'Broken Blood Bonds' Character Art

Meet Adriana, Jude, and Cyrus, plus read chapter one of 'Broken Blood Bonds,' Immortal Dark Hearts Book 1

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CHAPTER ONE (ADRIANA'S POV)

The hunger is winning.

Three days without feeding, and my body is betraying me in ways I never thought possible.

I reach for the wine glass, watching in horror as ice slowly spreads across the surface. Not exactly normal for someone born a fire witch.

Not good at all. I need to get some fresh blood in my system, and soon.

It may not solve my ice issue, but it should pacify my vampire nature, albeit momentarily.

It’s impossible to think with this constant thrumming in my head, the all-consuming hunger tugging at every edge of my deteriorating body.

Focus, Adriana. Dinner.

Across the dimly lit burlesque club, my target—a greasy-haired creep in his fifties—inappropriately gropes another waitress. Strike three.

Perfect. He’s absolutely perfect for what I need.

Not as a person, obviously. The man is human garbage, and his memories will taste like bile when I drain him. But that makes him perfect.

I used to be more selective about feeding.

Used to have standards.

But a lot can change in nine years.

The performer on stage, a petite blonde with a barbed-wire tattoo coiling around her thigh, sheds another layer to collective gasps from the audience.

She’s cute. Cyrus would’ve liked her. The thought rises unbidden, but I push it down immediately. I can’t think of him now.

Blood. I need blood.

Gripping my glass tighter, I return my attention to the target.

As the performer continues her show, the creep’s heartbeat spikes with lust, his pudgy fingers reaching for his zipper under the table.

Nausea claws up my throat, sharp and unrelenting, but I force myself not to look away.

No shame. The fucker is touching his dick right here, thinking he’s safe in the shadows, that nobody can see him being a pervert in public. But I see. I see everything.

The performance on stage is reaching its crescendo, but I’m no longer paying attention. The ten tables around me have been reduced to only one as my supernatural senses hone in on my prey.

But something is off.

The sound of his racing pulse should be music to my ears, should make my fangs ache with anticipation.

Instead, it’s giving me a migraine.

That’s new. That’s wrong.

For nearly five centuries, the sound of blood pumping through mortal veins has been the most glorious composition I’ve known. Now it hammers in my skull, competing with the relentless gnawing in my stomach that grows worse every hour I delay feeding.

I shouldn’t have waited this long.

Three days without fresh blood shouldn’t be a challenge, not for a vampire of my age. But the hunger has been returning more frequently now.

That’s not the only issue.

Feeding has become...complicated.

Last week, it took me four attempts to successfully compel a victim. Four!

I blamed it on fatigue, on stress, on anything except the obvious truth: I’m dying. Slowly, inevitably, dying.

My stomach growls again, bringing me back to the present, to the club.

Focus, Adriana.

The asshole with the unseen target on his back drains his beer and stumbles toward the exit, his entertainment concluded, fresh cum drying on his pants.

Scum.

Leaving cash on the bar, I follow him into the night.

As the city swallows us up, I step into the shadows between two buildings, intending to materialize ahead of him on the next block. But something isn’t right. My shadow-walking falters.

The familiar sensation of dissolving into darkness begins, then stutters, like a car engine trying to turn over. For a moment, I’m caught between forms, neither solid nor shadow, drowning in the nauseating vertigo of existing in two states simultaneously.

When I finally solidify, I’m only halfway to my destination, pressed against a brick wall.

Cazzo! I swear silently, as I rush to catch up to the target who’s stumbling down the sidewalk.

Usually, I move faster than the human eye. But today’s not a good day. The hunger is exacerbating the symptoms.

My dinner almost gets away as I try to stop the world from spinning. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Finally, I get close enough to grab him, yanking the man with the sticky pants into the alley with me before he can react.

“Hey!” His southern drawl is slurred with alcohol and confusion.

Not bothering to reply, I pin his arms behind his back, pressing him against the brick wall as my fangs extend.

I’m too desperate, too hungry to bother with anything but brute force.

He tries to shake me off, but even weakened, I’m still stronger than any human.

The relief should be instant.

That’s how it’s been for hundreds of years.

The moment my teeth pierce human flesh has always been pure euphoria, the hunger satisfied, warmth flooding my veins, strength returning to every cell in my body.

But not today.

His memories hit me with the force of a baseball bat to the gut: childhood trauma, wedding bells, the terrible things he’s done to his nieces. Usually, I can filter the emotional overflow, take only what I need while leaving the rest. Now it all pours into me unchecked: his pain, his guilt, his sick desires mixing with his blood until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.

The sour taste invades my mouth. I try to pull back, but my control is gone, my usual hypnotic influence reduced to nothing.

He stares at me with pure terror as the puncture wounds heal over, half-dead but fully aware of what just happened.

“Asshole.” I try my best to compel him before I shove him away. But I doubt it will hold.

I should kill him. For what he’s done to his nieces, for what he knows, for the simple satisfaction of ending something vile.

