Binding Blood
Binding Blood
Daniel de Lorne
romance.com.au/escapepublishing/
Binding Blood
Daniel de Lorne
The groundbreaking romantic horror trilogy, Bonds of Blood, comes to a thrilling conclusion with a story of loss, grief, and redemption...
Monsters don’t get to be heroes…
Betrayed by his brother and imprisoned in his sister’s dungeon, Olivier d’Arjou isn’t about to let a few chains get in his way. A vampire for six hundred years and a plague on his family for longer, he has no reason to hold back from wiping out the last of his family members and anyone who gets in his way. But first, he’ll need to break free.
When Oberon North, witch and survivor of one of Olivier’s most heinous crimes, comes seeking vengeance, it should be child’s play to bend the witch to his will. But Oberon comes with more power and resilience than Olivier expects and forces him to confront truths he’d rather avoid.
But Olivier’s inner conflict must take a backseat when he learns of his sister Aurelia’s plan to save the world from the demon Xadrak. A battle generations in the making, to succeed requires the ultimate sacrifice from both Olivier and his brother Thierry – and the last chance Olivier has to reclaim his humanity and a future he never thought possible.
About the author
Ruin. Romance. Redemption. That’s the magic trifecta DANIEL DE LORNE promises readers of his books. Whether it’s irresistible vampires, paranormal paramours, or hot everyday men, Daniel’s books go for the heart. And the stomach. And the spleen (just for good measure). Daniel’s first novel — the gripping gay romantic horror Beckoning Blood — was published by Escape Publishing in 2014. The sequel, Burning Blood, was released in May 2015. In September 2018 Daniel published Embers and Echoes, the second book in the Echo Springs romantic suspense series.
In his other life, Daniel is a professional writer and researcher in Perth, Australia, with a love of history and nature. All of which makes for great story fodder. And when he’s not working, he and his husband explore as much of this amazing world as they can, from the ruins of Welsh abbeys to trekking famous routes and swimming with whales.
To get to the real heart of the matter, take a look around his website at danieldelorne.com and sign up to his newsletter. Or you can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Acknowledgements
It’s been a long road to get to this final book in the Bonds of Blood series, going on nearly ten years from the first blush of an idea to finally getting my act together and wrapping it all up. There are a few people who have made this possible.
First is my good friend Nikki Logan, who encouraged me at the beginning to get it down and to make it better, who loves these characters almost as much as I do, and helped me right through to the end.
An enormous thanks to Kate Cuthbert and the Escape Publishing team who saw potential in this series and for giving me a publishing home. It’s been wonderful working with you.
To my husband, Glen, for being my biggest — and most insistent — fan, who gives me the freedom and encouragement to keep going, who tries his best not to break a writer’s fragile ego, and always shares in the joys and comforts me through the lows.
And finally, thank you to you, the reader, whether you’ve stuck with me from the first book or starting from here. I hope you enjoy this book.
For my husband Glen,
who waited a long time for the first book,
and even longer to get his name here,
but if not for him, I wouldn’t have got this far.
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part One
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Part Two
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Part Three
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing...
Prologue
He rose from darkness into an expanse of grey. A shapeless, endless landscape rolled around him, and enclosed him above and below. The only difference was him, an unsteady point in this unfamiliar place. He looked behind him — felt back with his awareness — without needing to turn. Nothing followed him, but something had sent him there, something he’d wanted to escape.
Something still out there.
He drifted, not knowing where to go or if the something prowled before him or behind. It didn’t matter which way he went. A drab vastness extended in all direction towards a horizon that never came nearer. Yet inside himself grew an uneasiness brought from wherever he’d been before. It clawed out of the deep, still hidden in shadow, but its approach became harder to ignore. He hastened.
How had he got there? How could he leave? He travelled, checking back often to see if whatever was after him — yes, something was after him. Something had chased him there.
Breath had gouged his throat, his insides cut with little hooks—
Hooks?
No… Teeth.
Biting into him. Taking chunks out of him. Except not chunks.
Blood.
The teeth had taken his blood. Drained him of it. Exiled him there. Wherever he was. He couldn’t return. Not yet. Not yet. Something stopped him. It wasn’t safe to go back. Not yet. Not yet. But those teeth that had stolen the life from him would follow. And he had nowhere to hide in all this grey. Nothing to defend himself with. Nothing but his hands —
He raised them and waggled his fingers. Yes, his hands. He could use them to fight. But as he looked they shattered and reformed into glowing shards of purple crystal, which then vanished and his hands reappeared. He looked down at his body, his bare chest, and ran his hand over it. Solid, yes, but neither hot nor cold. And then his body disappeared, and the purple crystal replaced it. Replaced him. And all the while the fear intruded more. He swivelled. It was getting nearer. Whatever it was. Whatever had hurt him.
