Blood Price: Blood Immortal, #1

Prologue

Years ago, more like centuries and centuries ago, there a new strain of vampires was brought to creation. Nightwardens, they were called by those who knew of their existence. A Nightwarden’s mission was simple. Guard the High Sorceress he was assigned to until needed no longer, then return back to his place deep within the earth, a place called The Fold.

A new High Sorceress would come to power every so often among the covens. Some covens were fortunate enough to have Nightwardens to keep them safe. These Nightwardens were bodyguards in essence, except they were bodyguards without a choice. Bound by the blood of the one they were charged with protecting, the Nightwardens were faithful, monastic, and unemotional. Or so it was thought.

No one counted on the emotions that would arise in these creatures that walk the dark and protect the sorceresses that wield power.

1

Elias

Iwould never forget the first time I tasted Vanessa’s blood.

Deep in the caves, far under the mountains. Away from humans and others of our kind. Even far away from animals. While in The Fold, we couldn’t run the risk of being discovered. We were too vulnerable.

Not that anybody could get to us. A member of one of the witch covens might be able to, maybe—and she’d have to be an exceptionally powerful witch to get through the layers of protection placed on our cells.

Even so, sometimes I wondered whether the spells were in place to protect us or to ensure we couldn’t escape before our time was up. Maybe we would try to get back to our charge, the one we had guarded until we were forced back to the Fold. While there was rarely any love lost between a Nightwarden and his charge, a man didn’t spend years and years, decades, sometimes more than a century, guarding another creature without something happening. Some sort of connection.

I had yet to feel such a connection with my current charge, Vanessa. I fought the grimace that was making its way to my face.

All of this went through my head as I navigated the maze that was Vanessa’s penthouse. Room after room, laid out without much concern for design or usefulness. What drug was the architect on when he or she designed it? It was like something out of a fevered dream. I could still vaguely recall those from back in the old days, the pre-turning days. When I was a young man—not a vampire yet. A boy by the standards of current society, of course. A society which coddled the young. I would probably be in college at that age if I had been born several hundred years later. Getting drunk, stoned, laid. I couldn’t normally stand the sight or even the thought of those lazy, entitled college bros—that was the term, wasn’t it?—but just then, as I collected Vanessa, it didn’t sound like such a bad life. Better than the life I had now.

I rapped on her closed bedroom door with the backs of my knuckles. Vanessa? Everyone will be waiting.

Just when I thought she couldn’t get any more insufferable, she pulled something like this.

Cressida would have my skin if Vanessa missed any single part of the ceremony. It would make her look bad, and that was the thing Cressida hated worst.

Vanessa!

I went from rapping to banging. Hard.

Still no answer.

I grit my teeth and wondered how much my charge would mind if I broke down her bedroom door.

I took three steps back and was about to find out when the door swung open.

You’re feeling very dramatic today, she sighed, eyes rolling hard.

As always, I had to bite back my irritation. And you’re feeling extremely deaf. Or just rude. Which is it?

I guess I didn’t hear you.

She brushed past me on her way down the hall, and I could’ve easily reached out and strangled her. It would’ve been a pleasure. Something I had been fantasizing about for as long as I had known her.

From the moment my eyes opened to the taste of her blood, and she looked down at me with a knowing, arrogant look.

Vanessa wasn’t my first witch, and she wouldn’t be my last, but none of the witches I had previously imprinted on and guarded looked at me that way. Like they had a servant.

Are you ready to go? I asked, following her to the front room.

That, at least, was beautiful. She liked to host parties in there. The windows looked out over Central Park, and in the late afternoon, with the day’s last beams of amber sunlight streaming down and turning the autumn treetops into a blaze of color, it was a gorgeous sight.

A sight that stirred memories deep in my mind. I had always loved that time of year, and I had seen so many autumns come and go.

Just about. You know it’s important for me to look good tonight.

And that was as close to an apology as I would ever get from her. I knew I should count myself lucky to get even that much.

I’m sure none of them will care what you look like, I muttered, leaning against the front door, still looking across the room to that view of the outside.

