Knight of Coins (Work In Progress)

Hi Everyone,

Here are the first two chapters of Knight of Coins.  The first two people to comment and let me know what they think of the chapters win a free e-book copy of Knight of Swords.

Hope you enjoy them!

Sara


Chapter One 

It was late morning, Halloween when I decided to kidnap Sabrina Collins.  I had never kidnapped a woman before and I did not intend to make a habit of it and I confess the task made me more than apprehensive.  But there was no other option.  I had been patient long enough.  Sabrina Collins would not come to me of her own free will and accept her destiny by my side so I had no choice but to take matters in hand and force her surrender.  The wind was picking up into a bluster in the dull grey sky as I followed her into the wood.  It swirled colours of red and gold as it lifted the fallen autumn leaves from the floor and moved them in a vortex around me.  Thankfully, she did not detect my presence as I watched her attractive mop of short blond curls bob in between the trees a small distance away.
I couldn't help but frown on her with disapproval at the careless way she took liberties with her safety when the change was now upon her.  Turning from human to hybrid Taleian vampire was fraught with danger.  It brought death to the human body in the first stage and then forced the agonising birth of the hybrid on awakening.  If blood was not administered before and during the transition she would die a second painful death.  As her fated Taleian mate I could not endure losing her.  I had waited more than a century for her birth.  She could not deny her identity as the child of a human and vampire union or dismiss my warnings any longer.
I brushed her consciousness with my mind rejoicing at how easy it felt to make telepathic contact with her through our natural Taleian bond.  I winced when I felt  the strength of the headache that pounded in her temples and the building of the fever that accompanied the start of her metamorphosis.  Yet still she walked in the middle of the lonely woods unaccompanied on her way home from lecturing at the university.  She was a stubborn woman just like the rest in the royal line and the Queen herself.  She would learn in time that I would not tolerate it in matters of her protection.
I was about to make my move when I suddenly sensed the presence of two other Taleian's in the wood close by, stalking Sabrina like prey.  I whirled around seeking them out.  Slavers!  The sound of a mobile echoed noisily around the small but crowded wood snapping my attention back to Sabrina.  I shook my head cursing under my breath as she answered her phone granting the slavers the perfect distraction to make their ambush easy.  One of them stood aiming a gun at her back as she slowed her brisk walk to concentrate on her phone call.
Their plan was a simple one.  Shoot her down to bring on her quick death and the change faster so that by the time tomorrow morning came she would be fully transformed and hidden in a slave camp.  Her body would then be rich in the healing properties bestowed upon the females in the hybrid race and they would callously rip the organs from her body to give to humans for a profit.  For if an ill human could find no cure for his disease he could consume the flesh of a Taleian hybrid woman and keep himself in remission, if not cured.  It made the price upon a female hybrid's head worth fighting over.  And as her body healed the process would be repeated over and over again for an eternity.
Anger and determination that they would not possess my innocent mate fuelled my quick movement and I was in perfect time to knock her to the ground with the simple push of my hand and take the bullet square in my chest.  I stood guard in front of my charge widening my mouth to bare the sharpness of my incisors and hiss my warning that I would kill any who attempted to take my her from me.
I glanced down at the bullet wound in my chest without a care, only glad that Sabrina was safe behind me now although a quick look told me I had pushed her so hard she had passed out cold.  I had to hurry.  The two Taleian slavers came out of the trees to face me at speed but I was ready landing a heavy punishing kick to the stomach of the first to reach me.  He flew backwards to land between two trees on his back as I raised the back of my arm and knocked it into the face of the other.
I unsheathed the sword at my side and twisted it with natural ease in my hand as the first came to tackle me once more. I swung neatly to one side and sliced the ancient blade cleanly through his neck to sever his head in one satisfying moment.