Whatever was coming to hurt him again.
He spun and the grey rotated around his axis as he shifted between flesh and light, blinking between one and the other, spinning faster and faster. He wouldn’t return. But where was he? And what was he becoming?
He flashed. He spun. He beckoned.
And the horizon changed.
A figure melted out of coalescing clouds. He stumbled back but kept his eyes forward and locked on the figure as it neared him. He couldn’t run but trying was instinctive. However quickly he covered ground, the figure — a woman — drew closer. Raven hair waving in a breeze that wasn’t there, a benevolent smile and sparkling eyes, her body close despite his retreat. She reached out a hand re
ady to touch him. He wheeled, fell and cowered.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here to help you. We’ve been looking for you.’ Her hand stroked his cheek, and the suddenness of it hoisted him to his feet. He jumped back and bunched his fists.
She vanished and reappeared behind him, catching him. ‘I’m not trying to hurt you.’ Her soothing voice smothered her lies. Everything there was meant to harm him. He should have been safe — safe from the thing that sent him there — but he’d landed in another trap.
He jolted out of her arms and positioned himself where he could see her.
‘I’ve searched for you for so long.’ She offered him her hand. ‘You shouldn’t be here, but this is not the end.’
He flinched. What did she mean? And how could she help him? She was a part of this. He didn’t know how but he knew it deep inside him where the thing lurked. Because of her, he was there. Anger stirred inside him and unleashed a torrent of shouted words. His mouth moved, he yelled, but she didn’t hear him. Whatever he said, she couldn’t decipher it and concern chiselled into her pale brow. Around him the light flared, a violet haze sparking as he raged with the transformation.
Slim hands raised. ‘Calm yourself, please. I’ll guide you back.’
Back? No. Back was where he’d be torn apart. He’d be… He’d be killed!
Her hand came nearer and he tensed. He’d destroy her if he had to; just to get away from her. Just to be safe.
To be whole.
She froze, and her eyes drifted over his shoulder and into the distance. ‘Get behind me.’ She rose up, growing bigger, and guarded him with her body.
He followed her wide gaze, and his heart plummeted through his stomach. The thing he’d been fleeing stalked out of the gloom. The woman had grown three times her original size, and he peered around her.
A demon strode out of the oppressive clouds. Wings the colour of tar, horns gleaming like polished obsidian, impatiently thrashing a pointed tail, eyes glowing crimson.
The demon didn’t come alone. Men and women swept across the plane to surround them. The space between his gasping breath and this army of death shimmered.
‘Well done, Sinara.’ The demon’s voice rumbled with the destructive glee of an earthquake. ‘Thank you for finding it.’
She snarled, an inhuman sound that sent him stumbling away from the protection of her back. Menace swept from the warriors with a stickiness that cloyed at the back of his throat. Trapped. He wrapped his arms around himself, but still his body shook with enough force that he feared he’d burst into a shower of splinters.
Maybe then he’d escape.
‘If I were you, I’d make this easy,’ the demon said. ‘Give it to me now and I’ll let you leave unharmed.’ He leaned forward and glowered with a toothy grimace. ‘Then again, I’m not you, and I’d prefer to see you beaten and burned.’
‘I’ll die before I let you control it,’ she growled.
‘Let’s hope so. Proceed.’
The army opened their arms and light burst forth. He braced, preparing to be blown apart by their magic — yes, magic, he knew of magic — but the attack rebounded. The hail of red power streaming towards him struck a shield that covered him and the woman. She checked points on it, tension held at the corners of her eyes. She protected them, but her muscles clenched the longer the assault lasted.
‘I have to get you out of here,’ she grunted. ‘You’re needed elsewhere.’
She grabbed his wrist, but her words had the touch of prophecy and he rebelled in her grasp. He wasn’t going to be used again. He’d already suffered for it once and that’s what… That’s what had brought him there. That’s what had brought him close to—
A chill crept up his feet and legs, into his belly and his torso, freezing his heart.
I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead.
‘No, don’t think that. You’re alive,’ she said in a hurried whisper. ‘You just got lost.’ Desperate eyes stared into him as if her saying it could make it so. But the cold had almost engulfed him and the fear was draining. Whatever they thought they could do to him, they wouldn’t get the chance.
‘We’ll find you.’ Heat bloomed through her hand into his wrist. Warmth kept him alive.
