Deathless (The Vein Chronicles Book 2)

by Anne Malcom

  All eyes went to Scott, who’d been leaning on the doorframe.

  “Scott, I totally forgot you were here. I thought you had a roller derby or something to go to,” I said.

  He glared at me. “It’s Ultimate Frisbee, and it got canceled,” he corrected.

  I swallowed a chuckle, only because he looked so serious.

  “You know about this?” Rick asked him. His voice was serious, like he was actually considering Scott as someone who didn’t live in his mom’s basement.

  Well, his mom was dead, so that was out of the question, but that was the spirit of his entire persona.

  Scott nodded. “The Deathless Prophecy.”

  I gaped at him. “How in the fuck do you know anything about a prophecy? You’re a half breed who works in the Sector. I don’t think a book on prophecy comes with the induction booklet. And with things like Ultimate Frisbee and Jonas brothers concerts on the agenda in addition to annoying me, I thought your pocketbook would be mighty full.”

  He focused his one eye on me, deceptively serious. That unnerved me more than the rest of it. “I read. A lot. As you say, I’m a half breed, and that fact means I’m in this world at somewhat of a disadvantage. But it also means I’m more likely to make friends with people on the fringe. And the fringe is where the knowledge is.”

  I continued to gape. “You’re serious? And not talking about people who play Ultimate Frisbee and collect My Little Pony?” I asked.

  “Isla,” Thorne warned.

  I gave him a look. “What? I’m just making sure. You never know with him.” “It’s a book of the origin of all things. A friend of mine said it’s passed down from generation to generation and was considered little more than bedtime stories. But the Deathless one is the one who is neither undead nor alive, who has the blood of the one who will kill her in her veins and on the heels of eternity they will ride, with the Great War determining the fate of the planet.” He recited it in that same kind of empty voice Sophie had before but it was from memory, like he was looking at the page in his mind.

  “Well this is becoming more and more like a daytime movie special,” I muttered. “Two people with the fate of the world in their hands? Yeah, it’s never that easy. The world is a big place. Two people can’t save it, nor can they ruin it.”

  No one was listening to me anymore.

  Which was pissing me right off. They were listening to the one-eyed half breed who actually said once that he thought Dracula was a great representation of society’s version of the vampire in the modern world. I would’ve felt better if he’d spoken of Eric Northman—at least he was hot.

  Rick was looking rattled. Which rattled me a little, if I was honest. The king had looked rattled exactly twice since I’d met him, both when I was on Death’s door. Luckily I had scampered away before he answered.

  But I bet he was getting frustrated now. Death, not Rick.

  Well, maybe Rick too.

  “I recall this legend,” Rick said slowly, focused on Scott and not me. “And at the summit we just held, a witch of one of the covens was mentioning it, saying that the events of the past decade brought about the prophecy of the Deathless, though we took little stock in prophecy considering the problems of the present.”

  I pointed at him. “Yes, that sounds like what we should do. Focus on the present. Not the future. Yolo. Wait, it should be Yodo. You only die once. Except for me, of course. And all vampires, if we want to get technical. Shit, Yodt doesn’t work. Whatever. All the more reason to live in the now, dudes.”

  Rick stared at me. “The present and the future seem very mixed right now. And it would be unwise to discredit such things that give us warning. It could be fatal, in fact. We have an alliance that is unprecedented with the attacks of hybrids increasing throughout the globe. This problem is not going away, not with the power behind it that is more than the world has seen in ages.”

  His eyes flickered to Thorne, something passing between them before it was gone.

  “Well, a fight’s a fight. We’ll not complicate it with this shit. Tell me where to be and who to kill and I’ll be there. For now, I need to get laid,” Duncan cut in.

  He winked at me, saluted Rick and then was gone.

  I watched his back fondly, wishing I was able to exit this fucking mess with the same ease and simplicity of the Scottish hitman.

  But no, I had to be the fucking chosen one.

