The Order of Vampyres 3
Destiny Calls
After making the ultimate sacrifice in order to save his perfect brother and mate, Cain Hartzler’s patience with Destiny has grown thin. Resigned to an eternity spent alone, Cain decides it’s time to choose his own Destiny once and for all. But every choice he makes holds a greater consequence than the last.
There is only so much an immortal heart can take, and once Destiny Santos grabs hold of Cain’s, he is changed forever. Cain’s ever-confident bad-boy reputation is shaken to the core by this mere mortal, and he will do anything to have her, but another female has set her heart on Cain, and he must make an impossible choice once again.
A storm unlike any other is coming, The Order is changing, and passion will burn hotter than ever before when Cain Hartzler is finally pushed too far. There is no escaping Destiny when she calls!
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 93,062 words
DESTINY CALLS
The Order of Vampyres 3
Lydia Michaels
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
DESTINY CALLS
Copyright © 2012 by Lydia Michaels
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-712-4
First E-book Publication: November 2012
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the unique and extraordinarily beautiful Ivone Santos.
Don’t settle. He’s out there.
Destiny will make sure he finds you.
({Hugs})
DESTINY CALLS
The Order of Vampyres 3
LYDIA MICHAELS
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
Cain scented a female. Soft and feminine, his nostrils flared as her fragrance mixed with the crisp, cool scent of freshly fallen snow that filled his lungs. Fallen leaves formed a foundation under the blanket of white, yet russet-colored pine needles made up pools of exposed earth under the canopy of evergreens.
It had been a cold winter with days devoid of blue skies and sunshine. Perhaps the bone-bleached opaqueness of the heavens sensed the bleakness of the world below. Twenty women had been brutally murdered in these woods, and Cain was growing more and more frustrated by the minute because he was no closer to finding the monster, the slaughterer, he sought. The thrum of the wilderness surrounded him, the beat of outside life trespassing among many natural habitats. The female was mortal.
For months he had been following the English news. He returned to The Order to tell the council what he suspected only to have his concerns pushed away like childish ramblings interrupting adult business. Sure he was young compared to the rest of his kind. At thirty-eight years he was a baby, but he was also more aware of the world outside their life on the farm than most.
So much had changed in the past year. The constraints of Amish living became all too suffocating. Like a noose around his neck, the repressive traditions were tightening with every twist and turn. Many simply fell limp and allowed the elders to dictate to them, but Cain needed to break away. He still was unsure if he would ever go back for more than just a visit with his family. He never truly fit in there, and the more exposure he had to the English world, the more he changed.
A sort of canned melody broke the quiet of the woods. Cain’s head snapped up and turned sharply to the left where the noise was coming from. She was close. His strong legs bunched with muscle, tightening like a spring, snapping and propelling him upward some twenty feet. He leapt into the trees and scanned his surroundings.
Spindly branches of deep green and black made up too thick of a shelter over the forest floor, so he dropped back to the ground, landing with agility into a crouch low on the snowy floor.
“Filho da puta.” The distant whisper traveled over the breeze to his ears. He didn’t understand the words, but they were spoken by a female. He began to move quickly, tracking the artificial sound of a woman singing about possibly having it all and then rolling in something deep. He still didn’t quite understand English music, and magically it seemed to come out of tiny little hidden devices loud enough to fill a room.
The music stopped, and he stilled.
“Hello?” the female voice said. The muffled chatter of a male came from the phone. The male voice, too, had a canned sort of echo. It was too muffled for him to make out the words.
“Hi, Vito. How are you?” the female said, and Cain began to quietly navigate his way through the trees to find the host of the voice.
Cain’s chest worked as he drew in her scent and moved farther up the mountain. Although it was winter, his body heated from the excitement of the hunt. His heavy leather boots, laced over his brindle and gray canvas pants, pressed deep prints into the snow. His breath puffed clouds of warm moisture before him, and his heated flesh created its own climate.
His exposed, muscle-laden arms glistened with a sheen of dewy perspiration. Cain had recently discovered many new gifts he possessed. Being something other than warm blooded or cold blooded was one of them. He couldn’t remember the last ti
me the temperature affected him.
