Guarding Bloodlines (The Princeton Allegiant Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  GUARDING BLOODLINES

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  GUARDING BLOODLINES

  The Princeton Allegiant Series

  DEBORAH GARLAND

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  GUARDING BLOODLINES

  Copyright©2019

  DEBORAH GARLAND

  Cover Design by Fiona Jayde

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-68291-982-8

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For my husband,

  who was incredibly cool the summer I wrote this book

  and didn’t give me the stink eye

  when he went off to the pool

  and enjoyed happy hour alone.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was harder to write than I thought it would be. In Drawing Bloodlines, Loren exploded on every page he landed on. He kept stealing scenes and I had to put him on a leash. Once I unbridled him in this book, I didn’t know what to do with him! The Prelude was particularly excruciating. There was so much to accomplish to start the narrative, while also reaching back to bring readers up to speed. After the tenth revision, I was ready to pull my hair out. My local writer’s group, LIRW (Long Island Romance Writers) conducts a critique review once a month. I signed up and put all my cards on the table. It wasn’t the bloodbath I thought it would be. And my fellow writers had some really good points that I quickly addressed. The entire direction of this book hinged on that Prelude, if I couldn’t make it work, the whole storyline might have changed. Which was heartbreaking, because it really was the story I wanted to tell. Because I was willing to bear my soul and open myself up to what could have been gut-wrenching criticism, I was able to finally put that Prelude to bed and get to the rest of the darn story. And thank you, especially to Nika Rhone who was nice enough to read the revisions I made based on that group critique session. Show your work! It can be really scary, but I’ve never walked away from a critique without learning something.

  A special shout out to Jennifer Bray-Weber, who did an early developmental edit on Guarding Bloodlines before I sent it to the publisher. This story was rather epic, and I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t gone off the rails. I was so pleased that I didn’t have to re-write the whole book, but she drilled into my manuscript on such a micro level with comments about facial expressions, sounds and smells, that I was able to go back and really add texture to the final product.

  Enjoy!

  Prologue

  Late December, Washington DC

  DC Allegiant Warehouse

  Loren

  Loren took little pleasure in stealing memories from humans. He marched along the dim hallway to clean up someone else’s mess. As he opened the door to one of the interrogation rooms, he tamped down his anger. Deadly and pissed off didn’t mix well. But, hell, this situation struck a nerve. This situation was personal.

  “Who the fuck are you?” The marine captain yanked on handcuffs confining him to a chair.

  “Loren Tagaris.” He always emphasized the correct pronunciation, Lawren, to strangers, then he murmured to himself, “And I’m way too old for this shit.”

  “And where the fuck is my daughter?”

  A smile curled Loren’s lips. Sniveling cowards were boring. “Back in Princeton with her mother. Safe.”

  His words didn’t matter because Stephen Kastner wasn’t going to remember a vampire from the Philadelphia Allegiant kidnapped his daughter.

  The allegiants, those geographically organized nests of vampires, were getting restless. Bold in their actions against their neighbors. The New York Vampire Command, the board that governed vampire laws, was losing control. They didn’t see it, but Loren did, and it worried him.

  “I’m gonna need proof, asshole.”

  “Fair enough.” Loren closed his eyes and took the image of little Annie safe in her mother’s arms from hours earlier and shot it into Stephen’s mind.

  Loren pitied the guy. He’d never had children. Never would. But he understood the bond. And the worry.

  “What the?” Stephen shook his head when the illusion coalesced and the captain saw it as if it were in front of him. “What are you?”

  “I am vampire,” Loren answered proudly.

  He sent a shock wave into Stephen’s brain erasing everything that happened after he was attacked in the parking lot at the Pentagon where he worked. Including being held in that room with white walls and no windows for hours while Loren traveled the long length of the East Coast from Princeton, New Jersey.

  As the only vampire with the ability to wipe a mind clean, he should have been in high demand. But Loren Octavio Tagaris, as he was born one thousand years ago, could also destroy another vampire with a flick of his wrist. The magical powers had been passed down through his maker’s bloodline. Loren was so deadly most vampires feared him and kept their distance.

  Captain Kastner’s head fell forward. All he would remember was a happy holiday with his daughter and his ex-wife picking her up to go back to Princeton.

  Confidant in his abilities, Loren stood and opened the door. “Take him back to his car,” he instructed the DC Allegiant guard posted outside the room. “He should wake up in about an hour.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard answered politely, trying to hide the tremor to his voice. “Cecilia is in the next room.”

