Blood Magic : A Fated Mate Paranormal Romance, page 1
Blood Magic
The Westwood Pack
F D Fair
Foundations Book Publishing
4209 Lakeland Drive, #398, Flowood, MS 39232
www.FoundationsBooks.net
Blood Magic
Book 8
The Westwood Pack
Copyright © 2023 by FD Fair
Cover by Dawné Dominique Copyright 2023
Book Formatting by Bella Roccaforte
Published in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
Worldwide English Language Print Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or in the case of actual locations and historical figures, used in a fictitious manner. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
About the Author
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Chapter One
Breanne—10 years ago
“One more day. I just need to get through one more day. They’ll come and save me tomorrow,” I repeat this mantra to the wall of my cell.
I’ve spent the last six years waiting, hoping, begging, and praying for the same thing. My coven will come to find me. Drusilla will save me.
Won’t they?
Dru must be here somewhere. The hunters abducted us at the same time, but she has always been so much stronger than me. If she doesn’t escape herself, her parents will rescue her. They are the coven leaders, and I know without a doubt that they will do anything to find her. When they do, Dru will make them come for me.
I know she will.
As the door to my cell slowly creaks open, I move to the corner and press my back against the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible. It’s an automatic prey response. If I am small and quiet, I may be safe. Maybe he won’t see me. Maybe he’ll leave me alone.
Even as that thought crosses my mind, I know it’s foolish.
Every day here is the same. I wake up, alone and confused. I take in the dark, concrete walls around me and remember where I am. All I have is one cot with no pillow or blanket, a small toilet, and a sink with no mirror, but my cell has become the only safe place in my life. When my jailer comes to remove me, it is only to torture and experiment on me.
“You’re up early, Breanne,” Richard says, sounding sadistically sunny. “Are you ready?”
Richard is standing in the door with a cruel grin plastered across his thin lips.
When I first got here, I hoped he might be different from the other hunters. He was older. He spoke and moved slower than the younger hunters who seemed so dangerously quick to anger. He reminded me of the grandfathers I’d seen on TV. He had shaggy grey hair and a big bushy beard, but his eyes gave him away.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, no more.”
“You know how to end this.” He clucks his tongue at me like he’s disappointed. “You give us the location of your coven, or you work for us. Those are your options. Are you ready to choose?”
I drag my eyes away from his and grind my teeth. The hunters want my coven, but I would never choose to give up my family and friends to these monsters. The second option is equally impossible. I won’t help them capture more innocent children to experiment on.
They call us monsters, but these are the options they offer me.
“Suit yourself.” Richard shrugs, walking forward to secure the leash in his large, hairy hand to the collar around my neck.
I’ve been here for six years now, and each day is exactly the same. Richard comes to collect me and drags me down the long, sterile hallways toward their torture of the day. I stopped kicking and screaming around year three. The only reason I know that is because every year on the anniversary of my capture, they give me a special kind of torture. It changes each year, though each one makes me wish for death more than the last.
When Richard stops me in front of the white door I’ve come to know as the “Surgery,” instinct takes over. I begin to thrash and try to back away.
“Please,” I beg. The collar around my neck squeezes tighter as I resist.
Richard turns toward me and sneers.
“If you want to save yourself from this, you know what I want.”
I violently shake my head back and forth.
“We will see if you still feel that way in a few hours,” he says, turning back to the door and rapping on it three times.
The door swings open, revealing two burly men in all black and a petite woman in a white lab coat. I desperately try to pull away and move backward. The thin, worn socks I wear slip on the white, tile of the floor. My fingers latch onto the leash, and I use all my strength to yank it away from Richard.
Surprisingly, he lets go, and my body flies back into the wall. The sudden shift stuns me, but I scramble to my feet and take off as his two goons take a step toward me. I summon as much speed as I can, but I’m half-starved so it isn’t much.
I race down the stark, white hallway and turn left where it branches. I know the path to the right takes me back to my cell. I do not know where the left leads, but I take it and pick up speed as I go.
It is empty, illuminated by the harsh florescent lights overhead. There are doors lining either side of the hallway, and I know one could open at any moment and halt my escape.
I reach the end of another hallway and hesitate for a moment before choosing to go right. Before I can make it far, I sense someone behind me.
I spin quickly, fall into a crouch, and hiss a warning.
Goon A stands in front of me with a wide smile on his face. I tilt my head. How did he beat me here? What does he have to be so happy about? It takes a moment before I realize he was just a distraction. I check my left and right and find that I’m surrounded.