“Merda,” the female cursed under her breath then cleared her throat. Cain was getting closer. “I, uh, needed to borrow something.” More muffled talking from the canned male voice. “Look, don’t get mad, but I needed it.” The female’s voice sounded unsure. “Uh, I sort of can’t.”
He drew in on her. “Why not?” the male voice snarled, and Cain tried to piece together the conversation. He gathered that the female was speaking on a cellular phone. Whoever the male was, perhaps he would come collect his female before some feeish rogue came and slaughtered her. Stupid English broad.
“I sort of lost my ride, and I can’t get back right away,” she mumbled.
“Back? Where the hell are you?” The male’s displeasure was evident in the pitch of his gruff voice.
“Jim Thorpe.”
“God damn it, Destiny! And what the fuck…” As the male continued to shout at the female, Cain tracked her smell until he had her in his sights. His stomach knotted the moment he set eyes on her. Of all the imbeciles who would be dumb enough to venture into these woods with a killer on the loose, he should have known that eventually this particularly annoying female would be one of them.
Destiny Santos was a female he was quite familiar with. Her persistent reporting for a local English news channel had more than exploited the fact that there was a rabid animal on the loose in the woods. Unfortunately the general public didn’t understand that this was not the typical wild beast they were dealing with, and if Cain could get hold of this dark-haired little piece of fluff long enough to wipe her mind, they never would. The last thing his people needed to deal with was the unstable outside world learning of their existence.
He refused to accept that hundreds of years of living peacefully secreted away in the mountains of Pennsylvania, under the guise of being Amish, could be completely spoiled by the hands of one mouthy little woman. No. He wouldn’t permit their exposure, especially not at the hands of Destiny Santos. She had been an itch, a thorn in his side, since he had first met her meddling around these woods searching for a story for her English news program.
“That’s why I have the crossbow.” Cain crouched low and silently jumped into a nearby tree. This female was quite a piece of work. Her attire looked ridiculous against the backdrop of the cold dark woods. The more time Cain spent among the English, the more he realized practicality was not their strong suit.
She tucked her black hair behind her ear, exposing a flushed caramel-colored cheek. Her eyes were too big and darkened with coal somehow, causing the dark sweep of her full lashes to appear almost feline like. She was completely Americanized from her tailored clothing, ugly boots, and denim-clad legs all the way up to the high arch of her eyebrow. Even her hair was unnatural, the severe sweep of black covering her forehead. She was as manufactured as the heavy bag that hung from her shoulder.
The muffled male voice continued to shout out of the flat, square phone Destiny held to her ear. “Are you insane? There’s a fucking killer in the woods, and you don’t have the common sense to stay out of there. Why can’t you have a normal job?”
“Like who, all the strippers you work with?” At the mention of strippers, Cain’s head perked up. A fascinating thing, stripping. Growing up on an Amish farm where dancing was somewhat frowned upon and music consisted of biblical hymns, he found the English’s version of dance rather…refreshing.
Yes, he was an advocate of the establishments these so-called ‘strippers’ labored within, and so long as it wasn’t anyone he knew dangling from the pole he saw no fault in patronizing such businesses.
He bet little Miss Destiny would look rather delectable dangling her generous curves on the stage of a strip club. She was short and round in all the right places. Her breasts were more than voluptuous, making the nip of her tapered waist all the more defined. Then her hips swelled and filled her tight denim pants in a way that hid nothing.
That plump little rump of hers was the kind a man would definitely pay money to see displayed in one of those useless beribboned undergarments the English ladies were so fond of wearing. Although she was annoying, even Cain couldn’t deny that Destiny Santos was something to be admired.
“At least they’re safe. You, on the other hand, have a death wish.” Cain had to agree with the man’s opinion of Miss Destiny. She wasn’t the brightest star in the night. For a woman who reported on every recent murder in these woods, to Cain’s thinking, she was plumb stupid to be hanging around without protection. Although she did have some sort of bow and arrow weapon in her hand, the item looked as ridiculous and unnatural on her person as those English dogs dressed in tutus.
The telephone made a sound, and she pulled it away from her ear, looked at the bright screen, and her eyes widened. “Look, V, I gotta go. My phone’s about to die.”
“Well, tell me where you are and do not go into those woods. I’ll be there in a little over an hour.” Cain relaxed. He could hang back and make sure the female didn’t get into trouble while the male came to retrieve her.
