The Vampire Dimitri

Prologue Horror

1691

A small village in the hills of England

Dimitri stared down at the blood. Everywhere. It was every where. On the bedcoverings. On the floor. On the table. On his hands. His arms.

The taste…still in his mouth. Rich, hot, full.

He swallowed the last vestiges on his tongue. Ambrosia.

He blinked, trying to focus, but his head pounded. When he tried to lift himself up, his sore muscles protested. Yet, life shimmered through him. His skin prickled, alive. Dimitri tried to breathe, but every breath he took in was laden with the scent. Bloodscent.

And then he remembered.

He remembered how it had happened.

Horror seized him.

And only then did he look over at the bundle of blankets and clothing, the lifeless form in a triangle of sunlight on the floor. One pale, plump arm hung out, marked and torn. Blood seeped everywhere: through thick quilts and the heavy layers of her dress. The mass of graying hair, loose and streaked with blood.

No. No. He held his temples, closed his eyes.

But he couldn’t deny it.

And even as he sat there in a room half shadowed and half blazing with sun, Dimitri was filled with loathing and hatred.

No more.

I don’t want this. I want out.

“Do you hear me, Lucifer?” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I want out of this. Release me.”

Silence.

Naturally.

For like all angels, fallen or no, Lucifer’s preferred method of communication was via dreams. In the deepest of night.

When one was the most vulnerable. The most suggestible.

The most easily lured and tricked.

“Release me, you damned bastard!”

But Dimitri already knew there was no way out. He’d already attempted it, tried to break the covenant in the last year since he’d left Vienna. He’d already denied himself what Lucifer had recreated him to need, twenty-five years ago: blood. Rich, warm, life-giving.

The devil’s Mark, depicting the insidious crack in his soul, was imprinted on his back and would never leave him. Thus it had been, for two decades.

And his attempt at self-denial, his attempt to thwart the devil and to break free?

The result was on the floor, a horrifying mess of limbs and tendons and mutilated flesh, destroyed. Dead.

Murdered.

Dimitri pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, a black ball of anger swelling inside him. His eyes stung.

Damn it all…he’d tried.

He’d left Vienna after the fire, left a world of opulence and hedonism that he’d never truly enjoyed, and refused it all. A year ago.

For a year, he refused to feed, to drink from anyone. He’d die first, damned or no. Surely if a vampire didn’t drink of the lifeblood, he’d grow weak and die. He’d force Lucifer to release him.

But it hadn’t worked at all, and it was his very weakness that had caused this tragedy.

For when the old woman had found him, near death, weak after a year without sustenance, he’d been naught but a loose-limbed mass of bone and flesh. Ready to leave the life he’d been tricked into, back when he’d saved Meg twenty years ago. When he’d given up everything for her.

The old woman found him here, and tried to help him—for she couldn’t have known. She was an innocent. She induced him to drink ale and broth, neither of which could save him.

And Dimitri: all through the night and into the day, day after day, he watched those solid blue veins. He lusted for the curve of her plump neck. He had to close his eyes to keep from taking what every humor in his body demanded.

And he was in control, despite the burning pain from Lucifer’s Mark—the agony that bespoke of the devil’s displeasure with Dimitri. He resisted. He fought it.

Nothing was stronger than his resolve. Not even the devil.

Until she nicked her finger with a knife.

And he smelled the blood.