I have always loved vampires, from as far back as I can remember. I recall lingering in the doorway, hiding, and stealing glances at Interview with the Vampire when the adults watched it in the lounge room, back when VHS was a thing. I was meant to be in another room, watching something kid-friendly… only problem was, some kind of horror movie about monsters was on, and I didn’t know how to change the channel. So, needless to say, I was introduced to blood drinkers and the beasts that go bump in the night pretty early on.

I lived for R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, and then came the teen years and I found Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles and was reunited with my beloved blood drinkers. Ostracised by my peers, (A-grade nerd, goth, had strict parents etc.) most days I’d eat lunch in the toilets, then I’d spend the rest of the period in the library reading my way through all of Anne’s books… And then I started writing my own stories. Alone, right there in the library. And I’ve never stopped writing since. Indulge in the excerpts below, and I hope you’ll end up enjoying the two vampire tales I have to offer as much as I loved writing them!

IMMORTAL HEARTS
Blurb: While patrolling his family’s ancient seat of power, The Crypt, lonely vampire Sebastian Gorefang spies two Fire witches drowning in the sea below. His curiosity piqued, he swoops down the sheer cliff in bat form to investigate. Drawing near he feels the undeniable pull of the Fated mate bond. Desiring nothing more than to share eternity with a companion, Sebastian rescues the pair of witches … only to discover that they are identical twins—and he shares the sacred bond with not just one of them, but both.

PURCHASE IMMORTAL HEARTS, TODAY!

Excerpt:

The moon rises, cold and distant, cloaked by dark, turbulent shadows—just like my heart. As pale as the moonlight itself, I observe the shimmering ocean from the battlements of my keep, The Crypt, a great castle hewn into the steep, solid, and immense obsidian cliff face of Avalar’s western coast that overlooks the Sea of Sorrow. Having originally crossed the sea to reach these shores, my forefathers aptly named these lands Sorrow’s End.

Burrowed deep into the cliff, my family sleeps peacefully in their crypts, knowing that they are safe on my watch. My mother and father slumber together, wrapped in each other’s arms, the very vision of immortal love. I sometimes visit them as they dream, and envy stirs in my heart. Of all my extended and great family, I alone … am alone. Without a mate to share my eternal life, I feel hollow.

The pleasures so relished by our kind have grown stale to me, and I yearn for a companion, someone with whom to covet the joys of immortality. I long for a precious beauty to treasure and call my own. Someone to warm my heart and bed. Someone who can see into my black soul and love me despite what horrors they witness there. But charged with the duty of guarding my kin, when would I meet such a woman? There is no opportunity!

Vampires have long been thought of as the monsters of Avalar. We feed on the blood of the innocent and guilty alike, venturing out only under the cover of darkness. The thirst drives us to unfathomably heinous acts of cruelty and devastation—not that we care. It is our way. It is what we are, what we have always been. We are proud creatures of the night, not self-loathing undead corpses of timeless memories and regret.

The witches steer clear of our domains entirely, and shifters skulk through our lands only when necessary, giving our keeps and crypts a wide berth. Though most are not old enough to know it, there are greater terrors that dwell in Avalar than vampires. But they are ancient, more so even than the Goddess most worship. But thankfully, they sleep, entombed beneath the waves.

Dragons. The thought of them sends a shiver down my spine. Dragonfire burns all, the stories of my kin whisper. No Element that exists can extinguish it. It burns until there is nothing left to feed upon. It stops only when it has devoured everything in its path, leaving behind a charcoal feast of destruction for the mighty beasts. The inhabitants of Avalar don’t know how lucky they are that we are their monsters, their creatures of nightmares and destruction. What death we could reap as a race in a single day would not compare to that of a single dragon.

Turning from the ocean, I sigh and prepare myself to walk the usual routes around the keep and the coast, ensuring the safety of my kin, when something catches my eye. A glint of firelight in the night. It gleams warm and painfully insignificant against the gloom of the open ocean.

My curiosity piqued, my predatory senses engage. Transforming into my giant bat form, I take wing, sweeping around the cliff face toward the waves. Two young women are flailing, drowning in the chaotic waves ruthlessly pounding the cliff face. One of them has her palm thrust up toward the sky, and in her hand burns fire. A fire without fuel? Witches! I realize. What in the name of the Goddess are two Fire witches doing in the Sea of Sorrow? Alone?

