Courage Runs Red Read online

  Courage Runs Red

  By W.J. May

  Book 1

  Of the

  Blood Red Series

  Copyright 2015 by W.J. May

  Courage Runs Red

  Copyright © 2015 by W. J. May

  Cover Art by Book Covers by Design

  Printed in the United States of America

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Thank you for your purchase, for comments, or to obtain further copies, please find us on the web at www.wanitamay.yolasite.com, on Face Book at Author WJ May, or contact the author direct at [email protected].

  Book Blurb:

  What if courage was your only option?

  When Kallie lands a college interview with the city’s new hot-shot police officer, she has no idea everything in her life is about to change. The detective is young, handsome and seems to have an unnatural ability to stop the increasing local crime rate. Detective Liam’s particular interest in Kallie sends her heart and head stumbling over each other.

  When a raging blood feud between vampires spills into her home, Kallie gets caught in the middle. Torn between love and family loyalty, she must find the courage to fight what she fears the most and possibly risk everything, even if it means dying for those she loves.

  Blood Red Series:

  FREE!

  Courage Runs Red

  The Night Watch

  Marked by Courage

  Book 4 – Forever Night

  Series

  Find W.J. May:

  Website: http://www.wanitamay.yolasite.com

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  Contents

  Blood Red Series:

  Find W.J. May:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Night Watch

  *BONUS*

  Excerpt of Seventh Mark

  Part 1

  Seventh Mark

  Chapter 1

  Seventh Mark

  Chapter 2

  Seventh Mark

  Chapter 3

  Blood Red Series:

  More by W.J. May

  Find W.J. May:

  Chapter 1

  One Dark and Stormy Night…

  Heavy rain battered against the windshield. The massive drops ricocheted like bullets against the roof of the car, and the wipers were losing their battle to keep the front window clear. A gust swiped against the side of the car. Kallie’s vise grip on the steering wheel still could not stop the slight swerve the wind forced the car to do.

  She had been driving already over a year, but just got her full license about two weeks ago. She knew how to drive, her dad owned a trucking company and had let her drive tow-motors and skid steers since she turned ten. Good driver or not, no one should be driving in this sudden storm. Her too-long bangs fell into her eyes and she tried futilely to blow them out. No way in hell was she taking a hand off the wheel to get them out of the way.

  Her dad sat sleeping in the passenger seat beside her, oblivious to the storm. One of his dispatchers had called in sick two days ago, and then yesterday a driver had come down with the same stomach virus. He’d covered the dispatch desk and then opted to right away take the transport truck’s freight delivery for the sick guy himself. He had gone and done the twelve-hour round trip drive with no rest. On top of all that, he still planned to be back in for work at seven tomorrow.

  When he got back to the office after parking the transport truck, he sent Kallie a text. She’d spoken to him earlier and had promised to pick him up since it was mom’s birthday and he always made her breakfast in bed – one of his specialties, omelettes.

  Kallie checked the time on the car’s digital clock, just after three thirty. When she had left forty minutes ago, dark clouds covered the full moon and night sky but it had barely been raining. The storm blew in about the same time her dad had fallen asleep beside her. She suspected he had picked up the virus his workers had, and she didn’t want to wake him.

  Another strong gust of wind slapped the side of her little car. The small Honda veered toward the curb and Kallie cringed as she drove through a massive puddle. The car hydroplaned and seemed unsure if it wanted to steer straight or spin. She let out the breath she had been holding when the wheels finally settled back on the asphalt.

  She flipped the defrost on high to try and clear the glare from the windshield. It didn’t work fast enough so she squinted to try and see clearer.

  “Weird,” she muttered. The haze came from outside, not from on the windows. Trying to see more than ten feet in front of her seemed next to impossible. She tried her high beams and quickly shut them off. They were useless. They just made the heavy rain look like shiny silver bullets and blocked any view through them.

  Her dad snorted loudly in his sleep and she glanced over at him. His head had fallen against the back of his seat and his mouth hung open slightly. She had no idea if he was wearing his seatbelt.

  A strange scratch against the outside of the car made her jump. It brought her focus quickly back to the road. A twig or limb must have blown down and scraped the car.

  It only added to her frustration. Kallie now strained to see if any tree branches or garbage cans might have blown onto the road.

  She huffed in frustration. They had to be close to their street now. Darn her folks for choosing to live just outside the city. Darn the city for not putting more lights on the long roads that led to her house.

  She accelerated a tad when she noticed the red mailbox on her right. Their street was about two minutes up the road. Easy peasy. Almost home.

