Turned Read online

  EARLY PRAISE

  FOR THE BELLADONNA AGENCY SERIES

  “If you’re looking for a hot, sexy, emotional read, Virna DePaul delivers!”

  —J. KENNER, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Release Me

  “Virna DePaul creates yummy alpha heroes, relatable heroines, and supercharged emotional plots. Run, don’t walk, to snatch up one of her stories.”

  —New York Times bestselling author TINA FOLSOM

  “A captivating start to a fascinating new series with a hero who’s to die for!”

  —Nationally bestselling author RHYANNON BYRD

  “Turned is intense, intricate, and insomnia-inducing (plan to stay up way too late!). Virna DePaul puts the awesome in the awesomesauce of paranormal romance.”

  —Joyce Lamb, curator, USA Today’s Happy Ever After

  “The chemistry between the two was great and made for some very sexy scenes.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “This book has everything you could want and so, so much more!”

  —Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews

  “Turned is an intriguing story with flawed characters who I connected with immediately. Fans of paranormal romance rejoice, here’s a compelling new series to sink your teeth into.”

  —Harlequin Junkie

  PRAISE FOR VIRNA DEPAUL

  “Seducer and protector—this vampire has it all.”

  —Fresh Fiction, on A Vampire’s Salvation

  “Virna DePaul is amazing!”

  —New York Times bestselling author LORI FOSTER

  “Incredibly well written, different, and hot.”

  —New York Times bestselling author LARISSA IONE

  “A gripping tale! DePaul creates the perfect blend of danger, intrigue, and romance. You won’t be able to put this book down!”

  —New York Times bestseller BRENDA NOVAK

  “If you have not yet started this [Para-Ops] series … you are really missing out.”

  —The Book Reading Gals

  “This is my first book by Virna DePaul and it will definitely not be my last. Deadly Charade is a suspenseful story full of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.”

  —Fresh Fiction, on Deadly Charade

  “Intense, emotionally charged, and thrilling.”

  —Fresh Fiction, on Shades of Desire

  “DePaul’s romantic suspense has shades of a thriller inside the pages, with damaged characters, love scenes that make the pages almost too hot to handle and hair-raising villains.”

  —RT Book Reviews, on Shades of Desire

  “Plenty of chemistry between the leads—along with edge-of-your-seat suspense—will keep you riveted.”

  —RT Book Reviews, on Shades of Passion

  “DePaul offers up an intriguing world rife with moral dilemmas and mistrust.”

  —Publishers Weekly, on Chosen by Blood

  “Seriously sensual! The sexual tension leaps off the page. DePaul has made a name for herself with paranormal fans who aren’t shy when it comes to titillating dialogue and interaction.”

  —RT Book Reviews, on Chosen by Blood

  Turned is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Bantam Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Virna DePaul

  Excerpt from Awakened by Virna DePaul copyright © 2014 by Virna DePaul

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Awakened by Virna DePaul. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  ISBN 978-0-345-54245-8

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54246-5

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover photograph © Claudio Marinesco

  Bantam Books mass market edition: April 2014

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part 1: The Job Offer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part 2: The Team

  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

  Part 3: The Mission

  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

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Awakened

  PROLOGUE

  He woke to the ugly whine of a power tool.

  Bright lights and shadowy figures hovered above him. His body seemed paralyzed. His mind numb. Caught in that ethereal place between dream and reality.

  Still, there was the faintest feeling of unease.

  Mental pictures of being with three others—his sister Naomi, Peter Lancaster, and Ben Porter. They’d been on their way to see a movie after work and had been stopped by a group of men. Men who’d turned on them.

  Bit them.

  Killed them …

  The sound of the power tool—was it a saw?—grew louder. Sinister.

  A scream echoed in the distance, followed by broken pleas for mercy.

  So he wasn’t dreaming but rather having a nightmare.

  No matter. He’d lived with plenty of those, too. It would end soon, though he had to admit—this one seemed particularly brutal.

  “He’s coming to,” a distant voice murmured, but Ty’s vision remained blurred. “Should we keep going?”

  Another voice answered, but it was muffled. Unclear. Even though Ty couldn’t decipher the words spoken, he heard the authority behind them.

  Then it happened …

  Numbness fled. He felt again.

  He hurt. More than he’d ever thought possible.

  Was he sick? Had he been in an accident? Was that why he kept imagining Naomi screaming and covered in blood? Not just her blood, but his, too.

  That must be it, he thought desperately.

  He was in the hospital, maybe even in an operating room. They thought they’d given him enough to put him under, but they hadn’t. Given how heavily he slept, it was ironic that it took a boatload of drugs to put him out for any length of time; he’d woken up during medical procedures too many times to count.

