The Savage Vampire (The Perpetual Creatures Saga Book 5)

by Gabriel Beyers

  But Thad asked her nothing. He seemed content just to be alive, and more than willing to explore every enigma firsthand. Shufah respected that.

  Not long after, a lavish-looking yacht passed through the massive ship’s dwindling wake far in the distance. Thad sat forward for a moment, his intense eyes studying the yacht as though something about it alarmed him. Something about the vessel also gave Shufah pause, but she couldn’t exactly place why.

  The yacht was sailing by much too far away for even Shufah’s enhanced senses to detect anything amiss—if there was anything to detect. It bobbed on the restless sea, shrinking into the inky night, until it finally blinked out of existence.

  Shufah looked around and noticed the other vampires standing and watching the yacht. She didn’t like that at all. But it was too late now to do anything about it. Even with their vampiric speed, they could never swim fast enough to reach the yacht before sunrise.

  Once the little vessel vanished, the separate groups of vampires returned to finish out the night in whatever activities they had been engaged in before. Thad and Shufah continued their stint of peaceful silence.

  Finally, just before dawn, Thad asked one simple question.

  “Do you miss the sun?”

  Shufah turned and stared at him for a long moment, wondering why he would ask such a thing. She wondered, not for the first time, if the boy might have a touch of augur in him, even if he didn’t realize it himself.

  “Every day for over five thousand years,” Shufah answered.

  Thad seemed neither surprised nor saddened by her response. The corners of his mouth dropped slightly, but not in a judgmental way, and he nodded as if he were listening to another conversation Shufah wasn’t privy to. Then he stood up and dusted off his hands.

  “Thanks for sitting with me,” he said.

  “Any time.”

  Thad moved to the edge of the stack, then looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t stay out here too long.” He stepped over the edge and dropped out of sight before she could answer.

  Shufah laughed out loud. She wasn’t sure how her end would come, the sun or her brother, but either way, Thad gave her hope that the future of the vampire race would rest in excellent hands.

  As the final few days of their voyage waned, the vampires’ general unrest bled over into full-blown agitation.

  They were all tired of hiding the days away in the thundering echo chamber of that hollow steel box. The rats’ blood went from bitter to rank in their mouths. Even Shufah felt the nagging desire burst forth to glut herself upon the ship’s raucous crew. But worst of all was the knowledge that their last battles were looming just over the horizon.

  On the last night, Shufah gathered the entire coven atop the highest stack.

  “I have some bad news,” she said.

  “Wonderful,” Taos said with a sardonic roll of his icy blue eyes. “I was getting so bored with all the good news we’ve had of late.”

  Shufah, quite used to Taos’s sarcasm by now, continued without skipping a beat. “We’re ahead of schedule. The ship will dock just after sunrise. We’re going to have to swim from here.”

  Considering all they had been through, and what awaited them, swimming the last hundred miles through dark, turbulent waters was only a mild inconvenience.

  They all grumbled, but Thad seemed the most put out.

  “Do I still get to hunt one of the crew members?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Shufah said with a smile. “We’ve run out of time. There will be plenty of prey once we reach shore. I promise.”

  Just after midnight, the vampires climbed down the tower of stacked shipping containers and assembled on the bow of the hulking ship. The waves broke in terrific whitecaps against the nose of the vessel. It was every bit of a one-hundred-foot drop to the churning waters below.

  “Look,” Thad said, staring nervously over the edge. “I know we’re perpetual creatures, and all that, but are you sure it wouldn’t be a better idea going off the back? What if we get sucked under? Pulled into the props?”

  “There are too many humans near the stern,” Celeste answered in a distant, almost dreamy, voice. As an augur, she not only knew the exact location of each human aboard, she could also sense the flurry of emotions washing through them all. She looked to Shufah. “We’d have to kill more than a few to reach the back, but maybe Thad’s right.”

  “What do the Furies say?” Shufah asked.

