2006: Henan Province, China

Summertime and the livin' was easy ... or not.

Sweat ran in steady rivulets down Jade's straining muscles to soak the tunic belted loosely at her waist. The sun, slipping past its noonday zenith, was unsoftened by a harshly blue and cloudless sky.

Trembling had begun, first in the joints of her knees and elbows, then arching from those strained points through all of her muscle tissue. The ripples underneath her skin shifted and rolled like a stormy sea.

And still, she stood.

Every hour a fellow initiate exited the temple at her back and walked with slow, quiet footfalls to the mound of ancient rock spheres that also lay behind her. Every hour the scraping of rock against rock sounded more ominous as a stone was added to the pile she supported on a scarred wooden platform above her head.

Her trial had begun at midnight. With confidence buoyed by the cool, crisp night, she had hefted her burden. More than twelve hours had passed. If the stones were five pounds apiece, that would mean she supported sixty pounds of rock plus the weight of the thick platform, but she knew from experience that some of the stones were heavier.

Foolish to count, her master would say. Better to center herself and meditate through the pain. She had lost the ability to focus on anything other than the weight above her head three stones ago.

Would she ever be ready?

As an initiate, she had seen other warriors go through this trial. She had placed the cursed stones herself above their heads in an act of obedience to the cause. In spite of her excellence in all other areas of training, she had yet to reach twenty-four hours--that magical, illusive goal that would prove she was ready. She was too proud, too passionate, too focused on achieving the goal for personal reasons.

Jade poked her tongue out to soothe her sweat-bathed lips. It was an effort not to bite the tip of it as her teeth clicked back together.

Her master hadn't told her to give up. He allowed her to try, year after year.

High in the mountains of Henan Province, Haven was small, a temple within a temple, hidden inside the Shaolin Temple on Yufeng Peak. Not mere monks, the warriors had been fighting evil for centuries. Unlike their famous Shaolin neighbors, the monks of Haven were not celebrities. Instead, they selected the best of the best from Shaolin to create an unequaled fighting force.

Other, carefully selected initiates were brought to the monastery. However, Jade hadn't been chosen; she'd been found bathed in her parents' blood. She had been the only one spared during a vampire feast interrupted by Haven's warriors. Jade hadn't been chosen, unless fate made its choice by sparing her that day.

Found, rescued, raised from a babe by men who had pledged their lives to Haven, Jade chose to honor those that had pulled her from the carnage. She would repay them. She would prove she was ready and join the warriors' ranks.

But, not this day.

Her sixteen-year-old legs gave out as Jade sank to her knees. Tears of relief and shame joined the moisture of sweat on her face. She heard the familiar metallic clank as the centuries-old safety mechanism clamped down to hold the weight of the platform she was no longer able to support.

Not this day, but one day.

She would pass this final trial. She would earn her master's approval to hunt and kill.

What did she know about any other way of life?

Chapter One

Nineteen-years-old. For some that meant college, sex, keg parties or moving away from home, but not for Jade. Though she'd lived a stark life, a warrior of Haven had to learn about the outside world. She would live in it, walk its roads, meet its people, but she would remain separate and apart.

Jade sat calmly in the lotus position and sipped mint tea. This was her home: bamboo mats and sliding partitions made of rice paper screens, meditation and training morning, noon and night. A warrior was cold and peaceful and, above all, had a single-minded dedication to the cause.

She had passed the final test.

A long soak in a hot bath had cleansed away the sweat and eased her sore muscles. The tea and meditation eased her spirit.

She had passed, and now she would leave Haven several years earlier than most. Her master was not pleased. She could hear his displeasure in the slap of his sandaled feet on the polished wood floor. With her eyes closed, she could still hear his frustrated sighs, sounds that spoke surprisingly of his loss of control over his emotions.

Calmly, without breaking the steady in and out pattern of careful breathing she had been taught, Jade opened her eyes.