  Pain radiated throughout his body. He was made of agony—excruciating, white-hot misery. It wasn’t just his hollow stomach and aching gums and parched throat. His bones were wickedly sharp knives piercing his organs and sawing through his skin. And just when he thought the pain had reached its peak, someone—or something—poked him or cut him or ripped at him, proving he was wrong and making him scream even as he prayed for death.

  Help me, he thought. They don’t know I’m awake but I am. Can’t they see my eyes are open? Can’t they hear my screams?

  But as more and more time passed, he realized they could hear his screams. And they didn’t care.

  He wasn’t dreaming.

  He wasn’t in a hospital being operated on.

  He was a prisoner. And saving him was the last thing his captors were interested in.

  So, unfortunately, was killing him.

  Special Agent Ty Duncan’s eyes flew open just as a shrill ringing pierced his eardrums. Blinking wildly, he took several seconds to realize the sound wasn’t coming from a surgical saw. Nor was it the pitiful screeches of men and women in agonizing pain. It was his phone.

  His fucking phone.

  But the nightmare—no, the memories of his captivity—had left him trembling and sweating, gasping for air, barely able to move. His heart slammed against his chest so hard he felt bruised and his stomach roiled with nausea.

  It was as if his caller knew what he was going through because the phone just kept ringing.

  Ring. Ring. Ring.

  When Ty could finally breathe and move again, he picked up his cell. “I’m here.”

  “Surveillance is a go,” his new boss, Carly, stated. “We’ve set you up next door with all the equipment you’ll need. You fly to Seattle tonight. You ready?”

  “I’ve been ready,” he pointed out, his gaze automatically drifting to the open files scattered around the room. He didn’t need to see her pict
ure to visualize his mark’s face.

  Eliana Garcia, aka Ana Martin.

  Former Primos Sangre gang member. Sister to Gloria.

  A female with long glossy dark hair and large dark eyes, her beauty straddling the line between ingenue and seductress, tempting a man to alternately protect and challenge her even as the ugly scar on her face warned him not to try.

  The woman who just might be able to get them where they needed to go.

  Soon he’d have more than her photographs to look at. He’d meet her. Talk with her.

  He’d do whatever it took to bring her in.

  He’d do his job.

  It was all he had left thanks to the vampires who had captured and tortured him.

  It was all he had left now that he was no longer human himself.

  After a few more perfunctory instructions from Carly, Ty ended the call. Then he couldn’t help it. He’d memorized Ana’s face but …

  He found his favorite photograph of her, the one in which she was almost smiling. The promise of that smile was as intoxicating as it was frustrating. Next to seeing her smile outright, there were only two things he wanted more.

  To fuck her. Hard.

  And to drink her blood while he was doing it.

  He slapped the photograph facedown on the table. He was shaking. Shaking with need for a woman he’d never even met. A woman whose past should have repelled him. Instead, he’d been inexplicably drawn to her since the moment he’d first seen her photograph, and now that he’d gotten the green light to go to her, the dark images from his nightmare had been replaced with unshakeable fantasies of taking her and sucking her blood.

  It wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t feed from her. Couldn’t fuck her.

  No, it was more than that—he wouldn’t.

  Six months ago, he’d been turned into a vampire. Afterward he’d been tortured. First by the vampires who seemed determined to test his immortality and his tolerance to pain. Second by his own body. Anytime his captors left him alone, he’d craved blood and sex. Lusting after them to the point where it was all he could think of. All he was interested in. Eventually, his overwhelming hunger had waned. Now he had a strict abstinence policy. No human blood. No sex other than with his own fist. It was the only way to be sure he wouldn’t sink to the depths he had before.

  If only he knew more about being a vampire. How to be a vampire. How to stop being one. All he knew was what the FBI had told him.

  Vampires were born. They breathed and they had heartbeats. They very much lived, but they lived in secret, interacting with most humans without giving away what they really were. When they’d been discovered years before, vampire leaders had assured the FBI they were no threat. While they drank human blood, they only drank from a small group of humans who knew what they were and whose ancestors had volunteered for the job for centuries. Moreover, turning humans into vampires, while technically possible, was forbidden as a matter of vampire law and morality. In the end, the FBI had decided it was in everyone’s best interests to keep the existence of vampires a secret.

  The FBI, however, was also keeping its own secrets from vampire leaders, the major one being that it had disregarded vampire law by employing several vampires—now labeled “Rogues”—to turn human recruits.