  “I think he’s got the right idea,” I put in, frowning and wanting to call out “Take me with you.”

  But I didn’t think Thorne would’ve appreciated it at that moment.

  No one listened to me anyway.

  “I’ll contact the coven to see what I can find out,” Sophie said. “Though I think my involvement in prophecy needs to be understated, considering I really don’t want to be sequestered.”

  It was at that point that the mute werewolf decided to speak. “That’s not fuckin’ happening.”

  “Of course it’s not happening,” I snapped at him. “If you hadn’t noticed, Sophie has these nifty new powers that would likely blow that place to the ground if she so wished.”

  Sophie grinned at me. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. To tempt you to make all the bad decisions. They’re usually the most fun.”

  For once she didn’t take me up on it. She was still serious. “I’ll do what I can to see what I can get from this, but Isla, prophecy is what our race is built on. You’ve just been too busy ignoring the society that you so badly want to be separate from to notice.”

  I threw my hands up. “Well who wouldn’t want to be part of a society that builds itself on the ramblings of a crazy and borderline-possessed witch?” I asked the room, then eyed Sophie. “No offense.”

  She shrugged. “Can’t beat the truth.”

  No. We couldn’t.

  And it seemed that the truth was staring us in the face.

  And the truth just happened to look a fuck of a lot like death.

  Chapter 9

  “I’m bored,” I declared, snapping the dusty book shut and throwing it on the oak desk.

  Thorne looked up from his own. “You’ve been reading that for approximately twelve minutes.”

  I pushed up and paced the dusty library. “Twelve minutes too long. I haven’t got eternity, you know. Well, technically I do, but still I wouldn’t want to waste it reading.” I paused. “Unless it was something that wasn’t a prophecy about me having the fate of the world on my shoulders. I don’t look good with anything on my shoulders. The shoulder pads in the eighties showed me that. I don’t have the frame for it.”

  It had been three days since the little prophecy announcement, and it was the most boring three days ever. We had the location of the witches, and we had a witch of our own in the chamber, yet we were fucking reading. Because wars were won in libraries, apparently.

  Thorne seemed happy about the turn of events, and not just because it meant we got to take sex breaks on the desk. I had been doing my best to stay away from all reading portions of our little activity. I had a company to run and minions to order around; therefore, this was the only day I actually had to be in the library.

  Apparently what they’d found meant Sophie’s words weren’t just hot air.

  And it also meant that Rick was attending all sorts of councils that seemed duller than beige sweaters about stopping the ‘kill on sight’ orders for slayers, since the whole ‘slayer tied to the fate of the world’ thing was gaining traction.

  Two vampires from the Sector were coming for tea. Or blood. I’d had to call Lewis to find myself a nice juicy mafia boss who’d escaped prosecution a couple of times and had a body count to rival my own.

  “You haven’t been around lately,” Lewis commented on the phone.

  “Oh yeah, I’ve been busy. Dying. Coming back to life. Fighting a sect of vampires intent on ending the human race as you know it. Oh, and Scandal just came out on Netflix.”

  There was a
long sigh on the other end of the phone. “You better not do anything stupid like get yourself killed, Isla,” he ordered roughly.

  I smiled on the other end of the phone. “Awww, does that mean you care about me?” I cooed.

  I got dead air as my answer.

  Then the location of the latest sucker to get drained for my little tea party.

  He was in the kitchen—the mafia boss, not Lewis. Hopefully he wouldn’t get too cold before they arrived, considering Theonexia and the sharing of his blood would be the only thing keeping the vampires from trying to kill Thorne and me.

  Self-righteous vampires from the Sector wouldn’t likely break one of the race’s oldest rules.

  As I paced, I thought. Which wasn’t good. Because idle hands were the Devil’s work, after all.

  That motherfucker already seemed to be working overtime to mess up my day.

  Scott had come in with his book and we’d read the passage the day before. Not as entertaining as Fifty, and it didn’t turn me on near as much.

  Or at all.

