Hello, everyone. I’m A.M. Hudson, author of the paranormal
romance series, Dark Secrets. Today I’ve got a very exclusive, one-time only
preview of Lies in Blood, the 4th book in the series. Reading this
won’t give anything away, but it will give you a unique look into the reason
for David’s mad ways when it comes to his ex-girlfriend, Pepper. Enjoy...
“How’s things going at Elysium?” Arthur asked. “Have they
worked their way through most of the prisoners now?”
“Mm-hm.” I sipped my drink as I nodded. “But a few of them
have to go to the mental asylum.”
Arthur and Jason exchanged glances.
“Pepper inclusive,” I probed, keeping my gaze on the
horizon.
“I’m not surprised,” Arthur said, turning to lean his back
on the rail. “I saw her a year or so ago, and requested they move her then.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Drake denied the motion.”
“Why?”
“David was gone at the time. And...I guess Drake saw it as a
method of revenge for his defection, perhaps,” Arthur mused.
My lip curled. “That’s so cruel.”
“He can be a cruel man.”
I looked up at Arthur for a second and watched his blue eyes
wander in thought. He looked younger when he was absent from his mind--his
features so much softer and almost kind of sad-looking. “Don’t you both think
that, maybe, it’s time for me to know what happened to her--to Pepper?” I
waited then, letting the idea sink in for them. “Clearly, I’m not going to dump
David if I find out he’s a masochistic torturer.” I held up my ring hand. “If I
haven’t left him yet, chances are, I’m not going to.”
Arthur smiled down at me, but when he looked at Jase, he
frowned.
“Jase?” I caught the same vibe Arthur had.
Jason bent down with a huge sigh and left his wine glass by
his feet, standing back up again slowly. “You’re right, Ara. You should know.”
“Yes,” Arthur said
suggestively, his wide eyes arresting Jason’s boyish confidence. “She should
really know everything, shouldn’t she?”
“In good time,” Jase said. “We’ll start with Pepper, and see
how we go from there.”
Arthur seemed to agree, stepping back and offering the floor
to Jase while he went to grab another glass.
“They were in love,” Jase began. “As much any two vampire
souls had ever been, but David's desperation to be a council member started to
waver from the day he met Pepper. He was missing meetings, failing to complete
tasks, and staring in dreamy-eyed gazes when he should have been carrying out
punishments. The last straw was when he set a prisoner free without torture.”
“He set someone free?” I asked, nearly leaping over the
balcony in disbelief.
“He wasn’t always as a harsh a man as he is now,” Arthur
added, standing beside me again.
“So, what did the prisoner do--the one he set free? Was it a
horrid crime?”
“He’d unlawfully turned a human,” Arthur said. “And David
quite simply said that he understood how love could madden a man--force him to
do things he wouldn’t normally do.”
I stared out to sea. “That doesn’t sound like my David.”
“It wasn’t the David any of us knew,” Jason said. “He was
even getting along--or trying to--get along with me.”
I smiled, rubbing Jase’s arm, then turned my head to look at
Arthur. “So Pepper was a good influence on him?”
“In ways.” Arthur nodded. “Well, enough that David had
planned to ask her to marry him—”
“What?”
“He had the ring his grandmother passed down,” Arthur continued.
“And he’d set the date and the time he would do it.”
“But. . .” I thought back to the day he told me about the
one and only vampire he’d ever wanted to marry.
“Who was it?” Jason asked, coming up off the railing just a
little.
“Who was what?” Arthur asked, confused.
“Ara was just thinking that David told her he’d only ever
wanted to be with one vampire, and it wasn’t Pepper.”
“Who then?”
“Morg,” I said, my tone raising in question on the end.
Arthur and Jason broke into a gusty fit of laughter.
“That is a big, fat lie, right there,” Jason said, failing
to compose himself. “They hated each other.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Arthur said, sobering a little. “I suspect David told
you it was Morgaine so you wouldn’t keep asking.”
I nodded. “Well, it worked.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t keep asking after that, anyway,”
Jason said, leaning down again. “He and Morg are incredibly mismatched.”
“I just figured it was in another time, you know--and that
people change.”
Jase wiped his mouth. “Not that much.”
“Right. So, what was Pepper like then?”
“She was a sweet thing, very much like you in a lot of ways.
Her hair was golden, her features petite, and she always seemed to be smiling,
like nothing ever bothered her,” Arthur said fondly. “I know she reminded David
a lot of his aunt.”
“And he was gonna ask her to marry him, right? So, why
didn’t he?”
