NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE

  BLOOD MOON SERIES

  BOOK 3

  TERRY SPEAR

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Terry Spear

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Wilde Ink Publishing

  Night of the Vampire

  Copyright © 2024 by Terry Spear

  Cover Copyright by Terry Spear

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Discover more about Terry Spear at:

  http://www.terryspear.com/

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63311-097-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63311-096-0

  Karen Hackett, thanks so much for loving my YA Blood Moon series, and looking forward to the next one in the series. This one is dedicated to you!

  .

  PREFACE

  Night of the Vampire Synopsis

  Arman dreams of a teen he met two years earlier when he realizes she’s in trouble. Even though he stays with his Welsh prince vampire friends through thick and thin, this time he’s certain he has to rescue her on his own. They’re not about to let him though. As friends since the Black Death, they stick together. Besides, they’re already known as rogue vampires who help humans and hunters in need, so what else is new? But this time the teen is a huntress, though she doesn’t know it. She’s held hostage by a powerful family of vampires, also that she’s clueless about, and they want her for her dream abilities when she turns eighteen during the red blood moon.

  Fiona doesn’t like living with her eccentric great aunt who gives her no freedom until the night of the Halloween dance, big mistake on her great aunt’s part. Fiona meets the teen of her dreams, she thinks, and the same guy she’d run into two years earlier in Dallas, Texas. But how could he be in Portland, Oregon now? Where she is? At her high school dance? She’s drawn to him like she has never been to anyone else, but before long, he whisks her away into a world she has never known—of vampires and hunters. Of witches and dream powers. Of danger and deceit. Somehow, he must keep her safe while she harnesses her abilities to do the same for him before the blood moon makes its appearance and it’s too late.

  PROLOGUE

  Two Years Earlier, Dallas, Texas

  Rarely did Fiona Wilder’s brother take her to the mall. But she was sixteen and didn’t have her driver’s license yet and to her surprise Justin had agreed to drive her. At eighteen, he was already in college, and she couldn’t wait to go too.

  “So how are Mom and Dad?” Justin asked as they walked through the mall. He was six feet tall, dark-haired, and dark eyed, nothing like Fiona. He was studious and wanted to be a doctor.

  “Dad’s drunk after work as usual and Mom stays out of his way as much as possible. Well, me too. But the fights about money and his drinking go on. And you know Dad. If she hides his bottles or pours his whiskey into the kitchen sink, he goes to the pub or just gets more at the liquor store.” Fiona was surprised her brother was sticking close to her. She thought he would just drop her off at the mall and do his own thing, then they could meet up and he’d leave her at the house afterwards.

  “What about you?” Justin glanced down at her, and she saw the concern in his dark eyes.

  She shrugged. “I have two more years to live there before I can escape our dysfunctional parents. You got through it. I’ll get through it also.” She adored him for caring. And for protecting their mother from their father during his drunken outbursts when Justin had still been living at home.

  “You can’t stay with me at the dorm,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Justin ran his hands through his dark hair. “I wish you could.”

  “I wish so too.”

  “We don’t have any other relatives except for Uncle Nat and Aunt Bea, but we’ve never even met them. I couldn’t locate them to see if you could live with them or with someone else possibly.” Justin sounded apologetic.

  Fiona appreciated that her brother had attempted to find another place for her to live. She hadn’t known he’d tried. “I’ve asked Mom about that too. She said that they are on the move all the time. She said she thought they were with the CIA.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Justin asked, sounding incredulous.

  “No. Who knows what they do to make money. Maybe it’s illegal.”

  “I hope not. Our grandparents are all gone,” Justin said.

  “We don’t know about Dad’s side of the family. We could never ask him about them, or he would go ballistic.” Which she thought was odd, but they didn’t even know if he had brothers or sisters, who his parents were or anything. So that was a dead end.

  “Right. If…if Dad ever gets violent with you or Mom, call 911 and then call me.”

  “I will.” Fiona was surprised that Justin seemed so worried for her. He had been so glad to leave home and go away to college that she thought he hadn’t really cared about what was going on at home any longer. She certainly didn’t blame him for not even coming home once he got away from there. Once she left, she was never going back.

  They went to the food court, and both got sodas. “I’m checking out the phone shop. Do you want to go to any shops and then meet up with me back here to have lunch?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She smiled, glad her brother had brought her to the mall. This had been the first time she had seen him since he moved away three months ago. She knew he’d been keeping up with schoolwork and making lots of new friends while still enjoying the company of his pals from high school. Keeping in touch with his high school sister hadn’t been a priority.

  He waved at her and headed for the phone store. She turned to walk to a nearby clothing store and ran smack dab into the cutest guy she’d seen in forever, spilling her dark, sticky soda all over his black T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

  “Ohmigod, I am so sorry!” She couldn’t believe the mess she’d made all over him. Immediately, she expected him to blow up at her like her dad would have if she had done that to him.

