Read an excerpt from the novel Vampire Lords of Blacknall Trinity from bestseller author Shirl Anders. A vampire regency romance novel available now.
Trinity caught the flashes of alabaster skin off to the left and in front of where he ran through the brambles. The woman's screaming had stopped many minutes ago, and he had to guess the foul beast hunting her had nearly run her to ground.
He veered his headlong sprint towards the glimpses of pale flesh he kept catching sight of through thickly-grouped trees surrounded by scattered bushes. His timing to reach the young woman before the vile monster leapt to kill her was too close to think he'd make it. The threatening roar he released was of a maddened vampire reverberating through the night air. The abhorrence would recognize his thundering challenge.
He heard the woman cry out … in pain this time. Instantly he smelled blood, as he bellowed, "No!" Then his large body crashed through a small opening in the foliage.
He realized too late he was moving much too fast to halt his forward motion, when suddenly the woman was there … as if pushed forward toward his unchecked momentum. He only had seconds to react and he grasped her against his body. Her long black hair whipped around them as he turned to take the brunt of an inevitable fall. He landed on his back with the woman piled on top of him. Then he heard the triumphant howl of escape from the foul beast fading into the distance.
Trinity held tight to the voluptuous young woman as he arched his back and shouted his anger at losing his chance to kill the abhorrence. "I will find you!" he bellowed.
He became aware of the woman screaming as she thrashed on top of him. More powerful than her ineffectual attempts at breaking his hold, while she screamed shrilly into his ear, were the scents of her fresh blood, choking him. It was a quality of blood scent he'd never inhaled before.
His savage and barely-controlled inner hunter snarled to life. Fangs punched past his lips as twin weapons, gluttonous for the smell of pure virgin’s blood pumping from cuts on the woman's struggling body. Ravenous hunger clogged his throat as he'd not felt since he was a young and uncontrolled vampire. Then, before he had any hope of exerting his willpower over the sudden monstrous cravings, his body turned, flipping the woman onto her back. He landed, pouncing over her. His fangs ready to strike, while the veins in his body throbbed for the blood he could smell.
Why was her blood so fucking potent?
The animalistic snarl that lunged from his throat clashed with the woman's frightened sobs, and her wide eyes gazed up at him with horror polished in their depths. Her small hands pounded against his upper chest as her bare hips and legs thrashed, trying to push his body off. His hard erection beneath his britches pounded for her submission, ordering his hips forward to press the rigid length down into her soft center, crushing her lower body's struggle to a halt.
The woman whimpered in fear. Then she cried, "Oh no! No!"
The strangled animalistic sound he made choked the woman's cried words into panting silence, as if she believed halting any motion would make the vicious animal set to strike her miss.
Beth couldn't stand the predator's gaze of yellow eyes with red glints slashed in the centers. She whimpered with sheer terror, jerking her gaze to the side, clenching her eyelids. She'd seen the long white fangs and she'd heard the animalistic snarls that came from the beast surely set to kill her. First, a monster hunted her and now another apparition held her captive. Yet the powerful menace against her felt like a man with hands, arms, legs, and a heavy chest. She felt men's trousers along her bare legs, and she felt a jacket fallen open over her breasts. Was it a man?
Why didn't it strike? her mind wailed, as her breath heaved. Was this the beast that chased her? She thought not. But her questions and abject terror paled in comparison when she felt a hardened length pressing into her core … and what that foretold, nearly caused her to fall into hysteria.
"Don't move!" The commanding voice was a tense baritone with the aftereffects of a growl.
The appearance of human words so surprised her panicked state, she jerked her gaze toward the sound as her body quaked in reaction. Had someone come to save her?
"Don't," the beast above her commanded, "Move."
To hear the semblance of a human's voice in the world gone so mad made her hopes flare unrealistically. Yet they did all the same. She wanted to live.
"Trinity!" a man's voice shouted from the forest surrounding them.
The beast's head jerked upward to look over her head and away from stalking her with its blazing and vulturous, yellow eyes.
"Stop, brother! Don't bite her, Trinity!" the voice rang out from the distance.
Beth felt the air she held suspended leave her lungs as her hands flattened on the chest above her. Bite her? She cringed.
"Virgin's blood," the beast-man above her snarled viciously. "So potent you can smell it. Never felt this hunger before!" His voice growled, making her whimper and squirm against him with the intense need to run.
"Trinity! Brother!"
"I will fight it, Church," her beast-man vowed, half snarled, half shouted as his chest heaved into her chest. "Move away!" he yelled.
"For our mother!" the voice, called Church, returned.
Beth didn't understand anything that had happened that night. How could she end up nearly naked beneath a primal man-beast? So many things were beyond the comprehension of her innocent life. However, she did understand — or perhaps she wanted it so badly to be true — that the man called Trinity, imprisoning her, was trying to fight the urge to strike her. He couldn't be the one that had chased her through the night forest because that presence held a livid and evil malevolence toward her.
"I will rise upward and give you my jacket," the creature called Trinity said. His voice held strange inflections through the large fangs extending from his mouth. It also seemed he promised the action as though to convince himself.
Beth tensed more, trying to slow her panting breath, halfway certain he wouldn't win the battle as he began to rise upward. Then, with his arms locked on either side of her, he stopped moving, but his other worldly eyes didn't stop traveling. He looked over her face, and then he looked downward toward her bare chest. She gasped a squeal of embarrassment chasing her fear, as caution be damned, she jerked her arms between them to cover her breasts.
"You are very beautiful," his tense voice emitted lowly. His hand rose and she would have flinched away, but his gaze held her immobile. His fingers touched her cheek and they felt cold as he curled them and he stroked over the curve of her cheek with the back of his knuckles.
"Please," she begged for her life, and the red glints in his eyes seemed to dull within the yellow. His hand lifted to her temple and he did the most extraordinary thing. He wrote a cross upon her temple with his fingers.
"For my mother," he growled lowly.
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