Blood on Silk (Awakened by Blood, #1)

by Marie Treanor

[Cocktails and Books]

Elizabeth Silk is in Romania working on her doctoral thesis on historical superstitions. Through all of her interviews, the name Saloman kept coming up. This name was the one name and superstition that she couldn't disprove, which threw a wrench in her thesis. With a helpful hint by one of the locals, Dmitru, Elizabeth heads to the crypt of a castle ruins (which coincidentally was being demolished from vacation homes. LOL!) in search burial spot of the elusive Saloman.

When she enters the crypt, she's excited by her find...a beautiful sarcophagus of a beautiful man she can only assume is Saloman. As she runs her hands over the sarcophagus, she discovers she dripped some blood on the stone (damn rose thorn). She tries to rub it off the stone lips, but only makes it worse. Instead of continuing down that path, she instead looks for a latch on the sarcophagus. What she gets instead is a painful pinch on her neck and then the sensual drinking of her blood. She manages to escape her attacker, who claims he's Saloman, but she's left wondering if she hadn't imaged everything. The next morning, she learns that not only didn't she image what happened but she had infact awakened the ancient vampire, Saloman. As his awakener, she is now in great danger from other vampire hunters and vampires who wish to kill her for waking Saloman and also from Saloman himself who wishes to kill her as a decent of his original killer and lover, Tsigana, and his awakener.

Elizabeth soon finds herself immersed in a vampire's need for revenge and the vampire hunter's league's need to silence Saloman forever. The only probably, Saloman keeps getting underneath Elizabeth's skin and she finds herself questioning whether she should kill him or love him.

I'm starting to amass quite a Vampire Boyfriend list. Saloman is one of those bad vampires that I just love. He's out for revenge and seems to only worry about himself, but he finds himself torn when it comes to Elizabeth. He knows he must kill her, but he enjoys her too much and wants her all the time, so he finds himself in a strange place with her.

Of course, Elizabeth feels the same way. She knows Saloman means to kills her. She hates him for putting her smack dab in the middle of this vampire nonsense and ruining her thesis (he can't be a superstition if he's real), but she's also drawn to him. The minute he kisses her, all her reasons for hating him go out the window. She knows everyone wants to kill him, but she's not sure if she can really take part in ending her eternal life.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, especially the push and pull that happened with Elizabeth and Saloman. The ending was cliffhangerish, so I'm glad I had the next book to jump into. Can't wait to see what happens next.