The Vampyre Legal Chronicles - Marcus

Magic will return to
the human realm of Earth. And Earth will burn as the ground shakes
and mankind will perish under the combined fists of pestilence and
disease. And magic will rule the land.
And so it begins...

Take one broodingly hot
vampyre. Add one gorgeous New Born. And this is just the
beginning...

Anais Walker has one
passion – Corporate Law.

And one goal – a
glittering career with Gillespie, Pattullo & Hindmarch.

Success is so close she
can taste it.

Until a lamentable slip
of concentration jeopardises a billion dollar deal with the Chinese
in Shanghai.

Is Anais about to lose
it all?

Famously ruthless
corporate lawyer Marcus Gillespie has two secrets.

He’s a Vampyre
Prince.

And after two hundred
and thirty years he’s found the woman for him.

She’s beautiful, smart
and with a body to die for. After six months of mentoring Anais,
the time has come to move her from the boardroom to the bedroom.
And when Anais makes a costly mistake, Marcus has the gorgeous
lawyer just where he wants her…

But although passions
run red hot in the bedroom, Anais refuses to give her heart or
commit to a future not of her choosing. When an ancient enemy
arrives in Shanghai with bad news, Marcus finds himself in a race
against time not only to win her heart, but also to save her
life…

Book One - Marcus

Copyright © C C
MacKenzie 2015

Published by
More Press

ISBN: 9781909331181

The right of C
C MacKenzie to be

identified as
the author of this

work has been
asserted by her

under the
Copyright Amendment

(Morals Rights)
Act 2000

This work is
copyright.

Apart from any
use as permitted under

the Copyright
Act 1968, no part

maybe
reproduced, copied, scanned,

stored in a
retrieval system,

recorded or
transmitted,

in any form or
by any means,

without the
prior permission

of the
publisher.

This book is a
work of fiction.

Names,
characters, places and

incidents are
either a product of

the author’s
imagination or are

used
fictitiously. Any

resemblance to
actual people

living or dead,
events or locales is

entirely
coincidental.

Cover design by:
Gabrielle Prendergast 

Headquarters of
Gillespie, Pattullo and Hindmarch, New York City, present
day
.

Contrary to popular
urban myths, vampyres do not dwell in deep dank places under the
earth.

Vampyres love
heights.

To a human eye,
the three men relaxing on the penthouse balcony at the top of the
tallest building in the City, overlooking the metropolis of New
York, might appear successful businessmen, which indeed they were.
The human eye might also assume they were in their late forties,
which indeed they were not. Their combined age measured two
thousand three hundred and forty-one Earth years.

Dressed in
bespoke suits in shades of grey, ranging from silver through
charcoal to almost black, and handmade in Savile Row (nothing but
the best for these boys), all three were enormous in stature. A
stature one of their sons had described as,
'Built like armoured
fucking tanks.’
But then all vampyre princes were towering in
stature, towering in a ruthless intellect, and all were...
ancient.

In fact one had been
there when the clan Gillespie disappeared in 1228 from the small
town of Badenoch in Scotland. Since he'd been made by The Maker
himself in Badenoch in the year 1228, Duncan Gillespie was a
vampyre Elder as well as a vampyre Prince. His blood and the blood
of his many progeny were among the purest in the vampyre
nation.

After the
passing of hundreds of years, and against all odds, Duncan had
managed to retain a minuscule spark of human conscience. A
conscience which troubled him still because he held himself
responsible for the destruction of three hundred and nineteen souls
of the Clan Gillespie. Why he alone had been spared to become
vampyre he knew not. He’d decided long ago it was probably the
capricious hand of fate. Unlike most of his kind he did not believe
for a single moment that he was anything special or a chosen one.
However, he did believe he had been more than fortunate to survive
the carnage of the vampyre wars that had followed.

Today, in the
middle of an unusually bitter winter, found him wondering if the
initial conflict that had split their nation might have been
avoided. As a rule he was not a person given to deep introspection.
He tended to keep profound thoughts for more important concerns.
But tonight Duncan was brooding and he wondered if these thoughts
and these feelings were the beginning of The Fade.

Even vampyres
didn’t live forever.

All three
vampyres raised their glasses of heavy crystal filled with the
finest claret, a Château Latour, to salute a fat moon of glorious
silver. A moon which hung in a sky as black as jet. All three
turned their faces to the celestial body and drank in the precious
light as if inhaling vitamin D from the sun.

Duncan sipped
deeply.

Tonight his
keen intuition for trouble was twitching.

The vampyre
witch Ezekiel’s unrelenting demands for a meet with the vampyre
council, on neutral ground, were becoming bloody tiresome. And very
bloody. As far as members of the council were concerned, the time
for talking to someone most of the council regarded as an
abomination had long passed. But a rumour, barely a whisper on an
arctic wind, had reached Duncan's ears of heavy losses incurred by
Ezekiel’s Legion in a battle in a distant land. Specifically, in
the Sinai Peninsula in north east Egypt, a land which was seeing
more than its fair share of bitter ethnic conflict. What the witch
had been doing with part of his Legion, in the middle of a
bloodstained war zone, didn't bother Duncan at all. He gave himself
a mental shrug. Who cared? Anything that put a hitch in Ezekiel’s
relentless ambition for world domination could only be a good
thing. It was best, Duncan took another deep sip of wine, not to
think about it. And it was certainly not a good idea to think of
Ezekiel himself. No point in attracting that bastard's attention.
Ezekiel broke every vampyre law by dabbling in the black arts,
magic, (and God only knew what else). The latest story doing the
rounds, one of many, was that the witch could read a human's
thoughts, even a vampyre's thoughts. Probably untrue and a load of
piss, but where Ezekiel was concerned one could never be too
careful.

