Vamped Up

by Kristin Miller

  He pounded his fists over the tablet, where Meridian and Ingrid’s blood had dried, staining the white tablet reddish pink. Their bodies had been dumped over the walls of the fort, their blood washing out into San Francisco Bay. How many more elders would join their little swim before he figured this shit out?

  Leaning over, scrubbing his head until his scalp was worn raw, Savage realized how close he was to failure. He focused on the one question bothering him most: why couldn’t he control the death shades longer than a single day and night?

  He checked his watch. Twenty-four hours ago he’d killed Ingrid and possessed her death shade. His thoughts streamed to Meridian and how long he controlled her death shade. Wasn’t that twenty-four hours as well? Now that he thought about it, the two cases were almost exactly the same.

  He forced himself to think logically, taking into account worst-case scenarios to cover his ass. If, by killing an elder, he only gained possession of their death shade for the span of twenty-four hours, how would he complete his plan? He’d need much more time than that, wouldn’t he?

  When he killed his next elder, gaining control over his or her death shade, could he bring down a large, organized haven such as San Francisco’s in such a limited amount of time? And would that elder’s maware do the trick? Would it give him the power he needed to be a formidable enemy to reckon with? No, upon calculated consideration, he didn’t think so.

  He needed more. More elders. More time. More power.

  He left the chamber, walking down the shadow-riddled passageways of the underground lair of the fort with newfound purpose. He needed to find a way to hold a group of elders captive. And a way to slaughter them while crippling the powers they’d use to defend themselves.

  He’d need heavier drugs. And chains. Lots of chains.

  Pushing open a wrought-iron door on the right, Savage looked inside. No chains, no bars, nothing that would do the trick. He strode down the hall, his boots striking the wood planks with hate-fueled determination. He opened up the next chamber door. It creaked loudly, blowing dust clouds into the small room. No chains, no bars—just dirt, a wooden bench, and a single narrow window offering a limited view of the city. He searched level after level, chamber after chamber, racking his brain trying to figure out how the hell he’d hold a handful of elders captive.

  The door at the end of the hall, illuminated by a bare yellow bulb, called for closer inspection. Double wooden doors with railroad nails spiked into the wood in an over-arching pattern were closed tight. He pushed on them hard, using his shoulder and body weight to shove them open. The hinges creaked, the seal finally giving way.

  Savage’s breath hiccupped in his chest as he stepped into the room. The space was perfect. The air was thick with age, musky and stagnant. Two long metal rods about hip-high were anchored to the walls flanking him and spanned corner to corner. The room had no windows. A single door. Cement floor with an inch-thick layer of dust and dirt.

  As long as he could get an entire flock of elders here one by one, drug them, and chain them to the bars, he’d be set. All he’d have to do when the time was right was walk into the room and stake them one at a time. Sure, it’d take awhile to round them all up, but once they were here—bound and drugged—it wouldn’t take long.

  Bloody perfect.

  He grinned at the thought and mindlessly trailed a finger down the crevice on his cheek—the scar a dangerously seductive elder gave him during the massacre of 1912 to forever remind him of his treachery against his race.

  Oh, he remembered what happened all right. With crystal clarity.

  Lilith was not only an elder then, but his Primus, and he was her top guard.

  That fateful night, the bitch had tricked him good. Persuaded him to do her bidding with her heart-stopping maware of overpowering lust and love. He took the bait, did what she asked without question, and guarded an underground chamber hiding the “gem” that was supposed to grant him and Lilith unmentionable power. Though for the life of him, he couldn’t remember exactly what he was supposed to be protecting. It was as if he could remember every detail about that night . . . except what Lilith had hid behind that goddamn chamber door.

  While therians and vampires fought in the fort, Savage’s ache for Lilith’s touch got the best of him. He’d left his post to accept her painfully erotic offer, creeping behind her as she watched the riots unfold from one of the rooftop lighthouse towers. He slid his hands around her waist and nuzzled into her mane of sunset-red curls as she spun around, slicing her dagger across his cheek.

