Visions Of The Vampire Queen (Book 1 Of The Vampire Queen Series)

Chapter 1

There was blood everywhere. The streets shone red from the fresh blood, blood from the corpses of humans who had been drained of every last drop of their precious hot, red, liquid life-force. If the realization of what had happened here wasn’t so horrifying and didn't have so many far-reaching consequences, Louisa would have savoured the smell of the fresh blood. Mmm...blood: sweet and metallic.

Despite her distaste for the situation, she couldn’t stop her fangs from lowering into place, ready to sink into the first live human she came across. She knew without even looking that her eyes would have already turned from a sapphire blue to a cold, ice blue-almost-white colour, as they always did when she was about to feed or when her emotions were heightened. For any other vampire, the situation would have been too much; a lesser vampire would be put into a feeding frenzy from all the blood. But Louisa was no ordinary vampire. Louisa was an ancient; the Queen and mother of all vampires.

As Louisa delicately stepped around the lifeless humans, she heard a scream from many miles off in the distance. Stopping, she cocked her head to one side straining to hear more. More came. Several more screams echoed from the North. It was more vampires. Yet another town was being devoured.

As she turned to head in the direction of the vampires, she heard a soft sobbing to her left. It seemed to be coming from the front porch of a nearby house. Carefully she stepped around yet more bodies as she headed to the tiny, decrepit house. On the porch, huddled in a ball behind an old, beat up lounge chair was a young boy of perhaps 6 years of age. He was weeping violently, his shoulders and chest heaving with the sobs.

Her heart went out to the boy. She imagined that what had transpired here before she had arrived must have been a horrific sight to witness. The chances were the child would have witnessed his entire family being savagely devoured, drained of blood. Murdered. It was certainly not a sight for any child to see.

Sensing her approach, he looked up hesitantly. Upon seeing her fangs and ice blue eyes he began to scream. His scream was high pitched and pierced through her head, like hot pokers searing her skull. In one swift movement, before she could stop herself or even give thought to what she was doing, she was on the boy. Violently grabbing his head and exposing his neck, she plunged her fangs into the child, drinking deeply.

Then blackness…

****

Louisa bolted upright in her bed, still half-asleep. It was the dream again. She called it a dream but she knew better. It was a vision; another premonition. She could not tell, as of yet, how long she had before the vision would become reality or who was behind the future vampire rebellion. But she would. If she was patient enough, the visions would give her the information she needed to know, in order to effectively deal with the vampires behind it.

She couldn't imagine her own children doing such a thing.

The vampires sired from the Queen’s bloodline were refined and could control their savage natures, to a point. It couldn't have been my children, she reassured herself once more.

It had to be a rebellion from the King’s bloodline. The vampires sired from the King’s blood, in most cases, were born destructive savages. However, one thing she had learned from many thousands of years on earth was that anything was possible. She would not act until she knew more.

She could feel her fangs begin to retract as she began to relax. The visions always affected her this way. She always woke up exhausted, with a slight headache and a deep hunger. While it was only a vision, she still felt a pang of guilt over the boy.

Why would she allow her hunger to overpower her principles like that? One of her rules - not just for herself, but for all vampires - was that feeding from a child was strictly forbidden.

Who could be behind these massacres? She had to know.

Her hunger for blood was becoming extreme now.

She needed nourishment.

For roughly two hundred years, she had been living among a small village of people in the Caribbean. She believed it had been somewhere in the early 1800s that she had left England and headed toward the new world. She was sick of what the world was turning into, and sick of her former mate, the King. His influence always seemed to be lurking, even when he wasn't. While they hadn't been mates for over two thousand years, he and his clan of barbaric vampires continued to be problematic for her and her own clan.

She and the King were the two only known originals; the beginning of all vampires.

She had no memory of being human. She might very well have been, but it seemed more probable that, like Djinns and other supernatural entities, she and the King had been created as vampires.

Of her exact age she had no clue; when one lives for centuries, one tends to lose count.

The King lacked much of the empathy that she had for the human race - at least he did several hundred years ago, which was the last real contact she had had with him. While for the most part Queen Louisa blended with the humans, Griffin had no desire to blend. He felt himself superior to humans in every way and exercised his dominance over them simply because he could.

Thinking of Griffin brought back the memory of her visions.

Could he be behind this?

No. They had decided long ago that in order to preserve the vampire race, they needed to keep their existence low key. Despite his ruthlessness and disgust for the human race, he wouldn’t risk too much exposure.

Then who?

Pushing the visions to the back of her mind, she gave thought to the more pressing issue at hand. Food.

Here in the village her arrival had been thought to be a sign from the Gods; she herself was considered a god by the people. That being the case, the villagers felt honoured when she chose from among them to feed on or to bed. The problem was that it was night, and despite the eager willingness of the villagers to offer themselves to her, she didn’t have the heart to waken one of them so she could have a late night snack.

There is always the local wildlife.

That was a fleeting notion. She never had been and never would be a lover of animal blood. It left a bad aftertaste in her mouth. It had to be human, tapped right from the source, where possible.

She slid off the bed and made her way to the entrance of her two roomed hut. It certainly didn’t offer the elegance she was used to when she was living in England, or elsewhere for that matter, but it was comfortable and, above all, she finally felt at peace here. No amount of money or luxury could compare with that feeling.

Stepping out into the night she felt the light warm breeze caress her cool flesh through the short, sheer sleeping gown she was wearing. While the villagers more or less kept to themselves and tried to preserve their own way of life, occasionally they would have someone head into civilization to collect supplies. The gown was one of the goodies they had brought back especially for her from one particular trip.

