MIDNIGHT HUNT: Book 3 of the Bonded By Blood Vampire Chronicles

Midnight Hunt

Book 3 of the Bonded By Blood

Vampire Chronicles

(Approximately 85,000 words)

Arial Burnz

Driven by the desire to meet the true love she’s experienced in her dreams,
Monika Konrads
uses her magickal skills to weave a love spell during the waxing of the moon. As if in response, a strangely familiar and handsome Scotsman is seeking to settle in their village. But the werewolf stalking Monika has other ideas about who her love interest should be.

Broderick MacDougal
is drawn to the powerful witch by a familiar force, and makes the chestnut-haired wise woman his next pursuit to unravel the mystery of why she reminds him so much of his late wife, Davina. However, there are other supernatural forces surrounding her, exposing Rick to a darker side of this deal he made for immortality...and this enchanting nymph may be his only salvation.

Monika’s quest to find a cure for the werewolf curse causes a chain of events that starts a witch hunt, dooming both her and Broderick to the fiery stake of judgment. And through these trials, they learn the Church has a new ally who is hunting down the members of the Army of Light.

Reader Advisory: This story contains some explicit love scenes, described using graphic and direct language.

Midnight Hunt

Book 3 of the Bonded By Blood

Vampire Chronicles

by

Arial Burnz

ORIGINAL EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Mystical Press

Midnight Hunt: Book 3 of the Bonded By Blood Vampire Chronicles

Copyright © 2013 by G.C. Henderson writing as Arial Burnz

Cover Design by Arial Burnz

Original Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to ArialBurnz.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

* * * * *

This ebook is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons—living, magickal, dead or undead—places, events or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Though there are actual historical events used in this book, they are for backdrop purposes only and may contain some artistic license.

Dedication

To all those who have fought life-threatening illnesses.

You are the real heroes and heroines of the world.

R.I.P.

Jeanette DiCosola

April 4, 1924—October 10, 2010

I love you, Grandma.

* * * * *

Acknowledgments

I could not write my books without my husband, DeWayne. He brainstorms all my stories with me, puts up with my moodiness over my characters, my crazy plot twists and turns, and gives me wonderful suggestions and ideas, which help take my stories in directions I never would have imagined. Together, we’re a great writing team!

Additionally, Broderick MacDougal would not be the
wonderful
character he is without DeWayne, who has given Rick his romantic streak, the unquenchable desire he has for his woman, or the fierce heart that beats in his chest. Thank you, my darling, for being a living example of the perfect man.

I want to thank all my patient fans! I pushed the date out on this book a couple of times…and you have all been so gracious and forgiving. I hope I’ve finally got the hang of publishing and there will be no more broken promises. What is a book if there is no one to read it? I would not be an author without my readers. I adore you all!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my beta readers, M. Sembera and Rebecca Halliwell. You really came through for me on this last-minute feedback, ladies, and were such a huge help! I’m lucky to have you girls on my team!!
Mwah!

A special ‘thank you’ goes out to AJ Nuest, who has been such a trooper through this whole experience. I put a lot of undue pressure on her to help me finish this book, which was actually supposed to be done over three months ago. If I had finished it when I promised, she would have had more time to edit. Any mistakes in this book are MINE and I cannot fault AJ
at all
. Unless the mistakes in this book are so unbearable as to interfere with the reading experience, I will probably just let some things go and move on with my series. No need to rehash the edits, as an author will always find mistakes with her work, no matter how many times she re-reads it. AJ and I have a favorite saying, “A novel is never finished. The author just gives up!” It just might be time to give up on this one…maybe.

It is my greatest hope this series gets better with each book. I hope you enjoy
Midnight Hunt
even more than I enjoyed writing it. On to write
Midnight Eclipse
!

That’s my two pence…

Arial Burnz

August 2013

* * * * *

Chapter One

Vollstadt Village on the Northern Coast of Germany—1636

Eighty years ago today, he killed her…

Broderick clenched his teeth as he cradled the frail body of his beloved Davina in his lap. “Blossom…when you hurt, I hurt. Please.” He gashed his wrist with his fangs and offered his healing blood. She shook her head. The torn flesh gathered and closed, healing without a scar.

“We have already discussed this.” Davina pushed his wrist from her face then coughed and curled in his lap like a fetus. She pressed the kerchief to her mouth as she labored through another long spell of hacking and wheezing.

The scent of her blood wafted up to his senses and he savored the sweet essence of his wife. Tears stung his eyes. “I will not lose you. Please let me heal you, just this once.” He knew his plea would be useless.

Drawing shallow breaths and rubbing the blood from her mouth, she gazed at him with sorrow-filled glassy eyes. “That is what you said the last two times. Darling, I cannot bear to live like this. You know the healing is only temporary. Your blood cannot purge this disease from my body and, each time, it returns worse.” His wife gasped and coughed, grunting and sputtering blood.

“Let me transform you, Davina.” He clung to her gaunt figure, hoping this time she would listen. “Then we can spend eternity together.”