  She’d been furious he left his post. Only he wasn’t the reckless, lust-driven vampire she’d assumed he was. She was too hot-headed to listen to reason. He’d assigned Ruan, a haven drone, to watch the door. That fool would do anything asked of him to get into the good graces of a vamp in power.

  He couldn’t have known Ruan’s insatiable need to investigate things himself.

  He couldn’t’ have known Ruan would open the chamber door and jeopardize the race for another hundred years.

  Shame overcame him. Savage didn’t ask why Lilith couldn’t request the gem back or why Ruan couldn’t simply replace it. He didn’t understand what was so important about a stone that couldn’t be undone with another elder’s maware.

  Head hung low, his title stripped from him, Savage fled the fort and didn’t look back until he heard the ear-splitting boom that rocked the stronghold, killing everyone inside.

  Now, as he stood in the center of the repaired underground facility of the fort, he realized this wasn’t the therian PR show of 1912, designed to get vampires to drink from mundanes so they could slander their reputation to the ordinary world . . . no. This was his performance of a lifetime. His only chance to come to power in his own right.

  Fortunately, over his hundred years or so on this earth, he’d heard about just the place to round up a few elders. They’d be weak and immature, not the wise powerhouses to match the likes of Meridian and Ingrid, but if he could snag a group of them it probably wouldn’t matter. Their mawares combined would have to be stronger than a single ancient elder . . . theoretically.

  The elder black market.

  Run by a group of prestigious therians, the market had been underground for centuries. Anything worth stealing and everything illegal passed hands among society’s elite paranormals behind closed doors, including drugs, weapons, and of course, elders. They were a bitch to track and capture, but there were a few who had become skilled in the art and worked for high prices. Although usually only the newly transitioned elders were naïve enough to get caught, their mawares were still powerful and a hot commodity for a therian with a thirst for power.

  Buying a handful of elders would cost him an arm and a leg, and certainly attract a shitload of attention that he’d originally wanted to avoid, but what choice did he have at this point?

  He pushed through the heavy doors of the fort and strode to his car. He had to remember to keep his eyes on the prize.

  For so long he thought that prize was finding and deciphering the scrolls. That the secrets to becoming all-powerful were hidden in the Grimorium Verum’s pages. Then, as he discovered Meridian’s burning desire to keep Eve safe, Savage realized she was the key—the prize he’ d been longing for. Oh, she was more than just a pure blood source, Savage knew that much. How she’d help him wipe out vampires in Crimson Bay, he didn’t have a fucking clue.

  But it didn’t matter anymore.

  Now that he’d figured out how to unleash the death shades, he didn’t need to slave day and night deciphering scrolls to figure out why Eve was so damn important. Hell, it didn’t matter if the scrolls mentioned her name. He didn’t need her or her secrets anymore. He could unleash the dark powers of the Ever After all on his own. To do that, though, he needed mawares, and he needed them in number. That was the only way he’d get what he wanted now.

  Consumed b
y a few dozen mawares with elder blood on his hands, Savage would soon earn the status he’d wanted all along. This time he wouldn’t need it bestowed upon him by a swoon-worthy elder. He only wished Lilith were alive to see him now . . . so he could gouge out her eyes and drive a stake into her himself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “One man will rise against many, one will fall by his will, and one will flee when he should fight. These three build the threshold from which there is no turning back.”

  Grimorium Verum, (prophesy written in elder blood), taken from bottom of first page recovered

  RUAN HIGHTAILED IT back to ReVamp before sunrise. He couldn’t go home. One glance at his bed and he’d crash, and no matter how he pushed the feeling aside, he knew deep down the nightmare where he killed Eve over and over again would return. He wasn’t sure if he could handle seeing Eve in that drained state again. If he could bear the guilt of watching himself kill her.

