Read more
Zusatztext "Expect Wicked! Twilight! and True Blood fans to gulp down this massive tome and grab for the sequel." -- Booklist ! September 2010 Informationen zum Autor Nancy Holder has published more than 200 short stories and seventy-eight books, including the New York Times bestselling Wicked series. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, and far too many animals. Visit her at Nancy Holder.com.Debbie Viguié is the author of the New York Times bestselling Wicked series and the Once Upon a Time novels Violet Eyes, Scarlet Moon, and Midnight Pearls. She lives in Florida with her husband, Scott. Visit her at DebbieViguie.com. Klappentext The authors of the "New York Times"-bestselling Wicked series deliver the first in a new trilogy--a darkly adventurous spin-off featuring vampires and those who hunt them. CHAPTER ONE For thousands of years the Cursed Ones hid in the shadows, fooling mankind into thinking they didn’t exist. Then one day they just . . . stopped. Skeptics turned into believers one fateful dawn. And no one was ever safe again. No one knows why they made themselves known. Why they chose a Valentine’s Day in the early twenty-first century to reveal their presence. Some say it had something to do with the end of the world. Others that they simply grew tired of hiding. I was twelve when Solomon, the leader of the vampires, first appeared on TV and lied through his fangs to all of us. Thirteen when the war broke out. Fifteen when the United States declared a truce . . . when, in reality, we surrendered, and the nightmare really began. Even after that, many of us couldn’t bring ourselves to actually say the word “vampire.” It was as if once we admitted it, then we’d have to believe in extraterrestrials or government conspiracies, too. Or in witches and werewolves . . . in anything and everything that could destroy us. Because we could be destroyed. We lost something so precious—our faith that eventually everything would be all right. Because it wasn’t all right . . . and few believed it ever would be again. So among those of us who swore not to abandon all hope, vampires came to be called the Cursed Ones. We learned that it was the name given to them long ago by those few groups who knew of their existence yet never shared the knowledge. But the vampires weren’t the cursed ones—we were. They had seduced us with their hypnotic smiles and talk of peaceful coexistence and immortality even as they had mounted a war against us. Then they sought to turn us into their slaves, and drink from rivers of our blood. I’m nearly eighteen now, and I have learned something about myself I might never have known, if I’d been able to live an ordinary life. But there is nothing ordinary about my life. Nothing. Including me. —from the diary of Jenn Leitner, discovered in the ashes THE VILLAGE OF CUEVAS, SPAIN TEAM SALAMANCA: JENN AND ANTONIO, SKYE AND HOLGAR, AND ERIKO AND JAMIE Barely sunset, and death exploded all around Jenn Leitner. It was a trap, she thought. The sky crackled with flames; oily smoke choked the air and burned her lungs. Jenn struggled not to cough, fearing that the sound would expose her. On her elbows and knees, her dark auburn hair loose and falling into her eyes, she crawled from beneath the red-tiled roof of the medieval church as it collapsed in a crash of orange sparks. Fragments of tile, stone, and burning wood ricocheted toward the blood-colored moon, plummeting back down to the earth like bombs. She dug in her elbows and pushed forward with the toes of her boots, grunting as a large, fiery chunk of wood landed on her back with a sizzle. She fought to stay silent as the pain seared through her. Biting her lip hard, she tasted coppe...
