Crimson Debt: Book 1 in the Born to Darkness series

Born to Darkness

Book 1: Crimson Debt

by

Evangeline Anderson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Evangeline Anderson on Smashwords

Born to Darkness

Book 1: Crimson Debt

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Author's note: I know a lot of you are
eagerly awaiting Shadowed, book 8 in my Kindred series and believe
me, it is coming. I simply hit a wall while writing it and had to
take a step back and write something completely different. This new
series is the result. I had great fun writing it and I hope you'll
enjoy reading it as well. Shadowed will be out later this year and
I have provided the first chapter at the end of this book for your
reading enjoyment. In the mean time, I hope you love reading
Crimson Debt as much as I loved writing it. Thanks for your
patience and for not pirating my work--I make my living on these
books and try to keep the prices low so everyone can enjoy
them.

Hugs and Happy Reading to you all!

Evangeline

“So you’re working here of your own free
will? No one has coerced you either mentally or physically into
employment at
Under the Fang
?”

The college age barmaid gave me a bored look
and snapped her gum. “Yeah, I mean no, nobody forced me or
anything. I’m here ‘cause the tips are great, Master Corbin won’t
let anybody fuck with us, and I get as much glam-sex as I want for
free. What’s not to like?”

What indeed. I studied her eyes, looking for
the telltale red pinprick in her pupils that denoted a thrall but
there was nothing. There never was at
Under the Fang,
Tampa’s premiere glam-sex club, which always pissed me off. I would
have loved to nail the owner’s hide to the wall. Self-satisfied
bastard.

Sitting on a raised dais in the center of the
club was the bastard in question—Alec Corbin, a four-star master
vamp who looked like a wet-dream come true. He was six four and
probably around two twenty or two twenty-five, all of it muscle and
he wasn’t shy about showing it off either. Right now he was wearing
a tight black t-shirt that hugged his broad shoulders and muscular
chest and made his dark blond hair glow positively gold in the dim
lights of the club. He’d died needing a shave but the dark blond
stubble on his square jaw only added to his sex appeal and I was
willing to bet that he knew it.

However it wasn’t his size or his looks that
drew the admiration of every fang freak in the sunshine state—it
was Corbin’s eyes. Fringed thickly with dark lashes, they were a
deceptively light silvery-blue that reminded me of the reflection
on the surface of a lake. A mysterious body of water that had
unexplored depths with monsters swimming somewhere down deep, just
waiting to grab you and drag you under. Pretty on the surface and
fucking scary underneath.

Yeah, that was Corbin, all right.

As though feeling my gaze on him, he looked
up and smiled at me, showing just enough fang to be insulting. I
met his monster’s eyes without fear and gave him a blank look back.
I can do that because I’m an Auditor, but I don’t recommend it to
your average garden variety human. Being one of the one in ten
thousand who is immune to a vamp’s glamour and mind tricks comes in
handy for me in my line of work, but if someone without my gifts
was to try what I do, they’d be screwed six ways to Sunday.

“Seriously, I mean this gig rocks. Where else
do you get multiple orgasms as a bonus?”

The chirpy voice of the barmaid drew me away
from my staring contest with Corbin and I turned to look at her
again. She had curly hair that was done up in a lot of tendrils
around her round face and there was a fresh set of fang marks on
her neck. Looking around the club, which was decorated in red,
black, and silver, I saw more than one patron with a matching set.
The sex for blood trade must be hustling tonight.

“So you do the glam-sex thing a lot, do you?”
I asked, wondering about the state of her gray matter. There
haven’t been any studies to prove that glam-sex—that is mind-sex
with a vampire—has long term side effects, but how often could you
let another being alter your brain before it turned to mush?

“Yeah, it’s great. Especially with Master
Corbin. I mean, I only got it from him once, back when I first
started, but
wow.
” She waved shyly at Corbin who didn’t
bother to acknowledge her. His lack of attention didn’t seem to
bother his employee, however. “It’s like
amazing,
” she
gushed, grinning at me. “I mean, have you ever tried it?”

“Can’t.” I pointed to the small black star
tattooed at the outer corner of my right eye—the mark of an
Auditor. I use makeup to cover it up when I’m out but the law
mandates I keep it visible while I’m at work. It’s the same law
that forces vamps to have their own tattoos—one star for every
century they’ve been alive. Or undead, if you want to get
technical. They use a special kind of ink—I’ve heard it’s blood
based—in order to make a permanent mark on a vamp and even so it
fades over time and they have to get it redone. Alec Corbin had
four little blood red stars under his left eye. As far as I knew,
he was the only four-star vamp in all of Florida, which was fine
with me. The longer a vampire survives, the stronger he gets. Four
stars are rare and scary enough, any more and you’re getting into
truly frightening territory.

“Oh, right.” The barmaid shook her head.
“Vamps can’t glam you, huh? Bummer.”

“I manage just fine,” I said dryly. “How does
your boyfriend feel about you having glam-sex with the fangers
every night?”

“Oh, I haven’t dated anyone since just after
I started here two years ago. I was going with this one guy—we were
even thinking of getting married. But he got mad when I quit school
to work at
the Fang
full time. He was all ‘Glam-sex is still
cheating’ and I was like, ‘As if, asshole. They don’t even touch
me.’ But he totally wouldn’t see it my way and he was being a jerk
about the whole thing. So we broke up.”

