Free Vampire in Her Mysts by Meagan Hatfield

Chapter One
    â€œWhere am I?”
    Yuri Feodorovna forced his eyes open, his keen vampire senses instantly tasting damp earth and blood in the night air. He lifted his head off the ground. An unbearable ache pulsed through his veins and a fine layer of sweat coated his body. Both sensations were something he usually experienced after a battle.
    Pressing a palm into the velvety earth, he pushed himself up to sit.
    â€œAhh,” he gasped at the spear of agony jabbing through his rib cage. He covered his tender side with his hand, wholly unsurprised to see his palm covered in red when he lifted it toward his face.
    â€œThat’s my blood,” he groaned, letting his head collapse against the tree behind him. “That’s…a lot of my blood.”
    What in Fatum’s veil happened?
    Clutching his waist with one hand, he used the other to push himself up. Standing sent a fresh wave of dizziness through him that threatened to pull him to the ground. Blood seeped between his fingers and streamed down his pant leg. Yuri bit down on his jaw at the current of pain streaming through him. The tip of his fang nicked his lip and the coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth.
    â€œDammit,” he said on a growl, spitting the mouthful on the grass. As if being ginsu’d across the abdomen by some wannabe samurai blood hunter last night hadn’t been bad enough.
    Yuri stopped. An icy cold hand grabbed his heart, as memories of the past few hours came together…the fighting, the clanking of swords and slicing of flesh. In particular, the tattoos embedded across his adversary’s forearms seared into Yuri’s brain. They identified the sword-wielding vampire who attacked him as a vanator . A vampire blood hunter.
    Yuri knew those tattoos well.
    He should.
    He’d worn the same ones for more than a century.
    One mystery solved. A vanator had done this to him, he thought, inhaling an uneasy breath. Too bad owning that little bit of knowledge didn’t make him feel any better. He could think of a dozen other beings he’d prefer trying to kill him rather than a vanator .
    Before Yuri’s brother Nikolai took over the Mysts , vanators were known as blood hunters—trained killers who assassinated their own from within. Blood hunters took out those vampires deemed not to be following the auld ways. Kings, queens, Dark Council members, corrupt politicians and aristocracy—no one had been safe from the vanators and everyone in their realm respected them and their missions.
    Yet now, they’d become little more than bounty hunters. Duty-bound by an undying blood oath to Nikolai, a false ruler and the brother Yuri had been covertly fighting against for the past decade. Ruthless, brutal, the vanators relentlessly stalked their mark. They would not stop until they succeeded in delivering their target, dead or alive, and collecting their bounty.
    Now they hunted him…and in the Mysts, of all places.
    The holy vampire lands beyond the Fatum , Earth and every supernatural realm in between, the Mysts were a perpetual dark haven where day was never truly day and vampires could roam freely. For that reason alone, this place had always been dangerous territory for any vampire to enter.
    Well, it had been pure and utter madness for him to come here.
    Yuri dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. Exhaustion warred with the need to act, to take out his opponents before they could regroup and strike again. He stumbled to the lake, pushing aside the marsh grass and shrubs. Collapsing at the edge, he sank to his knees. Cold water leached into his clothes, sending a chill up his already blood-drained body. He groaned, a tired and weak sound that made him cringe.
    Dipping his arm in the pool, Yuri washed the blood away. The caked-on redness seeped into the lake, revealing the tattoos forever embedded on the underside of both forearms from elbow to wrist, marking him vanator to anyone with the