Half Blood Rising

“She’s dead, and it’s a race against time. There’s no way we’re going to get her back, Adam,” Mum said. I didn’t understand why everyone was so upset. I was missing Kerry. She had been gone for a little while, and I missed playing with her. We had been best friends for so long.

My little sister. Mum and Dad looked worried as I squeezed my doll tight. We were driving in this large, strange black car. My Aunt Emilia was there, too, with Uncle Peter. My fingers were tingling, and light was coming out of the packages in the back. I wondered what it was.

The drive was bumpy, too.

“It’s the fae, they are involved. I told them the other day that I wanted nothing to do with their world. I stepped away from it when I married Roger.” Mummy was saying. She was holding Kerry’s pink shirt. Daddy had touched her hand. There were tears in his eyes.

“We don’t know, and, so far, no one has received any phone calls or letters,” Aunt Emilia said. “This might have nothing to do with the supernatural world.”

“Emilia, don’t talk about them in front of Jaymin,” Mummy said, almost in the same tone of voice when I had done something I wasn’t supposed to do, then Mummy would start getting upset, like now. “Roger wasn’t supposed to know. When I married him, you swore to me that they had accepted my decision. Obviously, they are punishing me for cutting my family away from magic.”

“She’s too small to understand any of it. The fae never tell the truth, and I thought you already learnt that lesson from experience. I will call one of the members, see if I can find something out,” Aunt Emilia added, taking out her mobile phone.

“But what would they want from her?” Daddy asked. “She’s just an innocent child.”

“Her gifts, she’s the first born in that line, so there is a lot they can gain …

“Jaymin, are you even there? What the hell is wrong with you?” a voice broke through to me. It was Lachlan; he was squeezing my arm. The memories from the past were quickly fading away. His energy rushed through my veins instantly as I tried to breathe. I closed my eyes, trying to keep this memory intact. It seemed important, and now I knew for sure I had a real family before I was turned.

Everyone was staring at me. We were still in the van, driving through the streets of Moscow. I must have drifted off for a minute or so. Damn it.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I snapped at him, pulling away from his touch and thinking I had to stay away from him from now on. Another flashback from the past—Lachlan—his touch could make me see my life before I was turned? This was the second time it had happened now, but this time, without having to drink from him? The images were so surreal, but it was difficult to concentrate as I was supposed to be listening to Dimitry’s briefing at the same time.

This was why others thought I couldn’t be trusted. They still believed I was only half-vampire and half-human, but that wasn’t the case.

“Dimitry just asked you about your experience, and then you seemed to zone out,” Lachlan said. Ramona was smirking, staring at me and whispering something to Judas. I hated her.

three years, so none of this will be new to me,” I said, a bit too aggressively than I’d

responsibility, the better. The newbies always ruin everything,” the bitch commented, and I wanted to

a very delicate job, and you need to be focused,” Dimitry said, giving me a sharp look. “Everyone will be going on a stakeout, we need results

to avoid touching Lachlan, he was making this trip difficult for me, and I had to prove

the clan and then read the briefing. This was going to drive me mad. I needed to get

ever met tended to insinuate? Half-vampire and half-fae, was that

had mixed genes—fae and vampire? Maybe the other vampires wanted to create a monster, and

here,” Dimitry said as the van stopped abruptly, and I nearly ended up in the front seat. “Come on, let’s

This was probably going to be our headquarters, where we were going to stay and report

house smelled of burnt cabbage and sage. There was an older Russian lady hiding in the kitchen when we all walked in. It seemed she was

most of the members of the clan are active in the night. There is no movement before six p.m.,” Dimitry announced. Moments later, Roxana, the Russian lady who turned out to be another vampire, walked into the room. She nodded to me and Karina first, sniffing. She

than our dorm in Kiev, but

bed. It was much colder in Moscow in July, but it was a relief from the constant heatwave in

I had to get a smart phone. The budget that we were given was limited, but it was something I was going to need

smell of blood, and it definitely wasn’t human. Since I’d been around other vampires, this had been happening to

father is a member of the High Council, and she’s been excelling in everything, really. Pure breed of Southern vampires, she’s a

asked, a little shocked that she managed to find out so much about this

is, but my pack leader was a hacker, and he showed me a few tricks here and there. It’s called the dark web,” she

must have always been a high target, so presumably, she would have been carefully guarded, too. We need to find the weakest link in the nest. There’s always one,” I said, wondering if

sense. Clubs were an easy target, and a lot of vampires enjoyed hanging out there. “And after we get this girl home

fact that I had to bond with Ramona made me

of cabbage. The vampires didn’t need to eat, but the traditional

Dimitry poured us all a shot of

her location, return here. I don’t want any screw-ups. Her father might be visiting tomorrow, and we need to show him that we are making

several scars along his neck. The one thing that caught my eye was a tattoo on his collarbone. A star with a cross: maybe it was a distinctive mark of the clan. I read somewhere that every clan had one.