“And spend an eternity running from—” She gritted her teeth and panted, squeezing her eyes shut. She heaved breaths and tensed in his arms. “Running from the Vamsyrian Council for fear of them destroying us. I want peace, my love.” She finally sighed. “I want peace.”

Broderick helped her lie back onto their bed and nestled under the covers beside her. She shivered. Her fingers feathered across his bare chest, and her unsteady hand reached for his face. He pressed his lips to her palm. Though gray streaks had dulled her hair with age and the wrinkles on her beautiful face bore testimony to her four-and-sixty years, the light of her spirit shining from within had not diminished…until these last two weeks. Davina grew weary.

“It is too late for me, Broderick. Even immortality cannot restore my youth.” She chuckled and Rick’s heart constricted. “We would forever receive the scathing looks thrown at us now…an old woman with such a young, handsome man. Scandalous.”

“I care not what others think. I—”

She placed a finger on his lips. “Hush.” She moaned and clung to him, coughing and bleeding from her mouth onto his chest. “End this now,” she wheezed. “Feed from me one last time, my darling. Let my life give you sustenance and offer me peace.”

“Nay!” He gripped her shoulders and searched her eyes. “You cannot ask this of me!”

“I plead for mercy, Rick.” She sobbed and a wave of misery flooded him with such a force, it stole the breath from his lungs—misery his wife had been holding back all this time!

“My god! Why did you not let me—”

“Forgive me, my love, but I did not want you to worry so.” She pressed her palms to his cheeks, wet from tears. “But now you know why I beg you to let me go.”

“Nay, Davina,” he whimpered into her hair and enveloped her in his embrace. Rocking her in his arms, he wept as she wracked and convulsed, coughing and moaning. She held nothing back. Her anguish consumed him. His sobs mingled with hers. Heart breaking, but knowing he could not let her endure this torment for his sake, he surrendered. “Aye, Blossom.”

Broderick pushed the hair from her tired eyes and damp but smiling face. She nodded and released a shuddering sigh. “Thank you, my love.”

He touched his forehead to hers and clenched his jaw. “How will I live eternity without you?”

Threading her tiny fingers into his hair, she gripped him with as much strength as her weakened form would allow, but her eyes bore into his with purpose. “Hear this now. Nothing, not even death, will keep me from loving you. Though this body may wither and become a dry shell, my spirit will pursue you until the end of time. We will never be apart.”

He covered her mouth with his and tasted her blood. Trailing tender kisses across her cheek and jawline, he nestled against her neck. “Eternally yours,” he whispered.

She clutched his head and offered her throat. “Together forever.”

Broderick hesitated, her erratic pulse beating against his tongue.

“Give me peace,” she whispered in a tortured breath. “Do this for me.”

“I will love you forever, Davina.” His fangs pierced her cool skin and Broderick drank the life from his wife, granting her wish…and tormenting his already damned soul.

Broderick threw the empty earthen cup across the tavern and it shattered, raining pottery shards over the patrons at the far wall.

“Acht!” The innkeeper charged to Broderick’s table and stuck a rigid finger in his face. “Another outburst like that and I’ll toss you out on your rump!”

Rick scoffed and leaned forward. “Don’t you have anything stronger than beer?” he demanded in German. “Bring me Scotch.”

The owner threw his head back and let forth a hearty guffaw. “You’re drunk enough, if you ask for that.” He glanced around as a few others joined him in a chuckle, but Broderick frowned. The man sobered. “Beer and wine is all I have. You want something stronger, you’ll have to travel down the river to Bremen.”

Perhaps he should go back to his ship where he had Scotch in the hold. “Don’t you have a barber in this town? He should have what I need.”

The owner frowned. “He most assuredly does not. He has just enough
aqua vitae
for the needs of our village. I’ll not wake him for the likes of you.” Crossing his arms, he stood firm, his posture daring Broderick to argue the matter further.

Not the least bit affected by the man’s attempt at intimidation, Rick tossed a small sack of coins onto the table. He wasn’t ready to return to his ship. “Then bring a cask of beer to my table. ’Tis enough there to pay for ten of them.”

The stocky man snatched the bag and examined the coins. Cocking an eyebrow, he hefted the sack in his beefy hand, then narrowed his eyes at Rick. The innkeeper disappeared through the door at the rear of the tavern and returned with a cask and a lead cup. “No more smashing my wares. It’s no business of mine if you want to drink yourself into sin, but you’ve been peaceful until now. Let’s keep it that way.” With a nod, he stomped off to his post behind the wooden bar.

Broderick glared at the other patrons, who eyed him with a mixture of apprehension, anger and disgust. However, they were all wise enough to divert their attention elsewhere, leaving him to his drink. The small tavern at the edge of the village where he’d docked was dark and unassuming. He just needed a hole in which to hide and sort through his thoughts without his crew badgering him about the long, senseless journey.

What in blazes am I doing in Germany?

The decades had been lonely without Davina, but he had managed. Seeing his step-daughter Cailin and her husband James had eased some of the grief. Though he mostly left Cailin in the capable hands of her spouse, Broderick returned every few years to visit…and they grew older while he did not. They had five beautiful children, who also grew into adulthood. Broderick watched from afar as time stole them from him, one by one. None of their children or grandchildren pursued the shipping company, diverting their occupational interests elsewhere, so when Cailin and James passed, Broderick reclaimed it, long forgotten by their offspring.

