The Corvin Chance Chronicles Complete Box Set

by N. P. Martin

"Because he’s Darick, and probably because you tried to attack him with this." She was holding the silver stake up for me to see.

  "For all the good it did."

  "It got you turned into one of us."

  "Hooray."

  "What’s the matter?" she said. "You don’t like your new form?"

  "I…" I didn’t know how to feel about my change in circumstances, both literally and figuratively. Literally because my capacity to feel emotion seemed to have been taken away for the most part.

  "Count yourself lucky."

  "Lucky? Why?"

  "You should really be a lowly vamp right now, a mere animal."

  "So why aren’t I?"

  She shook her head. "Because for some reason Darick made it so that you bypassed the usual process."

  "Why?"

  "He hates lower vamps, thinks they are no better than rats, only good in times of war when cannon fodder is needed. It doesn’t matter anyway, he won’t let you live that long."

  "You mean he’s going to try and kill me? Why?"

  "It’s just what he does. He’ll amuse himself with you for a while, probably pretend to be your friend even. Then he’ll get bored and kill you. It’s what he does."

  "You seem to know a lot about him."

  "I should. I’m his sister, Adrina Ó Duinn."

  "His sister?" I couldn’t contain my surprise. "I didn’t know he had a sister."

  "Well, now you do." She slipped on a pair of sunglasses. "Let’s go, before someone else lands at your door. I’ll have the security tapes wiped and all record of you on the computers. No one will know you were ever here."

  "And the bodies?"

  "Those will be taken care of as well. I’ll send a clean up crew."

  "A clean up crew? You have a clean up crew?"

  "You’d be surprised how often this happens. We can’t have the Council finding out that vampires are killing innocent humans, now can we?"

  "It didn’t seem to bother Darick much."

  "Nothing bothers Darick. He’d be happy for another war to happen." She moved toward the door. "Let’s go."

  I glanced at the two dead girls again, and then headed for the door, stopping after only a few steps. "Why are you helping me?"

  Adrina turned around and stared at me. "Because," she said. "You’re going to kill my brothers for me."

  Chapter 13

  To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. Not only was a bloody vampire now, but I was also moving down the hallway of a hotel with the Ó Duinn’s sister, someone I never knew even existed. I followed her around the corner as we seemed to be heading toward the back of the hotel. Soon we turned down a narrow hallway until we came to a window, which Adrina easily forced all the way open. "My car is parked in the alley below," she said. "Let’s go."

  I then watched as she jumped out the window and disappeared into the breaking dawn light. "Jesus," I said as I leaned out the window and looked down. I was three stories up so it was quite a drop. Adrina was down below looking up at me, as if to say, "What are you waiting for?"

  Normally I would’ve used magic to float down to the ground, but my body had changed now, the changes bringing with them some new instinct that told me I could easily make the drop without injuring myself. So I climbed onto the sill and jumped out the window without hesitation, soon landing in perfect crouch on the concrete below as if I’d just dropped from a mere few feet. There wasn’t a single ache or sign of stress in my bones or sinews. My whole body, in fact, felt like it was made from flexible iron.

  Adrina was already moving up the alley toward a waiting crimson car. As I began to follow her, I soon noticed that my eyes were beginning hurt from the morning light, making me wanting to cover them with my hands. Before I reached the car, I made a mental note to get myself some sunglasses.

  Then I remembered something. My guitar! I’d left it in the room.

  Bloody stupid!

  "Wait! I left my guitar in the room."

  "Too late now," Adrina said. "Let’s go."

  Shit!

  I thought for a moment about trying to enter the hotel again, but then I thought about the two dead bodies lying in there.

  "You need to tell your cleaning crew to keep it."

  Adrina shook her head as if she couldn’t believe I was even asking her that, saying nothing as she got inside the car, a Jaguar, some expensive looking sports model with blacked-out windows. She already had the engine started when I got in, and I was glad to get out of the light, which was beginning to burn my skin. "Where are we going?" I asked her, still smarting at the fact that I would probably never see my old guitar again.

  "To where I’m staying in Antrim," she said. "You’ll need to feed again soon. We can also talk there in private."

  As she gunned the car through the streets of Belfast, which were all but free of traffic at this time, I rested my head back on my seat and let out a long breath as I closed my eyes, my frantic brain still trying to process the fact that I was a vampire now. "So is this it?" I said. "Am I vampire forever now?"

  She turned her head to look at me, her sunglasses covering her eyes still. "Do you want to be?"

  I stared back a her, hardly able to answer that question. The thought of remaining a vampire for the rest of my now immortal life should have repulsed me, but it didn’t. There was no doubt I felt stronger and more powerful than I ever had before. My life until yesterday also seemed like a distant dream now, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. There was also the fact that I didn’t seem to be bothered by emotions anymore, which brought with a clarity of thought that was almost blinding in its intensity. The only thing I didn’t like as the constant thirst in the background, producing an urge to feed that seems to pull at my guts. Even after feeding in the hotel room, the thirst was still there. "I don’t know," I answered honestly.

  "Well, you don’t have to be," she said as she took us onto the motorway. "Not if you kill Darick. He was the one who turned you. If you kill him, you’ll revert back to being human."

