Crossing the Vale: Blood Tithe, #0

By Hargrove Perth

Isabella has been hiding behind a shade for centuries, a spell that has concealed her identity for the last 500 years. A blood oath to avenge her father will not allow her to rest until the vow is completed. She's living in vampire infested London where she works as a bartender at a VAC sanctioned job in a blood rave - a place where vampires can find willing blood slaves to lessen their thirst. Listening to the fangers, as she calls them, discuss what's happening in the vampire precincts lets Isabella learn things humans shouldn't know. When the fanger community starts talking about the crowning of a new Vale, a vampire prince, she knows trouble is coming. The Selection will be held, a sorting ground for the new Vale to choose one woman to be his immortal bride, but it's at the expense of hundreds of other women who will end up as blood slaves at the Tower. An unexpected alliance with a fanger just might give Isabella access to the interior workings of the Selection and a chance at fulfilling her blood oath, but only if she can hold the shade long enough to get close to the queen, Vale Cristiana, who's desperate to find the witch who cursed her before her time runs out.

 

Prequel to the Blood Tithe Series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paranormal Pen
• Release date: Nov 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386739890

Hargrove Perth

A perpetual night-owl and lover of all things paranormal related, Hargrove spends a great deal of time researching the larger than life characters of history to formulate characters unforgettable and strangely adored. She writes horror, dark romance, fantasy, and paranormal in the Adult, New Adult, and YA categories. When asked why paranormal, she said, "I'm the girl who cries at the end when Frankenstein is misunderstood, who wants Dracula to keep Mina in his arms forever... I see the humanity in them that others cannot." 2014 Author of the Year by Double Decker Books in Historical/Horror Dark Days Remy Broulette. DDBA 2015 Author of the Year YA Fantasy Miss Crabtree's School for Unnaturals, DDBA 2015 Nominee YA Fantasy Chronicle:Dark Sea Triad, and DDBA 2015 Author of the Year Horror (comedic) Coven Wives.

Book preview

CROSSING THE VALE

HARGROVE PERTH

Crossing the Vale Copyright February 2018

Hargrove Perth

All Rights Reserved.

NO PORTION OF THIS work may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without the explicit written consent of the author and the author's publisher. This work contains people who have been used in a fictionalized setting for the purpose of historical reference. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is used strictly for the embellishment of the story to lend credible influence to the fictionalized work. The copyright laws of 1988, namely the Berne Convention Copyright Laws of 1988, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, enacted by Congress protect this work from piracy and any transmission, trade, or sale through means electronic, printed, shared, or otherwise is strictly prohibited and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Published by Obsidian Cat Press

Edited by Smart Cat Productions

Cover art Design by Dark Water Arts Designs

Dedication

For my dear friend Kelli Gresham, a truer and kinder friend could never be found. I love you.

For author JA Stone who has become a trusted friend in the world of writing. Thank you for your friendship.

Every book has a soundtrack that fuels the writing. The soundtrack to this book was the music of Slydigs, a fabulous band out of the UK. Take a listen. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Isabella

HOW DID WE END UP LIKE this? I whisper.

It’s a question I’ve asked a thousand times while standing here in this exact same spot, staring at those markers, those lumiferious powered pylons designed to keep humans outside their sectors and in our own.

At least the fog is rolling in off the Thames. It will make it easier for me to slip out unseen and into their midst, especially come 3 a.m. when my shift ends.

Segregated.

It’s how we live now.

Vampires have their own areas and so do the humans. Stepping into one of those sectors means certain death for violating the Peace Treaty of the Sanguisuge from 1898.

It hardly seems fair that something so old should still be adhered to with such vigor.

We should’ve killed them when we had the chance.

Now their numbers are too great and their lineage too strong for humans to stand against them. So we pretend they aren’t even there, like naive little school children.

There’s a rumor, which I’m sure is all it is... a hopeless rumor, that there’s a vamp free zone in the Highlands if you can make it there. Making it out of the city is nearly impossible with all the cameras and lasers they have set up to track human activity. Cross the threshold outside the monitored areas without presenting your id and you’re as good as dead.

If there is any lesson to be learned out of all of this, it is: man is evil by nature, God doesn’t care, the Devil finds us amusing, and the only perfection in the world is evil...

And lastly... none of this would’ve happened if one of my ancestors wasn’t bent on revenge. So my family tree bears a burden too.

There’s been high activity in the thirteen Sectors that separate London. Word on the street is a new Vale is about to be crowned, a new fanger Prince, King, whatever the hell they call them. Only one of the thirteen Primevals can turn a Vale – a human male specially selected to rule. A Valess is never crowned. It’s used as a title only for the wife of the newly crowned vampire Prince. The Queens of each sector fear being over-thrown. Vales are easier for them to control.

Their hierarchy is strange, something not easy to understand since a Queen can create a Vale and he can choose a mate, or the Queen chooses one for him that becomes his Princess without the hope of ever becoming Queen.

Only a Primeval can be a Queen or King within the Sector and act as a sole ruler.

The Princes take the last name of Vale, the Queens use it as a title. I guess they do that to show that their newly turned prize belongs to them.

Like I said, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

It makes me sick just thinking about what is coming. I hate how they control everything now.

Women will be lining up in the streets to be part of the ‘Selection’, an absolutely absurd process where one woman is chosen to be the wife of the new Vale... only one.

That’s the clincher right there. No one knows what happens to those women after they are chosen and taken back to the Sectors. Only one makes the cut but none of them return. I’ve long said they become blood slaves but talk like that can end you up in jail or worse yet, turned over to them. So I just keep my mouth shut. No sense in ruining my plan or the destiny passed down by my family by that stupid Blood Oath.

It’s time to get ready and head out. I really need to get my bag packed.

I’m stalling.

Tonight’s the night Victor is to meet me in the alley of the Boar’s Head, a local bar where familiars hang out, once my shift is finished. He’s a bloodsucker, but he’s also a long-time friend. I knew him before he got fanged. We grew up together, well sort of. If the information he has is worthwhile, it could mean my Blood Oath might get fulfilled.

I hate my assigned job, the one dictated by the VAC-Vampire Area Council.

Everyone has one.

Mine just happens to be better than some.

At least it’s not a factory job. Being a bartender might not be the most glamorous profession in London, but at least it’s interesting. You meet all kinds of people... and vampires, or fangers as we call them in Sector Eleven, but the familiars are the worst.

Vamp junkies.

Wannabes.

A waste of human space.

It’s something that has never made sense to me, why you would want to be a walking buffet for the vampires, but some people out there are just looking for a way to survive, and from what I’ve been told the Sectors pay good money for certain blood types. A woman’s got to eat and pay the bills I guess.

I walk to the closet and pull out a black shirt and a pair