The Night's Baby

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

Debuting her second novel with the Urban family, author Stina continues her sexy African American fantasy series. Follow Adirah as she navigates the dark underworld of vampires...

When she entered school at a recently integrated college in North Carolina, Adirah Messa was looking forward to a bright future. Then she met a man of another kind who turned her world upside down.

     After being turned into a blood-sucking being and then giving birth to a child fathered by the King of Vampires, Adirah thinks that life can’t get any stranger. But when her ancient past becomes a part of the present, she learns that her son has a destiny that is out of her control. With the eyes of very powerful and new enemies set on him, the only way to protect him is for old enemies to put their differences behind them. If the opposing vampire clans don’t come together as one, it could mean the end of their kind altogether.

     Fans of supernatural fiction will enjoy Stina’s creative storytelling in this tale of vampires, romance, power, and revenge in The Night’s Baby.

Release date: February 27, 2018

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

There was a loud thud as her feet hit the ground. Usually, she trained with her clan, but that day Calum needed to do it alone. Lately, her mind had been clouded, not with vengeance, but with disappointment. She was disappointed in herself. How could she have been defeated that easily? She was beaten by a mortal. Well, at the time, she was mortal. Stories in the wind had come back and told her that Adirah was now a turned vampire, which meant that she was even stronger than before. Calum knew that in order to beat her in battle she would have to train ten times as hard.

The Malums’ new home was a treat for the eyes. It had once belonged to a very wealthy man in Maryland before Talum turned him. Desperate times called for desperate measures and after the last battle everything, including their wealth, had been depleted. The man, Thomas Langstan, was the owner of a Fortune 500 tech company called Flago, a company in which Talum now had joint shares. The mansion was built on its own land in a forested area, and their neighbors were a good thirty-minute drive away. It was the perfect place for the Malum clan to recuperate and come back better and stronger than ever. The mansion had four floors. The basement had been completely redone and turned into sleeping quarters for them. Calum’s and Talum’s coffins, however, were of course in the master bedroom, a room that Thomas so graciously offered to his new king and queen.

The surrounding land had been turned into a training ground, and right then Calum was taking full advantage of it. Her senses heightened, and she sniffed the air before moving quickly to the side.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

She’d moved just in time because the place where she was just standing was riddled with sharp stakes. Her bionic senses kicked in, and she heard the automatic machine that spat the stakes wind up again in the distance. It had a motion sensor and, no matter where she went, it would find her. Her training objective was to get to the off switch. The only thing was the machine was far, and there would be many obstacles in her way trying to stop her.

“Go!” she said to herself.

The knowledge that the training course would cause real pain added enough fuel to her fire. She took a breath and ascended toward her target. The wind flapped her long, straight hair and the trees around her blurred.

Boom!

It sounded as if a rocket had been let off. It wasn’t a rocket, but the boulder being launched full force her way might as well have been.

“Ahh!”

Her battle cry sounded as she launched herself up in the air and used her right fist to punch the thick rock. Her hand didn’t go right through it like she wanted it to, but it did some damage. The boulder flew the other way, and she landed gracefully, ducking at the exact moment that another was thrown at her. She knew that, as long as she was standing in that spot on the simulation course, the rocks would not stop coming. Her body was agile as she fought her way through until, finally, she reached a clearing.

It was quiet, too quiet. The thing about the simulation course was that every time it was turned on, the courses would be different. Calum didn’t know what was next because last time the boulders were last. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she sensed that she was not alone. Something, or someone, was circling her, stalking her, and trying to get a feel for her movements. She sniffed the air to get a whiff of whatever it was, and her eyes got bigger.

Snap!

Before she could prepare herself, a full-grown tiger presented itself by leaping out on top of her. She used her strength to hold its snarling mouth from taking off a chunk of her face. The look in the tiger’s eyes was all too familiar to her.

Hunger.

She knew the tiger would do anything in its power to make her its prey. She was so busy keeping its mouth from inching closer to her that she forgot about its claws.

“Ah!” she cried in pain as she felt the claws swipe across her belly. The leather of her one-piece jumpsuit ripped easily, and so did her skin. She smelled her own blood and so did the tiger, because it bucked harder.

“Not today!”

Calum ignored the searing pain on her torso and gathered all her power to send the tiger flying to the side. She got to her feet and allowed herself to transform. She felt her muscles grow slightly and she brandished her fangs. The nails on her hands grew to weapons so sharp they could cut through the thickest of glass. She hissed at the tiger as she crouched into a battle position.

In front of her, the tiger changed to where it was no longer a tiger. She saw Adirah in front of her, and her heart rate quickened. There was no way she would allow her enemy to leave that place with a breath in her body. At the same time, the two launched full speed toward each other and crashed violently together. Neither one stumbled or backed down. Calum’s arms moved with skill and speed as she landed each and every attack until, finally, she had taken the advantage.