I felt exhilarated as I moved to face the second man.  There had not been many opportunities to test my strength and bravery as a Taleian knight for a long time.  My energy and that of the other  royal knights had been spent more in concealing our identity amongst the humans than in respecting our true nature in recent times.  I moved to strike my sword at my enemy but he was giving up the fight and retreating like the coward he was.  I lowered my weapon sensing no other apparent danger in the wood and dropped to my knees to tend to Sabrina.
Calling her name I gently turned her over and swept my fingers over her face.  She was a beautiful woman.  Small, curvaceous and coupled with a tempestuous temperament that would prove an inviting challenge in our relationship, she was all I could have asked for.  I probed my fingers across the large purple bruise gathering on her feverish forehead.  She was going to be unconscious for a while longer.  At least it would make the execution of my crime of kidnap now an easy one.  I slipped my arm under her legs and lifted her up into my arms to carry her to the car.
Sabrina didn't wake up until she was lying on the sofa in my study.  I could have put her to bed but I was reluctant to leave her alone.  I wanted her where I could keep my eye on her.  The fever was getting worse and soon it would be time to give my charge her first taste of blood.  I stood up from my desk and approached her stirring form watching her long black lashes flutter open only to briefly close and open again.  This time her eyes widened and there was panic in them as she took in her unfamiliar surroundings.  I felt her fear sting sharp and hot in my mind as she sat up with a start.
She winced and her hand flew to her head.  I knelt down in front of her and took hold of her shoulders gently guiding her back down onto the pillow I had placed under her head.
'What am I doing here?  Oh no it's you.  I thought I told you last night at the party to leave me alone.  Did you bring me here?  What have you done?  Kidnapped me?  I don't believe this.'  She closed her eyes with impatience.
I gave a laugh.
'Don't you ever shut up?  I did what I had to.  You wouldn't listen to me.  I had no choice but to act.  Besides you should be grateful, I took a bullet for you today,' I joked.
I stood up and undid the button on my suit jacket and with playful eyes I opened it so she could see the blood stain on my white shirt.  Her mouth opened in shock and I knelt down to tilt her chin upwards to close it with great amusement.
'So, now will you believe everything that I have told you about your heritage and the dangers you face?'Sabrina was suitably silent but it was not to last.
'I have to get out of here.  You are mad if you think for one moment I am going to believe that I am a vampire in waiting.  I am a scientist.  I don't believe in things like that.'
I stood with a sigh and walked to the front of my desk, picking up the glass of cognac I had poured myself earlier and leant against it watching her throw off the blanket I had put around her.  I took a sip of the fiery golden brown liquid and then looked up at her again as she continued her annoying rant.
'Wait until the media gets a hold of this,' she challenged using her hands and wide gleeful eyes for emphasis.  'I can just see what they'll print in the newspapers,' she said with venom.  'Hot rich playboy, Victor James, kidnaps lone woman in wood and tries to convince her he is a vampire when she rejected him.  I mean, really.  All this because I didn't fall at your feet like every other woman when you asked her out.  I mean how many women do you want?  You came to the party with two of them on your arm last night as it was.'
'So you think I'm hot?' I mocked.
'I get it.  You don't take rejection very well.  Tough.  Don't you think your stunt has gone far enough?'
'You never stop do you?' I said sarcastically.  She was beginning to push my patience with her constant denial.
I was in her mind, I knew all of her thoughts.  She desired me as much as I desired her whether either of us liked it or not.  The bond between us was growing strong since I'd found her but she continued to fight it afraid of its strength.  Others would come to challenge my right to her and do all in their power to break our link to take her for their own as per Taleian law.  Some of them would ignore the challenge and simply rape her and make her their own and I would never be able to retrieve her.  For once the mating ritual had taken place she would be lost.  If I did not succeed in my quest to protect her from their violence she would be taken from me.    She swung her legs down on the floor and stood up, gripping the end of the sofa to steady her swaying form.  It was an effort not to go to her but I stayed casually leaning against the desk watching her intently.  It seemed to frighten her and unfortunately that was what I needed to do to force her to accept the truth.  But still she persisted as though trying to test the boundaries that I had set upon her freedom.
