by L. D. Rose
Fuck!
Slapping one palm on her sternum and the other across her lower left ribs like defibrillator pads, Kasen charged his dwindling chi and delivered an electric shock into her chest, his skin burning as he took the brunt of the heat. Her back arched up off the stretcher from the pulse, but the shock not only didn’t regulate her arrhythmia, but it stopped her heart completely.
“No!”
Bringing his hands together, Kasen pushed the heel of his palm just below her sternum and started CPR to keep the vital flow of blood pumping. “Epi, I need epi!”
Within moments, Kaj shouted in surround-sound, “Epi’s in!”
“C’mon,” Kasen roared, her delicate ribs cracking under his blows, ruining all of his careful work. “Don’t leave me now!”
“Tell me what I can do,” Kaj urged from the foot of the gurney, watching helplessly. It was notably quiet now, the kid’s cries having gone silent.
“Get more epi ready and we’ll switch.”
And on it went, the awful dance of attempted resuscitation. Kasen intubated her to protect her airway, injected her with more blood and medications, defibrillated and pounded on her chest until it yielded far too easily beneath his destructive hands. Kaj had to pin her down to keep her from flying off the stretcher, since the surges became more and more powerful with every strike.
He’d mended her, completely, but her traitorous heart had given up for God knew what reason. And as the minutes ticked by—progressively shrinking the chances of her coming back—Kasen’s hopes waned, tears igniting the backs of his eyes and anger clogging his throat.
Goddamn it. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
As he performed another round of compressions with Kaj bagging her with a respirator, Kasen gazed at her swollen face and glassy eyes, drained of all color as the loss of life settled in his bones.
Without warning, a demonic hiss shredded the air beside him, followed by the clattering of metal as something lunged at them from behind.
Time slowed to a crawl.
The curtain drew back to reveal a towering male with the sleeping child slumped over his shoulder, a Beretta trained right over Kasen’s head.
BOOM.
A muzzle flash and the kickback as a silver hollow-point bullet left the chamber when he pulled the trigger, the casing flying into left field. Kasen turned just in time to see it enter the forehead of a freshly-turned vampire—the kid’s dad and the woman’s husband—stopping the leech in midair as his skull snapped back, blood and brain blowing all over the white wall. With its newfound fangs still bared in a snarl, the vampire dropped like a boulder, crumbling at Kasen’s feet.
Kaj was already half-across the stretcher, ready to meet the hurtling vampire en route, on the verge of a pounce. They both craned their heads in unison as their eldest brother lowered the Beretta and holstered it at his hip.
Rome.
Battered, bruised, and wearing his battle uniform, Rome’s golden eyes glowed in his dark face as he shifted the still-comatose boy up, cradling him in his arms. Inky black pupils slashed through his gilded irises like a goat’s as they converged on Kasen.
“Call it,” his low baritone commanded with that ever-present note of menace.
Kasen picked up his jaw, staring at the Senary leader from across the wasteland of his failure. He ground his molars to a near pulp, anger surging through him fierce and hard. Sure, Rome had potentially saved his life, but this was his domain—his brother had no right to tell him when to give up.
“She’s dead, Kase.” Rome’s expression was void of all emotion, stone-cold and empty. Status fucking quo. “Let her go.”
Kaj pitched a sigh of respite and relaxed his stance. Dax tugged open the curtain from the other side and looked as if he’d been whacked in the back of the head.
Kasen glanced down at the corpse of a wife, mother, and human being. He’d been so close, so damn close to saving her. Then his bleary vision alighted on the unconscious kid in Rome’s arms, another parentless child abandoned in this wretched world of war and destruction.
“It’s over.” Rome, again, with a dash of sympathy this time. “You did your best.”
“Don’t.” Kasen braced his hands on the gurney and hung his head in grief. “Just don’t.”
Jaw flexing and eyes feverish, Dax pushed past the obstacles in the cubby and snatched the boy’s father by the wrist, towing his carcass away and leaving a macabre trail of blood in his wake. Kaj pulled the lines and tubes out of the woman’s cooling body, lifting her corpse like a bride over a threshold, his face lined with misery and defeat. Wordless, both men headed for the crematorium, where the bodies would burn to ensure they’d never reawaken.
Kasen regarded the bloodstained sheets, numbed by another loss. The dead were stacking up as the days progressed, worse than ever before. He’d lost count of the vics they’d treated last night, never mind what his fiancée, Veronica, was dealing with back home in Riverdale. And he wasn’t even including the DOAs.
These people had names. Hopes. Dreams. They had loved and had been loved. And now this family would simply vanish like the others, as if they’d never existed.
Rome’s throat cleared, cutting into his saturnine reverie. “Kase, I’m sorry—”
“It was too fast.” Kasen gathered the blankets, stuffing them into a ball between his white-knuckled fists. “The conversion. That leech turned too quickly, which means the Temhota strain is evolving. Fucking Konstantinov.”
Rome’s frown deepened as he absorbed the implications of Kasen’s words. “You don’t know how long he was dead for.”
“Not long enough.” After tossing the linens in a bin, Kasen collected what was left of the units of blood with mounting resent. He yanked out the ports and chucked them onto the wraparound counters, his fangs pushing against his lips in a bitter reminder of his notorious heritage.
