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Excerpt Blood Bond by Jacki Bentley

Blood Bond by Jacki Bentley, coming soon from New Concepts, excerpt is unedited by the publisher.



The evil thing chased her, threatened her life.

Well, it, or they, would have to could go through him first.

He opened his mind to her completely, not guarding even a corner for himself, seeking any telepathic message from her. That leap of faith surprised him to his toes.

The telepathic communication of The Vampire People in times of emergency had never worked with him and the insane Sylvia, the woman who’d made him undead. Sylvia had claimed he blocked her, said he resisted relinquishing full control to her. True.

Change! Change! The woman demanded of him again, this time in urgent, snarled mental words. Those two words invaded his mind with driving power and focus. He resisted the urge to clap his hands to his temples.

She closed ground enough that he could see her well. God, her eyes are beautiful.

“Shift, damn you! Now!” She yelled the words aloud this time. Leaping straight upward to become an amazing tropical bird as she spoke.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. Colorful, iridescent and radiant, like a South American Quatzal, but not entirely the same either. A bird pulled more from her vivid imagination than nature, he’d wager.

The invisible, elemental matrices that made up the preternatural shielding around her fragile form had better be as spectacular as she was. If not, some hunter would shoot her pretty tail feathers off in no time.

“Change shape. Shift!”

Once again she ordered imperiously, hovering overhead flapping her wings rapid-speed like a hummingbird. This time she tried something different to communicate with him, the word was the call of a bird, but he understood.

Now!

His hackles rose. He stopped making his way to her. Spreading his stance and folding his arms at his chest, he glared.

“You are speaking to me, ma chérie?” he asked. No woman had ever ordered him about. Not even the deadly, soul-sucking Sylvia. Sylvia and he had come to a grudging understanding on that point.

“Who else is the big bad-ass vampire dude around here? Yeah, I’m talking to you,” she said. “Make yourself something that can fly. Now! Fast!” Move it! I grow tired of telling you.

He smiled. Amazing the hell out of him, he found himself aroused by this woman’s voice … er … hell, bird voice … as it strummed through his system. She stirred him, even though she was more creature than woman at the moment. The thrum of the telepathic messages she could so easily transition to and from enthralled him as well as disturbed him. Even her autocratic orders stimulated him. She interested him as no other had. He found himself more than intrigued by her, with none of the boredom he grew used to over the years in sight.

The rush of adrenaline he’d long forgotten called to him.

“I have not done this in far too many years, little one. I may blow apart in the air around you.”

“Shoot,” she said. “No time for a refresher course, big guy. Clear everything else from your mind. Concentrate.”

Why not shift shape and see where she’d lead him?

Centuries beyond fear for his own safety, Thyre flashed to a bat.

A big, fox bat. He’d molded it to several times larger than natural size for the species. Mentally, he gathered air to him, constructing his own supernatural shield matrix of the raw elements in the air, the bone-like, solid matrices snapped into place around him. Years of practice making it second nature and finished fast.

She laughed at the sight of him now, a tinkling playful, girly-girl sound.

His gut sank. He was far too charmed by the female.

“Funny,” she said aloud in bird sounds. “Very funny. A bat. How stereotypical. Almost as much so as living in a ce-me-ter-y.” She drew out the last word, enunciating each syllable.



Jacki
www.jackibentley.com
Angel and the Flying Warhorses -- Sci fi romance
*2006 Ecataromance Reviewers Choice Award*

posted by Michelle Pillow at 8:10 AM