The Hunted

by Heather McAlendin

  Killer Queen

  The Hunted

  By

  Heather McAlendin

  Eternal Press

  A division of Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.eternalpress.biz

  Killer Queen: The Hunted

  by Heather McAlendin

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-383-6

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-384-3

  Cover art by: Dawné Dominique

  Edited by: Alison O’Byrne

  Copyedited by: Rose Vera Stepney

  Copyright 2011 Heather McAlendin

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  1st North American and UK Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Scott.

  Thank you for believing in my work and my weird and wonderful mind.

  Chapter One

  I struggled against the hands and bonds that immobilized me. I felt paralyzed. There were flashes of light and fangs, so many sharp, white fangs. My flesh was shredded, blood draining from wounds that covered my arms, my legs and my throat.

  “No!” I screamed. “Andrew, where are you? Why can’t I feel you? Why won’t you help me?”

  Suddenly, the bonds released and I sprang forward, reaching out in front of me.

  Nothing. There was nothing but cool air and the dark.

  “A dream?” I panted. “This was all a dream?”

  I ran my tongue over my exposed fangs and lips. It was a nervous habit I developed over the last few years. After a moment or two to quiet my mind, I reached out into the inky blackness and felt the darkness revealing the same feelings I had for the last six months: devastating loneliness.

  Reaching up the wall, I felt for the light switch. I blinked quickly as the room flooded with flickering, florescent light.

  I sat up in bed, alone; my long, silver hair fell like a curtain around my shoulders. I looked around the room at the blacked out windows and the sealed door. It was a barren, impersonal space excepting a small bed, a single pillow and a well-worn comforter I had stolen from a second hand shop not too far from where I was now living.

  This was what my life had become. The life of a former Vampire Queen.

  I glanced down at a small cooler that fit snugly under my bed. It was full of ice packs and blood bags.

  “Marie.” I sighed as I remembered our first visit to the blood bank not so many months ago. “If not for you I’d have starved to death.”

  Marie Saint Martin was a young, former nun with the gift of sight that I turned into a fledgling vampire. Although not without purpose, her human death and rebirth into the Vampire Clans left me unsettled and grieving. She was the kin of Andrew Saint Martin, the human host and consort I had chosen to become the next leader of the vampires and their first King.

  I still refused to feed from any human who would not give themselves freely to me. It sickened me the way these new vampires would feed off anyone or anything.

  I sat back and carefully lifted the bag of life-giving blood to my lips, revealed my fangs and drank deeply. I closed my eyes and sighed. Before now, my blood taking was an intimate process. I missed Andrew.

  Andrew was home, leading the Vampire Clans and taking care of Marie until she became used to her new life as a fledgling.

  I had a job to do and I had to keep that in context before I became maudlin and depressed about my past. My past had brought me to this unsettled present.

  Hannah was my chosen one; my first blood according to the Vampire Code. In a jealous rage and filled with greed she chose to break the code, break the rules, and break my heart. Hannah stepped away from me and the opportunity to become Queen, to force her way into the human world and create her own half-blood, motley crew of vampires.

  As former Queen, I was responsible for bringing her to justice and with that, ending her miserable life. In an odd twist of fate, I missed out on that justice myself but I had to seek out and end the lives of those Hannah had so wrongly created.

  The only problem was I had no clue how many were out there or where they were hiding.

  Chapter Two

  Feeling suitably refreshed at dusk, I came out from my hiding place and wandered the streets seeking anyone who would lead me to Hannah’s remaining brood.

  Mine was a lonely task and perhaps righteously so. I was amazed at what the modern world deemed a vampire to be. Modern movies portray us as evil doers; monsters who lust after the taste of human blood. In books, we are sexual deviants using blood to bring us to a frenzied orgasm. Humans choose to speak about us in hushed tones, comparing us to Satan or evil incarnate. There is so much fiction and so little truth to any of it.

  Although we are ancient and we do indeed sustain our lives with blood, we are not murderers, thieves, or rapists. It was these and many other misconceptions about our race that I had tried to avoid for hundreds of years. It was the main reason the Ancient Ones created the Vampire Code. Within the code, the vampire race could exist with minimal human contact and we could remain, by all human standards, a myth. The code was a safety mechanism. Too much rogue contact between humans and vampires would sully the bloodline and the pure vampire race would no longer exist.

  Now I had to rid the world of Hannah’s abominations and in doing so, protect the Vampire Clans and humanity before they meshed so closely together that both were in danger of extinction.

  Centuries ago, a whole race of ancient vampires called the Toltecs bred themselves into extinction. I dreaded the same thing happening to my people in the twenty-first century.

  “Look, it’s the Killer Vampire Queen.” A hushed, laughing voice mocked me from the shadows.

  “No longer Queen,” another chided. “She took a human lover and made him King over our beloved.”

  “Show yourselves.” I placed one hand on my thigh where I felt for the bejeweled dagger Queen Akita gave me before leaving my home so many months earlier. The blade was razor sharp and true. I had severed many vampire heads from their lifeless bodies by its machinations. The only true way to kill a vampire was to pierce its heart and remove the head from its body.

