Blood Tied I: Blood Tied, #1

By M.R. Storie

Married life can be so complicated, can't it? Most especially when your own family tree is . . . well, shall we say skewed like a bent coat hanger?
When Louise Pender, an insecure young vampire from a single-parent family, marries into the Hammonds' prestigious clan, she has little idea of what her future holds: a gifted daughter who hates and fears her snobbish, but blood-thirsty grandmother; a workaholic husband who spends most of his time at the family bank, and most annoyingly, a mysterious illness that strikes without warning to keep her from understanding what's really going on.
Will Louise realize there are life-threatening secrets in her new clan before it's too late? Or will her daughter Klea be consumed by the dark ancestral forces that desire her for their own purposes?
Chills, laughs, and exciting inter-species revelations to be had in this new paranormal adventure series. A new book every second month!

Blood Tied Tales of over 10,000 words each to read between full book releases.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marilyn Storie
• Release date: Nov 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781507075906

Book preview

Blood Tied I

Blood Tied, Volume 1

M.R. Storie

Published by Marilyn Storie, 2014.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

BLOOD TIED I

First edition. November 7, 2014.

Copyright © 2014 M.R. Storie.

Written by M.R. Storie.

Blood

Tied I

by M.R. Storie

Copyright © 2014 Marilyn Storie

Table of Contents

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

The Last Word

Chapter I

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1998 Durban, Connecticut

Looking good, my best friend Sabby Wescott said. Hey, is that another new dress?

Not really. Do you like it? I looked at Sabby from under lowered eye lashes. I was grateful she couldn’t see the new sandals I’d bought to go with it.

I’d bought the dress yesterday during my lunch hour. I didn’t mean to be dishonest. But admitting to anyone—especially Sabby—just how hard I was trying to be someone a guy like Jordan Hammond would want to hang with forever wasn’t something I could do. She’d been going out with Dylan Morello almost since writing was invented, back when they were both in ninth grade. They had always planned on marrying and that comfortable assumption was the bedrock of Sabby’s existence . . . .

How could someone like that begin to understand me feeling insecure about a guy?

Sabby was a great friend in many ways, but she took her future with Dylan for granted. She was already finished her training as a dental hygienist while Dylan was halfway through a plumbing apprenticeship—when he completed it, they would marry. Sabby had no clue about how I really felt. How could she? I still had no real idea of what I wanted to do in life and I’d only been dating Jordan Hammond for five months.

She looked me over more closely now. I realized she wasn’t fooled about the dress. You sure have been buying a lot of new clothes lately, Weesa. You’re making me jealous. I guess you’ve lost interest in saving for school since you got yourself a rich boyfriend.

Fat chance, I thought, though my face burned a bit.

Another thing Sabby didn’t understand was my drive to get ahead in life. Her attitude was: ‘good enough’. Mine was: ‘I have to do better.’ My father—he died before I was born—had been a doctor. I suspected my life would be different if he was still around. For one thing, getting the kind of education I craved—a degree of some sort—would be easier. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet, but I wanted to do something meaningful with my life.

When Jordan had come along, it had upset all my determined plans. Everything had changed in a wink. I was still putting money away for school, but I wasn’t leafing through college catalogues quite so much anymore. Instead, I was spending a lot of my free time trying to decide just which dress and which color of lip gloss Jordan would like best. I almost felt ashamed of my obsession with him, but at the same time, I was happy about it, too.

"It doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on school, I told Sabby and I meant it. I can afford to spend a bit of money on clothes. And just because Jordan’s family is rich, doesn’t mean he is."

She looked at me like I was an idiot. I guess I deserved it. Oh, man, she said with a disbelieving snort. Like that kind doesn’t stick together. You couldn’t pry them apart with a knife. You’re really full of it today, Weesa.

Well, maybe I was. The Hammond legacy in Durban was certainly having an unnatural effect on me because I hadn’t hesitated to drop a week’s salary on the outfit I was wearing today.

Walk This Way, where I’d found my latest heart-stopping dress, was the most expensive clothing store in Brock Mall. Its clothes were meant for young women like me, but the owner didn’t like anyone under the age of thirty. This had always struck me as ironic, because Mrs. Beecher was one of those women who—as my mother put it—couldn’t let go of their youth gracefully. She sold an awful lot of her clothes to women who were just like her. They weren’t young, but they liked to pretend they were.

The clothes in Walk This Way were stylish, all right, but too expensive for me to buy unless there was a clearance sale going on. Mrs. Beecher wore outfits I considered far too babyish for me (I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing polka dots and puffed sleeves) and I was only nineteen. My mother, a nurse at Durban Metro Hospital, said Harriet Beecher had been admitted more than once for care of infections stemming from a botched go of cosmetic surgery. My mother wasn’t being catty—she just thought it was stupid for hospital beds to be squandered on stuff like that.

Mrs. Beecher wasn’t my favorite character in Durban, but she had a point about her no-layaways policy. If she hadn’t started refusing layaways, then she probably would have gone out of business.

