Tainted BloodHell's Belle SeriesBook 2Karen GrecoGenre: Urban FantasyDate of Publication: Oct. 20, 2014ISBN: ISBN-13:978-1500844448ISBN-10:1500844446ASIN: TBDNumber of pages: 582Word Count: 95,704Cover Artist: Robin Ludwig Design Inc.Book Description:After surviving a vampire assassin (not to mention an awkward affair with a hot FBI agent that ended worse than she could have imagined), witch/vampire hybrid Nina Martinez is reunited with the full Blood Ops team in Providence, Rhode Island. Her Aunt Babe is tutoring her in all things witchcraft, and her vampire partner Frankie is enjoying the benefits of daywalking, courtesy of a demon spell.When a segment of the Rhode Island vampire population is marked for death by a tainted blood supply, Nina and her team race to find Patient Zero before the local vampire population is wiped out. But when a demon infestation threatens to take control of the city, Nina must join forces with newly elected mayor—and closet demon— Ami Bertrand before the city falls into ruin.Filled with fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat action, Nina and her group of supernatural misfits battle a surprising new enemy that threatens their very existence.No wonder she still can’t get a date.From Amazon.com best-selling author Karen Greco, Tainted Blood is the second book in the critically acclaimed Hell’s Belle urban fantasy series.
Excerpt: CHAPTER ONE
"Jesus Christ,
Frankie," I muttered as the crowbar hit the worn marble floor with an
earsplitting clatter. So much for
stealth. We should have just ripped through the doors with explosives.
We were breaking into
the Superman Building. At 26 floors, it was the first skyscraper ever built in
downtown Providence. It lost its last tenant three years ago, and the gorgeous
art deco structure was now a towering reminder of better days, when
manufacturing was booming and people had money to burn. Years of attempts to
"revitalize" the area had fallen flat. This left plenty of room for
the underground supernatural factions to sweep in and take over.
Frankie flashed a fangy
grin at me. "What's the fun in surprising them? It's never a good time
unless it all goes off the rails."
I shook my head and
sighed. Ever since Frankie was charmed by a demon to walk in the sunlight, he
thought he was invincible. And, sure, being a vampire helped, but he could be
staked just as easy as any other vamp. His arrogance could get us both killed.
We walked swiftly
through the lobby of the abandoned high rise, keeping tight to the walls. In
our all-black commando outfits, we blended easily into the dark hallway.
I stole a wistful look
at the bank of elevators. The electricity was cut to the building. We'd be
taking the stairs. "Want to guess what floor they're on?"
"I say top
floor," Frankie said with his hand already on the door to the stairwell.
It was going to be a
long-ass climb. Up the 26 stories and possibly a few extra flights to get to
the tippy top of the building's airship docking station. Seriously. The very
top floor of the building was built for docking blimp-like airships, so there
was a pretty cool waiting area/corporate suite turned Depression-era speakeasy
at the apex. Too bad we were seeing it under these circumstances.
About a week ago, a
suspicious news report piqued our interest. A group of crazed individuals were
caught rampaging through downtown, tossing cars with superhuman strength,
punching through brick walls and causing general weird mayhem. A few witnesses
described them with blood around their mouths.
Max, our newest Blood
Ops member serving as double agent in the FBI, was on record as calling this a
"bath salt related incident." It was simple to blame this behavior on
meth-heads on a DIY bender. But we knew better. They were vampires, and they
were out of control. Frankie and I were dispatched to take care of them.
We climbed the stairs
quickly, Frankie almost a floor ahead of me as we ascended. My calves ached by
the 17th floor, and I was dripping with sweat. The vamps would be able to smell
me by floor 22 if they were paying attention.
Since I am half vampire, I can handle a fair amount of physical
exertion. But a swift walk up the stairs of a high-rise carrying an extra 35
pounds of vampire-fighting gear was punishing. Pushing through the cramps in my
legs, I silently vowed to increase my workouts. It was hard enough to match
Frankie's speed and strength, but now that he thought he was the Man of Steel,
it was damn near impossible just to catch up to him.
We hit the top, and I
finally had a chance to catch my breath. Frankie smirked at my all-too-human
physical stamina.
When my heart stopped
racing, I double-fisted a pair of stakes and nodded at Frankie. He kicked the
door open and we launched into the penthouse. Moonlight poured through the
grime-coated glass ceiling.
