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  TAINTED BLOOD

  Enyo screamed in agony and rolled over, staining the snow scarlet with his blood and feeling his broken bones grind together. Sobbing in agony and sudden terror, he stared up through the one eye left to him as a horrible apparition of a female Vampyre, dressed all in white, snarled at him through dripping fangs. Her lips curled back in a savage grin as she raised a sword in her hands and swung it down at him like a baseball bat. Enyo put up a bloody, broken arm to fend off the blow, but the razor-sharp katana sliced through the arm and then his neck like a hot knife through butter. Enyo’s head catapulted through the air, staring back down at his ruined body lying shattered and bloody in the snow. It was the last thing he saw before the darkness opened up and swallowed him.

  TAINTED BLOOD

  JAMES M. THOMPSON

  LYRCIAL UNDERGROUND

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  TAINTED BLOOD

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue - The Assault

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2004 by James M. Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Lyrical Underground and the L logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: April 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0409-3

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0409-9

  ISBN: 978-1-5161-0409-3

  To Terri: for her love, for her support, and for always being there, no matter what!

  To William W. Johnstone: A man who was as good a writer as there is, but who, more importantly, was as good a friend and as good a MAN as there is. We’ll miss you, partner. The world is a lesser place for your absence.

  JMT

  The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions . . . but by iron and blood.

  Otto Von Bismarck (1876)

  Prologue

  The Assault

  The Vampyre assault force gathered in the darkness around their leader, softly stamping their feet and flapping their arms to ward off the frigid Canadian chill.

  As the lightly falling snow gathered on their shoulders, Michael Morpheus whispered in a voice harsh and gruff with suppressed bloodlust, “They probably won’t be expecting us, but just in case, go in fast and hard and take them out!” He hesitated, and then he added through clenched teeth, “And if it’s possible, save the redheaded one for me. I have a special treat in store for her and I don’t want her to die too easily.” This last comment brought a knowing smile to the lips of Morpheus’s second in command, Theo Thantos.

  As they began to move up the road, the human shapes began to melt and coalesce and morph into their Vampyre forms. They were all clutching swords, axes, and guns in their claws as they loped through the frigid darkness in knee-deep snow, growling softly at the thought of the fresh blood awaiting them ahead.

  Theo put his hand on Christina Alario’s arm and slowed her down until they were bringing up the rear of the column of Vampyres when the group reached the road leading toward the cabin. The rough-hewn log structure was barely visible through the falling snow, but they could all clearly smell the odor of the wood fire going inside. The added aroma of the Normals’ warm blood in the building caused their mouths to water in anticipation of the feast that was to come.

  Morpheus, confident of the element of surprise, took the driveway, Marya Zaleska at his side, and waved the others into the dense forest that surrounded the cabin. “Spread out and approach the cabin from different directions,” he urged in a low voice.

  Gerald Enyo and Louis Frene circled off to the left and jumped over a dry creek bed, crouching low. They’d moved only thirty yards when a bright light came on in a tree just ahead of them, blinding them with its glare.

  “What the hell?” Enyo said, taking another step forward and tripping the black wire strung between two trees. A tremendous explosion from five feet in front of him sent a huge cloud of smoke and dirt into the air, along with several hundred four-inch nails.

  The dense cloud of nails blew Enyo and Frene off their feet, shredding and flaying their skin and tearing their arms and legs to ribbons.

  Enyo screamed in agony and rolled over, staining the snow scarlet with his blood and feeling his broken bones grind together. Sobbing in agony and sudden terror, he stared up through the one eye left to him as a horrible apparition of a female Vampyre, dressed all in white, snarled at him through dripping fangs. Her lips curled back in a savage grin as she raised a sword in her hands and swung it down at him like a baseball bat. Enyo put up a bloody, broken arm to fend off the blow, but the razor-sharp katana sliced through the arm and then his neck like a hot knife through butter. Enyo’s head catapulted through the air, staring back down at his ruined body lying shattered and bloody in the snow. It was the last thing he saw before the darkness opened up and swallowed him.

  Louis Frene, who took the brunt of the explosion and most of the nails, couldn’t see anything as he opened his mouth and screamed for help, for both of his eyes were ripped from his skull by the force of the explosion. He didn’t even see the blade of TJ’s katana as it whistled through the air and tore his head off clean at the neck. He was dead before his screams quit echoing through the forest.

  Jean Horla and Peter Vardalack, walking next to each other in the deep woods on the opposite side of the trail, jumped and stared as lights began to come on all around them and Frene’s and Enyo’s screams came on the heels of a tremendous explosion off to their left.