  It will start with two and come in threes.

  The curse will be cast.

  And with the three of two shall the history be made—the future, already written with the spilling of the blood, being the first of the three.

  The blood which is designed to be fatal will cause death to abandon her. Yet it will make death her constant companion. Deathless in all ways except the blood.

  It is in which the beginning began that the new ending shall be written for the future or for the present.

  The three will determine.

  There will be a Deathless one.

  There will be one who takes Death’s embrace like a lover’s caress, and the animal within the two will roar at the moon, for its agony will blanket the earth.

  And there will be one as mortal as the weakest of humanity to bring down the strongest of immortality.

  Eternally they will walk the earth, or the earth will perish without them. With the Great War to be fought and the prophecy to be filled, it will end. Or it will begin.

  As it was and always has been.

  In blood.

  The blood will run.

  The Deathless night.

  The curse.

  The blood will run.

  “That’s cheerful,” I commented after reading and then banishing the light that came with the words. I needed the shadows. That’s where monsters resided, after all.

  “It’s not even necessarily about me and Thorne,” I continued. “It could conceivably be anyone. Brad and Jen. Or Brad and Ange. Or Brad and the fucking nanny,” I listed on my fingers. “Besides, there’re three other people involved in this. Well four, it seems. Three couples. And I don’t have any couple friends. I hate couple friends. So there we go, I don’t brunch or do quiz nights with anyone in a relationship and the world is safe,” I declared.

  Thorne hadn’t thought so.

  Rick had agreed, even despite the steady stream of hate between them that I was still curious about.

  But whatever, I had arguments to win.

  Which I wasn’t. Winning, that is.

  No one agreed when I suggested we “ignore Scott’s creepy bedtime storybook and start cracking heads and taking names.”

  Not even Duncan.

  Duncan.

  “Sorry, lassie. I’ll go into any fight without blinking. But war? War’s different. We need to know thy enemy.”

  I scowled at him. “Did you just quote Art of War?” I hissed.

  He shrugged.

  And then I’d stabbed him with a letter opener.

  Even that hadn’t helped. So he was away having all the fun and fighting a coven of hybrids on the other side of the state while I was stuck in a library.

  Reading.

  Well I wasn’t.

  But Thorne was.

  I focused on his dark head, bent over some ancient text that Sophie had carted over with her wolfy shadow before leaving as quick as her combat boots could take her.

  “The animal within the two will roar at the moon, for its agony will blanket the earth.”

  That light shined in again, illuminating the dark places and showing me with a cool certainty that the universe seemed to have plans for us. And not just me. My friend.

  And a werewolf.

  If she was destined to be with anyone, I would’ve been a lot happier had it been a demon of high caliber. Then he’d be able to talk to the man downstairs about wiping the slate clean of all this prophecy stuff.

  I didn’t like words in a book telling me how I’d live my life.

  Or how it would become my death.

  It pissed me right the fuck off.

  And since the universe was rather hard to stab with a letter opener, I focused on something more corporeal. And bled more.

  My heels echoed on the floor of my study like a warm drum as I stormed over to Thorne. His eyes met mine and he settled his solid gaze on me.

  It was tinged with what had settled there since… well, I’d come back from the grave with a very particular taste in blood and a pesky title of chosen one that I despised more than being known as the chick who accidentally saved a country from nuclear winter that one time.

  I stared at him. “They were wrong,” I hissed.

  He was no longer surprised by my spouting things that didn’t rightly seem like they went with the conversion, so he simply said, “Who?”

  “Everyone!” I threw up my hands, gesturing around the library. Immortality gave one a lot of free time—in between wars, of course. And before there was TV and online shopping, there were books. So I had a lot. Not all that were ever written, but a nice collection. One I had the irrational urge to set aflame and throw off my balcony.

