Elizabeth: Blood-Rose Guardians: Book 1

By Daisy-Jane Maxwell

Elizabeth has passed through time, a witness to the great strengths and weaknesses of humanity. Trapped in an ageless body by her long-lost love, Elizabeth hides from the changing world in inconspicuous places, biding her time while she seeks the answer to the question that has burned within her since she was a girl: 'What is her purpose?' Little does she know that her world would soon be tipped upside down, her age-old question would be answered and a Guardian will rise through the darkness! Elizabeth is the first book in the series Blood-Rose Guardians. It is with Elizabeth Rose Smith that the journey, and indeed adventures, begins. Book 1 introduces the Guardians - a bloodline of warriors who, against all odds, will fight for the dominion of the Light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528962704

Daisy-Jane Maxwell

Daisy-Jane Maxwell is an Australian author currently residing in Tasmania. She is a teacher, gardener and, in her spare time, endeavours to write about the paranormal romance and science fiction genres. Daisy started writing in 2008, with the first book published in 2009. Since then, she continues to work on the Blood-Rose Guardians epic series and other independent works. One day, she would like to retire from teaching so that she has enough time to immerse herself completely in books. However, that day has not yet come, so the balancing act of work and writing continues.

Book preview

Epilogue

About The Author

Daisy-Jane Maxwell is an Australian author currently residing in Tasmania. She is a teacher, gardener and, in her spare time, endeavours to write about the paranormal romance and science fiction genres. Daisy started writing in 2008, with the first book published in 2009. Since then, she continues to work on the Blood-Rose Guardians epic series and other independent works. One day, she would like to retire from teaching so that she has enough time to immerse herself completely in books, but that day has not yet come and so the balancing act of work and writing continues.

Dedication

For my son and ‘my’ other children, who inspire me

every day.

Copyright Information ©

Daisy-Jane Maxwell (2019)

The right of Daisy-Jane Maxwell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528919494 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528962704 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Prologue

I thought I knew myself, knew who I was. I had certainly lived long enough to figure it out, but it wasn’t until the man who had taken my humanity came back into my life, that I discovered I was somebody completely different. His return forced me to discover myself, and in doing that, to find out who I was destined to be – and that person was somebody very different from the me I was accustomed to being.

My name is Beth. It’s short for Elizabeth. I am twenty-one years old. I have been twenty-one years old for five hundred and forty six years. For most of that time, I have lived in France. I have seen the world change. I have been part of that change. I have heard it said that we live, we love and we learn. I don’t know who said that, but it is fairly representative of my life. I have lived, I have loved and I have learned that to be safe, sometimes it is better to stay inconspicuous, especially when you were born to stand out.

There was nothing special about me a month ago. I didn’t stand out in a crowd. Long brown hair, green eyes, slim build… I look like a thousand other girls in Paris. A month ago I was invisible, but then he returned and tipped my world upside down.

Chapter 1

Introductions

His hand slid under my shirt. It moved from my hip up my side and settled in the centre of my back. It was warm; it felt more so because my skin was cooler than his. Several days without feeding had ensured that. I could feel the rough bark of the tree pressing against my shoulder blade as he pushed against me. He was strong, but I was stronger. He didn’t know that though, it was easier to attract a man if he thought he was stronger – and like it or not, like him or not, it was essential that I attracted this man.

His lips pressed against mine. They were salty, rough, hot…he was tantalising and seductive…boy, was he seductive. I wanted him…wanted to taste him. His lips moved to my neck, every touch made me tingle. It was a fire that sprang from his contact and radiated out and away and shimmered to my extremities, setting my nerves ablaze. His left hand settled on my throat, it squeezed gently.

Are you frightened? he whispered into my neck as he continued to nuzzle my ear.

Should I be? I asked, my voice husky.

"Oui, ma chere," he replied. He was wrong. He didn’t know it, of course, how could he know that the very person he had hoped to trap – had, in fact, trapped him. She had been watching and waiting, stalking her prey like any predator would.

"Au contraire, Monsieur," I countered his response, my tone resolute and without fear.

"Pour quoi?" He looked confused. At that moment, my hands came up from my side. He squeezed my throat harder. I smiled a broad, toothy smile. His eyes widened as they glimpsed my fangs, now fully distended and ready to bite. I pushed away from the tree, swapping positions with him. My body weight alone was not enough to keep him in position so I held him in place with one hand against his shoulder; strength of the centuries contained in my muscles. I brushed my lips against his.

Relax, it won’t hurt…much. You actually might enjoy it.

I nuzzled against his neck. It was warm, his pulse rapid. I could hear his heart beating – rising toward a crescendo as the adrenaline surged. I sank my teeth into the flesh of his neck, piercing tissue and tapping the artery beneath. The warm flow was immediate. Blood filled my mouth and ran down my throat to fill my stomach. It was salty, metallic and satisfying. As I drank, my body temperature increased. My skin warmed, his blood flowing through my body. His heartbeat slowed; the adrenaline rush was over. I had consumed perhaps a litre of blood. The average man had about eight litres circulating through his body. A vampire wouldn’t usually drink enough to kill a man by themselves. Even still, a litre was a lot for one feeding. I stopped and licked the blood from his wound and my lips. The saliva on my tongue helped the wound heal. I pulled an anti-bacterial face-wipe from my handbag and wiped down his neck. I could not afford to leave DNA evidence in this century. At other times it had not mattered, but now it could make the difference between a life of freedom and one incarcerated. I looked into his eyes; they were calm. He had a smile on his face. He was mellow.