He screamed silently and thrashed. The heat intensified. The siege roared around them and the sound of stone cracking lifted his eyes as a jagged line spidered across the shield. His body seared with the blaze of her magic, and as an explosion shuddered around him, her power propelled him down to where the vampire waited to finish what he’d started.
* * *
Oberon’s consciousness slammed against his skull. Air punched into his lungs and heaved his torso off the ground. The violent jolt whipped awake the agony coiled in his dying body.
But he was alive.
He held the breath, a pause in mid-air before his strength dissipated, and he collapsed back on the singed carpet.
Alive. And in pain.
A shoulder ruined by fangs, a violated arsehole, a crunching ache in every bone and muscle, and a migraine drilling through both eyes: all converged to gnaw on his feeble energy.
Was he still there?
Panic sparked through his weakened body. His lead-lined eyes struggled to open, then battled to focus. Lights from the street cast shadows across the sofa, the broken candles, and the crumbling living room wall; signs of his efforts to fend off Olivier, but no sign that the vampire remained. The search exhausted him and he slipped back into darkness.
We’ll find you.
His eyes sprang open. Who’d said that? As real and as recent as if they’d been in this shithole of a room. Air scoured his lungs. Something was after him, and he couldn’t stay.
He released what should have been a simple jet of power, and sweat drenched his body, but he managed to bring his phone within reach. How could there be so little in him? He rested before he punched at the screen, letting his body steal a few precious seconds of his waning life force to recover for a further attempt at saving himself. Talons scraped through his body, while the prickles of the carpet fibres dug into his flesh with each shallow gasp, reminding him of how weak he’d been when facing that fuck Olivier.
He’d tried to help the vampire and been half-killed for his trouble. He focused on that invasion, and fury at being brought so low galloped through his body. He hitched his soul to it until he bucked with its violence. He should have been able to stop that bastard from—
He wrenched his mind away from the memory, not wanting to relive it, inside or out, not while this naked and exposed, this close to death. Survival came first.
Through drooping eyelids, he keyed in the number for emergency services. Thank Christ it was so short. The tinny voice of the operator came up the line. He pleaded for an ambulance, gave his address, told her he’d lost a lot of blood. Speaking snatched the last of his strength and the phone slipped onto the carpet. He didn’t know what was said after that, whether they were coming, what would happen next.
He fought against the dimming of his mind, but he was too feeble, too far gone. A desperate rattle of alarm at finding the vampire waiting for him sustained his consciousness for a second, but then that too evaporated and he floated into nothingness.
‘Can you hear me?’
Words broke through the fog. Latex-coated fingers pressed at his wrist, then his neck.
‘Please…’ he whispered.
Please don’t let me die.
His awareness rose and fell as his body lurched off the floor, as he was covered, as the door banged, as the trolley rattled and the ambulance lurched.
‘Hold on,’ a woman said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
Don’t be afraid…
Why did that seem so familiar? Like he’d just heard it. The more he focused on those words, the more his connection to the planet evaporated, the more grey swirled around him.
And something told him he had to stay away from the grey.
He hunted for something that
would keep him tied to Earth, and then, scrabbling with desperation at losing time, at losing life, he found it.
He sank all of himself into where the vampire’s teeth had torn his skin and marked him.
And it pulsed with life.
Everything else — thoughts, words, the greyest of mists and the glittering of obsidian — all vanished below the blazing vengeance and shame and disgust.
Because the vampire wouldn’t get away with what he’d done.
Part One
I
Olivier’s world shook with his roars, and the stone walls repaid him threefold. Locked in this circular dungeon in a darkness as black as his soul and strung up with his arms outstretched and his ankles shackled, he tested the limits of his power. His desiccated skin rubbed against the manacles, grating against the join between one piece of metal and another. He slammed his arms forward, pulling the chains taut. He was stronger than any man or woman alive — stronger than any beast — how could mere chains hold him, for fuck’s sake?
But they weren’t mere chains. And Aurelia had him right where she wanted.
He snarled, and the echo rebounded. An animal prowled in his voice, fettered like one for whatever purpose his sister had in mind.
She’d said he was needed, and that Thierry’s time for vengeance would come. But what she said hadn’t concerned him then. He’d been too wounded by Thierry’s eagerness to destroy him — and from the weighted silence that yawned within him.
He hung suspended in this lightless cell truly alone, cold trickling down his body and through the inactive mental bond between him and his twin. Aurelia hadn’t obliterated it completely, but he had no way of reviving it. Drained of blood to feed Thierry’s bitch-whore, his brother’s emotions should be coursing through him like syphilis. The thinner the blood, the thinner the veil: that’s how it worked.
He scrabbled through himself, digging in the dirt of his soul to find some scrap, some root, to nurture.