  The three women glanced from face to face in precise unison, stopping at Shufah. Alecto’s white hair and bright eyes shimmered in the starlight, while Megaera’s dark skin rendered her almost invisible in the shadow of the crates.

  “No unnecessary deaths,” Tisiphone answered. Her fiery red hair fluttered in the howling winds, occasionally exposing the deep wounds on either side of her head where her ears used to be. “We’ll spill enough blood soon enough, and we have no need of bad karma.”

  “That settles it then.” Shufah gave Thad a reassuring nod. “Let’s go meet our destinies.”

  Thad shot another nervous glance over the edge.

  Taos sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. “For pity’s sake. Move over, silky-boy.”

  He made to shove Thad out of the way, and had the boy still been human, it would have sent him careening over the side. But Thad was a vampire now, and a powerful one, despite being a fledgling. Thad merely stumbled to the side a single step before regaining his balance and shooting a burning sneer back at Taos.

  A flash of fear passed over Taos’s face so fast that only Shufah caught it. Perhaps he was thinking of the last time he and Thad had a tussle. Had the Stewards had not interrupted them, it could’ve easily gone either way. It was a mistake for Taos to underestimate Thad.

  “I don’t know what you’re all worried about,” Taos said, pouring on some extra bravado. “Just remember to tuck your knees.” And with that, he ran the short distance to the edge, leapt over the railing, hugged his knees to his chest as he turned to face them, and shouted, “Cannonball!”

  Taos’s voice cut through the night, bellowing even over the roar of the ship’s engines and the vehement growling of the churning tides. All eyes (even the missing ones) turned toward Celeste.

  Celeste returned their incredulous gazes with a broad, yet slightly embarrassed, smile. She shrugged. “What can I say? I love the guy.” Then, the pixie vampire leapt high into the air, performing a triple somersault that melded into a perfect dive. Her laughter echoed up the steel hull until the sea swallowed her.

  A strange, inexplicable levity had washed over them, lending to the vampires the giddiness of children who had come outside to find the blooming trees of springtime after spending a long and bitter winter trapped indoors.

  For just the briefest of moments, the terrors of battle and death held no authority over them. They were just as they were created to be. Perpetual creatures, powerful and uninhibited, free to savor the unending beauty of the night.

  Thad clapped his hands, hopping ever so slightly from foot to foot. “Oh, it is on!” He stepped onto the railing with one over-exaggerated stride, while turning to face Shufah and the Furies. “I’ll see you ladies in the water.” Thad pushed back with such force that he bent the heavy tube railing, then proceeded to backflip all the way to the waves.

  Shufah glanced at the Furies. “He really is adorable, isn’t he?”

  “That he is,” Tisiphone answered for the three.

  Shufah hadn’t known the Furies before Marjek had them mutilated as an example to the rest of the vampire nation. She had never seen the women when they weren’t in pain. But the cloned smiles upon their faces gave her hope that when this was all said and done, perhaps they could find their own measure of peace.

  The Furies jumped over the edge together, hand in hand, with Alecto in the center, as was their way. Just before hitting the water, they came together in a tight embrace, and plunged feet first into the dark sea.

  Only Shufah remained now. She tried to
relish the moment of calm, but she detested being alone.

  They were her coven. She had spent all her life avoiding covens, despite her distaste for solitude, clinging mostly to her brother. But they were hers and she loved them.

  Taos’s big mouth, along with the raucous laughter of the others, had alerted the humans. They were stirring about the deck, agitated and befuddled, with lights and binoculars, as they searched the narrow aisles between the stacks. Soon, they would be at the bow.

  Shufah considered allowing the humans to spot her. Let them see her fall over the edge. Maybe vanish from their sight like a ghost. But she merely slid between the top and middle railing and dropped to the water without fanfare.

  She met up with the others, who were sporting around like a pod of dolphins. Her appearance, much to her dismay, seemed to sober the group, and they fell silent. Shufah wanted to smile at them. She wanted to enjoy the moment as they had. But, for her, the well of joy had run dry.

