For The Sake of Revenge_An Alaskan Vampire Novel

by DL Atha

  “I’ll be watching for you then,” he said. “That’s a promise, Tam.” He turned away quickly, I suspect, so I could not see the tears that I knew were in his eyes.

  “Peter, one more thing,” I called after him.

  He stopped, turning only slightly towards me. His face was still averted and his hands were pushed deeply into his pockets. “Anything,” he answered.

  “Don’t check on the house. Don’t go anywhere near it. If Joel catches you out there, it will put him into a rage. He knew how I felt about you so please don’t put yourself in jeopardy.”

  He nodded, and I turned so I didn’t have to see him leave. Moments later, the whine of his car engine cut through the silence of the cemetery, and I was alone.

  Even though the cemetery was only a short distance from the center of town, it was absolutely quiet. Light from the bordering houses barely penetrated the darkness. The graveyard was set into a depression at the top of a small hill, and I was visible to no one here in the darkness.

  Violently, I jerked the arrangement of lilies from atop Mom’s grave, throwing them as far as I could into the brush that bordered the path. Tears that I’d hidden from Peter streamed down my face. The emotions I’d kept in check exploded out, shrieks ripping from my throat, and I buried my face in my hands so there was no chance anyone would hear me.

  I shook roughly from head to toe with so much more than just anger until my muscles ached and I sunk down beside Mom’s grave, the wetness of the ground sinking into the knees of my jeans. Curling into the fetal position, I cried until my eyes went dry and my lungs simply refused to spare any additional breath for sobbing.

  I lay there in the dark and wet for a few moments longer until I forced myself to my knees again. My terror tried to keep me on the ground, but my rage drew me to my feet. With raw vocal cords, I whispered my goodbyes to my parents. In a few short hours, I’d never set foot on hallowed ground again.

  From the time my feet struck the ground outside the cemetery, I felt the barrage of Adrik’s mind. Every vestige of daylight had vanished, leaving me open and exposed. Though he was weak compared to the former strength of when he was first made, the onslaught of his consciousness was still like a battering ram. I felt him start to sift through my thoughts like sand in a child’s hand.

  His cool humor radiated across the bond. “It seems you are ready now,” he whispered across my thoughts.

  “He needs to die,” I said aloud to no one in particular.

  Adrik said not another word as I drove to my house. I grabbed a few clothes and put them in a suitcase so it appeared I’d packed. I wrote a note for Peter, fully expecting him to ignore my warnings, reminding him of the danger of Joel and left it on the table.

  In my mind, Adrik only laughed.

  Chapter 16

  The Sitka airport sits on a small island just to the west of town. I crossed the small bridge and parked my car in the center of the parking lot, leaving it so that Peter would see it and believe I’d left for Seattle.

  The local airline flies in circuits around southeast Alaska. The last flight of the night would be leaving shortly, and I bought a ticket to further convince Peter that I’d left. The ticket took all of my cash, but it didn’t matter. What I was about to do didn’t require money. Then I left the airport in search of Joel.

  The walk was long; rain pelted down from heavy, low-lying clouds, but I had all night. Besides, he would be easy to find. He’d always loved his beer.

  He was leaning against an ancient jukebox when I pushed open the door to a hole-in-the-wall bar on a side street just off of downtown. The interior was dark, meant to convince you that some degree of anonymity existed in this small town. Smoke hung around his head as he leaned in towards a girl, sucking on his cigar in a vulgar display. He held a beer bottle loosely in his left hand. With his right, he was stroking the inside of her bare arm.

  Joel turned in my direction, no doubt feeling the heat of my gaze, as I walked towards him. The girl at his side reached out for his arm to pull him back towards her, but he shook her off, walking a few feet towards me.

  “I got your message in the flowers,” I whispered, leaning forward to speak softly in his ear. I tolerated his arms as he intertwined them around my waist.