  “You are all cowards!” I shrieked into the inky darkness. I could hear movement and breathing but I had yet to discover their hiding spot.

  “Cowards?” a disembodied voice said. “You allowed a fledgling vampire to murder Hannah. You, who supposedly uphold the Vampire Code to the letter, funny how time changes things.”

  I stopped and listened, my vampire blood churning with rage. The words and voice were vaguely familiar to me, like an echo in time.

  “Drake?” I whispered. “No, it can’t be. You are dead, I watched you die.”

  Once again I heard the familiar, low male voice chuckling.

  “Sometimes the eyes, just as the heart, can be deceived,” he said.

  Father Drake Von Brugel was an Ancient, older even than I or the Ancient Queen Akita. During the Christian crusades, he had been a formidable warrior of the cross. He travelled many continents on the Pope’s behalf to bring the sinful to the side of God. Father Drake knew no boundaries when it came to his faith or his merciless discipline and indoctrination of t
he soulless.

  He was a brutal man. My mind flashed back to our first meeting; seemingly a lifetime ago. In fact, it was many lifetimes ago.

  I was a warrior maiden on a quest to find adventure. I had been a trained healer and after I found my family brutally murdered by a warring faction, I set out to start a new life and leave my old life behind in the charred ruins of my tiny village.

  It was during one of these sojourns that I came upon a dense thicket in the woods. Deep within the thicket was a clearing where I had noticed a gathering of armed men and horses. As silently as I could, I crept up on the group and sat unnoticed in the dense underbrush.

  A very tall, well-built man in a long, black frock drew my gaze. His dark eyes glittered like diamonds in the midday sun and his hair was thick and black. He had a long scar on his cheek that ran from just under his left eye to his jaw. Instead of marring his complexion, it added to the authority and masculinity of the man. When he turned to face the group, I noticed the red and white emblem embroidered into his frock. He was a man of God, a priest!

  I moved slowly to get out of line of sight when I heard a grunt. A man, thrown from behind the line of men and horses, fell to his knees in front of the towering priest.

  “Do you accept the light of Christ in your heart? Do you release the demon within you to follow as his disciple?” Father Drake stared at the hooded man, prostrate before him.

  “I have no God and you speak heresy Priest! I have seen what you and others have done in the name of your God.”

  The man choked as he spoke. I could well imagine his throat was dry from breathing through the roughly sewn sack that covered his head. What had this priest and his followers done?

  Suddenly the priest’s fist came down on the man’s shoulder and knocked him flat into the dirt.

  “Quiet evil doer, your serpents tongue holds no power in the eyes of the Almighty!”

  “I do not answer to you.”

  The man let out a low grunt and quickly jumped to his feet. His actions startled the armed men surrounding him. Before anyone could move forward, he had a weapon in his hand, stolen from the warrior standing closest to him.

  With one swift movement, the dagger flashed forward and Father Drake sank to his knees with one hand wrapped around the weapon embedded in his stomach.

  “You will go to hell bastard dog!” The dying priest groaned. “I am ready to meet my God with a clear conscience.”

  I remember clapping one hand over my mouth as I watched the blood pump from his gut. Father Drake’s men called out to him, then captured and beat to death the offender who murdered him.

  “Yes, Silver, all of what you remember is true.” Drake said calmly. “I am no more a priest now than you are a Queen.”

  “How?” I started to speak, only for the ancient priest to interrupt again.

  “Same as you my dear, but my life was spared by one of a race of vampires older than God himself!”

  Toltecs? No, they were almost extinct by that time and Queen Akita found and spared the life of the last one!

  “Carlos?” Drake smirked as he ran one hand through his dark, wavy hair. “He was indeed one of the last of his kind but there was another and she is the reason I stand before you today.”

  She? I questioned silently. I had not heard a whisper of any female Toltecs surviving their extinction.

  “Impossible!” I roared. “Quit trying to distract me Drake. You are still a lying, evil snake.”

  “Oh, but it is true my dear. At any rate, it is due to that fateful meeting that I stand before you today. I know, such a contradiction in terms being a man of God and yet owing my life to the devil.”

  “Devil.” I sniffed loudly in disgust. “You know nothing of my race if you think we are spawns of the devil. Some humans deserve that title in a more literal fashion.” “Enough nonsense, Drake. Priest or not, you are in my way and I am here for one purpose only; to destroy Hannah’s spawn.”

  Father Drake stood silently and stared at me. His eyes glowed like coals and a growl escaped from deep within his throat. I still could not fathom him being one of my kind.

  “I cannot allow you to destroy that which made me who I am. Through my transformation I have gained more power than I ever had or wanted as a human.”

  Drake’s voice whispered deep within my head. Besides, in this form I have sent many of you soulless demons back to where the Lord Almighty can deal with you!

  I blinked for a moment as I realized he had just spoken with me telepathically. Just how developed a vampire was he?

