out of its fanged mouth and slid across the nape of her neck. Her large brown nipples war pert and erect, but it was from the cold temperature in the room, not from any sort of sexual arousal.
“Ahh, delicious,” it whispered evilly, as the red color of its eyes deepened. The creature sucked its tongue back into its mouth and bared its huge, sharp fangs.
Kelly struggled as much as she could, panicking at the horrifying sight. The creature’s breath smelled of rancid brimstone as it lowered its hooded head to the base of her neck until she could feel its jagged fangs scraping against her skin.
Kelly fought with all of her might, but her struggle was for naught. The creature’s fangs pierced her skin and sank deep into her neck. She felt her skin rip open as the blood began to gush into the creature’s hot, scaly mouth. Almost immediately, the color and vitality began to drain from her fragile body and everything around her went black…
Chapter Two: The Girl in the Gutter…
Detective William Hartzman reached for his cell phone on the nightstand beside his bed. He glanced at the time before answering the call. It was 5:17 a.m.
“Hartzman here,” he answered sleepily, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.
“Sorry to call at this hour, sir, but we need you down here at the corner of 9th and Ringwald. There’s been a murder—a pretty fucked up one, too!”
“I’ll be right there,” Hartzman replied.
**
The first rays of sunlight were just beginning to peek out from beneath the horizon as Detective Hartzman stepped out of his navy blue hatchback. As a homicide detective, he never looked forward to what he was going to find when he received a call like this one, but something in the deputy’s voice had made his stomach turn. He’d been fighting an ever-growing feeling of dread ever since his phone had rung.
“Whaddawe got?” he asked his subordinate, Deputy Allan Long, as he made his way past the bright yellow police lines and into the cluster of cruisers and blue and red flashing lights.
“Well, sir,” the Deputy cleared his throat before continuing. “Old Tom Hendricks claims that he had come out to his recycling yard early this morning and that’s when he found her.”
“Her?” Det. Hartzman repeated in a questioning tone, looking over at Deputy Long as he made his way toward the sheet-covered corpse lying just outside the front gate of the Hendricks Recycling Plant.
“Yes, sir. He said her body was just lying there in front of the locked gate as if someone had thrown her out like an old piece of garbage, sir.” Long’s voice was shaky and small beads of nervous sweat had formed along the edges of his forehead.
“Any ID on the body?” Hartzman asked. He knelt down beside the white sheet, deeply dreading what he was about to witness when he finally lifted it.
“Uhh—no, sir. But one of the other officers recognized her immediately, sir.”
Hartzman didn’t like the sound of that. He reached down and pulled back the sheet that was covering the body of the young woman’s corpse. What he saw made him glad that he hadn’t bothered to eat anything on his way over to the crime scene. He was certain that it would’ve come back up with a vengeance.
**
Detective Hartzman placed a menthol cigarette between his thin lips and pulled a red Zippo lighter out of his back pocket. Shielding it from the early morning breeze, he flicked his lighter and lit it quickly. He inhaled long and deep, allowing the menthol taste to completely fill his lungs.
“I’ve seen some pretty fucked up shit in my eighteen years on the force, but this—this takes the goddamned cake, by far,” he stated plainly, and then passed the cigarette over to Deputy Long.
The brown-haired deputy shook his head and took in a lengthy drag.
Detective Hartzman placed his hand to his forehead. He couldn’t stop his mind from going to the obvious explanation for this murder. He sure as hell hoped his mind was wrong though. If the inhabitants of Lexus were behind this then it would be a huge fucking violation of the truce.
Lexus was a community of ancient vampires who had agreed to a truce with the founders of the city of Mountain Crest over a hundred years ago. Only a select few city council members even knew of their existence, and they had agreed to keep the community a secret, allowing the vampires to live there peacefully—as long they never harmed a living human being.
Never in the past century had any of the vampire residents ever broken the truce. The humans were able to sleep at night simply because the extremely vast majority didn’t know about the potential danger that lived up the mountain.
“Write up the paperwork and have it on my desk before lunchtime, will ya, Deputy? I’ve got to go meet my daughter for breakfast and then I’m heading up to Lexus to question that clan leader of theirs—Vincent Veldassare, I think his name is.”