  “You need to come home,” he whispered intimately as he placed warm lips to the skin of my cheek. “You’re real selfish, you know.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “You keep on putting other people in danger. Like that priest friend of yours,” he spoke into my ear again. He’d pulled us onto the small dance floor. We swayed slowly to the music. His large hands slipped under my jacket, stroking my back. I forced myself to accept his touch.

  “Time’s running out for you, babe,” he whispered.

  I smiled. “No, it’s just beginning. Be careful of the priest, Joel. I’ve been to the police about you every day. They will notice if something happens to him. I’m going to disappear for a while, but don’t give up on me. I’ll be back. You better stick around. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s. You wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea by running off, okay?”

  I pulled away, and he didn’t try to stop me. He wouldn’t make a scene in the middle of a crowded bar. He really didn’t like witnesses. I watched him closely until I’d backed out the door, and then I ran as quickly as I could down the fog-entrenched street. I wouldn’t be around to find out, but I’d bet good money he’d be looking for me just as soon he could walk out of the bar unnoticed.

  I ran the nearly two miles to Totem Pole Park, which had been formed years back from the land where the Battle of Sitka had been fought. A walking trail had been cut through the forest marked by copies of original totem poles. The last totem of the trail marked the location of the Tlingit Indian fort where the Tlingit had held off the Russians in 1804. The land was still cleared here in remembrance of that fateful day, and Adrik was buried somewhere in that clearing. The park headquarters were closed this time of night, but it was a simple thing to jog around the corner and disappear into the forest that edged the street.

  The darkness of the night was heavy, blanketing the woods so thickly it was almost impossible to make out my hand in front of my face. Scattered ribbons of fog wound through the trees and drifted across the ground. It gave the park a haunted feeling and broke up the blackness around me.

  The wheels of an occasional car gritted against the highway that followed the contours of the park, and the headlights would flash through the trees behind me, creating a myriad of strange figures from the gnarled and broken tree limbs. I caught my breath a hundred times thinking the outstretched arms of a felled tree belonged to Joel. It was a relief when I’d finally stumbled far enough off of the road that the lights could no longer penetrate the denseness of the forest.

  My breathing was ragged by this time, and I leaned against a damp tree for support. I was hot from running, and steam lifted from my skin when I slipped off my jacket and tied it around my waist. Around me, the forest was unnaturally quiet. Not even a bird broke the silence.

  Adrik had been relatively quiet over the last hour, but now I could feel him grow restless as he sensed my presence in the woods. Closing my eyes, I emptied my mind of everything except the tug of the bond and let it carry me forward into the dark.

  Moss-covered tree limbs pulled at my clothing and dug into my face. My shoes twisted in mud that sucked at my feet, and I fell to my knees a few times, but I didn’t dare open my eyes. I could sense Adrik more without my eyesight interfering with the tether of our bond.

  Without vision, the bond became nearly palpable with every step I took closer to him, and I followed it into woods. His every thought was of me. The beat of my heart played in my own ears as he focused on the rhythm. His mouth watered and I could taste his saliva. I felt him dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands. I heard the sound of my footfalls through the bond. His fangs cut into his tongue, and I tasted his blood in my mouth.

  The bond
was a band of energy. With each step in the right direction, it shivered in anticipation. With every misstep, I could feel the tension gather as it jerked me back onto the right path. It became so powerful as Adrik focused his every thought on drawing me to him that I simply had to point my foot in a given direction and instantly I’d know whether it led me to him or away.

  The last of my footfalls brought me directly over his grave. He whispered to me that I had arrived. That he waited.

  On hands and knees, I knelt down and began to tear wildly at the ground. No one was around to tell me I was defiling a state park; it was only the two of us, and I dug my fingernails into the wet ground with as much force as I could.

  His grave was on the edge of the clearing, and in the center stood the final totem pole. The evening was so dark that the great pole cast no shadow whatsoever onto the empty ground around it. Only the drifting fog draping itself around the pole illuminated its ghostly form in the darkness; the eagle at the top of the totem glared at my actions.

