Blood is not thicker than water.
The Undead are restless, and the Empress feels powerless to heal the rift within the vampiric empire. As tensions rise, Angelica and Danny must hold a crumbling paranormal world together. But a knocking from the portal into Hell makes for a dark distraction. What horrors will the new Lieutenant of the Underworld heap upon them?
EXCERPT:
Danny was walking through the PID offices, but it wasn’t the PID he knew. Not anymore. Corpses were strewn across the floor, all people he recognized, most of them humans. He went to touch one, an older man with white hair, to see if by chance he was still alive, but he couldn’t. It was then he knew what was happening: he was having a vision.
But how? When he turned into a vampire, he had knowingly given up his psychic powers and hadn’t had a vision for over twenty years now. Despite his uneasiness, it was like riding a bike as the vision unfolded. He simply followed it to see it to fruition, knowing that he had no control over it now.
It was vivid, much more vivid than his visions used to be, which was saying something. The smell of blood was everywhere, but there was something wrong with it. It was sour, and made him cover his nose and mouth with his jacket so he wouldn’t gag. He’d never smelled it before, but when he saw the needles on a table filled with red liquid so dark it looked black, he knew: it was dead man’s blood.
Deadlier than garlic and more lethal than holy water to a vampire, dead man’s blood could kill a vamp nearly instantly. It had to be from a corpse that was dead for at least twenty-four hours, and the older the blood, the quicker the death of the vampire. Angelica had been testing out a new weapon which fired arrows filled with dead man’s blood and holy water, to better fight against any other possible Undead defectors.
He gave the table with the needles a wide berth, walking further down the hall to the training room. He wanted to stop, to turn and run, at least to wake up. But like any good nightmare, vision of the future or not, he could only keep walking at a steady but slow pace.
He could hear screaming and crying from the other side of the training room door, and his stomach rolled when he realized it was Angelica he heard crying. It didn't sound like she was in pain, exactly. She sounded angry and desperate and … sad?
He pushed open the door with a shaking hand and saw a bloody corpse pinned to a pile of workout mats, eyes wide in horror. He had no idea who the man was: he was in his sixties with greying hair and wide, hazel eyes. He’d been killed via vampire bite.
Danny turned the corner around the pile of workout mats the corpse lay on and saw another body, this one so far into decomposition that it was unrecognizable save for the fact that it wore male clothing. Angelica sat before it, blood leaking from her eyes, nose, and mouth as she sobbed.
Before his eyes he watched as his wife, the woman he loved, began to deteriorate and decay, turning into a skeletal corpse just like the one on the floor.
He tried to call out to her, to run to her, but he was still and silent.
From behind him, a voice slithered into his ear. He usually couldn’t hear voices clearly in his visions, they sounded like they were underwater. However, this one was as clear as a bell, and damn familiar, though he couldn’t place it.
“The time for revenge is upon us, Detective. Are you ready to see your world crumble before your eyes?”
About The Author
Lily Luchesi is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of the Paranormal Detectives Series, published by Vamptasy Publishing. She also has short stories included in multiple bestselling anthologies, and a successful dark erotica retelling of Dracula.
Her Coven Series has successfully topped Amazon's Hot New Releases list consecutively.
She is also the editor, curator and contributing author of Vamptasy Publishing's Damsels of Distress anthology, which celebrates strong female characters in horror and paranormal fiction.
She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and now resides in Los Angeles, California. Ever since she was a toddler her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things "dark". At two she became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle. She is also an out member of the LGBT+ community. When she's not writing, she's going to rock concerts, getting tattooed, watching the CW, or reading manga. And drinking copious amounts of coffee.
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