by E. M. Knight
I hear footsteps approaching. Only one person is out there. I leap up, sinking my claws into the ceiling, and hold myself there, right above the door, ready to crash down and kill whoever enters.
The doorknob rattles. The door is stuck. A man grunts—I can’t get over the fact I cannot feel him.
A second later he slams his shoulder through the door. He’s decked out in full SWAT gear, all in black, face masked and entire body armored. Not a trace of skin is exposed anywhere.
“CLEAR!” he calls, not thinking to look up. He turns away.
My heart is racing. Instinct compels me to fight, to attack, to rip the man and his companions to shreds for daring to threaten me.
But reason tells me that I have to be cautious.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess who these men are and what organization they belong to.
I strain my ears, concentrating on the breathing going on in the other room. I think I can distinguish four separate men by that.
I drop silently to the floor, press myself against the wall by the door, and peek out.
My breath catches. Yes, there are four men inside the room, but through the open door to the parking lot I see a team of at least twenty. All are heavily armed, and all have their weapons pointed this way.
I swallow and shy back.
Am I strong enough to take on more than twenty armed Crusaders?
Before I can make my mind up one of the men drops a heavy canvas over Sylvia’s body. His companions help him bundle her up, then they haul her over their shoulders and take the body out.
They don’t even spare a glance at Liana. I smell vampire blood in the air.
Could that mean she’s dead?
They deposit Sylvia in the back of a black, fortified van and slam the door. I hear more footsteps and see another group of at least twenty more join the first.
They came from the direction of the pack’s motel room.
“How many?” one of the men from the first group asks.
“We got eight. One escaped.”
“You let him?” the first man roars.
The other one doesn’t back down. “None of us expected to find so many of these creatures in that tiny room.”
“It should have made the execution more efficient.”
“Mistakes happen in war,” the second growls. “You got who we came for?”
“She’s in the van.”
“Good. Let’s get back to base.”
The first soldier glowers. “You’re just going to let the escaped vampire go?” he asks, incredulous and angry.
“We’ll find him another day,” comes the response. “If he’s strong enough to withstand the sun, he’s too fast to be caught in a foot chase.”
“Our master won’t be pleased.”
“I’ll deal with him,” the man from the other group promises.
“Fine.” He makes a fist, thrusts his hand in the air, and on the cue, all of his soldiers file into their vehicles.
“Good day’s hunting,” he says, before getting in the driver’s seat and closing the door.
The engines start, and the vehicles rip away. I wait for a count of one-hundred to ensure they’re really gone before stumbling out from my hiding spot and walking into the decimated motel room.
I look at the walls, the scattered glass, all the bullet holes. Light streams in through them, casting the place in a strange, ethereal, otherworldly glow.
Then, expecting the worst, I turn my eyes on Liana’s bed.
She’s there, still as a statue, her body riddled with bullet holes. Her blood stains the sheets, it looks awful, the scene is too ghastly to imagine.
I drop to my knees by the bed and reach for her hand. The rays of the sun sear into my skin but I fight through the pain. I focus, lending all my attention to my vampiric senses, trying desperately to feel even a breath of life still in her.
But there’s none. Liana is gone.
I drop her hand.
I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
This was not an execution. It was a massacre.
I stand up. My legs are shaking. I cannot get a grip on myself. All of my senses feel off; my perception of this place feels wrong, everything is somehow rotten…
I look down one more time at Liana’s desecrated body. I catch sight of a bullet that is lodged into bone.
I reach down, extend my claws, and pluck it out. I wince as pain shoots through my arm.
I bring the bullet up to my face, holding it by my claws. Only a moment later, they start to hiss and smoke.
I gasp and drop the bullet. It rattles on the floor, rolls around a bit, and comes to a stop by one leg of the bed.
Silver? I wonder.
I drop down and look at the bullet again, this time making sure not to touch it. It’s coated in Liana’s blood, which makes the determination difficult.
I look around, rip a piece of fabric off from the sheet, and gingerly reach for the bullet again.
The thin barrier is enough to prevent the harmful effect. I wipe the blood off, and look at the casing.
I don’t think it’s silver. At least, not entirely. The metal is black, like iron or coal. It’s heavy, too, much heavier than I would expect.
I wrap it up in the cloth and tuck it away. I stand up, cast one more look at Liana’s ruined body, then turn to leave.
But at the last moment I realize I cannot just walk out into broad daylight. Not only because of my weakness to the sun. What if there are more of those soldiers posted out there, waiting to ambush James on his return? I have no way of being able to tell, especially since I cannot sense them.
Nothing has ever thrown me off like that before.
I stand in the middle of the room, caught by indecision.
Movement on the far side of the road catches my eyes. I tense. Instinctively my fangs come out, and my claws extend.
But then I feel a hint of a vampire’s essence, and my nerves ease up.
A moment later Paolo is standing in the doorway, looking at me as if he’s seen a ghost.