We rushed in like
hellfire, expecting to find ourselves in the middle of a melee. But the room
appeared empty.
"Top floor,
Frankie? Really?" I grumbled, re-sheathing my stakes. "How much you
want to bet they're on two?"
Frankie raised his arm
and shushed me. I shot him a dirty look, but quickly softened it when I heard
the hushed groans too.
I motioned to Frankie to
move towards the sounds, and we cautiously walked to the back of the room. A
shape was huddled in a dark corner with two bodies laid out on the floor in
front of it. I pulled a mag light out from one of my cargo pants pockets and
trained it on the shadowy forms.
A female vampire inched
away from the light. Blood was smeared down her face and neck, and it covered
her chest. Two male vampires were on the floor, their fronts washed in red as
well. The walls were covered in sticky, black-red blood. The entire room was
just dripping. It looked like a blood bank exploded.
The vampires on the
floor were truly dead, their pale faces cracked like antique porcelain dolls.
Their appendages were just starting to decompose, but their midsections were
blown out, like they swallowed a bomb and it exploded. The one still living,
for lack of a better word, looked close to meeting true death herself. The
emaciated vampire half-sobbed, half-moaned as she rocked back and forth.
Although they matched
the descriptions of the vamps-gone-wild group, these couldn't be our marauders.
They were simply too sick. They looked like junkies who overdosed. A few times.
"What do we
do?" I had never seen anything like this before. I sure as hell hoped
Frankie would know how to handle this mess.
Frankie walked a wide
semicircle around the vampires, his shoes making sucking noises as he lifted
them off the sticky, blood-soaked floor. He was worried, clearly on guard.
"What's your
name?" he asked.
"Kate," she
croaked out.
"Right, Kate,"
Frankie's voice was soothing. "How long have your friends been like
this?"
"Since
yesterday." Her hoarse voice was barely above a whisper. "We slept in
the stairwell but they came in here last night and just...." She motioned
at the carnage around her and let out a muffled sob.
"So you were able
to walk back and forth to the stairwell? Can you do it now?" I asked.
She tried pulling
herself up, but wasn't strong enough to handle the weight of her tiny body. So
she crawled towards us, plowing over the disintegrating corpses.
"Stop, Kate! Stay
right there!" Frankie visibly jumped back, his shoes making a sharp thwack
as they lifted off the gummy floor. "Nina, you need to call Max and Dr. O.
Max needs to get the electricity back on to this building. She's going to need
to go out the elevator, and Dr. O needs to bring her down."
"Why are we taking
her out of the building?" I asked. Our mission was to kill them. Two were
dead, and the last one was nearly there. Mission almost complete.
"Because they are
Beta-Vamps." Frankie glanced at the vamp on the floor. "Right?"
She nodded, tears
streaming down her face.
"No way," I
protested. "Betas don't rampage like that."
"They do if they
are sick," Frankie explained calmly, his eyes still on Kate.
Beta-Vamps were like the
hippies of the vampire world. They were vampires that were missing the predator
genome sequence. They weren't human killers. They survived on who knows what.
Maybe animal blood. Maybe blood stolen from hospitals. In some extreme cases,
they ate rust for the iron content. Betas were rare, and, because of their peace-loving
nature, extremely vulnerable to attack from all sorts of supernatural factions.
"So why don't we
just carry her down?" I said with a shrug, stepping towards Kate, breaking
my boots' suction to the floor.
Frankie was in front of
me before I could take another step. My stomach rolled as Frankie dropped his
guard and a wave of his panic washed over me.
A few months ago,
Frankie had to bind me to him to save my life. For the most part, we're dealing
with it just fine. But if he's in emo overdrive and forgets to close off our
connection, I get hit with whatever he's feeling. It also works the same in the
other direction.
"Don't go near her.
She's been infected."
"Infected? With
what? Beta-Vamps aren't vulnerable to infections."
"With..."
Frankie stopped. He looked shattered. "My God, I haven't seen this since
1877."
"What is it?"
I pushed.
"Opium
poisoning."
"Did you just say
opium?"
"Blood-born opium
poison. If it gets into our bodies, we die." Frankie was visibly nervous,
moving in a jittery semicircle around the woman. "We can't go near
her."
"Oh. Shit. Does Dr.
O know what to do?" I shrunk back. Opium. Who knew? Apparently Frankie.
That explained why vampires were always told not to get their fix from heavy
drug users.