The aftereffects of feeding were always the same for my prey. Memories of the event faded as endorphins from my vampire saliva mixed into the human victim’s bloodstream. This was combined with a numbing anaesthesia which made the entire blood-letting painless following the initial bite. All that remained was two small puncture marks where my canine teeth had ruptured the skin and the artery beneath it, and these were easily healed with a bit more saliva. My saliva contains diluted vampire DNA which reacts with human cells; it is not like mixing blood – that has other, more permanent, effects. But vampire saliva could act locally to regenerate small amounts of damaged tissue. It was not only handy, but essential when human prey was involved. Humans have long memories and are not very good at dealing with difference. It has taken them centuries to even tolerate the variety within their own race, let alone other races. Vampires are a different race from humans but we are part of the same species, we are all Homo sapiens; evidently though, we are too different from the humans with whom we share the world.

Throughout history, humans have felt the need to attack and destroy individuals who appear different or even represent a different set of beliefs to the norm. Religious persecutions are a perfect example of this lack of tolerance between humans. The atrocities humans have inflicted upon vampires are just as great. Such heinous crimes due to differences have been documented since the beginning of writing. Modern writers call it genocide, but it has had many names and many justifications. Humans have a great potential for cruelty and as a result, vampires have learned to disappear by assimilating within human society. We look the same; we mostly act the same, but we have one outstanding difference: we need to drink human blood.

My favourite location to bite is the carotid artery in the neck. It is sensual, sexual and quick. The pressure of the artery forces the blood into your mouth. A litre can be consumed in a minute or two. All you have to do is swallow as the blood surges into your mouth with the pumping pulse of the heart. It’s not like lapping blood from a vein – that is slower and requires more effort. Arterial blood is sweeter; full of oxygen. Venal blood is more acidic. It’s like comparing oranges and lemons. I always preferred oranges.

"Merci, I said as I let go of him. Leave the gardens now. Go home. Have a shower. In the morning walk to the police and tell them you have been attacking women."

"Bien sur," he replied as he started to walk away. He would do exactly as I had asked – I knew without doubt that his particular reign of terror was at an end.

Post-feeding suggestion was a powerful weapon, particularly against the men I hunted. They were predators themselves. Not like me, not driven to feed for survival, but predators nonetheless. This one had been hunting women and raping them all over Paris. It had taken me a week to track him once reports had reached the media. It took one evening to bait him into following me to one of the remote pockets in Jardin du Luxembourg. He had followed me as I walked across the gardens.

Today, I first walked by him near the Senatorial palace. He had been sitting on the edge of the fountain. Children were sailing boats there. He was a predator amongst the innocents; completely inconspicuous to the women who frequently ran through the gardens. Of course I had been dressed to trap him: I wore a red, strapless shirt, which now hung loosely about my waist, and a skirt, a short one, revealing most of my thighs. I appeared to be an easy target for a sexual predator such as he had been. The clothes were an advertisement of my suitability as a potential target. It had been too easy to lure him. I had walked slowly past him by the fountain, pretended to roll my ankle, then continued on with a slight limp. In my peripheral vision I had seen him rise from his position and fall in behind me. I could smell him. A mixture of cologne and sweat, his breath tainted with garlic and vodka. He had closed in on me as I entered one of the more private areas to sit down and rub my apparently injured ankle. At first, he walked past. I heard him circle back behind me through the shrub-covered path at the edge of the garden. I smelled his distinctive scent return directly behind me, I couldn’t see him but I didn’t need to.

Vampire senses are heightened. I hear better, smell better, and see better than any human could hope to; I am designed to hunt – a miracle of evolution. Everything about me makes me superior to my prey. I am camouflaged to walk undetected through the very heart of a crowd. I have strength, speed, venom and, if all of that was not enough – I have at my disposal the energies of nature; I have magic!

I knew he was behind me the instant he stepped off the path onto the grass. One of his rough hands grabbed my shoulder, the other my elbow as he yanked me from the seat and slammed me into the tree. It was a move he had clearly perfected on other more helpless victims. Had I not been expecting his attack, I too, would have been taken by surprise at the speed of his attack. He had then planted his lips on mine – in some perverse attempt at domination. He was, in his mind, showing me that he was powerful, strong, virile and in control. He was wrong. I would be the last woman he kissed in a long time.

To anyone who chanced to walk past, the scene was rather typical of a summer evening in the gardens of Paris. Lovers came here all the time, they almost always had. Paris was supposed to be the one of the most romantic cities in the world after all. Tourists from all over the world came to kiss in Paris. There were several couples doing just that in the park at this very moment. I could sense them, their emotions, and their body heat as their intimate embraces made their heartbeats rise and the blood course more vigorously through their bodies. To a casual observer Paris truly was the City of Love.

