Blood Flame (The Flame Series Book 1)
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BLOOD FLAME
THE FLAME SERIES: BOOK 1
CARIS ROANE
Blood Flame - The Flame Series: Book 1
By Caris Roane
Copyright © 2015 Twin Bridges Creations LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the first installment of the Flame Series, BLOOD FLAME!
Connor, a powerful vampire serving as a Border Patrol Officer for his corrupt world, falls for a gifted witch who has the ability to kill him with a single touch…
In this book, vampire Officer Connor of the Crescent Border Patrol tries to suppress his desire for the powerful witch, Iris Meldeere. Because the woman possesses the ability to kill him with the tips of her fingers, how can he possibly fall in love with her? When a double homicide throws them together, he soon finds his deepest fantasies fulfilled as Iris succumbs to his seductions. But as they battle together to stay alive, and love begins to consume them both, will the witch be able to forgive the dark secrets of his past …
Enjoy!
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Coming Soon: AMETHYST FLAME, the second book in The Flame Series
http://www.carisroane.com/amethyst-flame-2/
Now Available: EMBRACE THE HUNT, Book 8 of the Blood Rose Series
A powerful vampire warrior. A beautiful fae of great ability. A war that threatens to destroy their love for the second time…
http://www.carisroane.com/8-embrace-the-hunt/
Coming Soon: EMBRACE THE POWER, the final installment of the Blood Rose Series!
Be sure to check out the Blood Rose Tales Box Set – TRAPPED, HUNGER, and SEDUCED -- shorter works for a quick, sexy, satisfying read. For more information:
http://www.carisroane.com/blood-rose-tales-box-set/
CHAPTER ONE
Connor held a spotting scope pressed to his eye. His adrenaline flowed as he levitated high in the air. He was forty feet above the witch, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d tried about a dozen times to leave, but couldn’t since his craving for the Tribunal Public Safety officer had finally tipped the needle into the red zone. He wanted her bad.
As a Border Patrol officer for Crescent Territory, he often spent time surveilling suspects. The problem was Iris Meldeere hadn’t broken the law. She wasn’t part of a Five Bridges drug cartel, she didn’t traffic innocent humans into their sick world, and she definitely kept her hands off the lucrative business of running flame drugs.
For a witch, she was a model citizen.
It was after midnight, but he was still in the middle of his shift. And he had no damn reason to be at Iris’s house, except he couldn’t help himself. Not that he had plans for the future since he could never actually be with the woman. As a witch, and a powerful one at that, she had the power to kill him with a touch of her fingers.
She moved around her overgrown garden, her voice reaching his ears almost incessantly. At first, he thought she was talking to someone on her Bluetooth because both hands were constantly busy, pruning, digging, cutting, planting. He’d rolled his eyes when he realized she was communicating with her plants. Very witch or very Iris, maybe both.
Apart from his bizarre need to spy on the woman, he hated witches with a passion.
A witch had started this whole shitfest with a brew pot. Result? Seventy thousand humans, in Phoenix alone, lived in a pit of hell, having gone through the
alter
and become something not human anymore. At least the original witch had changed as well. Witches were now one of the five
alter
species living in Five Bridges. Being an
alter
witch or a vampire wasn’t a choice; it was a genetic mutation.
His own story wasn’t unusual. Devastated by his wife’s death, he’d stupidly tried to numb-out with a hit of blood flame. But it had been laced with the
alter
serum that created a set of fangs and an annoying craving for blood. The flame drugs by themselves weren’t the culprit, only when enhanced with an
alter
serum.
He’d gained physical strength and long-life. Beyond that, he was living a nightmare, one that had started thirty years ago, not long after the flame drug craze had hit the human population.
Now he was here, watching a witch who had gotten hit with an
alter
serum herself ten years ago. Only her flame drug had carried the witch serum. He knew this because he’d Googled her. A lot.
She wore a purple smock over her jeans and a pair of flats that looked like ballet shoes, typical brew-faring clothes for one of her kind.
And he liked her in jeans. She wore them snug and that was part of the problem. He’d seen her dozens of times at the Tribunal building in her casual investigative uniform of short-sleeved t-shirt, also worn tight, along with the form-fitting jeans. He’d mentally stripped her clothes off about a thousand times. He swore he knew what she looked like naked.
