Blood Trials (The Blood Tribe Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Blood Trials

  Also by Iris Kain

  Shadow Hunter

  Eternal Spring

  Sour

  Blood Tribe

  Blood Trials

  Iris Kain

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be interpreted as factual. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 Pirate Farm Books

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgments:

  Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. 5.1.31.

  Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 3.2.1375.

  ISBN: 978-1-957244-10-5

  For my dear friend Kim.

  Beta friend extraordinaire

  Cats and rainbows, too.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter One

  Through a fog of blood lust and ecstasy, Amara Huett heard two voices on the floor above engaged in an angry debate. It distracted her from the handsome young man between her thighs on the bed. Her lover’s pale, cool body sent pleasure from her core to her slim fingertips as she writhed over him, but Amara was too unfocused to fully enjoy the experience.

  She shook her head and tried to clear her mind, but her thoughts moved like water striders on the surface of a still pond. One minute, she was intent on her lover, awash in desire, enjoying his strength and boundless vigor; the next moment, the conversation above interrupted her thoughts with annoying, insistent words.

  It wasn’t until her lover placed his hands on either side of her rib cage that Amara noticed she was struggling to keep her balance. His hands on her sides held her steady as her shoulders and head swayed. She felt pleasantly drunk but had a hard time concerning herself about it.

  I didn’t have any alcohol, did I? Her mind reeled with the unsteady, disjointed pace of the inebriated. She struggled to remember, but her thoughts bobbed and tumbled in a sea of confusion. She couldn’t recall her lover’s name. Or where she’d met him. Or how they’d wound up naked in the finished basement room of... It is my house, isn’t it? She giggled.

  Her head lolled, and the young man sat up and caught it tenderly in his hand. Amara grinned, and he returned it with interest. His elongated eyeteeth sent excited chills from her neck to her toes, and the sight of his tongue against them only heightened the thrill.

  Vampire! But god, he’s so beautiful. So, so beautiful. Hair as dark as raven’s wings, eyes like bright turquoise, his light skin contrasted against her toffee-color. But what is his damn name? Why can’t I...? This has to be a dream. Vampires aren’t real. And I’d never sleep with someone I don’t know.

  The sharp-toothed man below her drove his pelvis into her with earnest, sending waves of delight from her core through her body and making it impossible not to cry out. He gave her a smile that managed to be both shy and self-satisfied at her reaction.

  The voice from the floor above spoke, interrupting her enjoyment. Though the accent was English, the tone casual, it set Amara’s heart racing, this time in fear.

  That voice. I know that voice!

  Amara jerked upright, but her lover grasped her with gentle hands and brought her focus back to him. He met her eyes in his wide blue ones, and she lost the impression that she’d been on the verge of an important realization. She couldn’t resist her lover’s pull.

  And why would I want to? It’s a dream. I might as well enjoy it. She relaxed, her body a puddle of bliss and desire as she stretched into a reclining pose. The man below her enfolded her in his muscular arms and entered her again.

  Cedar-paneled walls surrounded her in the windowless room. Colors appeared ostentatious in the amber light of the bedside lamp: the off-ivory vase of the nightstand, the hazel swirls in the painting to her left, the yellow of the lamp, all of it blinding and frustratingly distracting.

  The brilliance was fleeting. Soon, the colors dimmed, along with the throbbing of blood pumping in her veins, the smell of pine cleaner and laundry soap, and the musky, heady odor of sex. She blinked until the colors became less murky and wished her thoughts would do the same.

  A voice growled, clearly frustrated. She’d know Thom’s irritated tone anywhere.

  Damn that conversation. I wish they’d stop talking.

  The voices drew her with a slow but powerful force like a tide to the moon. The deepest voice unsettled her, making her heart flutter in a way that was both familiar and terrifying.

  That voice. It sounds like the one that’s always running inside my head, but it’s talking to Thomas!

  Thomas. Her husband. My husband? Then why am I—? Her breath caught in her throat, and her stomach clenched in guilt as her eyes dropped to the breathtaking young man she lay with. How had she forgotten she was married?

  A sharp scratch on her breast set off another overwhelming wave of euphoria, but she fought the emotion. She tried to picture Thom, but all that came to mind was a muscular arm in a button-down shirt encircling her waist, a condescending voice, and a space where she assumed love belonged. No details. No face. No smile.

  A familiar metallic odor hit her nostrils and, with it, a rapture that stunned her. Her mouth opened, and she felt an odd pulling at the gums above her eyeteeth. What is that smell?

  She willed herself to block out all the hectic stimuli and shake the confusion, but it was as if she was under the influence of a hypnotic drug. Her vision blurred, and her muscles froze as she struggled to regain her senses.