  Shufah just nodded to them, for it was too hard to speak with the angry waves slapping her in the face. She oriented herself with the instinctual compass gifted to all vampires, dived beneath the surface, then swam with preternatural speed toward the unseen shore.

  Being able to swim long distances underwater without the necessity of breathing made it much easier to remain undetected. They pushed hard through the frigid waters, up and around the northern tip of Japan, and found themselves on the shores of eastern Russia a little less than an hour before dawn.

  The vampires quickly dispatched a small force of Russian soldiers patrolling the shorelines, then hid the day away in a tiny pocket cave created by Thad. It took them two more nights of traveling with vampiric speed before they finally reached the northern tip of Russia and the border of the Ice Sanctuary.

  “Do you think they know we’re here?” Thad brushed the snow and ice from his beard. “Do you think they saw us drink from those soldiers?”

  Shufah was sure the Watchtower had felt them feed, but whether they suspected an attack was anyone’s guess. Celeste had used her own augur abilities to cloak them as best she could, but she couldn’t say for certain if it had worked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Shufah answered.

  Thad looked less than pleased with that answer, but his resolve to go through with the mission remained intact. “This is it right here. I buried it the night Sebastian and I escaped.”

  The boy waved his hand, and the snow-covered earth pealed back, revealing a deep hole. The Ice Sanctuary itself was still several miles away. This savage infested cave was their only hope of infiltrating the Great House undetected.

  None of them moved.

  After what felt like a year, Celeste stepped forward. “I’ll go first.” She hushed Taos’s objection before he could vocalize it. “I’ll be able to sense the savages long before they reach us.”

  Taos reluctantly agreed, slowly releasing her hand as if it were the last time he’d feel her touch.

  Shufah placed her hand on Thad’s shoulder. “You must go next. You’ll be able to sense the correct path and remove the obstructions.”

  Thad extended his hand to Celeste. “We’ll go together.”

  Shufah glanced at Taos, thinking Thad’s offer might cause the blond giant to bristle, but to his credit, there rested a measure of gratitude in his eyes.

  Celeste took Thad’s hand, and the pair stepped into the hole. There was no laughing, no playfulness this time. The abyss gobbled them up, then sat with its greedy maw open, awaiting more.

  No sooner had the pair slipped below ground, then came the sound of rubble and scree shifting about. The remaining vampires didn’t wait around to discover whether their companions had landed safely. They barreled one by one (Shufah, the Furies, then Taos) into the hole with the blind suicidal faith of lemmings.

  Just below the mouth of the hole, Shufah landed upon a small halfpipe of rocks, sand, and silt that formed a twisting slide. The surface was solid like rock, yet at the same time, the minuscule grains shifted in a way that both transported her down the slide and controlled her speed.

  Once at the bottom, Taos lit a tiny flame in his hand, revealing just how far they had descended below the surface. He looked to Thad and nodded toward the one-hundred and fifty foot spiral. “I suppose we have you to thank for that.”

  A small smile flickered at the corners of Thad’s mouth. “We’re gonna want to move a bit further in before I drop that.”

  The group retreated deeper into the cavern, and with every step, the towering spiral lost its sturdy consistency, until finally, the whole thing came tumbling down like a sandcastle at high tide. The debris spilled into the entrance of the cavern, filling it from bottom to top, and forced them in another twenty yards.

  Thad led them deeper into the earth, past the place where the steel door had once been, and into the labyrinth. Every now and then, the boy had to use his strange gift to clear their path, but so far, it had been an easy trek.

  Taos kept the fire bright to discourage any savages from ambushing them. Shufah kept glancing to Celeste, but the girl merely shook her head, indicating she felt no danger approaching. Though that seemed well on the surface, a growing dread formed in Shufah’s soul.

  At long last, they came to the tall, vertical shaft that would lead them into the dungeons beneath the Ice Sanctuary.

