Seeking Serena (The Complete Series Books 1-5): Paranormal Vampire Reverse Harem

by Lily Levi

  A faint splash reached my ears and was quickly followed by another.

  I moved the cigarette into my mouth and lifted my hand against the sun to scan the open water, but there was nothing to see. A whale, a fish. Nothing more.

  Boots clopped down onto the deck. “The longer we live the less beautiful mornings we see, isn’t that so?” Theron took a place beside me and we scanned the water together. “What do you see?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Waves. The whole of the sea. The sky without clouds. A world without fear.

  “Freedom,” I said. “Maybe.” I looked up at him and he smiled down gently at me.

  He turned away from me and squinted out to sea. “I imagine if you could have freedom from us, you would. We have latched on rather tightly, haven’t we?”

  I took another drag from the cigarette and shrugged, but I was secretly glad for their latching. If it wasn’t for them, motivated by the Master’s game or not, Cain would’ve ended my streak of long nights in New Jersey. Orlando hadn’t stood a chance against him and I stood even less. What a place to die and in what a way.

  Orlando. He’d lied to me. I could feel that now, but still…

  There was another splash, louder.

  I leaned over the railings and Theron wrapped his arm around my front to pull me back onto the deck. “Careful,” he said, scanning the waves with me.

  “I’m always careful,” I said, taking the cigarette back into my mouth. The fleeting thought that Cain had been swimming beside us all the way from New Jersey crossed my mind in a single cold flash, but it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  But it was. His dark head of hair bobbed between the waves, one hundred meters or less from the end of the boat.

  “Shit,” I whispered, backing away from the side, heart pounding.

  Theron stood still against the rails, unmoving.

  My skin crawled with cold fear. “Theron,” I hissed. “There’s not enough wind, we should get the engine up.”

  He looked back from the side just as Ambrose emerged from below, dark hair ruffled and pale eyes still full of the nightmare he had left behind below deck.

  “Ambrose,” he said, eyes bright.

  “Theron.” Ambrose moved his eyes across the horizon. “Serena. Ah, mornings are a bit too cheery for my tastes.”

  I dropped my cigarette. “He’s out there,” I said, pointing. “He’s been following us.”

  His eyes focused themselves and the last vestiges of the nightmare dissipated. “Who?” he asked. “Who’s out there?”

  Theron beckoned him to the railings. “It’s Zane,” he said. “Look.”

  “Zane,” I repeated the name, only vaguely remembering it from that night so long ago. “Not Cain? Is he…” But I couldn’t finish the question. Is he here to kill me?

  Ambrose’s looked down at me and the relaxation in his eyes almost set me at ease. “Cain, Zane, Blaine.” He squinted down at me. “Very glad we don’t have a Blaine.”

  The head bobbed closer through the water and relief flooded my veins. He shared Cain’s dark hair, but the resemblance stopped there.

  “Brother!” Theron yelled, waving his arms high in the air above him.

  I watched him with alarm. “Should he be?” I started to ask, but it didn’t matter. He was already working to unhook the orange lifesaver from against the side of the boat.

  “Serena,” said Ambrose, drawing near. “Did we do dirty things last night, the three of us?”

  I stared at him briefly and then grabbed for Theron’s arm. “Theron,” I said. “How do you know that he’s good?”

  Good. What an innocent, naive word. Was that all it took? Don’t want to kill me and I’ll consider you ‘good’?

  “Darling,” said Ambrose, leaning over the side to help Theron release the lifesaver. “No one is good. Zane isn’t good. Zane is an opportunist.” He moved his free hand through the air and then returned to unraveling the twisted rope. “It’s why I like him.”

  I pinpointed the dark head of hair moving closer and closer towards us. One strong, naked arm reached out in long strokes. He cradled something dark above the water beside him, something I hadn’t seen until now.

  “He has a boy with him,” I breathed. “A little boy.”