“The night before he set off for his biannual leave, Drake
called him to preside over one last case.” Arthur’s lips rolled inward, the
memory skitting across his face, painting it with emotion. “I saw the look in
David’s eye--saw his heart break right there in a room full of people when
Pepper was bound and thrown to her knees before him like some petty thief.”
“He didn’t know she’d been arrested?”
“No.” The way Jason said that made me look at him. “I was
the one who arrested her.”
“You?”
“I was a Warrior, Ara. It was my job.”
“Who gave the order?”
“The king.”
“I just. . .” I rubbed my head. “I can’t picture David
sitting there and sentencing her to torture. I just can’t.”
“It was a grim scene--and it was, in many ways, a test,”
Arthur said. “He knew that. From the moment he looked into her eyes and then
over at Drake, David knew his next move would determine the fate of his
career.”
“He had to leave emotion out of it from there,” Jase said.
“He heard her pleas, heard her reasons for turning the child, and he suddenly
went stone-faced, as if he cared nothing for her.”
“Because she broke the law, or because it affected a child?”
“No one really knows.”
“Wow.” I toyed with the stem of my glass, then popped it on
the floor by my feet. “So, why does she haunt him so much? I mean, I knew he
sentenced her and that he’d loved her, but what’s the big deal, really?”
“The standard punishment for a vampire that turns a child is
The Hot Tar,” Arthur said. “Whereby the vampire is stripped naked and lowered
into a vat of boiling tar, burned until their flesh peels from their body, then
taken away to heal again--slowly, and without blood.”
“Once their skin is just pink again,” Jason said, “they repeat
the process. And this is done for the full term of the sentence. Often three
years.”
Arthur nodded to confirm. “However, Drake was so disturbed
by the fact that a council member’s own girl had broken such a law that he
stepped in after the sentencing and added two months torture--to be carried out
by soldiers during the day, and by David at night.”
“But. . .what about his leave? I thought he was—”
“He was delayed by two months as punishment for not
controlling his girl,” Arthur said. “Wow. So. . .” I pictured it all in my
head--seeing the room I was taken to the day Jason tortured me. “He just did
it--tortured her, like, happily?”
“Certainly not, my dear.” Arthur exhaled, looking off at
nothing for a few seconds, his face scrunched up tightly. “Every day, when he
would return to his chamber after her torture, he would fall to his knees and
pray for forgiveness.”
“I found him once,” Jason said, his own gaze drifting off to
thought. “He was on his knees, his body rigid—eyes on the brink of tears. He
said he couldn’t take any more. He said she cried his name out, begging him for
mercy. I offered to trade places with him--be the one to do it so that he
didn’t have to suffer. No one would’ve known it was me. But—”
“But he refused?” I said, knowing why. He would never have
let anyone else hurt someone he loved. Which, I understood then, is why he was
so quick to forgive Jason for the same.
“I remember, one night,” Arthur added, “I embraced
him--tried to comfort him, and for the first time since he was a boy, he
wrapped his arms around me and I heard him cry. Nothing haunted me more than
seeing tears from this boy who refused to cry for even the most heinous things.
Even the day his aunt died, he shed not one tear--that any of us saw, anyway.”
“But despite that,” Jase said. “He’d dust himself off and go
back down to that cell, because if he didn’t do what the king asked, much worse
would be ordered for the poor girl.”
“What kind of torture did he...I mean...it must have been
bad to haunt David?”
“It was.” Arthur nodded. “The final straw came one night
when I found him in a corridor, his hands and face covered in blood--her
blood--her golden hair tangled in long, broken threads around his fingers. I
asked him what had happened, and he said she went mad. Told me she just
couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Then...what was the hair and the blood from?”
“I asked the same thing. But he couldn’t speak. So, I went
down to see the girl—attend to her medically, if needed—and found her huddled
in the darkest corner, her eyes black, her body unclothed and bleeding. When I
squatted down and inspected her closer, found her hair was torn in patches from
her scalp--most of the skin missing from her upper thighs and wrists, peeled
away, you might say, as if she’d scratched it off with her own nails.”
“What happened to her?” I asked, horrified.
Arthur looked away. “David had found her in a similar state.
He asked what had become of her, and a prisoner told how she’d been quite
brutally raped--had things done to her that no young girl could imagine
possible. She’d tried to tear the skin from her own body to wash off the
horrors of what those men did to her, and when David came to comfort her, she
attacked him—thinking he was one of them.”
“The guards stepped in, Ara,” Jason said. “Every prisoner
knows that the punishment for attacking a council leader is a grave one--no
matter what state of mind they’re in at the time.”
“She was bound,” Arthur continued. “Thrashed with the
guard’s belt while David watched on--bound himself by the laws he protected.