  Less worried, she thought about her warm cozy bed and couldn’t wait to crawl under the covers and go back to sleep. Tomorrow was Saturday so no school. Maybe she should take her mom out to lunch.

  Lost slightly in thought, Kallie didn’t see the figure crossing the street until it was almost too late. The dummy wore a dark hooded top and no reflector stuff. “Shit!” Kallie swerved hard to the right and felt her dad’s side of the car go up on the curb. Puddles sprayed the underside and made an eerie, hollow banging noise against the bottom of the car. The concrete sidewalk was slippery and the car started to hydroplane again.

  She bit back a scream when the car stalled out and she lost
power steering. Pressing the brakes Kallie felt the car fishtail and almost as if in slow motion, she watched the stranger in the middle of the road stare at her with bright eyes. In the glare of her headlights, his eyes looked a weird red, like when you take a picture and the flash catches your retina.

  It was a strange thought at a terrifying moment like this.

  Still skidding, her focus back fully on the car, she tried pumping the gas and turning the key to get the car started again.

  This nightmare drive had no intention of ending. The car continued its spinning course. When the engine suddenly kicked back on, the Honda lurched forward and Kallie tried to swerve away from a parked car. The passenger front end clipped the parked car and as the steering wheel spun with a mind of its own, Kallie knew she’d lost complete control. They were going to flip. She was sure of it. She tried to brace her hands against the ceiling and screamed.

  Over and over she screamed; as they tipped, as her dad crashed against the windshield, as a horrible cracking sound filled the inside of the small car, as it picked up momentum from the small grade hill. Her screams were muffled when the air bag burst free from the steering wheel, but she continued her ear-splitting shriek through it all. She had no idea how many times the car rolled over and over. It felt like it would never stop.

  Abruptly, part of the front and side of the car slammed into a large hundred-year-old oak tree.

  Only then did her screaming stop.

  Everything around her crashed into blackness.

  Chapter 2

  Two years later…

  Kallie gripped the straps of her backpack as she jogged up the long set of concrete steps to the police station. She pulled her bag tight so it would not bounce against her back. With her luck, the loaner camera she got from her college photo class would flip on, or record itself jostling against her notebook or worse, have the battery die. Great first impression.

  At the top of the stairs she slowed to a walk and pulled her long blonde ponytail tight. How she landed an interview with this hot-shot rookie RCMP guy was newsworthy – probably more than the interview itself. This guy had managed to crack a bunch of unsolved murders and elude the press. She shook her head. Just a first-year college student who wanted to get into journalism, she hadn’t jumped through any hoops to get the interview.

  It had been quite easy actually. She found Detective Liam Steel’s email on the RCMP website and asked to interview him for her school paper. When his email address showed up in her inbox an hour later, she figured he was politely declining. Instead, he had agreed and asked what evening would work for her. Hands shaking with excitement, she replied and nearly misspelled the single sentence: Thursday night would be perfect. For once auto-correct worked in her favor.

  Now outside the doors to the police station, she checked her reflection in the glass with the remaining rays of the setting sun; hair in place, make up didn’t look smudged and her clothes were decent. She grabbed the long handle with one hand and at the same time slipped her iPod into the side of her backpack. Cool air blew against her as she stepped inside. The humidity made outside feel like a hundred degrees, and the smog from the city traffic didn’t help alleviate any of the hot thickness. The marble floor and constant run air conditioning inside the station made goose bumps appear on her arms. She shouldn’t have worn a tank top. At least her long striped skirt seemed to agree with whatever temperature man – or nature – threw at it.

  Even at night, the lobby bustled with activity. Men and women in uniform strode purposely down the hall or through doors while tired looking people paced or sat on red leather chairs. What or whom they were waiting for drew Kallie’s curiosity. Maybe they were waiting for their robbing son to finish his court case, or maybe they were the people who were robbed and were waiting to talk to a police officer.

  Someone’s watch beeped reminding Kallie she should have been here a bit earlier. She walked over to a reception line and stood by the “Wait To Be Called” sign.

  “Step forward, ma’am.”

  Did all police officers sound so formal? Kallie cleared her throat as she went to the receptionist whose bun seemed so tight the woman’s eyebrows were stuck halfway on her forehead. Kallie tried not to stare at them. “I’m here to see Detective Steel.” She cleared her throat a second time.

  Bun lady’s eyebrows shot up another notch. “Really? What for?” She clicked through a few screens on her computer. “Name?”

  “Kallie Matheson. I ha—”

  “I.D. please.” The receptionist cut her off.

