“I’m fine, Dad,” I said, taking my hands off my eyes to look at him. “It was just the light from—”
The light on the ceiling suddenly flicked on, instantly illuminating the room, but my skin suddenly started to burn and I screamed in pain. I fell to the floor and covered my eyes with my hands, but as soon as I did that, the light turned off and the burning sensation ceased, though my skin still hurt.
“Sorry,” said Dad in an apologetic voice. “I just couldn’t see anything in this infernal darkness and I turned on the light without thinking. I forgot your vampire nature means that you can’t be in direct light for too long.”
“And what happens if I stay in direct light for too long?” I said without looking up at Dad.
“Depending on your strength, you will either burn up into ashes or just suffer from really bad skin burns,” said Dad. “Electric lights are actually less lethal than sunlight, though as you found out, that doesn’t mean they’re painless.”
I should have been amazed at how quickly Dad was able to recall that information off the top of his head, given how many years it had been since he last hunted vampires, but instead I was more annoyed that he had nearly burned my skin off due to his own forgetfulness than anything. I took my hands off my eyes and looked up at Dad, who was smiling somewhat sheepishly at me.
“Anyway, uh, how did your first night go?” said Dad. “You didn’t sneak out and do any hunting, did you?”
“No,” I said, making no effort to hide the misery in my voice. “I just lay in bed all night. I didn’t get any sleep, but somehow I’m not tired.”
“Like I told you, vampires don’t need sleep like humans do,” said Dad. “You can stay up twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and see not even the slightest reduction in your strength or speed. It’s the lack of blood, however, that affects a vampire’s disposition. Go without blood for too long and you soon become too weak to do much of anything. That may explain why the light hurt you this morning, but not yesterday.”
I licked my lips. “That explains why I’m so thirsty. But I don’t want to drink human blood.”
“I know,” said Dad, stroking his chin. “But I’m not sure how to feed you without human blood. Vampires can eat human food, but it doesn’t actually fill them up or give them the nutrients they need to survive. So I can’t just give you eggs, bacons, and waffles for breakfast.”
I gasped. “There are a lot of negatives to being a vampire, but not being able to eat waffles for breakfast has to be the worst.”
“Personally, I’d think that potentially losing your humanity would be worst, but I guess waffles are pretty important, too, eh?” said Dad with a teasing smile.
I frowned at Dad’s lame joke, but then remembered something and said, “Oh, Dad, I have to tell you something before I forget. My friend Jane called me last night and told me about something that happened.”
I explained to Dad about the mysterious man who was most likely a vampire who came to my apartment and lied about being an old friend of mine. I didn’t say that the vampire was a minion of Lord Taranas, but I could tell that Dad was already putting two and two together in his mind. Dad was usually pretty good at inferring things, no matter how subtly they were put, so I felt grateful that he was able to look between the lines and understand what I was trying to say without me having to spell it out.
“That’s bad,” said Dad as soon as I finished. He sipped from his mug of coffee, a frown on his face. “I thought at first that Lord Taranas had sent that Bloodseeker to kill me, but if that vampire who came to your apartment is working for him—”
“Then I was the target the whole time,” I finished for Dad. “Meaning that my transformation into a half-vampire may not have been entirely accidental.”
“Right,” said Dad. He shook his head. “If that’s true, then this situation is far more complicated than I thought. I could see why Taranas would want me dead—I was infamous among vampires for being such an efficient hunter—but if he was aiming for you, then the behavior of that Bloodseeker makes far more sense. At the same time, I don’t understand if he was trying to kill you or transform you.”
Dad looked even more troubled than he did yesterday. I still didn’t quite grasp everything that was going on, but I could tell that Dad was far more troubled about me being targeted than him. That didn’t surprise me. Dad had always been very protective of me and he probably thought it was his fault that I had been transformed against my will like that, even though there was nothing he could have done about it.
But something Dad said reminded me of something I wanted to ask him, so I said, “Dad, what made you become a vampire hunter in the first place? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
Dad suddenly went very still, which was how I knew I had accidentally asked a very personal question. I hoped I didn’t offend him, because Dad always told me that I could talk to him about anything and ask him any question about anything I wanted. Did I accidentally stumble upon the one topic he didn’t want me to ask questions about?
“I just hated vamps,” said Dad stiffly. “All vampires are monsters, a blight upon the world that would be better off destroyed. I believed God gave me the mission to kill vamps, which was another reason I did it.”
I could tell that Dad wasn’t being entirely upfront about the real reason he became a hunter, but instead of pursuing that line of inquiry and possibly risk angering him, I said, “Are you sure that all vampires are bad? What about Lucius? He seems pretty good. Didn’t you work with him to kill a Vampire Lord once?”
Dad’s expression hardened. “I only worked with him back then out of necessity. He didn’t stab me in the back, that’s true, but I still don’t trust him. I barely even trust him to train you, but like before, I have no choice but to rely upon his help. I know a lot about vampires, but I don’t have the experience necessary to teach you how to control your powers myself. If I did, I would.”