  Shutting her mind to the overpowering lust and desire wasn’t easy. It was simpler to lie still and enjoy the carnal waves running through her body with her lover’s every touch. The clearer her mind grew, the more panicked she became. She needed answers,
but with solutions came a life-altering truth. She sensed more than she saw it, like putting her hand on a scalding doorknob and knowing a house fire lay behind the door.

  I have to see. I have to! This can’t be right. Was I drugged? Is this even real, or is it a dream? I have to fight it! Wake up, dammit!

  The flesh below her was too genuine not to be real. When her eyes met her lover’s concerned ones, she realized he didn’t like the level of clear-headedness he saw there.

  He sat up, pulled back the collar of her button-down shirt, and sank his sharp eyeteeth into her neck. Amara cried out in a mix of suffering and enjoyment, and the grip she’d had on reality slipped away.

  DAVID SHEEN STOOD IN the Huett foyer, Amara’s husband, Thom, tied to a heavy wooden kitchen chair two feet away. A third man, Angelo Vargas, lazed on the couch, picking at his nails and letting the picked cuticle bits flutter to the carpet. The man tied to a chair in the next room was not worthy of his attention.

  “Sorry about the restraints,” David said, allowing himself to come frustratingly close to kicking distance so he could feel Thom’s ill humor. “Couldn’t be helped, you know.”

  “So you say.”

  Dark-haired and dark-eyed, the three could have been brothers: angular faces, all on the taller side of average, muscular, straight teeth. Handsome, David supposed. Their hair was a little different. Angelo had shoulder-length straight hair lighter than the others and dark green eyes. Both Thom and David had shorter, wavy hair, but David’s was a tad longer than Thom’s professional style. It was the way they carried themselves that made them distinct. Angelo’s attitude was one of indifference to the point of soullessness. David had a feral quality that straitlaced Thom could never pull off. David often wondered if it was their similarity in appearance which drew Amara to Thom. He suspected the woman remembered more about her fugues than she let on.

  “Well, I couldn’t have you running about the house mucking things up.”

  “Mucking things up? My wife’s downstairs fucking a kid—”

  “He looks young, but he’s not. Physically, he’s kind of stuck, but he’s not seventeen.”

  “Seventeen? Aw, jeez. Statutory rape. Great. Fucking great. He’s a damned kid, and you miscreants—”

  “Gentlemen.”

  “Bullshit. None of you are fucking gentlemen. Gentlemen don’t let women fuck children in basements. You and your friend are up here having coffee—”

  “Tea.”

  Thom scowled, tired of his captor’s persistent correction of trivial details during Thomas’ remonstration.

  “Shut the hell up,” he snapped.

  “Listen, Thomas. You’re not in a position to quarrel now, are you? Tied up and all? I understand that you’re cross, but if you’d let me explain—”

  “There’s nothing you can say that would explain this. Nothing.”

  David pulled a second chair away from the dining room table and sat on it backward, his chest leaning against the backrest and his elbows draped over the top. He raised his brows cockily and heaved an exaggerated sigh. Thom’s head sank to his chest, and his nostrils flared like an angry bull.

  “I told you. He’s not underage. But you’ve been a right arse since we arrived, and you won’t listen. Are you ready to hear about how your wife met us?” he asked, “Or are you still too cross to hear? You might find it interesting.”

  Thom turned his chin to the wall. Although he tried to appear disinterested, his eyes gave away his curiosity, incapable as they were of not flicking back and forth from the other man’s face to the wall and back. David smiled. This was the point in the script he’d been waiting for.

  “Well then, allow me to fill you in on a few details about your wife she’s never told you. What she couldn’t tell you, because when she’s with you, she can’t remember.”

  IT HAD BEEN THREE WEEKS since Charles Dunning had sucked the life out of a human, and it showed. His drawn skin looked as furrowed as a well-used map of the Grand Canyon, and every noise or question directed his way made him irritable.

  This was no way to start ruling the undead. They’d been rudderless for months now, and he was standing by to announce that he was the new leader. Since Maysun hadn’t stepped up, he’d take the helm. If Maysun did turn up and claim her position as the leader of the Shévet ha Dam, the Blood Tribe, the global vampire organization that kept vampires and other dark souls hidden from humankind, he’d kill her.

  Maysun Khatri was the oldest living vampire in the Tribe after Cartephilus died. Logic dictated that it should have been her job to take over the Shévet ha Dam once Jerusha had killed her sire. Or was Jerusha still calling herself Vivian Black? Did it matter? A flower that went by either name reeked of the Source and had killed Joseph Cartephilus, the former head of the Blood Tribe.