  "I thought that was just a myth."

  "All myths are based on fact."

  "So I kill him and I become human again?"

  "Yes. Turning someone isn’t all done through blood alone. There’s magic involved, and that magic is tied to the vampire who did the turning, in your case Darick."

  I lapsed into a long silence as I considered everything, then scolded myself for even considering anything at all. Jesus, did I really want to be a vampire for the rest of my life? I thought. A dead thing with no beating heart?

  I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

  It took about forty minutes to get to the house where Adrina was staying, which apparently belonged to someone she knew. The house sat just on the shore of Lough Neagh, the largest lough in all of Europe. It was isolated in the countryside, surrounded on three sides by acres of woodland. It was a large gothic mansion, built from stone with archways and spires everywhere, and it was exactly the type of house I would picture a very old vampire living in. The inside, although quite dark, was equally as impressive. Upon entering the hallway, I was greeted by a huge wooden staircase that led up to a grand landing and walls lined with massive oil paintings of people and places I didn’t know. Set into the roof was a huge skylight that was made up of panels of stained glass. Downstairs was all wood panelling and arched doorways as well, with a well worn wooden floor.

  "This is impressive," I said half to myself as I stood staring around me.

  "It’s a house," she said. "This way." She beckoned me down a hallway and into a massive living room containing original Victorian furniture and bookshelves that sprawled the entire length of one wall. "Wait here."

  The she left the room, I sat down on a red velvet couch and stared around the huge room, the smell of wood and varnish strong in my nostrils. After a few seconds, I also started to hear something, tiny clicking sounds that I eventually pinpointed as coming from the mantle over the fireplace. When I looked, my eyes se
emed to zoom in on what was making the noise, and I saw clearly that it was a spider walking across the mantle. "Unbelievable," I said, shaking my head at my heightened senses. As a human, I would never have detected any of that.

  "Here," Adrina said as she walked back into the room carrying two large gold chalices, one of which she handed to me. "If you go too hungry you will begin to lose control of yourself."

  "How long until that happens?" I asked, accepting the chalice, which was filled with blood.

  "Twelve hours at most." She sat down opposite me in a large armchair and began sip from her cup.

  I didn’t even ask her where the blood in my cup came from, I just chugged half of it down, licking the residue from my lips as I basked in the immense satisfaction that came with feeding the thirst. "You have to feed every twelve hours? Do you drink from humans?"

  She stared at me a moment before answering. "That depends on how much they piss me off. I try not to, though. Mostly I drink the blood manufactured by our kind. It’s bland but it suffices."

  Once I’d consumed all of the blood in the cup, I felt stronger than ever, my senses heightened to the point where I could almost hear the dust settling around the room. "So tell me," I said. "Why would you want Darick and Constantine dead? They’re your brothers after all."

  "I have my reasons."

  "I’m sure you do, but I’d like to hear them. How do I know you aren’t playing me here?"

  "Playing you?" She snorted derisively at me. "Don’t think yourself so important. You’ve just made yourself a pawn in larger game."

  "In which you are the queen, no doubt."

  "That’s right."

  "So why can’t you kill your brothers yourself? Why do you need me?"

  Adrina sighed slightly. "I have my reasons…"

  Chapter 14

  As I sat and listened, Adrina went on to give me something of her story, beginning with the fact that she is not a born vampire, but a made one. Not only that, but she is the daughter of an Egyptian princess, or rather the daughter of an Irish princess who went to Egypt and married a pharaoh. Upon the fall of her father’s dynasty over two thousand years ago, Adrina, then aged eight, and her parents traveled to Ireland, back to the land where her mother was born. On arrival, they came under the protection of Conaire Mór, the High King of Ireland at the time.

  "It was very different to what I was used to," she said. "Egypt was a vast city back then, and coming here was like moving out to the country. I loved it, though, loved the country itself, how green it was, how spiritual it was."

  "Spiritual?" I said.

  "Yes. I had a deep interest in spiritual matters back then, having been taught the works of Hermes by my father."

  Due to her talent for understanding the deeper, more spiritual aspects of the world, Adrina was soon accepted into the Druids cast, where she began to study their teachings in astronomy, sacred science and religion. The Druids had colleges all over the world back then, places where those interested could come and learn the ways of the universe and mankind itself. The greatest of these colleges resided in Ireland, and it was to this college that Adrina dedicated herself. She studied non-stop for several years as she strived to become a fully-fledged Druid Priestess, and she would’ve become one if the event that changed her life hadn’t happened.

  "A war erupted," she said. "Between the vampires and the humans. The Druids tried to mediate between the two sides, but the vampires didn’t want peace, they wanted to dominate the country."

  During the course of this short-lived war, Adrina lost her parents to vampires who attacked their village, killing everyone they came across.

  "How did you survive then?" I asked her.

  "I survived because the vampire queen who led the attack on the village decided she wanted a daughter, and she chose me." Adrina shook her head at the memory. "The Queen didn’t want to go to the trouble of breeding again, as she had already done so twice. Breeding is a complicated process for vampires. Because of our biology, it isn’t easy to become pregnant. Death magic must also be used to facilitate the process, and once a female vampire becomes pregnant, they have to carry the unborn child for anything up to five years."