  “What the fuck was that?” Horla asked, just as a white demon rose out of the snow between them, a silver blade flashing in the light as he swung it at Horla’s head. Horla ducked and managed to get his own blade up in time to partially deflect the blow, causing it to glance off and embed itself in his lef
t shoulder down to the bone.

  “Peter,” he screamed, his voice rising in pitch as the waves of pain seared through his brain and blood spurted from his shoulder as from a fountain. “Help!”

  Peter Vardalack took one look into the demon’s red-rimmed, hate-filled eyes and he dropped his sword and began to sprint for the cabin just ahead, thinking if he could just make it to the door and inside he might be safe.

  Horla shook his head and fought off the pain long enough to swing his sword one-handed at Pike, who couldn’t seem to get his machete loose from Horla’s shoulder. Pike stuck his left arm up and caught the sword on it, wincing at the sound of the bones in the arm breaking and the lightning jolt of white-hot pain it sent up into his shoulder.

  Pike let go of his machete and grabbed a handful of Horla’s hair in his right hand, jerking backward to bring his chin up and expose his neck.

  He leaned forward before Horla could strike again and ripped Horla’s throat out with his fangs, jerking his head from side to side like a dog worrying a bone. Finally, the vertebrae in the neck gave way with a crunching sound and the head came loose in his hand. Horla’s body crumpled to the ground with Pike’s sword still embedded in the shoulder.

  Vardalack made it to within fifteen yards of the cabin, running and looking back over his shoulder, panting more from fear than from fatigue. “Oh Jesus . . . oh Jesus!” he chanted, praying to a God he’d forsaken dozens of years before.

  From in front of him there came a loud double-explosion, and he felt as if he’d been kicked in the head by a mule. The force of the twin loads of 00-buckshot took the top of his head off along with the left half of his face and one ear. His body spun half around, hit the snow, and flopped like a fish, his screams of pain and fear sounding only as gurgles through his shattered mouth and throat.

  Screeching like a rabbit caught in a wire snare, he reached up and sleeved the blood and tissue from his good eye just in time to see a Normal bending over him, a grimace of distaste on his face.

  “Please,” Vardalack croaked through broken stubs of teeth, spraying blood onto the night air. “Help me.”

  “I’ll help you straight to hell, you bastard!” Shooter said, reaching down to grab bloody hair in one hand while with the other he sliced through the neck of the monster in front of him.

  Vardalack died without his customary grin, for he had no lips left to smile with.

  As the explosions and bright lights and screams pierced the night, Theo Thantos and Christina Alario slowed even more, letting Morpheus and Marya and John Ashby pull ahead of them on the road to the cabin.

  He put his hand on her arm and whispered in her ear, “I think from the sound of things, we ought to get the hell out of here.”

  She snarled and bared her fangs as the smell of burning flesh and fresh blood wafted toward them on the night breeze, making her own blood boil and her mouth water. She shook her head and tried to pull her arm away. “Blood!” she growled, red drool running down her lips.

  Theo tightened his grip on her arm and shook it. “Don’t be a fool, Christina,” he said urgently, trying to keep his voice low so Morpheus wouldn’t hear. “They’re ready and waiting for us. It’s a trap and we’re all going to die here if we don’t leave!”

  After a moment, Christina’s eyes cleared and she forced the bloodlust aside and nodded her head. “As much as I hate to leave a good fight, I think you’re right,” she growled.

  They turned and loped back down the road toward their car as fast as they could, still holding hands, their claws intertwined.

  Marya Zaleska heard them leave and she touched Morpheus on the arm and pointed at their departing forms. He growled low in his throat. “Let the cowards go. I’ll deal with them later.”

  As Morpheus and Marya continued up the road toward the cabin, with John Ashby a few steps behind, a Normal man in a white suit stepped out of the darkness, a shotgun cradled in his arms.

  “Morpheus, you sick bastard!” Matt yelled at him, recognizing the beast that had tried to take Sam from him.

  Morpheus grinned and crouched, his sword swinging in a slow arc in his right hand. “You fool,” he snarled through fangs dripping scarlet drool, moving toward Matt and bringing the sword up while Marya circled to the other side. “Don’t you know guns can’t kill us!”

  “No,” Matt said though clenched teeth as he brought the barrel of the shotgun up, “but they can certainly fuck up your entire night!”

  Morpheus rushed him, standing up straight just as Matt fired so the buckshot took him in the chest and arm instead of the head, blowing the sword out of his hand and stopping him in his tracks as if he’d run into a brick wall.

  Morpheus staggered under the blow and twisted to the side, leaking blood all over the snow. He glanced down at the gaping hole in his chest and the mangled claws on his right arm and he screamed in fury. He bared his fangs and sprinted forward, ignoring the burning agony in his chest until he was right in front of Matt. He swung his left hand, claws extended, with all his might and swiped Matt across the chest and shoulder, laying him open and knocking him to the ground.

