Antique Instincts Book One

By Odette C. Bell

They say some things can’t wait. One is destiny. The other is murder.
Sonia tells herself she’s normal. She isn’t. A rare witch with a rarer skill – she can sort out the temporal order of anything.
While that might be incredible, it can’t catch his eye.
Rushford Halsey is the most powerful vampire in the city. A resolute man heading up Vampire Pharmaceuticals, he shouldn’t care about her. But there’s a problem. He’s her one-true vampire. Destiny has dictated they will be together. So what does Rushford do? Marry someone else.
He has no interest in Sonia – other than to keep her as far from his murky world as possible. When a dangerous drug hits the streets and she’s dragged into the case to stop it, Rushford loses and they’re thrown together.
But destiny can be a fickle thing. It’ll give you one chance at happiness. Lose or ignore it, and you will do so at your peril.
...
A light-romance urban fantasy, Antique Instincts follows a plucky witch fighting to win back the heart of her one true love. If you crave your fiction with charm, danger, and a dash of romance, grab Antique Instincts Book One and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series today.
Antique Instincts is the 5th Your True Vampire series. In a world where vampires know their true love at first sight, love brings trouble. Packed with action, wit, humor, and a dash of romance, you can read them separately, so plunge in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Jan 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005417260

Book preview

Prologue

Sonia stuck her nail in her mouth, driving it down to the cuticle, her sharp front teeth marking her once pristine nail polish.

A fat rain droplet splashed onto the shimmering royal blue paint of her old hatchback. And where there’s one, there are usually millions more.

Crap, it’s going to be a deluge. Isn’t it? Inching her neck back as if she were about to stare at some kind of horror show, she winced at the sight of the billowing gray and blue rain clouds. With a booming crack of thunder, they opened up like a sardine can at the paws of a massive lion.

Sonia shoved her trembling hand into her pocket and yanked out her keys. They slid around in her grip, and just before she could shove them into the old, rusted lock, she dropped them with a squelch into the glistening mud and flattened grass beside her. Why she’d come here to one of the remotest out-of-the-way parks at dusk, she didn’t know. Okay, she did. The camera she’d already lovingly and quickly stashed away in its waterproof case hanging on a strap around her neck was proof that some photos are just worth it. She’d snapped some insane pics of the prettiest dusk she’d seen in a while – all burning purples, blazing oranges, and reds darker than the most crimson blood.

This park, for all its inconvenience, had a lovely open area that allowed one to glimpse out over the sprawling metropolis of glimmering steel stacks, glass towers, and ancient sandstone manors. Get lucky enough to be here for dusk or dawn, and you’d see it lighting up the city, its long light sliding around every reflective surface and gilding them with the liquid of the sun’s gold. It was just a heck of a schlep to get up here.

And sometimes, if you didn’t have your wits about you, the mountains behind would conjure a heck of a rain cloud and dump it on your head like a plane getting rid of its solid waste with the tap of a button.

Come on, Sonia bemoaned as she shoved down to her knees, her sodden blue jeans splashing with mud. It was now raining so hard – in the space of a second or two – that she could barely see the shimmering metal ring of her car keys and the happy little kitty cat charm attached to them. If you believed her mad flatmate, a charm like that was meant to attract kind strangers. And if you were really attractable – not the right use of the word, but Jacqueline never let correctness get in the way of anything – the charm might bring you Mr. Right.

Sonia snorted now as her stiff, cold fingers finally snatched up the keys and they splattered mud all over her white blouse and tangled locks. Yeah, right. There was no such thing as Mr. Right. That was just a myth advertising agencies sold you to keep you perpetually unhappy and in a constant state of searching for something better. Who knows, maybe buying that new pair of sneakers or getting your hair cut just right would finally attract Him.

There’s no such thing as destiny, Sonia muttered through blue lips as she finally yanked her door open, the hinges protesting like an upset orchestra, and rammed her sodden body into the front seat.

She carefully removed her camera case and placed it on a towel in the back seat. Only then did she close the door, sigh at her outfit, and crane her neck to stare up at the clouds. She had to upgrade her assessment. It no longer looked as if she’d strayed into a storm. She’d strayed into the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter instead. The clouds now thronged together above her, tightly packed like swarming bees and likely just as pissed and out for revenge.