She had Adirah pinned down on the grassy plane, looking frail and helpless with several gashes in her body. The vein on her neck was exposed, and suddenly Calum remembered her wound. Without another thought, she clamped down on her victim’s throat and fed until she could no longer hear or feel a heartbeat. By the time she was done, the deep cuts on her stomach were completely healed, and it was like there was never anything there in the first place. Her entire face was covered in blood when she stood up. She smiled looking down at the dead tiger, pleased. She knew then how hard she would fight when she finally did see Adirah.

She heard a tiny whistle in the air, as if something was coming her way. Without turning around or moving, she put one hand up and caught in midair the stake going at least one hundred miles per hour. She’d grown tired of the course and was ready to end it, not complete it.

She grunted loudly as she spun and threw the long, thick wooden stake in the direction of the automatic weapon launching the deadly things her way in the first place. It took all of five seconds for her to hear the stake connect, followed by a big crash. She dusted her hands together, satisfied with herself, and made to go back to the mansion.

“That’s the third one you’ve broken in the past month. At first, I thought it was accidental. Now I see there was always a purpose.”

Calum looked up and smirked at the sight of her king. He’d stepped out from behind a tree in the distance. He too was wearing black fighting gear. His hair was newly cut, and he looked more handsome than ever. In a perfect world the two of them would have grown old together and had as many children as they could stand, but life had different plans for them. She was just happy that during her eternal hell she had someone who loved her as much as she did him to walk the path with her.

“You’ve gotten better at hiding your scent,” Calum told him, “even from me. How long have you been watching?”

“For hours. You fight with such diligence these days.”

“We cannot be defeated again, my love. We underestimated our enemies last time. That will never happen again. I almost lost you, and you me. That thought haunts my dreams every night. The Sefu must pay for these nightmares.”

Talum nodded and walked to where Calum was standing. The normally smooth cocoa skin around her mouth was still covered in blood, and her jet-black hair was badly disheveled. Still, he felt that there was no other as beautiful as his queen. He admired her for her drive. She was strong and could endure much pain. Like him, however, she could not take with defeat what came along. She was a strong vampire, the strongest female vamp he’d ever met. That was, until he saw what Adirah could do. He knew that was eating Calum alive inside, and that was why he made it his job to push her harder than she would push herself.

“How did you get a tiger into these lands?”

Talum could not help but smile at her question. She was so smart, never letting anything slip past her. “Thanks to our new recruit and business venture, we have enough money to do whatever we want.”

“How long did you starve it before deciding to use it in my training?”

“One week. Enough so that it would be hungrier than it had ever been, but not so hungry that it would be weak.”

Calum’s eyes went back to the dead beast, and she nodded in understanding. “Thank you, my king,” she said and took his hand in hers. She sucked the blood from her teeth and made a face. “Next time, make it a bear. I don’t think I’m too fond of tiger blood.”

“Anything for you, my queen.”

“Any news on the Sefu?”

As they walked through the forest and back to their home, Talum read between the lines of her question. “They are still in hiding, and that means that their king has not yet returned to them.”

“And our spy?”

“He has no news of the Sefu.”

“Then what use is he to us? Hasn’t he served his purpose?”

“No, he has not.” Talum kissed her hand. “Remember, he was the closest to Kesh. He knows him in ways that we never will. And now, he has the same distaste for his old king as I did when I first set off on my own. When the time comes, he will help me to destroy the Sefu once and for all.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Vampires like Tiev are powerful, but he is not a king. He seeks the protection of an umbrella. We will be that umbrella. Until he gives us what we want.”

“Watch him.”

“Ahh,” he said with a chuckle, “my vigilant Calum. We will not let him out of our sight.”

“And the baby?”

There seemed to be a shift in the air around them at the mention of Kesh and Adirah’s offspring. It was no secret that the entire vampire world, including the Sefu, felt a certain way about the fact that Kesh had had a child. They felt that the secret to reproduction was in his blood and, at first, Talum felt the same way. But the more he thought about it, the more he ruled that out. He, himself, had been turned by Kesh not only by a bite. He had actually drunk from Kesh’s blood, which meant he too had the same blood coursing through him. But he had not been able to reproduce, which meant that the key to having children did not lie in Kesh. It lay in Adirah. It had to. She was different, and she held the powers of vampires before she was even fully turned. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something special about her.

These were speculations that he often kept to himself, simply because he did not want to give Calum another reason to have hatred in her heart. He hated to see her on edge the way she had been. Although he was the one who started the war, he was beginning to tire of the destruction caused by it. By becoming a king, he had vowed to protect his clan; instead, he kept leading them down paths of destruction. And that was why when he found Kesh and his family, he vowed to make their deaths as quick as possible, and never go to war with another as long as he lived.

