Blog Tour Excerpt: Blood Awakening by Jamie Manning

Winterhaven Books is very excited to be a part of the Blood Awakening Tour, the second book in the Blood Prophecy series. Jamie Manning was kind enough to share a special excerpt for our followers! Check it out! But that's not all!!! There is a special tour wide Giveaway as well! Don't forget to sign up for the Giveaway on the Rafflecoptor form. A special Thanks to Once Upon a Twilight for hosting this fab tour!  To see the other blogs participating in the tour click HERE.

Blood Awakening (Blood Prophecy, #2) by Jamie Manning
Publisher: Pendrell Publishing
Release Date: April 23, 2013
Amazon / B&N

Ava’s life went from bad to worse the night Chance became a vampire.

He won’t have anything to do with her. Ava understands why—because he blames her—but it doesn’t mean she likes it.

And it doesn’t help that she’s starting to feel something for Erik, the boy who once wanted her dead. Especially when Chance decides that he does still love her, and wants her to be with him for eternity.

Now she has a choice: Humanity…or forever as a vampire with Chance.

But Ava wants nothing more than to be human again. At least, she thought that was all she wanted.

Thankfully her best friend Kayla has a plan to distract Ava from her boy troubles, and they go in search of Kayla’s missing dad. A great idea, but one that brings Sebastian back into Ava’s life. Along with another, more sinister former member of his coven.

Sebastian and Zyris face off against Ava and her friends, resulting in Ava making yet another choice that changes the course of everyone’s lives, and leaves her wondering if being human again is really worth losing everything.

BLOOD AWAKENING Excerpt

I didn’t wait for Erik as I took off down the hall toward Kayla. If anything else happened to her because of me, something horrible…

“You mean, a vampire?” Erik asked, finally catching up to me. “Here?”

“Yeah,” I said, scanning the area for the undead interloper.

“Where? How?” He seemed as panicked as I felt.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Close.” I didn’t want Kayla or Lacey to panic—or know what was going on—so I focused my hearing to penetrate through the wall of the office. I could hear Kayla reciting words from her dad’s journal pages, while Lacey offered her usual off-handed commentary. They were fine.

“Oh God,” Erik said, bounding down a different hall to a door marked STAIRS.

His uncle.

I ran with him, both of us bounding up the stairs to the third floor. My senses were kicking into hyper-drive as we climbed; the intruding vampire was definitely on this floor. I grabbed Erik’s arm just before he opened the door leading back into the hall.

“Don’t,” I said, pulling him back. “Let me.” Without waiting for his argument, I moved around him and turned the handle. Once open, the putrid scent of death—and of fresh human blood—flooded my nostrils. “Erik,” I said, looking back at him.

“No,” he whispered, knowing what I couldn’t say. “No.”

“Stay here.” I placed a hand on his chest, his heart beating like mad beneath it. “Please.”

“No way in hell, Ava.” Fury swirled behind the deep blue of his eyes. Fury that couldn’t listen to reason. I knew he would follow me; there would be no stopping him. So I gave in and stepped out into the hall leading to his uncle’s home with Erik behind me.

The door leading to his apartment was already open a couple of inches, and I could hear movement inside. My body on high alert, I slowly pushed the door open, praying that it wouldn’t make a noise and alert our presence. Once it was fully open, I could see the path of destruction the vampire left in its wake. Everything in view was awry: overturned tables, ripped sofa cushions, papers and books strewn across the hardwood floors.

The vampire was searching for something.

Without looking, I reached behind me and grabbed a fistful of Erik’s shirt, pulling him closer to me. I forced my mind to ignore the scent of him, instead focusing on the danger ahead of us. I led us into the apartment slowly, afraid that at any moment we would be attacked.

But we never were. Through each room, around every corner, the place seemed empty. No sign of the vampire, no sign of Erik’s uncle. It was as though they’d vanished. The noise I’d heard when we first got here was gone as well, which meant one of two things: Either they were really gone, or Erik’s uncle was.

“Please stay here,” I whispered to Erik, my voice so low even I could barely hear it.

“NO,” he mouthed back, practically pushing me forward. I wanted to shake him and say “I can’t watch you and save your uncle, too,” but I didn’t. Instead, I kept walking through the apartment, the master bedroom the only room yet to be searched.

When we made it to the door, I turned to Erik. “Once I open this,” I whispered, pointing over my shoulder to the door behind me, “you stay back.” I could feel venom dripping from my veins, which had been exposed this entire time and I hadn’t even known it. Erik obviously understood that I was dead serious, because he didn’t protest, only nodded in agreement. Satisfied that I had finally gotten through to him, I flung open the door, ready to strike.

Once in the bedroom, all I saw was blood. Covering everything.

The walls were splattered with it, blotches of deep crimson spotting the almost-white wallpaper, the thick carpet, the olive green bedding. My stomach lurched with hunger at the overwhelming scent of it and I had to fight with everything human inside me to remain calm. Erik practically gasped from behind me and stepped to my side. I instinctively threw an arm out to stop him.

“No,” I whispered, pointing to the bathroom off to our left. I could hear noises coming from inside, sounds of pain and vengeance. I slowly moved away from Erik and headed in the direction of the half-open doorway, more blood caking the exposed tiles of the floor. As I was ready to lunge in and stop the monster responsible for the carnage, the door flew wide open and a blur of black teeming with the stench of death bolted from the room.

My body was thrown back against a large armoire, shattering the wood and sending my brain into stunning dizziness. I almost blacked out, but knew that I couldn’t if I expected to keep myself—and Erik and his uncle—alive. I jumped to my feet, ignoring the shooting pain running from my hips to my head, coming face to face with the vampire.

He was about my height, and most likely my weight too, by the looks of him, with wild eyes and super-pale skin. A set of bloody fangs hung in the open space of his mouth, and he smelled foul. Like, worse-than-undead foul. Even though I felt pretty evenly matched against him, I knew that he had just fed, and would be a lot stronger than me.

Not that that was gonna keep me from killing him.

I didn’t think, only reacted. I leaned over, shoved Erik through the doorway back into the hall, and leapt forward at the vampire. We fell back onto the bloodied bed with me on top of him, his arms around my back. I tried leaning forward so I could sink my fangs into his neck, but the squeeze hold he had on me was breathtaking. I could feel my ribs ready to cave under the pressure, my lungs nearing asphyxiation. If I didn’t do something, I would be dead soon—or very close to it.

I started shifting my body, thrashing like crazy from side to side, hoping to break free. I didn’t, but I did manage to move one leg from his side to in between his legs…which gave me the perfect advantage to show him what a Super Knee to the groin felt like. One thing I’d learned about vampires? It might be hard as hell to kill them, but they still felt pain.

His arms immediately fell from my sides and went to his crotch as he cried and yelled out. I didn’t waste any more time, falling onto his chest and piercing the vein running up his neck with my fangs. The taste was worse than awful, his undead blood turning my stomach. But I drank it anyway, sucking in even the tiniest bit of fuel it provided, just in case he had a friend waiting in the bathroom. The vampire’s hands clutched and clawed at my back and head, trying to pry my teeth from him, but it was a pointless effort. Within seconds, his arms went limp by his sides, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he stopped moving. I kept my fangs in his neck a few more seconds just to be sure I finished him off before climbing off the bed and heading toward the bathroom. I used the back of my hand to wipe blood from my lips before going inside.

Erik was already there, inside the waterless bathtub and cradling his uncle like he had Lila’s lifeless body the night she died. I fought back tears—and the mesmerizing scent of his uncle’s spilled blood—as I knelt down beside them.

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