Blood Rising: A Vampire Fae Paranormal Romance (Highland Blood Fae Book 5) Read online

  BLOOD RISING

  HIGHLAND BLOOD FAE

  A.S. GREEN

  TORTOISE HOUSE PRESS

  Copyright © 2022 A.S. Green

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Sanja

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  Also By A.S. Green

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hello, reader. Personally, I’m uneasy when I don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name. If you’re the same…

  The ancient witch Bé Chuille is pronounced BAY KU-luh (with a hard guttural K).

  Hope that helps!

  ONE

  Fae Summit

  Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands

  Rory MacBain rested his forehead on the small round table in front of him, laced his fingers behind his head, and let out a soft groan. The air was infused with sweat, and the cacophony of voices sounded like an onslaught of waves, pounding a shoreline from all directions. Normally, Rory was all about chaos. But this was next level shit.

  There had to be at least a hundred fae in this secret underground burrow that had once housed an entire colony of pookas. One such pooka was currently on the right side of the room, arguing with a half dozen seelie fae.

  To Rory’s left, mermaids, kelpies, and hell hounds—all in their human forms—were arguing about one thing or another.

  Somewhere amongst all the elbows and asses, Rory had even a spotted a goddamn banshee. A banshee! Odder still, no one was freaked out by her presence—a presence that would typically mean someone’s impending death.

  But then, there was nothing typical about this gathering.

  And at the front of the room, standing on a slightly raised dais, were six chieftains of various fae races, engaged in the ever-classic game of Who’s Got the Biggest Dick?

  If there was going to be a war, the chieftain of each race insisted on being the leader. Rory’s own chieftain was among them. But the most famous was Cormac MacConall, a massively built alpha hell hound best known for hunting the Black Castle—the faes’ shared enemy and the reason for the gathering.

  Rory doubted there’d ever been so many different fae races together in one room. This was because they’d never seen fit to work together before—a critical error born of racial pride and systemic prejudices. Those errors had left the fae vulnerable to attack and had forced the majority of them to take refuge in America.

  Some of the fae, like Rory, had never been on Celtic soil until recently. Others hadn’t been here for centuries. Only a few—like the MacConall clan of hell hounds—had escaped their homelands recently enough to still carry traces of their original Irish accents.

  Three days ago, the newest member of Rory’s clan—a lovely witch—had mated his brother and claimed her birthright by blowing an ancient horn that summoned all the fae to the Highlands to retake their homelands.

  Or at least…that was the plan. Right now, it was pure chaos.

  Rory lifted his head off the table and glanced up, locking eyes with Ainsley—his clan’s queen—who was watching him closely from across the room. She’d been doing that a lot over the last few days. She tucked her auburn hair behind her ear and gave him a worried smile.

  Rory forced himself to give her a more confident one in return.

  So much had changed since their first meeting two years ago. He’d been at his lowest then. His clan hadn’t had a queen in decades and without one to sustain their mental balance, they’d been slowly going mad, withering and dying one by one.

  By the time his chieftain had stumbled upon Ainsley selling botanical ointments at a Renaissance Fair, there were only six surviving ba’vonn-shees—the entirety of their race nearly extinct.

  Since Ainsley’s arrival, they’d all regained their health. They were thriving even. Most of them were mated. One child had been born and another was on the way. A new generation meant hope, when they’d been sure all hope was lost.

  But then their brother Finn had died.

  No. Not died. He’d been murdered by the Black Castle.

  Rory rubbed his stomach, feeling as though a hole had been punched right through his middle.

  That was why Ainsley had been keeping such close tabs on him. They were all grieving, but she could obviously tell Finn’s death was affecting him especially hard. He didn’t think she knew the reason why.

  Still, Rory was glad for his queen’s perceptiveness. He also hated it. It was like he’d come full circle since that first moment she’d caught him in an alley, sucking the life blood out of some hapless woman.

  Rory had always known his…tastes…were a little different than his brothers. But back then he’d been completely out of control, clinging to the edges of his sanity.

  He might not have outgrown his need to push the envelope—and he suspected he never would—but he also wouldn’t let himself fall so low again. He couldn’t.

  Now that Finn was gone, he hoped Ainsley was up for the challenge of keeping him on track.

  An angry voice rose above the crowd, coming from the direction of the dais. The seelie chieftain was demanding to be in charge.

  “There are too many cooks in this kitchen,” Rory muttered.

