Nightwolf, p.1
Nightwolf, page 1
Nightwolf
A Vampire Romance
Karina Halle
Copyright © 2021 by Karina Halle
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Edited by: Laura Helseth
Proofed by: Chanpreet Singh
Cover design: Hang Le
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
~ Thomas Campbell
* * *
“Give the sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
~ William Shakespeare
Contents
Nightwolf
Playlist
Preface
Prologue
1. Amethyst
2. Amethyst
3. Amethyst
4. Amethyst
5. Wolf
6. Amethyst
7. Amethyst
8. Wolf
9. Amethyst
10. Amethyst
11. Wolf
12. Amethyst
13. Amethyst
14. Wolf
15. Amethyst
16. Amethyst
17. Wolf
18. Amethyst
19. Amethyst
20. Wolf
21. Amethyst
22. Amethyst
Epilogue
Dracula’s Book
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Karina Halle
Nightwolf
My name is Amethyst DeMille and I’m in love with a vampire.
Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
Yet the fact that he’s a sexy, centuries-old blood-drinking vampire isn’t what makes our relationship complicated.
It’s because we live in the same house together, work at the same exclusive club together, and he happens to be my best friend with absolutely no idea how I feel about him.
I mean, sure he’s probably seen me give him the eyes more than once. Can you blame me? Wolf is not only a deadly, charismatic vampire with great persuasion skills, he also happens to be built like a Nordic God, all solid muscle and chiseled bone structure and haunting eyes that I sometimes think tell me more than he wants me to know. He’s the type of guy most women find themselves falling for (and not just because they might end up his next meal).
But despite the simmering sexual tension and yearning between us, I know there’s no way I’ll ever be able to tell him how I feel. After all, I’m a human and he’s a vampire and he’s told me more than once that those love stories never end well.
Too bad my heart doesn’t know the difference.
Playlist
You can find the longer playlist to Nightwolf here on Spotify. For now, here are some key songs that influenced the book or set the right mood and tone. Enjoy!
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“Nightwolf” - Bohren and Der Club of Gore
“Nocturne” - Mark Lanegan Band
“Gatekeeper” - Torii Wolf
“Everybody Dies” - Billie Eilish
“A Drowning” - How to Destroy Angels
“Death’s Head Tattoo” - Mark Lanegan Band
“Death Bell” - Crosses (+++)
“Ten Billion Years” - Torii Wolf
“Cover Me” - Depeche Mode
“Too Late, All Gone” - How to Destroy Angels
“Stole” - Francesca Belmonte
“The Beginning of the End” - Crosses (+++)
“The Background World” - Nine Inch Nails
“Surprise, You’re Dead!” - Faith No More
“Lantern Room” - Torii Wolf
“NDA” - Billie Eilish
“Carnage” - Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
“Shadows Crawl” - Torii Wolf
“Telepathy” - Crosses (+++)
“The Last Time” - Dave Gahan
“The Real Thing” - Faith No More
“Baby Says” - The Kills
“Dissolved Girl” - Massive Attack
“We’re in This Together” - Nine Inch Nails
“Spinning Song” - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
“Time” - Hans Zimmer
“The Epilogue” - Crosses (+++)
For my father, Sven Halle. The world feels empty without you in it. I love you, I miss you, I hope I continue to make you proud.
For my brother, Kris Halle. I hope you’re taking care of Papa up there. I love you.
Preface
Nightwolf is a friends-to-lovers vampire romance set in contemporary San Francisco. It’s a complete standalone and a spinoff of the much darker vampire romance Black Sunshine (and the very dark & bonkers sequel The Blood is Love). While you meet Amethyst and Wolf in those books, you do not need to read them in order to read Nightwolf.
HOWEVER, if you were planning on reading Black Sunshine, I suggest you do so before you read this one as there will be spoilers for that story. It’s currently available in KU on Amazon.
ALSO, there’s a short story focusing on how Wolf and Amethyst first met called “Dark Eyes,” and that’s also worth a read before Nightwolf. You can find it in the charity anthology Two More Days put together by Colleen Hoover. It is also in KU. It gives a little more context to the characters.
* * *
Content Warning: contains lots of blood (obviously), foul language, sexual scenes of a graphic nature, and death of a loved one. Please note that I am not a medical professional and all the scenes that take place in the hospital have been gleaned from personal experience and may not be 100% accurate.
Prologue
Kingdom of Norway, 1696
The boy was afraid.
Despite sharing the small loft with his older brother, Asmund, and his sister Eira, their close proximity as they snored away in their beds did nothing to disperse the sense of heavy dread in the air, hanging above him like thunder clouds.