She seemed resigned to the fact that no one wanted her in these woods. “I’ll meet you right by the—” A musical, cheery chirping tune played from the phone, and she stomped her foot and stared angrily at the device. “Merda!”
Cain wasn’t sure what had happened. Where was the male going to meet her? She shivered and tucked the telephone into her coat pocket, the screen no longer illuminated. She fumbled to fit her chilled fingers into a pair of gloves and crossed her arms. She began to bounce in place, and Cain was mildly distracted by the sway of her large breasts.
Her calm dissolved as her large eyes darted from one shadow to the next. Her little white teeth began to chatter under her full lips. Cain had a fleeting sense of compassion and decided he should help the pathetic creature. Being that Cain was disciplined in controlling the elements, he figured he could at least send a warm gust of air her way. He dropped softly to the ground, landing almost silently in the shadows.
“Who’s there?” She looked left then right, and Cain could sense her panic. He focused on her and tried to send a wave of calm her way, but it didn’t seem to reach her.
Suddenly, although hidden deep within the recesses, untouched by the silver light of the moon, Cain was being targeted. Destiny’s hands trembled, her eyes appeared unfocused, and Cain knew she couldn’t see him, yet that silly weapon was now trained on his chest. As silly as that weapon looked in her unsteady arms, he was in no mood to get shot, and unsteady arms weren’t to be trusted.
He stepped silently to the right, and the crossbow remained pointed at the space he had now vacated. He was slightly impressed as she stood perfectly still except for the slight way her body shook, tense for battle, for nearly ten minutes. He was so involved with really looking at her, noticing the way her lips trembled and that she had the daintiest little beauty mark just above her right lip, he barely picked up on the other’s presence. Destiny, however, permeating the air with fright, was on high alert.
A crunch of movement disturbed the silence behind her, and she whirled with the grace of an irrational arachnophobic female noticing a spider on her person. The scent of her panic filled him. “Who’s out there? I’ve a weapon, and I’ll shoot anyone who gets too close.”
Whoever gave this woman a weapon clearly had not thought the gift through. Cain had no doubt she would shoot anything, but he would also bet she was more likely to harm herself in the process. Trembling like the last autumn leaf clinging on a branch for dear life, she was almost comical. Then something else struck his senses, and he tensed.
Vampyre.
The other was male, older, and, unfortunately, aroused. Cain breathed in his scent but didn’t recognize it. Cain’s instincts told him the male was in an elevated position. The sheer stink of his possessive intent told Cain he wasn’t planning on sharing the female.
A limb whined and snapped high above the canopy and made a buffeted fall to the ground, nearly crushing the dark-eyed
little vixen. She luckily dodged the heavy branch in time, but almost shot Cain in the process. While she clumsily jumped out of harm’s way, she jarred the shooting mechanism on the bow and released the arrow, sending it whizzing through the air directly at him. He zipped out of the way just as the arrow embedded deep in the trunk of an evergreen so close to him and with such speed that a droplet of sap splattered on his skin.
Cain focused on the unseen whereabouts of the other male as he kept Destiny in his peripheral. At least her weapon was now rendered useless. She had fallen onto her back and proceeded to stand, again with the grace of a newborn lamb. Tremors shook her curvy frame, and Cain cursed as she pulled out another arrow and loaded it into the sophisticated weapon with trembling fingers. If that wasn’t bad enough, he now scented fresh blood.
As she scowled and batted at the mud covering a good portion of her curvy legs peeking out beneath her fawn-colored coat, she winced as her finger brushed over the wound. Distracted by the scent and her peculiarly irritating lack of survival instincts, he missed the other male’s advancement on her until it was too late.
An ominous growl echoed from above, and then she screamed. The male fell from the trees like a weather-beaten wild animal. Her already big eyes went huge, and she turned and began to run deeper into the woods. The sound of her breathing beat off the trees and reverberated in her wake, leaving the air laced with pure terror. Cain automatically took up chase.
Dark black hair trailed behind a dirty, naked masculine form. He was heavily muscled and grunted like a beast as he chased the girl. Like a cat leisurely torments a mouse, the other was not moving remotely close to the speed their kind was capable of, and Cain recognized the twisted purpose in his slowed pace. The beast planned to torment its prey.