  “Agreed,” said a female voice right beside him. “We need a general, and it should be your chieftain.”

  Rory looked up (though not too far up) to see a petite dark-haired fae with deep blue eyes, standing beside his table.

  “Branna MacConall,” she said, introducing herself. “Pooka.”

  “Rory MacBain. Ba’vonn-shee.”

  She smirked. “I know who you are, blood-drinker.”

  “Are you the one who’s mated to a hell hound?” Rory asked.

  She gave a single nod. “I’m sister-in-law to Cormac MacConall, who’s up on that dais with your chieftain, swinging his cock around with the best of them.”

  Rory liked this pooka immediately.

  “And you think my chieftain should lead?” Rory asked. Not that it didn’t make sense. Alex Campbell, was CEO of a large company. He knew how to lead a lot of people whereas these other chieftains led relatively small clans. Still, he was curious to hear another race’s take on it.

  “Of course,” Branna said, as if it should be obvious. “You’re the only Scottish fae here, and we’re on Scottish soil.”

  “The confrontation will likely move to Ireland at some point,” Rory said.

  “True. But even then, it makes sense to have a ba’vonn-shee lead. All of the Irish clans have too much history of squabbling between us. All that baggage will get in the way, cloud judgments.”

  “Maybe,” Rory said.

  “Which is why I’ve already got my girls working the crowd, planting seeds.”

  Rory glanced around the room. He didn’t know who her “girls” were, but he could guess. All three of the MacConall hell hounds were mated—and to different races.

  “Won’t campaigning for someone other than your own family make trouble for you?” Rory asked.

  Branna clicked her tongue in derision. “Meghan, Rowan, and I make our own decisions. And our mates know what side their bread is buttered on.”

  There was a scuffle on the right side of the room. Some gasps. Chairs turned over. Great. It seemed someone had thrown a punch.

  Branna climbed onto a chair so she could be seen above the crowd. She put her fingers to her mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look toward the back of the room.

  Rory had to give it to her—the little pooka was commanding. Maybe she should throw her own hat into the ring.

  “Enough,” she said, once she had the room’s attention. “All this meeting is doing is proving why we—a gathering bursting with magical gifts—have been subdued by mere humans. We need order. We need unity. We need a single leader.”

  The angry seelie chieftain stepped forward on the dais, and the arguments resumed.

  Someone else yelled above the cro
wd, voicing their approval for Alex. “It was the ba’vonn-shees who found the witch and the horn, and called us all home.”

  “We wouldn’t be here if not for them,” someone else yelled.

  Rory was impressed. It seemed Branna and her girls had planted a whole field of seeds.

  Alex stepped front and center and the room went quiet for the first time all night. Callum Campbell stood at Alex’s right shoulder. His auburn hair and short beard looking freshly trimmed.

  Finn should have been on Alex’s left, his dark curls hanging in his eyes. Instead, there was an empty space where their murdered brother would normally stand.

  Rory’s gut constricted at the reminder of his absence. As much as he tried to pretend it wasn’t real, it kept slapping him in the face, making him sad, exhausted, and most of all…angry. He needed to burn some of that anger off before it ate him alive.

  Rory pushed his chair back quietly. Everyone’s attention was on Alex now, and no one noticed when Rory slipped out the back. They could all plan their war without him. He’d fight when the time came, but for now…

  As he exited, the December air hit his face with such a stinging slap he lurched to a stop. The silence of the night, compared to the volume inside the burrow, took a moment to get used to as well, rankling his agitation.

  He needed blood. But he didn’t dare tap a blood source without Finn there to ensure he didn’t lose control.

  So, no blood. But there were other appetites he could satisfy.

  Gathering his focus, he recalled a familiar Glasgow street. With the scene clearly visualized, he pushed himself into the fourth dimension, tilting away from the pookas’ burrow and popping out in an alleyway off the busy street scene he’d brought to mind.

  Across the street, a neon sign in crimson letters read, THE BARACLAVA—a nightclub that catered to Doms and their Submissives. A man in head-to-toe black leather approached the door. He was being led by a woman in a red leather catsuit who held a chain connected to the man’s spiked collar. When the door opened, a throbbing bass beat filtered across the street, taking up residence in Rory’s chest.

  It was a place built on fantasy, a place where people got lost and…at least for a little while…a place where he could pretend to forget. It was as good a place as any to test his self-restraint.