Sonia palmed her face, turned the car on with a grunt – it was that or listen to the ignition splutter like a popped lung – and threw the gearstick into reverse. As the car madly swung out of the gravel and grass carpark, she saw something glint to her left.

Now the storm had settled in, the lighting was poor. The kind of poor that would see even a shifter with bang-on night vision and regular beta carotene injections rubbing his eyes and walking into holes. Still, there was something out there, wasn’t there? … Was it a guy in a dark hoodie, the fabric thickest just below his eyes, only a slice of his mouth visible? A slice with two teeth as sharp as hatchets and just as strong?

Sonia slipped a shaking hand off the steering wheel and slapped herself lightly. Can you just have a rest for one night, paranoid mind? she berated herself. Jacqueline might always say the wrong thing and mix her metaphors like a trainee chef at the spice rack, but Sonia’s one foible was arguably worse – she got scared. Easily. Often. And sometimes uncontrollably.

She twisted her head around and tried to catch another glimpse of the guy, but it was too dark, and her windscreen was lashed with another round of ballistic fire from the gunmetal-gray clouds above. She had to pay attention to the road, too – she almost fishtailed coming onto the bitumen of the road beyond. Yanking the wheel, hunkering over it and controlling the car, a blast of her hot breath pushed back across her face in a sheet of white, and she stared back in the rear vision mirror.

She couldn’t see a thing. Even as she reached up and wiped the marching condensation from the glass, it was thankless. Either the guy wasn’t there, had never been there, or—

Something lurched onto the road in front of her. She saw a flash of a dark, thick hoodie, a lean, strong body, and a set of gleaming vampire canines drawn like cocked guns. She glimpsed it all in under a second – the same heart-destroying moment it took her to yank hard on the wheel and skid to the left. The road around these parts was treacherous. The ditches were massive and as deep as the Mariana Trench to accommodate all the rains coming in off the mountains behind.

Sonia knew she’d strike one, and there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about it. With a spine-shaking smash, the car fell into one, the airbag engaging and slamming up into her face, forcing her back against the headrest with an ear-ringing whoomph.

Her tires spun, churning up mud that splattered over her windows… because her foot was still on the accelerator.

She….

She was vaguely aware of a shape beside her. Someone there. Right there next to her car.

She turned to ask for help.

But you shouldn’t expect help from murderers.

The guy settled one long finger on her handle and yanked. That was it – all he needed to crumple the steel and pull the door off with all the ease of someone throwing leaves into a shredder.

As Sonia’s heart pounded and blood slid down her brow, she turned her head to see those same vamp teeth glimmering from underneath that same dark hood.

No… you…. She couldn’t finish her words – couldn’t finish her breath. Both were trapped somewhere near the top of her throat like a cork someone had shoved down a wine bottle neck. There would be no drinking the wine – not unless you cracked the neck and got to the contents that way.

Apt.

That’s exactly what this vampire wanted.

Another ripe throat, he hissed darkly as he leaned in, slid one pale finger with a long, rough nail down her throat, and nicked her skin.

She felt a single bead of blood blossom over her clammy skin and slip onto the guy’s waiting nail. He used it like a spoon to scoop it up to his mouth. A few crackles of bright yellow magic protected it from the pounding rain like plastic wrap ensuring some snack didn’t spoil in the fridge.

She watched, her ears still ringing, her head still thumping like someone was playing football in there. As one calamitous shake pushed from temple to temple, she waited to black out.

The guy wouldn’t let her.

Reaching in, he pulled her out of the car with one hand as he delivered the blood to the tip of his waiting tongue with the other. She was treated to the horrifying sight of him ingesting her blood like some crack addict throwing back their latest hit.

His mouth opened wider, his body stiffened in a wave, and he shuddered through a gasp.

Then he pulled her out of her car, dropped her onto the rain-slicked bitumen, and searched for the closest trees.

He grabbed her by the back of her collar, tore the fabric with his long nails, and dragged her towards the pines and birches that lined the road.

Sonia tried to scream. Her body knew this was it. If she couldn’t call for help, she’d….

Calm down, prey, he muttered, slipping one finger up and back as he clutched her collar with a cast-iron grip. His dangerously sharp thumb nail cut the back of her neck, and she felt something transferring into her skin with a shaking jolt.

Her eyes started to roll into the back of her head, the movements grinding like gears that were down to their last threads.

Sonia was going to… going to die. This was it.