There are three guards surrounding me, and I can see Richard approaching—unconcerned, unhurried—down the hall.
If I weren’t already in fight mode, I would surrender. It’s clear that I am outnumbered and too weak to hold my own against them. That’s not what I do.
Instead, I kick my leg out, sweeping the guard to my left off his feet. He drops like a sack of potatoes.
I quickly hop on him and sink my fangs into his neck. I rip into him, and the second the metallic tang of his blood hits my tongue, a moan slips from my lips. I suck harder, pulling the blood in faster.
I pull back with a gasp as a strange fire begins burning down my throat. I pull my lips away from his neck and try to breathe through the pain. I allow myself to be pulled away from him by the other two. Below me, the guard frantically chokes and stills, thick rivers of blood still burbling from the wound on his neck with each ragged breath.
I spit and try to claw the fire from my throat.
Once I’m standing, I bend at the waist, retching up all the blood I just ingested.
“Perfect,” Richard says, clapping his hands and sounding giddy. “It worked.”
I look up and narrow my eyes at him.
“What did you do to me?”
He waves an indifferent hand in my direction and secures the end of my leash in the other.
“We were simply testing a—you’d probably call it a ‘vaccine.’”
I gape up at him in horror. My empty stomach is still roiling. They have a vaccine that makes blood poisonous to vampires? If they gave this to the world, vampires would starve and die out in a matter of weeks.
“Of course, we’re still perfecting it.” He disinterestedly toes the boot of the hunter who is bleeding out on the floor. He huffs a breath. “It obviously doesn’t work fast enough, and one in four have a bad reaction to the vaccine and don’t make it through the night.”
I should be horrified at his lack of empathy for his fellow hunters, but I feel a bloody smile on my lips at the thought. The world is rid of a few hunters, and the general population will not allow mass production with those odds.
I heave, and more burning blood comes back up. I allow my head to drop while the two remaining guards hold me up by each armpit. I vomit again, and the blood splashes all over the floor. My feet pass through it, and I leave a bloody trail behind as they drag me back toward the surgery.
Once I am inside, they strap me to the chair and set up an IV with something that looks like human blood. I’m so dehydrated that it takes a few tries for them to find a vein, but they aren’t concerned with being gentle. I watch as the red liquid creeps through the clear tubing toward my arm.
Immediately, the burning stops, and my entire body begins healing. I’ve been starved for so long that I can feel my body frantically absorbing every single drop. As if a thick veil is lifted, my vision clears, my hearing enhances, and my sense of smell is heightened.
Ugh. Actually, I wish I could turn that off. It can’t be me that smells like that. Can it? I move my head slightly, taking a big whiff of myself before gagging.
Yup, that’s definitely me.
Abruptly, the IV is ripped from my arm. Blood spurts out, spraying up and across the wall behind me. A few drops land on my lips. I stick out my tongue and lap it up, moaning at the taste. Definitely human.
“That’s enough,” Richard sneers. For the first time, his anger is not directed at me.
“Sorry, sir,” the woman in the lab coat says, bowing her head.
“That was my fault, sir.” Another woman in a white coat steps forward to take the blame. “I was under the impression we were testing the new compound today.”
“And?” Richard nods, but there’s still an angry look on his face.
“Research and development recommended giving her a pint of human blood to ensure she survives the process,” she continues after checking the file in her hands.
Fear permeates the air. With my senses stronger than they have been in years, I can hear the increase in her heartbeat, smell the beads of sweat on her brow, and see the tremble in her hands.
“She’ll survive without it,” Richard states matter-of-factly, and I scrunch up my nose. I’m not sure he realizes just how close I’ve been to death. In his own backward way, I think he may have just complimented me.
The white coats get back to work. They have to replace the IV in my arm, but it’s easier to find a vein this time. Even the little bit of blood they’ve given me has caused my body to heal and my veins to swell beneath my skin. This time there are two bags hooked up to it. One is full of a clear liquid, and the other is bulging with a blue liquid that looks almost like gel.
“Beginning the first injection of Compound Z.” The woman whose fear I can smell seems to be the leader here. I hear a click as she starts a timer and look in time to see her nod to the man standing next to my IV. He slowly turns the dial to open the line for the clear liquid.
I can feel the vein wanting to close as the cold liquid flows into it, making everything cool as it spreads. I can tell exactly when it hits my heart and can’t help but gasp in pain as my body tries desperately to heal the damage being caused by whatever they’ve just pumped into me.