This was because a lot of the girls from my former school thought it was smart to wear an outfit once or twice and then return it to get their money back. And they were kind of thoughtless, too. They’d put clothes on layaway and never bother to tell a store clerk later that they’d changed their mind. It always seemed to be the rich kids who did stuff like that. The ones who weren’t rich, like me, were too conscious of being poor to be jerks.

Well, maybe ‘poor’ is an exaggeration: My mother and I weren’t exactly hard up, but we sure weren’t frivolous. I’d learned the value of money living in a single parent family. I’d been diligent about saving up as much as I could on my own for school, too. Combined with savings from a year of working (and a small student loan if I absolutely had to), I thought I’d manage a couple of years of college at least. By then, I figured, I’d know what direction I wanted to head in.

My newfound obsession with Jordan was changing things. It was making inroads on my money, for one thing. I’d already spent more than I could afford on makeup by the time I spotted the dress. I liked it so much that I’d even considered raiding my college savings for a moment (but only a moment).

Its material was a velvety stretch cotton that would make the most of anyone’s curves. It was stamped with an embedded pattern of interlocking circles which made it unique in my eyes. Mrs. Beecher may have been difficult to deal with, but she did sell great clothes. I’d found a pair of tights in her store that echoed the dress perfectly. The tights had similar interlocking circles that ran up the outer sides of each leg. Together, with sleek sandals, the effect was really striking.

I’d purchased the tights (the store owner had insisted on that, of course, because I’d taken them out of their packaging to try them on), but I’d had to wait another two anxious weeks to buy the dress. I’d wanted it so much that I had dropped into the store to visit it every few days (and to check if it was still hidden in the size sixteen section at the back of the rack where I’d put it). Someone did return it to the size four section on the weekend, but I moved it back. I’d itched to try it on again, but I didn’t dare: Mrs. Beecher was about my size and I didn’t want her getting any ideas. It was a one-of-a-kind dress and I had been determined to get it.

I have to admit it’s killer, Sabby said now. I’m not trying to be mean or anything, Weesa. I just hate it when you try to bullshit me. She leaned against the counter, swinging her purse. That mossy green color looks great on you. Every guy in this bank is staring at you so I guess whatever you paid for it was worth it. I’m even glad Dylan doesn’t work here or I’d be jealous.

I don’t care about the other guys in this place. How about Jordan? Do you see him looking over here at all?

Sabby, true friend that she was, casually looked over in the direction of the loans department for me. She pulled her sunglasses off and pretended to re-insert a lens that had popped out. I was getting impatient when she suddenly grinned. With a flourish, she perched the glasses back on her nose. He looks like he’s studying those papers on his desk, but he keeps snatching looks over here.

That made me happy. The dress had cost a lot, but it really was worth it if Jordan liked it. I passed Sabby her bank book and she went to sit down in a chair, waiting for me to get off work.

Sabby had an appointment to get her hair straightened and she didn’t altogether trust a brand-new hairdresser. She wanted me to come along and watch, to make sure the woman was doing a good job at the back of her head. I missed Albert Diamante, the hairdresser we’d always gone to at the Snip-It Shop. It was fortunate I’d had my hair newly cut by him last week, right before he dropped out of sight. People said Albert had probably gone back to the city—either he couldn’t make enough money in our little town to justify sticking around, they said, or he’d finally gotten tired of being one of the few openly gay people in Durban. 

Sabby was only a shade shorter than me, and I’d been the tallest girl in my class. Her full name was actually Sabrina, but I don’t think anyone had ever called her that. She had high cheekbones, skin the color of coffee with a double helping of cream, and an amusing way of sliding her eyes to the side so she could check out interesting-looking guys without them noticing. She’d become my best friend in high school after we’d both gone out for the track team at the same time. We’d both dropped out of track a couple of months later—the team captain had died in a freak accident and everyone was gloomy—but by then we were good friends.

I hadn’t been dating Jordan back then, but I’d noticed him right away when we’d moved to Durban from Chicago. I couldn’t get near him at school, though. There were too many popular girls after Jordan Hammond III for me to think of competing. I was just a nerdy loner who happened to be good at math. It wasn’t until he started working at the bank that I’d finally gotten to know him.

Young woman, I’ve been waiting here for two minutes and you have yet to notice you have a customer.

I started and looked up to see a well-dressed woman standing in front of me. She was as sleek as a snake, wearing a two-piece designer suit that reeked of New York. I sneezed as a cloud of expensive perfume drifted over to me, underlining her image of sophisticated opulence. Sorry, ma’am. I don’t know what I was thinking. May I help you?

Well, of course you can. Why else would I be waiting? I’d like to make a deposit.

With one perfectly manicured hand—the nails were matching claws—she pushed her bank book through to me, along with a stack of checks. She hadn’t filled out a deposit slip. I guess she figured that kind of work was for menial minions like me. The woman had already made me so nervous that I made a mistake when I tallied up the deposit. She stretched her mouth in a mean smile and corrected me.

Don’t you know how to add? The bank should be more careful about who they hire.

The other tellers stiffened in a