Blood and spices: A Gothic vampire novel

By Vampirella Dragonstone

Prologue: The Port of Venice, 1889
The fog crept up from the Grand Canal like the cold fingers of the dead. In the port of Venice, the *Serafina*, a spice ship from the distant colonies, lay heavily in the water. Its cargo-cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, and nutmeg-exuded a fragrance that permeated even the salty sea air.
But it wasn't the scent of spices that drove Luciana Marcello to the port that evening. It was the longing for freedom, the despair before her arranged marriage to the Duke of Padua, and an inexplicable call that echoed in her dreams.
She was standing on the wooden pier, her black skirts whipped by the wind, when she first saw him.
He stood at the railing of the *Serafina*, a silhouette against the moon-impossibly beautiful, impossibly still. His eyes, when they met hers, were dark as the water at her feet and old as the city itself.
"You shouldn't be here, Signorina," he said in a voice that glided like velvet over her skin. "The harbor is dangerous after dark."
"More dangerous than a life without life?" she whispered back, not knowing why she was revealing her soul to a stranger.
He smiled-a sad, knowing smile. "Some darknesses are worse than others."
Luciana knew in that moment that her life had changed forever. She didn't know that the man before her was named Damien Valois, that he had sailed the seas for years, that his heart had stopped beating two hundred years ago.
All she knew was that she was lost.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GC3T4DYG
• ISBN13: 9798279412075
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"