Blood Beneath the Harbor
A Staten Island Ferry Vampire Romance
The last boat out of St. George leaves at two in the morning. Zack Vasco has been aboard every one of them since 1905.
Released October 8, 2026 · Kindle & Kindle Unlimited · 242 pages · A paranormal romance from 88Away
He isn’t riding for the view. Every night at slack water he ties one tarred line at the stern, counts the wake in fours, and keeps shut the thing that woke under New York Harbor the year it swallowed a thousand and twenty-one souls. He has done it alone for a hundred and twenty years. The last woman who shared the knot with him drowned holding it.
Anjali Fernando has never stayed at a job past eight months. The transfer form is already pinned inside her locker. Then she re-ties the vampire’s line with her missing father’s hitch, ties it better, and the harbor learns her name.
Now a silver-haired gentleman is paying strangers’ fares on the night boat, and the people he is kind to walk smiling into four-degree water. He holds a century-old debt over Zack. He holds an older one over Anjali’s family. And the knot will not hold on one name much longer.
Zack would rather carry her off the water than let her stand the watch beside him. Anjali would rather leave first than be kept.
To close the gate, he has to ask, and she has to stay.
A steamy standalone vampire romance in The Cold City.
- Dual POV
- A guarded immortal
- A heroine who chooses the bite
- Explicit open-door heat
- A guaranteed HEA
- The Staten Island Ferry at two in the morning
- Old bargains, kept lines, and a hidden New York
- One couple’s complete story, connected to the series
A paranormal romance for adult readers. It contains explicit on-page sex, biting, blood-sharing, consensual blood play, vampire violence, old bargains that bind the living, grief, family estrangement, and scenes in which people are held against their will by a debt they did not choose. The central romantic relationship is consensual. Boundaries matter on the page. The heroine’s yes matters. The hero stops when asked.
The last boat out of St. George leaves at two in the morning, and I have been aboard every one of them since 1905. That is not devotion. A man who has done the same thing forty-four thousand nights running is not devoted. He is only unable to stop.
I know the boat the way your tongue knows your own teeth. I know which bench on the upper deck has the loose bolt that ticks when a container ship’s wake comes under us, and which of the port windows fogs first, and that the starboard forward door has to be pulled half an inch toward you before it will give. I know the fare box has not taken a nickel since Eisenhower. I know the diesel comes up through the deck plates at the stern and settles into a coat, and that on a wet night it will still be there in the morning, in the closet, waiting for you like a dog.
I board at 1:42. I stand at the port rail until we are clear of the slip, because that is where the water misbehaves and I prefer to watch it be ordinary. I walk aft at 1:58. I stand at the stern for the crossing. At 2:25 we make Whitehall and I step off and ride back on the 2:30, and at three o’clock I am standing on cold concrete at St. George with an entire empty island in front of me and nothing owed by anybody until the next night.
That is the whole shape of my life. I want to be clear that I chose it.
For everyone who works the night rotation, and for the ones who stayed up to ride it home.
Read them in any order. Read in order for the whole city.
Each book is one couple’s complete story with a happy ending. Blood Beneath the Harbor stands alone; Blood Under the Lights and Blood Across the River open the first two doors beneath New York.
Before the lights, before the river, before the harbor.
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Ride the last boat.
Blood Beneath the Harbor is out now on Kindle, and free to read in Kindle Unlimited.