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    To Love: Vampire Assassin League, #21
    To Love: Vampire Assassin League, #21
    To Love: Vampire Assassin League, #21
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    To Love: Vampire Assassin League, #21

    By Jackie Ivie

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    About this ebook

    THE MYSTIC

    Marla Sanders lives an alternate lifestyle.  She’s a believer.  Astrology mainly.  The occult.  The spiritual.  Paranormal.  The world’s soul.  The powers that bring fantasy to life.  It shouldn’t be a far stretch to believe in vampires.  It really shouldn’t.  Especially when the one that appears is young.  Very handsome.  Extremely fit.  And claiming her.

    HIGHLAND HUNK

    Cullen MacCorrick was born to war.  Fighting for an independent Scotland got him an execution sentence.  Vampirism set him free.  Centuries of afterlife haven’t altered him much.  He’s got a perfect bachelor life.  No plans.  No encumbrances.  No complications.  A seer warned him before his capture to stay away from Stonehenge.  And he did.  Until…

    FALL EQUINOX

    Marla’s on this once-in-a-lifetime trip.  It includes the inner circle at Stonehenge.  On the eve of the Fall Equinox.  The monolith is lit with sunset hues.  The atmosphere is electric.  Her horoscope foretold of a date with destiny.  A new beginning.  Another chance.  Oddly…there wasn’t a word in there about Cullen...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJackie Ivie
    Release dateJan 9, 2016
    ISBN9781939820440
    To Love: Vampire Assassin League, #21

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      Book preview

      To Love - Jackie Ivie

      CHAPTER ONE

      The bastard went south, taking the Rail King at the last moment.

      Interesting.

      Cullen debated his options, and then launched onto the railway car directly behind his prey, settling onto a ladder for the ride. This assignment was getting interesting. Good thing he’d had a nice feeding earlier at Edinburgh from a roving band of tourists. They were always in season anymore. The particular group he’d chosen last evening had been fairly young. Fit. Enormously drunk. They didn’t appear interested in historical sites. They were pub crawling. Some of them were literally on their knees. They’d made a nice cocktail of tastes, as well as a pleasant, already-dimming, memory.

      He licked his lips, tasting residue of bitters and dark ales.

      His prey on this assignment was Alton Lang. Cullen had scanned the file, memorizing on sight. Alton had been a senior accountant. Above-board. Cleared several years of security checks. But then, something happened. Something turned Alton into a multi-million dollar embezzler. On the run. The guy was thin. Short. Previously locked behind a pair of thick spectacles. Now, he alternated all sorts of looks. Used colored contact lenses. Differing facial hair patterns. All kinds of hairstyles. Weight was also a variable. The fellow was short, however. His height wouldn’t be easily manipulated. He was well below Cullen’s six-foot-five. Apparently, Alton had embezzled from the wrong people. He’d known what would happen, too. That explained the aliases and ID’s he’d procured. The Vampire Assassin League had discovered seven thus far. They were included with Alton’s file. He might have more by now. He was slick. He was quick. And he was desperate.

      This was a bit like salmon fishing, just as Akron had portended. With a great, wily fish in his sights.

      It had been dawn when Cullen first located his quarry. The fellow was dressed as a rabbi. Big beard. Black coat. Yarmulke on his head. Large, black portmanteau in one hand. He’d been standing amidst a group of tourists. Stood out like a Sassenach at the Highland Games. Since it was raining, everyone was sporting a plastic cape/hood affair with the tour company’s logo on it. Everyone, except Alton Lang. The moment Cullen had spotted him however, the man had turned. A light source hit the Star of David hanging from his neck chain. Cullen had to avert his eyes or risk sight-searing issues.

      And that’s why he was headed directly to the heart of English territory attached to one of their trains.

      Well.

      He hadn’t been south in centuries. As far as Cullen was concerned, there was the country north of Hadrian’s Wall...and there was everything else. That held true even after Scotland’s sixth King James had ascended the English throne as King James I in 1603, uniting the two countries. Didn’t change how this Highlander thought. Cullen still had one of his wanted postings hanging from an inner castle wall. The parchment was tattered and faded. Barely readable. It was his mark of bravery and courage.