  Although Charles, not Jerusha, was the one who’d driven the wedge within the ranks of the Shévet ha Dam, he saw no reason to blame himself for its collapse. If Cartephilus—then known as Jude Shepherd—hadn’t kept Jerusha as his slave for centuries, the Tribe’s division and Jude’s death wouldn’t have been necessary. Jude had made the mistake of feeding Jerusha on his blood and had made her incredibly powerful, mistakenly believing he could control a creature who was his spiritual opposite.

  At two thousand years old, Vivian was now the oldest vampire on earth with a power that Michael and his family could only marvel. Only Cartephilus had been older and more potent. When the former doorkeeper to a man called Pontius Pilate was cursed by a young teacher named Jesus to walk the earth until Armageddon, Cartephilus had become the first of the earth’s walking dead—and the father of the vampire race. Sensing the good in Jerusha—the young Hebrew woman Vivian had once been—Joseph had taken her captive, planning to abuse her at his leisure for centuries.

  But fate worked in mysterious ways. The Maleficence that powered Joseph—who, years later, called himself Jude Shepherd—had an opponent, one that had found a home in pure-hearted Jerusha. The Source, which loves all beings, found a way into Joseph’s heart through Vivian. Two thousand years after he captured her, she used the Source to help Joseph recognize his suppressed adoration for her. With his acceptance of this love, Jude Shepherd rejected the Maleficence, and became a mortal far overdue for death.

  Cartephilus was a lovestruck fool. And Maysun is a fool as well if she doesn’t take her place in the Tribe.

  Perhaps she knew death waited for her. Charles Dunning held the darkest power on earth, the Maleficence. And he who held the Maleficence ruled the Tribe, regardless of age. Despite Charles’ exploitation of all the resources the Tribe offered, he hadn’t found Maysun. She’d vanished, untraceable despite his global psychic reach. Rumors abounded that she’d died in the war, but she’d survived long enough to call him after the Blood War had turned to dust in the Savannah sun. She’d made a passing comment about a holiday, and Charles had agreed she needed to take time off. Days later, he’d learned his plan to track Maysun down and kill her while she was on vacation had become impossible.

  That was April, six months ago, and two months after the battle. If she’d taken a summer holiday, the summer had ended, and she should’ve shown up by now. If Maysun was dead, he resented not having the chance to be the one to thrust the proverbial—or literal—stake into her heart.

  Perhaps six months wasn’t long, when measured against his lifetime, but he’d grown impatient. For centuries, Charles had watched as vampires hid from humans in the shadows and the dark of night. Jude had never embraced the potential glorious authority of the Tribe. Charles would not make that mistake. It was time for vampires to take their proper role on the earth.

  The flurry of Renfields—his vamp-addicted minions—bustling around his new Sedona home made his typical quiet hobbies impossible. Their nervous haste as they fluttered, unpacking box after box in room after room, was the type of frantic motion that made him edgy. That, and he was famished.

  He could have eaten sooner, but the move from Houston had
made hunting difficult, more an interruption than a need. A vampire with his age and blood lineage had the strength to go weeks without food, but his stamina and power to resist sunlight waned as the stolen blood in his veins aged. Now, the combination of the emptiness in his stomach and the unforgiving desert sun gave him a headache.

  Many of his younger kin thought him crazy, relocating to a town where the sun was a near-constant presence. He didn’t care. He’d considered many factors when deciding where to purchase his new home. Once he assumed the head of the Tribe, it would house their headquarters. If aspiring members of the Table were powerful enough to be part of his company, he expected them to have no apprehension about negotiating miles of the desert.

  He was fifteen hundred years old and descended directly from Joseph Cartephilus, the two-thousand-year-old father of vampires. A trek into the daylight would not kill him, especially if he used photoprotection—a special sunblock designed by Blood Tribe scientists to lengthen the time a bloodsucker could withstand sunlight. If his skin endured a day in the Arizona sun, it might grow a little pink, no more.

  “Mr. Dunning?”

  Charles turned and faced a tiny Renfield, a meek, slim female who seemed the type to be more comfortable in a library than moving and unpacking boxes.

  “Yes?”

  “Your—your...” she held up a tall, mirrored glass case. Charles eyed his reflection in the back: slick, dark-brown hair, an oval face that, years ago, had often been mistaken for the actor, Tyrone Power.

  “The great room, please,” he said with a fluid wave of his hand. “Near the mantel. And be careful with the crystal that goes inside once you find it.”

  She nodded and waddled off with the heavy case in her arms. Charles winced, expecting her to drop it at any moment as she swerved to avoid boxes in her path. Renfields were stronger than humans, but a Renfield her size still had her limits.

  He wished his servants had set up the wet bar. He longed for a highball. The taste of liquor was bland to his undead tastebuds, and getting drunk nearly impossible, but single-malt Scotch was a pleasant habit that left a comforting warmth in his stomach that helped him forget his need to hunt for a while.