  Kallie slipped a strap off her shoulder and unzipped her backpack. She pulled her wallet out and handed the woman her driver’s license. She covered the odd pair of scars on the bottom of her wrist with her free hand. They were faded but the pink jagged spots reminded her of drug needles. She wasn’t a druggy, she’d never tried anything stronger than ibuprofen, but people always commented on them. It made her uncomfortable and now at the police station, she seemed more aware of them.

  “Go down the hall all the way to the end. There’s a set of stairs. Third floor, go right to the very end, last door on the right is the detective’s office.” Oblivious to Kallie’s discomfort, the secretary handed Kallie her driver’s license back, along with a visitor’s badge. “Wear the pass so the officers can see it, don’t stuff it in your bag.”

  “Okay. So hall, stairs, third floor, right and right at the end.” She slipped the pass over her head and made sure her name lay face up. “Thank-you.” Even bitter-bun lady deserved a teeny bit of politeness. “Have a nice day.”

  She race-walked down the hall and jogged up the steps, repeating the direction pattern under her breath until she reached a wooden door containing a brass plaque with Dt. L. Steel on it.

  About to knock, butterflies had somehow managed to find their way into her stomach and throw a hip hop party. She wiped the palms of her hands against her skirt and took a deep breath. “It’s just an interview,” she muttered. Except what if her questions sucked? What if the guy didn’t have anything to say? He refused to talk to any of the big national papers so what if this was some kind of joke?

  Chuckling sounds distracted Kallie from her thoughts. A deep, slightly sexy-slightly muffled voice called from behind the door, “You coming in, or just going to stand there all night?”

  Kallie blinked and glanced above the door expecting a security camera staring down at her. Nothing there but cream-painted walls. Strange. She shrugged and reached for the doorknob, turning it. She stepped inside, the heavy door swinging shut behind her.

  The office had a musty smell. Four filing cabinets lined the side of the office with no windows, a large multi-angled desk seemed to take up the rest of the space. Three computers sat spaced across the desk, stacks of folders and papers covered the rest of it. Kallie knew it was the same color as the hard wood floor only because of the ornate carved legs. No pictures on the walls, only the window with a view of the city lights below.

  A guy not much older than Kallie stood by the table. He had one leg on the edge and was tying a grey sneaker. He wore baggy jeans, a sleeveless blue zip up jacket over a black tank top. Easy to see he worked out by the muscles covering his bare arms and cut shoulders. Short cropped dark hair continued down to the scruff of a five o’clock shadow. It gave him a sexy rough boy kind of look.

  He lifted his foot off the table and turned to smile at Kallie, his bright grey-blue eyes making her lose all train of thought. She’d pretty much forgotten everything when she noticed him, but those pretty eyes distracted her brain all over again. Something in the back of her mind flickered but she failed to chase after the thought when he spoke.

  “Hi.” He seemed amused by her staring.

  “Ha-Hello.” She forced herself to look away and pretended to concentrate on the desk. “I’ve got a meeting with Detective Steel.” Maybe he was the intern. Wouldn’t that be awesome.

  “Liam. Just Liam.”

  “Okay. Is that what he prefers to b
e called?” She wondered if she should get her notepad out to go over her questions.

  Cute boy smiled again. “He does.”

  Kallie slipped her backpack off and set it on the other end of the desk. “I’m Kallie.” She pulled out a notebook and the camera. “I’m supposed to interview Detective St—Liam. Is he here? Does he know I’m coming?”

  “He is. And he does.” The silly grin appeared again. “How old are you, Kallie?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “You just started college this year?”

  “Yeah.” She flipped her notepad open to the page she had written the list of questions on. She stared at the page, trying to focus on the questions and not the millions of others she was wondering about the good looking stranger in front of her. “Are you in school?”

  “Me?” He crossed his arms and leaned his bum against the table. Taut muscles rippled without trying on his upper body. “I’m one of the nerdy guys. Graduated high school at fifteen. Crazy, I know. I enrolled in the police academy that summer and joined the RCMP two years ago.” He pressed his lips together and forced air out of his nose. “Kinda found my way up the ranks.”

  Nerdy? Far from it. “Wow, how old are you?” She was willing to bet his story was way more interesting than Detective Steel’s.

  “Nine—sorry, I’m twenty-one.” He swallowed and paused, then glanced down at her hands. “Do you need to write any of this down?”

  “Uh, no. I’m good.” Twenty-one? He hardly looked older than she did. Smart young guy working as a cop already. Kallie straightened suddenly, her notepad slipping from her hands. It dropped to the floor with a resounding slap. “Wait a minute…You’re Detective Liam?”