Out For Blood: Bloodlines, #3

By Lara Lynwood

There's a half-dead vampire on my doorstep. And for once, it's not my fault.

 

What it is, though, is an opportunity. Because I know this vampire. And with the information he nearly died to get, we've got a chance - a chance to strike back against Nathanael, the self-proclaimed vampire overlord.

 

Nathanael thinks he's untouchable. He's got the vampire nobility at his beck and call, power I can't even imagine - oh, and an army.

 

Too bad for him I see all that as a challenge.

 

But as we take the fight to Nathanael, it turns out there's more secrets buried in my past than I knew. And Nathanael might be the only one who can tell me the truth...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lara Lynwood
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223491347

Book preview

Out For Blood

Lara Lynwood

Copyright © 2022 by Lara Lynwood

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.Grey

2.Recovery

3.Questions

4.Wards

5.Plotting

6.The Tunnels

7.Gold

8.Runes

9.Sephy

10.Missing

11.Attack

12.Imprisoned

13.Family

14.Hospitality

15.Taken

16.Escape

17.Debt

18.Magic

19.Honour

20.Blood

21.Discovery

22.Daughter

23.Lies

24.Finale

What to read next...

one

Grey

When I opened the door of my shithole flat that evening, I wasn’t expecting to find a half-dead vampire on my doorstep.

Normally, I only saw half-dead vampires when I’d made them that way. I definitely hadn’t had anything to do with this, though.

My first thought was that it was some kind of warning – either for me, or for the vampire who’d been lairing here up until I’d killed him two weeks ago. A threat – careful, or this is how you’ll end up. It wouldn’t have worked, if that was what they’d intended. I didn’t respond to threats like most people. I was a Guild-trained hunter, and that meant I went after threats with extreme prejudice.

But I realised a moment later that it couldn’t be a threat – the vampire was still alive. Or, well, as alive as vampires ever got, anyway.

And hard on the heels of that realisation followed recognition.

"Grey?"

He didn’t answer, of course. Whatever had happened to him, he was too far gone for that. And last I’d heard, he had vanished, disappeared into the Tunnels to lead Nathanael’s army away. How had he even gotten here – how had he known where I was? Then again, I wasn’t exactly making a secret of my presence in the neighbourhood, more like daring any vampires to try and come at me. It would be easy enough to find me.

But it wouldn’t be easy for any vampire, even one at full strength, to make their way here through sunlight and through streets full of either humans or hostile supernatural creatures. I wondered for a second if that was how Grey had been injured – but no, I could see at a glance that this was too bad to be just a street beating. And Grey was strong, and a fighter; I’d seen that much in the Tunnels, when we’d worked together against a pair of powerful noble vampires. There was something more going on here – something bad enough that Grey had risked the sunlight to drag himself here, to my doorstep.

I stared down at him. He wasn’t moving, except for the faintest rise and fall of his breathing. That was a strange one – vampires didn’t quite need to breathe, but it was habit for a lot of them. And the extra oxygen helped with things like fighting and healing, or so I’d read.

How do I keep ending up in these situations? I asked the air in front of me. Then I sighed, shook my head, and crouched to haul Grey over my shoulder. I wasn’t too worried about any bite risk – even if he woke up and went for me, I’d been intending to go hunting. I was fully armoured up, and had every intention of staying that way until I was certain Grey was in full control of himself.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t even have gone that far. I would have put Grey down then and there, injured or not – killed him in cold blood. I certainly wouldn’t have considered trusting him not to attack me, especially when he was injured. But now... I’d worked with Grey. I couldn’t say I trusted him, not quite. But I trusted that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Not intentionally, at least.

He’d need to feed at some point, if he was going to heal. But I wasn’t going to think about that until he actually needed to. And then... Well. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Grey was solid, but still lighter than he probably should have been. Given that the last I’d heard of him, he’d been fleeing Nathanael’s forces in the Tunnels, that didn’t surprise me. It was actually helpful; I shifted his weight to one arm, and traced a few runes onto my door, reactivating my wards and adding a couple of new ones – things that would warn me if anyone approached. I didn’t normally bother, since there were other people living in the block of flats, but whatever had happened to Grey – whoever had happened to Grey – I didn’t want it showing up at my door with no warning.