  But the dark-haired teen actually smiled at her, his eyes sparkling with good humor. “No problem,” he said. “I’m Arman. And you are?”

  “Fiona. And I…I can’t believe I did that to you. I’m so sorry.”

  Three male teens were standing next to him, all smiling also. The redhead of the bunch said, “He should have apologized to you for running into you.”

  Ha! She was the one who had turned so quickly and walked right into tall, dark, and gorgeous. But the redhead had sounded dead serious. She hadn’t looked where she was going. Arman had just been there and was now wearing her icy soda.

  “Why don’t I buy you another soda to make up for it?” Arman said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Can I buy you lunch?” Arman persisted.

  “Uh, thanks, but no. I’m so sorry.” Fiona was so embarrassed her cheeks had to be brilliant red. She said she was sorry one last time, and hurried over to a trash can, threw out her empty soda cup, and went into the clothing store, wanting to disappear, thinking what a catastrophe that had been!

  Arman and his friends watched as the girl tore off.

  “She was cute,” Ruric said.

  “She’s human.” Arman headed for the men’s room. His friends followed him. “You could wait for me outside the men’s room.”

  Levka said, “We’re going to, unless you need help or direction.”

  Arman shook his head. Levka often led their little band of princely vampires.

  “Not me,” Stasio said. “I’ll go get you a new shirt.”

  “Thanks.” In the meantime, Arman took off his shirt in the restroom, planning just to rinse it out and dry it under a dryer if Stasio couldn’t find anything in a hurry. But Stasio used the vampire way to move—disappearing and reappearing before Arman had even finished washing the soda out of his shirt. At least his pants and shoes only had a little bit of the soda splashed on them.

  “Here,” Stasio said. “It’s not black, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.”

  “Did you appear in front of anyone?” Arman asked him, eyeing the pastel pink shirt. “Pink? Really?”

  Stasio smiled, then was serious. “No one saw me. I was careful. I appeared behind a rack of clothes. And then I grabbed the first shirt I could find.”

  Arman tossed the sticky soda-covered one away and pulled the new shirt over his head. “You know as long as we live…” He quickly washed away the soda splatter off his pants and shoes.

  “Yeah, yeah, karma, and all that.” Stasio laughed and they headed out of the men’s room.

  Ruric and Levka smiled.

  “Looking good,” Ruric said.

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  They watched as Fiona came out of the shop with a package and saw her glance in their direction, her eyes widening when she saw Arman had changed into a pink shirt. She smiled. Arman smiled at her.

  But then some guy joined her. An older teen. He was carrying a package from the phone store and led her to the food court.

  “Do you think it’s a boyfriend?” Stasio asked.

  “Brother,” Ruric said.

  “Why do you think they’re related?” Arman asked Ruric. “They don’t look like they were at all.” Not as dark-haired and eyed as the young man was, and as fair as Fiona was.

  “I heard her talking to him about spilling a drink on a guy and her brother said that he’d never known his sister to be that clumsy. Was it on purpose? Then she poked at him with her package in a humorous way.”

  Arman had seen her poke at him. He didn’t know why, but he felt drawn to her. There was just something that…well, he couldn’t pinpoint what intrigued him so much about her.

  Stasio slapped him on the back. “She’s not one of our kind.”

  Levka smiled. “Come on. Let’s grab some lunch, but not at the food court, and then we’ll get what we need and head out of here.”

  “To the vampire club tonight in the warehouse district?” Ruric asked.

  “Yeah. To the club tonight,” Levka said. “But we don’t want to get into any trouble this time.”

  Arman hoped Levka hadn’t just jinxed them.

  1

  Two years later, Scotland

  Arman retired to bed early at the elder vampire’s estate in Scotland, well, now it was his and his friends’ estate after putting the elder vampire down who had owned it. After the big battle to overthrow the League of Vampires, Arman had started having dreams of Fiona. She was the beautiful blond-haired girl with bright green eyes of seventeen who would be eighteen soon that he had met at the Dallas mall. She’d been visiting him in his dreams for weeks now, though she was a human, not a vampire like him. He’d wondered if it was because he’d met her at the Dallas mall when she’d spilled the soda on him. Yet he hadn’t been having dreams about the accident.

  He’d wanted to have lunch with her. Dinner even. He had been totally smitten with her. Something about her just appealed—her apology, embarrassment, the sweet but guilty smile she had shared with him. Even though he was a vampire, he’d felt in that moment, she had…mesmerized him like the gaze of a vampire could.

