Austin's Lost Bride (The Sterns)

AUSTIN'S LOST BRIDE

by Mindi Winters

Strong willed, reckless, and longing for vengeance, Rebecca Carter heads into the fight alone…

Filled with regret at his failure, Austin Stern vows that this time his nemesis is going to die…

Five years after saying goodbye, Rebecca and Austin reluctantly decide to work together to finish the monster that broke them apart. But evil has its own plans, and as things fall apart Rebecca and Austin will find their lives in each other’s hands, both struggling to survive being taken by the beast.

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Notices

This book is a work of the author’s imagination. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

AUSTIN'S LOST BRIDE

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Copyright © 2011 Mindi Winters. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.

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Chapter 1

Rebecca felt her pulse quicken and her breathing go shallow. Blood rushed throughout her body and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her toes curled and she thought how she was about to die. Mannus had her body under his control and the grip of his hand around her neck was like steel.

She was dead, only a few heartbeats away from passing out. He wasn’t even going to bother turning her. Suddenly, Mannus loosened his grip slightly and Rebecca felt air return to her lungs and blood flow back into her head.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was going to kill Mannus, not the other way around. Kill him for what he did years ago. She trained hard to be ready. Tracked him and his thralls for nearly five years before he made a slip and it was time to make her move. She even threw off another hunter team tracking him so she could have the kill all to herself.

Stupid.

Every hunter knew from training that while it may sometimes be acceptable to hunt a supernatural creature alone, hunting a vampire solo was absolutely forbidden. Especially a vampire as old and powerful as Mannus. But she did it anyway.

A sudden thought of Austin leading another hunter team gave her a shudder.

Why the hell did she just think of him? Rebecca might be hunting Mannus, but it was Austin and what HE didn’t do that caused of all this.

A sudden yank on her neck brought her back to reality—throttled by the vampire she was trying to kill and surrounded by three of his thralls. Her hands were still free, but Mannus had her by the neck, off the ground with only one arm. Even if she made a move for her silver dagger, or the other numerous weapons she still had on her, it would be useless. His other free hand would block any move by her to get a weapon, or he’d just plain crush her neck.

Just killing her would be too merciful.

He swung her around and placed her feet on the ground as two of the thralls moved up to grab her arms. He was going to turn her.

The light wasn’t especially good, coming from the moon through a nonexistent roof in this abandoned building. Only in Detroit, she thought. She was going to be turned into a vampire inside a vacant building only a stone’s throw away from the river on one side and a fast food joint on the other. She didn’t even consider screaming. No one would come.

Rebecca tried pulling her arms free but the thralls had them secure and Mannus’s hand was still on her neck. She had tracked him for a long time, but this was the first time she ever saw him in person. He had a rugged look with dark-brown hair and facial features that jutted out giving him a definite predator demeanor. His eyes bore into her and held not the slightest hint of emotion or empathy. He was a monster for so long that any hint or memory of his once held humanity had been driven out by the beast. A few scars were on his face and neck, rare for a vampire because only the beautiful and unblemished were usually turned.

But Mannus was no ordinary human before becoming a vampire. He was the original chief of the mighty Germanic barbarian tribes that battled Rome more than 2000 years before. In one great battle with Caesar’s legions, his tribe slaughtered the Romans to a man. When word reached Rome of the massacre, an old man, who was a young vampire with children born when he was human, went out in search of Mannus. The Roman was determined to avenge the death of his favorite human son. He wanted to inflict the worst punishment possible on the barbarian chief, but he failed and ended up turning Mannus into a monster.

“I thought it was against the Hunters Law to challenge a vampire alone?” he asked.

A slight sound left her throat and he smiled.

“Did you think your cause so unique and so righteous that you could challenge me alone? Tens of thousands have died at my hands. Your loss is just one I inflicted over the years. The tragic story that drives you is just ordinary.”

“So you’re just going to kill me then,” she asked, not believing her luck.

“Yes, but not until I turn you—completely.”

Rebecca’s head spun at completely. Why turn her if he just wanted to kill her? She knew the answer as quickly as she thought it. It was the same reason the Roman turned Mannus: To utterly destroy him when he is finally killed.

The turning wasn’t automatic. Sure he’d drain her and then feed her his blood, letting the beast inside. But that wasn’t enough. The beast would be balanced and at war with the human soul. Each existing until a mortal death comes and the soul prevails or the beast is sated with the blood of a first kill. The beast always won. In the end and with the passing of the life taken, the soul is devoured by the beast so that no chance of ascension to heaven remains. Then any death that comes is absolutely final.

Rebecca’s eyes widened with fear and realization that she would never see her loved ones again even in the afterlife, because she wouldn’t have one.

“The only question is: do we complete the turning with a victim off the street? Or do we go looking for your former favorite?”

Austin.

