Blood & Magic (Book 1)

Chapter One

"Oh shit!" I cried.

The stench of death filled my nostrils and my eye popped open. Instinctively, I rolled to my side, falling from the cold stone bench on which I'd been laying. I landed on to my hands and knees on the hard packed dirt with an 'oomph'. I had narrowly escaped a pair of dirt caked hands, the nails torn and bloody from the creatures escape from the grave.

The cemetery, while nice and dark at night, was clearly not a good place to nod off.

My assailant was Derek Jordan. Until last week, he had been the starting linebacker for my high school's rival football team, the Eastfield Colts. There was also a brief time last summer when he dated my best friend Winnie. That was before he died, of course. He wouldn't be playing football or going on dates ever again in this lifetime.

I quickly recovered, silently cursing myself for falling asleep on the job. I wasn't usually so careless, but lately I'd been sleep deprived. I'd been having dream after dream, never getting a good nights sleep. Technically, it was always the same dream, on repeat. In it, I was a little girl, maybe two years old at most, and there was a beautiful woman carrying me. We're running from a huge gothic mansion, and when we finally get away, she hands me to another woman—still beautiful, but a little younger—then she runs back toward the house. I always woke up at that point. I had no clue what the dream meant, but I wanted it to go away. It was interfering with my extracurricular nocturnal activities.

In one smooth move, I grabbed the sleek silver dagger from the sheath in my boot, and sprung to my feet. I lunged for the creature, its crimson eyes locked on my throat. Derek was a newborn vampire and had only one thing on his mind.

Blood.

My blood to be exact.

The nice thing about a newborn vampire like Derek, was that they were slow and stupid, controlled by their blood lust. Once Derek finished his first meal, it was a whole other ballgame. He would transform from Bruce Banner into The Hulk.

"Over my dead body," I taunted as he lunged for me once more.

I easily sidestepped him. Derek paused for a moment in confusion, looking side to side, until he located me once more.

"Over here, Big D." I waggled my fingers, giving him a sweet smile.

I waited for him to lunge, and with careful aim, I threw my weapon.

My dagger found its mark, right through the heart of the former high school football star. He slumped forward, his red eyes never straying from my jugular as the demonic light went out.

I took a step back as he fell face first in the dirt beside the grave from which he'd dragged himself, his body sending a cloud of dust into the air.

"Did you have to fall forward?" I groaned, glaring down at the body and shaking my head, before falling to my knees beside his body and shoving him onto his back. "Seriously, nice work, Kate," I muttered to myself, letting out an irritated puff of air as I removed my dagger from his chest. I wiped the residual goop on the sleeve of his high school letter jacket and sighed.

When Mom told me she was pretty sure Derek had been killed by a vampire, I'd hoped she was wrong. Derek was a pretty decent guy—for a jock—so it was a shame when I'd learned that he'd apparently died in a car accident.

I say apparently, because despite being found in the driver's seat of car that had obviously been totaled, there was quite a bit of unaccounted for blood. They don't share that kind of knowledge with the general public, but as an employee of the medical examiners office, Mom gets the inside scoop.