With one last glance up and down the corridor, I shut my door firmly.

***

It was only once I’d deposited Grey on the half-collapsed sofa that I realised the situation I’d gotten myself into.

The bulb in here had no lampshade – I hadn’t gotten round to replacing it after moving in – and the harsh light made Grey’s injuries look even worse than they had on my doorstep. What I could see of them, anyway – his clothes were damaged, nearly soaked in blood. Too much blood, vampire or not. That obscured his injuries as much as his clothes did, if not more.

All right, first steps. Just like I’d been taught in training all those years ago.

Then again, I didn’t think any of my trainers had ever expected me to be giving medical treatment to a vampire. But after the past few months, I couldn’t find it in myself to be that surprised.

First steps for an injured vampire would have to be different than for an injured human. For all that Grey had seemed to have excellent self-control when we’d met before, he still fed on humans, and I had no way of knowing if he’d be able to control himself if he woke up when I was treating him. I wasn’t quite human, not any more, but that might not matter. I didn’t especially want to end up mauled for my efforts.

So, restraints, before anything else. Fortunately, suppressing cuffs were a part of every hunter’s kit – you never knew when you might need to apprehend a supernatural creature rather than kill them, after all. They’d stop him using his full vampiric strength, and maybe hold back his magic a little, too. I probably shouldn’t still have them, given that they were powerful magical artifacts and property of the Guild – but nobody had missed them yet.

I spared a moment to be concerned about what effects the suppressing cuffs might have when Grey was already badly hurt and weakened, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. In order for me to be able to safely treat any of his injuries, he needed to be restrained. The cuffs were the best way I had of doing that.

It took a little work, and a few half-collapsed chairs sacrificed for their wooden legs, but I managed a way of restraining Grey that wouldn’t affect my ability to treat him, or make his injuries worse, but also wouldn’t let him rip a chunk out of me if he woke up half-feral. That done, I sat back on my heels and just looked at him for a moment.

Where could I even begin?

The last time I’d treated anything even close to this major, it had been just after my run-in with Nathanael, the vampire trying to make himself some kind of overlord. He’d manipulated Felix, a witch and my ally, using the life-debt Felix owed him. In the process, he’d hurt Felix badly enough that even with my help, it had been a good week before Felix was able to do much more than limp a few steps – and witches healed fast. Not as fast as vampires, maybe, but faster than an ordinary human. Faster even than a Guild hunter, from what I knew. Felix’s injuries had been bad.

This was worse.

I sighed, checked my kit had everything I needed, and got to work.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t even have considered helping Grey. I would have either killed him or dumped him in the streets – partly to avoid whatever had attacked him coming after me, partly to use him as bait for countless weaker vampires who might see him as easy prey. Depended on how merciful I was feeling at the time.

Now... it hadn’t even crossed my mind to do either of those things. I’d barely hesitated over bringing him into my home. Even knowing the danger he could present to me, I’d only thought about how to minimise the risk, rather than letting it convince me this was a bad idea.

I wasn’t sure how much of the change was because I knew him, had spent time around Grey and the other vampires he called allies – the young noble vampire Luka, for example, who reminded me far more of the starry-eyed trainees at the Guild than a ruthless, malicious monster. It would be easy to attribute most or all of my softening attitude to that.

But I couldn’t help thinking about what I was.

Dhampir. A halfbreed, a mix of human and vampire, existing only because someone had chosen to create me – for what purpose, I didn’t know. And knowing that I was just as much vampire as I was human... how much of my newfound openmindedness might be my heritage changing me somehow, shifting beliefs and mindsets I’d always built my life upon?

I sighed, shaking my head, and dropped the cloth I’d been using into the box of soiled cloths, already piled high. I’d cleaned away a lot of blood, more than should have been possible. It couldn’t all be Grey’s, so he’d at least gotten a few decent hits in on his attacker or attackers.

All it had done, though, was reveal more and more injuries. There didn’t seem to be a square inch of Grey that was unwounded, whether it was just bruising or, more often, bleeding gashes, the flow sluggish enough that it was clear he’d been bleeding for a while now.