Seeing the two witches struggle in the turbulent waters stirs something in my soul, and it’s like the darkest parts of me suddenly burst into flame, rekindling the long-starved embers of my heart. Like a man possessed, I give in to the song in my heart and the instinctual need gnawing away at my belly. Diving down, I plummet. At the last possible moment, I back wing and snatch one witch from the water with my clawed feet, lifting her toward the stars and my keep.

After setting her down on the battlements, I waste no time retrieving the second witch from the surf. Laying her beside the other, I transform back into my vampire self and stare in awe. They’re twins. Identical twins. Flame-haired, fucking porcelain-skinned sisters of Fire. The witches stir vaguely, enough to splutter and cough, clearing the cold, briny seawater from their lungs. One of them makes fleeting eye contact with me before her cerulean jewels roll back in her head. She falls limp, passed out with exhaustion while the other instinctively reaches a weak, protective arm over her sister, before she too, loses consciousness.

They look so tragic, lying there together, sodden, half-drowned, and bedraggled. My heart inexplicably aches for them. They could—were they conscious—set me ablaze with a single thought, and yet the danger and risk serve only to solidify my will and my need for them. I will have them both, I decide. There is no other choice. They have come to me, practically to my threshold and into my waiting arms, seemingly delivered by Fate itself.

After scooping them up with ease, one over each shoulder, I carry the twins down from the battlements, into the heart of our subterranean keep, and to my personal chambers. Their skin, though warmer than mine, is icy for their kind. Resting them on the bed, side by side, I bite my lip as I gaze at their glorious, young forms, nipples prominent beneath their transparent, wet dresses.

The scent of their blood causes me to salivate and my fangs to ache, but I force the hunger down by sheer force of will. I have never before smelled such exquisite deliciousness in all my thousands of years. I close my eyes and swallow the urge to tear open their throats to sample their precious crimson nectar. No. They are mine. There will be time for blood, but it is not now.

After fetching two beautiful gowns from the family vault, acquired at some point centuries ago, I undress the twins and wrest them into the new, dry gowns before covering them over with my luxuriously thick duvet. Once I’ve lit the fire in the hearth, I retire to a plush, velvet chair by the window and settle down to watch over them throughout the night.

PURCHASE IMMORTAL HEARTS, NOW!

FORSAKEN HEARTS
Blurb: Zade is an outcast—a scarred wolf shifter without a pack. There could be no worse fate for a beast bound by nature to find their Fated Mate. But Fate can be as cruel as she can be kind … and Zade’s path inevitably crosses that of the ancient, and embittered vampire, Elizabeth. Will fur fly, and blood paint the forest red? Or will the two forsaken souls find common ground, and a way to overcome the prejudices of their kinds to create their very own bloody Happily Ever After?

PURCHASE FORSAKEN HEARTS, TODAY!

Excerpt:

Dropping from the ancient rafters, flapping my wings just once, I shift, landing silently upon the decaying wooden floorboards of the long derelict temple. The pews—where elemental witches once worshipped and communed with the Goddess—are covered in dust, and the dark forest beyond has invaded the once sacred space. Strong, gnarled roots threaten the very foundations, while gleaming poison ivy writhes, snaking in through the cracks to curtain the entrances. Moonlight filters through shattered windowpanes, casting twisted, elongated shadows in the darkness, adding to the Gothic and abandoned nature of the rotting place of worship—my current place of solitude.

Hunger whispers at the edges of my consciousness with a thousand years of practiced patience. Eliciting a deep sigh, I tread through the glittering shards of broken glass strewn over the aisles. They pepper the dusty pews like fragments of crystal reflecting the iridescence of the celestial body glowing like a white-hot jewel in the expansive eternity of the night’s sky above.

Brushing past the trailing ivy I step out into the cool air beneath the stars. The Dead Forest is quiet, but not silent. It never is. Fireflies dance to their own song in the gloom, while crickets chirp in the underbrush. Magnificent owls soar between the trees, the occasional death shriek of unsuspecting rodents momentarily disturbing the peace in their wake.

Swiping my long black hair from my eyes, I close them and enjoy the whisper of the breeze caressing my cold skin. With a sigh my mind wanders to memories of long ago, to hillsides bathed in bright, warm sunlight. I see the green valleys, sweeping mountains, and deep blue rivers of my home country as clearly in my mind’s eye as if I had seen them just yesterday.

I recall the feel of my mount between my legs, the scent of horse sweat, and the flexing, bronzed muscles of my servants slaving away in the fields beyond the castle. I was once a great noble woman and have laid claim to many titles over the centuries… But now I am no more than a myth, a legend; a monster spoken about in hushed tones to children to scare them into obedience. Now, I am just Elizabeth, an ancient vampire living alone in the shadows of a land that was never mine to begin with. My true home, where my kind originated, was burned to ash long ago by dragons. We fled across the Sea of Sorrow to survive, for nothing but the power of the Goddess can defeat dragonfire.

