Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2

Blood Born

Cora’s Choice –
Book 2

by V. M. Black

Aethereal
Bonds #2

AetherealBonds.com

Black Lotus Press

Washington, D.C.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 V. M. Black

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Cora Shaw’s Story

Cora’s Choice (90 to 130-page novellas)

Book
1 –
Life Blood
– FREE

Book
2 –
Blood Born

Book 3 –
Bad Blood

Book 4 –
Blood Rites
– Coming June 17, 2014

Book 5 –
Blood Bond
– Coming July 2014

Book 6 –
Blood Price
– Coming August 2014

The Alpha’s Captive (45 to 64-page novelettes)

Book 1 –
Part One
– FREE

Book 2 –
Part Two

Book 3 –
Part Three
– Coming July 1, 2014

Book 4 –
Part Four
– Coming August 5, 2014

Book 5 –
Part Five
– Coming September 2, 2014

Stand-Alone Short Stories

Heaven’s Price
– Coming June 24, 2014

M
y veins burned. Pain seared through them, through my heart, like razors in my blood, turning every racing beat into a new agony. I sucked in air hard past the crushing weight on my chest.

My eyes
…. I knew they were open, but I saw only shadows against darkness.

I tried to open my mouth
to call out, fought to move my hands to catch at someone, anyone for help. Nothing happened. My burning limbs were heavy and dead, even my voice beyond my control. Inside, I writhed with the pain that screamed through every nerve ending. But my body would not move.

“She’s alive.”

The words hung in the darkness with me. But they weren’t from me—they came from somewhere else, somewhere outside my burning body.

From him.
Mr. Thorne. The vampire who had cost me my life.

There was a burst of noise then, from far away, and a sudden light, first in one eye and then the other, and an impression of a face framed
by curls. There were other people, far too many for my fevered brain to take in. Then the light was gone and darkness closed over me again.

“Congratulations, Dorian.
You managed not to kill this one.”

I assembled the feminine
voice carefully in my mind, one word after the other, but the meaning escaped me. Someone was pulling at my hair, pressing something to my neck. The touch against my skin sent an explosion through my head, and I managed to make a strangled whimper.

For a moment, the rest of the pain receded slightly, and I came back to myself enough
to make sense of what someone else muttered next.

“As long as she doesn’
t bleed out.”

“That
won’t happen,” the female voice said sharply. “Don’t scare her. She might be able to hear you.”

Something
tightened around my upper arm, and something else squeezed one finger. There was tugging at the gown around me. It was pulled away, out from under my limp body. Cold air washed against my angry, burning skin. Struggling for breath in my sea of pain, I felt a faint twinge in the back of my hand.

Someone snarled a curse.
“She’s got no pressure. I can’t get a vein. Are you sure we shouldn’t do a transfusion?”

“No.”
The word cracked through the room—cracked through my panting, sweaty body. Mr. Thorne. Even now, my body sang at his voice. No one else had such power over me. “The blood would not be compatible. She wouldn’t survive.”

“She’ll get through this,” the woman said soothingly.
“We always do. Ready now? One, two,
three!
”

I was lifted into the air for a moment before
being set onto another surface, firm under the cloth that warmed far too quickly against my hot skin. A blanket was pulled up over my body, then there was a pressure on my face, around my mouth, and the weight on my chest grew fractionally lighter. Faint, distant lights—the ceiling?—swung dizzily as I was swung rapidly into motion.

“I want six milliliters of blood taken every hour,” the woman said. “This is a historic moment, people. Let’s make the most of it!”

And then the
darkness came roaring back, and everything else fell away.

***

I was conscious, first, of the strange sheets beneath my body, smoother and cooler than mine had ever been. Then I became aware the scent—roses and lilies and other flowers my nose couldn’t name, perfuming the air around me until it was thick and cloying, like a funeral.

I didn’t hurt.
The shadow of the pain still haunted me, but I didn’t hurt anymore.

And, I realized with some surprise, I definitely wasn’t dead.

I dragged open my eyes. I lay in the center of a wide four-poster bed, sunlight slanting at a low angle across the duvet. Beyond the tied-back curtains was the vast expanse of an unfamiliar bedroom, a poem in dark wood and beige upholstery.

Despite the exquisite taste
displayed in the balance of the furniture and the sophisticated play of texture and shade, the bedroom left the impression of complete neutrality.

No one lived in that room.
No one ever had. The only sign of life came from the vases that burst with extravagant bouquets on every flat surface, the smell of the dying flowers hanging heavy in the still air.

