Kiss of Life

By Seleste deLaney

The vampire’s curse has been awakened, and Jocelyn has no choice but to accept her destiny as the Blood Kissed—the one destined to destroy the vampires...or rule them. While Max and Chad want to help her reach her full potential, not all of the supernaturals share their plan.

The Council of Elders, a crazed sorcerer assassin, and a vampire hunter out for revenge have driven Jocelyn into hiding. She and her ragtag army have holed up in the forests of Michigan’s upper peninsula to get ready for the fight. If training is any indication, they should be ready for war by the time she turns fifty.

But no one is going to let her wait that long. War is nigh, the death toll is rising, and when Michigan’s most famous harbinger of doom shows up on the scene, the army of the Blood Kissed is hoping for a miracle, praying to be graced with a little kiss of life...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seleste deLaney
• Release date: Mar 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311704535

Seleste deLaney

At a young age, Seleste deLaney discovered the trick to not being afraid of the monsters under the bed was to turn them into heroes. Since that time, she’s seen enough of human monsters that she prefers to escape to fictional worlds where even the worst demons have to play by the rules and the good guys might end up battered and bruised (or dead), but they always win. And really, isn’t that the way it should be?She resides in the Detroit area with all her favorite monsters (nice ones—some are furry and the others call her Mom) and is hard at work on her next book. In those rare moments when she isn’t battling terrorists, vampires, or rogue clockworks, she can be found all over the Internet, where she loves to interact with readers.

Book preview

Kiss of Life

A Blood Kissed Novel

Seleste deLaney

Kiss of Life Copyright © 2015 by Seleste deLaney

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Cover Art © 2015 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

Edited by Skyla Dawn Cameron

First Edition March 2015

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Published by: Seleste deLaney Books PO Box 7182, Sterling Hts., MI 48312

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, Seleste deLaney Books PO Box 7182, Sterling Hts., MI 48312, [e-mail].

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

No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without permission from Seleste deLaney Books. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights and livelihood is appreciated.

More in the Blood Kissed Saga

*Of Course I Try

*The Ghost of Vampire Present

Kiss of Death

*re-releasing soon in the Blood Kissed Anthology

Other Books by Seleste deLaney

Agents of TRAIT

Gaming for Keeps

Conning for Keeps

Fighting for Keeps (April 2015)

Badlands

Badlands

Clockwork Mafia

Cupid’s Conquests

GunShy

Love & Other Indoor Sports

Dedication

To all my beta readers and critique partners

—past, present, and future—

whether it’s been one book or many,

your help and support mean more to me than you can ever know.

Prologue

Into every life a little rain must fall—though at this time of the year, snow was more likely. Either way, Remy was rather looking forward to the deluge that was heading their way. Which made it all the more frustrating that the storm clouds had been gone for so long.

When he’d first led Jocelyn Reyes to this house, he’d anticipated a lovely game of cat and mouse. Then she’d gone and proven herself smarter than he’d expected. She’d thwarted his plan to swoop in and save the day when the sorcerer assassin had nearly gotten the best of her. He’d watched the entire ordeal from his hiding place, his respect for her growing monumentally. The arrival of the damned hunter had put a little glitch in his own personal matrix, but she’d dealt with him even more handily than she had the sorcerer.

A couple of weeks was all it had taken to turn her from a meek, little mouse to a cold-blooded killer. Considering he’d initially thought the pretty little Blood Kissed wasn’t worth the skin she wore, he’d been impressed.

Then she, Max, and that tool Akerman disappeared. Poof. Into the night like a trio of the bats that lived in the cave on his estate.

Of course, the bats always came back. The Blood Kissed had been gone the better part of a year.

And Remy was still hanging out at this stupid burned out crack house in Detroit.

Sure, he could find them, but that wasn’t the point. Hunting might be fun, but chasing was demeaning. Eventually, he’d make them come to him again. Hell, eventually they’d have no choice.

For the moment, the house had become more interesting anyway. Or at least the little blonde thing who kept snooping around had. He’d noticed her for the first time near the end of summer—drive-by in a car with music a little too quiet for the neighborhood and a little too loud for someone trying not to draw attention to themselves for fear of trouble. It was the precise volume that screamed fuck you in the most polite tone possible.

That alone made her worth a second look, but she’d driven right by, only slowing down enough for someone watching to notice. She didn’t come back for over a month, not when he’d been there. A few days before Halloween, she’d parked down the street and wound through abandoned yards and alleys until the house the world forgot stood in front of her.

She’d promptly kicked in the front door and the boards covering it.

