The Vampire's Release (Undead in Brown County #4)

By S.J. Wright

Her hair smelled like ripe oranges. It teased and beckoned me forward. I came to stand beside her and took one of the gently waving amber locks into my fist. Her head turned towards me, but she closed her brilliant eyes and let her lashes sweep over whatever emotion that might have been blooming inside her head. Without real intent, my fingers left her hair and touched her chin.

“Why do you close your eyes?”

“You frighten the hell out of me, Michael.”

Sarah and Michael have faced deadly challenges. He gave himself over to his worst enemy to save her life. When an old friend comes to his rescue, her methods may bring an end to the Michael that Sarah Wood has come to love. The secret to his release may give rise to a lethal monster who poses the greatest threat that Sarah has ever faced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.J. Wright
• Release date: Oct 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301338429

S.J. Wright

Stay-at-home martyr, paranormal fiction author, rapid reader of Kindle fiction.

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THE VAMPIRE’S RELEASE

Book Four of the Undead in Brown County Series

By S.J. Wright

This book is dedicated to my sons.

Your smiles, laughter and hugs bring me such joy.

I adore you both so much.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2012 by Stephanie J. Wright – Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

PROLOGUE

June 29, 1952

The whiskey blurs out real life nicely. The burn as it goes down is nothing anymore to me. Claire has said that she’ll find every one of my hidden bottles. She couldn’t. I don’t even know where they are. I don’t know where they come from most of the time. I think the god-damned vampires are behind the whole thing. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t want the stuff. I wouldn’t need it.

Little Robby found a loose fang in the north meadow yesterday. I told him it was probably from a coyote. The kid looked at me like I was a liar. He’s a sharp one. I hate that he will have to fool with all this when I’m gone. That’s the biggest reason I started writing in this journal. When I finally keel over, I hope all these damned vampires are gone. But if not, Robby’s going to need to know.

The new one, Michael, is a different sort. He hates my guts and never lets me forget it. And he’s angry at the Council for putting him away. Now that I know why they did it, I’m always telling Claire to head into the house early. I don’t need him creating vampire freaks out of my family.

- From the Journal of Jonathan Wood

Chapter 1 – Michael

There was a part of me that realized I had succeeded, even though my ancient body struggled against death and afforded me little in the way of physical relief from the torture. After having so much of my blood drained from my veins by doctors bent on replicating its properties, the agony of going without was becoming familiar.

I was cold. I realized vaguely that I had been cold for a long time. But I had never physically felt it as sharply as I did in that horrible little room. The instinct that humans have to shiver is not present in vampires. So I lay there in that bed like a corpse, feeling the sensation of it as I never had before.

The walls of my prison were oddly comforting in a twisted sort of way. They were keeping me in what looked to be an old bedroom with yellow peeling wallpaper decorated in roses. Not just red roses, but pink, yellow, and white. They were a vague reminder of the morning I strolled through a decadent French garden with Amanda in 1933. I remembered how she had fretted so much over a few errant drops of blood that had spoiled her yellow morning dress after joining me for a warm red liquid breakfast. I had laughed at her vanity only after checking my own clothing for any spots.

We seemed made for each other, her and I. Two deadly pieces of forgotten humanity bent on flooding ourselves with pleasure, whether it was gorging ourselves on the blood of a Russian prince, playing in high-stakes card games against American heiresses or climbing to the summit of Mount Everest.

Of course, it was not all blind succulence. There were single seconds of that period in which I saw the truth of my immortal lover. She was unusually violent with her victims, often removing their heads from their shoulders immediately after having her fill. Whether she felt any real guilt over her excessive mutilations was unclear to me. Having her near was enough back then. I may have even felt a measure of admiration towards her daring ways.

In the end, my own fragile strands of morality held fast. One hard and fast rule I have adhered to since becoming undead was to never, ever hurt a child. I suppose there is some connection there to my own childhood, and I don’t doubt that a deep session with an open-minded psychotherapist would reveal much about that particular qualm, if I were willing to put myself through such a thing. But this rule of mine regarding children was not something that Amanda and I agreed on.

The first time I caught her trying to take the blood of an innocent boy, an inner rage consumed me that was so fierce; I temporarily forgot the love I had for my gorgeous redhead. She felt the sting of my teeth and felt the strength of my hands around her neck for the first time. It startled her, that intense emotional reaction. She saw something in me during that moment that frightened her, and it had nothing to do with my physical strength or speed. She seemed to recognize the fierce light in my eyes. Perhaps it was familiar due to someone in her past that had held firm to some belief that didn’t coincide with her own lack of humanity.