When the lashings stopped, she laid there in a pool of her own blood, and
before David could react, the guards grabbed her by the hair and. . .”
“And?”
“Sodomized her,” Jase said.
I covered my mouth, knowing how David would react if that
were me.
“David tried to fight them off,” Jason added. “But it only
made matters worse, and he was tangled up in the process--tearing half her hair
away himself.”
“The guards restrained him,” Arthur said, “made him watch
until the girl gave up screaming and just laid there sobbing his name.”
“When they released David,” Jason said. “He just turned away
and walked from the cells like a ghost--went on leave the next day, and never
spoke of her again.”
“Drake recommended a two-year stint in a high school--to
live among those who have so few cares and worries,” Arthur said. “He figured a
lighter occupation would do David good after such a harrowing ordeal.”
“School? He sent David to school after all that?”
Arthur nodded. “And it did do him good. Drake was right. We
saw changes in David after just a few weeks. But, even then, everything that
made that boy alive was dead. He was colder and harsher, and I worried for the
young humans in his community.”
“Then he met you,” Jason said, smiling at something far
away.
“Yes,” Arthur added, and the energy in the space changed—the
daunting, horrible reality lifting away a little. “After that, he returned to
council meetings—smiled again, he was, you could say, more human than he’d been
when he was a boy.”
“So, you can imagine what you must mean to him, Ara,” Jason
said. “That you were the very thing that gave him a reason to live again--to
believe that life wasn’t a nightmare he couldn’t wake from.”
I thought back to everything we’d been through--feeling a
sense of dread for the time he walked away from us just to protect me from his
world. And I was grateful to him for that now more than ever after everything
Pepper went through. He always said he couldn’t protect me from the horrors of
his world, and this story explained so much more why the very mention of
turning a child had sent him storming off to his room--slamming the door. I
felt bad for even bringing it up now. “God, I just wanna call him and tell him
I’m sorry for everything bad I ever said or did.” I laughed. “Poor guy.”
“Yes. And you can see now why, in my pursuit for revenge, I
thought it so marvelous to steal you from him--by pain of heart or even death,”
Jason said.
“Wow, that was incredibly malicious, Jase.” I backhanded his
arm.
He rubbed it as if it hurt. “I know. But, he knows I’m
sorry.”
“We all do.” I nodded, looking out to sea, then just let it
all out with a really long breath. “Wow.”
“Yep.” Jason leaned beside me again. “Wow.”
“I’ll say,” Blade came to stand beside Jason. “That’s quite
a story.”
“He never told me that,” Emily said. “I asked him once, but
he wouldn’t tell me.”
“I can see why,” I said. “I wouldn’t either.”
“Well, now you know.” Arthur stood tall again. “And I must
warn you, Amara, do not ever bring it up in front of him. Do not ever seek to
use it against him or to—”
“I wouldn’t do that, Arthur.” I crossed my heart. “Not even
if I was mad with him.”
“Well, I hope not.” He bowed his head. “Because I could not
vouch for the man you may see beneath this new David.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll never speak of it. I swear.”
“See that you don’t,” Arthur said, and walked away.
“Well, story time’s been fun, Ara,” Blade said. “But it’s
time for bed.”
“Okay.” I looked back at Jase.
He offered a sweet smile. “Night, Ara.”
“Night, Jase.” I went to take the jacket off and hand it to
him, but he stopped me.
“Keep it tonight. Give it back tomorrow when you come see me
for our first training session.”
I snuggled into the leather again. “Okay, what time?”
“Sunrise.” He flashed a mischievous. “Nah, just kidding. Any
time you like, sweet girl. I have aaaalll day.”
“Okay.” I nodded and walked past him with a big smile on my
face. “Sunrise it is.”
“See you then,” he called.
I hope you enjoyed that little sneak peek. Be sure to join
us on Facebook for more little bits and pieces.
About the Author:
A. M. Hudson loves her life in Australia and, despite wishing it would snow at Christmas, couldn't imagine living anywhere else in the world.
She fell in love with her husband at just sixteen, and since then, has added three boys to the mix.
A. M. prides herself on writing the shocking, the depthy and the highly-emotional subjects other writers steer away from. She addresses the uncomfortable with conviction and enjoys taking stories down dark paths.
Some of her heroes are Stephen King, Walt Disney, Hamish and Andy, Muse and 30 Seconds to Mars, and with influences like these, one can only imagine what stories will unfold.
When she's not writing, A. M. reads books, watches movies and chats with fans on Facebook.
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Dark Secrets
The Heart's Ashes
Mark of Betrayal
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Dark Secrets
The Heart's Ashes
Mark of Betrayal
