Vamped Up

by Kristin Miller

  Ruan remembered Lilith and Savage’s talk in the gunpowder stockhold of the fort. He remembered the dim lights, Savage’s threat to kill him, Lilith’s offer to scrub his memory, and their words about the balance of the worlds. They needed him to live so Eve could harness the mawares . . .

  “We don’t mention this to a soul.” Ruan folded the scroll and shoved it into his trench coat pocket.

  Nodding, Dylan slowly stood upright.

  Ruan watched Lilith scribble something onto a pad of paper before he said, “We find Eve first and then I’ll do what needs to be done.” He turned to Dylan, whose tender blue eyes shadowed to a steel gray. “Promise me that no matter what happens tonight, you’ll keep Eve safe.”

  “Of course,” she whispered. “She’s one of us now, whether or not she shares our blood.”

  Ruan roped her into an embrace that was more of a thank you, goodbye than she could’ve realized. “You’re one of a kind, Dylan. You know that?”

  She pushed him away, smiling through the sparkle in her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what Slade keeps telling me.”

  Swallowing down the thought that he’d never see Dylan again—the friend who had become like a sister—Ruan turned and strode to where Lilith had pages of scroll tossed about. “Tick tock, tick tock, Lilith,” he ground out. “Make yourself useful yet?”

  “Not quite. This section reads more like blueprint instructions than a prophecy. There’s something here about a granite sea wall. At least I think I’m translating this right.”

  “I don’t have time for you to think you’re doing anything right,” Ruan said. “Figure it out.”

  She pursed her lips, thoroughly unamused. “Listen to this: adobe and brick. Ten feet thick. Four tiers . . . and I think there’s something about a lighthouse, though I’m not sure. I’m working on translating the rest right now but it’s slow-going. Still could be anywhere on this side of the bay.”

  Dylan piped up. “Why would elders bother documenting blueprints?”

  Ruan’s gaze locked on Lilith. “Because they think the place Savage has taken Eve is impenetrable. They were trying to help us find a way in.” He suddenly got the feeling that he’d been submerged under the sea for years—beneath miles of salty bay water and murk and mud. He could feel the pressure building. His lungs burned from air deprivation. He gasped. As the sweet, heavenly breath filled his lungs, he said, “He’s taken her to Fort Point. Savage is going to finish what was started in 1912.”

  “More than that,” Lilith said, taking another slow sip of her drink. “He’s going to use the remnants of the evil energy in those walls to ensure the death shades he releases are the strongest yet.”

  Ruan swiped his hand across his jaw. “How’s that work?”

  She sighed. “They become more powerful when anchored by deep-rooted emotions—the truest—like lust and anger or greed and grief. We know from the way it was used as a battle stronghold at the turn of the century that at least three of the four have been experienced within its walls.”

  Ruan remembered the heat firing through his synapses when he dropped Eve to the floor and made love to her. “Oh, I think we can say all four are covered. Lust included.”

  Dylan cocked a curious eyebrow and threw up her hands. “I won’t ask if you don’t tell.”

  Ruan stormed to the locked cabinet against the wall and popped it open. He armed his belt, boots, and leather pants pockets with enough guns, knives, ammo, and grenades to take on every therian in Crimson Bay. He strapped a thick band of throwing knives to his black Under Armour shirt and closed his trench coat tight. Despite his urge to bash into Fort Point without reason, he couldn’t dismiss the buzzing in his brain. Could they be mistaken about the location? “Dylan, the pieces of scroll written in Latin . . . didn’t they say place of horror . . . time will come . . . elders will fall . . .”

  “ . . . all will succumb. Yes.” Dylan’s expression flickered with anger. “It’s gotta be the fort. Fort Point is the site of one of the greatest horrors committed against our race. How’d we miss that?”

  “Manent optima coelo,” Ruan mumbled to himself. He remembered the Latin phrase scribbled on the top corner of the first page of scroll he’d read. “The best things await us in heaven.”

  That’s exactly where he was headed, but Ruan doubted the best things awaited him there. Eve would be here. Left behind.