"I am ready, Master." It wasn't an argument. She would not dishonor him in that way. It was merely an assurance, a statement of fact.

"You are too young." Again, in spite of his sighs, it wasn't an argument. He only stated what he saw as fact.

"The final trial has been passed, Master. There is no other obstacle. I am one of Haven's warriors."

She tilted her chin to look up at the man who had been her only father from her earliest days. Her eyes widened, and she lost some of the calm she had achieved when she saw the look in his eyes. Those deep brown orbs were not resigned. In fact, they held a challenge. So many times, she had seen such a look. It always signaled one more wall to climb, one more riddle to solve, one more, one more, one more...

"Master?" she questioned. All the triumph of her earlier accomplishment faded to the barely noticeable pulse of muscle fatigue.

"There is a provision--an option--left up to the discretion of the Masters should we feel the trial by stone is not enough."

Jade rose to her feet. No protest fell from her lips about the unfairness of it all though her stomach clenched at the thought of any test above and beyond the one she'd just passed.

"There is no room for miscalculation. Sending an initiate out to fight before they are ready would mean certain death and possible dishonor. If you aren't ready, your life and training would be forfeited. Your failure would be a chink in the armor of this house."

She was ready. She would do whatever was required to prove it. Heels together, palm gripped by palm in front of her pelvis, head down--she waited to prove her worthiness.

A slide of paper and wood caused her to raise her eyes. What she saw sent a shock of icy adrenaline racing to her knees.

The Angel of Death.

He was the most legendary of all Haven's warriors. Some said the god's had given him immortality in order to even the odds against the immortal vampires they fought. Some dared to say he'd been tainted by centuries of bathing in the blood of his enemies.

Jade could find nothing to say at all.

Here was a power greater and older than any she'd ever faced. He moved into the room with an easy glide of muscle and sinew. In one hand, he held the weight of a wicked looking staff; in the other, a glimmering golden whip made of bronze. He twitched it like a tiger's tail with every step. He was taller than she was by a foot or more. He was heavier than she was by fifty pounds.

He didn't speak. He wouldn't. She was a mere student, not worth his time. Surely only duty, his honor bound obedience to the Masters of Haven, had brought him here. She could see her insignificance in his black eyes. Her muscles, much abused this day, were revitalized by a sudden thrust of fury.

Why must she face the Angel of Death? In all of her years at the monastery, she'd never heard of another initiate having to do so. Her mind gave her the answer.

Because I am a foundling.

The answer only strengthened her resolve.

A springing back flip brought her to within grasp of the wall of weapons. She chose a longer staff than the one he held, plucking it from its brackets without turning her attention from her opponent. The proper spin of it should provide a shield from his metallic whip. She began the rotation as he stalked toward her. She couldn't help but admire the way his lean muscle was highlighted by candlelight. He wore nothing but a loose drape of cloth at his loins. He looked savage, all gleaming black hair and even blacker eyes. She wondered if he could possibly be as old as the stories claimed. Then, she wondered if she would survive as he suddenly attacked with a stinging slash of whip that easily found its way past the whirling shield of her staff to slice a bloody path down her left cheek.

Jade responded by using the spin of his own whip's momentum to wrap it around the tip of her staff. Using her staff as a lever, she plied her weight, purposefully dropping to the floor against the other end of the wooden pole, to pry the whip from his fingers.

She heard the rattle as the whip hit the opposite wall, but she didn't turn her face away from Death to celebrate.

...Mostly because his face was inches from hers.

He had followed the pull to land on top of her and pin her down. He gripped her wrist so she couldn't bring her staff against him. She gasped as she strained against his strength. The scent of spicy incense on his skin teased her nose. His long, straight hair fell in a curtain around their faces until it seemed they were in a private world created by black waves of silk.

"Evil is seductive, Little One. It isn't the strength of it you have to fight against. It's the allure. Never let them get this close."

His lips were inches from hers.

