Banished: Revamped Series, #2

By W.J. May

In a future ruled by fear, can two outcasts find the strength to save a city?

 

Tabitha Maslov is a Feral.

 

Cast out by the Archon she served for half a century, Tay turns to the ruler of Brooklyn in an attempt to regain her status. But the decadent, forever-young, Bethania has no intention of offering aid for free. In the tunnels below Manhattan, as Archon Bethania's spy Tay nearly loses her life a second time—only to be saved once again by the man she thought had betrayed her. The man she's slowly coming to realize might be her only true friend.

 

With Manhattan in flames and a new race of monsters loose in the streets, Kaiden and Tay must trust each other now more than ever. If only that was as easily done as said.

 

Kaiden Ottaker is an abomination.

 

Saving Tabitha Maslov the first time was a mistake the Shifter Alpha Lubok might have forgiven. Deliberately turning his back on his own people in the tunnels to save her again is a decision he won't. But Kaiden can't stand by and watch the Elder die, even if his choice means he'll never again have a pack.

Kaiden can't ignore the connection he feels to Tay, but he doesn't have time to analyze his growing feelings for the strong-willed, beautiful vampire. Archon Jeremiah unleashes a plague of abominations based on Kaiden's mutated DNA, the Archon of the Bronx wants a monster for his own ends, and more than one person in power wants both of the renegades dead.

 

On the run and facing enemies on every side, can Kaiden and Tay change the course of the war between the Archons and stop Lubok's deadly plot? Or will New York City fall forever into darkness?

 

NOTE: The Revamped Series is a 'revamp' of the original Bit-Lit series published several years ago. I was never genuinely happy with the set up and telling of the story so I decided to go through it again and make is better! I hope you enjoy this version.                WJM

 

REVAMPED SERIES
Book 1 - Hidden

Book 2 - Banished

Book 3 - Converted

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Shadow Publishing
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393245599

W.J. May

About W.J. May Welcome to USA TODAY BESTSELLING author W.J. May's Page! SIGN UP for W.J. May's Newsletter to find out about new releases, updates, cover reveals and even freebies! http://eepurl.com/97aYf   Website: http://www.wjmaybooks.com Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-WJ-May-FAN-PAGE/141170442608149?ref=hl *Please feel free to connect with me and share your comments. I love connecting with my readers.* W.J. May grew up in the fruit belt of Ontario. Crazy-happy childhood, she always has had a vivid imagination and loads of energy. After her father passed away in 2008, from a six-year battle with cancer (which she still believes he won the fight against), she began to write again. A passion she'd loved for years, but realized life was too short to keep putting it off. She is a writer of Young Adult, Fantasy Fiction and where ever else her little muses take her.

Book preview

Have You Read the Hidden Secrets Saga?

Book I – Seventh Mark  Part 1 is free!

USA TODAY BESTSELLING author, W.J. May brings you a twisted Red Riding Hood fairy-tale that'll get your heart thumping - for fear and love.

Beautiful Rouge has little knowledge about her past, she has questions but has never tried to find the answers. Everything changes when she befriends a strangely intoxicating family. Siblings Grace and Michael, appear to have secrets which seem somehow connected to Rouge. Forced to be apart, Michael and Rouge's worlds collide when a hidden terror threatens to destroy Michael's family. Rouge may be the only one who can find the answer.

An ancient journal, a Sioghra necklace and a special mark force life-altering decisions for a girl who grew up unprepared to fight for her life or others.

All secrets have a cost and Rouge’s determination to find the truth may force her and Michael apart. It can only lead to trouble...or something even more sinister.

*Warning: There are werewolves in this story... and they are not friendly.*

Hidden Secrets Saga:

Seventh Mark - Part 1

Seventh Mark - Part 2

Marked by Destiny

Compelled

Fate's Intervention

Chosen Three

Spin off:

Prophecy Series:

Only the Beginning

White Winter

Secrets of Destiny

Find W.J. May

Website:

https://www.wjmaybooks.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-WJ-May-FAN-PAGE/141170442608149

Newsletter:

SIGN UP FOR W.J. May's Newsletter to find out about new releases, updates, cover reveals and even freebies!

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Revamped Series

Book 1 – Hidden

Book 2 – Banished

Book 3 - Converted

Banished Blurb:

In a future ruled by fear, can two outcasts find the strength to save a city?

Tabitha Maslov is a Feral.

Cast out by the Archon she served for half a century, Tay turns to the ruler of Brooklyn in an attempt to regain her status. But the decadent, forever-young, Bethania has no intention of offering aid for free. In the tunnels below Manhattan, as Archon Bethania’s spy Tay nearly loses her life a second time—only to be saved once again by the man she thought had betrayed her. The man she’s slowly coming to realize might be her only true friend.

