Read Blood on Silk Online

Authors: Marie Treanor

Tags: #vampire

Blood on Silk

BOOK: Blood on Silk
10.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“Saloman and Elizabeth’s relationship is both amazingly
hot and terrifyingly complicated. Readers will fall instantly in love
with the world that Marie Treanor has created.”

—Michele Bardsley, national bestselling author of the Broken Heart series

PRAISE FOR MARIE TREANOR AND HER NOVELS

“Wow! Steamy-hot fantasy, sizzling sex, and a story that makes you think . . . Marie Treanor really packs a lot into these pages.”

—Fallen Angel Reviews

“Prepare to be scorched, alarmed, illuminated, and fired up!”

—TwoLips Reviews

“Fantastic.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“My first impression of this work was
wow
. . . highly recommended read from an author to watch.”

—The Romance Studio

“A very unique fantasy. The passion and heat . . . was Pure Erotic but with a loving passion that made me feel all warm inside.”

—Paranormal Romance Reviews

“A fantastic story . . . superhot sex. I cannot wait for future books.”

—Joyfully Reviewed

“A strange and adorable relationship . . . so much more than a mere vampire story.”

—Romance Junkies

“Funny, sizzling, and tender.”

—Bitten by Books

“Marie Treanor always delivers a book that you’ll be talking about long after reading it.”

—Love Romances

“Hauntingly beautiful and entirely sensual.”

—Ecataromance

“Clever, agreeable, and very readable.”

—BookWenches

“A superbly written story filled with suspense, action, and steamy, passionate encounters.”

—Literary Nymphs

SIGNET ECLIPSE
Published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre,
Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, September 2010

Copyright © Marie Treanor, 2010

All rights reserved

SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Treanor, Marie.
Blood on silk: an awakened by blood novel/Marie Treanor.
p. cm.
“A Signet Eclipse book.”

eISBN : 978-1-101-45995-9

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into 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 above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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

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.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Robert Gottlieb and Kerry Donovan,
who’ve made writing this book a pleasure
as well as a learning experience.

For Heather, MCDC,
who shares my longtime love of vampires.

And, as always, for my husband.

Chapter One

S
aloman. Again.

“I’m beginning to hate that guy,” Elizabeth muttered. “If he ever existed.”

She spoke in English, so her informant, Maria, an almost entirely toothless old lady in black, merely grinned without a clue as to what she’d said.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said in Romanian, switching off the tape recorder on the table between them. “You’ve been very helpful.” As she rose to her feet, Maria grinned again, adding to Elizabeth’s suspicion that she’d just been fed a farrago of nonsense. It was as much for the locals’ amusement as for her own—one of the challenges of her research was to pick out the “genuine” myths from the made-up ones, and it wasn’t always easy.

The villagers who’d gathered curiously in the garden during the interview now fell back as Elizabeth stashed the recorder in her bag and turned to go.

“Thank you for the coffee,” she added to the younger woman who’d brought it, and this time Maria’s smile was genuine.

Elizabeth slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way along the shaded path toward the rickety garden gate. She’d get no further useful material here. The villagers would just vie with one another to impress her now—or fool her. It wasn’t always clear which.

But although some of them stayed to chat with the old lady and her daughter, others walked toward the gate with her, as if eager to impart more nonsense. Elizabeth avoided eye contact, knowing she could be here for hours if she didn’t. And she was tired. It had been a long day, and despite the weeks she’d spent here in the summer heat, she still found it grueling. She had never imagined she’d miss the cold and rain of a Scottish summer.

She liked this charming garden, though, full of fruit trees and vegetables as well as large, brightly colored roses and, most of all, the maze of paths lined with vines that had been trained to form an almost impenetrable roof. The shadowed tangled-lattice effect in the sunlight was pretty and, more important, cool.

“Miss Silk? What makes you think the vampire Saloman didn’t exist?”

Damn.
She’d met the speaker’s gaze before she realized it, drawn by sheer surprise because he spoke excellent English. The other locals, as though accepting his victory, fell back and dispersed by other routes.