Yeah. Obsessed.
And guilty as hell. His kind didn’t go with her kind.
His kind
killed
witches, wizards and anything else that dared to smash up herbs and throw them in a cauldron, or cast spells, or worse, kill with the tips of their fingers. Witches, like Iris, were a danger to vampires and shifters. She should be offed, like all her murdering, enthralling kind.
Yet, here he was, floating above her garden, so quiet he’d never be heard not even by another vampire. He’d gotten good at stalking the woman.
Iris had that feeling again across the top of her shoulders that a vampire was watching her. She had excellent instincts, but every time she either hunted through her garden or checked the night sky, nothing.
She also had an instinct about who the vampire was. James Connor, also known as Officer Connor, of the Crescent Territory Border Patrol.
Yep, Connor was here again, which caused her heart to beat hard in her chest. Vampires killed witches as often as they could, but in this case an attack wasn’t what she feared.
No, the dull thuds of her pulse meant something far worse. Against all reason, small tendrils of pure desire moved over her breasts, down the insides of her thighs and curled around her sex.
A year ago, she’d seen Connor at a crime scene, one that involved a couple of human children. Until that moment, she would never have believed a vampire capable of any kind of compassion. She honestly thought that the
alter
had removed all tender emotions from those humans who had become vampire.
That night, she’d been called to the same scene to make a full report on behalf of the Five Bridges Tribunal, the central governing organization for which she worked. She served as a Tribunal Public Safety officer and as such could move freely among all five territories without too much fear of getting assassinated in the process. Murder among the five
alter
species was rampant.
At the crime scene, with so many vampires present, she’d remained in the shadows, content to merely observe and gather data.
Because of the bloodsuckers, her own killing instinct had risen to the surface, vibrating like a motorcycle engine on overdrive. Her fingers had ached to touch some pressure-points that night and rid her world of a few sets of fangs.
She hated this aspect of being a witch, the driving need to strike another species down. But every one of her kind, once having gone through the
alter,
felt an intense pressure to self-protect. She’d come to accept that what she experienced was a basic survival mechanism. Vampires and shifters killed witches, her kind returned the favor, though for her she’d only done so when attacked. However, that didn’t change how much she detested her new nature.
The crime scene that night had torn her own heart into a thousand pieces. Two children were found at the Phoenix entrance to Sentinel Bridge, a boy and a girl, about nine or ten. They’d accidentally gotten hold of one of the flame drugs that carried the
alter
serum, and had begun the process of change. But children couldn’t handle the sudden physical trauma involved. Death always followed.
They’d held hands as they’d died, facing each other. It had broken Iris’s heart, seeing their twisted bodies, fingers entwined. She’d wept quietly, and that’s when Connor had arrived.
She’d seen him many times at various crime scenes, but never like this. He’d taken one look at the pair then dropped to his knees, covered his chest with both arms and rocked. She’d had no idea what had gone through his head at that moment, but she’d felt his compassion in waves hitting her over and over, wrecking her heart and somehow causing her to become fixated on a damn vampire.
As much as she’d come to loathe his kind, she’d ended up craving him with a terrible need.
She was tired of thinking about him almost constantly, though. More often than not, her thoughts turned into elaborate fantasies that usually involved his fangs buried in her neck and his cock plunging in and out of her sex. Sick as hell.
Tonight, she was determined to change all that.
With a fresh lime in her hands, she moved into her workroom between the house and her garden. She set about creating a spell that she should have used about eleven months and four weeks ago. She had no doubt, once completed, the formula would end her obsession.
She fired up her cast iron pot-belly stove, using elder wood. Once blazing, she placed the blade portion of her hatchet on top. She needed the metal hot enough to slice instantly through a thick wax candle.
On her worktable, she cut the lime in half, then squeezed the juice onto a purified elder wood tray. She rolled a thick black candle in the juice and invoked Connor’s name several times until she felt the spell move into place. At the same time, she made use of one of her most powerful incantations. She then picked up the heated hatchet and held it aloft ready to slam the blade through the thick wax and break Connor’s hold on her.