  He couldn’t say he was surprised by the look of wonder on Dylan and Slade’s faces when he walked through the doors and said he’d willingly help with the scrolls.

  He’d fought them on it for so long, it was only natural they’d ask what changed his mind. He wasn’t about to tell them it had anything to do with a teleporting trainee with kerosene-like blood, so he gave some bogus excuse and darted into his office, closing himself inside with the scraps of scroll laid out over his desk.

  They’d left him to his work, thank God, and disappeared to their scheduled Bloodlust Drinkers Anonymous meeting, housed in one of ReVamp’s many classrooms. That meant he had roughly an hour to scan over the two pages of scroll in private, try to figure out why the hell they were in his handwriting, and break the cipher by figuring out his keyword from a hundred years before.

  He tried plugging keywords into the Vigenère table, anything he could come up with that related to their race: vampire, blood, Crimson Council, therian, Fort Point, haven, valcdana, enlightenment.

  Nothing.

  He flipped the ancient pages scribbled in Valcish, the ancient language of their kind, copying passages that seemed to stand out from the rest onto a pad of paper. It wasn’t long before the words started to blur and his eyelids became too heavy to keep open.

  Sleep overpowered him. With a resounding thud, his forehead dropped to his desk.

  The nightmare started the same as the last few he’d had. A dark void with no beginning and no end sucked his body into some sort of whirlpool, spinning him round and round. His thoughts spiraled like water down a drain, twirling faster and faster until they jumbled together and he couldn’t make sense of them. Where was he? Why couldn’t he see through this blackness yet be so conscious of it at the same time? Disorientation set in.

  Like a mine went off in his brain, everything changed.

  As black became light and Ruan’s nausea settled, he opened his eyes. He stood smack-dead in the middle of the chilling stone chamber that had haunted his dreams for longer than he could remember. Single door. A tiny slat of a window, too high to peer through and too narrow to squeeze through, sliced into the dirty concrete wall behind him. A hush echoed from outside. Was that surf breaking on rocks?

  Curious about his dream environment that was so familiar, yet so distant, Ruan stepped closer to the window, tripping over something on the floor.

  His lungs deflated as realization hit him like a cannonball. He fell to his knees. He didn’t have to look down to know Eve was lying on the cold, hard ground . . . lifeless.

  Throat burning with grief, Ruan ghosted his hands over her body, holding back the urge to wrap her in his arms and carry her out of this place. He eyed her bloody leg, where he’d dipped his fangs into her flesh, violating her. His gaze drifted over her white chemise, along the soft curves of her body, to the light golden fan of hair haloing her head. He gently replaced a fallen strap over her shoulder.

  It’s a dream. Only a dream.

  Her neck was tilted awkwardly to the side. He touched two fingers to her chin and lifted . . . then dropped his shaking hand. Her head lolled back to the concrete, but not before he spied two fresh puncture marks on her neck.

  He did this to her. She was dead because of his greed, his selfish nature. He’d killed her. Not again . . .

  Air thickened until he couldn’t breathe. Walls closed in, flattened out, then closed in again. The chamber pulsated as he backed away until his back met the hard span of the wall behind him.

  Blood chilled in his veins . . . except on his back, a warm buzzing spread through his muscles. At first he thought it was his imagination, but the longer he leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath, the hotter his back became. Confused, he spun around, his arms twisting behind him to touch the mark that was now throbbing with heat.

  His eyes caught on something in the concrete. The heavy stones cemented together were old and worn, with dirtied grout and chipping mortar. All except one. One oblong stone in the center of the wall looked new and fresh. He swiped his fingers over it, feeling it radiate with some sort of power, and came away with a finger covered in dirt and warmth spreading through his hand. The grout between that stone and the others bordering it was faded, but not as dark as the other grout lines around the chamber.

  He ran a finger around the outside of the stone, eyeing his trail with increasing curiosity. With each swipe, his finger buzzed with electric current. The grout faded lighter and lighter, until it was almost translucently white. Glowing.

