Matters of the Blood (Blood Lines, Book 1) - Softcover

Lima, Maria

3.52

988 ratings by Goodreads

9781439156742: Matters of the Blood (Blood Lines, Book 1)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439156743 ISBN 13: 9781439156742

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

If you thought your family was strange...

Try being Keira Kelly. A member of a powerful paranormal family, Keira elected to stay among humans in the Texas Hill Country when the rest of the clan moved (lock, stock, and grimoire) to Canada. But family duty means still having to keep an eye on cousin Marty -- a genetic aberration who turned out 100% human, poor guy. And recently Keira's been having violent dreams -- or are they visions? -- featuring Marty as the victim of a vicious murder. Something sinister seems to be brewing in little Rio Seco. Can Keira get to the bottom of it all while avoiding entanglement with her former lover, Sheriff Carlton Larson? And what does she plan to do about the irresistible and enigmatic Adam Walker? When this old friend shows up as the new owner of a local ranc and wants to get better acquainted, Keira is more than happy to be welcoming...until she suspects that Adam could be intimately connected to the dangerous doings in Rio Seco.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Sometime before the Revolution, Maria Lima was born in Matanzas, Cuba, to a family of voracious readers and would-be writers. After her family emigrated to the United States, Maria discovered the magic of books. She started writing her own stories and has been at it ever since. Her writing turned corporate as she used her journalism degree and cranked out marketing copy, feature stories and book reviews. The fiction muse kept calling and in the spring of 2005, was finally fed as Maria's first published short story, "The Butler Didn't Do It" was published in Chesapeake Crimes I and garnered an Agatha Award nomination for Best Short Story. Maria spends most of her days working as a Senior Web Project Manager in the DC area. Her evenings and weekends are spent writing.

CHAPTER ONE

I know the dead and the dead know me. Not a personal choice, mind you, just the result of being born into a family of necromancers. It's in our blood, so to speak. Not that I am one -- not yet anyway. It's more that they needed someone to learn the family business. So instead of more practical training, I learned how to deal with death.

Two years ago, my entire life changed and I ended up more or less back where I'd started -- the heart of Texas Hill Country in a small town called Rio Seco -- babysitting a whiny forty-year-old mortician cousin whose idea of fun was to call me at the ass crack of what-the-hell-time-is-it, a couple of hours past my usual dawnish bedtime, and beg for money. Okay, I had it and he didn't, but all I wanted from him was a little respect -- you know, the stuff Aretha sang about. My cousin had plenty of respect for his clients (actually, for their families who were paying for his services) but not for me. Marty Nelson would always bitch to me about his dead-end (pun intended) job, his life (mostly useless) and his lack of funds (eternal).

Enduring two years of boredom, near-solitude, and conversations with a man with whom I had less in common than a family pet wasn't what I'd imagined. Okay, so I had made this choice. What can I say? At the time, it sounded easy. I hadn't bothered to consider the consequences, imagine the future and recognize how unspeakably bored I would become. Marty certainly didn't make it any easier.

Then things started changing. Over the past couple of weeks, I'd been blessed with my own personal nightmare freak show. Lifelike dreams, crashing into my REM cycle with an overwhelming assault of vivid Technicolor, surround sound and Smell-o-vision. I spent years as Death's assistant and now those years were coming back to haunt me...not with guilt or accusation, but in nightmares full of pain, fear, violence and a hell of a lot of blood.

That was the part I kept wondering about. Clan deaths were rarely violent, at least in the last century or so. Nowadays, when our folk died, it was by choice, not by chance. I wasn't sure where all this was coming from, maybe it was just my own sick psyche dealing with the so-called facts of my life.

This last one was the worst so far. Even the bright mid-afternoon sun couldn't chase it away. I still tasted blood, tasted death. The rich flavor of life bleeding into lifelessness hovered at the back of my throat, covering my tongue with that morning-after-the-night-before fuzzy coating that makes you run to the nearest toothbrush and giant bottle of Scope.

I could still remember every last bloody minute of it.

I ran. Faster than I could ever remember running, my feet passing smoothly over rough terrain, my body automatically turning, avoiding rocks, cacti, and stumps of dead mesquite dangerously spearing the still night air. As the pale light of the nearly full moon blazed my path, my night vision adjusted automatically.

I could smell them in front of me. Hot fear-scent mixed with the exhilaration of the chase. This was what I wanted, what I needed.

Two hunters ran in front of me, staying in the shadows so I couldn't see who they were. No matter; after they fed, then I would.

I lunged forward, impatient now to reach my --

The smell slammed into my nose as I heard their prey fall, one body, then another. My gut roiled in agony, anticipation.

Blood. Lots of it. Where were they?

Fog clouded my vision. My senses shut down as the blood spoor became my only focus. I broke through the bushes, branches scratching my face, my arms, my body, pain receding into the background. There they were -- ahead, in a clearing just by the lake, next to the homey picnic benches scattered throughout the small area.

Two of them, torn and bleeding. The rich scent teased me, luring me over. I looked around. The hunters were gone. Long gone. No one was there but the dead...and me.

