Into the Storm (Vampires of Velum Mortis Book 2)

by Stephanie Summers

  “There are many possibilities. Some control fire, others control water, just to name a couple. Some don’t exhibit anything above speed and strength.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m holding you up.”

  “I don’t mind. If you have questions, I want to answer them.”

  “Oh, really?” she said with a laugh and pushed herself forward before turning to look at me. “I thought you hated my questions.”

  “Only a little grating in the beginning…”

  We both stood a moment later. “You go ahead and go do what you have to do. I’ll be here thinking up more things to ask you when you get back,” she said and winked.

  “I won’t be gone long,” I said and left the room, closing the door behind me.

  Scratching Cyrus behind the ear, I said, “Make sure she stays safe.”

  The streets of Velum Mortis were quiet, almost eerily so. I raced for the castle at the edge of the city where my best friend and king dwelled. As I approached the gates, I was greeted by two guards. One I knew, and one I didn’t.

  “You came out of nowhere,” Meredith said. “Have you finally ditched that damn punishment and returned to your full glory?”

  “Something like that,” I said. Meredith was a fierce warrior and a very old friend. We’d fought at each other’s side more times than I could count, and I’m not ashamed to admit that she’d saved my ass more than a time or two. “I need to see Liam.”

  “Is King William expecting you,” the other guard, the one I wasn’t familiar with, asked.

  Meredith cocked her head at him, and asked, “Really?”

  “What?” he asked with a shrug of the shoulders. “Just doing my job.”

  “This is Stellan, the king’s best friend. The king is always expecting him.”

  “My mistake,” he said and bowed.

  “I’m not royalty,” I said with gruff and moved past him.

  “No, you are not,” Meredith said and laughed. “Come on. I’ll take you.”

  We made our way in near silence to the front doors, through them, and up the staircase toward the king’s chambers.

  “Stellan,” a familiar female voice called out from somewhere behind us in the great hall. “How have you been?”

  I turned to face her and found a soft pair of eyes looking up into mine with a big grin plastered on her face.

  “My queen,” I said and bowed.

  She shook her head, and said, “Don’t… I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. To you, I am and always will be just plain old Delia. Got it?”

  “Yes,” I said as she threw her arms around my neck, pulling me in for a quick hug before letting go.

  “You really should come around more often to hang out instead of going off on missions that are below you. He misses you.”

  “This mission wasn’t below me. Trust me on that one, but I will take your suggestion into consideration,” I said with a smile.

  “He’s in there,” she said tipping her chin toward a door to my right. “Meredith, I’d like your advice on something.”

  “Of course,” Meredith said and the two of them made their way down the hallway and out of sight.

  Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the door and waited.

  “Come in,” a muffled voice replied.

  Opening the door, I stepped through and closed it behind me.

  “Surprised to see you back so soon. Have you brought her?”

  “She’s not with me.”

  He raised his eyebrow and stood sternly in front of me. “A lot rides on you bringing her to me. Where is she?”

  “My king—”

  “Stellan… How many times do I have to tell you that it isn’t necessary to address me so formally. You and I have been friends for over a thousand years. We’ve fought along side each other, we’ve gone through hardships… nearly starving together before the great war with the fae. And I will never forget the way you assisted Delia here and in Mallory Falls…”

  “Then I hope you will hear me out.”

  “Of course…” he said, motioning for me to follow him and sit at the table. A decanter of blood sat at the center of the table and he poured me a glass.

  “I can’t turn Sydney over to you,” I said, bringing the glass to my lips and taking a quick sip. As soon as the blood hit my tongue, it had me wanting to gulp down every last drop in not only my glass but his and the decanter. Restraining myself wasn’t easy, but I managed.

  “Stellan… I’ve already assured the wolves that we would intercept her and turn her over. Peace between our species cannot move forward without this.”

  “You said you’d hear me out.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Sydney is my mate.”

  His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. “That’s not possible… She’s a wolf. Never in the history of our kind have I ever heard of a wolf mating with a vampire. They have been our enemy since long before either of us came into this world. It’s why I have to turn her over to the alpha I’ve been meeting with… He’s her father, and he’s agreed to help in my mission to bring the species together and end the senseless fighting and killing. Witches, wolves, vampires… We were all created in this world as children of Hades and there is no reason for us to constantly be at one another’s throats. Sydney is the key to something much bigger.”

  “But she’s my mate,” I said with nearly a growl. “And she doesn’t know any-fucking-thing about her father. She has no memory of him. Why does he want her now?” And why hadn’t he protected her like he should have? Liam wouldn’t know the answer to that question, so I didn’t bother to ask it.

  “To add to the pack.”

  “Breeding, you mean?” I said, my top lip curling slightly.

  “Yes.”

  “No. I won’t turn her over.”

  “She’s not your mate, my friend,” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I’m not saying it’s impossible that you feel something for her. Lust maybe, but she can’t be your mate. You would’ve felt the pull years ago if she were, and there is no way you’d ever confuse that feeling with anything else.”