“You’re alive,” he gasps. “How?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I respond. I never knew what to make of any of the pack vampires, but Paolo especially always struck me as potentially treacherous.
He grunts. “You don’t trust me.” He looks behind him, then slips in and closes the door.
He takes my arm and leads me to the back of the room. He rights an upturned chair and forces me down.
“You’ll talk,” he says. “Tell me how you survived.”
I eye him with outright hostility. “Who the hell are you to make demands of me?”
“I am the stronger vampire here,” he hisses. “Don’t make me exert my influence.”
“Then why are you treating me as if I’ve done something wrong?” No sooner than the words leave my lips do I gasp. “You think I’m responsible!”
“It’s highly suspect that a vampire as weak as you could have survived when all of my pack brothers are dead,” he growls.
“So what, you think I betrayed us? I betrayed you?”
“I don’t know,” he snarls. “That’s why I’m asking. I don’t know you, I don’t know your coven. I barely know James!”
“You knew where we were going the moment you stepped on the plane,” I say.
“Answer my question. How did you survive?”
I glare at him, not wanting to reveal even a drop more information than I have to.
Not until I get a better sense of who this vampire is.
“April, answer me!” he screams. His hands jut out and latch onto my shoulders. He brings his face an inch away from mine. “Answer me, or you die here like the rest.”
“James will kill you if you do that,” I hiss in defiance.
He barks a cruel laugh. “My brothers are all dead! Do you think I intend to stick around until James Soren comes back?”
“You swore an oath…”
“An oath of obligation,”
he says. “James failed to protect the pack as the alpha. He led them to their death! Any allegiance I had to him is null and void. Last chance to answer me, little girl, or else I slit your throat here and now.”
I struggle against his grip but he is miles above me in strength.
“Fine,” I relent. “Fine, I’ll tell you.”
He backs off an inch
I sneer at him. “It wasn’t through any skill or special ability. I survived entirely by luck.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl,” he growls.
“I’m not lying!” I exclaim. “Something woke me. Minutes before they arrived. I wandered to the bathroom and—”
“Wait,” he interrupts. “Something woke you? You rose from the vampire sleep?”
“Yes,” I say. “And then I—”
“Something woke me, too,” he mutters.
He lets me go and turns away.
I wince as he’s not looking and rub my injured shoulder. The wound isn’t healing yet. I don’t know why.
“Then it’s not coincidence,” he says, almost to himself. “You and I both survived for a reason. We were beneficiaries of the Divine Sight.”
I screw my face up. “What?”
He spins back. “No time to explain. Not now. We have to get away. We need to go into hiding. I apologize for my prior treatment of you.” He meets my eyes. “You must understand I’m under a tremendous amount of stress.”
“Don’t pretend you’re the only one,” I mutter.
“Heh.” He gives a small smile. Then he extends his hand. “Truce?”
I look at him warily… and then shake it.
“Truce,” I agree.
“The bodies will disintegrate in a matter of days,” he says. “We have to leave them all.”
“What else would we do?”
“It’s customary to bury the dead,” Paulo says, very seriously.
“Even for vampires?”
“Especially for vampires. Given how rare a true death is. You’ve witnessed an incredibly awful thing here, April. Few vampires can say they’ve seen similar.”
“Those men,” I say. “Why couldn’t I sense them? Why couldn’t I feel them coming?”
“Oh, but you did,” he tells me. “You awoke because of the threat.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say.
“What? You think it a fluke that you, a vampire only recently made, one in no way strong enough to pick herself out of the daytime slumber initiated by the sun, miraculously woke up just minutes prior to the attack, and survived it?” He shakes his head. “No, April. You were meant to live… as was I. It’s the only reason we are speaking now.”
“You’re basing all of that on the fact that something jolted me from my sleep?” I ask, incredulously.
“I already told you what it was. The Divine Sight.” He shakes his head. “We’re wasting time. We have to go.”
“Go where?” I ask, walking up to him.
“Into hiding,” he says. “The Crusaders know that I am alive. They fired their rounds at me, but because I was awake I was able to escape. Do they know that you live, also?”
“No,” I say. “At least, I don’t think so. None of them saw me. If they had, you would not have found me standing here.”
“A salient point,” he agrees. He looks at the beds. “Say goodbye to your friends, because—”
With a violent choke he cuts off. “Where’s Sylvia?”
“They took her,” I say. “Rolled her up in some sort of sheet, took her to the van. Drove away with her.”
“Was she alive?” Paolo wonders. He walks over to the wall and traces his fingers over the bullet holes. “No. There’s no way she could have survived if she was asleep.”
“She was once part of the Crusaders,” I tell him.
“I know that. James explained everything before we made this ill-fated trip.” His hand curls up into a fist. “I swear to you, if I ever cross paths with that pompous, spoiled brat again…”
He trails off. “Well. It won’t be a pretty sight.”
“Let’s keep James out of it for now,” I suggest softly.
He glances back at me. “You’re right.”
“Smarter than you gave me credit for,” I say.
