Blood Lines
Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR
MORTAL DANGER
“Terrific . . . The cat-and-mouse story line is action-packed . . . A thrilling tale of combat on mystical realms.”
—The Best Reviews
“
Mortal Danger
is as intense as it is sophisticated, a wonderful novel of strange magic, fantastic realms, and murderous vengeance that blend together to test the limits of fate-bound lovers. An intricately crafted, loving, lavish tale.”
—
Lynn Viehl,
USA Today
bestselling author of the Darkyn series
“A dramatically told story . . . It is this reviewer’s hope that this series will have many more stories to come.”
—
Romance Junkies
“I’ve been anticipating this book ever since I read
Tempting Danger
, and I was certainly not disappointed.
Mortal Danger
grabs you on the first page and never lets go. Strong characters, believable world-building, and terrific storytelling make this a must-read for anyone who enjoys werewolves with their romance. I really, really loved this book.”
—Patricia Briggs,
USA Today
bestselling author of
Moon Called
“[A] complex, intriguing, paranormal world . . . Fans of the paranormal genre will love this one!”
—Love Romances
“A thoroughly enjoyable read. I’ll be looking out both for the previous volume and the next book in what promises to be a series well worth following.”
—Emerald City Fantasy and Science Fiction
“Gripping paranormal romance.”
—Fresh Fiction
PRAISE FOR
TEMPTING DANGER
“A story whose characters I remember long after the last page is turned.”
—
New York Times
bestselling author Kay Hooper
“An exciting, fascinating paranormal suspense that will have you on the edge of your seat. With a mesmerizing tale of an imaginative world and characters that will keep you spell-bound as you read each page, Ms. Wilks proves once again what a wonderful writer she is with one great imagination for her characters and the world they live in.”
—The Romance Reader’s Connection
“Fantastic . . . Lily and Rule are a fabulous pairing . . . Ms. Wilks takes a chance and readers are the winners.”
—The Best Reviews
“Wilks’s heroine is so top-notch.”
—The Romance Reader
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF
EILEENWILKS
“Fun [and] very entertaining!”
—The Romance Reader
“Should appeal to fans of Nora Roberts.”
—Booklist
“Fast-paced.”
—All About Romance
“Eileen Wilks [has] remarkable skill. With a deft touch, she combines romance and danger.”
—Midwest Book Review
Books by Eileen Wilks
TEMPTING DANGER
MORTAL DANGER
BLOOD LINES
NIGHT SEASON
MORTAL SINS
BLOOD MAGIC
Anthologies
CHARMED
(with Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Jayne Castle, Julie Beard, and Lori
Foster)
LOVER BEWARE
(with Christine Feehan, Katherine Sutcliffe, and Fiona Brand)
CRAVINGS
(with Laurell K. Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, and Rebecca York)
ON THE PROWL
(with Patricia Briggs, Karen Chance, and Sunny)
INKED
(with Karen Chance, Marjorie M. Liu, and Yasmine Galenorn)
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
BLOOD LINES
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / January 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Eileen Wilks.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-101-46077-1
BERKLEY SENSATION
®
Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY SENSATION is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Dear Reader,
It’s been a little over three months since I met Rule. It seems a lot longer. I could turn all mushy and say it feels as if my life began when our eyes met that night at Club Hell, but I’d be lying. I had a life before him—bumpy and imperfect, but a life.
Just about everything in that life has changed, though. That is why it feels like a lot more than three months have passed.
I was a homicide cop back then. That’s all I’d ever wanted to be—at least since the age of eight, when I learned that the monsters are real and look a lot like the rest of us. Now I’m working for the FBI, Unit 12 in MCD—that’s the Magical Crimes Division—and I’m bonded for life to the prince of the Nokolai Clan.
Two months ago I was investigating the first West Coast killing in decades by a werewolf—excuse me, a lupus. Rule Turner looked to be my prime suspect. I realized pretty quickly he couldn’t be, but it took longer to find out who was behind it all. A nutty telepath, a charismatic cult leader, and an ancient goddess-wannabe had teamed up to destroy all lupi in the United States, and they didn’t object to killing a few humans along the way to taking over the country.
We stopped them. By “we” I mean Rule and me and a few others, like my grandmother—who’s gone to China, dammit, on some sort of personal pilgrimage. She left about a week before I ended up in hell. Literally.
See, I killed the telepath. She was doing her damnedest to kill me at the time, so I didn’t have much choice. But the cult’s leader got away, and he took her staff with him. Or maybe I should say
Her
staff, because it was tied to the goddess we don’t name. We had to find and destroy the staff, which meant tracking down Harlowe, the cult leader.
We found him. It didn’t turn out well for any of us. Harlowe got dead, along with some others. I got split in two, with half of me blasted into the demon realm.
Rule went with me. That part of me, anyway.
Don’t ask me to explain this split business. Cullen— that’s Rule’s friend, the sorcerer—might be able to, but you’d be making a mistake to ask. The man looks like walking sin, but he turns into the nutty professor when he starts talking spellwork and theory.
It gets pretty confusing after that. Neither part of me knew the other one existed. The one in hell—or Dis, as the natives call it—had no memory. She did have Rule, but he was stuck in wolf form. The me still on Earth knew Rule wasn’t dead because of the mate bond, but finding him was another story. Eventually some of the lupus priestesses—they’re called Rhejes—plus Cullen managed to open a small hellgate, which is only a little less illegal than mass murder. Me, Cullen, Cynna, and an obnoxious gnome named Max went after Rule.
Dis is split into regions, each ruled by its prince. The goddess-wannabe had infiltrated one of those regions by sending her avatar—think of an avatar as a sentient cup, with most of the person poured out to make room for some of the goddess—to make a deal with its prince. They had a falling out. The demon ate the avatar and went nuts, and both sides of me found ourselves in the middle of a war in hell.
Both of me were very surprised by the dragons.
The Other Me and Rule had been scooped up by a dragon early on. This hadn’t seemed like a lucky break at the time; more like a nasty way to die. But in the end it was a dragon who knew how to get us back—get me back with my Other Me, that is, and get all of us back to Earth . . . including him and about twenty of his huge, beautiful, and deadly buddies.
We didn’t escape unscathed. The authorities decided to pretend it wasn’t possible to open a hellgate, so we weren’t in trouble for that. After all, the gate vanished as soon as we returned. But Rule nearly died, and I . . . I know things I never thought it was possible to know. Death isn’t the absolute I used to believe it to be.
And the dragons? They vanished so thoroughly that some people are talking about Hollywood publicity stunts. It did happen in California, after all.
This is the story of what happened after we all came home, sort of like Dorothy & Co. after Oz. I’m betting you thought everything was peachy for Dorothy once she got home.
We forget that Kansas is no safer than Oz. After all, that’s where the tornado hit.
