Blood Curse Read Free

She couldn't forget the image of those open, glossed-over eyes staring at the ceiling, her pale white body lying on the cold metal slab in the morgue.
    Those two perfect round holes in her neck.
    Mary Ayers had been killed by a vampire, her body sucked completely dry of blood. The police could convince themselves there was some other explanation yet to be found, but Aria knew what she'd seen. There had been fang marks on her mother's neck, and she was going to catch the killer. She was going to learn everything there was to know about his kind, and when the time was right, she would hunt down the vampire who'd killed her mother and left her body sprawled across the lawn at Druid Hill Park. Then she would send the monster right back to hell where he belonged.
    She just didn't know how she was going to do it yet, so she continued to research. She read encyclopedias, magazine articles, and books. It didn't bother her that most of her research was comprised of fictional material. Aria had always believed there was some truth to fiction.
    She found that all writers of vampire lore believed in very similar ideas. Vampires did have weaknesses. Fire, sunlight, holy water, and bleeding-out seemed to be the most widely believed causes of death. Some authors also favored crosses and garlic. It was highly debatable whether or not a vampire could morph into a bat or another type of animal, and while some believed they could fly, others just believed they could jump incredibly high and far, giving the illusion of flight.
    But of all she read, one fact remained consistent: They were incredibly pale, gaunt, fanged creatures with an insatiable thirst for human blood, and they possibly possessed the ability to read minds. It would be hard to bring one down, but she was sure it could be done.
    Aria read the pages of the journal Curtis had given her, discovering a great deal about his great-grandfather. According to the diary, a vampire by the name of Eron had crept into Alfred Dunn's bedroom at night and forewarned him he was going to execute his son for his sins. The following morning, Alfred's twenty-year-old son Patrick was found dead in an alley. That was when Alfred Dunn became a vampire hunter. He searched all of Ireland for the vampire named Eron, but he couldn't find him. He found others, but he didn't kill them. He wanted Eron.
    He studied, researched and hunted night and day. The search led him to America, and eventually Maryland.
    Aria found the diary portions harder to understand once Alfred reached Baltimore in 1969. His beautiful script had turned into rash scribbles, his once elegant words and phrasing turned into an erratic scrawl, as though his mind were racing faster than he could find words to describe his thoughts and observations.
    He made several notes about vampires, listing their known hangouts, names of vampires he'd interviewed or heard of, dates of sightings. Lists of names were long and scattered throughout the pages, not in any logical order. Aria scanned a page of them.
    Addison, Bethany, Gregario, Jonathan Deville, Olden, Katerina, Palo, Lionel, Demarcus, Niles, Robert Savant, Seta, Carson, Rialto . . .
    Rialto.
    Aria halted at the name as images plowed into her. She and a large, golden-skinned man with dark, wavy hair cascading down to his shoulder blades wrapped around each other amid a tangle of white cotton sheets. Her sheets, from her very own bed in her downtown apartment. The window to the balcony was open, and she could feel the wind blowing through it, cooling the droplets of sweat clinging to her naked body as the man moved in and out of her. She could smell nighttime air, fresh linen, and the man's spicy scent. Their sweat fused together and produced a scent of its own, coconut and spicy earth. It was the most delicious scent she had ever breathed in. And the pleasure she felt as he slid in and out of her was more intense and gratifying than anything she had ever experienced. She could barely contain