  After clamping the last knife on his belt, he shoved his cell in his pocket and pulled his trench coat closed.

  “You know that you could fire every piece of artillery in that cabinet at a death shade and it’d fly right through it, right?” Dylan asked. “We saw a death shade first hand in the haven. The way it took that girl was unlike anything we’d ever seen. It merely brushed against her! That’s all it took. That is what we’re going up against here, except there’s no telling how many there’ll be.”

  “I met up with one in the alley behind Mirage.” Ruan suddenly realized how close he’d come to killing Savage then. “I’ll be ready for them this time.”

  “Fort Point is a dark, mysterious place with an underground facility that could house hundreds of elders.” Lilith said, rubbing the tips of her fingers together nervously.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here.” He slammed the cabinet closed. “We can talk on the way over.”

  “Okay, worst case scenario here.” Dylan frantically packed a black duffel with binoculars, a couple Alvambra bottles, and a few Bloodblaster bars. Mathilda’s diamond-encrusted shaft gleamed in ReVamp’s overhead lights as she secured it on the waistband of her jeans. “Lilith, you said the amulet around Eve’s neck draws elders to her, right?”

  Lilith blinked slowly, as close to an acknowledgment as Dylan was gonna get.

  “Then let us assume Savage is going to slaughter every elder Eve draws to Fort Point. How many elders do you think Eve will call? How many in the area are capable of making the trek in the next . . . say, twenty-four hours?”

  Lilith pinched her lower lip and came away with a thumb full of cherry-red lip gloss. “Fifty. Maybe double.”

  “A hundred?” Dylan squeaked. “We could be up against a hundred death shades? Holy hell.” She tore open a Bloodblaster bar, shoved the mini-morsel into her mouth, and chewed wildly.

  “Not to mention Savage,” Ruan added, striding toward the door. He had all the information he needed. It was time to get outta dodge. “Savage is going to have their mawares at his disposal and we’re still not sure what that kind of power that’s going to give a single vamp.” Which reminded him . . . “Dylan, I need you to stay behind and get in touch with Slade. Have him make a motion to mobilize the haven’s army and any of those in the area as well. See if we can get reinforcements sent over to the fort.”

  She slung the duffel over her shoulder and strode toward the exit as if she didn’t hear a word he said. He stopped her. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re not coming.”

  “You can’t do this alone.” For such a petite little thing, she sure had the will of a bull.

  “He’s not alone.” Lilith slid the duffel from Dylan’s shoulder onto her own. “I’m going with him.”

  Trust or no trust, Ruan couldn’t turn down an offer to help. He nodded in agreement. “Dylan, I need someone to fill in Slade and the Crimson Council. Tell them what’s going on. Tell them what the scrolls revealed. Hiram will know what kind of a threat Savage is and won’t be able to decline Slade’s motion.”

  Truth be told, she could’ve informed Slade over the phone, but there was no way he was putting another life in jeopardy. Ruan was planning on going down in flames and he sure as hell wasn’t taking Dylan with him. Besides, the Crimson Council was the safest place for her to be right now—surrounded by Primuses and guards and the entire haven army at the ready.

  “What about Dante?” Dylan asked, shooting a glance at the clock that Ruan matched. Two a.m. “You s
aid someone needed to wait for him here.”

  Ruan pulled his cell out of his pocket as he pushed through the swinging double doors into the lobby. “I’ll text him. He’ll probably get to the fort before I do.”

  Nothing was going to stand in Ruan’s way now. Not even Death.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Hell is empty and the devils are here.”

  William Shakespeare

  DYLAN ADJUSTED MATHILDA on her belt for what felt like the hundredth time as she stepped into the Crimson Council chamber. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a council meeting—jeans and a cardigan and a droopy ponytail hardly screamed elegance and respect—but now was hardly the time for formalities.

