By Blood Sworn
The Dagger Chronicles
Book 2
Janice Jones
Amberjack Publishing
New York, New York
Mama
Our story ended much too soon. With a heavy heart, I begin another without you. Ever my hero; forever in my heart.
Prologue
From his position behind the glass, he waited. What else could he do? In this century, he was at a disadvantage. Witchcraft continued to elude him, as it always had. And Brice Campbell couldn’t tell a spell from a fast food menu, so Tristan was forced to watch and wait.
Giselle worked day and night—page by page. The “clean room” was off limits to Tristan. Something about how the magicks she used to transfer his consciousness could be interrupted if he stood in that room for even a few minutes. He felt like he was back to his old self, but she insisted he wasn’t.
“You need more time for the blood to take hold permanently,” she warned him over breakfast.
Tristan sighed. More time. He was tired of that phrase, quite honestly. Over the centuries, waiting was something he had come to know intimately. But if he had to wait any longer, he’d surely go mad. He reached up to press the little white button that operated the two-way speakers.
“How much longer?”
Giselle peered over the top of her glasses at him, her gloved hands poised over the delicate pages of the book of dark magic she’d been painstakingly scanning for the last three hours. With her hair pinned up in a bun and covered in a matching bonnet, she looked like a surgeon.
“This may take a while.” The mask over her mouth moved as she spoke. “You should go on with your day, Tristan. You’ll just be bored watching me.”
Tristan pressed his right palm to the glass and tapped it lightly with the ring around his finger as he held the button down. Giselle continued to pass the slim lighted wand over the page. He watched the tedious process in painful boredom. “Sorry, I’m just anxious.”
“So am I, but scanning two thousand pages will take time, Tristan. My program will decipher the text but not instantly. Most likely this language is dead, so we may have to wait even longer for the translation.”
Tristan stepped closer to the glass. “Don’t you have a spell that can turn that into something we can read?”
Giselle shook her head, and he could tell she had a smile on her face. “My magic isn’t strong enough for this. But I do recognize some of the words here.” She leaned closer to the book, and Tristan saw her eyes narrow as the mask over her mouth moved. “It says something about a dzhadazhiya—that’s Bulgarian.”
“For what?”
She looked up at him with something akin to fear and disbelief. As she scrambled over to the messy desk in the corner, Tristan sighed.
He released the button while he waited. All this babble about dead languages and ancient glyphs had given him a massive headache. “Giselle,” he growled under his breath, then pressed the button again. “What does it mean?”
A leather-bound journal lay open on the desk. She flipped the stiff pages quickly, stopped, appeared to read the words scribbled on them, then looked up at him.
“Dhampir,” she announced with a grin in her eyes. “That’s what my people called them, anyway.”
Tristan suddenly felt lightheaded. He let his weight fall against the glass as he smiled at her. “Are you sure? Please tell me you’re sure.”
“The doctor made references to a hybrid program, but there were problems,” she said, almost under her breath as she shut the journal. “I have to go over this, without interruption,” she said then hurried back to the workstation. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
He left the observation room in a good mood. Down the long, dim corridor, Tristan practically danced toward the freight elevator. In the bowels of this museum, among the cement walls and dank smells, he felt safe. This place reminded him of home, his underground fortress in the desert. The home and family that hunters invaded and destroyed.
He reached the freight elevator just as his phone buzzed. He was surprised that it even worked down here. The thick cement walls and spider-web of electrical wires should have blocked the signal. He looked at the screen with a small grin. Some good news, finally. The shifter had surfaced.
According to his source, Kit Blaze had arranged to meet with Alex Stone in a few hours. Tristan wondered how long it would take before she cracked. Shifters were not known for their strength of character. For the right price, they’d give away all to the highest bidder. This woman had proved to be no different. Apparently, she felt Alex Stone would protect her.
“Oh how wrong you are, my dear,” Tristan whispered to the empty freight elevator when the door slid open. He stepped inside. “She can’t protect you—not from me.”
Chapter 1
Her stomach knotted at the sight: the position of the bodies and the chaos of the room. But, worst of all—the thing that would give her nightmares—was the look on the children’s faces, smeared with blood, as they grinned at their dead parents.
“Damn shame, huh?” someone said behind her. “I thought this was supposed to be against their rules—turning little kids.”
“It is,” Alex muttered as she pushed her way through the agents while they documented the scene. But when she reached the couch, a strange sense of déjà vu came over her. It was all too familiar.
His bulky body was blanched and perched awkwardly on the faux leather couch; its light-colored pillows stained dark with his blood. Of the two victims, he had definitely gotten the worst of it. While one had fed from his neck, the other had ripped through both wrists like a chainsaw. And he was beyond bled dry. Alex could see the outline of his skeleton against his shrink-wrapped skin.
From the looks of it, the mother had come through the front door and dropped her groceries outright when she saw the carnage. Her shoes were covered in smashed fruit and spilled milk—drag marks paved the way to where she was now.