Duncan’s eyes,
cold and dark, were those of a predator. Eyes that had seen too
much for too long now scanned the heavens searching for the
tell-tale blur, the loss of focus in the night sky and loss of
focus which would alert them to the presence of unwelcome eyes and
ears.

He took another
deep sip of wine, and cast a weary eye over his dearest friends.
Friends who'd fought by his side through war and famine and plague.
They both looked as grim and miserable as he felt himself, and
silent as a grave.

Duncan broke
the silence, "Constantine and his extensive pharmaceutical
resources are standing by for the first sign of mutation of the
swine and avian influenza viruses." He took a long steady breath.
His Scottish accent always rose when he was stressed. "He did not
anticipate the unfolding Ebola catastrophe in Africa. He believes
we are not dealing with a
natural
calamity."

Prince Don
Cristophe Pattullo’s vast shoulders shrugged in the way of the
Latin. He’d been likened by one of his daughters to a taller and
better looking version of a young Al Pacino in
The
Godfather
. Fair comment, since it was very true Cristophe had
given the Borgias more than a run for their money.

His deep
rumbling voice vibrated through the air.

"
If
magic is again leaching into our reality, I do not believe we have
anything to worry about. It is not the first time magic has sought
to rule this world. It was defeated before. It will be defeated
again. Let's face it, humans, no matter how stupid or inept, are
very hard to kill. For centuries they have managed to dodge any
number of mass extinction events. The World Health Organisation and
many others are winning the war against the spread of the disease.
I see no cause for concern."

Cristophe
wouldn't worry, Duncan knew. The Italian harboured little love for
human beings. On a good day he regarded them as a necessary evil,
and on a bad day as nothing less than an infestation of parasites,
who did their best to destroy the world they lived in.

"Constantine is
warning there have been reports of the hemorrhagic Marburg virus
piggybacking on the back of Ebola in Uganda. He's worried. It may
only be a matter of time before the virus mutates again and becomes
airborne. If that happens, be in no doubt, what we have seen thus
far in Africa will be as nothing. The spread will be more deadly
than that of the great plague after world war one."

Cristophe shook
his head, waved a hand.

"Bah,
Constantine's ongoing concern about humans does him no honor. He
frets and wrings his hands like an old woman."

"Perhaps it's
because he has a conscience," Duncan snapped. "You would do well to
remember how the Ebola infection began in the first place."

"It is not the
first time disease has jumped species," Cristophe reminded him.
"Times are changing. Human technology is evolving at a faster rate
than we anticipated. DNA sequencing of the blood of one vampyre
surely must threaten our very existence. I admit our young are
careless. Stupidly so. Especially in Africa and in Europe. I cannot
believe they want a return to the old ways, to drink the blood of
humans. Listening avidly to extreme doctrine by lunatics in the
guise of priests like Voltaire and Vassily raving about the
purity of the race
and to openly flout our laws."

Cristophe
stopped his rant, lit a slim cigar, took a deep inhale, exhale.
Smoke rose into the night sky. "Perhaps," he continued in a silky
voice, "it is time for another example to be made. A gentle
reminder for Vassily to... toe the line."

At that, the
third vampyre prince, Samuel, Lord Hindmarch of Devon and Cornwall,
turned his head. These days he looked nothing like the
swashbuckling pirate of his youth. The ready smile and twinkle in
his grey eyes had long gone. Twin fists of grief and loss now held
his heart, trapped, in misery. His ash blonde hair was streaked
with silver, which along with pale skin pulled tight across high
cheekbones, gave him an appearance of being carved from solid
ice.

Cool grey eyes
settled on Cristophe.

"You're a
bloodthirsty bastard. If you lay a single finger on Voltaire or
Vassily the Vampyre Rights lobby will have your ass in court...
again."

Clamping the
cigar between his teeth, Cristophe sent him a big grin. A grin that
showcased fangs so white they could star in their own toothpaste
commercial.

"Oh, for a
return to the good old days. Beheadings, ritual burnings, burying
the bastards alive for twenty years. Good times, good times."

"It is not a
joking matter," growled Duncan.

"Who is joking?
Vampyre Rights," Cristophe muttered under his breath and shook his
dark head. "I don’t know what the world is coming to.”

"You, of all
people should understand the inquisitiveness, the sheer tenacity,
of the human mind and the human spirit. I'm thinking of the Hadron
Collider in Cern. They've already worked out there is more than one
reality. How long will it be before they crack the code and open
their first portal?" asked Samuel.

"Then we must
destroy it," said Cristophe in a ruthless tone that chilled
Duncan's spine. "We cannot permit humans to move through time or
through realities. They have a hard enough time dealing with the
one we live in now."

"I will never
understand your continued hatred of humans, Cristophe," Samuel
mused. "The study and understanding of human beings is a life
skill, and since you've lived for hundreds of years, I would have
thought you might have taken the time to perfect that skill. When
we have the theoretical as well as emotional understanding of why
people are the way they are, it is then relatively simple to
embrace compassion and forgiveness."