  No, he had to be mistaken. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, then peered at the glowing ring around the stone in question.

  To his surprise, as if his mouth had a mind of its own, he muttered, “Mentelo quisa a Grimorium Verum aprirligaza commando!”

  He hadn’t the slightest idea what the words meant or where they came from, but the walls shook dust from the overhead lights and dirt to the ground. The border of the warm stone glowed so bright Ruan grimaced from its glare.

  From out of nowhere he mumbled the words again, with more weight this time, “Mentelo quisa a Grimorium Verum aprirligaza commando!”

  The earth trembled at his feet. He touched the wall to stabilize himself, releasing his grip when the stone burned his palm. He knelt to the ground, watching the chamber quiver and shake and moan from its shifting.

  Then just like that, the shaking stopped. The room stilled. The crash of waves on rock rumbled outside.

  Ruan touched a hesitant hand to the stone. It was cold. Dirty. Ordinary.

  He turned his attention to Eve, determined to get her out of this place—dream or not—and caught his breath. She was glowing, head to toe, from the golden strands of her hair to the tips of her dainty toes. She was an angel. Glowing like the stone in the wall. He bent down, stretching a hand to touch her, when she arched up suddenly, shattering into a fireball of white light.

  “Ruan!” Dylan shouted.

  He shot upright, head spinning, his gaze locking on Dylan standing over him in ReVamp’s back office. That damned dried-blood-colored paint on the back wall came into focus first. He really needed to pay someone to cover that shit up.

  Dylan bent lower, examining his undoubtedly disheveled appearance. “Are you all right?”

  He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and ground them back and forth, taking the opportunity to run through his nightmare again. This time the feeling of the nightmare was different. Usually guilt and hunger filled him upon waking; so much so that he had to jet out of bed and take a cold shower before he laid eyes upon Eve again. But now, he didn’t feel either of those things.

  He was curious about the glowing stone and what it meant, what the dream was trying to show him, and what the words meant that flew out of his lips. “How long was I out?” he asked.

  “ ‘Bout twelve hours. It’s nearly sunset.”

  Blinking slowly, Ruan checked his watch, feeling sore and bruised like
the nightmare kicked the tar out of him. “Damn it. I gotta get home.” For the first time since meeting Eve, he didn’t feel like the remnants of the nightmare would cause him to harm her. At least that was progress.

  “Eve called earlier. I told her you were sleeping.” Dylan curled up on the leather-wrapped chair facing his desk and tucked her feet beneath her, a white porcelain coffee cup etched with “Got Blood?” cradled in her hands. “She said to leave you be . . . that you haven’t been sleeping well at home and she’d catch up with you later.”

  Eve’s response made it sound like she had plans or somewhere to be. Was he forgetting something?

  Ruan took a deep breath and nodded, the details of the nightmare fading from his memory. What were those words he’d shouted? Apri . . . command . . . something. Damn it.

  How did they seem so natural to him, like he’d known them his whole life, yet now he couldn’t recall them with any kind of clarity? What the hell was up with that stone in the chamber wall? And why was Eve glowing after he’d touched it?

  “I didn’t realize I was out for that long,” he said, fumbling through the scrolls as if he knew where he left off. “I wish you’d woken me.”

  “You’re welcome to crash here any time you like; I hope you know that.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Dylan cleared her throat, swallowed slowly, looking sickly pale.

  “You all right?” Ruan asked.

  She nodded. “I’ve just had some sort of stomach bug the last couple days, but don’t worry about me. Listen, if you ever want to talk about your nightmares,” she said in between sips of her coffee-blood combo, “I’m listening now.”

  Yeah. Unlike the time at the Crimson Council meeting, where Dylan needed him to figure out the scroll and death shade connection for her.

  He leaned back, stretching his arms behind him. “It’s the same thing that’s been happening since you found the shit kicked out of me on that beach by Fort Point. My dreams are whacked and I have to get over it, that’s all.”