  I turned my back on its knowing stare and dug my fingers even farther into the dirt, throwing clods of earth into the air behind me. Despite the few rocks that I came across, my nails gave way as I clawed through ancient and rotted root systems.

  Needing more purchase in the wet earth, I grabbed a nearby tree limb and snapped it in half across my knees. With every muscle fiber in my body, I used the limb to gouge deeply into the packed forest floor.

  I pulled at the years of caked dirt and roots until my every muscle burned with the fire of exhaustion. And then I would see Joel’s face in my mind and know it was the last image my mother had seen. Hatred and rage ran hotter than my exhaustion, and I pushed past it, digging until a sharp metal tip bit into my skin. I jerked my hand back, gritting my teeth against the pain as blood welled to the surface and dropped like hot wax onto my legs.

  I sat back and studied the metal for a second before striking the metal tip protruding from the ground with my tree branch. Adrik spasmed in pain; I could feel the agony across the bond, and I knew I’d found the mark.

  Using the metal tip as a guide, I dug through the muck until my fingers scraped across the clammy feel of wet skin. The sensation startled me and I jerked my hands back but for only a brief second before I sucked my breath in for resolve and began to unearth his body from the stake upwards. I focused only on his chest and head, careful to keep his arms and hands buried.

  Weakened by time, the iron stake and cross could not keep the muscles of his chest and neck from contracting, and ever so carefully, I began to clear his head and neck. I started high, smoothing the mud and debris from his hair, the locks of which had grown long, curling through the mud.

  He jerked angrily with the slowness of my movements, anxious to be free of his centuries-old prison. His body convulsed upwards, lifting his head farther from the mud that encased him. With each movement, jet-black strands broke from their muddy molds and snaked across my skin. I struggled not to jerk backwards at the slimy feeling. I couldn’t afford to let his hands get a hold of me before I accomplished my plan. I doubted he had the strength to move too much against the stake, but I wasn’t about to take the chance.

  I’d be guaranteed nothing but death if he could sink his fingers into my wrists or my heart. It would be a simple matter to kill me and then drink my blood as it poured from my veins, and I’d get nothing in return.

  When I had cleared away the muck and could make out his features, I grasped the stake firmly in my left hand and twisted it violently forward and side to side in his chest. Underneath me, I could feel his neck contract in a silent scream, his lungs too full from years of dirt to be able to make sound. Twisting it harder, I urged him to lie still, promising him no further pain if he did what I said.

  Steadily, he relaxed underneath me, but I kept one hand on the stake while with the other, I resumed freeing his head and neck from the clutches of his tomb. Using my thumb as a scoop, I scraped grainy layers of mud from his eyelids, and I pried his dirt-caked lids apart so he could physically see me for the first time.

  While I could barely see him in the dark, having to rely more on touch than anything else, I knew that he could see me with absolute clarity. Reflected in my mind was my own image. My face was dripping with muddy drops of perspiration, and my hair hung down in sodden locks that framed my face. My lips were curled back over my gritted teeth.

  He bared his fangs at me, and I ground the stake harshly into his chest to show him who had the upper hand. Through the blood bond, I sensed the intensity of the pain, but I dared not to ease even the slightest pressure on the stake. I needed this small upper hand.

  Sucking in his breath harshly, I watched his nostrils flare with my scent. He remained buried from the mid-chest down, and I sat atop him. Between our bodies, I guessed there was about twelve inches of dirt through which I could barely feel the heaving of his chest as he tried to suck my scent deeper into his lungs.

  He couldn’t rise against the metal stake Ivan had replaced through his heart to pin him to the ground. But still he could flex his arms and legs enough that I could feel them twitching through the dirt between us and he could lift his head slightly. When I twisted the stake, his body went motionless except the hiss of air through his clenched teeth.

