Page 1 of Nearly Dead

ChapterOne

Here is what I know.

I’m Tamara Devine.A mere mortal.

I’m twenty-eight.

My skin is on fire.Every nerve sparks straight into my brain, and I can’t keep my eyes open.Someone keeps whispering my name.It’s annoying.And I’m so fucking hungry.

Dammit, not again.

I claw at the bedding as I convulse, my senses too sharp like someone turned up the contrast on reality.I have to close my eyes.There’s a metallic tang in the air.Blood.Old, powerful blood.

I want that blood.

Where the hell am I?

The last clear memory I have is of Draakmar’s amulet.The ancient dragon’s magic was the only thing keeping me alive.I reach for the magical amulet out of habit.It’s my last line of defense.My fingers close around nothing.

Gone.

Of course.I gave it to Diana.She never should’ve been dragged into this supernatural nightmare.She should never have found out about monsters.

She’s only six.

Paul’s daughter.

Paul.I loved him.I still might.But knowing me destroyed his life more than once.I wanted so desperately to be normal and a part of their lives.I should have stayed away from them.

If I had the temperament to write it in a book, my story would be a tragedy.

I try to hold on to the memory, but it slips through my fingers like water.The fire.My family dying.Conrad framed me for their murders.Then time reset like some cosmic joke.It folded back on itself.Suddenly, they were alive again, none of them remembering they had died.Conrad took their place in death.Only I remembered.Only I carried that hell.Then I remember Conrad’s ghost tormenting me.

No.Not now.That’s over.Stay in the present.

I paw at my neck again.Please, gods, don’t let the amulet have reset time.

No.Time didn’t reset.Diana has the amulet now.She’s safe.Maybe giving away my protection was the final nail.

Maybe that’s what happened.

Maybe I’m already dead.

A sharp pain tears through my stomach, and my mind screams with one truth.No.Definitely not dead.I feel every excruciating second.

I’m not human anymore.

Lord Constantine.Costin.Beautifully deadly master vampire who wants to possess me.I remember his silky voice and his cold hand.He’s the flame to my moth.He pressed his wrist against my mouth while Alpha Thane’s werewolf venom coursed like acid through my veins.

“Drink,”he said.

I obeyed.

Sometimes I think it’s love.Other times… I don’t know.I think maybe it’s all about control.Regardless, even now, in this agony, I want him.

Pain racks me.I need to think.Who am I now?What?The pieces are all scattered into a million broken shards.I have to figure this out.

My father is Davis Devine, a magic so powerful everyone he meets seems to bend to his will.I’m the byproduct of his affair with Lorelai, a human woman I just found out existed.She loved me as a baby, but my crib became a magnet for supernatural threats.Goblins nearly killed me.So she gave me to my father and vanished.

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