Half-human, half-vampire, born and raised in a goddamn lab—let’s not forget the ‘side-effects’—and bred to fight monsters in order to protect humanity.
Or what was left of it.
Wrestling down his self-loathing, Kasen eyed the boy as the kid exhaled in a soft, peaceful breath. Nothing like a powerful psychic to relieve all suffering. “What are you going to do with him?”
“I don’t know.” Rome’s throat worked, a rare gesture of uncertainty. “Find the rest of his family.”
“What family?”
His brother’s Persian features hardened into a glare. “Kase—”
“Rome.” Kasen wrenched on the faucet and shoved his hands in the industrial sink, washing them with excess vigor. Blood circled the drain as fury congealed in his chest, thick and suffocating. The kid would probably end up in the dreadfully overrun foster system, much like Veronica and Jon had.
“We need to talk.”
Christ, his brother epically failed at social cues. “Can it wait?”
“No.” The boy shifted on Rome’s broad chest, nestling into the hollow of his neck, snoring softly. Kasen didn’t know why, but it tugged at his heartstrings. “You need to see this.”
His brother removed a stack of folded papers from the inside of his Kevlar vest and offered it to him with a calm, penetrating gaze. Kasen couldn’t look him in the eye since he was sure Rome read him like an open book, every emotion, thought, and intent exposed to his brother’s keen sight. Kasen was used to it, but he didn’t have to like it.
“What is it?” he asked tersely, secretly glad to focus on something other than this disaster. He unfolded the printed sheets and skimmed them. By the neat formatting and excessive empty space, it appeared to be a register of some sort with a title stamped in bold across the top of every page.
THE AMERICAN RARE DONOR PROGRAM
“It’s Konstantinov’s hit list,” Rome said as Kasen
finally met his solemn face. “And Veronica is on it.”
Also from L.D. Rose and Soul Mate Publishing:
RELEASING THE DEMONS
(Book 1 in The Order of The Senary Series)
Blaze Knight has been through hell and back, but the nightmares aren't over yet.
Five years after being maimed and tortured by vampires, Blaze is still picking up the pieces of his shattered life. As a genetically engineered hybrid mercenary, his mission is to protect what's left of humanity. When his tormentors return to the Bronx gunning for Blaze's blood, he's forced to face the demons of his past. Hell-bent on revenge, he seeks the help of Valerie Medeiros, an NYPD detective who manages to steal his heart and save his life in more ways than one.
Motivated by her sister's gruesome death, Valerie's life goal is to bury every vampire in the ground where they belong. She has a hard time trusting anything with fangs, yet she falls headlong into Blaze's life, a life full of darkness and horror she can't even begin to fathom. The bodies are stacking up, but Valerie can't let go of this hybrid, a beautiful monster filled with pain, rage, and passion unlike anything she's ever known.
In a world where the line between good and evil is blurred, Blaze and Valerie will find danger at every turn, risking everything they've come to know and love, including one another.
Available now on Amazon: RELEASING THE DEMONS
BLACK BULLET
(Book 2 in The Order of The Senary Series)
Fledgling vampire Jonathan Kerr has just met his match.
Not even his past life as a former Marine and FBI agent could prepare him for the battle against the monster inside him, struggling to take hold. After an old nemesis of the Senary surfaces in Brooklyn, unleashing chaos and terror in the battered borough, Jon sets out to take him down. Instead, he ends up with far more than he bargained for when he clashes with the beautiful half-vampire hybrid, Lawan Knight.
After escaping near death and suffering unspeakable horror at the hands of vampires, Lawan trusts no one, regardless of species. In between bouts of drunken stupor, her only goal is to exterminate all those who've wronged her, including every member of Jon's vampire bloodline. But Jon's soulful eyes and quick smile crawls under her skin, transforming her black and white world into a hazy shade of gray.
As the days rapidly grow darker, Jon and Lawan turn to one another, but their inner demons threaten to tear them apart. The only way either of them will survive is if they overcome their greatest fear—
Available now on Amazon: BLACK BULLET
SWEET SACRIFICE
(The Soul Mate Tree Book 9)
Heaven is hell without her . . .
Former Navy SEAL Sebastian "Bash" Lockard died in Afghanistan after leaping on a grenade to save his comrades. Little did he know his act of heroism would grant him a ticket into Heaven's elite army as one of the few and powerful Archangels. Struggling with his new existence, Bash still retains his human memories, leaving behind a wife he loves with all of his heart. Although he's forbidden to see her, he can't resist her lure, or the mortal desires he harbors for her.
As a young widow and nurse, Irene Lockard still mourns her husband two years after his untimely death. His absence is everywhere, and when her best friend weds, she hits an emotional rock bottom. As if summoned from the skies above, Sebastian appears before her, and they share an unforgettable night. But when he once again vanishes, she wonders if she's truly gone mad with grief.
The only way Sebastian can remain with Irene is if he makes the ultimate sacrifice. But will she overcome her fear of losing him again to another war?
A standalone paranormal romance in The Soul Mate Tree Series
Available now on Amazon: SWEET SACRIFICE
L.D. Rose is a neurotic physician by day, crazed writer by night, and all around wannabe superhero. She writes award-winning dark paranormal fiction and she’s a PAN member of the RWA and FF&P. She currently lives in Rhode Island with her studly hubby, her hyperactive Boxer, and her two devious cats.
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