Jade had never been on a date. She'd never stolen kisses or daydreamed about the boys she'd trained beside night and day. She had fought with them. She had competed with them. She had never felt a man's breath on her lips like a mint-scented promise.

She allowed herself one deep, steadying breath. She allowed her tongue to slip out and moisten her unkissed lips. The rise and fall of her breasts beneath his chest seemed to ease his weight. Was the great Angel of Death distracted by cleavage? He flicked his eyes to follow the movement of her tongue. Then he closed them ... just long enough for her to topple the table beside them with a fierce kick. Candles fell, raining hot melted wax on his bare back. Enough drops stung her face for Jade to admire the way he stifled his shout as he rolled way, leaving smears of rapidly cooling wax on the floor in his wake.

She rose quickly, staff in hand, and brought it down on the back of his head.

Death slipped into unconsciousness with surprise etched on his fierce features and blisters rising on his back.

Jade touched the cut on her cheek with the back of her hand as her Master stepped forward to bow. When she brought her hand away from her face, it was smeared bright red.

Blood.

A reminder of the prize she had just earned.

* * * *

Dillon Raveneaux tossed back another swallow of vodka. The clear, clean color of the sloshing fluid in the bottle mocked him, as did the artificial burn of the alcohol as it slid down his throat.

He remembered a richer, hotter, more intoxicating burn.

He closed his eyes against the scarlet memory and took a drag from the cigarette in his other hand. If the alcohol wouldn't cleanse away the phantom taste of blood, then maybe smoke would. His first pack of the night had already added a trickle of ash to a pile reminiscent of his worst nightmare and still his tongue craved the forbidden taste of something it couldn't have.

Someone it couldn't have.

His hands shook, and more ash joined the pile at his feet. Some of it still resembled bones.

He didn't know what made Raveneaux genes resistant to the madness that claimed most vampires. His Maker, his queen, had seen it as a mark of honor. A product of southern aristocracy, she had turned hundreds if not thousands of Raveneaux either directly, as she had him, or indirectly using him and others. One such vampire, a scrap of a girl he had turned, had killed the queen. He'd felt the weight of the life he had stolen from Holly on his shoulders even as he'd craved the taste of her blood.

Even now, when he was free from the queen, his body quaked for what it couldn't have. No matter how many nights he resisted the siren call of Holly Spinnaker's blood, there was yet another night to face. He wandered far from her Virginia home but never far enough.

On the one hand, being released from the thrall of the wicked queen vamp who had made him was salvation. He was his own man again ... mostly ... if you discounted that he wasn't a man but a monster. He punctuated that thought by setting down his bottle long enough to slide a wooden match stick from the box never far from his fingers. He shut the box and rattled it a few times to reassure himself that there were plenty of matches left. He put the box in his pocket and struck the match against the heel of his boot to light a new cigarette. On the other hand, suddenly developing a conscious after two hundred years of wallowing in blood, sex and fear was pure damnation.

Dillon dragged deep. He could almost imagine his lungs hardening and rejecting any lasting effect that the bitter, moistened smoke would have had on an actual man.

Not human but no longer what he had been for over two hundred years. He had been the queen's puppet, but he had enjoyed it. He had gloried in it every minute of every night ... more often than not.

Life's a bitch and then you don't die.

Broken Bow, Oklahoma, had changed. He hadn't expected to find it the same. Since he'd been free, he'd wandered over pathways that should have been familiar, but trails had become asphalt, and the prairie where he'd once taken part in cattle drives had given way to shopping malls and fast food restaurants.

Dillon emptied the rest of the vodka over the vampyric remains at his feet. No matter how many ravening beasts he exterminated, he could never atone. As he stood and walked away, he lit another match and tossed it over his shoulder onto the spreading pool of vodka. The room began to burn. Peripherally, he caught the gleam, first, in a flash of blue-tinged white, then warming to a rich yellowish-orange.

He didn't look back at the flames, but he felt their heat licking at his heels.