  Well, surprise, surprise. Even as the Rogues had been turning human recruits in exchange for FBI favors, they’d been running their own operations behind the scenes. Maybe the FBI had suspected as much. Maybe they’d been willing to turn a blind eye to minor infractions. But after Ty, Peter, and Ben had been captured and turned, the FBI had gone into damage-control mode. No more human recruits would be turned—not until the Rogues were contained. Failing to do so would not only put the whole operation at risk, but might alert the general human population about vampires before the U.S. government was ready for that to happen.

  That’s where Ty came in.

  He was still a special agent with the FBI. Granted, he was being hidden away like a dirty secret, but he was an undeniable asset. Like the born vampires, Ty could move as fast as a cheetah. And like the born vampires, he was unable to tell a lie. But the animal blood that weakened born vampires was more than enough to sustain Ty, and he could survive brief contact with the sun while born vampires burned instantly upon direct contact. On the flip side, he could only occasionally read minds, while born vampires could easily and consistently do so.

  Now he had one immediate task—recruit Ana Martin for Belladonna, an off-the-books agency formed by Assistant FBI Director Rick Hallifax. So off the books that the only people who knew it existed were Hallifax, his right-hand man, Special Agent Kyle Mahone, Peter, and Carly, Ty’s boss.

  If things worked out the way they wanted, soon she’d be Ana’s boss, too.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Seattle, Washington

  A few weeks later …

  Back in the Bronx, Eliana Maria Garcia’s weapons of choice had been a smart mouth, the occasional threat of a knife, and her fists. Now, standing with her back pressed against the brick wall behind Monk’s Café, Ana Martin had something even better—a gun. One she was hoping she wouldn’t have to use.

  Confronting the man who’d been following her, however, was unavoidable. She’d noticed him at the bank yesterday, then the market. But last night she’d seen him outside her house. And moments before? Across the street.

  That was one coincidence too many. She’d left Primos Sangre over seven years ago, but if there was one thing the gang had taught her, it was that survival meant confronting danger head-on rather than running from it. Since she didn’t trust the cops—didn’t trust anyone—her only choice was to handle this herself. Her way.

  If only she wasn’t so scared. But she’d put her old life behind her, and even though she wasn’t happy—could never be happy without her sister—she was often content. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror she even managed to like the person she saw looking back at her. The thought of losing that scared her more than any threat of physical harm ever could. And it scared her enough that she was willing to fight to make sure it didn’t happen.

  The sun had set long ago. Now and then a stab of light from a passing car pierced the shadows of the alley where Ana was hiding, forcing her to dodge back. Invisible, shrouded in darkness, she waited. When she heard footsteps, she knew it was him.

  Forcing her near-numb fingers to tighten their grip on the gun, she watched as he walked past her, then made her move, coming at him from behind, pressing the barrel of her gun against the back of his head.

  He didn’t even jerk.

  From the back, he looked big. Broad. Muscles rippling. Dangerous.

  But from the front? Even from a distance, he’d looked more than dangerous. He’d looked deadly. Beyond handsome. Midnight hair and eyes just as dark. Savage and sophisticated at the same time. She’d never seen his equal. Certainly never met anyone that came close.

  Part of her knew she’d gotten the drop on him a bit too easily. That perhaps she was doing exactly what he’d been expecting. Hoping.

  But it was too late to go back now.

  “Hands where I can see them,” she managed to get out.

  Slowly, he raised his hands in surrender. Only she still wasn’t buying it. Her nerves screamed at her to run, but logic kept her feet planted firmly on the ground. Somehow, she knew if she ran, he’d only come after her.

  “Why are you following me?”

  No answer. No surprise.

  With her free hand, she patted him down, the way she’d learned to do in the gang. By the time she’d frisked him from the back, she was the one who was sweating. And not from exertion.

  Nothing about him was small. He was tall and buff, more than big enough to overpower her slight frame. Sangre-style paranoia set in, and it occurred to her that this guy might be undercover. She instantly recalled the run-ins she’d had with cops as a teenager. The way they’d often pulled her long dark ponytail, hard enough to make her back arch and breasts lift. The way they’d sometimes copped a feel or implied they’d leave her in peace if she made it worth their while. She’d never given them that satisfaction.

  But no, she decided. This guy’s vibe was just too different. Not so much cop as outlaw.

  His entire body was contoured with interesting ridges and bulges and planes. This close she could smell him, a subtle spicy scent that managed to convey unabashed maleness and warmth despite what seemed to be a rather low body temperature. The man held himself in control. Unlike her. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the rush of heat to her cheeks and moved faster to disguise the telltale trembling of her hands.