Page 1

Prologue

The blood slid down his chin to his throat, down over his chest. The woman that he’d only just fed from slid down his own body in death. He didn’t care that he’d killed her. There were plenty of other humans around that wouldn’t care either. He needed his fill and took it anyway that he could. Being a vampire gave him rights that even the council couldn’t undo. Nor would he allow them to. He was a god in the vampire world. Or so he’d been telling anyone that came around him.

“You murdered her.” Shrugging his shoulders, he looked around the open field where he’d brought the bodies when he was finished with them. “The council said that they were going to prosecute you if you killed the next time you fed. Do you not heed what they say to you?”

“Are you going to tell on me, York? Run to the council and tell them that I fed from a human and took too much? You’re nothing but a pussy. Tattle tale.” York said nothing. “I’m going to do what I wish, and there is nothing you can do about it. What I say goes, and the sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be.”

The large vampire grabbed his throat when a breath of air went over him. He looked at the young vampire in front of him who stood so still he looked like a statue. He stood there with his throat in his hand as if he’d not just told him that he did what he could.

“I’m the council now and what I say goes.” York dropped the flesh in his hands as it started to turn to ash. “I have been assigned to uphold the law and make sure vampires like you no longer kill humans simply because they can.”

“You’ve torn out my throat.” Dropping to his knees, he knew that he was surely dead. His body, now that he could see it, was disappearing before his eyes. “You cannot kill me. I’m thrice your age.”

“Yet I have done it.” As his body trembled and turned to ash, he thought that when a vampire turned to ash it happened quickly, like a breath of stagnant air. But it was taking so long that he could feel the pain of it throughout the rest of him. “You will be no more, David. I have decreed it to be so, and I will continue to kill rogue vampires until my dying breath. Humans deserve more than having you feast upon them.”

As the younger vampire walked away, David cried out in pain. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He was a god. Damn it, what the fuck did he mean, he was set to kill rogue vampires? As his head hit the ground, he realized that he really was no more. The damned upstart had killed him.

Chapter 1

York watched the cars as they went by him. He wished every day that there had been no invention of the monsters. They were the ruination of the world in his opinion. As he was crossing the road to his office, he ignored the beeps that came with him walking his route. Just as he was stepping into his office, his cell phone rang. Another invention that he wished never to have been.

“York.” He knew that whoever called him on the contraption thought him rude. Well, he thought when you’d been around as long as he had, then you deserved to be as rude as you wished. When no one said anything for several moments, he simply closed the connection. He didn’t have time to wait on someone to get around talking to him. He entered his office just as he did daily, but today, he knew that today was going to be different. His mother was there.

“I have a busy schedule today and have no time for lunch if that’s what you’re here for.” She kissed him on the cheek, then slapped him. “I suppose you have a reason for the latter of the two?”

“You should know what today is, and you’ll have lunch with me if I wish it.” She sat down in the chair across from his desk. After adjusting herself into a comfortable position, he sat at his desk. “What’s gotten into you today? You seem more fired up than usual.”

“I had to work last night.” She knew better than most what his job was that would put him in a vile mood. And it wasn’t the office that he was currently in. “I have plenty to keep me busy today, so if you wish to go to the cemetery, you’ll have to wait on me. I really do have a great deal to do today.”

“I’m sorry.” York told his mother that he loved her. “And I know you mean it as well. When are you going to be able to go? I have a busy schedule as well, but I want to go to see your father.”

“How about I clear my schedule for after lunch, and we can go then? I have plenty to do then, but I’ll do that for you. But I’m going to need a favor in return. You have to fire my secretary.” She asked what this one had done. “She thinks that my schedule between two and four is time for me to get more meetings in. That time is mine, not hers, and I can’t keep telling her that I can’t be bothered. I have warned her several times that I can’t work then, but she won’t listen.”

“I’ll do it.” She laughed a little. “Still going to the boxing ring during that time, are you? I would have thought you would have found something else to keep you in shape.”

“I like it. It relaxes me.” He didn’t tell his mother that it was also his time to get into better shape. As old as he was, and being a powerful vampire, he still had trouble getting around sometimes. “My shoulder still bothers me. I have to keep it moving, or it hurts.”

“The pain from the pike that was put into you.” He nodded. “I thought that I’d lost you that day. I could feel your pain, and it nearly took me to the floor.”

“I was saved by someone who was more powerful than me.” She nodded and looked out the window to his office. “Mom, I’m all right. It’s just a bit of pain now and again.”

“Your father said the same to me just before he died.” He knew that too. He’d been there when his father had died, and it felt like the earth had shuddered under the weight of his death. Even to this day, he would think about the power that had killed the man that he loved. “Do you suppose it was the same woman? The one that killed your father yet saved you?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t either. And he’d been looking for her since the day he’d been out doing his job and had been ambushed from behind. It had been centuries ago now, and all he’d seen of her was the fact that she was glowing. “For all I know she could be dead and gone herself. She pulled me from the pike in my shoulder and laid me to the ground. Had she not used her magic, I would have surely died that day.”

He shuddered to think about how much pain he’d been in when she pulled him from the pike. To this day he wondered what sort of being would save a man such as himself and yet let others die around him. York would lay down his life for her had he any clue what her name was or where to find her.

York was the vampire slayer. He would kill rogue vampires that were causing trouble to the humans and other shifters. He’d been at it for so long that he no longer questioned if he was going to be hurt while killing them but counted on his powerful magic that kept him and his family safe from harm. It had been centuries…spans of time that simply got away from him. He ignored his mother for working on his projects while she sat there. He would clear his day for her and then take her to the cemetery where his father’s ashes had been buried.

“They say that there is another like you. Has no mercy where others are concerned and doesn’t care for vampires.” He said that he didn’t have any trouble with vampires. “Nay, you do not. However, you will kill them without any kind of notice if they act up. For all these years, I still wonder why they picked you over all others.”

“I don’t question them anymore.” She told him that was probably the best way to deal with them. “I take my pay and do what they want. It’s the way that I’ve been able to stay unknown to others.”

“I would say that’s about right. You can’t have lived this long if someone would have known who you were.” He buried his head in his work and finished up. His mother had done as he asked and fired his secretary. She wasn’t working out, and that was the best way to deal with her. When he was ready to leave with his mother, she said that she’d thought he was going to get rid of her last week when she’d scheduled time when he should have been resting. “She’s going to have no memory of working for you either. I think that’s the best way of dealing with her.”

“Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek again, and they were off. The cemetery wasn’t that far away from his place of business, but with all the traffic, it did take about thirty minutes to get there from his office.

He looked at the large headstone that was in place at the top of the resting place and sat down on the bench with his mother. Putting his hand on the cold stone, he told his father that he missed him and did every day. Mom would take longer to speak to him, and he was all right with that. York would keep an eye out for anyone thinking to bother her and send them on their way. Today there was a funeral at the graveside, and he watched the people there grieving. York would protect his mother with his life, and she knew it and didn’t worry about being out in the open for so long.