  “So you still consider yourself a priest, Drake?” I asked sourly. “You are what you hate most and yet you still blindly follow a God who cannot and did not help you in your time of need?” My voice dripped with sarcasm as I watched and waited for Drake to move. He did not disappoint me as he steeled himself then lunged forward, trying to grasp me around the neck.

  “I have had younger and more powerful vampires try to kill me Drake and I am still here.” I mocked. “Let me guess, you figured Hannah would show you where I was and allow you to bury yourself deep within the Clans to do what you wished? Sorry if your plans were ill thought out.” It was the last word that spat from my lips as I quickly moved aside, watching as Drake fell to one knee, missing me entirely.

  I heard a distinct hiss from his companions, who until that moment remained hidden in the shadows.

  “Stay where you are!“ Drake shouted as he raised an immense hand, bidding his minions to come no further. “Hannah is gone?” he mused as he raised himself up to his full height and clapped the dust from his hands. “Yes, of course she is. That is when I started hearing them.” He smiled as if discovering a hidden cosmic joke.

  “Them? What the hell are you going on about Drake? Have you lost your sense of reason as well as your balance?” My voice was dripping with sarcasm as I watched a faint smile play upon his lips.

  “You cannot tell me that the all powerful Silver Devries cannot hear them? Hannah’s brood is everywhere, my dear. It is a sorrowful song full of lament and regrets and confusion. Now I understand, but…” Drake stopped speaking, closed his eyes, and holding a hand over his chest, he nodded. “Yes, I see it all now.”

  His dark eyes snapped open and he stared intently at me. Very slowly, I reached for my blade.

  “It was not you, was it, my dear Silver? It was a fledgling and of...of Andrew Saint Martin’s line? How sweet that is!”

  I shook my head and tried to keep my face as unreadable as possible. He, like Andrew had developed his gifts very quickly. Even I did not have such an advanced gift of sight.

  “This new breed puzzles you, don’t they?” he asked dryly. “It’s alright my dear, the new wave of our kind is taking over. You and the Ancients will soon be extinct.”

  A flood of rage and anguish washed over me. Before I could control the impulse, I sprang forward, fangs bared and my blade aimed at Drake’s chest.

  Without even so much as a breath or a blink, Drake raised one hand and wiped me aside like nothing more than a butterfly in the wind. He could have snapped me in half if he had a mind too.

  I landed with a grunt but quickly leaped to my feet and stood silently, waiting for his next move. Drake drew up to his full height and brushed the dust from his pants, a sly grin spread across his ruggedly handsome face.

  “You should be dead now, Silver,” he said. “Do not forget that. Now you owe me your life!”

  I growled and ran my tongue over the tips of my fangs. “I owe you nothing Drake and once the Clan finds out who and what you are, or at least were, you will have precious few days to gloat.”

  Once again, Drake smiled and stared directly at me, causing me to shift uncomfortably from side to side. Never had a human or vampire made me so self conscious. I shook off the feeling and lifted my eyes directly up to meet his.

  “Do you really presume to think they do not know about me? Do you think Hannah has been the only rogue vampire? The one who turned me may be older
than any in the Vampire Clans…older than Carlos.”

  His deep voice and stare lulled me into a false sense of security. What was happening? My senses dulled and my head felt thick and dense, the vampire blood within boiled and flushed my cheeks and chest.

  “What?” I moaned before collapsing to the ground in a heap, unable to move or feel.

  “So much for the all-powerful Vampire Queen.” Drake laughed.

  Those were the last words I heard before everything went silent and black.

  Chapter Three

  I woke in the darkness; my head and tongue felt thick as if I had taken drugs. I struggled to move.

  “Damn it! “ I shrieked. My ankles and wrists were in manacles and my back forced straight against a cold, cement wall.

  “Drake!” I yelled in a hoarse, dry-sounding voice. “Drake, where the hell are you and where am I?”

  I tried to search out with my mind but even the air around me was lifeless and still. There were no living beings in my presence or within five hundred meters of me on either side.

  Squinting, I could barely make out a door at the far end of the windowless room. I panicked...for a moment.

  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and quieted my mind.

  I am here my love. The smooth, familiar voice soothed my wildly beating heart.

  Andrew Saint Martin, my partner, my lover, my friend and willing host for centuries, was the current King of the Vampire Clans. After my misfortune in letting Hannah escape to create her own unholy clan, I and the Ancients chose Andrew as the first male ruler. Hannah had broken the Vampire Code by choosing to infect the true vampire line with second-class human blood. Hannah was my chosen one and each human she chose to bond with, weakened the vampire lineage. For centuries, humans and vampires lived in harmony. Humans blissfully unaware of our existence unless they chose, of their own accord, to become a host and psychically bond with us. As long as a human remained in a vampire’s care, they never aged nor required protection. When a human host wanted to be free, the vampire would respect his or her wish and that human would grow old and die, with the memories of service within the Vampire Clans erased for all eternity.