BLOOD CURSE – Sharon Page
Blood Series , Book 7
Aphrodisia Trade Paperback
ISBN-13:  978-0-7582-7831-9
November 2013
Erotic Paranormal Romance

London, England – Early 1800's

Lady Ophelia Black lives in a sort of prison, guarded by Mrs. Darkwell.  Ophelia's family was told she had died, but she has a terrible secret; whenever she touches someone, she causes them to die.  Ever since she entered puberty this curse has been upon her, and she despises being locked in her room every night, with nothing to do, at Mrs. Darkwell's School for Young Ladies.  Recently she has been escaping to an art museum late at night and looking at the sculptures.  Who could imagine a man's naked buttocks could be so magnificent?  Her feeble attempts at dabbling with clay and stone humble her compared with these wonderful stone and marble sculptures.  Lately a gentleman with raven hair has met her in the museum and asked her to meet him at Lady Cresthaven's to see her private collection.  Careful not to get too close to him, he seems kind and has a gentle look in his eyes, until he puts a funny smelling cloth over her nose and kidnaps her.

Mr. Ravenhunt has been hired to kidnap Ophelia for a gentleman, and for a vampire hunter that is one of the nicer jobs he has.  After being turned by the vampire queen, Jade, and living as her private vampire hunter and servicing her lusts and beatings, he now lives alone and must go out and feed only when necessary.  After losing his fiancée years ago he fought Napoleon, and then kept fighting any war that would have him, until he was fatally injured, and the vampire queen suggested she could save him and make him immortal.  All the people he has assassinated over the years now haunt his dreams, but it is the shy and beautiful Ophelia who brings some light and happiness into his life.  When Jade takes his younger sister hostage, she will not let her go unless Raven takes Ophelia's curse from her and gives it to her.  The only way to get the curse is to give Ophelia five orgasms and make her fall in love with her.  Sounds simple to him!

Two people who are cursed must deal with their growing feelings and all the people after Ophelia for her curse; Jade to use it to be more powerful, and the Royal Society to take her and cut her body open to find out the secret to her curse.  Needless to say, Ophelia and Raven need the help of Guidon, a small man who knows the history of the vampires, and who gives Raven a book on how to take the curse from Ophelia without killing her or himself in the process.

Sharon Page has once again mingled the paranormal world of vampires and strange powers to give us BLOOD CURSE.  Raven was turned into a vampire by a vampire queen during a war in Ceylon, and for years was Jade's private slave, doing her vampire hunting (and killing) per her instructions.  When he left Jade he still does vampire slayings, and Ophelia's kidnapping, for a price.  He feeds on the lowest of the low, and hates what he does, but he can't help himself.  Ophelia got her power at a young age, has never known how she got it, and is sure she can never get rid of it.  Here two people who have almost given up on their lives meet, and the attraction between them is quick to grow as Raven introduces Ophelia to passion (as carefully as possible).  Told from their points of view, they battle their attraction and Jade, who wants Raven to take Ophelia's power and give it to her, and the Royal Society of Vampires who want to cut her up and study her powers.

Secondary characters will surprise you.  There is Frederica, Raven's sister who doesn't know he is still alive and even lives close to his house, thinking he died in the war.  Harry is Ophelia's brother who is courting Frederica, and thinks his sister was dead of an unknown disease.  Mrs. Darkwell isn't who she seems, and the small gnomish man Guidon, the librarian of all vampire history, also has a hidden story.

BLOOD CURSE is the seventh in the BLOOD SERIES, following BLOOD RED, BLOOD ROSE, BLOOD DEEP, BLOOD WICKED, BLOOD SECRET and BLOOD FIRE.  Not interconnected, these stories will show you a different side of the paranormal world and the beings that inhabit it.  If you want to find a vampire who gets redeemed and how a woman with a curse deals with it, BLOOD CURSE is just the suspenseful story you need this month.

Cece Johns