“So you quit school and you haven’t had a
meaningful relationship outside the confines of your own head in
two years? All just so you could work at a bar and get mind-fucked
every night?” I asked bluntly. “Think about it—you could be married
with kids and a career by now and instead you’re slinging beers for
minimum wage. Is it really worth it?”

The barmaid’s cheeks flushed an angry red.
“You sound like my mom. Come to think of it, you kind of
look
like her too.”

Okay, that hurt. Thirty was coming up pretty
fast but I didn’t think I really looked my age. If anything, my
bright red hair, big brown eyes, and freckles made me look younger
than I was—a trait I hated but used to my advantage when I needed
to. Probably what the girl was referring to was my choice of
clothing. I was wearing a gray tailored pantsuit with black heels
to add a little height to my five foot four inch frame. The cut of
the suit was pretty severe and it didn’t show a bit of skin besides
my hands and throat—a far cry from the barmaid’s daisy dukes and
cut-up-to-here midriff t-shirt.

“Forget I said anything,” I told her,
snapping my citation pad shut. “What you do with your life is your
business.”

I was trying to make peace but she couldn’t
let it drop. “Like you’ve done so much with yours,” she sneered.
“You’re just some kind of bureaucrat who goes around and tries to
ruin other people’s fun. Is this what you do all day? Ask people
stupid boring questions?”

“Actually, I also kill vampires sometimes,” I
said pleasantly. “So my job isn’t
all
boring.”

The girl’s mouth was suddenly hanging open
and I had a moment of satisfaction when I thought I’d finally
gotten through to her. Then a deep, cool voice behind me said, “I
think you’ve annoyed Ms. Godwin quite enough for now, Bambie. Maybe
you should go see if table five needs a refill on their
drinks.”

“Yes, Master Corbin.” The awe in her voice
made me roll my eyes and she bowed and actually backed away, as
though Corbin was some kind of royalty. Well, to fang freaks like
her, he probably was.

“Sorry about that. Bambie isn’t the brightest
barmaid we have here at
the Fang
but she’s competent and
reliable.” Corbin stepped around to face me and turned the force of
his considerable charm on me like a spot light. I could feel the
envious stares of the other women, and quite a few of the men in
the club as well, as they watched us.

“No problem. Just part of the job.” I met his
eyes because I could. But just because he couldn’t glamour me
didn’t mean it was easy to hold his unwavering silver-blue
gaze.

“The job which includes killing vampires,” he
said blandly.

I frowned. “That’s right.” I wore a Glock 22
loaded with hollow point bullets filled with silver nitrate and I
knew how to use it. I’d only pulled the trigger twice—both times my
life had been threatened—but I was also the state mandated button
man—or button woman in my case. That is, when a vamp was sentenced
to death, I was the one who pushed the button that opened the
skylight in the sun room where our fanged friends were executed.
Hey, somebody had to do it and it was part of my job. Not a part I
particularly cared for but I wasn’t going to apologize for it
either.

Corbin seemed to sense my defensive mood
because he changed the subject. “I trust you got the information
you needed and that our little establishment passed your test with
flying colors?” he asked smoothly.

“You’re in compliance.” I couldn’t keep the
annoyance out of my voice. Other vamp run establishments had
regular complaints but
Under the Fang
never had a single
problem. Every employee was perfectly happy, every customer
completely satisfied. The local PD never even got any drunk and
disorderly calls which was unheard of since the club had a full bar
and last call wasn’t until five AM.

“You sound disappointed.” Corbin grinned,
showing more than a little fang, which really pissed me off. Not a
lot of humans know it but displaying their fangs is more than just
an expression of hunger for a vamp—it’s an outright sexual come-on.
Corbin might as well have rubbed his hard-on against my
thigh—that’s how subtle it was.

“Why don’t you close your mouth, Corbin. I
don’t appreciate your little display.”

“You should be flattered,” he said mildly.
“Not many breathers affect me this way.”

“You get a hard-on for danger. Is that it?” I
shifted my stance so my jacket fell open, revealing the Glock
strapped under my arm. Unfortunately, Corbin’s silvery-blue eyes
went to my breasts instead of my gun.

“Let’s just say I like aggressive women.” He
smiled at me, not retracting his fangs a bit. “It’s a great pity,
though, that you have to use a weapon to back up your threat. It
would be so much better if you had the physical strength to meet me
as an equal.”

“Why is that? You want to arm wrestle?”

He laughed, a deep, rich sound that seemed to
go right through me. “I think I’d prefer a different kind of
wrestling and I don’t mean of the glam variety.”

I could feel myself blushing and it pissed me
off. Corbin was talking about sex— not mind-fucking but actual
physical
sex—which was highly illegal between humans and
vampires. That’s because you can’t go to bed with a being strong
enough to bend an iron bar in half and not wake up looking like
road kill the next morning—if you wake up at all, that is. A vamp’s
blood-lust combines with their fuck-lust when they try to have sex
with a human and the result usually looks like a Jackson Pollock
painting.

“I see I’ve given you some food for thought,”
Corbin noted when I didn’t answer his innuendo.

“Yes. You have me thinking you’re offering
more than glam-sex here, which, as you know, is against the
law.”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest and
grinned. “I would never offer such a thing to a human—not unless
she could handle it, Addison.”

The use of my first name pissed me off even
more, as he no doubt intended. I reached for my cuffs—the ones made
of a tough silver alloy vamps can’t break. They’re also covered in
velvet to keep their skin from burning on contact, which sort of
ruins the effect in my opinion but whatever—they work.