The Crimson Line

He conquered vampires in battle-now he just has to survive the boardroom. Sharp suit. Sharper stakes.

After helping end the Dracule War, slayer Caleb Helsing didn't ask for a reward. He took one: the CEO seat at a supernatural corporate empire and a penthouse with a skyline view. A few years of freedom and luxury seemed fair.

But as his exasperated human secretary often reminds him, the Board of Directors isn't interested in post-war burnout. They want results. And if Caleb doesn't start acting like a real leader, he'll lose everything-his title, his home, and maybe a few pints of blood.

The problem? Slaying evil vamps doesn't teach you how to run a company full of... potentially friendly ones? He needs guidance. Or better yet, someone with gravitas to swoop in and do all the hard work for him.

Luckily, Massimo Bruneli, the vampiric Doge of Venice, owes Caleb a favor. But Massimo's in trouble too. Bloodless bodies are turning up in the canals-and they're not vampire kills. If Caleb wants Massimo's help, he'll have to earn it. Now he's juggling a supernatural mystery, a team of skeptical young slayers, and a secretary who might just be scarier than the monsters.

The war is over. But leadership? That's a whole new battlefield.

Dive into the new urban fantasy series from the bestselling author of the The Red Chronicles and find your next UF addiciton!

Sleepless and growing more annoyed by the moment, Caleb lay in place where he’d awoken: his left arm wrapped around the previous evening’s distraction, his percale bed sheets twisted around both of their ankles. Outside his bedroom door, his chief of security and his assistant conducted a verbal thumb war. It didn’t matter who opened the door, really. In the end, it wouldn’t change the truth.
Caleb Helsing’s life was fucked up. And now, at last, he was out of time and worse, excuses for why he couldn’t unfuck it.
Michelle (that was her name, right?) stirred, a coquettish smile bubbling on to her face when their eyes met. “Hey.”
Caleb pulled in his hand enough to lift the stray hairs covering her face, tucking them behind her ear. “Hey back.”
Michelle looked out the wall of windows, taking in the pre-dawn soft glow of the Chicago landscape as seen from over a hundred meters off the ground. In the distance, Lake Michigan’s ice-crusted depths sank into the blossom of a sunrise.
“It’s so early. Why are you awake?”
“I haven’t slept at all.”
He withheld “because I’m a supernatural being who is genetically prone to being nocturnal.” It raised questions, ones he’d be perfectly willing to answer since Gabor was standing by to rewrite any of Michelle’s memories that a huey shouldn’t have, but he wanted to hold on to this escape a little longer.
Last night, this king mattress had been a canvas he’d painted a masterpiece using the leggy brunette beside him as the brush. It had been fun. Had been. But as Michelle relaxed into a semi-boneless existence and drifted off, sated and exhausted, Caleb stared at the ceiling, mentally sparring with his ever-present anxieties. Even fantastic sex couldn’t divert his thoughts for long.
With a little purr, Michelle tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder and snuggled into his body. For warmth, Caleb presumed as he kept his suite at a temperature Amy described as “frigid as fuck.” (She tended toward drama.)
A slayer was always a warmer than a huey. Despite not understanding the science behind it, it made sense for a supe whose defining ability was hurling balls of solar radiation about. This side effect of his heritage had often come to his advantage when entertaining members of the opposite sex.
Caleb reached out, angling the sexy minx’s chin and dotting a kiss to her lips before he spoke. “Last night was awesome, but I think I’m late for a meeting I promised to make.”
“A meeting? Now?” The odd statement took her eyes to the teal glow of the alarm clock on the bedside table. “It’s six-fifteen in the morning.”
“I know. That Board always schedules these damn things at the ass crack of dawn. It’s… weird. I think they just like watching the sunrise in safety from the TK floor.”
WWL’s cash cow, so-called Athenian glass, took care of that. The shit was as expensive as hell, but it managed to block out the exact wave lengths vampires were allergic to. While the executive offices were subterranean to avoid daylight, the whole boardroom was wrapped and gave a view of the city skyline even a bloodsucker could enjoy without turning into a pile of dust.
“Believe me, I don’t want to go,” Caleb admitted. It was the most open he’d been with her since they’d met twelve or so hours before. “But I don’t think I can get out of it any longer. I’m sorry.”
Just at that moment, he heard Amy repeat a threat handed down from the chairperson of the board, and his urge to protect kicked in. Caleb’s muscles clenched; his grip on the woman beside him intensified by instinct. Michelle must have thought she was getting an aggressive hug because she threw her arm back over him and squeezed back.
“Oh, did you want to have a little morning cap before you head off, then?”
No, he did not. He wanted to show Raquel the business side of his solarium. Honestly, he doubted the chairperson would make good on her threat. Caleb had spent the last year letting everyone know Amy Popowitz was his. Not in a sexual way, but in the ways a vampire could lay claim to a human who tickled his fancy, so he, a Slayer, made it well known around the halls of the Walt Whitman Labs that you didn’t touch the blonde huey unless you wanted to chance being ashed.
If they were going to respect him, he had to back up that claim with action. “I really should get up and go,” he said through clenched teeth.
But the brunette countered, “I thought you were the boss. CEO, isn’t that what you said at the bar last night? Just tell them you’ll be there in an hour.”
“There might be… consequences.”
And that wasn’t limited to having his assistant being used as a blood bag. The Board could take this all away. His lux townhouse, sizable salary, his fancy corporate title…
Did they not know how limber Michelle was?
Whether they did or not, Caleb could hear that the conversation outside his door had reached its crescendo, and footsteps were turning his way.
“Michelle, I think we’d better get up before…”
If you wanted to tempt fate, point at it and laugh in its general direction.
The door burst open, and Caleb pulled himself up. He yanked the bed sheets along for the ride, covering up the parts considered unprofessional to show a woman who worked under you in a professional capacity while also respecting the privacy of the one who had worked under him the previous night in a more casual way. His back pressed against the cool metal frame. From a break in the curtains, an orange-red beam of sunlight shot and illuminated the tip of Amy’s blade.
Fucking Hitchcock couldn’t have designed it better himself.
“Amy.” He said her name as part acknowledgment, part accusation. “You’re looking well this morning. Any particular reason for the knife, though?”