  He’d just wanted her to know that he wasn’t upset with her in the least. But she’d shyly declined and hurried off to join an older teen, her brother, if Ruric had been right about what he’d overheard. Not that Arman had been all that surprised. Arman had been a stranger, and she probably hadn’t trusted him. For good reason. Sure, he was a good vampire, but if she knew what he really was, she would have probably thought he was a monster.

  Even when Arman saw her in his dreams, she was so real, so wonderful to be with that when he woke, he felt she would be there, sharing a smile with him, a kiss, a hug.

  But this time when Arman drifted off to sleep, he felt tension, anxiety, concern and knew right away something was gravely wrong.

  A blond-haired man came to him in his dreams, his eyes an intensely soulful green eye, and said, “You have to go to Portland, Oregon and save the girl in your dreams. She’s cursed with a gift and vampires who are evil to the core want that gift. Regina Peckinpah and Tobias Farrington, to top the list. They have taken her hostage, though she doesn’t know it. I beseech you to take her to safety and protect her until after the night of the blood moon when she turns eighteen.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Fiona Wilder. You’ve met her before. In Dallas. It wasn’t a chance meeting,” the man said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who has a keen interest in her welfare. I need you to do this. You feel the connection between the two of you. You have to do it.”

  “What do you mean we didn’t meet by chance?” Arman asked.

  “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “Fate?” Arman didn’t believe in fate.

  “You need to take her to your safe house. Don’t delay or it will be too late.”

  “By…?” Arman needed a timeline. If he believed this, he had to still fly out and that would take time.

  “Before the blood moon.” And then the man faded away and was gone.

  It was nighttime, darkness cloaking everything, but Fiona was there in the darkness, listening to whispered voices, alarmed, unable to learn what was going on.

  Arman immediately thought of the blond-haired man who had warned him to move her out of the harmful situation she was in. He wanted to talk to her, to ask her what was wrong in the worst way, but he could never speak with her. She couldn’t speak to him either. It was just enough to be near her. But he worried that the man who warned him to save her was right and Arman had to do something about it—and pronto.

  They were separated this time though. Seeing her through a bedroom window of a house he didn’t recognize, he tried to get her attention. Somehow, he knew he had to get her out of there. He didn’t know why. But he feared she was in trouble. If he got her out of the house, would she recognize him? Would she go to him willingly? Would she leave with him without a fight?

  She went outside to see what the scratching noise was on her bedroom window. It was Arman, trying to reach out to her without waking the vampires in the house.

  Before Arman could go to her, someone went outside to join her. He saw glimpses of a woman, powerful vampire—a rogue—Regina. Crap. Fiona wasn’t a vampire. At least he didn’t think she was. Unless vampires telepathically communicated, or they showed off their elongated canines, they couldn’t tell if someone was a vampire or human. Or Fiona could even be a hunter, who were just as powerful as vampires, but didn’t have the need for blood or the teeth that would extend. But she wouldn’t be living with the rogue vampires then.

  Fiona went back inside. He had to whisk her away to somewhere safe. Someplace like the estate he was living at now in Scotland.

  Then he saw her in a different place. She was wearing a martial arts uniform, all white, cinched with a black belt. All around her, dead people her age with ghoulish faces and blood-splattered clothes were dancing. It was at night, music playing in the background, and Fiona was standing off to the side, looking like she didn’t want to be there. He could feel her sense of not belonging, of wanting to escape. He felt an urgency that he hadn’t ever felt before. He had to go to her, reach out, remove her from there, save her before it was too late. The blood moon was coming. Fiona was turning eighteen then. He had to save her before then. It could be a matter of life or death.

  He had a hold of her hand. He was drawing her out of the place, the wild music still playing, but a fight had broken out between a mummy and a guy wearing a toga. “Come with me,” Arman pleaded with her. “Come now.”

  But she broke away from him. She released his hand, unwilling to leave with him. It was dangerous to stay behind. He had to come up with another plan. A plan that would remove her from the rogue vampires’ grasp.

  A door slammed shut in the distance, muffled voices speaking in another room, waking Arman. He realized it was morning, but he couldn’t let go of the dream he’d had. He wrote it all down, but he couldn’t quit thinking about it. He had to save her. He knew it with every fiber of his being.

  Wanting to do what was right, Arman walked into the living area where he heard the other Welsh princes talking. He had to tell his friends he was leaving for the States. Though he was usually the one who didn’t take risks and didn’t want to upset the League of Vampires, he always stuck it out with them. Levka, Ruric, Stasio, and Arman had been friends since the Black Death had turned them into vampires. Over the centuries, they’d helped humans in need—to the league’s consternation. The ruling vampires felt humans needed to take care of themselves. This time, he had to go it alone and he didn’t want to tell his friends why he had to leave. They would think he was crazy and would try to stop him.