It’s all for nothing because he spins the dial on the blue liquid, and it sluggishly works down the tubing. As soon as it enters my arm, every nerve ending lights on fire. The fire spreads quickly through me. I scream out, feeling every inch it travels through my body. When it gets to my heart, everything goes black.
For a moment, I think I am dead.
Something warm drops onto my lips, and I part them automatically at the taste of blood. My eyes shoot open.
I’m still in the surgery. I’m still hooked up to the IV, but neither serum is flowing openly into my arms.
Noticing I’m awake, the head doctor makes a note on her clipboard and nods at her associate who is standing next to me. I look over at him, forcing his hazel eyes to meet my baby blues.
Without words, I plead for him to stop. Don’t turn the dial. Don’t let them do this.
All my pleas earn me is a shrug and a grimace. He sighs, as if to say, “no hard feelings, but this is my job.” He slowly spins both dials, opening both channels at once.
This time, I know what to expect. I clamp my mouth shut, trying not to cry out no matter how much it burns. I whimper when it reaches my heart but stay conscious as it spreads. I pass out again when I feel it reach my carotid arteries.
Once again, I wake to blood dripping into my mouth.
They repeat this process over and over. I do not know how long the torture lasts. I do not know how long I lose consciousness. I’m vaguely aware that I must have been here for days because, each time I open my eyes, there are new people standing over me.
How much more of this can I take? They have others to take their place. They trade off shifts, go home, and rest before they come back to torture me again. I am here alone. Every waking minute is filled with agony, and my only peace comes when I’m rendered unconscious by pain.
“Breanne.” Richard’s voice breaks through the haze of my pain, and I try to turn my head in his direction. “This has gone on long enough. You know what you have to do.”
I assess the state of my body, sensing that I can’t take much more before I die. I shake my head, ready to take that blissful jump into the afterlife.
“Suit yourself. Double the dose,” he says without hesitation.
I close my eyes to embrace my death with open arms.
I don’t die.
Instead, they keep me at the brink of death, pulling me back each time I get close to relief. They give me just enough blood and rest to survive the next dose.
I don’t see Richard again until they begin the more invasive forms of torture.
“Why are you doing this to yourself, Breanne?” he says, gesturing at my body. I am so inured to the pain that I have to glance down to assess the damage he is referring to.
There are several people in white coats who are disinterestedly, systematically carving into my skin.
My pale, unblemished skin is now covered in dried blood and slice marks. Each one heals slower than the last. If this goes on much longer, I won’t be able to heal at all, and the scars will remain.
“All you have to do is tell me what I want to hear.”
I open my mouth to reject the offer again, but my words are cut off by a fresh jolt of pain. One of the knife wielders slides their blade deep into my stomach.
“Okay,” I cry.
“Stop!” Richard calls out, and all the white coats step back. “What was that?” he asks, bending forward so that his face is inches from mine.
Tears stream down my cheeks. I wish I was stronger, but I’m not. I would welcome death happily, but they will never let me die. They will keep me on the brink of death but never give me peace.
“What did you say?” he repeats.
“Okay,” I sob. “Please, just make them stop.”
Richard huffs a contented, confident snort that makes me feel sick.
“Which option are you choosing?”
I’ve had years to consider this choice, but the truth is that I’ve always known I couldn’t hand my coven over to these people. Richard’s offer to work for him has always been vague, but at least I won’t know the people he goes after.
“I’ll work for you,” I say, dejected.
“Excellent,” he says, stepping back with a clap of his hands. “Remove her restraints.”
He grabs something off the counter. I watch him closely, knowing it won’t be as simple as him sending me out and giving me the chance to escape. It’s not as if I have the strength to run right now, but he’s too horrid to let me walk out of this room without a leash of some kind.
As soon as the IV and straps are removed, I let out a sigh. At this moment, I don’t care what Richard’s stipulations are going to be. All I care about is that the pain is over. When I’m out there, my chances of escaping or dying are a lot higher than they are here.
“I had a feeling you were going to choose that option, so I went ahead and had this made for you.” He holds up a metal collar. It looks far stronger and more permanent than the filthy, worn one he dragged me to this room with. It is surrounded with thick, metal pins that look like a studded collar. I watch in confusion and then horror as he opens a small piece of metal at the end of each outward spike and injects a stream of blue and clear liquid.