I could recall when Central Park was nothing more than a dirt lot, considered too far uptown to even be bothered with.

You don’t know much about women, do you? she winked as she checked herself out in the mirror one more time. She owned a lot of mirrors. Her waist-length black hair shimmered as she fluffed it with both hands. For someone who’s been alive as long as you, I would think you would’ve picked up a few things.

I’ve picked up enough, I growled, then shut down.

I was never much for conversation, anyway, and we were getting nowhere.

The fact was, no matter how she tried to blow off a coven meeting—no matter how hard she tried to be flippant over anything of real importance—I could feel her apprehension. Her anxiety. The shell of carelessness she had worked so hard to perfect over the years concealed a deep pit of insecurity.

Her silvery eyes flashed at me when she turned away from the mirror. She felt the direction my thoughts had traveled in. Let’s go, already. I thought we were in a hurry. I barely held back a sigh as I opened the door for her. She sashayed down the hall to the elevator in a pair of jeans so tight, they could have been painted on.

Cressida would take issue with that. Witches weren’t supposed to draw human eyes to themselves. Vanessa’s argument that humans dressed that way all the time and therefore her outfits weren’t outside the norm actually made sense. Fashion certainly had changed over the centuries.

The car was waiting when we reached street level, and already the sky had begun to darken overhead. Night came on more quickly every day at this time of year. Another reason I enjoyed it.

The driver pulled away from the curb without instruction, already knowing where we were headed.

A driver not in use by the coven would question why we’d want to travel to a rundown neighborhood, where rows of abandoned buildings sat and rotted. Trash littered the sidewalks—bottles, wrappers, used condoms and needles on the corners where the prostitutes and drug peddlers did their business.

Nobody in their right mind would take a Lexus into that part of town unless they planned on getting carjacked or worse. I pitied the fool who tried to steal our car.

Even so, knowing what I knew, it didn’t thrill me to step out of the car in front of the decaying mansion in question.

Glass crunched under the heel of my boot as I climbed out, my head on swiveling and assessing our surroundings. The razor-sharp dagger sat in the holster on my belt, and I slid a hand under my open trench to rest my fingers on the carved handle.

A vampire with a dagger—perhaps a rarity, but not surprising, considering that this dagger was precious to me. Hundreds of years old, it was a present long long ago, specially handcrafted for me, every character etched into it was designed for only one person. Me. I’d been extremely adept with my dagger before I’d been turned into a vampire, and my affinity for blades still continued. And the weight of my coat was a testimony to my fondness for weapons.

Coast is clear, I muttered.

One high-heeled boot emerged from inside the Lexus. Then another. Vanessa stood, unfolding her lean body as gracefully as a cat. She threw her hair over one shoulder and held out the carefully folded robes she’d brought with her.

I’m a little too busy to carry your robes, I growled as I closed the door.

She scoffed, but followed me up the broken brick stairs which led to the front of the house.

After all the time I’d spent as her Nightwarden, she insisted on testing the limits of my patience. I wondered how she was managing the ruined brick walkway on her ridiculous heels.

We stepped through the open front door just as the sky turned dark—open because there was no door left on the mansion, but only open to the naked human eye. No human could cross the threshold, and only a witch of the Crescent Moon Coven—or one of their Nightwardens—were permitted thanks to the numerous spells and wards cast over it.

It was like entering a different world. Gone was the ruin visible to those who peered inside from the walkway. Inside, crystal chandeliers dating back to the mansion’s early days cast an inviting glow throughout the foyer. The rich, polished wood lining the walls and the brass sconces dotting it called back to the Gilded Age, when that sort of ornate decoration was common.

When I looked down, I could see my reflection in the marble floor.

You’re finally here. Cressida’s voice announced her irritated presence before the sight of her did.

She rested one heavily-ringed hand on the banister as she walked down the wide center staircase. Her robes gave the illusion that she floated, along with her natural grace. Something her daughter Vanessa had inherited.

Vanessa barely hid her irritation as she shrugged out of her coat and