"I'm not sure. That's
why you need to call him. And he'll need Max since we really shouldn't stay
here. Now please. She doesn't have much time."
Right. I pulled out my
phone. I'd start with Max. He'd need time to power up the building anyway.
He answered on the sixth
ring.
He sounded groggy.
"What's up?"
"Sorry to wake you
but we're at the Superman Building with two seriously dead vamps and one who is
really sick. We need to turn on the power to get her out of here with the
elevator. Can you get this building back on the grid?"
"Christ, can't one
of you just carry her down the stairs?" His voice was muffled, like he was
pressing his face into his pillow.
"Frankie and I
can't touch her. She has some sort of infection, something that only vampires
can contract. And it kills them."
"Really?" He
jolted awake. I heard the bed sheets rustle as he got up.
"I don't know,
really. I've never heard of this before. But I know Frankie is freaking out,
and said we need to get her out of here. And he only freaks out if there's a damn
good reason."
"You know I worked
for the FBI all day, right?" he groused. I heard a closet door slam.
"Seriously? Are you
going to do this right now?"
"You both were
going up there to stake them anyway. So they die of something else. It's the
same outcome. Why save her?"
"Because, she's not
a predator vampire."
"What the hell are
you talking about?"
"Look, I'll explain
later, but we are running out of time. I need to get Dr. O here, and you need
to get the electricity on at this place."
"Jesus, you people
are complicated. I'll be there in 20." He hung up before I could respond.
Like Frankie, Max had
made a deal with resident demon and Providence mayor Ami Bertrand. As a result,
Bertrand had turned Max into a Berserker, a supernatural warrior that went
extinct with the Vikings. Well, extinct up until Bertrand's curse.
Since Max had been
turned into a supernatural entity, but one that was supposed to be extinct, he
joined our team as a double agent with the FBI. Our team is Blood Ops, an elite
government agency that deals with rogue supernatural factions. Technically, we
also don't exist. To humans, anyway. Our existence — hell, the very existence
of anything supernatural — was on a "need to know" basis, and even
the president of the United States didn't need to know. Only a very select few
Department of Defense members knew about Blood Ops. That's plausible
deniability for you.
But damn, the Berserker
in Max sure made him grumpy.
I hit the speed dial
button for Dr. O. Dr. Lachlan O'Malley led our unit of Blood Ops. Though he
mostly resembled your favorite 60-something college professor, Dr. O was a
Druid priest, which made him pretty damn old. And, like the Druid priests
before him, he knew absolutely everything.
"Nina, what's
wrong?" Dr. O asked in his thick brogue. I could tell I woke him up.
"Sorry Doc, but we
have a problem here. We have Beta-Vamps that ingested opium. Two are dead —
like for real, seriously dead. One is barely hanging on."
"Opium? Are you
sure?" Dr. O sounded a lot more awake suddenly.
"Frankie says he's
sure. Said he hasn't seen this since 18-something or other."
"Frankie would
know. Do you have her quarantined?"
"Quarantined?
Frankie said not to touch her. He didn't say anything about a quarantine."
This was weird.
"You are in the
same room with her?"
"Where else would
we be?" I asked, impatience getting the best of me.
"If any of their
blood gets into your blood stream, or Frankie's, that would be very bad."
"Yeah, Frankie
already explained that to me. We aren't touching her.
"Nina, I am afraid
it's much more serious than that. Opium poisoning tends to make infected
vampires projectile vomit out blood before they die. Then their torso
explodes."
That sounded bad. And
gross.
"When? When would
that happen?" I gripped the phone tightly, eyeballing Kate. She whimpered
in the corner near the vampire bodies with her back against the wall.
"It could happen at
any time. Lock her in wherever you are, and wait until I get there. Do not wait
in the room with her, neither you nor Frankie. Do you understand?" Dr. O's
tone was stern.
"Yes, I got it.
Okay, we are on the top floor. Max is on his way to power up the building to
get her out of here. Just get here fast."
"I am on my
way."
The phone went dead. I
hightailed it over to Frankie, who was staring helplessly at Kate.
"Frankie, we gotta
get out of here." I pulled gently on his arm.
"Please don't leave
me." Kate's voice was so weak, I could barely hear her whisper.
Frankie didn't move. He
just looked sadly at the sick Beta, his eyes filled with tears.
"Come on,
Frankie." I nudged him again. "We can't be in here right now. Dr. O's
on his way."