Elizabeth said, “Besides the word ‘vampire,’ you mean?”

The man smiled. She’d noticed him before, watching her a little too closely for comfort, while she talked to old Maria. Although she didn’t doubt her ability to get rid of him—eventually—her internal alarm bell gave a warning tinkle. He was perhaps around forty years old and wore the traditional garb of most of the older villagers—long white shirt, belted in the middle, and dark trousers—and his dark, steady eyes were of the same nut-brown color as his sun-drenched skin. Only the mass of deeply etched lines around his eyes spoke of greater age, but then, the sun did that to people.

“If you want to hear about vampires, the villagers will tell you,” he explained. “They always do.”

She allowed herself a rueful smile. “I’m not the first to ask these questions around here, am I?”

“No. We’ve had people writing books, people making films, people who want to meet vampires, people who want to
be
vampires—”

“I’m a little more serious than that,” Elizabeth interrupted. Her car was in sight, and she wanted nothing more than a cool bath and some dinner in her own room before a good night’s sleep.

“Ah yes. You’re writing your doctoral thesis.” He held the gate open for her, and she cast him a quick glance as she passed, checking for any signs of mockery. The shading vines cast an intricate pattern of shadows across his face—an interesting, intelligent face, but not a comforting one. Something about him—something both attractive and repellent—bothered her. But then, she’d had that reaction to men before. Excessive interest might be flattering, but she didn’t trust it.

“I heard you tell Maria,” he added, obviously misunderstanding her suspicion. “What exactly are you writing about?”

She smiled and nodded a definite farewell as she passed through the gate. “Vampires, of course.” Once she was away from the sheltering vines, the sun hit her like a wave.

He called after her. “So what’s your problem with Saloman?”

Well, she could bore him with that till he shoved off. Then she could drive away, venting her frustration inside the car. She halted and frowned back over her shoulder. “That he keeps cropping up in too many eras,” she all but snapped. “I have recorded stories of at least one Solomon before Christianity, several Salomans between the eleventh and the eighteenth centuries, and one Sal at the beginning of the twentieth. Oh, and Maria’s Saloman in the nineteenth.” She snorted. “And everyone claims they’re the same man!”

“He’s a vampire,” her companion said reasonably. “He can exist for centuries.”

Elizabeth cast him a withering stare and in spite of herself walked back to him as she dug in her bag for the car keys. “I’m writing a doctoral thesis, not a fairy tale. My interest is in the social conditions that inspired and fed the vampire superstitions, not in the gory details.”

“And what were they?” the man inquired.

“What?” Distracted, Elizabeth fumbled the keys, dropping them into the recesses of her bag. She rummaged for them again.

“The social conditions,” he said patiently.

Retrieving the keys, Elizabeth came up for air. She sighed. “Are you really interested in this?”

“Of course.”

She shrugged. “My theory is that accusations of vampirism resemble accusations of witchcraft in western Europe, insofar as they were made against people who presented some kind of threat to their communities—either economic threats, such as the single, unsupported women who made up the bulk of so-called witches, or more physical ones. I believe accusations of vampirism were made after deaths to justify killings that would otherwise have been unlawful. There may be elements of guilt and other factors in there, too, but in basic terms, that’s what vampire legends come down to—people who threatened villages by stealing, pillaging, excessive taxation, military levies. . . .” She trailed off. “Well, you get the idea. Anyway, generally it works. Most of the individual cases I’ve found support my theory. I can trace many such characters to legal documents and recordings of their deaths. But Saloman . . .”

BOOK: Blood on Silk
10.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Just a Corpse at Twilight by Janwillem Van De Wetering
The Girl Who Kissed a Lie by Skylar Dorset
Heroin Love by Hunter, I.M.
Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg
The Girls on Rose Hill by Bernadette Walsh
The Admirals' Game by David Donachie
Melissa's Mates by Jennifer Salaiz