Jennifer Armintrout - Queene Of Light

Blood Ties Book One: The Turning

“Every character is drawn in vivid detail, driving the action from point to point in a way that never lets up.”

—The Eternal Night

“[Armintrout’s] use of description varies between chilling, beautiful, and disturbing…[a] unique take on vampires.”

—The Romance Readers Connection

Blood Ties Book Two: Possession

“Armintrout continues her Blood Ties series with style and verve, taking the reader to a completely convincing but alien world where anything can—and does—happen.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

[four-star review]

“The relationships between the characters are complicated and layered in ways that many authors don’t bother with.”

—Vampire Genre

Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes

“Ashes to Ashes will stun readers with the twists and turns so artfully incorporated into this latest tale…. Not to be missed.”

—The Romance Readers Connection

“This series is one that only gets better.”

—Huntress Book Reviews

Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls’ Night

“The action will keep readers on the edge of their seats as the ongoing fight reaches its peak. Entertaining and often steamy romances run parallel to the supernatural action without dominating the pages. All Souls’ Night ends on a most unexpected, but thoroughly creative scene.”

—Darque Reviews

“Armintrout pulls out all the stops in her fourth and final Blood Ties book, skillfully setting up a climactic clash of good vs. evil. Along the way, familiar characters reappear and new ones are introduced, and all are uniformly detailed and interesting. As before, Carrie’s first-person viewpoint makes up the bulk of the narrative, adding much to a bloody good read.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

[four-star review]

A LIGHTWORLD/DARKWORLD NOVEL

To me, this book symbolizes a beautiful flower

that grew out of the rotting rib cage of a

murder victim abandoned in a shallow grave.

Thank you to everyone who made that weekend

such a horrible experience and forced me to

retreat into a fantasy world where a sewer

full of monsters offered more

hospitable company than yours.

Nice people and objects that made this book

possible were the Friday Night Mudslingers,

my supportive family, Diet Coke, and

Emmy Rossum’s Inside Out album.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

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

Acknowledgments

In the Darkworld, the filth made it difficult to fly. Faery wings were far too gossamer and fragile to withstand the moisture that dripped from the murky blackness overhead or the clinging grime that coated everything, even sentient things, that dared cross over the Darkworld border.

Ayla knelt in the mire, searching the mucky concrete ground for signs of her quarry. She’d had no problem tracking the Werewolf this far. The foolish creature did not even realize it was being followed, and her wings, not delicately made but leathery flaps of nearly Human skin, thick boned and heavy against her back, had given her the speed to keep up with him as he rampaged through the depths of the Darkworld. But they had made her too conspicuous. As she tracked the Wolf, something tracked her.

She heard it, lurking behind her. Whatever followed had wings, feathered, if she guessed correctly from the rustling that echoed through the tunnel like tiny thunder. Perhaps it thought she wouldn’t hear it. Or couldn’t.

The chill that raced up her spine had little to do with the gusts of cold air that blew through the tunnels. She knew the beast that followed her. She’d heard it spoken of in hushed tones in the Assassins’ Guild training rooms. It was a Death Angel.

The stories were too numerous to sort fact from fiction. Some claimed an Angel had the powers of the Vanished Gods. Some dismissed them as no more powerful than a Faery or Elf. And some insisted that to look upon one was death to any creature, mortal or Fae. Once, not long after Ayla had begun her formal Guild training, an Assassin was lost. His body was recovered, impaled upon his own sword, wings ripped from his back. She’d seen him, though Garret, her mentor, had tried to shield her. The marks on the Faery’s ashen flesh indicated he had not been cut, but torn, as if by large, clawed hands. The killing blow had come as a mercy.

Whatever the Death Angels were, they did not look kindly upon other immortal creatures.

The blood pounded in her veins as she forced herself to focus on resuming the trail of her Wolf. Pursued or not, she had an assignment to carry out. Until the Death Angel struck, she would ignore his presence.

Closing her eyes, Ayla called up the training she’d received. She reached out with her sightless senses. She could not smell the Wolf, not above the stench of the sewer. She could not hear it. The irritated buzz of her antennae, an involuntary reaction to the tension vibrating through her body, coupled with the rustling of the Death Angel’s wings in the shadows behind her, drowned out all other noise. She reached her hands out, feeling blindly across the pocked concrete of the tunnel wall. Deep gouges scored the surface, filled with fading rage. Her fingers brushed the residual energy and her mind lit up with a flare of red. The Wolf had passed this way.

Rising to her feet slowly, she traced the walls with her hands. Here was a splash of blood, blossoming with a neon-bright flare of pain behind her closed eyelids. Innocent, simple blood. There would be a body.

In a crouch, she moved through the tunnel, her arms low to the ground, trailing through the congealed filth there. Something dripped farther down the tunnel. It was audible, like a drop falling from a spigot to a full bucket. There was water ahead. Dirty water, no doubt contaminated by waste from the Human world above, and the Wolf’s victim would be there, as well; the despair and fear of its last moments tainted the air.

She followed the trail of blood and pain, the water rising to her knees, then to her waist. Something brushed her bare skin below the leather of her vest, and her eyes flew open. Floating beside her, split neck to groin, the empty skin of a rat. The Wolf had come this way to feed.

Summoning energy from her chest, she directed it into a ball in her palm. The orb flared bright, and she tossed it above her head to illuminate the space. To her left, another tunnel led deeper into the Darkworld. Another opened ahead of her. In the yolk of the three tunnels, hundreds of eviscerated rats bobbed in the stinking tide.

Rats. My life is forfeit for the sake of rats.

Wading through the sewage, she made her way to a low ledge. Another body waited there. The Werewolf, already twisted and stiff in death, caught between his Wolf and Human states. The grinning rictus of his Human mouth below his half-transformed snout gave testimony to the poison that had killed him before she could, and would have killed the rats if he’d not gotten to them first.