But I can’t.

Not like this.

Not when I’m barely functional enough to feed, let alone commit a clean murder.

Instead, I leave him in the alley and saunter off into the night.

* * *

The October air bites into my skin as I make my way through the city streets. Even the cold feels wrong now, sharper than it should be, like my body can’t regulate temperature the way it used to.

Feeding should have restored me. Instead, I remain hollow, the hunger temporarily silenced but not satisfied.

A group of college students stumbles past, laughing, their pulses singing in harmony. My fangs ache. Still hungry. Always hungry now.

I duck into a side street, away from temptation, just as my phone buzzes.

A text from Dimitri:

Package secured for tomorrow night. Client confirmed.

Half a million for a Byzantine manuscript. The kind of money that used to matter. Now it’s a mere means to an end, funding my search, keeping up appearances, maintaining the infrastructure of a life I’m not sure I’ll be around to live for much longer. Not at this rate.

My fingers are trembling. I stare at them, willing them to be steady. They don’t listen.

Another buzz. This time, an email notification from a rare book dealer in France. My heart, my stupid, non-beating heart, lurches with something dangerously close to hope.

I shouldn’t open it. Not here, not in some filthy alley with the taste of a pedophile’s memories still coating my tongue.

But I do.

Just as expected—another dead end.

How many does that make? Two hundred? Three?

I close my eyes. Count to ten in Latin, then Italian…then English.

The brick wall is cold against my back. I slide down until I’m sitting on the dirty street, knees pulled up, phone clutched in my hand like it might offer answers instead of disappointment.

Nine years of searching, and I’m no closer to finding that damn spellbook than I was the day it was stolen, also known as the day my undead body started falling apart.

There’s a reason vampire-witch hybrids usually don’t survive their turning. I used to think I was special, lucky, that I found a loophole. But loopholes only get you so far.

And nine years after the Grimoire containing the living spells holding my opposing natures in balance was stolen from me, my time is finally running out.

A rat scurries past my foot. I don’t bother moving.

What’s the point? Even the rats no longer fear me.

I used to be powerful, untouchable. I walked through the world like I owned it because, in many ways, I did.

Now I can’t even feed properly. Can’t shadow-walk without nearly killing myself. Can’t go three days without feeding before my insides threaten to tear themselves apart.

It’s strange not being able to trust your own body. The constant worry that it might fail you in new ways. It’s a long way removed from the feeling of invincibility I carried with me for half a millennium.

My phone screen glows in the darkness, still showing my email inbox. All the same message, variations on a theme: Nothing yet. Still searching. Will keep you posted.

Empty promises from people who don’t understand what’s at stake, who don’t understand that every day I go without finding that Grimoire, I lose a little more of myself.

My fire magic is turning to ice, my vampire abilities flickering like a dying lightbulb. The two natures that should never have coexisted in the first place are finally tearing me apart the way nature always intended.

I should get up, go home, maybe plan tomorrow’s search…I should do something.

But for a moment, one heavy moment, I let myself sit in this filthy alley and endure the full weight of my failure.

I can’t keep going on this way. I’ve been going in circles for nearly a decade; still nothing.

With a sigh, I pull up the list on my phone. The list that’s consumed so much of my recent life, organized by city, cross-referenced by reputation and likelihood.

I cross off Morning Manuscripts.

Another dead end.

Nobody there was even remotely useful.

The shop assistant didn’t even look up from his phone when I inquired about Renaissance catalogs. Just waved me away, telling me to look on the shelves if I need anything.

I had hoped to find a competent research assistant by now, someone who could look at this puzzle with fresh eyes, but they’re all disinterested, too full of themselves to even bother with the test I’ve set up to filter out the inept candidates.

When did humans become so apathetic?

Only four shops are left in this city, according to m y list. Four more chances before I have to move on to the next place, the next disappointment.

Morrison’s Rare Books is next on the list; tomorrow’s mission.

They won’t know anything about my book; they never do.

Why do I keep getting my hopes up?

The book dealers have been as useless as the underground collectors.

I’ve searched hundreds of shops across three continents. Bribed collectors, intimidated dealers, hunted rumors through the black market with single-minded obsession, only to watch each trail go cold.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So, what does that make me?

A rat scurries past my foot again, bolder this time.

The audacity. His head makes a satisfying crunching sound under my foot as the squeaking dies down to silence. I kick the carcass away from me.

Shoving my phone into a pocket, I push myself to my feet, ignoring the way my legs protest.

I can’t stay here all night. Tempting as it is to give up, to let nature run its course until there is nothing left of my body but vulture food, I force myself to move.

The city continues bustling around me, unchanged, oblivious, as I walk the familiar streets. Life continues for everyone who isn’t slowly disintegrating from the inside out.

Morrison’s tomorrow.

It will be a waste of time.

I’ll go anyway.

Because what else is there?

*Artist credit: @runawayfromtoads