Alex pulled on a sterile glove as she made her way closer to the body. She couldn’t help but notice the sick similarities to scenes from the past, years before, in times she had hoped were long gone.
It was Tristan’s twisted idea of fun. Turn the children and send them after their own parents. His signature catch-me-if-you-can move. The sick bastard.
Was he here? Was he close? she wondered as she watched the dark blood congeal on the couch; its smell coated her nostrils then planted itself in her brain.
“Why do you think they trashed him so badly but left her almost pristine?” one of the agents asked as she snapped pictures of the scene.
Alex glanced at her. It was a good question. She turned her attention to the dead woman, the mother, sitting so very still in her rocking chair in the far corner of the room.
The woman’s hands, stained with blood that traveled down from her wounds, lay in her lap, almost peacefully, as if resting. Alex could tell from the pattern of bloodstains and the way it was smeared after congealing that one of them had brushed her hair and reapplied her makeup after her death. Maybe in a childish attempt to make her look alive. Some last, tragic moment of humanity that flickered in their almost dead hearts.
“They loved her,” Alex said softly, but loud enough to be heard by the agent.
“Love?” The agent hummed. “You buy your mother flowers when you love her, not bleed her to death.”
Alex turned to the agent and motioned toward the father. “Him? No love lost there,” she sighed with a shake of her head.
Another gruesome memory popped to the surface. Something about the father and the savageness of his death brought
to her mind a small town in Utah. The father there had been torn up just like this one. But not a biological father—a step-father.
The mother had been fed on as one of them sat in her lap. That was clear. It would have been the smaller one, the younger one, the boy, held in her lap. The marks were a deep purple color against her blanched skin. The boy had tapped the vein in the bend of her elbow—a hellish mockery of a nursing child.
In her mind’s eye, the chair rocked back and forth as the boy guzzled his first meal as a vampire. What did he care that his mother’s life spilled from his small mouth to the beige carpet? The mundane trappings of modern life meant nothing to a fledging vampire as he sated the first pangs of a thirst that would last the rest of his unnaturally extended life.
“So they hated their father,” another agent said. “What else is new?”
“I don’t think he’s their father,” Alex said as she looked around, absorbing more and more information from the scene. Her eyes trailed down from the body perched in the rocker to the pool of mostly dried blood at her feet. She stopped when she saw another clue: footprints—two sets.
“She’s wearing a wedding band,” the agent replied. “And it matches his.”
The agent’s words drew her attention away from the prints. “So? That’s doesn’t mean he was their father,” Alex replied with a quick glance toward the young vampires.
All along the walls were pictures of the woman and the two children, but without the man. In contrast, on the mantle was a wedding picture of the two adults without the children.
The wedding looked simple, even with the exotic Hawaiian locale. Lush and green beyond description, the mountains behind the bride and groom filled the background. No fancy dress or giant cake.
He was probably her second marriage, Alex surmised. Maybe it had been a second marriage for both of them.
“See those pictures?” she asked with a nod toward the wall. “They’re still hung, perfectly straight and clean.”
“So?”
“So, look around you. Those pictures are of the mother and the kids.”
“And . . .?”
Alex pointed to floor around the couch. “See those pictures, the ones with the man in them?”
“Yeah.”
“They ripped those to shreds.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not their father,” the agent replied. “Maybe he was beating them, or worse.” The agent frowned as she picked up a crumpled piece of a picture, still covered in blood.
“He’s not their father,” Alex stated firmly. “How did you catch this case anyway?”
They stepped closer to the man’s body, and Alex examined the neck wounds—one on either side. They didn’t match. On the laminate floor around the couch were bloody prints of the nine-year-old boy’s bare feet, the thirteen-year-old girl’s flip flops, and another set—slightly smaller than the father’s, but not quite as small as the mother’s.
“The mother works for Strategic,” she answered. “Dr. Carlisle made her the Executive Assistant to the Head of Field Ops here just last month.”
Alex stared at the wedding pictures again. That would explain their Hawaiian wedding. If she was in field assignments, then she was making big bucks. It would explain why Tristan chose her too.
“Those footprints there,” Alex turned back to her discovery in front of the rocking chair. “They match those by the couch.”
The agent turned to one set then the other but didn’t seem to grasp the significance of what Alex was telling her. Then a glint of recognition blinked in her eyes.
“They had help,” she grinned and nodded.
They looked to where the giggly children sat—hands cuffed behind their backs—against the opposite wall. One of them would lead her to the third one.
“Where’s the other one?” Alex asked coldly as she walked over to them.
“Other what?” the girl giggled as she bumped her little brother.
“The other kid,” Alex said between clenched teeth.
They looked at each other, shrugged, and then burst out into high-pitched, childish laughter. Alex looked at the children for a moment, watching them laugh. Remorseless. Twisted.
