Original Sin Read online

  ORIGINAL

  SIN

  The Order of Vampires

  Book One

  LYDIA MICHAELS

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Bailey Brown Publishing

  Other Books by Lydia Michaels

  ORIGINAL | SIN

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Epilogue

  THE END

  Other Books by Lydia Michaels

  Special Thanks

  Bailey Brown Publishing

  Paranormal Romance

  ©Lydia Michaels

  ORIGINAL SIN

  THE ORDER OF VAMPIRES 1

  Copyright © 2020 Lydia Michaels Books, LLC

  Editor: Allyson Young

  Copy Editor: Theresa Kohler

  Cover Design: Lydia Michaels

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  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9995236-4-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9995236-5-0

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  Other Books by Lydia Michaels

  La Vie en Rose

  “Heart Wrenchingly Beautiful!”

  Breaking Perfect

  “Delicious and Dirty!”

  Blind (FREE)

  Untied

  First Comes Love (FREE)

  If I Fall

  Something Borrowed

  Protégé

  “Secret Kink Society!”

  Simple Man

  “Unexpected Baby/Fatherhood”

  The Surrender Trilogy

  “Drama, Betrayal, Scandal, Oh my!”

  The McCullough Mountain Series

  (Book #1 FREE)

  The Degrees of Separation Trilogy

  (Book #1 FREE!)

  The Calamity Rayne Series

  (Book #1 FREE!)

  Hurt

  “Hauntingly Dark Romance! A Masterpiece!”

  www.LydiaMichaelsBooks.com

  ORIGINAL

  SIN

  DEDICATION

  For Trudy.

  This was where our journey began.

  Years later, and we’ve come full circle.

  Very few things bring me as much joy as writing something that impresses you.

  So, cheers! Here’s to an amazing friendship between two distant souls.

  And the story that started it all.

  xo

  Prologue

  Deep in the Pennsylvania Mountains

  1934

  The metallic stench of blood permeated the air. Pine needles and leaves cushioned each step, as the men crept closer to the putrid sounds of tearing flesh and growls. Blood trickled from a branch. Moonlight caught in a tangle of human hair matted to the rough bark of a tree. Ezekiel knew then, there was no salvation left for his brother.

  Their heightened sense of smell hindered each step, as the rotting stench of littered corpses laced the wind. Underbrush, slickened by sticky massacre. Blood traveled like little tributaries into the nearby brook, dying the shallow waters red.

  Greedy snarls tangled with hungry grunts as Ezekiel and the hunters eased in, none of them prepared for the sight that greeted them. His jaw trembled as his gaze twitched away, rejecting the slaughter before him. His brother, once the kindest immortal to ever grace this earth, bared his fangs and screeched an unholy, predatory growl, warning them not to take another step.

  A knot of bloodied limbs hung limply over Isaiah’s crimson stained claws. His grip so intense, his nails embedded in the lifeless woman’s flesh. She was not his mate. None of them were. Thus the delirium swirling in his eyes as he gored himself on female mortal, after female mortal, in an endless search for the missing half of his soul.

  “He’s feeish,” one hunter wheezed, while others gagged over the stench of carnage. “Step aside, Ezekiel. You shouldn’t have to watch.”

  He couldn’t move. Rooted into the blood drenched ground, he burned the grotesque image of his bloodthirsty brother into his mind, promising to hold it there for eternity. This is what became of their gentle people when God’s call was not heeded. This was his brother’s forsaken fate.

  A trail of genocide lay in Isaiah’s wake, and as Ezekiel stared upon the massacre, he felt responsible, on some level, for the crimes his brother had committed. This was the merciless gluttony of a madman—an animal—whose peaceful nature had been snuffed away.

  “Isaiah, what have I let you become?” he rasped under his breath, brokenhearted by the tragedy before him.

  So wild were Isaiah’s eyes, he did not register their threat, only their presence as he rutted into the limp corpse gripped in his arms. The instinct to bond remained, but his humanity had been stripped down to a raw nerve of instinct, a predator’s hunger now starved of benevolence.

  Ezekiel reached a hand toward his son, who stared at his beloved uncle in shock. “I’ll need a weapon, Jonas. One that will end this.”

  With trembling hands, his son loaded a bullet into the rifle, his gaze wavering between the gun barrel and Isaiah. They all wore the shame of this moment, each one of them responsible for not recognizing the insistence of the call when it fell upon Isaiah. As a mated Elder, Ezekiel should have been more attune
d to his brother’s well-being, heeded the symptoms before they overtook his brother’s gentle manner and turned him into this.