The
n the memories came flooding over me—his mouth on my neck, the blood, the mad heights of pain and pleasure. I shuddered and lifted a hand to my neck, my heart pounding suddenly.

I felt nothing there b
ut smooth, unbroken flesh.

The movement caused a tug on the back of my hand, and I looked down to see an IV taped to it
. I followed the drip line back to a stand next to the head of the bed. It was bizarre, ridiculous, even, to see such a mundane, mechanical medical device after the impossible insanity of the night with Mr. Thorne.

The vampire.

The smooth skin under my fingers told me that I’d imagined it. Every fiber of my being insisted I had not.

I was alive.
Whatever had happened, I’d survived that night. And now, to keep surviving, I needed to get out of here.

Wherever here was.

I counted five doors around the perimeter of the room. The question was, which one led out?

I sat up and scooted up the bed to get a better look at the IV taped to my hand, and a pulling sensation between my legs drew my attention downward.
I slipped my free hand under the sheets to discover a catheter, the tube strapped to my leg and leading off the edge of the bed.

The IV I could handle, but how the hell was I going to get rid of that?

“You’re awake, madam.”

I
started at the voice, my heart accelerating, and jerked my gaze up to see a slight young woman standing in one of the doorways. She wore a simple gray dress with a high collar and a neat line of buttons all the way down a flaring skirt. Another neutral in the neutral room. Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of white tile—a bathroom. She flipped off the light and stepped fully into the bedroom.

“
I’ll let Mr. Thorne know you can see him now,” she said, pulling a phone from her pocket. She tapped at it for a moment before returning it to her skirt and taking a seat on one of the delicately carved chairs.

M
r. Thorne—the vampire.

Oh, my God.

How could I have known?
I wondered. Then immediately, I thought,
How could I have not known?

Long before I’d come to his house, i
t should have been so clear, so absurdly obvious that he wasn’t—couldn’t be—human. No human could have the kind of power over anyone that he had over me. At a word from him, a stranger, I’d thrust my finger into a candle flame.

I should have known
he was something more than what he appeared.

Echoes of my climax washed over me, and I scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand, wishing to chase away the
heat I felt rising there.

Even now.

I stopped. He’d promised a cure for the cancer that was killing me. It was the only reason I’d walked into his house that night, knowing that he was offering me a one in one hundred chance at life. If his procedure didn’t work, I would have died, but I’d been a dead woman walking. I’d had nothing to lose.

But
I hadn’t known then just what his procedure was, much less what he was, though some primal part of me must have recognized that the way he messed with my head was anything but natural.

Blood is collected, and simultaneously, you are given an injection.
His words came back to me. His mouth on my neck, drinking my blood, licking, sucking it...and his saliva, entering my body through the wound his teeth and made.

Shit.
I fought down a wave of visceral panic.

Could it be true?
Could I really be cured?

And if I was, what next?

I felt...spent. Empty. Yet unaccountably, the smothering fatigue that had been my constant companion for the last five months was gone.

“Good morning.”

I jumped again. I’d been so wrapped up in my churning thoughts that I hadn’t noticed one of the other doors open. I hadn’t even noticed Mr. Thorne enter, though his presence now filled the room.

The woman left the room quietly behind him and shut the door
as he stepped closer, his expression intent but unreadable. The flood of light from the great window on the far side of the room washed over him, allowing me to see him more clearly than ever before.

Mr. Thorne
was still impossibly, inhumanly handsome, his piercingly blue eyes regarding me from under his broad forehead. Though still pale, his skin had a healthier cast to it, and the thinness in his cheeks and hollows under his eyes were gone.

Because of me
. Because he drank my blood.

Holy shit.

How could I have ever thought he was human? He looked like a man, but there was a difference to him, not just in the paleness of his skin and the intensity of his eyes. He seemed to extend beyond the limits of his own flesh in the way that ordinary mortals could not, as if his will formed a dark force around his body. I could feel it drawing me to him.

Now
that I could truly see him for what he was, I understood how he gave such an impression of size. His physical height was perhaps only a trifle over six feet, but the part of him that was more than human extended beyond the confines of flesh and bone, making him seem larger than he had any right to be.

Despite
the attraction he exuded, a very immediate and primitive part of my brain wanted nothing but to run away, screaming. My legs twitched of their own accord—and reminded me that I was tied to the bed in quite a literal way.

“I’m glad to see that you’re awake,” Mr. Thorne said.
He crossed to my bedside.

I shrank away, but as he came closer, the strange magnetism that surrounded him overtook me, overwhelming the panicked direct
ions from my hindbrain to flee. I closed my hands around my blankets to keep from reaching out for him. Even now.