  “But what if the suppression made it so I couldn’t feel her?”

  “It didn’t. It only altered your ability to feed on humans and manipulate them, nothing more.”

  “But that’s not all it did. I can’t tap into the power of the storm so easily, can barely feel the spark within myself. I believe it altered much more than you ever intended.”

  “I’m telling you, Stellan. She isn’t your mate, and you’ve been given an order,” he said sternly.

  “What would you do in my position?”

  “I’d do as my king commanded and bring him the girl because I would understand that she was not my mate and that I had been given an order.”

  “So now we’re back to you being my king, friend?”

  “In this instance, yes. He has vowed to bring war to our front doors if I don’t produce her. If there was anything that could unite the packs and make them fight together as one, it’d be war declared against us. I cannot risk it. Peace will be a hard enough journey as it is, and I won’t compromise the very start of it. At least bring her to me so I can show him that I have her. I may be able to stall for a short period of time before giving her to him until you can be convinced that she isn’t yours.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll hear no more,” he said, his mouth settling into a hard line as he clenched his jaw a second later. “Bring her to me immediately. You won’t like the consequences if you don’t.”

  I said nothing and slammed the door behind me as I left. I wanted to race home, to gather her into my arms, and flee, but I didn’t think I could live with knowing I’d started a war between two species that were more than capable of fighting it out for years with countless bodies piling up on either side. A repeat of the devastation my kind had felt during the great war wasn’t something I wanted to see again or be responsible for.

  The wolves wouldn
’t start with Velum Mortis. No, they’d start in the human realm, taking out all those who had been turned vampire by the exchange of blood, all the while strengthening their alliances. Maybe even pulling the witches into the fold. Then, when they were at their strongest, that’s when they would attack Velum Mortis, and if they had paid any attention at all during the fae war, they would know they could starve us out and hit us at our weakest.

  And it would all be my fault.

  Or I could break my promise to Sydney and hand her over to the king to ensure peace.

  Neither choice seemed a viable option.

  17

  Sydney

  Time had passed slowly since Stellan had gone to the king, or at least, that’s how it had seemed. I’d felt like I’d spent hours there alone in that room, though it may have only been minutes.

  I’d found a book about the history of vampires and skimmed over some of its passages. Though I couldn’t focus my attention on much of it, I did find an interesting mention of how it is that vampires pass through the veil to the city and why portals were created. Since Stellan hadn’t explained it to me yet, I figured I could spare him the explanation by reading about it myself.

  The physical location of Velum Mortis sits between Edgington City and Mallory Falls on the human plane and as long as a vampire is near that area, he or she can pass through easily enough. But since the human world is a far bigger place than that small area, portals were created so that vampires and other creatures could easily travel anywhere in the world they might want to go.

  They’d enlisted the help of witches to create the portals. I’d seen what vampires and demons looked like, but I wondered what witches might look like. Were they evil and green and warty like the wicked witch of the west or were they good and beautiful and flawless like the good witch Glinda? I think if I were a witch, I’d use magic to make myself damn near perfect. I’d erase every bit of myself that I didn’t like, but then I wondered just how much of me would be left after I was finished.

  It wasn’t long before my thoughts turned toward Stellan and the indescribable way he made me feel. The way I longed for him was like nothing I’d ever felt in all my life. Thinking back to the first time I’d seen him weeks ago, I could see that it had all sparked then, but I’d convinced myself it was stupid, that I was crazy for feeling so strongly about a stranger. But then there was the way the heaviness in my chest that had lingered for the past five years had simply dissipated when I got close to him. I’d thought I was crazy for thinking that had actually happened, too, but maybe it had. I hadn’t used my inhaler at all since I’d been with him the night those men tried to take me for the wolves, and truth be told, the inhaler never truly helped to alleviate my symptoms.

  Only Stellan…

  The wolves, I thought to myself. How could I possibly be one myself? Perhaps I wasn’t full-blooded wolf. That would explain why my mother had never said anything, but she obviously knew what I was to have sold me off in the first place and never bothered to tell me. If she didn’t know I was a wolf, she wouldn’t have made the deal with them that she had.

  And if I believed everything Stellan had told me, we were meant to be together for eternity. In the span of a few days, I had found the one thing I truly wanted in life. Someone who cared about me, someone I could create a family with, someone who wanted to protect me. But it all seemed too good to be true, and part of me wondered if it wasn’t just lust and excitement that I was feeling.

  The door to the room creaked open, startling me away from my thoughts.

  The sight of Stellan, tall and strong, standing in the doorway nearly took my breath away. I greeted him with a smile, but he only turned away like he hadn’t noticed.

  Hesitating for a moment, I decided to follow him out of the small room and see what was up. My gut told me the visit with the king hadn’t gone well.

  “It’s time to go,” he said and gathered up the few things I had into a bag.

  “I don’t want to,” I said shaking my head. “I thought you said I was your mate.”

  “I was wrong,” he replied. “You’re a wolf. It isn’t possible.”

