A big welcome today to Damian Serbu as part of his blog tour with IndiGo Marketing and Design for The Vampire’s Protegy from NineStar Press. Thanks, Damian, for sharing an exclusive excerpt!

He grabbed his Jack and Coke, stood beside the dance floor, and scanned the room for a delicious specimen, maybe for sex, maybe for dinner, maybe for both. One gorgeous twink attracted his attention right away.

His straight black hair hung down to his shoulders, his eyebrow piercing added a certain allure, and the tattoos of fire crawling up both his arms enticed Charon with their vibrant red and defiant attitude. He glanced at Charon with hazel eyes, smiled, then whirled around and continued dancing. When he turned back toward Charon, he smiled with thin but bright red lips.

He walked right up to Charon, his eyes twinkling, and jerked his head in greeting. “Jordan.”

Charon smiled and held out his hand, to formalize their meeting. “Charon.”

“Strange name. May I?” Jordan pointed to Charon’s drink on the table.

“By all means. Here, let me buy another round.” Charon moved them to the bar as he answered the comment about his name. “It’s C-h-a-r-o-n. Greek mythology. A long story. A little boring for tonight.”

“That’s cray-cray.” Jordan grinned and walked away while Charon ordered two more drinks.

He found the young man, probably just turned twenty-one or even here with a fake ID, alone in a more isolated part of the bar and handed his drink to him.

He held his glass up and tipped them together. “Cheers.”

“To what?” Jordan asked as he took a drink.

“Nothing in particular.”

Jordan nodded. “You’re totally slammin.”

Charon laughed. “I appreciate the compliment, though it’s a bit forward.”

“Well, actually, I should tell you something. See, I come here to work. Well, and play. Play a lot. Play is work, though. They’re the same. You catch my meaning?”

Charon grinned. “You’re a prostitute.”

Jordan shook his head. “Makes it sound nasty. Just another hoe. Or girly. But I give blow jobs and shit for money. Nothing dangerous.” Jordan reached into his pocket and held up a condom.

Charon reached over and patted the young man on the shoulder, swallowing his snide comment about how he could call himself whatever he wanted or dismiss the label of a prostitute, but a whore was a whore in Charon’s book.

“Very intelligent of you.” He tapped the condom. “I hate to end our association so quickly, but as you can see and pointed out—” He motioned up and down his body. “—I don’t exactly need to pay for it.”

Jordan held his hands up to Charon. “Wait. Wait. Don’t go. I’d do you for free.”

Charon squinted at him. “What’s your story?”

Jordan shrugged. “I said I’d do you, not go into therapy or share my life. That’s private.”

“So you’re homeless.”

Jordan took a big drink. “Maybe.” He emptied his glass. “We doing this or not? Cuz otherwise I got work to do.”

Charon downed his drink, too. “Where to?”

Jordan smiled, the wide grin reaching all the way to his eyes. “Follow me.”

Jordan led Charon outside and around the back of the bar, down an alley and then stopped in a darkened, isolated spot. Charon almost commented on the danger of it, but why did he feel protective of this one, and what good would his words do, anyway? Instead, he reached over, lifted Jordan’s chin, and kissed him hard on the lips.

They fell into a deep kiss, a long and affectionate one, surprising Charon who usually kissed merely as a means to getting on to bigger and better things. He soon unbuttoned Jordan’s shirt and bit a nipple. Oh, how he wanted to reveal his fangs and bite harder, to taste the delectable blood, but not yet. No.

Casually Charon turned Jordan so he faced the wall, with both hands on it to hold himself up. Charon reached around and undid Jordan’s belt, then slid his pants and underwear down. Jordan pushed his tight shaven ass out toward Charon, who jabbed his tongue into it and swished it all over.

Unable to control himself any longer, he stood up and pulled out his own cock, then paused and actually put the condom on when Jordan whispered the request. No disease could infect a vampire, nor could he transmit something to a human, but why argue and ruin the moment? Leisurely inserting himself into the pink hole, Charon closed his eyes and lost himself in the sheer pleasure of the moment. God, that felt good.

Maybe the time off from sex or interaction heightened Charon’s sensitivity, or maybe the sexiness of this homeless youth captivated him, but it took about ten or eleven thrusts, even with the condom, and Charon shot his wad long and hard.

He pushed farther into Jordan, then grabbed the guy’s hard penis and stroked him to completion while licking his ear and neck. Again for unknown reasons, Charon decided to resist the urge to bite into him and taste the luscious blood.

“That was righteous.” Charon finally pushed away and started to dress himself.

“Totally. Swag.” Jordan dressed quickly. “Well, no time for long goodbyes or anything. Thanks for the ass grind.”

Jordan pretended to tip a hat from his head as he sauntered down the alley and back toward the bar.

Sated for the time being, Charon turned toward his castle, walking through Denver because he wanted to take a night off before delving into the matter of furniture. Except that he passed a house with a kick-ass lamp in the window. Tiffany, or at least a replica, with blue and purple stained glass, dragonflies separating the various panels, and a brass butterfly on the base. He peered around, spotted no one, thought of his lesson with Styx but found no security system, so he walked right up to the window, smashed it, grabbed the lamp, and ran away with vampiric speed before anyone could see him.

Charon spent the next couple weeks, up until St. Patrick’s Day, stealing, buying, and otherwise acquiring all the furniture he wanted for his mountain palace. He walked through the entire place, from room to room, even the ones he kept empty, then grabbed yet another bottle of wine, this time a splendid Chardonnay from Arista Winery, and poured himself a glass while sitting in his formal living room. He stayed in his cave-turned-castle on this night, contemplating his next move, when the thought of Jordan pounded into his head. He got hard, remembering the bubble butt, then came upon an idea to solve the one thing missing from his domain. He needed servants.

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!