With Manhattan in flames and a new race of monsters loose in the streets, Kaiden and Tay must trust each other now more than ever. If only that was as easily done as said.

Kaiden Ottaker is an abomination.

Saving Tabitha Maslov the first time was a mistake the Shifter Alpha Lubok might have forgiven. Deliberately turning his back on his own people in the tunnels to save her again is a decision he won’t. But Kaiden can’t stand by and watch the Elder die, even if his choice means he’ll never again have a pack.

Kaiden can’t ignore the connection he feels to Tay, but he doesn’t have time to analyze his growing feelings for the strong-willed, beautiful vampire. Archon Jeremiah unleashes a plague of abominations based on Kaiden’s mutated DNA, the Archon of the Bronx wants a monster for his own ends, and more than one person in power wants both of the renegades dead.

On the run and facing enemies on every side, can Kaiden and Tay change the course of the war between the Archons and stop Lubok’s deadly plot? Or will New York City fall forever into darkness?

Contents

Have You Read the Hidden Secrets Saga?

Find W.J. May

Revamped Series

Banished Blurb:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Converted Blurb

The Queen’s Alpha Series

The Omega Queen Series

Find W.J. May

More books by W.J. May

The Chronicles of Kerrigan

Chapter 1

"F or the Servitor, loyalty is everything. For what is granted can be taken away, and what is most desired can be withheld, if loyalty is not given. Do not let them forget this."

–From the journals of Edmund Ardoin, first Archon of New Orleans

The Elite Tactical Unit moved through the tunnels in near-silence, scouts at the edges watching for the telltale gleam of vampire eyes in the dark. At their head was the Servitor Matthias, who had swapped his usual white uniform for drab greys and blacks and carried a long wooden stake in his right hand.

He felt ridiculous. He had received full military training as he climbed the ranks of Archon Jeremiah’s servants, but there was an enormous difference between an aide with a few months of boot camp under his belt and the blood-bonded professional soldiers he was leading through the dark. The Archon, however, had insisted. And none of them was in any position to argue.

You are the only one I trust to handle this properly, the Archon had told him as he suited up. If you do your task well, perhaps we can discuss some... further advancement.

It was hardly an out-and-out offer, but it was as close as Archon Jeremiah had ever come to hinting at the next step. As things stood, Matthias held all the power a mortal would ever be allowed to hold in Brooklyn. To advance any further, he would need to be an Elder. It was an honor he had imagined he might be offered, before Archon Jeremiah’s obsession with synthesizing the Shifter-Lych virus and the nasty business with the deadly new drug had turned the Archon’s attention entirely from anything outside that focus.

The point should have been moot, his turning long-past. Matthias was well past the time that any other Servitor in his position would have been invited to join the ranks of the undying. Any other Archon would have rewarded more than two decades of loyal service. Any other Archon is not Jeremiah, Matthias reminded himself wryly.

That all the Elders had once been mortals was not a fact lost on Matthias, but the Elders themselves seemed to forget that as they grew older. Jeremiah, in particular, seemed happy to go on in the delusion that he had never been such a miserable thing as human, and that appeared to include a near-complete refusal to make new Elders. It’s that, Matthias thought, and his reluctance to add anyone else to the list of people he has to treat with some scrap of respect. Matthias held back the sigh that wanted to escape and watched for the ‘all-clear’ signal from the advance scout just ahead.

What’s to say he will ever allow me to become an Elder? Matthias wondered privately to himself. The thought of decades rushing past as he watched his master never grow any older grated on the Servitor. He knew he should be humble, that he should accept the good fortune he’d already been granted. As a Servitor—a mortal allowed to drink the blood of the Elders themselves—he could very well live for another hundred years without any ill effects.

It was just galling that everything he’d worked for and sacrificed, all the bowing and scraping and ‘Yes, sire. Thank you, sire’ would net him nothing in the end. He wasn’t allowed to acknowledge it but he was angry, and growing more so. Nearly forty years old and the sum total of his life’s work had led him to a sewer in Manhattan, looking down the barrel of mortality.

There was a slight buzz from the device he held in his hand, and he glanced down at the dim screen. The RFID tracker had come online again. Somewhere, many hundreds of meters above, there was a low-flying drone satellite with enough microwave, radio, and x-ray tech packed on board to pierce the layers of concrete and earth and detect the signal of the device that Archon Bethania of Manhattan had implanted in her new charge.