Ash and dirt and dust coated her hair. The strands were so ratted, they approached the early stages of dreads. Remy dropped into the house from an upstairs window and concealed himself at the top of the stairs to watch her. He rapidly decided she could pull off the Rastafarian look if she wanted. She had that air about her, the devil-may-care and all that. She would just be the angriest Rastafarian he’d ever seen. Harsh angles lined her face as she scowled into the depths of the house, staring straight past the blackened walls and furniture to a spot in the kitchen.

He was pretty sure the door she’d left dangling off its scorched hinges hadn’t been the target the blonde had been hoping for. A wind swept in and blew her hair in a wild curtain. The fire in her kohl-rimmed eyes as she yanked the strands from her face spoke of death and pain.

Remy liked her already.

And then her gaze had shot to the top of the stairs where he sat, masked in a cloud of shadow, and decided he might be in love.

Her ski-jump nose actually twitched as she looked right at him.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Then she turned and stalked into the kitchen, leaving him to choose whether to stay safely hidden or sneak down the stairs. When in doubt, Remy always made the smart choice.

Blurring his movements, he flew to the bottom of the stairs, re-concealing himself between the front door and the entry to the kitchen. The blonde knelt in front of the overturned table, next to the dark stain that no one had bothered to clean from the warped linoleum. What a waste of blood.

Sal, you stupid fuck. What the hell were you thinking? The woman’s hand clenched into a fist, and it wasn’t until she jerked her other hand back that Remy scented fresher sanguine. Drops squeezed through her fingers to blend with what had long dried onto the floor. He sighed. More waste. I’ll make them pay, brother. Even though you asked for this, I will make them pay for your death.

Remy blinked. The hunter had been her brother? Why wait so long to come here? Especially when the perpetrators for her dear idiot brother’s demise were long-gone?

She pressed her bleeding palm to the floor for a heartbeat then stood and marched back toward the front door. Unable to resist, Remy reached out with fingers more like those of a ghost than a man and ran them through her hair, sweeping it off her neck on a breeze of magic.

And there was the hunter’s mark tattooed on her spine just below her hairline: a scythe with ribbons trailing from it. In the blonde’s case, the ribbons were crimson, bloody...beautiful.

As her hair surrendered to gravity and fell against her back once more, she paused. Her lips twitched, curling up the smallest increment. "I get it. You’re big and powerful, but I’m going to clue you in to something. The only reason we’re not testing just how strong you are at the moment is I have other idiot vampires to deal with. You’re a blip on the radar screen of my brother’s death. You. Don’t. Fucking. Matter. Maybe another day you will, but not right now. Why don’t you go do something useful and dance on a sundial at noon?"

Yeah. It was definitely love.

But now it was Christmas Eve, and Remy’s ladylove hadn’t shown her face at the house in the past two months. Even with how long he’d been alive, two months bordered on forever when all he had to do was hang out in an empty crack house. Time to move on. The little huntress would find him again, he was quite sure.

Meanwhile, there were other pieces to put into play before his rain dance could begin in earnest.

Chapter One

Just once it would have been nice for the little bitch to praise her for a job well done. Instead, Jocelyn found herself on the floor again, plucking yet another arrow from her skin—this one embedded through her parka and right into her damn boob—while the pixie stroked her bow.

"What the hell, Janiqua? I did exactly what you told me to." Stupid pixie venom. She’d probably been out for at least ten minutes and the wound would hurt about a hundred times as long. The cold wasn’t helping either. Jocelyn was supposed to be in charge, but the pixie refused to train her in one of the cabins with heat. Apparently warmth made her soft.

Iridescent dragonfly wings whirred as Janiqua launched into flight and hovered just out of Jocelyn’s reach. You, human, did exactly what I told you to do in this lesson, but neglected everything I’ve taught you before.

Okay, but today was for today’s lesson. I dodged the attack and even took out three of your little friends in the process. Instead of a ‘good job, Jocelyn’ or even a ‘not bad for a human,’ I get a poisoned milk machine.

Then it’s for the best your breasts aren’t being used for anything at the moment. She zoomed down, snatched the arrow from Jocelyn’s fingers, and thrust it back in her tree-bark quiver. "You are learning, but if you treat everything as only a moment in time, you will never be strong enough to lead a fight against the vampire elders. They won’t break their attacks into bits and pieces for you to adapt to. Your mind needs to always expect another attack from a different direction. Our lesson is in effect until I say it is over. She fluttered back to the chair. Or until you are unconscious."

Jocelyn sat up, rubbing the back of her head, and wondered what exactly she’d hit on the way down. So what you’re saying is training is actually over, and this is all practice until I get it right. AKA until I don’t die.

The pixie sniffed as if the idea was ludicrous. Training never ends. But it’s been over seven months. If you’re planning to improve, you need to move beyond the basics.

Seven months.

