Bound through Blood is available for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Through-Blood-Alexis-Kennedy/dp/0615942202/

Amazon description: When Devin lost his true love to the 18th century witch trials, he thought he’d lost his only chance at ever having love and a mortal life again forever. But then the vampire tastes his true love’s blood in another—her tenth generation great-granddaughter. Now, suddenly, that life is possible again, but only if he can convince Salena Saunders of their destiny. Fighting against the forces who want to protect her and the men who want to have her— including his own long-lost vampire brother, Gabriel— Devin struggles to get close enough to prove his love and intentions to Salena while protecting her from Gabriel and her own superstitions. Salena Saunders works as a tour guide in a New Orleans historical home—unraveling the past for tourists—when her own past begins to haunt her and mythical stories actually come to life right before her eyes. For the first time ever, she seeks guidance from fortunetellers and voodoo priestesses for answers—ones that both promise to shock her and guide her to true love and her destiny. Beyond the realm of mythical creatures and superstitions, as well as her very own cultural surroundings, Salena must come to terms with being Bound Through Blood.

Excerpt: Devin kept pace with the women; he’d been watching and following Salena all day. It had taken some time to locate her, but he’d finally found her scent when he flew, as a black hawk, over the French Quarter. She had been walking out of a voodoo shop, with a look of deep concern on her beautiful face, when he caught her scent. It was her unmistakable alluring fragrance of honeysuckle and lavender.

At the café, he’d heard the woman address her as “Salena.” What a pretty name. Noticing the talisman the old woman wore, he figured she must be a Gypsy. He’d overheard their entire conversation at the café; it was a good thing the wait staff hadn’t noticed a black cat lying around in their pristine establishment. Now, perched on the windowsill of the Gypsy’s cottage, he listened attentively. He wanted insight to all of this as well.

As soon as the front door closed, Heloise bustled into the other room to get her deck of cards. Then she spread them out on the coffee table and told Salena to choose three. Salena did as she was instructed, although she was still not sure what she expected to accomplish here. She was looking for answers, though, regardless if they were logical or not.

Heloise flipped the first card, which she reminded Salena, represents the past. “Death.”

Salena gasped at the word.

“Don’t worry, child, it is not necessarily about you or anyone dying. Let’s see what the second card is before we determine the meaning of the first.” Heloise flipped the second card, “Fool,” she said, looking back at the first. “Hmm, let’s see the last card.” Her withered hand flipped over the final card. “Tower.” She looked at all three cards, then at Salena’s concerned and curious face. “You must come to terms with something from the past because it is in your present. Not is all that it seems to be, and in the future, you are going to find out that some of your core beliefs are false. Salena, you will have to open up your mind to accept what was, what it is now, and what it is destined to become. I see danger in your life now, and it has something to do with the past. We must look at what happened long ago.” With that, she left Salena, bewildered, and headed into another room of the small house.

Salena sat there, thinking about the woman from the voodoo shop and her “vision.” The tarot reading, not that she believed in this stuff—well not before today anyway—sounded very similar. So what does that mean?

Heloise returned to the living room with a very dusty and old book in her hands and a look of apprehension on her wrinkled, but wise, face. “This is a diary that belonged to my great-great-great-great-great, I think, grandmother who died right here in Louisiana in 1724. I remember, from my young adult years, reading about some horrifying events during my grandmother’s life in the colony. I’m afraid that, if I’m right, my child, the devil himself has come back and set his sights on you.”

Shocked, Salena jumped up from the sofa and paced the small room, trying to assess what that could mean. Heloise was thumbing through the book, and Salena was surprised by how fast the old woman’s fingers could move. Salena glanced at the pages when Heloise paused, but she couldn’t make out any of the words because the book was written in French. She studied the old woman’s face as she flipped the crinkled, yellowed pages, and then she saw a look of recognition in Heloise’s timeworn eyes.

Heloise clutched the talisman she wore with one hand and took Salena’s wrist in the other, in order to look at the faded bite mark again. She looked into Salena’s anxious eyes and wrung her hands nervously, “Could it be?”

“Could it be what? What did you read?” Salena stood frozen in place.

Heloise turned another page in the book, “I think you’ve been chosen.”

Salena started pacing again, feeling restless, and threw her hands in the air, “Chosen for what?” her voice came out tense and shrill and she started to bite her nails. It was an old nervous habit, and with all of this stress, she’d never grow them out again.

Heloise turned more pages. “Her diary speaks of a dark and handsome stranger who was in the colony at the same time a trail of young women were left seduced and lifeless. Faint markings, resembling bite marks, were found on the bodies. It was the only proof he’d been there. The proof mysteriously vanished, though, by the time the bodies were burned. The colonists thought it must be a plague, because they didn’t know what caused the young, healthy women to suddenly die and turn ashen. That is why the bodies were burned.

My grandmother wrote that only the Gypsies suspected otherwise, and there was one,” she said, paraphrasing a page in the book,”a young widow with an infant son, who survived. The woman was strikingly beautiful with milky white skin, raven black hair, and eyes the color of a clear sky—who was bitten—but lived.”

Heloise stopped and looked at Salena. “She sounds like you.” Salena looked down at her wrist, and Heloise glanced in its direction also.

“The visitor had been seen with her often, leaving more bite marks on her neck and wrist, yet her life had still been spared, and the marks seemed to disappear right before their eyes. She had tried to conceal them, but they were discovered, nonetheless, and the colonists accused her of being the devil’s mistress—a witch—and they burned her alive in her home. After that, the devil had disappeared.

Her son had escaped with a servant and was raised by his uncle in another colony.” Heloise turned the page, and then her face showed comprehension. She looked at Salena with an expression of foreboding. “The condemned woman’s name was Abigail Saunders.”

Salena plopped down hard on the sofa, shaken to the core by that piece of information. Her formal name is Salena Abigail Saunders—after a long distant grandmother, according to her late father.

“It says here,” Heloise said with angst in her voice,” the Gypsies thought he was a vampire. And I think he may have returned,” She tapped the newspaper on the table by the tarot cards; the front-page story was about the female victims. Then she put her hand on Salena’s wrist. “You must be careful girl. This isn’t a New Orleans tourist attraction; your life really is in great danger.”