It felt like something was sitting on his chest, pressing down on his heart and lungs until he couldn’t get any air in, and when he opened his eyes to the darkness, he was certain he could see something perched on top of him, a creature black and winged and ominous.
Mara. He was warned about them, he just didn’t believe in them, these demon witches that came into your bed at night, bringing with them misfortune, death and bad dreams, whispering evil things and singing scary lullabies.
Mara.
Then, as his eyes adjusted to the thin moonlight coming through the window, he realized there was nothing there at all.
The boy took in a deep shaking breath, his lungs capable again, and then slowly sat up. The loft was cold, his labored breathing causing ice crystals to form in front of his eyes. Even though the fire from the central hearth below tended to die out in the middle of the night, the heat was usually trapped up top with them. He’d never felt cold like this before, not in September.
He looked to his brother and sister, sleeping in their narrow beds, the hay stuffing askew beneath the woolen blankets. In the dim light they looked peaceful, sleeping soundly, though their breath also froze in the air. Thirty years from now, when the boy turned thirty-five, he wouldn’t have to worry about temperatures hurting him, but for now, he was shivering.
Not just from the chill.
Because there was someone else in the loft with them.
One minute there was nothing there, the next a shadow appeared in front of the lone narrow window.
The figure of a man.
A man without a head.
The boy opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out. Not even air. He could only stare wide-eyed at the headless figure blocking the light of the moon.
Yet, for all the raw terror that was pulsing through his body, there was also this heavy sense of grief and sadness. It radiated out from the headless figure like smoke and the boy could feel the grief sinking into his skin, altering him from the inside out.
Go away, the boy thought, and his words were shaking from fear in his own head. Go away, go away, go away.
The headless figure just stared. Even though he had no head, the boy could still feel eyes on him. It was like the figure was sizing him up.
Like he wants to take me to the Red World, the boy thought. Where I will be torn apart, limb from limb, and eaten alive.
But then the figure turned to the side and walked across the loft, making no sound on the wood floors, and started down the ladder toward the ground floor.
The boy watched, frozen in place, until the headless man disappeared below. Then he sprung out of bed and ran over to the edge, peering over to see the figure walk across the packed earth floor, past the bed where his father and mother were in a deep sleep, toward the door.
Something about the way the headless figure turned toward his father as he passed him, something about the way he moved, made that sick sense of despair return, a feeling so powerful that the boy nearly fell to his knees.
Yet, as he watched the headless man open the door and walk out into the night, the boy was quick to follow. He wasn’t fearless—that would mean he had no fear and he had that in spades—but he acted in spite of the fear. Brave would be a word for it, so would curiosity. Whatever he was, he scrambled down the ladder and ran after the man, out into the chilled night air.
Just in time for the headless man to step into a slice of moonlight and dissolve into a flock of ravens. The large black birds
The boy stood there, dumbfounded. How could the man just disappear like that? Turn into birds? Never mind the fact that he was missing a head. The boy knew the world held unexplainable, dangerous and strange things—his family included—and yet he’d never seen anything like this.
Never felt anything like it either.
The sorrow, grief, despair. It still clung to him like bonfire smoke.
“What is my nightwolf doing?” his father’s sleep-tired voice came from behind him.
Wolf felt another current of dread run through him at the sound of his father’s voice, though he couldn’t quite place why. Nothing so far was making any sense.
Wolf closed the door to the night and looked over at his father in bed with his mother, lit faintly by the dying embers of the hearth.
“I thought I heard something,” Wolf said, chin raised, not wanting his father to think he was scared.
But his father was intuitive. Wolf was brave, even when he wasn’t, and it was a cruel world, but he was only five years old. Still a little boy. His father adjusted himself in the bed, and gestured with a hearty wave of his arm for his youngest son to come over.
Wolf hesitated, wanting to be strong, then his age got the best of him. He scurried across the floor to the bed and got in between his parents. His mother was on her side, in deep sleep, but his father put his arm around Wolf and held him close, pulling the blanket over him.
“You sure you heard something?” his father asked him in a low voice. “Because I didn’t. And you know I can hear everything.”
Wolf nodded, swallowing hard. He couldn’t go back on his word now and say that he saw something rather than heard something.
It was probably all a dream anyway, Wolf thought. No one would dare come into this house with my father right here. My father is more powerful than anyone. He is a god. He can live forever. And one day, I’ll live forever too. No one will ever be able to hurt us.
“One day I’ll live forever,” Wolf found himself whispering as he fell asleep in his father’s arms. “Just like you. We’ll be together forever.”
“That’s right, my little nightwolf,” his father said, kissing his forehead. “Now get some sleep.”