  The place was erupting. Primuses were gathered around the center table, all standing, yelling at one another at the top of their lungs. They debated the true meaning of the scrolls, whether the source that deciphered them was, in fact, credible, and what means should be taken to safeguard their race. Guards sat rigid-backed, poised and proper, at their Primuses’ sides, hands folded over the table before them. General khiss members stared on, breathless, from the rows of seats lining the edges of the room. The large meeting space was softly lit by red and yellow bulbs hanging from wrought-iron sconces in the corners. Usually, the aura was warm and comforting. Now, though, the dim glow was ominous and gloomy.

  A draft swept through the room as the cherrywood doors cinched behind her, sending chills scattering beneath her cardigan.

  She caught Slade’s eye. He was standing stoic at the front of the room, arms folded across his chest, his massive frame dominating the space between two wide cathedral columns. His lips quirked into a tiny smile that he squelched down when the volume in the room rose. Dylan slid into a vacant seat in the back, watching the action unfold. She’d already called Slade on the way, filled him in on Ruan’s plans and the new information found in the scrolls. Now, she waited to be called to testify what she knew. What she saw Ruan decipher with her own eyes. If she’d be called at all. From the loud nature of things, the Primuses already had plenty to discuss.

  Hiram double-fisted the table, leaned far over, and glowered at the other Primuses. “This unruliness will no longer be tolerated in my house!” He searched the fuming, pinched faces of the fellow leaders. “We must come to a consensus to move forward and that is the end of it. Like it or not. Slade has informed us, through his own reliable source . . .” His appreciative gaze slanted to Dylan, then back again. “ . . . what Savage plans to do to bring the End of Days upon us. We’ve heard the rumors. We’ve seen the encrypted scrolls. Now, thanks to Ruan’s memory returning, we know the facts. How can we stand by and do nothing when our elders are faced with extinction in the face of the greatest evil we’ve ever known?”

  Justus, a Primus wearing a smoked red gown with sleek midnight-black hair and overly tanned skin, stood from the table, glaring at Hiram through narrow eyes. “Since when is word-of-mouth accepted as fact?” he growled. “You cannot expect me to mobilize my haven army at the whim of one of your amnesiac guards.”

  Hiram’s eyes glowed silver. “Do you expect my haven army to be as useless when Savage and his death shades come for you and yours?”

  Justus hissed, baring long, thick fangs. “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s reality.” Hiram swept his white hair behind his ears and met the eyes of each Primus around the table. “Remember your votes tonight. It may seal the fate of the khiss you represent. We need a consensus and we haven’t the time to wage war amongst ourselves.”

  Silence met him head-on.

  “Yet I implore you, fellow Primuses,” Justus began, “to remember that Savage is only targeting elders and a very specific mundane who means nothing to us. He has not threatened a single vamp from our khisses. If we engage him in whatever battle he has planned, we become the targets.” He paused, and as Hiram started to refute him, Justus roared, “I vote we extinguish the bond that links our havens to Hiram’s. If he wants to kill innocent members of his khiss in the name of some encoded prophesy, so be it. But he shouldn’t be able to call an emergency meeting and ask us to ride the speedway to hell with him.”

  “Let us vote on the matters at hand,” Hiram said, and they all rose on cue. One by one, they filed out of the room into an antechamber on the far left, their dark robes skimming the hardwood floor. The Primuses’ voting chamber had always been a mystery. Only accessible through one heavy-duty and very soundproof door. And only standing Primuses could enter—an ancient maware ensured that. But that’s not what made the antechamber mysterious. It was the fact that even though Hiram informed Dylan time and time again that the council debated in the antechamber for far longer—and much more candidly—than they did on the floor, they only ever seemed to be gone a few seconds. It was almost as if the moment the last Primus clicked the door shut, it opened again and they filed out—a difficult consensus forged.

  This time was no different.

  They were in and out of the antechamber in seconds. Dylan remembered Meridian’s maware of time warping, of being lost in the vortex of her apartment, and wondered if Meridian had played a part in the mystery behind the impossibly quick vote. The last elder in—the first elder out—held his balding head high, his worn and crooked hands clasped in front of him.