  Thad motioned, and they gathered in close around him. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I know Sebastian and I didn’t kill all the savages. I figured we’d run into at least a few.” He seemed to be speaking to himself, for he shook his head, dispelling the glassiness of his eye. “I’ll have to lift us from here. I doubt even you old-timers could make it up that shaft.”

  Shufah and the Furies smiled at him. Even at a time such as this, it was hard not to.

  Thad closed his eyes and the ground beneath them shifted, pushing higher and higher, carrying them up the shaft. Once at the top, they stepped through the ordinary door into the dungeons, and the column of debris returned to its place.

  A deep silence had fallen over the Great House. Shufah had never known it like this before. It felt abandoned… but not empty.

  They checked the large furnace room, but the fire had long ago expired. A quick sweep of the prison cells showed them to be unoccupied. The electricity no longer functioned, so the elevator was out—not that any of them would have been willing to trust it. Up the hidden stairs they went, taking floor by floor, checking every room.

  All they found was destruction and calamity. Not a single soul remained.

  They emerged onto the main floor intending to cross the great hall and take the grand staircase to the northern wing where the Watchtower dwelled. Scars of fire and battle blackened the once glittering room. All that was once ostentatious was now defiled.

  Shufah’s heart dropped. The Stewards had vanished. The Watchtower surely gone. But what had happened to those left behind?

  “He said you would come,” a quavery voice echoed. “He told me to wait for you.”

  The group spun around, startled by the sudden appearance of a man at the top of the grand staircase. He was dirty and disheveled, shivering as if cold, and for a moment, Shufah didn’t recognize him.

  “Conrad, is that you? What’s happened here?”

  Conrad let out a tittering giggle. His eyes were wide with mad fright. “The High Council abandoned us. But then he came to lead us. He told me you would come.”

  “Who told you?”

  Conrad’s mad gaze flared. “Suhail.”

  From every dark corner, pouring like blood from a death wound, came hundreds of snarling savages.

  As the savages surrounded them, Conrad pointed down at the group. “Suhail wants you, Shufah, for himself. The rest of you must die.”

  Chapter Seven

  In the near total darkness of the cell, Sebastian stared at the corpse, and the corpse stared back.

  “There must be a way to escape,” the Necromancer said, his voi
ce somehow pouring out from between the dead man’s lips.

  The Dwarf sat with his back to the wall, his stunted legs crossed before him. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a pillow to lounge on. “There are a hundred ways to escape. That’s not the issue.”

  “Then, what’s the issue?”

  Sebastian didn’t enjoy looking at the corpse. It was his eyes. They were lifeless, yet animated at the same time. It was… disturbing.

  “If we escape, they will only catch us again. And punish us. For you, a few broken bones. For me, well, they’d most likely pluck off my arms and legs. Our only hope is to get beyond their reach.”

  “How?”

  Sebastian threw up his hands. “If I knew that, I would have tried it already.”

  The corpse raised an eyebrow. “A man like you leaves nothing to chance. You probably started formulating escape plans the moment they took you in that cemetery.”

  It was true, of course, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He never revealed the truth if he didn’t have to. Well, once, he did, and it came back to bite him.

  Damn you, Thad, and your oversized mouth, he thought.

  As much as Sebastian wanted to keep his own council, if he had any hope of escaping, he’d need to purchase the wizard’s help, and his price was information.

  No good could come from joining with this man, yet dying seemed the only other option. “There is one way. We must gouge out the eyes of our captors.”

  The Necromancer laughed, but the sound didn’t quite translate well through the dead man’s throat. It seemed like a glitch, as though he were having a bit of trouble maintaining his presence inside the corpse.

  “That’s a tall order. I’m powerful, but not that powerful. I still have a human body, and let’s face it, on your best day, you’re no match for the other three blood-suckers.”

  Sebastian couldn’t argue with that. Good thing physical confrontation wasn’t what he had in mind.

  “Not their literal eyes, you dolt. I’m talking about the Watchtower. The most powerful vampire psychics,” he added, when the corpse shrugged.