  “Are you able to listen? Try to concentrate,” I calmly whispered to him. His mind was an angry, hungry red haze. I was getting images from him but not much in the way of coherent thought given the proximity to my blood that continued to drip onto my jeans.

  “We can help each other, Adrik. I know how to release you not only from this grave but from this life altogether. I really can help you.”

  Through the barrage of thoughts I was getting, I made out an occasional sentence that made sense, and I let up on the stake a little, allowing him to think more clearly. He lifted his head slightly and began to cough decades of dirt out of his lungs.

  “There is no help,” he said through the bond.

  “There is. I promise.”

  He didn’t need me to tell him my plan; he could read it clearly in my thoughts.

  “What about the collateral damage?” he asked, small amounts of air beginning to pass across rusty vocal cords. His Russian was guttural and harsh, but with the help of the bond, I understood him.

  I felt my answer float through my mind. I left it there, unwilling to push the words out of my mind. “I don’t care anymore.”

  Whatever remorse I felt had melted away earlier when I read the note left on Mom’s grave. Peter had said I wasn’t the kind of person who rationalized away the victims, to justify the suffering of others to satisfy my own self.

  He was wrong, of course.

  I’d justified doing exactly that ten years ago for nothing more than a man when I’d abandoned my family and friends. I saw myself clearly even if Peter didn’t. But this time would be different. This time, I’d protect Peter. The whole island might die, but Peter would be safe.

  His safety would not be an issue. Because Peter was the key to helping Adrik. How had I missed the connection for so long? Peter was the direct descendant of the archimandrite, the same one who’d excommunicated Adrik. No doubt, the bloodline went back a great many years, but it was the same one. Peter could release Adrik from this life by re-communicating him and Adrik wouldn’t lay a hand on him, knowing that Peter was his only way out of this hell.

  “What makes you think he will release me? He is of the archimandrite’s blood, after all.” Adrik’s voice was barely audible, and I strained to hear him.

  “You don’t know him the way I do. He’s kind. Peter would never want anyone to suffer,” I answered, tracing away the dirt from one eyebrow.

  “I find that hard to believe having known his ancestor.” His voice was a rasp over clenched teeth.

  The flavor of something sinister and violent wafted across the bond from his mind. It was different from his usual hunger but the sensation was fleeting, and I couldn’t make it out. He focused on my smell, and
his hunger pulsed so greedily that it drowned his other thoughts. He wanted to distract me, I knew. And it worked. I had my own revenge to plan.

  “You have to believe me, Adrik. Peter’s good—sincere. He will help you.”

  “The way he helped you?” He asked snidely.

  “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. But he tried,” I answered, thinking back to Peter’s advice. A sane person would have taken it. “What I want is to see Joel dead.” I spoke again. “I wanted that more than I wanted Peter.”

  That same sinister feeling floated across the bond, and I could taste it on my tongue. It was sweet at first, spreading out until it coated the insides of my mouth, and I swallowed in response and nearly gagged as the sweetness became so thick that I could barely breathe past it. I choked and started to ask him about his dark thoughts, but before I could, the sensation was gone and he was speaking again.

  “Then the last vision that crosses Joel’s dying eyes will be your beautiful face, Tamara. And as you lap up the blood that pools around his body, remember that nothing tastes quite as sweet as revenge.”

  My sight had finally adjusted to the inky darkness, and I could just make out the glittering of his eyes in the blackness. Sitting up to gain more traction, I grasped first the cross, pulling it from beneath the earth. His skin sizzled where it touched him as I jerked it away from the burnt tissue it was adhered against. Then, I clenched the stake more firmly as I lowered my bleeding right hand closer to his waiting fangs. He gritted his teeth, hissing violently as I shoved the stake side to side to gain control of his body.

  The timing had to be perfect. The tip of the stake had to come out just as he lifted his lips to strike. A little too fast and the stake would be out, releasing him before he’d bitten me. At that point, I’d merely be dead. I needed his mark on my skin before I died if I was to rise.