  “Now you die, you fucking Normal!” Morpheus growled, baring his fangs and leaning over a helpless Matt.

  “No-o-o!” screamed Sam, racing out of the woods next to the road and leaping onto Morpheus’s back, tearing at his eyes and face with her claws before he could get to Matt.

  Marya snarled and raised her sword, looking for an opening to take Sam’s head off, when Pike ran out of the darkness, his right arm hanging bent and useless, his machete in his left hand.

  Finally, Marya saw her chance, and she swung at Sam’s exposed neck, but Pike lunged forward and parried the blow with his weaker left hand. Marya’s sword knocked Pike’s lighter machete from his grip, and she spun around and jerked her own sword backhand and slashed Pike across his left arm, cutting it to the bone.

  Pike grunted in pain and stepped between her and Sam, who was still clinging to Morpheus’s back. He growled and bared his fangs in hate with both his bloodied arms hanging useless at his side, defenseless against her. As he snarled his defiance in the face of certain death, Marya grinned and slashed sideways with her sword, cutting the tendons to his right leg, causing him to topple to the ground next to Matt.

  Pike rolled to cover Matt with his body, trying to protect him as Marya screamed in fury and raised the sword for the final killing blow.

  Before she could strike, a shotgun exploded from behind her, the buckshot catching her in the back and blowing her forward onto her knees.

  Ed Slonaker ran up the road, his still-smoking shotgun in one hand, and his K-Bar Assault knife in the other. As he ran toward her, knife extended, she lashed out one-handed with her sword and caught Ed in the thighs just above his knees, doubling him over and knocking him to the ground.

  Marya climbed slowly to her feet, blood pouring from dozens of wounds in her back and again raised her sword with both hands, this time aiming at Ed.

  Kim Slonaker, a few yards behind Ed, dove headlong into Marya’s body, both of them rolling over several times until Marya came up on top, her sword point at Kim’s neck, her fangs dripping crimson drool as she snarled and growled, her eyes wild and crazed.

  John Ashby, who’d stood by, transfixed by the drama until now, stepped quickly forward and grabbed Marya’s wrist, stilling her deathblow to Kim. “Marya, that’s enough!” he growled, jerking her to her feet.

  “But . . .” she yelled, rage filling her eyes as she jerked her hand, trying to escape his grip.

  “I said,” John said firmly, snatching her sword from her. “There’s been enough killing tonight. Let it go!”

  Marya glared at him for a moment, her fondness for him warring with the bloodlust in her veins, until finally she ducked her head in submission and put her arms around his neck, collapsing into his arms, feeling for the first time the pain in her back.

  John looked over her shoulder at Kim and Ed lying next to each other and smiled. �
�That was for old times’ sake, and for friendship,” he said, picking Marya up in his arms and loping down the road out of sight.

  Sam and Morpheus continued their death struggle, rolling around in the snow among the bodies lying on all sides of them. Their claws were locked on each other’s throats, their fangs snapping and biting and tearing at their flesh, seeking a killing wound.

  Morpheus, weakened by the gunshot wound to his chest and unable to fully use his right arm, jerked his head forward and snapped, his fangs tearing a deep chunk of flesh from Sam’s right cheek. She howled in pain and brought her right knee up as hard as she could between Morpheus’s legs. Morpheus screamed in agony and doubled over, letting go of Sam’s neck with one hand as he grabbed his crushed genitals.

  That was all the opening Sam needed; she dipped her head and turned it sideways and sank her fangs as deep as they would go into the soft flesh of Morpheus’s neck, screaming with anger as she ripped out his trachea and esophagus and tore the major arteries to his brain in two.

  As he crumpled to his knees and stared up at her, his eyes beseeching her to let him live while he tried vainly to stem the pulsating jets of blood from his neck with his left hand, Sam calmly reached behind her, picked up the sword Marya had dropped, and in one lightning blow cut his head off.

  Without another look, she dropped the sword and turned and ran to take Matt’s bleeding body in her arms, pressing on the gashes in his skin to stop their bleeding, telling him over and over how much she loved him and that she’d never forgive him if he died on her.

  As John Ashby loped through the knee-deep snow of the Canadian forest, he glanced down at Marya. She’d fainted from the intense pain of the 00-buckshot slugs in her back and chest and had reverted back to her human form as her Vampyre blood tried to heal itself. Even now, with all that had happened over the past hour, he felt a stirring in his loins at the sight of her helpless in his arms. She was so beautiful, with her long, flowing blood-red hair and pale skin, her cheeks and nose dusted with faint freckles that only served to accentuate her emerald-green eyes.