Paolo chuckles. “A lot more confident than you have any right to be. But I like it.”
“So what happens next?” I ask. “When the human authorities come and discover the scene—”
“Nobody is coming, April,” Paolo tells me. “I circled out five miles around this place before returning. Everything’s been abandoned. The Crusaders have everybody and everything here in their back pockets. The police force, the deputy, the sheriff, the elected officials. They own this land. What I suspect will happen, sometime soon, a great fire will engulf this motel, burning all the evidence of this away.”
I swallow.
“How did we get in this spot, to be threatened by humans?” I mutter with a bit sense of awe.
“We got here by following James,” he says. He turns around and takes my hand. “But that will no longer happen. I will take care of you, April. I will protect you. You and I are now linked, the both of us have been marked, and it is no small thing that we can ignore.”
“Marked… by the Crusaders?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Marked by the Divine Sight.” He hesitates, and then asks, “Do you remember when James asked if there was any way to get through the sealed door in our lair?”
“Yes…?”
“We told him no. But the truth is, there is a way through. And what you’ll find on the other side is like nothing you can expect.”
“You lied to him?” I say. Then, curiosity getting the better of me, add, “What’s behind it?”
“That’s nothing I can share. None who have seen it can. The only way to know is to step through the door yourself.”
I pull my hands away and cross my arms. “Call me skeptical.”
“You have every right to be. But should it be needed, should we come to that point, I will take you to the other side.”
I can’t make up my mind whether he’s deceiving me or not.
“Say I believe you. What then?”
“First things first,” he says. He brings his wrist to his mouth, cuts open two small incisions and offers it to me. “Drink.”
“What?” The drops of blood forming on his forearm tempt me beyond repair. But I don’t move. “Why?”
“You need my blood to heal.” He gestures to my shoulder. “Their bullet grazed your skin. Only blood from a vampire you’ve never tasted will give your body the substrate needed to overcome the damage.”
I swallow, trying my best to hold back… but I cannot.
I give in.
I grab his arm and seal my lips to the cuts. I draw deep. Hot, florid blood fills me. It energizes me, revitalizes me, gives me new strength. No longer do I feel so shaky, so unsure, so—
“That’s enough,” he says, yanking his arm away. “The wound has closed.”
I look at my shoulder and discover he’s right.
“You’re not going to enjoy going out into the sun,” he says. “I’ll do my best to lead us through shaded areas. Still, if it gets to be too much, you tell me, and we can bury down.”
“What, like into the earth?”
“Yes,” he smiles. “It’s where the first vampires slept.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dagan
Near the ancient coven
A feeling of deep apprehension pulses into me from all sides as I lead the way through the deep, underground shaft.
We’ve been walking for what feels like hours. Beth has stayed close the whole time, but conversation has been non-existent.
I think she feels the same sense of dread that I do.
I have no idea what causes it. I’ve never experienced anything of the sort before. This feels like a deep-rooted fear, seeping into me from the vampiric half of my being. The animalistic, instinctive part is powerfully afra
id, and it radiates that fear into my conscious.
Suddenly, I stop. Beth nearly walks into me.
“What is it?” she hisses. Even her voice, always so sure, wavers a tiny bit.
“I think I hear something,” I say. “From up ahead. It sounds like… running water.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Beth says.
“Listen closer. Use your magic, augment your hearing somehow, amplify the sound waves. I don’t know,” I grunt. It’s a measure of how off-kilter I am that I would actually ask her to use magic.
“I… cannot,” she mumbles.
I turn my head back. “What?”
“The Elements are twisted here,” she shudders. “They’re wrong. Perverted. Dangerous. I don’t dare touch them. There’s no telling what they would do.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re not serious?”
“Deathly so,” she says. “All you and I have is our vampiric strength.” She gives a sudden grin, but it’s so forced as to be almost pitiful. “That’s what you always wanted. Right?”
“Guess I should be careful what I wish for,” I mutter, turning forward again. “We proceed slowly. You tell me the moment you pick up the sound.”
“Okay,” she agrees.
I start walking. Beth is right behind. We get about a hundred yards before she says, “I hear it.”
“It hasn’t gotten all that louder,” I note. “Meaning it’s still far away.”
I glance back at her. She nods. “Let’s keep going.”
I lead us down the tunnel. “When you say the Elements feel different,” I say. “Explain to me what that means.”
“It means exactly what I told you earlier,” she says. “The currents are churning, unlike I’ve ever felt them before. They are wild. If I try to channel them, there’s no way I’ll be able to control what I do.”
“So what do you think is the cause?” I ask her. “Is it something about this place?”
“Undoubtedly,” she answers. “I felt the change as soon as we walked in.”
Maybe that’s the source of my discomfort, I think.
“Dagan?” she asks. “We’ve been here a long time. What do you expect to find?”
“Hell if I know,” I growl. “But we are not turning back, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“If whoever built these tunnels is responsible for the change in the currents…” she begins.