Rebuilding the business kept him occupied enough to stave off the heartache of losing Davina. Though his bereavement had never disappeared, he
had
managed. And when her birthday arrived, he mourned as he always did on those special days. But this year, as he wept over her grave, grief swallowed him. The specter of his beloved Davina had penetrated his defenses and pierced through the numbness he’d forged over the near-century. His heart ached like the day he lost her and grew to a restless yearning, which encouraged him to leave Scotland. He readied the smallest ship in his fleet, requiring only a four-man crew, whom he trusted and paid well to protect his investments.

He followed this longing south—out of Scotland, along the eastern coast of England and across the Channel to Belgium. Then the compelling desire to traverse along the war-torn, northern coast yanked his soul through the Netherlands and to the final port of Vollstadt in Germania of the Holy Roman Empire. Each time he had docked along his journey, his crew would restock and he would explore the port. He would feed and find no reason for what pulled him away from home, so they would sail onward. As far as his crew was aware, he was searching for a place to expand his shipping business.

Thankfully, this tugging at his soul kept them along the coast and away from most of the conflict happening inland in Central and Southern Germany. In his grieving and frustrated condition, he would have gladly slain the countless mercenaries raping the countryside in these endless battles over religious prattle. But he wouldn’t unleash his wrath for the deaths would weigh heavy upon his soul, neither would he put his crew in danger. He had enough burdens to bear without having
their
lives on his conscience as well.

And here he sat, staring at the leaden mug waiting to be filled, just as he ached for his own heart to be filled.

Due to the rapid healing of his immortal blood, alcohol had no real effect on him. At one time, he’d had a generous portion of Scotch whiskey and started to feel drunk, but it quickly passed. He gulped down six mugs of beer from the cask and closed his eyes tight against the ache in his chest. The libation did nothing to drive the images of her from his mind.
I should relive them…again and again. Savor every moment. Eight decades of silence…and then a precious, spectral encounter with her today.
He had only dreamt when Davina was near, whenever she thought of him while he slumbered during the day. But she was dead, so these new visions couldn’t be her. Perhaps he had been so consumed with grief on the eightieth anniversary of her death, he had finally gone mad.

Davina had been in the woods, her ethereal form naked and waiting for him. Her cinnamon tresses spilled over her shoulders and hid the precious globes of her breasts, but blended with the thatch of curls at the juncture of her thighs. Young and breathtaking as she was when she’d entered his Gypsy tent as a voluptuous woman in 1514.

He fell to his knees before her and buried his face in her skin, growing hard as he inhaled the lavender scent of her hair. “Davina!” He covered the swell of her belly with kisses and nibbles, his hands smoothing over the lush curves of her silken legs, bottom and back, unable to get enough of her.

She cradled his head to her breasts and wept. “How I’ve missed you!”

Davina straddled his thighs and Broderick claimed her lips. Tearing open his breeches, he then slipped inside her wet heat. Surely he had died and gone to heaven! She clung to his back as she rode him to a swift and furious climax, taking Broderick with her.

Shuddering and panting, he pulled back to gaze at the rapture on her face and a chestnut-haired woman with creamy skin rocked in his arms. “Blossom?”

She nodded, her sapphire eyes revealing the woman he would die for.
Davina pressed her lips to his and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Together forever.”

Aye, he
had
gone mad. Broderick opened his eyes, reached for the cask and jerked with a start.

Malloren Rune sat across the table from him. “Well met, Broderick MacDougal,” she whispered in her British accent, concern in her gaze and dressed like a German peasant woman.

The prophetess!
“I cannot recall the last time I have been taken by surprise.” He scowled at her. “Exactly how much does your position as the Keeper of Secrets prolong your life?” The last time he had seen her, over a century ago, she was more than one-hundred sixty years old. What was different about her? Her skin held the subtle scent only found on… “You are a Vamsyrian?”

She nodded.

“But…you are a member of the Army of Light.”

“It was necessary so I may continue my station. My transformation was the second sign in the prophecy. It appears I will be the steward of this journey to redemption for Vamsyrians.”

He tipped his head back and a sardonic chuckle rumbled through him at the irony. “The one who advises mortals against the very choice you made. Have you sacrificed your soul to save us all?”

Clearing her throat, she squared her shoulders and raised her chin with regal defiance. “There are many sacrifices I have made through the years in my service to God, though none quite as important as this. The prophecy is why I am here.”

“Where were you when Davina died of consumption? You claimed she was the key to this damned prophecy and, when I needed answers, you were nowhere to be found.” He cursed under his breath. “How is it I did not sense you approach me? Why I could not find you?”

Malloren shifted in her chair and avoided his glare. “My talents for remaining unseen were magnified when I crossed over.” She narrowed her eyes. “You will not find me if I do not wish to be found.” Glanced at his cup, then the cask, she sighed and sadness shrouded her face. “I truly regret the sorrow you have endured over Davina’s passing, but I have—”