Now, in Avalar, a great and beautiful island queendom, I avoid my own kind like the plague, and I’ve lived—if lived is the right word—through several mortal lifetimes. My old blood carries hatred and prejudices like a sickness that refuses to be cleansed and healed. The battles between sires and bloodlines, the fight for dominance and supremacy over each other… Those days are long gone, and yet they still haunt me like a plague in the back of my mind. I played my part in those wars too many lifetimes ago. And though I carry the wounds of the past in my heart, I won’t reignite those wars here. War, in all its forms, is pointless and serves no one but the victor.

Killing for a cause is like fucking for virginity; it’s senseless madness. I have drowned nations in seas of blood, and swept through kingdoms, a storm of death with razor-sharp fangs. But that is not who I am anymore. I am no longer Elizabeth the Red. I kill only to feed, and I feed only as often as is necessary to prevent desiccation and maintain my strength. I cannot lose sight of the fact that centuries of bloodshed have earned me countless enemies. I would be remiss to think that I am free of them—even now I cannot allow myself to drop my guard.

Without warning a soul shattering, anguish-filled howl splits the night, slicing the serenity of the forest like a knife through mortal flesh, jarring me instantly from my reveries of the past. My brow furrows and my senses flare to life. That is not the cry of an ordinary wolf. I know it with a certainty that sends a thrill of danger racing through my veins.

I have not seen a wolf shifter in these parts for some two hundred years. The old packs know better because they remember that this territory is forbidden to them. To trespass into land occupied by an immortal is a death sentence… Perhaps tonight I shall have an easy meal.

My thirst flares at the promise of fresh blood, and not just any blood, but shifter blood—magically potent and infinitely more satisfying than mortal or witch blood. And I need not fear repercussions; for there are none to be had. I fear no one. I am among the oldest of my kind now and am stronger and faster than even the wisest and eldest of the shifters alive today. Any who dare enter my lands do so at their own risk.

The packs will not contest my right to feed and defend what is mine and the witches have never been foolish enough to venture this far into the untamed wilds. They prefer to live among their own kind in their elegant castles and houses of stone, divided even by the elements they wield. For as long as I can remember, since I first dragged myself from the bitter embrace of the sea and onto these shores, the witches have been divided; Earth, Air, Fire, and Water vying for the authority of Chaos… the element of magic itself.

Shifting into my elegant bat form, I take to wing, soaring high above the canopy of the dark forest. My supernaturally sensitive hearing guides me to the precise location of the intruding wolf as if he were a glowing beacon in the gloom. Diving into the shadows like a lethal, silent arrow, I alight within the foliage of a tall black pine, blending into the shadows, hidden from view by the pungent, glossy needles.

Peering down into the glade below, I spy the injured shifter in his mortal-appearing form; the shape we adopt to blend in when the need arises. The scent of his blood fills me with equal parts lust and hunger. Sitting by a small stream, I see a discarded trap beside him, a vicious thing made by man with teeth of iron to maim the native inhabitants of Avalar. I almost feel a pang of sympathy for the shifter. His leg has been bitten deep, and he winces as he scoops handfuls of water in an attempt to wash it clean. I wince with him, but for an altogether different reason. What a waste of precious blood!

Even injured as he is, he’ll put up a fight I imagine. It’s a shame, really. He looks to be a beautiful specimen of a man. With long, tangled blond hair, his muscles gleam beneath the moonlight, flexing as he leans back and forth tending to his grisly, bloody wounds. His bare, open flesh obviously stings upon contact with the chilly water of the stream, and he grimaces, throwing back his head to the stars, his ice-blue eyes sparkling like cold fire.

The subtle hiss of his breath and the flash of his brilliant blue eyes stirs something within me, and I find myself second guessing my impromptu dinner plans.

PURCHASE FORSAKEN HEARTS, NOW!

Both these stories stand alone and end in a delicious, well-deserved Happily Ever After! However, they are a part of a larger world and you’re welcome to explore it if you like! Hearts of Avalar is filled with blood, magic, gorgeous witches and sinfully sexy shifters… Pick and choose or read all the way through. The journey is up to you! Pairings are M/F unless otherwise noted.

EXPLORE THE HEARTS OF AVALAR SERIES!

🔥🥵 ROMANCE PROMOS 💋❤️

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Until next time…