  Ambrose handed the lifesaver, finally freed, to Theron. “Which means he hasn’t a free arm for wine,” he said. Theron mounted himself on the first set of white bars along the outside of the ship and flung the white tube out to sea with a heavy grunt.

  “Which is a terrible thing,” he added, moving closer to me again. “The wine. Since I believe we’re nearly out.”

  Zane

  A whole fucking day in the open water.

  I wrapped the crook of my arm around the lifesaver and let myself take the first relaxed breath of air since the boy had wormed his way into the pilot’s cockpit and sent the plane into a wild drop.

  His small body was surprisingly heavy in its lifeless form, but despite his weight slowing me down, I hadn’t let him go.

  “Little jerk,” I whispered.

  Theron tugged back on the rope from the side of the boat and I swam forward in spurts when I could manage to do it, but the only kind of exhaustion that had ever suited me was the drunk kind.

  “Did it look like I was drowning?” I asked, lifting the boy up from the water for Theron to grab hold of. My arms ached with the strength required to hold him up. “Do I swim that badly?”

  Ambrose offered me a half-smile before reached down to take my hand in his. “Brother,” he grunted, helping to lift me. “So good of you to come.”

  I clambered onto the deck and let myself rest on all fours like a wet, half-drowned beast. “Of all the mighty, unholy things,” I breathed.

  Theron laid the boy out on the deck beside me and worked to find a pulse in his neck. Serena, in all of her bitter glory, bent down press her ear against the boy’s chest.

  “He’s dead,” I said flatly. “Hit his head, cut it, I don’t know.” I moved my hand through the air. “Something, something. Lots of people dead. He’s dead.”

  Serena lifted her head from the boy’s chest. “No,” she said, eyes wide. “He’s alive. Barely.”

  “Barely,” I said, moving to my knees. “Might as well be dead, then.”

  Ambrose kneeled beside me and his dark scent struck into me. “You’ve always had a pleasant, optimistic character.”

  Theron stood and disappeared below deck. He returned with the handle of a large red and white first aid kit in his fist.

  “Good luck,” I said and sat back against the rails.

  I watched him work with Serena by his side. She was beautiful in her own way, I would give her that. Her dark hair fell into her eyes and she pushed it back behind her ears, oddly pointed like the ears of a furious little pixie I had once crushed between my fingers.

  Discover what she is.

  I wondered if the Master still cared what she was and if there would still be any sort of second-rate prize for figuring it out.

  Likely not. Kill her or protect her, that was it, and if Ambrose of all of us meant to protect her, then that would be my course too, like it or not.

  Ambrose settled himself beside me and patted my knee as if we were old friends, which we certainly were not. I hated him as much as the others, if not more, but at least I could respect him.

  “What is he?” he asked quietly. “Is he your boy? How dark the mother must’ve been - his skin is so utterly black and yours, well.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s just a boy.” If he lived, it would be better to keep his abilities hidden from Ambrose and Theron - Ambrose, especially - for as long as possible. It was the one thing I had over them.

  “I see,” he said, tapping his fingers. “I assume you won’t miss him when he dies, because he will. I can already taste the gravedirt on my tongue.”

  “Don’t care,” I said, leaning my head back against the rails. But part of me did care and i
t made me sick to think about. The boy had annoyed me, but I’d grown marginally fond of him. Coupled with what he could offer in terms of his abilities, it was almost a shame to watch him go.

  Serena set the boy’s head in her lap and Theron set to work stitching the long cut at his temple.

  Ambrose and I watched silently and I was glad for it. Not drowning had been exhausting and talking was the last thing I wanted to do. It always was; unless it was to some slender-legged woman who had no idea whose bed she would crawl into until asked to do it.

  I found myself eyeing Serena’s legs and quietly admiring the long curves of her calf muscles and the upward V-shape of her thighs beneath the fabric of her tight, black pants. It was almost a wonder that only Theron and Ambrose were with her.

  I peered down the stairwell from where I was sitting. “Anyone else on board?”

  Theron sat back from over the boy.

  “What?” Serena asked.