  "Five years? Jesus, that’s a long time."

  "It is. It’s also dangerous for the mother, who can quite often die in birth. This is why vampires don’t breed very much, often preferring to turn a suitable human instead."

  "Which is what happened you."

  She nodded. "Yes. Queen Magdalena took me back to her castle and turned me soon after. She already had two sons that she bore herself. I was now her daughter."

  I shook my head. "How did you cope with that?"

  "I didn’t at first, by refusing to feed, almost dying in the process."

  "That must have taken some willpower," I said, feeling my own raging thirst in the background, which was still hungry for more even after I had drunk the blood Adrina had given me.

  "It did," she said. "But I was practically a Druid Priestess, and my mind had been well forged by then. I could’ve easily held out until I eventually died."

  "So what happened? Did they force you to feed?"

  "Not exactly. Constantine came to see me. It was the first time he had anything to do with me since I arrived at the castle. He came to my room and sat down beside me, and he just…stared at me for a long time."

  I shook my head. "I’m sure that was pleasant."

  "It wasn’t particularly. I found his presence intimidating, but I couldn’t deny his words made sense when he spoke."

  "What did he say?"

  "That I would be wasting a great opportunity to learn if I let myself die, and that I could continue with my studies—unfolding the mysteries of the universe—for an eternity if I wished. Time was now on my side, he said, and much else besides. All I had to do…"

  "Was drink."

  "Yes. So I did. They brought me a young boy from the local village and I drained him dry." She lapsed into silence for a moment, appearing lost in the memory. "I didn’t even feel bad about it afterward. He was just food, nothing more."

  "The joys of being a vampire," I said. "My own conscience seems to be deserting me as well."

  "Only if you let it. There are ways to retain most of your humanity. Being a vampire doesn’t have to mean being a monster as well. It’s just that most vampires prefer it that way, then they don’t have to feel bad about killing humans to feed of off them."

  "Are you saying you’re not a monster like the rest?"

  "I’ve done plenty that I’m not proud of, but I also found ways to retain my humanity thanks to my Druidic and Hermetic teachings. It’s a question of controlling the mind and the instincts that want to take over."

  "But you still killed for food, right?"

  She shook her head. "I rarely killed anyone that I fed from, taking just enough each time."

  "Rarely?"

  She shrugged. "Accidents happen."

  "So you were like a vampire monk then?" I smiled at my own joke.

  Adrina looked back at me deadpan. "A vampire Druid would be more accurate. I carried on my teachings with the High Priests, after I finally convinced them to allow me to do so. Most of them thought it would be sacrilege to allow a vampire to be initiated into the Higher Mysteries, until I pointed out that turning me away would go against the teachings of those same mysteries."

  "So you’re a Druid?"

  She nodded. "Yes, I am."

  I sat forward in my seat slightly. "So if I said to you the words, 'Serpent Son', you would know what they meant?"

  Adrina stared at me for a long moment, her implacable face hard to read. "Where did you hear that?"

  "Someone called me it. Why, do you know what it means? Tell me."

  "You’re asking me to discuss things that I don’t have the authority to discuss."

  "The authority?" I said frowning. "Who has the authority?"

  Adrina said nothing as she merely stared at me. Then I suddenly remembered that I
still had the medallion in my jacket, and I reached in and took it out, throwing it over to her. "What can you tell me about that?"

  "Where did you get this?" she asked, seeming surprised that I would have it.

  "It doesn’t matter where I got it. Do you recognize the symbol?"

  Adrina stared at the medallion for a moment and then tossed it back to me. "I’m not at liberty to discuss it, like I said."

  I shook my head in frustration, my body seeming to pump itself up in a strange new way, fueled no doubt by my frustration and slight anger at Adrina for not telling me what I wanted to know. "This is bullshit. I’m sick of all this fucking secrecy."

  "Quell that anger," she warned. "You’ll find it hard to control if you don’t, and I wouldn’t want to hurt you if you were stupid enough to force this issue."

  "I just want to know what’s going on."

  "You’ll find out soon enough, believe me."

  I shook my head and looked away from her. "It’s getting to the point where I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore, to the point where I’m now a bloody vampire, just to add further confusion into the mix."

  "I feel your pain."

  "Do you?"

  She glared at me, her eyes glowing red for a second. "Haven’t you been listening to me?"

  Taking a deep breath, I did my best to force my anger back down. "Yes, I’m sorry, it’s just all this is overwhelming."

  Adrina smiled slightly. "Welcome to the grownup world."

  "Very funny."

  "It wasn’t meant to be. I’ve been around for over two thousand years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life just gets harder and more complicated the longer you go on."

  "Two thousand years," I said shaking my head. "I can’t even conceive of that."

  "You could be around as long, if you chose to remain a vampire."

  "Are you recommending that I do so?"

  She shrugged. "It definitely has its benefits, once you get used to the ever raging thirst. You never age, never die unless you get killed. You’ll be faster, stronger, your mind will be sharper and your magic more potent."