  Loren only nodded in response. The armed guard should have been more confident. Except, high-powered weapons were no match for Loren. Not when he could send a mental signal and disable an entire army. Make them put down their machine guns and knives. Or use their arsenal to blow each other up.

  Nearly all vampires knew what Loren could do. Some were even trained to recognize his scent. Then warned to stay the hell away from him.

  He’d kept his nose out of messy vampire politics. Until now. Now, he was a fixer.

  From inside the second room, he heard the DC vampire who caused all the trouble yelling. “Stay away from me you, you rogue.”

  Uh-oh. He opened the door slowly and found Julianna, his precious progeny mentally grilling Cecilia with her ocean blue eyes.

  I told you to wait in the car. Loren gritted his teeth as he spoke silently to that handful of woman he was losing his mind over. You’re wanted by New York, or have you forgotten?

  Julianna glanced at him with the sexiest lopsided smile he’d ever seen. But this is so much fun. She sat across from Cecilia, who clawed at her scalp as if the invisible poking could be scratched away.

  Loren could feel Julianna’s power. The power he gave her when he bit her three hundred years ago, except his venom hadn’t penetrated to make her fully vampire. She was an aberration in his world. New York had declared her a rogue, reluctantly. She was only part vampire.

  Yeah, he knew a way to have fun with her. But she’d been running from him since day one.

  I’m thinking about it. Her startling reply hit him square in the chest.

  Really? Here? Now? They had a vampire to question! He shook the thought aw
ay to move this interrogation along.

  Cecilia had snapped confidently at Julianna, but she sprung from the table and backed into a corner when Loren came into view. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Coward. Boring. “You should be,” he responded coldly and closed the door.

  “You promised to go easy on Cecilia and be fair, Loren.” George, the DC Allegiant’s commander helped the dark-haired vampire back into her chair as she smoothed her soiled white pantsuit.

  Loren’s height shadowed Cecilia as her jaw slid open. Her mind flew in all different directions with the typical conflicting alarms about the deadly vampire she’d heard about. But no one had told her how intensely good-looking he was.

  Loren ignored both Cecilia’s fear and the surging desire he knew she couldn’t control. He paced around the table with his hands clenched tightly into fists behind his back. His powerful energy plunged the room into an almost unbearably cold temperature. Cecilia only shivered because she was scared out of her wits. A vampire wouldn’t notice how frigid it was. Their blood mixed with venom, ran like ice water through their veins.

  “And I wasn’t expecting her.” The commander sneered at Julianna with a quake in his voice. “Whatever she is.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” he snapped at George. Now I have to wipe everyone’s mind!

  Sorry. Julianna’s inner voice hinted at sincerity, but he wasn’t really sure. She had no stake—he cringed at the ironic turn of phrase—in this game.

  She’d been a ghost most of her three hundred years. Loren wasn’t sure what New York would do with her if they caught her. She’d inherited his gifts and was almost as deadly as him.

  Watching her wield his simplest mind control power turned him on to the point of madness. Whatever she was, he made her. Was she meant to be his, somehow, some way? Was that how it worked?

  “Loren?” Julianna nudged her chin delicately back toward the table.

  Right, he thought getting his head back in the moment.

  “Cecilia, you need to understand how you put us at risk.” Loren directed his anger at the commander as he slammed a fist on the table, cracking it. “All of us.”

  A vampire’s first duty to their allegiants: don’t let any humans know you’re a vampire.

  “You’re making me nervous.” Cecilia ran a trembling hand through wild hair that had fallen out of the neat bun she usually wore. “I’m not quite sure what else you want me to say.”

  “How could you conspire with Philadelphia and help kidnap a marine captain’s daughter?” Loren continued. “George had to get special permission from New York for you to work at the Pentagon. What were you thinking?”

  “Why don’t you just go into her head already and find out?” Julianna rubbed her arms, reminding him the chill in the room affected her. I’m not as good at it as you.

  You could have stayed with me. I would have taught you everything.

  But Loren was surprised she wanted to take on the role of bad-cop. That image of her gently cradling Stephen Kastner’s daughter, Annie, flew into his mind. What happened in Princeton a couple of days ago affected her. Julianna was all-in here. Were her running days over?