“This boy is a handful.” Adirah sat in the kitchen of their quaint home and stared, admiring her perfect little boy. The kinky curls all over his head, mixed with his dimples and wide, light brown eyes, made him the cutest little boy she’d ever seen. He was the perfect mixture of herself and Kesh, but he definitely had her eyes. They were the same eyes she shared with her mother.

He sat happily in his high chair clapping his hands and eating his baby food. Adis was the first of his kind: a day walker. He could still live off of regular food and go out in the sun without a special ring. However, he had a strength not normal of a baby, and he was developing faster. He learned how to walk when he was only eight months old, and he had a thirst for blood. That was the reason they were not able to take him out around animals; he would kill them and drink from them. Kesh told Adirah that it was something he would grow out of, because for him it was not something he would ever need unless he was weak. It was like an energy booster, because he would grow to be stronger than all of them without the need for blood.

“Just like his father already.” Kesh came from behind her with a grin.

At the sight of Kesh, Adis began to clap his hands harder and bounce in his chair. Kesh leaned down and kissed his little forehead before standing straight again and kissing Adirah’s lips.

“What’s for dinner?” Kesh joked and headed to the fridge that they kept in the garage.

When he returned with two fresh pouches of blood, he noticed that Adirah had taken Adis out of his high chair and gotten him all cleaned up already. She was making funny faces at him and making him giggle from deep in his belly. The love she held in her eyes for their son was so pure. She was barefoot and dressed casually in a baby blue blouse and a pair of jeans that hugged her newfound curves. She had a glow: not the vampire glow, but a different kind of glow that only motherhood could bring.

“Motherhood suits you,” Kesh said, setting the two pouches of blood on the tall, square kitchen table.

“Thank you, honey,” she said as she rocked Adis and listened to his coos. She could tell that he was sleepy by the way that he kept blinking his eyes and fidgeting in her arms. She knew that after a nice warm bath he would be knocked out. “I’m about to go and get him ready for bed. When I come back, we can pretend we’re trying to make another.”

She winked sexily at Kesh and made her way to the back of the one-story house. The house was a step up from what she was used to growing up, but she knew that it was something that Kesh had to get used to. The only good thing was that their backyard had a pond and many trees. Also, all of their neighbors were older folks who didn’t care to poke their noses in their business. Adirah tried to make their new normal life as seamless as possible, especially for Kesh. He was a king subjected to living like a peasant temporarily. She didn’t know how much longer they would have to live like that, but for the time being, she figured it was the safest thing for them.

With both the Malum and the Sefu clans at odds with them, she knew they couldn’t resurface until they were absolutely ready. Although she had defeated Calum, she was not battle ready. When she got involved with Kesh, she never really thought about what the title of being his queen would really entail. It wasn’t like the things she saw on the television. She wasn’t going to just be able to sit on a throne and look pretty with poise all day. Being Kesh’s queen meant leading an entire clan of people she knew almost nothing about. It also meant putting her life on the line for something that she didn’t understand. Still, whether she liked it or not, she would go to the end of the world and back for Kesh. The love she felt was like a fire that burned in her chest and, for him, she had already given up her soul.

“Come on, honey,” she said while she put Adis in his baby tub. “Let’s get all this food from underneath your fat chin. Ooooh, where did all these rolls come from, huh? When did you get so chunky!”

She let him splash the water around for a little bit before she cleaned him all up with her favorite lavender-scented baby soap. By the time she scooped him out of the tub, he wasn’t even able to hold his head up any longer. His head flopped on her shoulder and by the time she got him in his pajamas his tiny snores were filling the air. She laid him down in his crib and turned on the baby monitors, placing one on the nightstand and the other in her back pocket, before leaving the room.

Her hunger began to well up inside of her, and she couldn’t wait to get to the bag of blood waiting for her on the dinner table. She was sure that Kesh was done with his by now, but when she got back, she smiled. Kesh was sitting at the dinner table with a full bag in front of him. He’d waited for her, although she knew he was hungry too.

“Kesh, you could have eaten,” she said taking her seat. “You know I don’t like for my king to be hungry.”

“And I don’t like for my queen to eat by herself,” Kesh countered and nodded toward the pouch.

Adirah popped her pouch open and chuckled slightly. “You know when I was younger, my mother wouldn’t let us touch our food if we didn’t say our grace. I guess it doesn’t really matter now.”

Her smile was a sad one, as it always was when she thought of her mother. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her in over a year, and she really hoped that she was doing all right. Instead of letting her sad thoughts consume her, she dug into her pouch of blood. The craziest thi. . .