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Lucius said he was a ‘Pure,’ right? That means a vampire who doesn’t drink human blood and tries to help humans instead. Doesn’t that make him a good guy?”
Dad sighed and looked down into his coffee. “Lots of evil men have claimed to be pious Christians, Tara, only to turn out to be worse than nonbelievers. Quite a few so-called ‘Pures’ in the past have turned out to be normal vampires wearing a mask in order to get closer to sorcerers they wanted to kill.”
“So you think Lucius is a hypocrite,” I said. “Even though he hasn’t done anything to show that he’s a hypocrite yet.”
“I’m saying that you should be careful when working with vampires,” said Dad. “Whether they call themselves Pure or not, they’re still dangerous creatures who hate humanity and everything that is righteous. You have to be careful around them and don’t let your guard down even if they claim to just want peace.”
I frowned. “Dad, can vampires …” I trailed off.
“Can vampires what, honey?” said Dad.
“Can vampires …” I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to this question, but I felt like I needed to know it. “Can vampires be saved?”
Dad paused. “Saved … as in, salvation through Christ?”
I nodded. “Yes. Is it possible?”
Dad scratched the back of his neck. “No, I don’t think so. Vampires are creatures without souls. There is nothing to save. They aren’t even supposed to exist. In fact, vampires actually hate things like crosses precisely because of their holy properties. I’ve never heard of a vampire who became saved through faith in Christ or even of any evangelists attempting to convert them.”
I gulped. I wanted to ask what that meant for me, but I was so terrified of the answer that I couldn’t say even one word. Still, I managed to squeak out, “What about someone like me? I’m not fully vampire, but I’m not fully human, either. Am I still saved? Or am I destined to burn in hell?”
Dad sipped his coffee again. He didn’t meet m
y eyes, and this time, it wasn’t because he was afraid of inciting my blood lust. “I don’t know. I’ve never dealt with a half-vampire before and there are no Bible verses or theological books on the subject. To me, you still seem to be the same Tara I’ve always known, the Tara who gave her life to Christ when she turned thirteen. God won’t take away your salvation, no matter what.”
“But …” I put a hand on my chest. “What if I don’t have a soul anymore? Or my vampire half eats away at my human soul? What then?”
Dad sighed. “I don’t know, Tara. Your situation is so unusual and I hesitate to speak on spiritual matters as important as this without a solid biblical foundation, but—”
“Am I interrupting anything?” said a voice from the shadows.
Dad and I started and looked in the corner of the room. Lucius was leaning against the wall, his red eyes glowing softly in the shadows, looking at us with an amused smile on his face.
“Lucius,” said Dad in annoyance. “How long have you been standing there?”
“I just got here,” said Lucius promptly. “I only heard the tail end of your conversation, something to do with your human religion or something. Didn’t sound very interesting or relevant to me.”
Dad looked at Lucius as if he thought Lucius had been here a lot longer than just a few seconds. Me, I just stood up as straight as an arrow and tried to make my hair look nicer as subtly as possible. I knew it was silly to feel this way, but if you saw Lucius, you’d probably feel the same way. He was just that handsome.
“Anyway, I’m back,” said Lucius, pushing himself off the wall and walking over to us. “I gave my report to the Council and they are currently discussing what to do about this recent turn of events. Meanwhile, I’m here to train Tara, like I said yesterday.”
“Right,” said Dad, who still didn’t sound pleased at Lucius’s appearance. “I suppose you want to get started right away.”
“Of course,” said Lucius. “The sooner you begin training Newborns, the easier it becomes to teach them how to control their impulses. Tara is essentially a Newborn from a vampire perspective, meaning that she needs to be trained right away.”
“All right,” I said. “Do we start now or—?”
“We should train somewhere else,” said Lucius, glancing around the room. “This room is too small for training purposes, especially because we’re going to be getting some combat training in. I have a place that is better suited for training than this room.”
Lucius held out a hand toward me, but then Dad grabbed his wrist and said, “You’re not taking my daughter anywhere, Lucius, at least not out of my sight.”
For a moment, anger flashed in Lucius’s eyes and I thought he was going to rip Dad’s head off, but then his usual calmness returned and he said, in his normal voice, “Richard, I understand you want to protect your daughter, but the best way to protect her is to make sure that she’s trained the correct way. And the best way to train her would be to take her to a place where we can train without worry about damaging your house or alerting your neighbors of our presence. I have zero intention of harming her or intentionally putting her in harm’s way. She’ll be perfectly safe with me.”
Dad looked like he was going to tell Lucius to take a hike. Lucius met his gaze without hesitation and for a second the two waged a silent war between themselves.
Then Dad let go of Lucius’ wrist and said, “Very well. Take her wherever you need to, but if I find out that you’ve harmed her—or put her in harm’s way—I will spend the rest of my life hunting you down like the vamp you are.”
“I would expect nothing less from the legendary Hunter,” Lucius replied. Then he looked at me and said, “Now, Tara, take my hand. We have no time to lose.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lucius’ hand was cold to the touch and probably would have disgusted me if I wasn’t a half-vampire myself. It helped, of course, that Lucius was very nice to look at, even though he didn’t seem to notice me yet. But maybe that was for the best right now. With everything going on in my life, it was probably for the best that I didn’t focus on romance or try to pursue anything with Lucius yet.