  “We’re on the same side.” George stepped in front of Loren. “I understand your connection to what happened, and I’m sorry your progeny, Alexander, had been forced to mate with that lunatic Christiana in Philadelphia.”

  Loren got involved in this mess because he made Alexander vampire.

  A maker defends what is his.

  His lips curled back against his fangs. “And your vampire conspired with them.” Jabbing a finger in George’s chest, he hissed, “Brought a human into it. A human whose mind I had to erase. What if I hadn’t?”

  New York didn’t want Loren aligning with or fighting against any one of its allegiants, but this loose end needed to be tied up. Quickly. The vampire Lords would lose their minds over three allegiants fighting against each other. And a weak commander was more dangerous to an allegiant than a pack of rogues.

  “She knows something else.” Julianna narrowed her eyes.

  “Stay out of my head. Both of you!” Cecilia stood and backed up toward the door, her feet sliding out from under her like she couldn’t get far enough away from him or Julianna. “I keep feeling you in there. Stop it.”

  Julianna only tightened her control on what Loren suspected was Cecilia’s fractured mind. Given all that his progeny was and wasn’t, and New York’s sentinels after her, no allegiant would accept her.

  The New York Lords wanted to abduct her, stuff her into one of their dungeon cells. Hide her warm blood and immortal body from the world. They considered her the biggest threat to their vampire prime directive: stay hidden.

  Torturing a DC vampire in front of the commander wasn’t Loren’s idea of keeping a low profile. Which was why she was supposed to stay in the damn car!

  “Oh, my God.” Julianna gasped and turned so white he lost his balance.

  He moved to her side at once, her fresh floral scent hitting him. Hard. He was distracted enough. “What is it?”

  “Tell him, Cecilia.” Julianna’s fingers trembled when she grasped on to him briefly.

  “Cecilia . . .” Loren spoke softer and sat on the table. He took her hand. The shock of fear rolled off her in such intense waves he could almost see them float off her skin. “If you know something, you need to tell us. I can rip into your brain and take it from you. Take it all from you.” Loren didn’t do good-cop well.

  “Cecilia, listen to Loren.” The DC Commander gave Julianna a creepy once-over. “They’re right. You can’t keep secrets from them.”

  “I want some kind of assurances,” Cecilia choked out.

  “Assurances for what?” Loren angrily shrugged his shoulders.

  The female vampire’s wary eyes dodged his glare. Her fear of Loren was enough angst to inflict on her. “I know something about all those missing vampires. I overheard the Philadelphia guards talking when they collected Annie.”

  “Cecilia!” George cried out and immediately stood in front of her, blocking Loren, who was about to lose it. “This interrogation is over!”

  “Wait! No.” Loren brought his wrists up to flick all the movement in the room to a screeching halt.

  “This is my vampire. This is my allegiant.” What a time for George to grow a set, but the commander had a damn good point.

  Loren, don’t bother. We can track her down later. Julianna’s warning slid across his frontal cortex like a seductive caress. Calming him.

  Loren groaned inwardly. He was off his damn game. This mess was why he didn’t get involved with the allegiants. He had to play by the rules. It was one thing to casually peek into current thoughts. Memories, older ones had to be ripped out of the head and the person, human or vampire usually passed out from the pain.

  But what was he supposed to do with this information he just stumbled upon? He was there to wipe Stephen Kastner’s mind and scare the hell out of Cecilia.

  If it got out he was actively getting in between DC and Philadelphia, or worse, favoring one above the other, all hell would break loose. He’d be violating his truce agreement with New York. Loren liked his freedom. He passed through state after state, casually ‘checking-in’ with the local commander.

  Scaring the crap out of them was an extra bonus.

  “Guard!” George called out and the door opened. “Escort Cecilia home.”

  A shaking, wrangled mess of a female vampire, reeking from the scent of guilt and shame tiptoed past Loren. Before he let Cecilia leave, he dipped inside her mind, as well the guard’s, and plucked the memory of Julianna from their brains like a twitchy burrowed tick.

  When they were gone, George ran a hand through his white-blond hair. “That could have gone better.”

  “Cecilia must be punished for concealing such sensitive information. Brought before New York and questioned further by them. Missing vampires is serious. Heck—” Aiden. Missing. Loren’s mind began to whir, revving like an engine. Overdrive. Bingo! “Aiden from Philadelphia is missing, in case you forgot. A kidnapped commander is treason, George.”