Rebecca felt a lump in her throat. She hated Austin, but didn’t want to see him dead. She began to struggle harder, but the thralls’ grip remained tight and Mannus increased his hold on her throat, tilting her head slightly to the left. He moved in for the bite, his fangs finally showing in full. She could feel the anticipation radiate from him.

Mannus sensed what she saw. Another person was in the building. Two mini-crossbow bolts came out of the shadow straight for Mannus’s heart. He spun around quickly, letting go of her neck. The first bolt hit him in the side and Mannus let out a scream so primal it made her wonder briefly if anyone at the fast food joint would call the police. The second bolt Mannus avoided with a step back. That bolt hit a thrall holding her straight in the face and he was down.

One arm now free, she made a quick throat strike at the other thrall holding her. Before he was down, Rebecca made a move for her silver dagger. Inherited from her mother, it was the most potent weapon she possessed and she readied to throw it.

The final thrall had started shooting, but he considered the unseen hunter to be the bigger threat and was aiming away from her. Two more bolts came out of the dark, all at Mannus, but he was ready now. Wincing in obvious pain, but his face filled with rage, he was ready. He deflected both bolts with ease. He grabbed the bolt in his side and pulled it out just as Rebecca’s dagger struck him.

Mannus screamed. Even in a jaded city like Detroit, Rebecca knew someone must have called the cops by now. The vampire reached to pull out the dagger, dropping it quickly when the handle burned his skin. Rebecca could see real fear in Mannus’s eyes now. He was hurt badly. The dagger was more than a simple inheritance from her mother. It was enchanted by magic and blessed by God. It had killed many supernatural creatures in its history and now it was hers.

She locked eyes onto him and prepared her next attack. A second later, she watched stunned as he turned into a bat and escaped through the roofless building into the night.

Impossible.

He shouldn’t have been able to escape. The dagger’s magic should have bound his transformation abilities. Then she reminded herself that Mannus was considered one of the most powerful vampires existing today. The amount of blood he would need to overcome the dagger’s magic was simply staggering.

A bullet grazed her arm and she dropped in pain. She cursed herself for gawking and turned to face the last thrall. Hate filled his eyes for her hurting his master, but before he could get another shot off, a mini-bolt hit him in the skull.

Thank God that thralls usually aren’t too bright. After having their minds warped to the vampire’s will, a thrall wasn’t usually left with much independent thinking. The thrall had forgotten about the other hunter.

Rebecca didn’t even want to look over at the figure moving out of the shadow. The flutter in her stomach told her everything she needed.

“Hello, Austin,” she said.

Scuffed up, dirty, bruised, and bleeding Rebecca still looked beautiful, thought Austin Stern. A tight fitting hunters suit didn’t hurt either, he smiled.

“Don’t clean your dagger,” he said.

Rebecca shot him a hard stare. “I know my job,” she said.

He shrugged. “You were trying to do my job, so I’m trying out yours.”

A lone police car was outside the building now and approaching sirens meant more cops would soon be here.

“Take care of the bodies. I’ll get Mannus’s blood on the ground.”

Rebecca nodded, her eyes still seething. He watched her move quickly to apply oil on each of the thrall’s, noticing her trim figure as she bent over each of them. He started throbbing, and he wondered if it was more than just her arm and leg muscles that had gotten stronger since they had seen each other.

More cops had arrived on the scene. An officer commanded them to come out and surrender.

“Ready,” she said.

“Do it!”

Austin marveled at her control and finesse. Her arm must hurt like hell, he thought. She etched a quick word of power and a glowing symbol formed in the air in front of her. The thrall’s bodies erupted as incandescent light and turned to nothing but dust. No trace of human existence remained and nothing for forensic CSI folks to work with. Austin smiled.

Instinct took over as Austin grabbed Rebecca and spun her to the ground. Bullets poured into the building from the police, but he couldn’t stop a vision of him throwing her down, slipping between her legs and thrusting into her.

Rebecca smacked him. “What the hell are you thinking about? We have to get out of here.”

He was crazy. She hated him and now was definitely not the time to be thinking sex.

The shooting stopped and they were commanded to come out again. The building was surrounded.

“Hold my hand, you idiot. I can veil better,” she said.

She held her hand out and he took it. The strength in her grip startled him. She had trained hard. They got up and he wondered how it would feel to have her hands work their way around his body and over his cock as the bulge in his pants got bigger.

He waited for the world to change. When he looked up, the night sky and moon were just as clear as before. Rebecca started walking toward the exit and he frowned.

“Veil us here,” he said.

Rebecca let out a single laugh. “We are veiled. Keep quiet and let me lead. Don’t let go of my hand even for a second.”

Rebecca smirked and Austin realized he must look like his face had just been hit by a sledgehammer. His own veils, when they were done well, left him looking at the world through a huge fuzzy haze. Good enough to get around undetected, but crap for noticing details in the outside world. Even the best cast veils should leave a slight but still noticeable snow effect on his perception of the world. But Rebecca’s was perfect.