Blood Curse Read Free Page A

herself as he continued the sweet torture, changing his rhythm from fast to slow, teasing her over and over again, prolonging her ecstasy until she screamed out his name.
    Rialto.
    Aria wiped away the sheen of sweat which had spread across her forehead and willed her heart to quit racing. “And I thought Curtis needed to get laid,” she murmured to herself, surprised by the intensity of her daydream. She could still smell the man's lingering scent, and she was wet from the desire surging through her.
    She'd been having dreams of the same man for months, though she struggled to remember everything that happened in them. All she could remember was making love to him. Sometimes it was slow and sweet, sometimes fast and wild . . . but she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was something vital she was forgetting.
    A sick thought crept into her mind, and she stared at the name in horror. If it was written in Alfred Dunn's journal, it was because the name belonged to a vampire. But surely she wasn't dreaming about having sex with that Rialto. The man in her dreams was too dark and muscular to be a vampire, and never, not even in a dream, could she defile her mother's memory by sleeping with the same kind of monster that killed her.
    Paint splatters across canvas. Red. Black. Gray mixed with blue. A little girl with dark, flowing hair and pale golden skin stands in the middle of a circle of children, crying as they taunt her. Zebra girl. Half-breed. The words pelt her like stones
    The girl now kisses a blond, tanned man, both of them young, barely seventeen. She believes his vows of love and surrenders her body to him willingly. Pink and yellow paint on canvas, the strokes light and airy
    Crimson slashes splatter across the pink, and the young man's face now appears red and angry as he hurls the same words from her childhood at her, striking at her with the back of his hand. Her skin has darkened with the summer sun, beautiful and exotic. Mocha cream
    Another slosh of red paint. A cross burns in a yard. The young woman cries in front of it. Her emerald eyes shine through her tears. Beyond the burning cross, a body is removed from a small blue house. A white sheet covers its face, but a dark brown hand hangs off the side of the stretcher. Her father's hand. Black paint on canvas. The brush strokes are hard and angry
    Baltimore. The brush strokes soften, but still only the dark colors adorn the canvas. Black, gray, the darkest of blues and purples. A pale blond woman lies on a metal slab, her blank eyes staring at the ceiling. Two holes lie in her neck. The vampire hunter stares at them, balling her fists in anger, vowing to find the one who did this to her mother
    Red paint splatters across the canvas. The vampire hunter sits in a library, her head bowed over a leather book, a diary of sorts. She reads his name and she remembers his touch . . .
    The world turns dark and cold, blue twilight creeps through the branches hanging overhead as he finds himself standing in the silvery forest he's come to know as the dream realm. The blind witch is there before him. “Protect her,” she says to him, “for you will die without her and so will this world.
    Rialto jolted awake, his heart pounding furiously. She was close. He knew this now more than ever. She was right here in Baltimore, most likely still sitting at the library reading that journal.
    He crossed the hotel room and entered the bathroom, stepping into the shower to clean away the sweat drenching his body. Even with the water streaming over his face, he could still smell her sweet scent. Coconut. Sweet and tropical. Perfection.
    Snap out of it, he cautioned himself. She was trying to avenge a loved one's death by becoming a vampire hunter, going by the so-called evidence she'd found in the morgue and information written in a diary. She believed vampires to be cruel killers, yet she made love to him in her dreams. The dichotomy didn't matter. She could prove to be very