“Yeah, what’s he, like about a thousand years old, now? I think he’s been the leader up there since my granddad was a kid,” Deputy Long joked.
He chuckled at his own remark. Det. Hartzman shrugged off the comment. The deputy had no idea just how accurate that statement could be. Deputy Long flicked his cigarette butt onto the ground before climbing back into his vehicle and speeding off down the road.
As he made his way over to the Mountain Crest Diner, visions of what he’d just witnessed began to play over again in his head.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he’d seen when he’d pulled back that sheet. The naked, battered body of a young brunette was lying face up on the cool, hard ground. Her eyes were wide open and sunken, as if she’d been dead for more than a week. Her skin was wrinkled and pale and her mouth was frozen in a wide-open state of both shock and horror. Right away, Hartzman had notice the two deep puncture wounds at the base of the left side of her neck. Her body had been completely drained of its blood.
Hartzman wondered if he was going to be able to eat anything at the diner when he finally arrived.
**
“Hey, dad, over here!”
Hartzman looked up as the sound of his daughter’s voice reached his ears. She was seated at a booth near one of the windows of the diner and her right arm was in the air, swinging back and forth, commanding his attention.
Ava Hartman was William’s lovely, intelligent, and driven 25-year-old daughter who had arrived back in Mountain Crest just last week after accepting a position as a freelance writer for the Mountain Crest Journal the largest and most prominent newspaper in the city.
Hartzman hurried over and joined her in the mahogany-colored booth, sitting down across from her.
His daughter’s bright smile and fiery red hair never ceased to bring a grin of pride to his face. He was very proud of her and wanted her to know it. She had left Mountain Crest more than six years ago to pursue her Master’s degree in investigative journalism, and had just rented a small two-bedroom house on the East side of the city after being offered the job she‘d gladly accepted just over a week ago. He had helped her get settled in and they’d made this breakfast date only five days ago.
“Hello, angel!” he greeted her, forcing a half-smile.
“Hi, dad! How’s it going?’ she inquired enthusiastically.
She was clad in a strappy lavender sundress that dipped down into a U-shape just above her breasts and her thick, wavy red hair was pulled up into a neat bun. Shiny red locks hung down on either side of her oval-shaped face, falling just beneath her perfectly strong chin. Her eyes were a bright emerald-green color, accompanied by her high cheek bones, small, pointed nose and full, lavender gloss-covered lips.
She reminded Hartzman so much of her mother, who had died from acute leukemia when Ava had been in her second year of college. She’d taken a semester off to mourn, but had
been more determined than ever to finish, feeling that it would’ve made her deceased mother proud. Now, as he stared into his vibrant daughter’s eyes, he tried to find the words to explain everything had happened early that morning.
Why did this shit have to happen the week after she returned? he wondered silently. What the fuck was going on in the once-quiet little city of Mountain Crest?
**
“Her name was Kelly Garrison,” he explained in soft, solemn voice. “She was a senior at Mountain Crest high who had just turned eighteen years old last month—a goddamned baby, for God’s sake.”
Ava looked over at him with horror in her pretty green eyes.
“Oh, my gosh! What kind of monster would drain all of the blood out of his victim?” Ava remarked rhetorically. To her, it sounded like something right out of a bad horror movie.
“Well, they questioned the boyfriend, but they don’t believe he’s a suspect,” Hartzman explained. “He claims that they were at a drive-in movie and that he went to get a bag of popcorn, and when he came back, she was just…gone.”
“Wow!” Ava exclaimed. “And no one saw anything?”
“Well, that’s what I’m gonna find out,” Hatzman replied.
He had drunk 3 cups of coffee while Ava had eaten French toast, turkey bacon, and a small fruit salad.
At least someone has an appetite, he thought dismally.
“I’m coming with you!” Ava said, suddenly. “This could be just the kind of story I need to catapult me to the top!”
That was his daughter; always thinking of a way to get ahead. He couldn’t help believing that she’d come by the trait honestly though. His wife had always been a perfectionist, always dead-set on reaching her professional goals.
Ava’s mother, Aurora Daniels-Hartzman, had been a reporter for the Channel Five news before she’d fallen ill and had eventually passed away. It never ceased to amaze him how Ava looked more and more like her with every passing day.
