Title:  The Vampire’s Protege

Series: From the Vampire’s Angel universe

Author: Damian Serbu

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: August 21

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: No Romance

Length: 99600

Genre: Horror, paranormal, abduction, action, blood and gore, cisgender, contemporary, crime, dark, death, gay, paranormal, vampires

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Synopsis

A sinister vampire offers Charon a choice he can’t refuse: play a deadly game of winner takes all, losers die.

Charon relishes the competition and molds himself into a sexy vampire who defies vampire law, savoring his power and embracing the role of villain. He also loves surrounding himself with hot young men. But when an alluring vampire stalks him and threatens to turn him into the Vampire Council unless he helps with a seemingly impossible task, will Charon risk his perfectly narcissistic life on the challenge? Does he have any other choice?

Excerpt

The Vampire’s Protege
Damian Serbu © 2017
All Rights Reserved

Prologue

Introducing Charon

Everyone thinks they adore the Vampire Council with its rules and regulations that allegedly govern all vampires and thereby ensure the safety of virtuous humans. People want to lose themselves in the tales of the Council members: Xavier and Thomas and their love; Anthony and Jaret and their guarding of humanity; Catherine and Harriet and their whims within a righteous vampiric empire. Most of all, the Vampire Ethic provides comfort with its guarantee that goodness protects an individual from a vampire attack, with its promise that all vampires defend innocence.

Vampires accept this reality because it gives them a collective soul. The ethic protects them from the stereotype of evil incarnate preying upon humanity. Or, in the least, obedience to it keeps them alive, lest the Council hunt them down and murder them for transgressions against it.

Humans desire the Council’s laws to maintain their fantasy of security from the supernatural realms. Who would dismiss a hidden force of vampire police that might swoop in at any sign of danger and annihilate the perpetrator?

Yet deep inside, so many long for something different, something that avoids this utopian trope and perfect world, all tied up in a pretty bow. Part of everyone, that piece so desperately stamped down and derided, seeks an alternative story.

To be sure, many will deny it. Fight against these words and honorably cast them out as the devil’s temptations. Yet no proof of Satan or such demonic forces presents itself. Because even those thoughts really stem from the inner being in everyone, that secretly locked-up atom inside a person that pines for freedom and seeks release, even as the goodness scolds it.

Still people contest these words. Deny them.

Yet a fascination with villains thrives in America. Think of the great antiheroes of history and their legendary fame. The Wicked Witch of the West. Darth Vader. Hannibal Lecter. The Joker. The infamy of historic figures such as Adolf Hitler or Ted Bundy or the Son of Sam. The people who don the costumes at Halloween of Lord Voldemort, Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler because it empowers them for a night with beautiful wickedness. People laugh at Scar, Ursula, and even Mr. Potter. They read the tales of Lex Luther and Cujo, privately wishing they would eventually triumph over the heroes of the story and bring a bit of destruction to the globe.

Jack the Ripper lives through the ages because he successfully hid himself, true. But also because his perfect malevolence went unpunished. People want that for themselves. His legend draws them back again and again to that story with the hope of their own misdeeds going unchallenged.

Thus, whether admitted or not, people long to meet Charon. Yes, so many cry out for Charon and his story. People want him. Readers desire him, need him, really. The world will have no choice but to love him. All will embrace him as they have these other villains of history. They will celebrate his perfect treachery.

Unlike those obedient to the Vampire Council, Charon hardly worries about a bit of notoriety from time to time. Fear of retribution never enters his vocabulary. He need not concern himself with the Vampire Council and its regulations. Nor does Charon often fret over any other person or entity cracking down on his masterful empire.

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Meet the Author

Damian Serbu lives in the Chicago area with his husband and two dogs, Akasha and Chewbacca. The dogs control his life, tell him what to write, and threaten to eat him in the middle of the night if he disobeys. He previously authored several novels now out of print, and is excited to reignite his writing with Ninestar Press!

Guest Post

Besides writing, what are you passionate about?

I am most passionate about my family and friends.  Nothing is more important to me than to spend quality time with all of them.  Because I am pretty introverted and shy, I tend to want to do this with intimate one on one time or in just a smaller group.  It starts with Paul, my husband, and making sure that we have at least a short amount of quality time together every day.  I have to be more deliberate with my family and Paul’s family, because they all live out of state from us.  While we don’t see them as often, we make sure to schedule time together, and while that’s happening to totally immerse in it.  And I want to do the same thing with friends, whether they live around us in Chicago or far away.  I am very loyal, even if I may not see someone for a while, I feel deeply attached to them and love to get together and pick up wherever we left off.

Another passion is for my dogs.  Actually, I group them with the above, as part of my family.  I have had seven over my life, and each and everyone of them meant the world to me.  My parents got me a dog when I was three, and I’ve had one ever since.  I can’t even begin to put into words how much they’ve meant to me over my lifetime, how much their presence has nourished and protected me.  Paul and I treat them like our kids.  Nothing brightens any day, regardless of the circumstances, more than spending time with them.  Sometimes it’s just their quiet presence.  Like right now, Akasha and Chewbacca are taking naps just outside my office door in the hallway.  They sleep there because it’s carpeted, unlike the office, but right where we can see each other. It’s incredibly comforting.

As for hobby type passions, I love watching professional sports, and am an avid Cleveland fan.  I have season tickets to the Cleveland Browns and still travel back for every game, even though we live six hours away in Chicago.  And I get all the sports packages on TV, so I can watch the Browns, Cavaliers, and Indians all the time.  My entire basement is a Cleveland sports room, and most of my friends thing that I’m absolutely nuts when they see it.  Thankfully, Paul indulges me.  I felt like life was finally complete when the Cavaliers won the championship in 2016.  I really thought that I would never see a Cleveland championship in my life!  But I still watch my teams, and my goal is to live in the moment, to escape the world for that bit of time, and only worry about the play on the court or field.  This sports fandom for Cleveland comes from my mom’s side of the family.  It started with my grandfather, who grew up in Akron, and moved through my uncles and mom to me.  SO in many ways it connects back to my first item, about friends and family.

What else?  I jog. I LOVE to read – fiction, nonfiction, anything.  I read the New York Times. I read to learn, to escape – because reading so fulfills my life and ignites my brain.  I’m also a pretty big Star Wars fan.  I think that I learned everything I ever needed to know growing up, from Star Wars.  Actually, in almost everything that I do, I bring an intense passion.  So I am not as diversified as some people in what I do or enjoy doing, because I put so much energy and love into the few things that I do!

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8/21    Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 

8/21    Outrageous Heroes of Romance

8/22    Shari Sakurai 

8/22    MM Good Book Reviews

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8/24    love bytes reviews

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8/25    The Novel Approach

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