'I am out of here before you go too far and do something you will regret, Mr James,' she told me fiercely and began to move.  I took another sip of cognac and let her get as far as the door.
'You are not going anywhere,' I told her with a dark menace to my tone.   She stopped her movement and turned to look at me with fearful eyes .  Good I was beginning to get through.  Whatever it took to make her surrender to her new existence and to myself I would do it and damn the human part of my conscience.
'I have to leave, Victor, this is ridiculous . . .'
'Doctor Collins, I said you are not going anywhere.  Now sit down and rest before I make you.'My tone was deeper, more threatening this time and I meant that I would carry out my threat.  I was fast discovering that the way to master Sabrina's temper was with a firm hand. 
Fearful she made a sudden break for the door.  I flicked my eyes ever so slightly towards it as she took hold of the handle and prised it from her fingers with my mental strength.  I slammed it closed and locked it.
'Sit down, Sabrina,' I commanded making her jump as she stared at the door.
'How did you do that?
Her anxiety was at full tilt raising her blood pressure and pumping adrenaline around her body attoo fast a rate for her sickening body.  I grew concerned.
'I closed it with my mind.'
'No, ordinary people can't do that.'
'I can and so can you.  I know from your mind you have been able to move objects before and you've kept it secret.  We are not ordinary people,' I told her calmly.  'I said sit down.'
Sabrina put her hand to her head and staggered.  I put down my drink and began to move towards her.
'Ok, ok, I will sit down before I fall down,' she told me putting her hand out.  
I kept my distance as she struggled to sit back down.
'I will sit for a while and then I am leaving.  You can't just keep me here.  I've got flu or something.'
'Why do you continue to deny what you are?' I demanded with frustration.
'Because it can't be real.  It just can't . . . I can't be something like that it's impossible and neither was my father one.  My mother wouldn't have married a monster . . . What is that?'
I followed the direction of Sabrina's pointed finger to my sword as it lay propped against the wall.  I walked towards it and picked it up, running my fingers along the blade as I held it lengthways and pressed the top of my index finger at its tip.  Sabrina was both transfixed and unnerved by the weapon.  I moved towards her and she pressed herself back in the sofa as I sat down next to her and brought the blade to her soft vulnerable throat, forcing her to strain upwards.
She spluttered her breath with fear.  I felt no remorse.  She need to be controlled or she would die.  I lowered my voice darkly.
'This is what I am going to use to protect you from the slavers and the challengers who are going to come knocking on my door to take you from me the moment you are reborn as a hybrid.  The slavers want your flesh and the challengers want to take you as their mate.  As a female Taleian hybrid you should consider yourself an endangered species.  Too many of you have been taken from us by the slavers and I am not about to let either of them have you because you are mine.  But if you do not obey me I may decide to use it upon you instead.  Do I make myself clear?'
She nodded furiously when I pressed the blade just a little closer.   Satisfied at her capitulation I leaned over and brushed her lips with a kiss yearning for the time when there would be more to our intimate contact.  I lifted the back of my hand to test the progress of the fever on her brow.  It was nearly time for her death.
'Now, I think it is time you took your first taste of blood, Sabrina.'

Chapter Two I still held the blade of my sword to Sabrina's tender throat feeling rebellion rise strongly in her mind at the mention of blood and being forced to consume it.  I pressed her back in her seat once more when her body jumped to move.  A smile twitched at my lips as I remembered my own reaction the first time I was made to take blood.  It took more than a sword to my throat to hold me down.  It took two Royal knights to keep me still as one of them force fed me.  Sabrina would struggle, we all did when the time to change came upon us unannounced and I would have no option but to be firm and harsh in my treatment of her until she accepted the life giving essence that would mark her transition. 'There is no way you are going to make me take blood,'  the tremble in Sabrina's voice threaten to overwhelm her.  'I won't let you,' she told me with conviction.  'I can't . . .'
