The Foxworth Coven, Book One, Death Of Innocence
By Kayden McLeod
Website: http://www.kaydenmcleod.com/
Genre: Erotic Paranormal Romance (Vampires, Deities, M/F)
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Website: http://silverpublishing.info/
Release Date: May 2011
Tag-Line:
Even unconditional love cannot always banish an eternal nightmare
Summary:
The Foxworth family has blazed a trail through human and vampire history alike, changing the ways of both races in Canada for all time. The Council has demanded a full report for the long and twisted tale of how the Surrey Coven had come to be the most powerful and feared; an assemblage that anyone would question before coming up against.
The Leader of the Surrey Coven, Canya recalls how her family came to be. A story filled with pain and heartache, until she meets Gregory Foxworth: a debonair CEO to the family shipping company. Gregory remembers taking her away from a life that shocks him, hoping to shelter and love her. But little does he know all he has done, was make her a target for a sadistically warped man. One who will have her and his own personal brand of vengeance. Sometimes, a grudge isforever.
Excerpt One (Rated PG):
Prelude
Canya
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
June 3 2010
The sky was overcast, grey and temperamental, much like my mood. The ocean was the flat colour of slate, reflecting the drab clouds above, while the waves lapped at the long expanse of sand making up the beach.
I loved my house in White Rock, a nice city in British Columbia within the Fraser Valley. It was our main residence, but we owned a lot of property all over the territory that was ours to tend.
I sat outside, on my patio with expensive white paper and a pen, with Gregory at my side. His hand was on my shoulder in a show of support, a silent partner, until it was his turn to write his account. The beginning, where we started, was my words. But I wasn’t sure where to begin. When a story went on for decades, where does one start?
I thought of my family to give me strength.
The Foxworths had grown and changed so much in the last century. They too were asked to tell their parts of the tale, but they’d decided that it was when I discovered the new world, remaining even now in shadows that this story should begin.
It was almost a century to the day, when we finally ended what plagued my family for so long. Was a hundred years too long to hold on to hope that your loved ones would eventually survive and thrive, even if some had to die in seeing it happen?
The Council, our governing body, paid me a personal visit yesterday. Though it had been an official visit, I didn’t have a great track record with those appointments. I was respected, but all in my Coven were also feared for their individual reasons, their individual pasts.
Over the years, our Coven had been allied with some of the most powerful entities this world would ever know. We have the forces of nature on our side, the power of dreams and the most feared monsters that make humans run and hide under their beds.
The Council only “requested” this document, because it is unbelievable, as it sounds. I believed they wanted to watch us fail to give the facts; to prove beyond doubt that what we said was real.
And we do have proof of all of our accomplishments. But I still suspected they don’t believe some of what my family and friends claim. Even to us, who are vampires and know of all sorts of real magic, our story is very far-fetched. Our experiences rip apart our own beliefs, not just the human view-point, and then stitch them back together again. To know the real truth of what lays just out of even our sight.
For a race with our real origin of beginnings, you’d think that they’d believe our tall-tale.
Personally, I wouldn’t have ever chosen to put this to paper, but when the Council decrees something, you refuse or disobey at your own risk. So, I will do so for our own well-being, and finally admit what we really are.
Some think the Foxworths were lucky for our “good” fortune. Others consider it a curse on top of the Curse that all vampires already share. I didn’t know which side to follow in that.
As a race, we’re the damned that had at one point been blessed. We were the ultimate oxymoron and the personification, if you will.
Our kind has seen both sides of the balance, and now we were precariously hanging by our fingertips, trying to protect mankind from ourselves. Most of us moved steadily forward to evolve with everyone else, but outlawed Rogues kept trying to throw us back into the dark ages.
Even so, we would always stand between the evil that rears its head within us, and the good in everyone else. Though we cannot protect humankind from their own forms of evil, we could do our part to keep the harmony on our end.
That was the Foxworth Coven’s mission statement.
We lived with humans, not just among them. We tried not to abuse our power, and assimilate into humanity the best we could. We raise our children with those beliefs, in hopes that one day we’d have real freedom and understanding. It was only one small step in the face of many, and so far, our ways had set the standard for Canadian ways.
We must be doing something right.
Possibly this record of our family would convince a few more of our kind that just because we are at the top of the food chain, manned with more power then any being had a right to, didn’t mean vampires had the right to abuse it.
Maybe it will show that no matter how bad life appears at the time, hope is always at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes it will just take a little time to get there.
I knew this better than most. In the end, I knew just how lucky I’d been.
As a child, I’d known real love existed out there—somewhere. But my parents had never been examples of that. They’d almost hated each other, and liked me even less. It was a match for necessity and nothing more.
Years ago, my cousin had told me, I’d been born to be a servant. Since the time I had been old enough to clean and mind the cattle, it’d been my life. Being taught to cook simple meals before turning the age of ten, I was expected to serve them nightly.
Under my mother’s watchful eye, I grew up alone and afraid. My father had been a big, burly man who was far too gruff to ever have children. I believe he had me, only because it had beenexpected of him. After me, they’d never tried for a boy. Something that enraged my father and something I had to suffer for continuously.
But it isn’t my childhood hell that begun my long journey, nor my terrifying family legacy. For generations my human family possessed magical gifts, but these required us to keep them quiet for our own survival. The differences between those who are gifted and those who did not understand them were vast in the early twentieth century, more so than they had in the nineteenth.
As a teenager I’d been starved for love and affection, something that all of my friends had received and gave so easily. I’d searched far and wide for it, a way to leave my past behind me. To finally get out from under my parent’s thumb or I would surely go mad.
They didn’t want me to go. They’d made no move to marry me off. I still believed that if the occurring events of my early life hadn’t taken place, they would’ve found a way to keep me tied to them forever.
Near the age of twenty, I was practically an old maid when I’d met Thomas. For months we had come together in secret. I’d thought nothing of it. Those were the times then. Plus, I didn’t want my parents to know, until it was too late to stop me.
I went to Thomas willingly, time after time, needing to feel human and liked. So much abuse from my parents made me desperate to jump into anything that would bring about my escape far too quickly. My normally intelligent mind hadn’t had the time to warn me of the impending dangers, in direct relation to the hard-pressed decisions.
I had mistaken lust for love, and that really had been my downfall, and breakthrough for survival.
If I hadn’t met Thomas, I doubted I would’ve met my true love.
Every cloud has a silver lining, even the darkest and most deadly ones.
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