  “Every twit who wrote sagas, epics and fucking poems about this great thing called love. Because it’s not great. I’m a vampire, for Lucifer’s sake. I kind of have the monopoly of pain and suffering. Granted, I’m usually the one delivering it, but it’s merely details.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know what’s ruined me more than lost limbs, burning flesh, and daggers to the fucking heart? You. This love. It’s the most suffering I have ever experienced. And the worst fucking thing? Like some masochist, I don’t ever want to stop suffering because that means I’ll stop loving you. So yes, these idiots with their tales of love are liars in the ninth fucking degree, and if a good portion of them weren’t dead I’d kill them all myself.”

  Thorne had weathered my rant with a blank face, maybe because he’d weathered many a rant and also because he was maybe trying to tread carefully around the bomb he’d only just defused that could, at any moment, start the ticking clock to explosion.

  “No, babe,” he said finally, looking from me to the aged books full of bullshit. “You’re wrong.”

  I raised my brow at him. “And you’re brave, saying that to an emotional female who just happens to be a vampire and has the power to rip your fucking heart out,” I said blandly.

  His face stayed impassive. “Yeah, Isla, you have that power,” he agreed. “But it’s not about you being a vampire. It’s you being you.”

  “They’re one and the same,” I snapped.

  “No, they’re not. What you are doesn’t define you.”

  “I disagree—it is all that defines me. That and my excellent taste in shoes.”

  “You know what defines you? The fact that you kill as easy as blink but risk immortality to save a race that wants you dead. That you will break someone’s arm for looking at you the wrong way but you’ll break someone’s neck for hurting someone you love. That list of people may be small, but that’s all the more important. Because you give everything you are to the people you love, and that shows you something. And it shows you that these epics, poems, fucking tragedies were specifically right. Because the good ones, the great ones, they are full to the brim with pain and suffering and blood. But they’ve withstood in their own right. Become immortal because of that ugly, powerful, beautiful, heartren
ding kind of love. And that’s what we have. There’ll be blood, of that I have no doubt. Mine. Yours, though I’ll do anything in my power to prevent that. But there’ll be blood. And suffering. Death, but not yours. Or mine. Because what we got, baby, it’s immortal. And it ain’t got shit to do with the fact that you’re a vampire or I’m a Praseates.”

  I paused at the words. At the truth to them. But then the truth was a tricky thing. Much like a great pair of shoes. Looked and felt great, but for you to look good and feel better about your outfit you also had to welcome the pain that came with six-inch stilettos.

  I didn’t know, of course, but I’d heard enough whiny humans bitch about the pain.

  I’d almost snapped their ankles to show them real pain and then educate them on the importance of sacrifice.

  And sacrifice for fashion was the biggest of all.

  Or so I’d thought.

  Until I met a man I’d sacrificed it all for.

  But then it turned out someone had already decided that sacrifice. And if there was one thing I didn’t like, it was being told what to do. I’d tell people what to do until the demons came home because I knew better than most people.

  All people, in fact.

  Which was why I didn’t need such a thing as prophecy to tell me what I’d die for.

  Who I’d die for.

  I was quite capable of doing that for myself.

  And it pissed me off that the universe and I had come to the same conclusion.

  The man standing in front of me professing his undying love.

  The undying love that just happened to be written in a book older than either of us.

  So I didn’t blink in the face of his words.

  Outwardly, at least.

  “I’m a rule breaker,” I informed him. “It’s like strength training for me. The heavier, more taboo said rule, the more fun it is to snap and work my biceps. That’s why I had so much fun doing it with you. Oh, and I guess the whole love thing too,” I added when his eyes flickered with fury. “But I thought I was breaking the biggest rule of our kind when really I was going along with some god’s plan.” I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t like plans. Or being told what to do. I like to surprise everyone, myself included, with the fucked-up shit I do. Now it seems that this entire existence has been written in the stars. For young romantics, it may be all very soulful, but I’m not young, nor romantic. And the very thought of anyone, even a god—especially a god—telling me who to love before I figure it out for myself makes me itchy,” I declared. “And not in a good way.”