They aren’t really children any longer, she told herself as she pushed down the revulsion and pity turning in her gut.
A thought occurred to her. She picked up the evidence bag, lying nearby, and pulled out old airline tickets and the man’s wallet. She thumbed through the cards until she found what she was looking for. Sandwiched between his AmEx and an old arcade card was a picture of a kid. His red hair was messy but clean, and the braces on his teeth looked brand new.
“Who is this?” Alex demanded as she held up the picture to the monstrous siblings.
“Ronnie,” the boy squealed just before his sister bumped him, hard. “Ow! He’s Chuck’s kid,” he finished softly, frowning at his sister.
“Was he looking after you while they were in Hawaii?” Alex asked as the knot in her stomach tightened. Tristan got to Ronnie, somehow, and then he turned them.
“Yeah, so?” the girl sneered.
She looked around again. All the drapes were drawn, pinned together, and taped on each side. Along the top, more duct tape sealed the fabric to the wall. There was no sunlight in this room, at all. There was even a pocket door that separated this room from the kitchen, with its big bay window that would fill that room with warm sunlight in the mornings.
“What happened when you tried to leave this room?”
They looked at each other then back at Alex.
“The sun burned us,” the boy whined.
The agents parted as Alex moved quickly toward the pocket door. She slid it open, but the light only reached so far into the room. As long as the children didn’t venture too close to the threshold, they wouldn’t be burned by the light.
Alex tossed the wallet at the woman. “Check all the rooms—be careful. He could still be here somewhere.”
The agent flipped the picture over. “Why would he still be here?”
“Because they can’t go out into the light—not yet. They’re newly turned and haven’t had the fake stuff. He’ll be close.”
The agent grinned at the picture, “He shouldn’t be hard to find if he’s hiding from the sun.”
“Then find him,” Alex barked.
The woman turned and left without another word. Two other agents followed behind her. After a few seconds, Alex could hear them as they searched through the rooms, as things fell to the floor and glass broke. Strategic would foot the bill for anything that needed to be replaced, if anyone actually showed to bury these two.
“Who did this?” Alex asked the children again. This time, her voice was laced with steel, but they just laughed again. “Answer me!”
“We did,” the girl answered, a smile on her young lips. “Are you slow or something, lady?” More laughter from the two newly born vampires. She didn’t have time for this shit.
Alex knelt down in front of the little monsters and looked up at the guard. He nodded. Without a word, he pulled out his gun and pointed it at the girl’s head.
“Not to them,” Alex replied. “Who did this to Ronnie?”
The gun had an effect. It always did. “Our new father,” the girl said hastily.
Her brother nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Chuck the Schmuck deserved it anyway.”
“Why?” Alex asked over their nervous laughter.
“Because he was a schmuck,” the boy rolled his eyes at Alex. “You are slow.”
“And what about your mother? Was she a schmuck too?” Alex asked.
The children’s giggles stopped cold, and they glared at Alex. She could hear the growl in the back of their throats like animals. It was nothing at all like a childish imitation of a growl. This was the real thing.
“Don’t talk about ou
r mom like that, bitch,” the girl spat as her top lip curled to reveal a nice set of new fangs. “She was the best mom ever!”
“She couldn’t have been that good,” Alex said innocently. She wanted to fan the flames—get one of them to tell her something useful. “After all, you killed her.”
They lunged at the same time, quick as snakes. But Alex was faster. She grabbed them both by their necks and slammed them back into the wall. Each of them struggled, writhing under her grip for a long moment, even with their hands handcuffed behind them. They both showed surprise at her strength before calming from exhaustion. When they were calm again, Alex handed the boy to the guard but kept the girl pressed against the wall for a moment longer.
“What did Ronnie tell you about your new father?” Alex asked. Her voice was calm, but her heart raced in her chest.
“Just that he was rich and powerful,” the girl replied. “And he would take better care of us than Chuck ever could. And we’d be young and powerful forever, just like him.”
“What’s his name?”
She shrugged, shook her head. Streaked in electric blue wash-out hair dye, her stringy blonde hair was caked in blood and oil. It hadn’t been washed in a few days, judging from the smell.
“When is he coming for you?” Alex continued to keep the timbre of her voice calm.
The girl kept quiet, her lips one thin line as she pressed them together. Alex grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her across the sticky wooden floor toward the big front windows. She pulled the heavy drape to one side. The tape that held it closed ripped loose, taking paint flakes with it. When Alex held the girl’s foot in the sharp rays of mid-afternoon sunlight, she screamed as her flesh began to sizzle and blister.
“When?” Alex repeated as she held the drapes closed again.
As her brother yelled and struggled with two agents across the room, the girl roared and cried while her injured foot smoked. Before the last blister sealed itself again, Alex stuck her foot back in the light.
“I don’t know! I swear,” the girl screamed and wiggled to get loose.
By Blood Sworn Page 1