      And what had been his life.

      Ah.

      The train was slowing. Cullen glanced about. He hadn’t noticed the city closing in about them. Buildings. Streets. Ugh. London. It looked even more peopled than he’d heard. The place was a disgusting cesspool of humanity, and then they entered the King’s Cross Train Station. They captured the space within a huge glassed enclosure. Arches supported the span of roof, probably angling to make it feel less claustrophobic. As far as Cullen was concerned, that was a failure. The place was packed with humanity. Due to the skies, it felt dank. Dark. Rain was still spitting down from dingy gray skies somewhere outside. All-in-all. It was perfect fishing conditions.

      Cullen flew to a side wall before the train stopped, hanging in the shadowy area beside an arch, watching as the train emptied. No rabbi exited. A lot of men looked the same height as Alton Lang. Cullen turned his head, scanning the sea of heads bobbing and jostling about, and when that proved ineffective, he went higher, looking down at the scene from the highest vantage.

      Alton was definitely missing. His voice wasn’t. Cullen had listened to the audio portion of the file, memorizing the exact timbre of Alton’s voice. That came in handy now. Through the cacophony of sound in the area, he distinctly heard Alton Lang hailing a cab from beyond his field of vision.

      Cullen didn’t waste another second. A blink of time later and he slid through an exit door and hovered above the taxi line. No one seemed to notice him floating. Checking. Scanning. And...there! Alton was now an average Joe. Wearing denims, a plain button-up shirt – top button unfastened, and boots with lifts in them. He was beardless. And bald. He was speaking in dulcet tones to an extremely non-average redheaded woman already seated in the cab. Cullen watched as he shoved his black portmanteau into the cab before joining the woman. Alton then proceeded to enjoin a kiss that would send any theatergoer’s blood pressure rocketing.

      Well. That explained Alton’s foray into embezzlement.

      This was getting downright intriguing. Alton was slicker than any salmon Cullen had pursued. He was going to be twice as pleasant to kill, too. And then Alton unlocked his lips from his woman and said something about Waterloo Station to the driver. Eleven minutes away. They’d make the train. Then Alton added Salisbury. And then Stonehenge.

      Stonehenge?

      Oh. Hell.

      That was the absolute last place Cullen wished to visit. A seer had given him a direct warning back in the fourteenth century. He’d been alive then. Young. Battle-tested. Extremely arrogant. The Laird of Clan Corrick’s only legitimate son. The seer’s words had frightened him. They still did. Stonehenge held complete darkness for Cullen MacCorrick; a black dearth of matter the seer hadn’t been able to peer through. And all these years of afterlife later, Cullen still remembered exactly how fear felt.

      The car moved away from the curb and entered traffic.

      Well. That was that. Fishing was over. Time to get serious. He’d known not to come south. Damn this bastard accountant-turned-embezzler.

      ~ ~ ~

      It was still raining. Marla wasn’t certain how she felt about that, although the grumbling among the others in her tour group wasn’t hard to overhear. Of course everyone wanted a perfect look at Stonehenge. They all wanted pictures of the sunset on the fall equinox. It was one of two days when the earth’s days and nights were in perfect balance at twelve hours each. Somehow the ancients had figured that out, and supposedly the shadows that hit Stonehenge at either sunrise or sunset of either equinox demonstrated that fact. That’s why the tourists paid extra. The dull gray skies and rain weren’t part of the package deal.

      Her break-up with Chad hadn’t been, either.

      Marla slid the sunglasses higher up her nose, huddled into her hand-loomed Alpaca sweater worn beneath the clear plastic rain cape, and blinked rapidly. She looked ridiculous. She didn’t care. She’d killed off most of a bottle of wine last night. That had been stupid. It hadn’t stopped the heartache and it didn’t kill the sobs. It did give her some really blood-shot, scratchy eyes and a massive headache today, however. The headache could also be due to the restrictive bun she’d put her thigh-length hair into. She normally

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