We walked to the corner of the room and Lucius disappeared into the shadows like a diver jumping into a lake. I would have hesitated, because it looked like I was going to walk into a wall, but because Lucius was holding my hand and pulling me along, I could not resist as I was pulled into the shadows.
I half-expected to walk straight into the wall, but instead I kept walking. Soon, the spare room’s surroundings completely vanished and I found myself walking through complete and utter blackness which I could nonetheless see through. Actually, I could see even better than I could back on Earth, as if I had just stepped out of a mild fog into the clear air.
The place into which we had entered was some kind of strange, ancient stone hallway with doors and connecting hallways on every side. It looked kind of like the interior of a medieval castle, except much older than any medieval castle I knew of (which, admittedly, wasn’t much). There were no torches on the walls or any other light source, and the doors weren’t even labeled, yet somehow I could see as well as I ever could in here.
“What is this place?” I said as I followed Lucius, looking around the empty hallway. “Your castle?”
“It’s called the Shadow Way,” said Lucius. “And no, I don’t have a castle. The Vampire Council does, as does the Order, but I do not.”
“The Shadow Way?” I repeated. “What’s that?”
Lucius glanced over his shoulder at me in surprise. “You mean you’ve never heard of the Shadow Way?”
“Hey, I just got turned into a vampire literally yesterday,” I said, scowling. “Unlike you, I haven’t had three centuries to figure out all of the details about vampire powers. I didn’t even know you could travel through darkness.”
“Right, right,” said Lucius, nodding. “I’m not used to dealing with someone as … uninformed as you, so forgive me if I don’t explain as well as I should. Anyway, the Shadow Way is a parallel world connected to Earth, accessible only by vampires or other creatures that can travel through shadows. The Shadow Way connects the entire planet together, allowing people who use it to travel great distances in a very short amount of time. It’s one of the main ways that vampires travel around the world quickly and efficiently.”
“Sounds convenient,” I said. “What are all of the doors for?”
Lucius gestured at the doors as we walked. “These will take you to certain designated spots on Earth. While each door leads to a specific spot, it is possible to change a door’s location to wherever you want it to go. That takes practice and skill, however, which means we are not going to be doing it today. We’re just passing through.”
I looked around the ancient hallway. “So I’ll be able to access this place someday?”
“If your training goes well,” said Lucius. “It’s certainly a skill I intend to teach you, but for now I think you shouldn’t worry about it.”
“And why do I have to keep holding your hand?” I said, glancing at my hand in his. “I can walk on my own.”
“Because it is easy to get lost in the Shadow Way, especially for someone as unfamiliar with it as you,” said Lucius. He looked over his shoulder at me, a grim look on his face. “And you don’t want to get lost in the Shadow Way, not unless you want to end up in the hands of the Strangers, at any rate.”
“The what?” I said.
But Lucius apparently didn’t hear what I said, because he stopped in front of a door and said, “Ah, here we are.”
Lucius opened the door and passed through, pulling me behind him on his way in. As we passed through the doorway, I felt a presence looking at me and looked over my shoulder in time to see what looked like a small child—no more than six or seven, based on his height—staring at me with the creepiest black eyes I’d ever seen. I only had a short time to see it, however, before the door closed behind me abruptly and vanished into shadow.
> “Here we are,” said Lucius, letting go of my hand and gesturing at our new surroundings. “My personal training room.”
I looked at where Lucius had brought me. It looked kind of like a home gym, with a rack full of old dumbbells next to us, work out mats on the floor that were slightly frayed at the edges, and a bench with a barbell over it. The wooden walls were covered in scratches and had obviously been patched in several areas over the years, while the floor had gouges that had been partially covered by the mats, though one of the bigger ones—which looked like it had been made with a sword—poked out from underneath a mat. The whole room smelled of sweat, but also of death, which wasn’t too different from the gym I went to back in Greensboro, actually.
“What do you think?” said Lucius, putting his hands on his chest.
“It’s … small,” I said somewhat lamely. “When you talked about training room, I thought you meant, like, not your home gym.”
Lucius shrugged. “I prefer to keep things simple. No point in going extravagant, especially when I don’t have all the room in the world. This is the only room the Order allowed me to turn into a training room and it has served me well so far.”
“Wait, what do you mean the Order has allowed you to turn into a training room?” I said, looking at Lucius worriedly. “Where, exactly, are we?”
“Castle Wings,” said Lucius, “also known as the castle and headquarters of the Order of Vampires.”
I put my hands over my mouth. “You didn’t tell your bosses about me, did you?”
“No, I did not,” said Lucius. “But don’t worry. Nearly everyone is out on a mission today, including the Chief. And the few agents who aren’t currently out in the field are in their rooms resting. We have a very strict, though unwritten, rule of not interrupting each other whenever we’re training or resting, so I think we should have at least a few hours to ourselves.”
The Vampire Sword (Vampire Sorceress Book 1) Page 5