Free Austin's Lost Bride (The Sterns) by Mindi Winters

Chapter 1
    Rebecca felt her pulse quicken and her breathing go shallow. Blood rushed throughout her body and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her toes curled and she thought how she was about to die. Mannus had her body under his control and the grip of his hand around her neck was like steel.
    She was dead, only a few heartbeats away from passing out. He wasn’t even going to bother turning her. Suddenly, Mannus loosened his grip slightly and Rebecca felt air return to her lungs and blood flow back into her head.
    It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was going to kill Mannus, not the other way around. Kill him for what he did years ago. She trained hard to be ready. Tracked him and his thralls for nearly five years before he made a slip and it was time to make her move. She even threw off another hunter team tracking him so she could have the kill all to herself.
    Stupid.
    Every hunter knew from training that while it may sometimes be acceptable to hunt a supernatural creature alone, hunting a vampire solo was absolutely forbidden. Especially a vampire as old and powerful as Mannus. But she did it anyway.
    A sudden thought of Austin leading another hunter team gave her a shudder.
    Why the hell did she just think of him? Rebecca might be hunting Mannus, but it was Austin and what HE didn’t do that caused of all this.
    A sudden yank on her neck brought her back to reality—throttled by the vampire she was trying to kill and surrounded by three of his thralls. Her hands were still free, but Mannus had her by the neck, off the ground with only one arm. Even if she made a move for her silver dagger, or the other numerous weapons she still had on her, it would be useless. His other free hand would block any move by her to get a weapon, or he’d just plain crush her neck.
    Just killing her would be too merciful.
    He swung her around and placed her feet on the ground as two of the thralls moved up to grab her arms. He was going to turn her.
    The light wasn’t especially good, coming from the moon through a nonexistent roof in this abandoned building. Only in Detroit, she thought. She was going to be turned into a vampire inside a vacant building only a stone’s throw away from the river on one side and a fast food joint on the other. She didn’t even consider screaming. No one would come.
    Rebecca tried pulling her arms free but the thralls had them secure and Mannus’s hand was still on her neck. She had tracked him for a long time, but this was the first time she ever saw him in person. He had a rugged look with dark-brown hair and facial features that jutted out giving him a definite predator demeanor. His eyes bore into her and held not the slightest hint of emotion or empathy. He was a monster for so long that any hint or memory of his once held humanity had been driven out by the beast. A few scars were on his face and neck, rare for a vampire because only the beautiful and unblemished were usually turned.
    But Mannus was no ordinary human before becoming a vampire. He was the original chief of the mighty Germanic barbarian tribes that battled Rome more than 2000 years before. In one great battle with Caesar’s legions, his tribe slaughtered the Romans to a man. When word reached Rome of the massacre, an old man, who was a young vampire with children born when he was human, went out in search of Mannus. The Roman was determined to avenge the death of his favorite human son. He wanted to inflict the worst punishment possible on the barbarian chief, but he failed and ended up turning Mannus into a monster.
    “I thought it was against the Hunters Law to challenge a vampire alone?” he asked.
    A slight sound left her throat and he smiled.
    “Did you think your cause so unique and so righteous that you could challenge me alone? Tens of thousands have died at my hands. Your loss is just one I inflicted over the years. The tragic story that drives you is just ordinary.”
    “So you’re just going to kill me