Seven months of training and getting her ass handed to her by pretty much every supernatural creature here. Seven months of hiding in an old summer camp in the upper peninsula while the elders did who-knew-what in their absence. Seven months of preparing for, and avoiding, her destiny at the same time.

Blood Kissed. Blessing or curse, her future had been decided by some long-ago treaty signed in blood and magic. She was fated to control the vampires as soon as she came into her full powers.

Which would be kind of cool if she actually had any powers worth mentioning. For now the best part of the deal was that the crap running through her veins enhanced vampires, kind of like the super soldier serum affected Captain America. Sadly, the effects didn’t last as long, so while she was busy looking for her own hit of awesome, she was also on regular transfusions to make up for the blood she kept donating to the cause.

And after seven months of building an army, they had plenty of soldiers but pretty much zero unity. There were a couple exceptions, but in general separation was the order of the day. The werewolves lived in one cabin when they weren’t in the woods. The pixies had booted an owl from a hole in a tree somewhere. The magic users hung out together, but it seemed all too often like they were spying on each other’s work than actually working together. On and on it went.

And then there were the vampires.

They’d managed to rally more than a few to the cause—those most disenfranchised through the rule of the elders. Basically, they had the screw-ups with their righteous anger. And youth. A lot of youth.

In vampire terms, they weren’t much more than toddlers for the most part. On the other side of this fight, they’d be cannon fodder. The ones sent in to wear the enemy down and die a tragic, and likely pathetic, death.

They were part of Jocelyn’s front line led by the two other things she’d been avoiding for seven months.

Chad and Max.

The scary part was, with her staying as far away as possible, they’d both been on their best behavior. Straight and narrow all the way, never deviating from their goal.

And that meant one thing for sure—her sex life was dead. Hell, even the pixie knew.

Exactly how aware is everyone around here about the lack of action my boobs are seeing? Disgusted with herself and the situation, Jocelyn shoved up from the floor and dusted off the seat of her pants. Hopefully they weren’t low on painkillers since the bump on her head throbbed now that she was upright.

Well. Very well, in fact. Janiqua’s eyes trained on the corner of the room nearest the ceiling and in a rush, swooped over. When she came back in sight, a spider squirmed in its death throes on the pointy end of her bow. The pixie plucked off one of its legs and started to chew. The only people having less sex than you and those two vampires are the young werewolves, and at least they still all sleep in a mostly naked pile.

Try as she might not to look away, Jocelyn couldn’t stomach watching as Janiqua dissected the live spider. The pixie would see it as weakness, but Joce didn’t care. Torture for fun had never been part of her plan—not even where creepy crawlies were concerned. Yeah, well, the two of them in my puppy pile ends up nothing but trouble.

Something squished, and she could just picture spider guts dripping down the pixie’s arm. Then choose one and be done with it. You think you’re strong with your celibacy, but it’s weakness.

What? Jocelyn turned back, and sure enough, bits and pieces of the spider hung from Janiqua’s pointy little teeth.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, dashing the remnants of her snack to the floor. You’re too weak to make a choice between them, so you wrap up your decision to not choose in a nice little bow and pretend it makes you stronger. It is still weakness in a pretty bow. One pull and it will all unravel. The strength, the power, is in the choice. Until you find that, you will forever be weak. Janiqua hissed at the door. Your wretched animal is here, which means it is time for me to depart. We train again tomorrow, human. Be better.

Before Jocelyn made it to the door, the pixie had disappeared through a vent in the wall. She wished she could believe Janiqua just had issues with the language and had actually meant feel better from the poison, but she knew otherwise. The words had been chosen with care—Jocelyn wasn’t good enough yet, and the pixie wanted to be sure she knew it.

Sighing, she opened the door a crack. A sleek mass of gray fur dotted with snowflakes sauntered in as if it were perfectly normal for a cat to hang out in the frigid temperatures up here. Once the door shut again, the animal twitched, sending her fur ruffling in a wave that dislodged the snow.

Hey, Nikita, I missed you. Did you catch something fantastic for dinner? A couple days ago, on Christmas, the cat had deposited an enormous rat on Jocelyn’s bed. As disgusted as she’d been, she tried to look at it as a gift instead. There’d been few enough of those this holiday season, so she’d clung to every one she could find. Including that they were all still alive.

The cat hopped onto a window ledge and stared at Jocelyn, not making a sound. Her dark green eyes shone with the sort of knowledge only wild ancestry could bring. Not for the first time, Jocelyn wondered exactly how far from their larger cousins house cats really were— especially her adopted Russian Blue.