  TWO

  Black Castle Headquarters

  Douglas Street, Glasgow

  Sofia Marin stood at the back of the Black Castle headquarters as the meeting of new-generation fae hunters wound down. The beer and the whisky were gone. The songs had been sung, and the session musicians had packed up their instruments.

  All but the final speech had been given. Words like “vermin” and “disease” and “a stain on the soil of Christianity” had been the resounding chorus of the evening, and hundreds of attendees—business people, shopkeepers, farmers, and students—had petitioned for the prayers of their founder, St. Patrick.

  Soon, her mother Olivia Marin would be addressing the ranks. Their numbers had slumped greatly in recent years due to a lack of funding, but their renewed recruitment efforts had raised a group one hundred strong.

  The Black Castle no longer fit in the back room of Merton’s Pub. Now they rented a large meeting space off Douglas Street in Glasgow.

  Sofia Marin stood at the back of the room, eager to get the place cleaned up as soon as the meeting was over. She had somewhere to be—somewhere where she often went to escape, if only for a little while. She fiddled with the end of her long braid.

  She bent to pick up a crushed beer can along with two pamphlets that had fallen onto the floor. One was a scientific explanation of the chemical properties of salt and iron and their damaging effects on the fae.

  The other pamphlet had a color photo on the front. It was a photo Sofia had taken herself during her Celtic History class at the University of Glasgow. She was in the Arthur Evans Merit Program for archaeology students, and last fall her history professor had been a ba’vonn-shee—Professor Callum Campbell.

  Of course, she hadn’t realized it right away. Some of the fae could blend in so easily with the normal human population. Professor Campbell resigned from the university soon after she’d surreptitiously snapped his picture from the front row of the lecture hall.

  She’d only seen one other fae since then (that she knew of). He’d been another ba’vonn-shee, and he’d looked human, too—though not as smoothly polished as her former professor.

  That second one had been massive and wild with a huge bushy red beard, as if he’d been living off the land his entire life. She’d seen her mother’s point about them being more like animals than humans. That was, until he cried.

  Sofia was quite certain the tears hadn’t been from physical pain, though her mother and some of the other Black Castle members had caused him plenty of that. Rather, they’d seemed to be tears of heartbreak.

  Sofia hadn’t known what to do with that. It had gone against everything she’d ever been taught about the fae. To think they had feelings… Or even a heart to be broken… It had made the torture too hard to watch.

  She hadn’t felt the same about the fae, the Black Castle, or their mission ever since. Even so, she wouldn’t let her mother down. Despite her misgivings, she would never deliberately disobey.

  But Olivia Marin was the only person Sofia would yield to. In fact, some former classmates joked that Sofia’s middle name must be Control.

  Their jabs never bothered Sofia. The name fit, after all. For example, it wasn’t an accident she landed at the top of her class and had recently won Professor Davies’ prize: a year-long spot on his dig team. She never settled for second place, and if a war was coming, she'd put her money on her mother.

  Sofia stopped what she was doing to let Olivia pass on her way to the podium for the final speech of the evening. Sofia’s mother was one of the few members who’d been raised in the Black Castle since birth. Now she was their general—if titles were being handed out—and she always had the last word.

  She was a tall woman with brown hair so dark it was nearly black. She wore it in a severe bob, and her hazel eyes were cool and assessing. Her cheek was scarred with deep score marks from the recent skirmish with the bushy-bearded ba’vonn-shee. Time would tell whether they’d be permanent.

  Back when Olivia had been trying to convince the modern citizenry that the fae and the threat they posed were real, she’d worn conservative business suits to the Black Castle meetings. A highly educated and competent appearance had been a selling point. Tonight, she was dressed in a new black and khaki military-inspired outfit of her own design.

  Three green and black banners hung on the wall behind her. One said Fraternity. The second said Purity. And the third said Sanctity. All three were emblazoned with the symbol of the Black Castle: a shamrock crossed by a sword.

  Sofia had the same symbol tattooed on her wrist—an eighteenth birthday present from her mother after she’d left her father’s house in Spain to come live with Olivia in Ireland.

  Olivia gripped the edges of the podium and waited for the crowd’s attention. It didn’t take more than a few seconds. Her presence had always been commanding.

  She surveyed the impressive crowd, seeming to make eye contact with every single person in the room. Then she said in a voice that was low and dire, “We are at a crossroads.”

  If it were possible, the crowd quieted even more. Sofia stilled.

  “While we look back on the events at Urquhart Castle, we are reminded that discipline must be our motto. Orders must be obeyed.”