  Dylan focused on Hiram. On the long sag of his chin. On the disappointed pallor of his face. She didn’t need to hear the consensus to know he’d lost. There’d be no meeting of the minds. At least not tonight. Which meant Ruan was on his own against Savage with God-knew-how-many death shades in that fort.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Hiram began, all anger and impatience lost as if he’d had a lifetime behind the antechamber doors to come to terms with the vote. “Our haven armies will remain in place until further notice.” Turning, he aimed his words at Slade. “Our havens remain joined, requiring all votes for one haven to proceed into war, but what one man does of his own accord will be his foolish fortune alone.”

  Slade nodded ever so slightly. If Dylan hadn’t spent the last few months memorizing every move her lover made, she might’ve missed it. He looked in her direction, his coal-black eyes searching hers, winked—the cue to bail—and slipped out the narrow door to the right of the great room. He got the message Hiram was subtly relaying. And now he was going to fight beside Ruan and bring Eve home. Dylan rose, crouching so as not to garner attention, and slipped out the back door.

  There was something she had to tell him and it couldn’t wait another minute.

  GRIMACING, HOPING HE’D learned enough about death shades to possess one, Savage peeled open his eyelids.

  He was no longer in the fort, focusing hard-core on seeing through the “eyes” of the death shades he’d sent out into the city; well, his body was still in the fort, of course, but his mind was far from it. With a single, slow blink of his eyes, Savage was huddled in the air vents at San Francisco’s haven, waiting to descend into the Crimson Council’s chamber . . . or rather, Savage corrected, the death shade he was possessing at the moment was in the vent.

  He’d done it! He could sense the raw, pulsing energy of the death shades. And make them bend to his will.

  From behind the blurring veil of a death shade’s shadow, Savage made out the faint outline of vamps sitting around a large table in the center of a great, and very gray, room. When the blurred shapes finally settled into one distinct image of what could only have been the Crimson Council meeting at his former haven, Savage realized one death shade must’ve been more dominant than the others.

  And now he was looking down on the council meeting from up above, from the scope of a single death shade.

  He could feel the deep vibrating energy of the death shades around him. Knew they were slinking down different air vents that all led to the same place. Making their way to the council’s chamber to solidify the attack. Drafts of cold air settled on the back of his neck as a massi
ve clump of death shades slithered behind him, ready to drip through the slats in the vent and ghost around the room.

  From below, Hiram pounded on the council chamber. It sounded like angry thunder to his death shade’s senses. Two Primuses who gave off greedy, sulfuric scents rose to their feet, yelling in rich octaves too deep and muffled for Savage to decipher. They had no idea what was hanging above their heads, clinging to the vaulted ceiling like thick black swags.

  His new army.

  Savage urged his death shade forward, oozing through the vent slats, then reforming into a darker, more concentrated form than it was before. It hung to a wide, wooden beam overhead, awaiting the perfect moment to make the Primuses eat their own words.

  And to think . . . they’d determined he wasn’t a threat!

  With bat-like squeals of attack, mobs of death shades flooded the chamber. They circled the walls, sinking deeper into the pit of the room, hissing from within.

  Khiss members watching the council meeting scattered. Death shades swooped in from all directions. Circled their feet. Spiraled up their bodies. Wiggled smoky fingers of death into their lungs. Screams for help only fueled the death shades’ enthusiasm. They spiraled faster and faster around the room like supernatural vultures picking off dying prey. They dipped low, swooped over covered heads. Wisps of their shades thinned, reaching low into the chamber like fingers of rain separating from clouds, tickling the earth. Primus guards screeched in defeat as their souls dusted to the Ever After.

  Savage’s death shade hissed in early victory.

  The Primuses had huddled protectively in the center of the room, their backs to one another, their mouths agape in horror. Savage’s death shade gurgled as it oozed from the overhead beam and floated over the ground before them. It circled the Primuses, pushing them tighter together. Corralling them for slaughter.

  Savage set his fogged sights on Hiram. Beneath the death shade’s veil, Hiram looked proud. Fearless. Strong. As Savage fought the urge to laugh, his death shade hiccupped. The death shades swarming the chamber blurped in unison. Did they just react to his emotion or was he imaging the connection, making it more intense than it was?