A cry of pain echoed loudly from her pursed lips and she raised her hand to head in agony and then I felt it, felt her in my mind for the first time.  I lowered my sword to the floor as she raised her other hand and held her head, rocking back and forth with the pain.  Her consciousness swept on into my mind searching for anything and everything amongst my thoughts.  I was ecstatic.  Her resistance had been broken down by the bond itself.
'Don't do that.  Don't wander into my mind uninvited,' she shouted at me.
I gave a small laugh as I took hold of her arms and prised them away.
'Look at me, Sabrina.  I am not in your mind at this moment, you are in mine.'
'What?'  Tears sprung into her eyes and her body began to shiver.  'What's happening to me? I need to go to hospital,' she was almost talking to herself unaware of my presence.  'I'm afraid.'
I punctuated my tone with firmness and strength when I spoke, hoping my confidence would give her belief that I spoke the truth and that I would carry her through the cruel process.
'Concentrate through the pain.  Try to keep your link with my mind.  Let me shoulder some of the pain for you.  Sabrina, don't be afraid.  I am here for you and I won't ever leave you.  I promise I will make sure you are safe.'
'No.  This isn't happening.  I don't want to be in your mind.  I just feel more pain.'
My voice lowered as I made every effort to gentle her and coax her acceptance and trust now I felt her disbelief weakening at long last.  I cupped the side of her face and gently lifted it to me commanding her attention.  She looked at me with childlike wide frightened eyes filled with the heavy weight of pain and confusion.
'That is because you have been resisting our mental bond and it has caused me discomfort when you refused to allow me access to your mind.  I had to fight it to get inside you.  You are a strong woman, Sabrina,' I smiled.
'To be apart from your mind, your thoughts causes us both physical pain.  You must allow the bond to follow freely or you will spend an eternity locked in pain and sentence me to the same punishment.  Stop resisting and accept your fate.  I have little choice in our joining just like you but I want this Sabrina more than anything and I won't ever let you go, darling.  I've waited too long for you to come to me.  There is no escape.'
She stared at me but did not speak.  I heard her teeth chatter as her body temperature began to rise higher and her human body fought to cool itself.  Another cry of pain.  She opened her mouth and yanked one of her arms free from my hold to press her fingers against the top of her jaw.  I waited for her to find the irrefutable truth of her new emerging existence as she probed her finger between those pretty pink quivering lips of hers.  Her eyes widened with shock and she was suddenly raising her aching body and stumbling to the mirror over the fireplace at the side of the sofa.
I stood just behind her and put my hands in my pockets patiently watching, waiting.  With shaking fingers she lifted her top lip and viewed the new pointed incisors viciously splitting open her gums and pushing aside her other teeth to settle their position just like a newborn teething.  Her eyes filled with hurtful resignation and a fresh batch of tears she did her best not to shed gathered in her eyes as she stared back at my reflection in the mirror.  I felt her sense of helplessness crush her as she looked at me with terror.
My heart leapt.  I wanted to hold her, comfort her in my arms and reassure her frantic mind that all would be well, that I would be there for her day and night.  She would not have to face this new existence alone but she needed a moment to accept her new reality.  I stood still and viewed her with sternness still  sensing a frisson of denial echo in her mind.  Finally after a couple of silent minutes as she studied her teeth once more her eyes began to roll backwards and her face drained of colour.  She clutched at her stomach and started to fall to the ground.  I heard myself gasp but my movement was quicker than lightening and in perfect time.  My arm was under her falling body and sweeping her up into my arms before she fainted to the floor.
I raced out into the large hall and carried her up the long staircase to my bedroom at speed.  I had to hurry and make sure she fed before death claimed her.  She was moving her head from side to side in a frenzied delirium when I laid her upon the bed.  I knelt on the bed beside her and stripped off my jacket, tossing it to the floor and undid the cufflink on my shirt to roll its sleeve up my arm away from my wrist.  I lifted my arm under her shoulders and pulled her to me and up to sitting.  I kept my arm across the top of her body holding down her arms to prevent her fighting me and bit into my wrist.