  As immortals, they were all susceptible to evil, each one running the risk of becoming the world’s most vile creature. But there were ways to avoid such horrific fates. If they had just helped Isaiah find his mate, his salvation, this could have been prevented. This was what their ignorance had cost them.

  “Father,” Jonas whispered, handing him the rifle with quivering hands. “It will only anger him and put us all in danger. The human blood has made him strong.”

  Ezekiel understood the boy’s fear. A bullet wound could only maim their kind. Bringing down an immortal of his brother’s age would take much more. Ezekiel would not allow anyone else the task. Isaiah was his kin, his responsibility.

  “When I shoot, you run. Do not look back no matter what you hear.”

  Jonas’s blue eyes widened with fear, but obedience kept him silent. The boy nodded and for the first time, Ezekiel saw him as a man.

  He gripped his son’s shoulder, sensing the tremors under his skin. “Look at him, Jonas. One day you will have sons of your own and you must know their fate. Let this be a painful reminder of what becomes of us when we ignore the call of God.”

  Jonas stared at his uncle as Isaiah impaled the sagging corpse and bared his bloodstained teeth with disregard. Jonas’s brow knit with confused disbelief, his gaze lowering to the ground as his body turned away from the horrific display. His fists clenched at his side.

  Jonas and the other males would never forget the threat that accompanied God’s calling. Tradition dictated obedience, not only for the continuation of their species, but to save the human race from mass genocide. Left wild, one of their kind could easily exterminate legions of mortals. A feeish immortal put their kind at risk of exposure. Isaiah’s blessing had become a curse, and now it was Ezekiel’s duty to put him down like the animal he’d become.

  Immortality remained a relative term. They existed on borrowed time, surviving by God’s will. Salvation required balance, good and evil, light to counter the darkness. Without that delicate balance, honor and duty would be overshadowed by disgrace and greed. The undead would mingle with the living, preying, violating, and pillaging without restraint or conscience. Failure, such as his brother’s failure, would rain like a plague, bathing the world in blood and sin until darkness was all that remained.

  This was the consequence of disregard for God’s plan. God’s calling was their kind’s greatest blessing, but when left unanswered, it withered into an incurable curse.

  “As soon as you hear the gun shot, Jonas, run and do not stop until you reach the farm.”

  “I should wait for you, Father.”

  Ezekiel shook his head, unsure if he’d escape alive. “Do as you’re told.”

  He lifted the rifle and trained it on his brother, knowing the first shot would only anger the beast within. But there was nothing else to be done.

  “I’m sorry, dear brother...”

  Chapter One

  Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  Present Day

  Adam’s mind jolted awake to the crushing agony of loss. Bone deep sorrow and instant regret stole his breath as he jackknifed off the bed. The house stood as still and dark as a tomb, yet he sensed his mother’s fear as intensely as if it were his own.

  Pulse thundering, he scrambled to his feet, only to double over and catch his weight on the bed as he pressed a hand to the piercing pain in his chest. Not his pain, but hers. Panic, regret, loss, and heartache splintered through his ribs like jagged ice. So familiar with his mother’s emotions, he instantly identified her as the source.

  Confusion shifted to impotent fury as his father came awake in the room above, his potent emotions knifed up Adam’s back.

  “Abilene?” Adam heard his father’s deep timber through the ceiling, and the concern vibrating his voice.

  “Jonas,” his mother wept. “Make it stop.”

  He knew in that moment, as his parents’ fear clouded his own, another babe might be lost. Adam’s sorrow tangled with their intruding emotions.

  His bare feet scuffed over the cool wood floor as he reached for his clothes in the dark. His gaze scanned the shadows, listening for the confirmation he’d heard too many times before. His mother’s cries cut through the chilled air, from the floor above, and Adam lowered his head, knowing his suspicions to be true. She’d lost another.

  Concern pushed into his mind, and he quickly tugged his pants off the peg on the wall, sensing his younger sister, Grace, approaching. He hooked his suspenders over his bare shoulders and took a step back just as the door swung wide. Gracie’s elfin figure filled the cavity.

  Tears shimmered in her bright blue eyes. “It’s Mother. Adam, she’s losing another one.”

  He pulled her into his arms, lending his strength as well as comfort. She had such a big heart, her emotions cut into him like razorblades lacerating his insides.

  “You must be brave, Gracie. We all must be strong for Mother.”