Tabitha Maslov. Matthias had not known her well, and he hadn’t exactly liked her. No one liked the Elders. Feared them, respected them, hated them even. But not liked. Tay, though, had been young, and she had spent a lot of her time following Archon Jeremiah around, star-struck by his power and grace. He’d courted her attention, encouraged her fawning, and then dropped her like she was nothing. Matthias hadn’t been surprised. He had wanted to tell her once not to get too attached to the young Archon of Brooklyn. He hadn’t been with the Archon long then, but all the Servitors knew that Jeremiah had a habit of collecting pretty young things in his personal harem of Elders, only to grow bored with them months or years in.

But Tay would never have listened to Matthias in those days. He had been only a lowly mortal, not even high in the rankings of the Servitors. And she had been a brand new vampire, relishing her recently-acquired power. It had been sad to see her become a Feral, but that too had been far from a shock. Jeremiah had always had something of a vindictive streak, and Tay had never learned to play entirely by the rules.

No, the surprise came much later with an urgent message from Archon Bethania in Manhattan. Informing them that she had just sent one of Jeremiah’s so-called pet projects down into the sewers to flush out the Ferals there and dig up any truth to a rumor that a new anti-Lych drug was on the market. It was, apparently, some kind of street toxin that had a near-fatal effect on any vampire feeding off a mortal intoxicated with it.

Archon Jeremiah, of course, had been totally incensed by the idea of one of his own brood—however far fallen—working for the enemy. He had paced and ranted, swearing to kill her: to rip out her lungs, to tear up her heart, to feed her to the Shifters himself.

What made Jeremiah angrier? Matthias wondered. That Tay had not skulked quietly in some dingy apartment somewhere, mourning her exile and longing for her Archon? Or that she was apparently thriving under a rival leader’s power?

If being used as a spy can be considered thriving, the Servitor thought wryly. In the end, however, Jeremiah had been given no option but to agree to Bethania’s demands. He would share joint responsibility for the strike force that would attack the Feral base (on Bethania’s territory, he had been careful to note). Together they would get to the bottom of the mess and return triumphant to inform mortal and Elder alike of their glorious, save-the-city efforts.

And Tay, if she was lucky, would be forgotten. If she was unlucky, well...

Matthias rolled his eyes. In actual fact it did not take a genius to realize all that was happening was Archon Bethania getting Archon Jeremiah to clean up her Feral problem for her. But Archon Jeremiah either had other plans in motion or was too enraged to notice the manipulation.

Maybe I should offer my services to Archon Bethania, Matthias mused as the tracker in his hand blipped once more. She surely would not reward my loyalty with a slow slog toward inevitable old age. But then, he had heard she liked her Servitors young and handsome, and he could no longer lay claim to the former title. He shook off the useless conjecture; Jeremiah would never allow him to leave, and he had a duty to fulfill. Tay was just ahead, a few hundred meters maybe, but so was a den of Ferals. He needed to keep his mind on task.

Matthias gestured his men forward, and the Elite Tactical Unit burst into the main pumping room. At their head, he unleashed a full blast of automatic rifle fire into a startled young vampire with a skull tattooed on his face. The vampire’s body writhed, jiggled obscenely, and erupted into blood and gristle before falling backwards. Matthias took aim at the next and fired again.

Screams echoed off the tile walls. Snarls followed, the vampires giving themselves over to the viral transformation always waiting in their blood. Matthias knew that they had to kill as many as they could in as short a time as possible. A den of vampires—even surprised and weakened Ferals—would not fall easily to mere Servitors.

But the ETU was a band of military professionals, trained to be the best and very good at what they did. Admittedly they were usually up against mortals, but at least half had probably seen action fighting Shifter incursions. They moved like beetles—scurrying low, stopping, firing—in quick, jerky movements.

Matthias didn’t have time to really register what was going on or to get a good look at his surroundings. It was chaos and blood and a hail of bullets, the wails of the dying rising above the noise of the guns. He just kept on firing and moving, moving and firing.

The room they were in was almost an amphitheater, but its many additions by the community made it slow going for the attack team. If it had been open space, their job would have been easy; they had the element of surprise. But there were too many obstacles to hide behind and crawl under, and the panicked Ferals were fleeing from the bullets mowing them down.

Head for the tunnels! Block the exits! Matthias aimed his weapon at a Feral who had just leapt through an opening. There was a startled screech, and the creature crumpled.

The tactical unit continued their march into the Collective territory, the whole room echoing with the sounds of thunder and torment. Here and there a vampire turned to fight; Matthias saw one Elder rise up from his rags, easily seven feet tall and brandishing a sword. The Servitor watched in horror as the