  “He’s lost so much blood,” he said, needle and thread in hand. “Do you see how it refuses flow?” He leaned closer to the boy’s head again. “It’s not that it’s stopping, it’s just that there’s not much of it to be stopped anymore.”

  Serena leaned forward to touch the boy’s heart beneath his white raincoat and Theron pressed his ear beside her fingers.

  “Nothing,” he said, lifting his head. “There’s nothing.”

  “If he needs blood,” she said quietly, slowly. “We need to give it to him.”

  I laughed although I’d hardly meant to. “He’s dead,” I said. “Things die. I know that’s probably difficult for you to understand, but it happens all the time. All. The. Damn. Time.”

  She shot me a glare that would’ve sliced my heart in two had I cared what she thought.

  Theron sat back on his heels. “He’s gone,” he said to her. “We did what he could and there was little enough to work with.”

  Serena shook her head and grabbed for the first aid kit at Theron’s side. She shrugged off her leather jacket. “He needs blood,” she said with a quiet determination. “And you’re all cowards.”

  “He’s dead,” said Theron. “There’s no reason for you to hurt yourself.”

  She took up a small scalpel from the box and cut into her wrist and hissed in air through her teeth. “I’ve never wasted myself on anyone,” she said, pressing her wrist to the boy’s small lips. “But he’s a child.” She tilted her head back to the sky. “Fucking monsters,” she breathed.

  Theron grabbed her arm. “If he comes back, you’ll have made a monster of your own.”

  She lowered her head from the sky and frowned at him. “The window between life and death is very small and so I’d appreciate it if you’d let go. Fucking please.”

  Theron’s face hardened at her. “All right,” he said. “All right.” He let go of her arm and she continued to press down on her own veins, forcing the blood to flow from her arm into the boy’s red mouth.

  “I know what our blood can do,” she said. “We take, but we can give back. How much have I taken?”

  I touched the line of my jaw. “You ever see what happens to the ones that come back?” She hadn’t, of course. That much was apparent. She wouldn’t be in such a rush to do it if she had. She was like a kid who had learned a big word the year before and had finally found a sentence to use it in without understanding all of its nuances.

  She just wanted to try it, that was all.

  “Do you know,” said Ambrose quietly from beside me, “that I’d once tried the same thing with a woman I’d consumed and later realized that I’d mostly fallen in love with?”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” I said.

  “It had been a desperate measure that hadn’t worked,” he continued. “But it had certainly made me feel better for trying.” He cocked his head as he watched Serena. “Of course, it hadn’t made my lover feel any better, but alas, there we have it.”

  I folded my arms, tired and sore. “Do you think she’ll give me some of her blood if I lay out on the deck like he is?”

  “Hardly,” said Ambrose. He folded his hands. “I’m assuming the boy was pleasant or you would’ve dropped him. At the very least you considered him useful. A floatation device in the worst of circumstances.”

  I shrugged at this. “The kid was a kid. Annoying like all the rest of them.”

  Ambrose nodded. “We can always throw him overboard. The walking dead are so very tiresome.”

  “Zombie bullshit,” I said, struggling to my feet. “One thing we don’t need.”

  Serena glanced up at me and then closed her eyes as the red blood trickled from her veins. “Heartless asshole,” she whispered.

  “That’s right, darling. Heartless asshole.” But the pout of her full, red lips gave me more heart than I would’ve wanted her to know about. Just not in the right places.

  Ambrose pointed to the stairwell. “The liquor is down there,” he said. “I suppose you’ll be wanting it. Though I believe the wine is gone.”

  Pollux

  The sun fell and the moon rose once more, but I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Nikolai or his hell-craven dog again. Cain continued to brood, even as we moved from warehouse to warehouse along the long dock, biting and eating as we went, but not even the turmoil of mortal men could lift him from his mood.

  Below our perch in the last warehouse at the end of the dock, the sirens blared out long and loud. Muscled police dogs hunted us down the pier, but they were more like cats when compared to Nikolai’s hound.