  “And Father,” she whispered. “This will destroy him.”

  “Have faith. Father is stronger than we realize.”

  She gazed up at him and nodded with borrowed, feeble courage. But unlike Adam, who only felt others’ emotions, his sister heard their most private thoughts. And in the silence, when emotions ran high and thoughts were less guarded, Grace’s telepathy always got the better of others.

  Her bravery crumbled and tears rushed to her eyes. “Oh, Adam, why does God keep taking her babies?”

  He tightened his arms and pressed a kiss to her head. Long waves of dark hair dwarfed her already petite size. So rarely did he see her without her bonnet, her unadorned head only added to her innocent appearance. Although Gracie was an adult, she’d always maintain a childlike quality in his eyes.

  “We mustn’t blame God,” he whispered. “Always trust that He has a plan for us.”

  “Then who can we blame? This isn’t supposed to happen to immortal females.”

  He wished he had the answers she sought. “Faith is based on trust, Grace. We must trust God’s plan. It is not our place to question that which we cannot know.” When he sensed a pending argument, he said, “You should see if you can be of assistance upstairs.”

  As a male, he would not be welcome into his mother’s private quarters under such circumstances. Grace, on the other hand, was expected to lend her services in such situations. But as an empath, Adam was drowning in their turmoil thrumming through the ceiling, and had little shelter from the onslaught. If Grace could ease their mother’s anxieties it would go a long way toward salvaging his strength.

  She unlatched her arms from around his waist and stepped back. “I can’t. Not yet. She’s so... I simply can’t bear her thoughts.”

  Adam could sense the shame washing over his mother, while Grace heard all the disgraceful thoughts ruminating through her head. By morning, they would both be wrung out and raw. Yet, their mother would bear the worst of it.

  Based on the pain mangling his insides, he now assumed the loss was complete. His father’s reverberating regret left no doubt that the babe was gone.

  Adam nodded and waved a hand for Grace to sit on his bed. She lowered like a feather floating to the earth, delicate and depleted.

  “Our added worries will only increase the burdens already laid upon this home. Let us suffer together in this moment, alone, where our doubts may be ground into teff and lost to the wind.”

  Sorrow filled her blue eyes, tears magnifying them in size. “We must galvanize ourselves for the hours and days ahead,” she whispered, folding her hand around his. “It will be hardest on us.”

  He and Gracie would suffer the brunt of the pain, as they always did. She had learned to temper her telepathy on most days, but there seemed no filter in times of extreme emotion.

  Having suffered every sentiment under this roof, he sympathized with her and squeezed her hand. “One would think, aft
er so many losses, the ache would wane.”

  She shook her head. “It’s the opposite. With each miscarriage, her doubts grow, and her faith withers. Soon she’ll have no devotion at all, just a hollow womb and a hundred nameless graves.”

  “Grace!” Her words, so contrary to her usual uplifting spirit, startled him.

  “Would you rather I lie? I’ve seen the same worries in all of our thoughts. Even you wish they would stop trying to conceive for a time, so that we might have a respite from such grief.”

  Ashamed that she was right, he lowered his gaze. “It pains me to see any one of you hurting.”

  “Because you’re an empath?”

  “No, because you’re my family.” His grip tightened around her hand. “It’s our duty to look after those we love. Father cannot save Mother from this pain any more than you or I can. It’s a terrible consequence for man to feel so helpless in what is already a great loss.”

  “And for females it’s simply another lesson in acceptance. We have such little control over our lives as is.”

  He didn’t like hearing such jaded words from his sweet sister, but as he heard the scuffle of footsteps in the hall, he contained his comments for another time. “Cain’s awake.”

  Her spine lengthened as if she’d adorned invisible armor. The door creaked and their brother stood over the threshold. Unlike them, Cain had no special abilities that offered insight to the unspoken climate of the house.

  “Am I dying? Why so bleak?”

  Grace released Adam’s hand and stood, tugging the wrinkles from her chemise as a way to avoid eye contact with Cain and hide her tears. “It’s Mother. She’s lost another.”

  Even Cain, for all of his cool indifference, couldn’t hide his regret at such news. “But she was so close, almost full term. Are you sure there’s nothing to be done?”

  Their mother’s misery was inescapable. Adam shut his eyes to better absorb it without flinching. “It’s too late.”

  His strength waned, and he debated taking a seat. He loathed drawing attention to himself when others were in such need of comfort. Grace, aware of his thoughts, glanced at him and frowned.

  He met her stare. Mother needs you.