Blood Relations - Prologue

The story you are about to read is a sequel and a spin-off at the same time. If you have not read the following stories at this point:

Shadow Walker

Touched

Erick’s Journey

The Lesser of Two Evils

Trail of Madness

Redemption Lost

It might be a good idea to hold off on reading this story, at least until you’ve read the three free stories available from my web site. (Free stories are listed in Italic) You don’t need all of the information contained in those stories, but some of the situations in this story will make a lot more sense once you’ve gone through the other freebies. Really.

If you haven’t yet read the Campaign Trilogy in print or e-book form, then it’s best if you skip the prologue and go straight to chapter one. That will give you a story with less spoilers about the events in the Campaign Trilogy, allowing you to later be surprised by the various twists in the novels, should you choose to buy them. And the events in this novel will not affect either Jobe McKenzie or Wendy Stoffel, at least, not until later in the series. Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Ahem. Right, I’ve got the obligatory warning out of the way, so I’ll let you get on with it then.

Z.E.W.

Thursday, July 17, 1997

San Antonio, Texas

Vicky’s stomach was a hard, angry knot that growled in protest at being empty for too long. Her knees ached from crouching behind a dumpster without moving, but patrolling for meals made her feel woozy.

Her head pounded from a headache that was brought on by two nights without food, and it felt like a mallet was constantly thumping the back of her skull. Her fangs throbbed, and her hunger was so intense that her mind wandered to fantasies of ripping open a victim’s throat.

She pushed aside the thought angrily. It was biting victims that got her in trouble in the first place.

It had been roughly seven months before when Vicky fled from Tucson with her roommates, Amber McKenzie and Marcus Wrigley, though neither needed to run with her. Vicky was the only one who’d been stupid enough to leave behind a trail of bodies with bite marks.

She didn’t feel guilt for her actions, and in her brief life of close to nine decades, she had never felt bad over taking live meals. She was a vampire, and humans were food. But she had been trained to hunt and feed more discreetly, and she felt frustration at the turn of events which left her with no choice but to feed with reckless abandon.

Her problems began when she agreed to work with Wendy Stoffel in a futile effort to stop a daemonic ritual from being completed.

Vicky allowed herself a thin smile at the memory of Wendy, a pale, blue-eyed halfling who thought of herself as a mutant. Wendy lost most of her family in Texas, and she might have been killed herself had she not run into Jobe McKenzie, Amber’s older brother.

Amber’s berserker brother, Vicky thought.

Wendy and Jobe had been working together to investigate a series of grisly murders, all of whom were connected to a group of rogue Army soldiers. The vigilantes followed the trail of the men to Tucson, and it was there that Wendy met Amber. Being eager to help one of her brother’s friends, Amber had invited Wendy back to her apartment to meet her roommates.

Vicky supposed that Amber was so eager to help Wendy, because there was nothing she could do to help her brother. With Jobe’s problems, she couldn’t even go near him without provoking him into a rage.

Berserker, Vicky thought again and shuddered. Inside Jobe was a wild animal that could be triggered by contact with his family, among other things. He ran away from home to avoid hurting anyone, but Amber tracked her brother down. Not knowing the danger that she was in, Amber tried to persuade Jobe to return home. For her troubles, she was put in the hospital for several weeks. 

Vicky had no idea what Jobe looked like, because she’d never bothered to make introductions. She knew from past experience how berserkers acted around vampires, and one thrashing was more than enough to teach her a lesson.

Vicky let her thoughts return to Wendy, who met Amber at the University of Arizona. After hearing Wendy’s story, Amber tried to convince Vicky to help Wendy locate the men behind the rituals. Wendy was skeptical that Vicky was a real vampire, but once she’d been convinced, she offered Vicky a free feeding as a small bribe.

Vicky had to force her mind away from the taste of Wendy’s blood quickly, because it made her stomach ache even worse.

Vicky refused to help initially, because the odds against them were just too great. It was only after Jobe had been abducted by the soldiers that Vicky agreed to help, and by then, everyone understood that they were heading into an ambush.

Her memories blurred to the point when she’d been wounded. In an attack made by a group of soldiers in a van, Vicky took three rifle rounds to the lower stomach, and yet she still kept fighting. She’d killed and drained five of the soldiers, but it hadn’t been enough to fill the holes left by the bullets.

Vicky stumbled home, and Wendy made a vain attempt to heal the grievous wounds by feeding Vicky. It wasn’t nearly enough, so Wendy raided a hospital’s blood supplies. Wendy and Amber worked together to bind Vicky’s wounds, and without both of them fighting to keep her alive, Vicky wouldn’t have survived.

Their efforts weren’t enough to get Vicky back on her feet, and Wendy left to track down some of Vicky’s pets at the Asylum, the nightclub where Vicky took her meals.

Vicky was still lying in a pool of her own blood when Wendy was snatched from the packed nightclub by a daemon. Vicky should have been angry about Wendy being taken on her home turf, or about being wounded by the soldiers. She was, to a certain extent, and she’d even told herself that she was lashing out in anger over being shot.

But in truth, she was scared shitless by the idea that the daemon might come for Amber next. It was panic and desperation that forced her to consider a stupid, near suicidal plan of attack on the soldiers.

After Vicky recovered enough to hunt on her own, she fed on a pair of criminals. She’d drained both men before feeling healthy enough to fight. That didn’t stop her from draining more of the soldiers when she had the chance.

By then, it wasn’t about feeding or healing. Being afraid for Amber’s safety made Vicky restless and too eager to feed on her enemies. She wanted the soldiers to feel as much fear as she did before she killed them. She longed to taste the terror in their blood and know that they were frightened of her.

The sheer number of drained victims cropping up all at once meant she couldn’t go back to work at the blood bank. She couldn’t go back to the club to take little sips from willing pets. She couldn’t collect gauze pads from her pets to make tea. Most of all, she couldn’t stay in Tucson with every cop in town looking for her.

Vicky had to resort back to her wandering gypsy lifestyle, claiming a few victims in each town or city before she moved on. In some places, no one was hanging out at night, but Vicky refused to break into homes to look for her meals. It was one of the few courtesies she could offer to the humans, only hunting on those foolish enough to be out alone at night. On the nights when she couldn’t find someone outside, she went hungry.

It was hard on her, but it had been even harder for Amber and Marcus. Vicky’s friends had fought over her nightly. The arguments usually started with Amber insisting that there had to be “another way” to keep Vicky fed. Marcus didn’t like to think about what Vicky did when she left their motel rooms each night any more than Amber did. But he knew there wasn’t an alternative, and in his frustration with Amber, he constantly reminded her that they were on the run because she’d decided to help Wendy. Things usually slid downhill and got ugly from there.

Vicky was almost glad when Marcus left Amber. She’d hated listening to their bitter fights, and it frustrated her that Marcus blamed the whole mess on Amber. She also hated putting up with Amber whining that there had to be another way, because there wasn’t.

Sure, she could try to subsist on cow or pig blood, but neither tasted very good. Both were junk food, something to be taken as a snack when real food wasn’t available.

Like now, for instance, Vicky thought, bringing herself back to the present, and back to the San Antonio alleyway where she huddled behind a dumpster, waiting for anyone to show up. She didn’t care if it was a drug dealer or a drug addict by then. She just wanted something in her stomach.

Farther down the alley, a cat growled. He started to sing an angry song about spending another night aching with hunger.

Vicky could relate.