Initially, I’d thought that I would be able to treat Grey’s injuries. Or at least fix things so that he wasn’t actively bleeding out on my sofa. But now...

I knew next to nothing about what was actually healthy for vampires. Funnily enough, my Guild training had focused on how to kill a vampire, and how to tell if one was really dead, rather than how to keep one alive and well. So I knew that Grey was definitely still alive... but I knew very little about how to keep him that way.

But. I did know someone who might.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

Felix and I hadn’t spoken that much since that night I’d confronted him and Nathanael, found out that he’d considered – however briefly – sacrificing me to free himself of the ghostly imprints that haunted his every moment. I wasn’t sure if we were avoiding each other because of that, or because of what had happened after. Felix had told me – well, not everything. I still had no idea how he had ended up with a life-debt to Nathanael in the first place, beyond a vague remark that Nathanael had saved his life from another vampire.

But he’d told me why he had been cast out of the Mancer Academy as a teenager. He’d told me about the imprints, shades of the past that he could hear, see, sense every moment of every day, that he could never escape from, not even for a moment. That attempt at escape had been what led to the slaughter at the Academy, and his expulsion.

Felix had made himself vulnerable, telling me what had happened. And after I’d left to find myself somewhere to live, deeming him healed enough that he probably wasn’t going to drop dead and ruin all my hard work... we hadn’t spoken. Not really, not beyond the briefest of messages to update each other on whatever new information had come up about Nathanael or the Guild’s ongoing sabotage issues.

But if anyone would know how to properly care for a vampire, it was Felix. Well, I knew a few others who might, but they were well out of my reach at the moment, hidden deep within the Tunnels. And Felix and Grey knew each other – it was Felix who had directed me to Grey in the first place, what felt like years ago but had actually been months.

There was something else, too, though I hated even considering it. Grey would need to feed. There was no escaping that. And I wasn’t prepared to let him feed on me, even if I had still been fully human. But Felix...

I wasn’t going to ask it of him. I couldn’t, not when I wasn’t prepared to offer the same thing myself. But he might well offer – and if he didn’t, then he’d know a way to let Grey feed that could satisfy both my own morals and Grey’s. Maybe it was wrong, that I was prepared to use what I knew of Felix’s tendency towards self-sacrifice, but I didn’t exactly have much choice. Every ally I’d once had relied upon my being Cassandra Blackthorn, Guild hunter. Now that I’d lost that, all I had were Felix, Grey’s people hidden in the Tunnels, and possibly Marci, the only member of the Guild who might still trust me.

It had to be Felix, then.

I treated what I could, first. It might take time to contact Felix, and there was no point ignoring injuries that I could mitigate, even if the rest were beyond me. I’d probably need to transport Grey, as well. Felix didn’t know where I lived, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Finally I picked up my phone, a scrappy little burner, and stared at it.

I held down the speed-dial I’d set Felix to, listened to it ring.

Cassandra?

Felix, I said, glancing at the unconscious vampire on my sofa. It’s Cass. I found Grey. And he needs help.

two

Recovery

Of course, getting help from Felix wasn’t anywhere near as easy as it sounded.

I can hardly give you medical advice over the phone, Felix snapped. "Not without seeing him. And from what you’ve said, he’s injured badly enough that I would want to see him regardless."

Where, exactly, I said, wishing for patience, are you suggesting you see him?

I have a home. You have a flat. Take your pick.

He made it sound so simple. As if there weren’t excellent reasons he had never been here, didn’t know where it was – excellent reasons I’d never actually told him the address, even if he could probably guess by the sudden dearth of vampires in the area.

I can’t carry him to yours, I said.

"Then invite me to visit you. I am aware, Cass, that you don’t especially trust me, given, well. Recent events. But trust me in this, at least. Grey is my friend, as much as he is your ally. I have absolutely no intention to harm him."

I hesitated. It would have been easy to say yes, to avoid the potential argument, to just get Felix here and able to help. But I had to say it.

You have a life-debt to Nathanael. What are the chances that he’s the one who did this to Grey, one way or another? And what are the chances that he’d force you to hand him over?

There was silence for a few moments. Then Felix spoke, his tone perfectly calm.

"Cass. I have been beholden