It hadn’t always been the case though. When I first arrived from England, I was barely twenty-one years old. At that time, Paris was better known for its political revolutions than for its romance. The infamous guillotine was in fine form shortly after. Heads used to roll, literally, in the Place de la Concorde. I had seen Lavoisier’s decapitation myself. He was a prominent chemist at the time, unfortunately for him, he also controlled the taxes of the city. People generally didn’t like his taxation system and his date with the guillotine was the result. Paris, had been then, a city where the people pushed back – it still occurs now, but the world at large is more civilised and the method of resistance has become less bloodthirsty. The entire world was different at that time; smaller and less understood. People were paranoid and easily swayed by a vengeful mob. My parents had been the victims of such paranoia. They were accused of being witches by a nefarious neighbour and that had been enough to cost them their lives and property. In mediaeval times, England and continental Europe had been the site of witch-hunts. Hundreds of innocent people, including my parents, had been identified, trialled and killed for using witchcraft and making deals with the devil. The most clandestine methods had been used. Many were burnt alive; others were tortured with hideous devices. Some were put through ordeals, which according to some powerful men in far off locales, should decide whether or not they possessed magic and demonic skills. I had escaped death by witch trial, not because I wasn’t guilty of witchcraft (which I had never practised), but more so because a twist of fate had given me an opportunity that my parents did not have – I lived, they died.

The summer before the witch trials hit our village, I had met a man at the London markets, had been courted by him, had shared his bed, had shared blood and without realising what I had done, had destined myself to share his eternal future. At the time, I was simply reacting to what I thought in my inexperience was an over-enthusiastic lover. I had not anticipated the effects of acquiring a mouthful of his blood as I had bitten into his shoulder.

The moment I had done it, I knew by his reaction, that it had not been expected. He had moved from above me and looked at me quizzically. I remember the shock registering in his dark eyes. Clearly, women didn’t usually bite back – my mistake. It had been my first time with a man; I was unsure of the appropriate protocol for lovemaking. As it turned out, it was that accident that saved my life; it was that moment that changed my destiny. The first time I made love with someone was the last moment I was fully human.

I recalled my own shock as my body had started to burn. The heat started in my mouth and neck and spread outwards. It was a fever like nothing I had ever experienced. Pain, burning pain penetrated and infiltrated the very fabric that composed my flesh. I was passing through the fires of Hell for my sins of the flesh – surely that was the reason. My father’s forge had surely not the heat of the Hellfire. The man, my supposed beloved, had just watched; both amusement and concern identifiable on his handsome face. I remember the searing pain for only a few seconds and then nothing. I woke up later and he was still there, lying beside me now, calmly stroking my face.

His name was Adam, and at the moment I had returned his bite; drank his blood – I became his Eve…but he had always called me his Rose. I had not known him to be anything other than human, but he was something ancient and mystical, something mythological and divine. He was a vampire!

Adam’s intention had been a seductive method of collecting a meal. My inexperience in matters of seduction had resulted in an entirely different outcome. Swapping blood with a vampire results in a permanent transformation. When I had returned Adam’s bite, he had sired me. That was the day I woke up a vampire. It was this accidental transformation that had saved my life during the witch trials.

My family, at least what had survived the Black Death, had been submitted to trial by drowning following the neighbour’s accusation. The executioners came to our home with sacks filled with stones. The struggles of my parents were inconsequential to the men who held us down and tied the rock-laden sacks around our ankles so tightly that there was no hope of escape. Each sack had enough weight to drown an ox – a mere human had no chance of survival. This was not a trial, but a sentence of death. One by one they pushed us off a cliff into a river below – waiting enough time between each to watch the bubbles dissipate as first my father’s lungs, then my mother’s emptied of air and filled with water. I was terrified and sobbing by the time they pushed me over the edge.

The premise of this particular trial was that a witch would float, an innocent would sink – though with the weight of rocks strapped to our ankles, I doubted there was any other option than to sink. My parents both sank. They were not witches – small consolation given that they had drowned. In theory, it meant that their home and land was not forfeit, but the very nature of the trial, in which all of us were tested, meant that there was no immediate surviving family to inherit the family home and land, and so, it was made available to that horrific neighbour who had levelled the unfounded claim in the first place!

When I was pushed off the cliff, I discovered the first of the many benefits of being a vampire. I could hold my breath. I could hold my breath for a very, very long time.

The water had been icy cold. Weighted by the stones, I sank to the bottom, but I did not drown. I felt my toes touch the bottom of the river and stay there held down by the rocks, but I didn’t die. After a moment’s processing my situation and the grief associated with coming face to face with my dead parents’ suspended bodies being pulled in the direction of the current; their vacant eyes staring at nothing and everything simultaneously, I loosed the ropes on my wrists and ankles and then worked myself free of the death device. I stayed below the surface of the water and swam downstream, allowing the current