She was squealing and sobbing with resistance when I brought my bloody wrist to her lips and pressed it against them.  She closed them tight just as I and countless others had done in our own change.  I fought to keep my patience.  I was frightened for her life but also afraid of hurting her with the force I could exert upon her to make her feed.  But it was becoming inevitable that I would need to be cruel to be kind.
'Open your mouth, Sabrina, or I will have to hurt you to make you,' I thundered at her.
Still she fought me with her dying breath.  Damn it, the woman was stubborn beyond all realms of sensibility.  I wasn't losing her whether she liked it or not.
'Just let me die.  I don't want to be one of them,' she panted.  'Please, I just want to die.'
'No, no way.  You don't get out of life so easily.  I won't let you have that choice.  It isn't yours to make alone now.  We are Taleian mates.  I get a say in your life and you are going to have to realise that and no you are not allowed to die.  I forbid it.'
'Arrogant, son of . . .' I heard her begin to say in her breathless voice.  It was all I needed.  I moved my arm up around her throat to hold her in position and pressed my wrist against her open mouth before she could finish her sentence.
'Ladies shouldn't swear, Sabrina,' I said with gentle humour as she violently struggled, gulped and gurgled as the blood hit the back of her throat.  'It is very unbecoming.'
It took several minutes before her legs stopped thrashing around on the bed and her hands stopped clawing at my arm that imprisoned her against me before she began to suckle the blood with eagerness.  Taking the blood would ease some of the transition pain as the body moved out of its denial and into acceptance of its physical transformation.  Now she drank the blood contentedly.  It was just like feeding a baby.  But then that was what this whole process was, a birth.
After a while I decided she had taken sufficient to ease the danger and I removed my wrist, allowing my bite to heal.  I fluffed up the pillows on the bed and sat back against them stretching out my long legs and turned on my side to hold Sabrina against me in my arms.  She looked up at me, quiet and peaceful even though fear of what was to happen reigned uppermost in her thoughts.  I was happy and relieved beyond measure when she pressed her body and face against me for nurture and protection.  I held her tighter loving the feel of soft feminine face against my chest.
I felt her brow.  It was soaking.  It wouldn't be long now.  I kissed the top of her forehead and felt the dampness coat my lips and sat in silence waiting for her human death.
'I can't hear your heart,' she whispered.  'This is real, isn't it?  I am going to die.'
I cupped her face and stroked my thumb along her paling cheek wiping at a single tear that escaped her eye.
'Yes but you will awaken again.'
'I'm afraid.'
'Shhh, it will just feel as though you are slipping into a deep sleep,' I soothed softly feeling the familiar fear I had experienced at my own human death in 1890 in London when I was just 24 years old.Sabrina was making the change in her early thirties.  It came when the body was ready, no matter the age.  Besides there were advantages to being a Taleian hybrid vampire, you never aged past twenty-five in appearance even whilst still a human.  It was one of the only benefits of the Druid's curse that was settled upon my ancestors and turned us into vampires when our ancestors were driven from our lands in ancient Briton.
Sabrina's body felt cold and clammy and a ghostly whiteness was colouring her complexion.  There was no fight left in her.  She was calm, serene and resigned to her fate and my control.  I had witnessed only one death and rebirth before.  There was always sadness at the death of the human body and I felt it its heaviness engulf my mind.  An obsessive fear would follow as the lost one lay in the sleep of death for hours, and the Taleian hybrids waited and prayed that they would awaken.  Sometimes the hybrid didn't.  A weakness in their body may have prevented their full change or sometimes they simply died and we never knew the reason.
I looked down at Sabrina as though she were a babe in my arms and willed her to make the change with safety.
'Close your eyes, Sabrina,' I whispered softly.  'Go to sleep, darling.  I will be here.  I promise you will be safe.  I will protect you.'
'I saw you in my dreams before I met you,' she confessed.
'Yes, it was the same for me but they were more than dreams, they were visions.  They told me where to find you.'