The boy closed his eyes.
The world started to drift away.
But those feelings he had earlier, the ones of grief, sorrow, doom and despair?
They stayed.
The next morning, Wolf had a hard time remembering what brought him into his parents’ bed in the middle of the night. He chalked it up to a bad dream, and tried to explain away the depth of unwanted and scary feelings that rolled around inside him. Those same feelings of sadness and dread still lingered without cause.
Sensing this, as he sensed a lot of things normal humans couldn’t, Wolf’s father invited the boy out into the woods to pick mushrooms with him. This was usually something he did alone, so Wolf felt proud and important that he was chosen to go along, especially as Asmund and Eira were tasked with helping their mother harvest the garden.
Father and son set off towards the woods at the back of the house. They lived many miles from the nearest town and kept entirely to themselves, his parents only venturing to nearby settlements when they needed to feed, which wasn’t that often. There were no other houses near them in the narrow valley between alpine mountains, dotted with meadows, moss, and rows of tall, fragrant pine. It didn’t belong to them—nothing in nature did—but they used it as respectfully as possible. Wolf’s family felt they were as one with nature as any of the creatures that lived in the wild, no different than a bear or the deer that fed in the meadows.
As they walked through the woods, Wolf dragging the burlap sack for the mushrooms behind him, his father regaled him with stories. These were stories that Wolf had heard many times before, but he had always been with his siblings, gathered around the hearth. This was the first time he was the only one in the audience, and for that it felt like he was hearing them for the first time.
He listened, enraptured. His father told the tales with passion and reverence, a natural storyteller. He told Wolf about the Black Sunshine, a dark world he could visit when he was older, a safe and magical place where his elders would stay in the days of the relentless midnight sun. He told him about the evil king who lived in the arctic snow, surrounded by rivers of blood, a red world where the bad ones came from. He told him about how the creatures of the night, his brethren, came to be, drinking the blood of the living. These stories didn’t scare Wolf—and they weren’t meant to scare him. Blood was a part of their lives.
“First comes love,” his father would always say. “Then comes blood. For us, those are the two most important things in our long lives. You can’t survive without either one.”
But Wolf thought himself lucky. Though they lived far from town, a place he never went to, and though he’d only met a handful of people other than his family, he had all the love in the world. He would have the love of his father, of his mother, of his siblings, forever.
At least, that’s what he assumed.
His father had just finished telling a story about a family of bears that lived by the nearby river when suddenly the sun was blotted out from above.
Both father and son stopped walking in the woods and looked up to the sky that was peeking through the gaps in the tall pines. Ravens were flying overhead, masking the sun and settling on the branches of the trees. The big black birds peered down at them like curious gargoyles and Wolf thought of last night, how the headless man turned into them.
Suddenly he was very, very afraid.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” his father said, reaching out and grasping Wolf’s hand. “They’re just ravens. They’re like us. Misunderstood.”
But his voice wavered and from the way his father was standing, alert and listening, Wolf knew that for the first time ever his father was afraid too.
He stood there for a long moment, the fear strange and palpable.
“Wolf,” his father suddenly said in a harsh whisper. He squeezed his son’s hand and stared down at him with ferocity. “I need you to listen to me, carefully, okay? People are coming.”
Wolf blinked, not understanding. “What people?”
The ravens chattered above them, as if asking the same question.
“Men that mean to harm us,” he said quickly. He placed his hands on Wolf’s shoulders and held tight. “I can hear them even if you can’t. I can smell them. You need to hide.”
His parents had always told him that men were something to fear, especially the ones from the town. Their relationship with humans was complicated, they’d say. They needed people to survive, but in many ways the people were more dangerous.
“Why don’t we run away?” Wolf asked his father, his heart rate starting to rise. “You’re faster than the fastest deer. Faster than anyone.”
“Because I’m tired of running away,” he said gravely. “I’m tired of trying to keep these people away from my family. I need to stay, to face them. They’ll never leave us alone if I don’t. They don’t like what we are, Wolf, they’re afraid of us. Call us heathens. They call us murderers without even trying to understand why.”
“You don’t murder people,” Wolf said. “You hunt them.”
His face grew grim. “And one day you will too. We do it less and less and only to survive, no different than hunting the deer that live here. But humans will never understand, will never have to, will never want to. And they fear what they don’t understand. We will always be monsters to them, no matter what we do. They are more dangerous than us because they carry hate in their hearts, hate which corrupts and kills. Which is why this needs to stop. And you need to hide. Then, when it’s all over, I need you to run all the way back home and take your mother and brother and sister into the Black Sunshine with you. Your mother will know what to do.”