You know, I felt a lot less crazy-cat-lady when you used to answer if I talked to you. Still, Niki just stared at her, unblinking. It had been that way since they came up here. Something about being at the camp made the feline take up a vow of silence broken only by the occasional purr when deep in a trance of petting. Maybe it was the presence of the werewolves who had to smell a bit like predator to her. Or maybe it was the pixies that she liked to stalk and pounce on. Jocelyn liked to think it was the latter—honing her most potent weapon, stealth. Either way, without the mewling and hissing and other social sounds from the cat, loneliness wrapped around Jocelyn like a binding blanket, ready to smother her in an instant.

You know what, Niki? This situation sucks ass so hard it should leave hickies for months.

All of it. From the training to the worry to the cold to the ache in her chest every time she looked at Max or Chad. The only person here she could talk to at all was Logan, and more often than not, he was responsible for playing mini-alpha to the werewolves. There was no one left for her to talk to. Not even her grandmother’s ghost.

After her last bit of advice had helped Jocelyn defeat the assassin—at least temporarily—Grandma had indeed poofed and not returned. She was one person Jocelyn hadn’t expected to miss, but even her foul-mouth and cryptic messages were better than the oppressive quiet here.

Jocelyn lifted Nikita and scratched her behind the ears. Outside, the wind had picked up, swirling snow in cyclones that reached into the trees…as if some force of nature was set to fall on them and tear their world apart.

With the way she’d been feeling lately, she couldn’t decide if she should run from it, fight it, or embrace it.

The only thing she knew for sure was at the very least this particular storm would bring change, and change had to be good.

Right?

***

The steady thunk, pause, thunk drew Chad like the heartbeat of a particularly tasty morsel. Except he knew at the end of this trek, the body in question wouldn’t be happy to see him. If he was lucky, he’d walk away without a set of fangs in his own damn neck.

One of them had to be the adult here though, and so far they’d avoided each other in any but the most official settings. Train together? Fine. Dispense Jocelyn’s blood so the other vamps got enough but not too much? Fine. Pour over paperwork and numbers and inventory? They could do all that.

But in the months since they left Detroit in a rush, they hadn’t addressed the one thing hanging in the air, choking the life out of everything it touched.

Jocelyn.

Chad stepped up to the edge of the clearing and watched as Max swung the axe again and again, his ridiculously bulging muscles doing the thing that had half the women up here swooning over him. It was below zero out, and the idiot had short sleeves on. Sure, he was hopped up on Jocelyn’s blood and basically immortal, but did he have to be so showy about it?

Clenching his hands into fists, Chad tamped down the stupid jealousy. He’d played that game already, and they’d both lost Jocelyn, nearly lost her forever. He wouldn’t let that happen again, even if it meant he had to step up and broach this conversation. Hell, even if it meant he had to do all the talking.

You coming out here, Akerman, or are you just going to stare at me? Max thunked the axe into the stump he’d been chopping wood on and slid his arms into a jacket.

Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about Max not talking to him.

Sorry. Approaching you when you have a weapon in your hands still seems a little stupid. He stepped forward and, when Max dipped his head toward the pile of wood, he held out his arms.

Max dropped a few split logs into the cradle of his elbows, and when Chad didn’t argue, he bent for more. I haven’t actually tried to kill you yet. It’s possible I’d even started to think you might’ve decided not to give me a reason.

Jocelyn? Wasn’t she enough of a reason?

As if Max heard his thoughts, he dropped more wood onto the pile in Chad’s arms and kept talking as he grabbed the rest of it. If you think my love for Jocelyn would push me to doing something stupid, just stop. She’d never forgive me for killing you as long as you’re on our side. He stood and smiled, the curling of his lips holding only the slightest trace of evil intent. Though, the moment you decide to jump ship, you’re fair game.

Together they started trudging back toward the cabins. Good to know there’s a limit on your ability to tolerate me.

It has nothing to do with that. You’re dangerous, Akerman. Foolhardy and rash and...young. He waved off any argument with a scowl. "I know you don’t like to hear it, but in the vampire world, you’re young. You still have that whole I’m invincible thing going on. You’re not, and Jocelyn sure as hell isn’t. You get to stick around because she says you do. But if you become a threat to her safety, I will rip you apart like you’re made of straw and then set you on fire in the damn sunlight."

At the woodpile, Chad dropped his logs while Max methodically put his in place. His irritation dissipated a bit as he watched, truly seeing the difference between them for the first time.

Chad threw his logs into the pile where they could be picked up and used as easily as any other. Yet, even now he could see where a big snow would cover them, making them wet and useless—all because he was in a hurry to get to whatever came next. It didn’t matter if it was more log splitting because in his rush, he left this work half-done.

Then there was Max. He attacked splitting wood the same way he did everything. It wasn’t just about getting the job done or doing it fast. Max had the patience to do it right. The same way he’d made sure the cabins had heat for this winter and the roofs didn’t leak. The same way he took the young werewolves under his wing and taught them.

The same way he waited for Jocelyn to come around.

That last