As she proceeded through the village and came to the beach, she saw the moon was full. It lit up the ocean beautifully. Splinters of light sparkled over the waves as they lapped the shore. This was her home now. It pained her to think about leaving here and having to deal with a group of unruly vampires. Two hundred years of solitude and peace, a peace she had never felt before in her lengthy lifetime, she feared would be coming to an end.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t heard the footsteps coming up from behind her.

“Goddess,” a soft male voice spoke from the rear and somewhere below her, bringing her back to awareness.

Louisa turned to see Len kneeling at her feet, his dark head bowed. His hair covered his eyes, but she knew without looking they were downcast in respect. She looked him over carefully. He was a very beautiful man, for a human. He had dark golden skin. She had told him on numerous occasions that he was a human cast in a god's body. He took it as simple flattery but she truly meant every word. She had never seen a human or immortal to date that could compare to him.

“You do not need to bow before me when we are alone Len,” she turned back to the sea, continuing to watch the twinkle of the moon’s reflection on the water.

“I know, but I feel I must,” she heard him slowly rise to his full height beside her. She was a small woman, roughly five feet in height. He towered at least a foot over her, strong and powerful.

“What are you doing here?” he inquired coming up behind her, wrapping his massive arms around her waist and pulling her against him in a warm embrace.

“Thinking.”

"More visions?” Len had noticed that over the past few weeks she had become more and more distracted. A few days earlier, he had managed to get her to reluctantly admit what had been tormenting her.

She had chosen him as her companion several years ago so she tended to share many of her secrets with him. He’d have been a fool to think she revealed everything, but she revealed more to him than anyone else she'd ever known, even the King. When she had arrived in the village a couple of hundred years ago, his people easily accepted her as their long awaited Goddess. The Goddess of Life and Death, was how they referred to her.

****

Len suspected the Goddess didn't reveal all to him and she wasn't the only one who had a few secrets they kept to themselves. From his understanding, the villagers still thought of her as their Goddess, but he had discovered the truth a year or so ago.

He was the one who made the voyages into civilization from time to time to pick up supplies and various goods. It was there that he started hearing stories. He learned of the legends and myths about the nightwalkers, also known as vampires. Supernatural beings that drank on the blood of humans to live, never aged, were immortal, had superhuman strength and various abilities. Following much research, he had determined that she was indeed a vampire and not the Goddess the other villagers thought her to be.

He kept this information to himself. He didn’t even mention his discoveries to Louisa. He didn’t feel there would be anything to be gained from anyone knowing what he knew. Louisa had protected their village during times when privateers had been abundant in the area, and she protected them even now. She was loved and worshipped, by the other villagers, but most significantly, he felt it was important for them to keep their faith in their Goddess.

His people were simple people, who had very little; their faith in the gods was what made them so special. Louisa, their Goddess, his Goddess, is what made the village so special.

One day, perhaps a day not very far from now, his people would be enlightened. Their beliefs shattered. But it wouldn’t be today or tomorrow and it certainly wouldn’t be because he enlightened them.

Out of the back pocket of his trousers he produced a small silver dagger. It gleamed in the moonlight as he raised it up in front of Louisa. Without hesitation, he sliced open the back of his forearm.

Warm, deep red blood seeped out of the cut and began to slowly trail its way down his arm to his wrist. He raised his arm to her mouth so she could feed.

Without a word she accepted his offering, lowering her head to the open wound and began to drink. Len always seemed to know what she wanted and needed at all times. She savoured the sweet metallic flavour as the warm blood flowed over her tongue and down her throat.

She moaned softly.

She could feel Len stroking her long dark chestnut brown hair as she drank, while holding her tight against his hard hot body.

The worries she had about her visions and their relevance began to fade.

Blood was not only nourishment but had the same effect on vampires as ecstasy would on humans. Her hunger for food began to dwindle as she drank; it became replaced by an entirely different need.

Sex. Blood and sex, two of a vampire’s favourite things. In many cases they went hand in hand.

Shivers began to surge through her body, intensified by the feel of his hot body pressed tightly against hers, his shaft pressing aggressively against her back.

Satisfied, Louisa released his arm and leaned back against him fully. He lifted her hair away from her delicate neck and trailed soft kisses from her collarbone to her jaw. She tilted her face towards him, her lips touching his in a soft and tender kiss. He could taste the blood still on her lips, a taste with which he had grown familiar over the past couple of years.

Allowing her to feed on him came with benefits that far exceeded the price. Benefits he intended to take advantage of right now. A slight amount of pain for an immense amount of pleasure was a fine deal in his mind.

He grabbed hold of her hips and pulled her into him. Tightly. Urgently. He rubbed his hard cock, which was constricted by the trousers he wore, against her backside. She let out a low growl pulling her lips from his momentarily. Her ice blue eyes looked deeply into his dark brown eyes.

She turned around to face him now, draping her arms around the back of his neck. With one hand she trailed her fingers seductively along his jaw line before pulling his head down so his lips met hers again. This time, however, the kiss was more heated, even more urgent than before. She loved the taste of him, the smell of him. She could feel the heat well up between her legs and she wanted satisfaction, needed satisfaction.

Her hand caressed his body, stroking his smooth, bare chest. It worked its way lower exploring his finely toned abs before finally working its way to his waistband. With expert skill she undid his pants in a swift, fluid motion and knocked them to the ground, exposing his fully erect cock. She knew he was aching for her to grasp onto his hard, long shaft, but she liked making him wait that extra few minutes before giving him what he craved so badly. Louisa loved seeing the yearning in his eyes, raw and primal.