Sneak Peek at the Bloodhounds series

So Donna & I have talked about it on twitter & it’s been on the website for a little while, but I hadn’t come on over here and posted about it yet because I am odd about not talking specifics until the contract is in, and then I got super distracted by finishing Deadlock (we finished! Yay!) so I never did.

From the series page:

No one knows when the first vampire came to the United States, but they all remember when their numbers grew so vast that the United States decided to fight back. In 1823 the Bloodhound Guild was founded, turning out warriors blessed with the strength to battle their enemy and the curse of being somewhat less than human.

Sixty years has given the Guild plenty of time to become a fixture in the untamed west. The bloodhounds are all that protect the border territories from the vampires who make the Deadlands their home. It’s a dirty job, but what do you expect from a man who’s more than a little monster?

We tentatively have four books planned (though only the first one is contracted at the moment, so you know what that means–everything changes!)  The setting is a little bit steampunky and a lot wild west, and they’re without a doubt grittier and dirtier than any of the other longer books we’ve done.  (Certainly more so than Southern Arcana or Red Rock!)

The first book, Wilder’s Mate, is is about an unofficial inventor’s apprentice whose mentor is kidnapped by vampires, forcing her to accept a bloodhound’s help in bringing him safely back from the Deadlands.  It’s tentatively scheduled for a March 1st release date from Samhain.

Now, because I think I’m going to start posting excerpts on Sundays, here is a little (unedited! ack, unedited!) taste:

# Unedited Excerpt from Wilder’s Mate #

It wasn’t her friend’s soft hand that reached down and gripped hers. It was a strong hand, tanned and rough, followed by an even rougher voice. “You must be Nate’s little one.”

Damn it all. The bloodhound was early.

He dragged her up to the floor as if she weighed nothing, deftly maneuvering her body so that she didn’t bump her head or scrape her skin on the hot metal. After he set her on her feet, he stepped back to study her through narrowed eyes. “Why are you dressed like a boy?”

If she’d had any feminine pride left, it would have withered under that assessing gaze. He was dark and forbidding, a large man wrapped in the savagery of a hound. Some hid their other natures well, but this one…  Satira met his eyes, and a beast stared back.

Not a man to be trifled with, which made the reply that tumbled free reckless. “Why are you dressed like a man?”

But he only raised one eyebrow in a slow arch. “You’re not going to fool anyone with that getup. You’ve got tits.”

Ophelia smothered a noise that had to be a laugh, and Satira crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her traitorous friend. “You could have warned me he’d arrived.”

“You didn’t exactly ask, did you?”

No, she hadn’t. Not that asking would have done any good. Ophelia would be pleased by the arrival of the one man who could lay waste to Satira’s desperate plan—if she let him.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Squaring her shoulders, she met the man’s gaze again. “Are you here to go after Nathaniel?”

For some reason, the corner of his mouth twitched. “Let me guess. You want to go with me.”

The sorry bastard was laughing at her. Pride turned her spine to steel as she dropped her arms. Let him stare at her breasts until his eyeballs fell out. “Yes. I know more about Nathaniel’s weapons than anyone else alive. And I can use every damn one of them.”

“I reckon that’s so.” He nodded quickly, just a little, almost as if the gesture had been meant only for himself. “You do what I say when I say it. Got that?”

She’d expected more argument. Bluster, maybe, or to be told to put on a dress and mind her tongue. A fatal mistake, because it meant she still judged him as a man. Ascribing a man’s motives to a bloodhound was a mistake she should know better than to make.

Agreeing to obey one’s orders implicitly was another mistake, but one not so easily avoided. Tense seconds ticked by as she listened to the blood pounding in her ears and wondered if she was foolhardy enough to step across that line, to trigger that savage instinct that would put her completely at a beast’s mercy.

Maybe not, if she hadn’t owed Nathaniel everything. For the man who’d all but raised her, she’d risk her very life. “What you say, when you say it.”

He watched her as if he could read her thoughts. For a moment, she thought he might still say no, but he only held out his hand once again. “My name is Wilder.”

Ophelia watched them both with raised eyebrows and stunned disbelief that would surely break at any moment. Before her friend could protest, Satira reached out and grasped the hound’s hand, any self-consciousness about the work-roughened shape of her hands swallowed by the firm grasp of his callused fingers. “Satira,” she whispered. “I’m Nathaniel’s apprentice.”

Wilder released her. “I know who you are. You’ve got ten minutes to gather whatever you need, or I’m leaving without you.” He tipped his hat to Ophelia as he turned. “Ma’am.”

The blonde stared after him. “He’s letting you go with him.”

There wasn’t time. Satira closed her fingers around Ophelia’s wrist and dragged her toward the broad staircase that led to the second floor and her suite. “Because I’ll be useful. Nathaniel is famous. Infamous. We have the best tools for fighting vampires.”

“That man is the best tool for fighting vampires,” she argued. “You won’t be back before the new moon. Do you have any idea what that means, Tira?”

She stumbled over the first step, but caught her balance with one hand on the banister. “I live under a bloodhound’s roof. Levi might have been old—” The past tense tripped her up for a moment, swept her up on a wave of grief, but she forced it down. Levi had been old, for a hound. His death was sad, but not unexpected. “I know about full moons and new moons. I’m not a fool.”

“So what are you going to do when he starts humping your leg?”

“Ophelia!”

Her friend snorted. “It’s a perfectly valid question.”

They reached the landing, but there wasn’t time to pause and argue the point. Wilder would leave without her, and his mission from the Guild had to be to keep their new technology from falling into vampire hands. She was the only person left who needed Nathaniel alive.

She turned toward her rooms, dragging Ophelia along behind her. “I’m not a virgin, and I’m not puritanical. I’ve bedded hounds before.”

“Not during the new moon.” Ophelia yanked at her hand, forcing her to stop and face her. “Be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

Her friend’s brown eyes held nothing but desperate worry and too much experience for her tender years. Ophelia never pretended that life as a whore was anything but dangerous, an unglamorous profession that might earn you coin enough to make a life for yourself—if you could hold it together.

Satira’s mother had held it together. Long enough to attract the eye of the bloodhound who bedded her every new moon, more regular than any clock. The beast inside turned men into monsters with the full moon, but a different sort of savagery came to light when the moon fell dark. Sexual hunger. Feral need.

Ophelia would know the answer to the only question Satira dared ask. “Is it violent?” Surely not. Impossible to imagine Levi laying a violent hand on her mother. And yet…

“No, not exactly. Not like—” Ophelia bit her lip. “The physical demands are almost the least of it. Do you understand what I mean?”

Warmth filled her cheeks as she remembered the last bloodhound to take her to bed. A cocky young stranger, new to his power and full of himself and life. He’d still had an edge, an intensity that expressed itself with dark looks and teasing games.  He’d plied her with dominance and control until she was ready to sob from the relief pleasure brought.

Her knees hadn’t worked right for days, and he’d been barely more than a boy. The man waiting downstairs was anything but.