I stepped closer. Two deer, small, defenseless, spotted bodies too small to escape the things that chased them. I reached down, my hand operating independently of my conscious brain, my body taking over, knowing it needed --

I screamed as I realized that the bloody corpse nearest me wasn't a deer after all.

It was my cousin, Marty.

Something buzzed at my hip and my hands jerked the wheel. The Land Rover's right front tire slid off the road onto the gravel shoulder, kicking up dust. I recovered, steering back on to the road.

Holy crap. I really had to stop thinking about this, especially while I was driving. Maybe I should try to adjust my sleep cycle and sleep at night, like normal people. Yeah, right. Normal. Ignore the obvious.

The buzz-tickle came again -- damned cell phone. Would I ever get used to this thing? I fumbled it out of my pocket while steering one-handed, and answered. "Hello?"

"Keira?"

"Hi, Marty." Great. I should have looked at the caller ID before answering. Who else would call at three p.m. -- early for me -- but my charge, my responsibility, the reason for my dissatisfaction and the frequent star of many of my recent nightmares? Of course, the dreams of his death might just be the product of my jumbled mind sorting out not-so-cousinly feelings. Could just be a bit of scary wishful thinking. After all, two years was twenty-four months too long to be riding herd over a man only three years my senior, especially one as annoying as my cousin. After this last set of dreams, though, I was considering changing my analysis. These nightmares weren't fodder for a shrink's couch. They'd send any would-be Freud screaming.

"Are you busy?"

Busy trying to not freak out, but otherwise, not really. Can't say "busy" describes my life these days.

I pulled over to the side of the road so I could concentrate on talking to him. I didn't like to talk while driving the narrow, winding back roads.

"Not exactly. What's up?"

He paused, as if my question was too hard to answer.

"Keira, I'm sorry, I know you hate to be called early, but...uhm...I sort of need...I've got..." A sigh and another pause followed.

An armadillo waddled across the asphalt, its leaden progress hypersonic compared to the conversation I didn't actually seem to be having. The silence stretched. I could hear Marty breathing, but no words.

I finally spoke, unwilling to sit watching armadillos avoid becoming road decor any longer.

"Marty, what the hell do you want? I can't do anything if you won't talk to me."

Closing my eyes, I leaned back in my seat, holding on to my temper. I could feel it rising, an almost automatic response. Deep breaths, Keira. Slow, calming breaths. It didn't pay to get angry with Marty. He never really noticed.

No doubt his skinny, balding self was now sitting behind his previously owned pressboard desk, the very picture of a respectable mortician in a baggy Men's Wearhouse three-piece suit while I sat here like an idiot in my vintage Land Rover Defender waiting for him to tell me something that mattered. It never mattered to me -- only to Marty and his overbearing sense of self-importance. The fact I'd been "assigned" to him couldn't help his misguided illusions of grandeur.

"I think I'm in trouble," he finally whispered. Marty's voice sounded hesitant.

"How much is it this time? Another security door? The latest and greatest embalming machine or whatever?" At the beginning of this particular month, he'd needed to pay his property taxes. The week before that he didn't have enough to cover an overdue invoice. Two days before that...well, it was always the same thing. Just a couple of weeks ago, I'd paid for a state-of-the-art security door after another phone call, during which he whined for the better part of a half hour and then gloated over his nifty new toy, an electronic door controlled by a security touchpad. Expensive high-tech protection. Just what a small town mortuary run by one guy and a part-time receptionist needed. As always, it had been easier to write the check and pay the invoice. If money could buy a little peace and quiet, then so be it.

"No, it's not -- Keira, I...can't...Shit. I need you to come over." He sounded exasperated, a change from his usual pity-poor-me-I-need-money whine.

"Excuse me? Come over? Now, before I eat breakfast?"

"I really need you to come over here, Keira."

"Why -- the door break down?" I couldn't help it. I'd not only paid way too much money for the thing, I'd also had to pay for the special technician to come in from Austin and re-install the door after Marty's local bargain guy messed it up.

"Look, I really need to talk to you. It's important. But I can't talk right now, and not on the phone."

The last words were more breaths than actual words, as if he were trying not to let someone overhear. Who, I had no idea, since the receptionist was older than God and almost as deaf as Marty's clients. She was unlikely to be there at this hour anyway.

Damn it, if I avoided him now, he'd keep badgering me with phone calls and voice messages until I gave in anyway. But I gave it one more shot.

"Marty, can I call you later, after I get some food in me? I just got up."

"Yeah, I guess," he said, reluctantly. "But don't call, just come by when you're done eating. I have to see you in person, Keira." He hesitated, then continued. "This is family important...blood important. Please."

Bloody freaking hell. I hated this already and I didn't even know what it was about. I'd let the words sway me, but I knew his tendency to exaggerate. Last time he'd sworn it was a family thing he'd been scared he'd gotten his then-girlfriend pregnant. He wanted money for an abortion. She wanted the baby and a husband -- turned out to be a false alarm. A few weeks later, she moved to Dallas with a new guy. Marty kept the money and bought a new suit. That was eight months ago. I told him then that if he ever invoked the family again when it was a personal problem, I'd call in said family. Why did I think he'd listened?

"I'...

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.