It changed our relationship, creating doubt and distrust where before there had only been adrenalin and mutual satisfaction. The boy she’d been feeding from survived. Barely. I was more cautious after that incident and began to spend more time away from Amanda. She adapted to the change, drawing away from me long enough to cause me to worry and then returning like a beautiful bird to whichever dark place I’d taken myself.

My disillusionment with her grew and festered like a boil, the infection spreading and hardening me against her numerous charms until the only positive things we had left were memories of our early days together, such as the rose garden in Paris.

I should have known it would come to that sort of an end. I did know. Jones had spared not a single chilling detail about how Amanda had tortured him. At the end of our affair, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw accusations her way and remind her of the Captain, whose memory she looked on with measured indifference. Maybe if I could have penetrated or possibly cracked the protective walls she’d built around herself, I might have discovered the source of her anger. But then everything began to go wrong with the Council. The monstrous head of politics rose up, creating a shadow of everything else in my world.

Isaiah was fortifying his league of minions and whispering lies into the ears of the other Council members. It was enough of a political push to have them all begin to doubt me and whether or not I had the ability and moral fortitude necessary to rule.

I was supposed to be a monarch of sorts over the undead in America. It had been Teddy’s idea. She had always had more faith in me than sanity should dictate. She intended me to rise to the challenge, exercise my powers, rule with fair judgment and a moral stance that few of my kind possessed. I often wondered what facet of my personality might have given her that impression. Perhaps she had heard somehow of my intense need to protect children and assumed that attribute would extend to my night-dwelling brethren.

Vincent and Gregory, the two eldest brothers had been warring with one another for centuries behind the scenes. They had agreed reluctantly to my future reign. In public conferences, they were coolly polite and sometimes remarkably civil to each other. What my spies discovered was that during these high-brow Council meetings, the vampires and humans hired by Vincent and Gregory were conducting their own operations of which the Council had no idea. It ended up being a series of attempts to gain power over human leaders through threats, bribery and cold-blooded murder. All these things were done to humans in power in order to influence the eventual influx of vampires into American politics.

It was a sad ploy that ended quickly once the rest of the Council discovered what they were attempting to do. Gregory was reprimanded by the Council and removed from his seat. He retreated completely from our secretive society and from the country itself. The last rumor I’d heard about Gregory was passed to me through my contact in London. He had apparently taken control of a little country in the Mideast and was passing himself off as an Islamic holy man.

Vincent was able to convince them that he was only using his agents to counteract what Gregory’s had done and that he was protecting vampires everywhere by doing so. The Council took him at his word and let him remain in his place of power among us.

Isaiah had been content to remain in the background, presiding over the meetings when necessary and dolling out his moderate opinions when he was asked. Towards me, he was slightly deferential in these public venues. But I felt a hole in that public persona. He was holding something back from all of us.

Victoria came face to face with Isaiah for the first time after a meeting in New York City. As we were leaving the office building that had been the site of the meeting, he offered us both shelter at his private lakeside lodge in upstate New York. I recalled the unusual strength of Victoria’s nails pressing into the wool fibers of the sleeve of my coat. I remembered the way her graceful body suddenly went still and how wide her eyes grew in her pale face as the intentions and emotional turmoil of Isaiah were viewed through her particular gift of sight.

Politely, I declined the invitation. Isaiah had stared hard at Victoria for one moment, and I feared the possibility that he may have discerned the nature of her gift. We had done what we could up to that point to keep Victoria’s ability to read minds a secret from the other vampires. The only other one who knew was Meekah.

What Victoria felt from the elder vampire had pushed her into a terrifying silence. Only after many attempts and gentle prompts could I get her to reveal to me what she had felt in Isaiah’s presence. What was behind that bearded face and inside the brain of that creature was so dark and loaded with grisly images that Victoria had an incredibly hard time putting it into words.

Even now, I find it hard to confront the demonic intentions

Reviews for The Vampire's Release (Undead in Brown County #4)

[Leanne Crabtree · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Since I read this after reading book 3, it made a lot more sense to me than the 18 months between book 2 and 3.

Anyway, I'm glad that Sarah finally made her mind up and chose Michael, he'd always cared for her so for them to end up together has made me happy for them. Team Michael!

As for the rest, everything that had been building up over the previous three books was brought to a head in this and we see the final showdown with the Council and some of the other Vampires. I'm glad a lot of it fell on the good guys side.

If you're going to read this, you should read them as closely together as possible to get the full affect of the story.

I've seen the author is planning on a fifth book, but I think the series has ended well enough without it so I don't think I'll read it if it does come out.