She squirmed and I felt her fear heighten.
'There were others, three men.  Night after night they plagued my dreams.  One of them frightened me.'She had to be talking about Taleian male challengers to our mating bond.  I would need to be on my guard.  I had sensed at least two of them desperately trying to establish a bond with her mind over my own since I first found her.  But her stubborn resistance to have any of us in there had served and protected her well.  Yet she talked of another I had not seen.  All of the challengers would sense her change and would be planning her capture.  I would not let them take her from me to make their own.
'No matter, Sabrina.  They will not be allowed to harm you.  We will talk of this when you awaken.  Now sleep little one.'
Sabrina's beautiful facial features contorted with another wave of intense pain and she took her final breath.  Her body fell limp in my arms and her life slipped away.  I trembled all over and held her to me with crushing strength feeling the sharp quick loss of our mental connection and the sudden ache in my temples that accompanied it.  I sat for a few moments simply holding her, stroking her face, too fearful to let go of her.  But I knew I had to move, to prepare for her anticipated awakening and the attacks from the slavers and the challengers that would now undoubtedly ensue.
I laid her down and removed her boots and clothing from her cold body.  I pulled a shirt from the wardrobe, the best I could find and dressed her in it before slipping her under the black silk sheets that covered my bed.I stood at the foot of the bed unable to tear my eyes from her sleeping form wondering when she would wake.  I was impatient even though I knew fine well it would take hours.  I picked my jacket up from the floor and took my mobile phone out of the breast pocket and hit the speed dial for my friend Dylan Lysander, another knight who served with me as I stood over Sabrina's dead body.
'Victor, how is the delivery coming?' he asked me with humour.  'Is she still resisting?'
'Sabrina has just died and I am waiting for her awakening.'
Dylan's tone turned serious.
'Good.  Then you will be needing your human blood donor?'
'Yes.  The slavers have already attempted to take her from me.'
'Do you need help?  You know we are here for you.  The Queen is concerned and determined to visit you the moment she is told of Sabrina's awakening despite the obvious danger.'
'Stubborn as ever, then?'
'Oh yes.'
'Sabrina is no better.  It's definitely a trait that runs in the royal family, especially in the women.  I've never seen such obstinacy in anyone but them,' I groaned.
'Sounds as though Sabrina is going to be a handful when she wakes.  I will bring the donor and check in on you.  The waiting is the worst part of the process.  I won't be long.  Hang on in there.'
I hung up and decided to take a shower and change.  The hot water was inviting as it pounded against my skin.  I lifted my face to the water and ran my fingers through my short hair flattening it against my scalp.  I dressed in a black cashmere sweater and some trousers to match and dried my hair.  Gone were the days when I had a valet dress me, although sometimes I missed it when I couldn't decide what to wear.  I came out of the bathroom noticing how still the large house appeared.I know I had given the staff the week off to prepare for Sabrina's birth into a hybrid and there was no one else there but it seemed too quiet.  I listened to the crows squawking in the trees outside in the grounds and the eerie calls of the peacocks that wandered there.  Yes, everything was normal but I couldn't help shake the feeling and a Taleian never ignored his feelings however strange or improbable they were for they were always right.I looked out of the large Georgian windows at the side of the bed.  It was just past lunchtime and at first I saw nothing but the dull greyness of the day.  Then the blur of a black shadow passed in front of my eyes across the other side of the window.  I froze as a second shadow passed by.  I turned quickly to the wall next to the window outside to confirm my suspicions.  A black mass engulfed it.  It slowly transformed into a physical black and green human form confirming my worst fear that the slavers had sent Hunter demons to capture Sabrina.It stared at me and hissed with its venomous tongue.  There was always another one.  They never hunted alone.  I swung around to the large fireplace behind me as I heard a whistling sound and a black mass seeped out of the fireplace into the room in front of the bed.  I would have reached for my sword but then I remembered it was lying in the study downstairs.  I would just have to fight without it.  They would not have her even if it cost my life.