  “Bullshit,” I said with anger coating the word. “Then explain the connection we have.”

  “Lust. Nothing more,” he said and clenched his jaw as he turned away.

  “Lust? Really? Look me in the eyes and tell me that’s all it is for you.”

  His back stiffened before slowly turning to face me.

  “You’re right… I’m trying very hard to convince myself that it’s lust. Everything would be so much easier, so much more clear-cut if it were. It’s not. I know it’s not, but my king has commanded me to produce you to him today. If I don’t, war is coming and I can’t be responsible for the carnage that will follow.”

  “What does he want me for?” I asked. “You still don’t know that?”

  “Your father.”

  “My father?” I asked, my chin nearly hitting the floor. My father had never been in my life as far as I could remember. I didn’t even know what he looked liked. “What does any of this have to do with him?”

  “He enlisted the help of the king to bring you back to him.”

  “If he cared so much then why did he ever leave me in the first damn place?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I don’t think he wants you because he misses you.”

  “Screw him,” I said. “And screw you, too, for throwing me away so easily.”

  “Syd, you don’t understand. I’m not—” he said just as a loud growl cut through the tension.

  Stellan looked away from me and moved so fast into the other room that I hadn’t seen him move at all. Hurrying to catch up, I was stunned by what I saw in the living room.

  A woman, tall and beautiful with waves of dark auburn hair and intense blue eyes stood in front of Stellan with her hands lounging lazily on his chest as she gazed up into his eyes with a sly smile plastered on her lips. She wore a tight black bodice with a long red skirt that had a slit up the side so high it nearly flashed all her business. The ensemble was completed by a pair of knee-high boots with heels high enough that she nearly came to Stellan’s chin.

  A moment later, he swatted her hands away from him as she turned her attention to me.

  “Who is this?” she said with a sneer.

  “She’s none of your concern.”

  “Good, because I’m here to collect on that debt.”

  “Not now, Theodona,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “You promised me,” she said through her own nearly clenched teeth. “Or have you forgotten?”

  “What is this about?” I interjected.

  She sauntered over, peering down her nose at me as if I were vermin standing in her space. “To borrow Stellan’s words, it’s none of your concern.”

  “Oh, but I think it is,” I said, though I didn’t know why. He’d made it clear that even though there were feelings involved, our relationship wasn’t worth holding on to. Still, in my heart and soul, I knew he was mine and I wasn’t ready to hand him over to another.

  “Let it go,” he said. I didn’t know whether he was talking to me or her, but both of us ignored him.

  “Stellan owes me a substantial debt.”

  “Theodona,” he said, his voice raising. Cyrus inched forward, his teeth bared.

  “She wants to know. It’s only fair… He has promised himself to me. Sexually.”

  My stomach dropped to the floor. Who was this woman to him? Had she been the reason he had changed his tune so quickly? Maybe he had hoped to get rid of me before our paths could cross.

  “I helped the king and queen when they found themselves in an unfortunate pinch, and in return Stellan agreed to fuck me whenever I chose for him to do so. I’m here now, choosing for him to fuck me tonight so that my belly will soon swell with his child.”

  I looked at him, my heart sinking.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said under my breath. I had meant to sc
ream it, but it only came out in whispers.

  “Syd,” he said desperately.

  “Don’t call me that,” I said and pushed my way past him.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “And I don’t want to,” I said and hurried through the front door and out into the streets of Velum Mortis, unsure if I’d last on my own, and not really caring if I did.

  18

  Stellan

  I picked up the nearest thing, an end table, and sent it hurdling toward the wall as a growl rumbled in my chest. Theodona moved between me and the door, clenching her fist. No doubt summoning enough magic to blast me back if I tried to go after Sydney. The hair on Cyrus’ back stood on end, his teeth gnashing together as he echoed another growl.

  “Hush,” she said confidently, though she side-eyed Cyrus when she said it as if she were anticipating what his next move might be. “The both of you… You knew this was coming.”

  “I will not. Not now, now ever. I will never lay with you.”

  “You promised me,” she said as her brows furrowed. “I’ve entered my fertile period, and we are to create life this night. Life that will one day rule over not only Velum Mortis but all of Hades creatures.”

  “Don’t you think he might take exception to that?”

  “No one has seen Hades in thousands of years. He may as well be dead. I’ve foreseen another taking his place and it will only happen when a witch and a vampire come together and create the most powerful being ever to be created. I’ve seen a hybrid child coming.”

  “I won’t do it,” I said.

  “You will or I’ll hurt anything and everything you’ve ever cared about, starting with that little beast that just ran out of here.”

  “I don’t care about her,” I lied. “She’s nothing to me, only a mission for the king I hadn’t quite completed.”

  “Forgive me, Stellan, but that is complete and utter demonshit. She’s your mate, and you’ve proven your stupidity by trying to lie about it. You’re already falling for her. I can see it in your eyes… Give me tonight and return to her tomorrow. You’ll never have to see me again.”