  I paced in front of Cain, moody and dark as he was. “Who do you think did it, killed all those men?” I asked only with as much sarcasm as I thought he could understand.

  But Cain only stared angrily down into his large, open palms.

  “Did they not fill you?” I asked. “Do you want me to wrangle up an officer or two to bring your spirits up? Their blood runs much hotter. It’s all that passion for the law, I imagine.” I laughed at this. “The law.” I tapped my finger to my mouth and waited for Cain to say something, anything at all. He could brood - brooding was fine. It was the incessant, unbroken silence that irked me.

  “How many laws did you break when you killed Orlando, I wonder?”

  But he said nothing.

  I clucked down at him. “Do you feel remorse?” I asked. “Do you feel guilt?” But as far as I knew, Cain felt nothing. He was more beast than vampire and more vampire than man. It was likely he felt nothing at all.

  Only hate.

  I touched my hands to my knees in a show of exaggerated exasperation. “Stubborn,” I said, standing tall again. “That’s what you are. Stubborn. Well, brood if you want, brood all day if I care. Brood on a roof. Brood in a cellar. Brood, brood, brood.”

  “Sit,” said a voice, dark and cold from just behind me.

  My heart fell and my stomach rose, but I did not turn.

  Cain lifted his head and his eyes steeled over with recognition.

  Two padded weights set themselves on my shoulders and I let myself be pushed helplessly to my knees below their force.

  “Good boy,” said Nikolai.

  The dog moved his paws from my shoulders and padded slowly in front of me. Her jowls hung with hot, diseased saliva and her thick muscles twitched even as she stood still.

  “You’re late,” I said with as much snap in my voice as I dared.

  Nikolai placed his hand on top of my head. “Is that so?” he said. “Because it seems to me I’m never late.” He patted my head and I closed my eyes against the force of his thumping hand against the top of my skull.

  “Unnecessary,” I said between my teeth.

  His dog sat down in front of me and lowered her long face to look into mine. Her black eyes reflected my own, but there was no way to tell where her pupils pointed or which part of me she was eyeing the closest.

  “All things are necessary,” said Nikolai. He lifted his hand from my head. “Stay,” he said, but it was impossible to tell whether he was commanding the dog
, me, or both.

  Nikolai moved forward and sat down beside Cain who only stared at him. He placed a hand on his knee and Cain grunted down at it.

  “Careful,” I said with a quiet sullenness, not wanting to startle the dog into shredding my face like she had to poor Remus. “He’s in a mood.”

  “Serena has you down,” said Nikolai.

  Cain turned his head to face him. “Ambrose has her,” he said.

  Nikolai nodded and patted his leg with as much force as he’d used on my head. It was a wonder Cain didn’t reach out to tear him to shreds as he had to Orlando.

  Would he attack if I ordered him to again?

  Perhaps, but the risk of him disobeying me was too great. Nikolai wouldn’t stand for it and neither would his dog.

  “Ambrose has her?” said Nikolai. “Is that so? There’s no better luck.”

  I lifted my knee from the ground, cautious and steady. “And why is that a good thing?” I asked. “Ambrose isn’t Orlando.”

  A low growl rumbled through the dog’s throat and her black eyes shone with the bridled urge to kill me.

  I dropped my knee back down and folded my hands in front of me.

  “Serena is alive and well,” said Nikolai. He whistled and his dog padded heavily back to him.

  “Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

  Cain’s eyes flashed down into mine for the first time since his mood had taken him over.

  “Hello,” I said. “There you are.” I cautiously eased myself back up to my feet. “Not sure why he doesn’t just kill her and get it over with,” I said, straightening my coat. “Though it does give the rest of us a better chance at winning the game. Can’t complain about that.”

  Nikolai bent to adjust the black collar around the dog’s impossibly thick neck. “The game is shit,” he said calmly. “It always was.” He smiled. “It’s cathartic to say out loud, you really ought to try it. The game is shit. Nonsense. Shit and nonsense.”