She’d had dreams, fantasies, heart-felt wishes – you name it. She’d always wanted to make something of her life, maybe of other people’s lives, too. Now she would be just another statistic.

Her mind might not work right now – it might be fighting off the twin effects of last-ditch adrenaline and whatever the vamp had slipped her – but she could tell who this guy was.

The Hooded Serial Killer. She’d read an article on him just the other day. He was most active at dusk, apparently. Oh yeah, and no one had ever survived.

With a shaking, raw jolt, Sonia realized she was seconds from being murdered. Brutally.

She started to blubber, but the movements of her lips were weak, and the flesh jolted around like frayed rope.

They reached the tree line. Sonia could smell the scent of disturbed dirt, feel the mud sliding under her unresponsive legs, and hear the guy’s steady breath and the unnerving sound of air rushing past his extended canines.

Sonia had once been to a fortune teller. She didn’t believe in them. Nonsense, right? Magic existed – sure. But nothing could ever tell the future unless it had the power to make the future real through actions, not mere predictions. Not her point. The fortuneteller, all dressed up in mounds of fake blue velvet and with malachite rings glinting on her fingers, had told Sonia one thing – her future would be wrapped up with a vampire. Entangled was the exact word she’d used. And Sonia could see it and hear it now – the way the woman’s old, corrugated lips had pulled apart around that word like someone thrusting a fist through a wall, then the hiss of her slurred syllables.

Entangled, ha?

The fortune teller had been right. The vamp, now far enough behind the tree line, far out of sight of the road, leaned down, pulled Sonia’s hair all the way out of her limp ponytail, and wrapped it around her throat.

Sonia screamed one last time. She squeezed her eyes closed, she clawed her last hope up from her heart, and she forced it into her cry like someone trying to drive a car on blood, not gas.

She had no power to stop this, no magic to try – nothing to save herself with other than this last scream.

But once it was out, the guy just squeezed harder, and Sonia was treated to the moment her throat closed off around her words like a noose.

Everything became blurry, the world narrowing down, blackness seeping in, as dark and sticky as tar, and just as hard to escape from. She clutched at her hair with unresponsive fingers, the knuckles losing all their grip, her wrist following with a shudder a second later.

Just as Sonia went to give up, just as her vision blackened the whole way, she heard one last plaintive cry from her soul, and she heard something else, too. A grunt. She… it wasn’t because it was loud – loud enough to cut above the charging rain, the cracking lightning, and the steady hiss of her killer’s breath. It wasn’t even that it was different – the equivalent of a white flag in a sea of blood. It was… it had come for her.

Sonia had never felt too many moments of utter connection in her life. Maybe when she was taking some of her best photos. Perhaps the day she’d picked up her camera and realized it was the perfect way to express her usually messy, uncoordinated thoughts and fears. But nothing like this.

She shouldn’t be able to move, and God knows her muscles should be too unresponsive to do anything other than crumble for good, but she still opened one eye. She still stared up. She still saw.

A man in a dark suit shoved through the trees, faster than anything Sonia had ever seen, moving like the wind itself. He reached her attacker, looped an arm around the guy’s middle, and smashed him into the closest tree.

Sonia…. Her mind wanted to shut down. But her heart couldn’t. It received this sudden rush of blood, this adrenaline-hit of pure emotion. As it surged through her chest, as it rushed up high, reaching her lips and parting them with a shaking sigh, she watched the guy.

At first her eyesight was too bleary to notice anything other than his shape, his broad shoulders, his powerful chest, his shoulderlength sandy blond hair that whipped around him, thumping against his ropelike neck as he rammed her attacker up against another tree.

But the more she stared, the more clarity returned.

Her throat had almost been crushed. The vamp had been pulled off her half a second before he’d managed to kill her, but Sonia should still black out. She couldn’t. The sight of her savior kept her anchored, not just to the spot, but to the land of the living.

She watched him reach a hand around. Magic charged across his skin. From the light of it, from the sheer burning power that looked as if it could match any furnace on Earth to the rapidity with which it appeared, it was the power of a vampire.

You’d think she would freak out. A vampire had just tried to kill her. Now another one had appeared.

But there could be no freaking out.

Nor could there be any questioning one pertinent fact. This guy was here to save her.

So he hurried up and saved her.

The serial killer grunted one last time. He sent vampire magic blasting up over his own