He hesitated. "We
can't leave her like this."
"We aren't going to
do her any good if we get sick, too," I reasoned.
He ignored me. I changed
tactics.
"Stop being a
stubborn ass," I raised my voice. He still ignored me.
Kate moaned and fell
into a fetal position. She began to convulse. Frankie made a move towards her,
but I grabbed him. Standing in front of him, I took him by both shoulders and
stared into his eyes.
"We need to get out
of here before she barfs blood all over us. Don't make me go witchy on
you."
It was an idle threat.
Only a few weeks before, I first learned that I am half-witch as well. My witch
abilities were dormant for years — hidden by my vampire genetics — until an
unfortunate encounter with a spelled knife turned on the hocus-pocus. I was
working with my witch mentor, who's also my aunt, on controlling my newfound
abilities. Much to Auntie Babe's frustration, I was not taking to it like a
fish to water. If I tried to unleash my mojo in here, poor Kate could very well
blow up, taking Frankie and me along with her.
Kate's moaning was now
punctuated by high-pitched cries of pain. Clearly in agony, she writhed on the
floor. Her hands formed into claws, and she scratched at the body of the
seriously dead vampire closest to her. His skin tore like dried papier-mâché as
she drove her nails into his corpse. As she tore at his flesh, blood bubbled
out of her mouth.
"She not going to
make it!" I shouted at Frankie, pushing on his lanky six-foot frame.
"And neither are we if we don't get out of here!"
I shoved Frankie harder
towards the door. He finally snapped out of his stupor and we fled to across
the room to the stairwell door. I pushed on it, but it didn't budge. Shaking
the handle, I pressed all my weight against it. Nothing. I moved aside and
Frankie levered a kick at the door. He succeeded in denting the door, jamming
it even harder into the frame.
"Crap, Frankie!
There's no time!" I yelled over Kate's ear-piercing shrieks.
Frankie looked wildly
around. "Can we break the windows?"
Everything was soaked in
blood. Blood we couldn't touch. Crap. I had no choice.
"Hold on!" I
closed my eyes tightly and I tried to clear my thoughts, but between Kate's
shrieks and Frankie's desperation creeping into my head, not to mention my own
stress, my mind was too unfocused to do this right. Oh well. Close enough was
going to have to do.
I felt the air shift
around me, and I latched onto this small breeze, willing it to grow to
hurricane strength. My hair loosed from its ponytail and slapped across my
face. The swelling wind pushed me forward. Grabbing Frankie's hand for
stability, I cried out the few words of Latin I could come up with that
approximated "break the damn glass." The five plate glass windows on
the south side of the room shook. I repeated the words louder, putting more
force behind them. The wind turned hurricane strength, pushing us across the
room, dangerously closer to Kate. Finally, the windows shattered one by one,
shards of glass falling 26 stories to the sidewalk.
I opened my eyes. Kate
was about to explode. Blood frothed around her lips, her shrieks now muffled as
the blood worked its way up her throat.
Hands still clutched,
Frankie and I nodded at each other, knowing exactly what we had to do.
Together, we ran straight for the windows, and leapt feet first into the
star-filled sky.
Frankie's hand slipped
out of mine as we both twisted our bodies and made a grasp for the ledge. I
caught it, just barely, almost wrenching my shoulder out of its socket on the
impact. Frankie similarly stopped short next me. We dangled 26 stories over
downtown Providence.
River Vamp
A Hell’s
Belle Prequel
Short
Story
Karen
Greco
Book Description:
Frankie and Nina head to New York City
for an early Blood Ops mission.
Guess what they fish out of the Gowanus
Canal?
Free at Smashwords
About the
Author:
Karen Greco has spent close to twenty
years in New York City, working in publicity and marketing for the
entertainment industry. Originally from Rhode Island (she loves hot wieners
from New York System, but can't stand coffee milk), she studied playwriting in
college (and won an award or two).
After not writing plays for a long time,
a life-long obsession with exorcists and Dracula drew her to urban fantasy,
where she can decapitate characters with impunity.
Her first novel, Hell's Belle, was released
in 2013. Tainted Blood is the second book in the best-selling Hell's Belle
urban fantasy series.
Tour
giveaway
10 copies of ebook (mobi or epub format)
and custom-made vampire stakes, etched with ruins, like the stake Nina uses in
Tainted Blood. Open to US Shipping.
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