The Dead Wolves: An Ashwood Novel (Cursed and Damned Book 1)
Page 1
Contents
TITLE PAGE
Copyright
Synopsis
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Also by Katerina Martinez
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Author's Note
An excerpt from Pixi Poison
Also by Katerina Martinez
About the Author
THE DEAD WOLVES
A Cursed and Damned Novel
Book One
By Lee Dignam
&
Katerina Martinez
THE DEAD WOLVES
A Cursed and Damned Novel
Book One
Copyright © 2017 by Katerina Martinez & Lee Dignam. All rights reserved. Cover uses images © 2017 Depositphotos.
Published by Supernal Publishing
Cover Art by Rebecca Frank Art
Editing by S. Williams
Visit: www.katerinamartinez.com
***
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or tell your friends about this serial to help spread the word!
Thank you for supporting my work.
Someone is abducting women from the streets of Ashwood.
Cyanide doesn't consider herself a mercenary, but when you get hired to run potentially dangerous missions usually concerning undesirable characters, that's what you are. What she wants is to get the hell out of Ashwood - a rotting, lost cause of a city - but travelling across the country isn't easy when you're one of the undead. She needs money to make that happen, and if she wants to make enough of it to leave, she needs to run one last mission for her organization's benefactor; she has to find out who's abducting women from the streets, and why.
In order to do that, Cyanide needs to work with Neo - an at times frustrating, but alluring vampire - chasing down leads and finding clues in an attempt at figuring out how deep the well goes. But this whole thing runs deep and black, and at the bottom of it are secrets, treacheries, and dangers she couldn't have imagined.
She has to find it within herself to persevere, because one of the girls who went missing is vitally important to her benefactor, and if she doesn't find this lost lamb, she may be stuck in Ashwood for a long time.
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Also by Lee Dignam & Katerina Martinez
The Half-Lich Series (An Ashwood Series set in the same world)
Book 1: Dark Siren
Book 2: The Void Weaver
Book 3: Night and Chaos
The Blood and Magick Series
Book 1: Magick Reborn
Book 2: Demon’s Kiss
Book 3: Coming Spring 2017
The Amber Lee Series
Book 1: True Witch
Book 2: Dark Witch
Book 3: Shadow Witch
Book 4: Red Witch
Book 5: Feral Witch
PROLOGUE
Seven vampires descended a stone staircase, carrying the fate of another in their hands. Daniel Knight was the last of the hooded congregation, following silently into a chamber situated at the entrance to a series of catacombs. Along the walls inside the chamber, tall candles set into gothic sconces flickered dimly, birthing sinister shadows that danced upon a cabaret of oil paintings, each depicting a different stage of the vampire court’s triumph over the traitor, Crimson, who was depicted on the walls as a scrawny, pale, dark-haired demon, with bat-like wings stretching out from his shoulders and not two elongated fangs, but four.
Count Rufus, on the other hand, loomed over Crimson as a valiant knight in full plate armor, wielding a great sword with a red-hot tip and the Catholic Cross burned into the hilt. This wasn’t a story to be told to vampires, it was a warning of what would happen to traitors who stood up against the unity of the court, and the sanctity of the position of Count.
Daniel took his place, standing on top of a stone slab with a horse’s head carved into it. Each of the vampires around him stood on top of similar slabs, each carved into the shape of a different clan’s sigil. These slabs formed a half-circle around a large, intricately decorated tomb which acted as the room’s centerpiece. Open archways into dark, foreboding corridors branched off in several directions, each leading to a different part of the city. The tunnels were like veins running beneath Ashwood’s skin, jagged and far-reaching, but they had long since gone cold and black.
A series of growing footsteps began to intrude upon the near-perfect silence of the chamber, hard and forceful, each heavier than the last. None of the vampires here turned their heads when the large, lanky-framed vampire, whose wide stride and heavy footfalls identified as Branor Corvallis, the Count’s aide, swept into the chamber. None moved so much as a single muscle, except for the eyes; they moved like the eyes set into paintings.
Branor’s cloak billowed behind him as he moved. The candle’s flames seemed to want to reach out and touch him, while the shadows they cast shied away from him, scared and quivering. When Branor reached the stone tomb, he knelt before it, clasped his hands in front of his mouth, and entered into a moment of silent reverence.
Daniel swallowed the tension building in his throat and waited. When Branor was done, he rose, placed his hands upon the tomb, and turned his head up to look at the crowd from behind his hood. The darkness clung to his face, light managing only to touch the tip of his chin and nose, and bouncing off the crow’s head pin on his chest. When he spoke, the whites of his teeth became visible, as if the sharp canines set into his jaw wanted to be seen.
“My brothers,” Branor said, “we gather here, in the presence of our most noble Sovereign, to begin the rite of the blood hunt.”
“Blood hunt?” one of the gathered asked, in a low, but purposeful tone of voice. “A blood hunt hasn’t been called in over a century. What is the meaning of this?”
“Our city is rotting. Have you ever seen what happens to an old house when the floors start to crumble? The rats and the roaches are dragged into the light and exposed for what they are. Vermin. Pests. Parasites. And then they are exterminated.”
“You would call us pests and vermin? How dare you.”
“I would call us kings, brother. Kings and queens of the night, princes of darkness, lords of the land. But to the humans, should they ever discover our existence, we would be rodents to be eliminated. We would be the devils they would blame for every single one of their
problems, and they would band together to find us, and burn every one of our homes to the ground. They will take what we have worked so hard to build, and they would be justified in doing so because to them, we are monsters.”
Silence followed this ominous declaration. Daniel allowed his eyes to roam the gathering of vampires and noticed the slightest turning of heads between individual vampires. Branor’s words were getting through to them.
“What does this have to do with a blood hunt?” another vampire asked.
Branor paused and drew himself up. “There are some of us who toe the line between our kind and theirs; those who choose to walk a tightrope hanging above discovery itself instead of retreating to the shadows as we have always done. I have done all I can to warn our brothers and sisters of the dangers of getting too close to the human herd, but they choose to ignore those warnings and continue on their paths which will only lead to tragedy. Tragedy for all of us.”
“Who?” someone, Daniel wasn’t sure who, asked.
Branor pulled a chalice from within his robe as if by magic and held it aloft for the crowd to see. Candlelight touched upon what looked like a hand of bone holding up a silver basin encrusted with blood-red rubies. He reached into the chalice and pulled a slip of paper from inside. He then passed the paper to the closest vampire on his left.
“I do not take this rite lightly,” Branor said, “but our shared secret, the very thing that keeps our society safe, is in danger. For the good of the court we must make an example of this vampire and squash the threat before it grows any larger.”
The vampire with the note opened it, peered at what was written on it, and passed it to the vampire on his left. Daniel, who was on the other side of the room, would be the last to see the name written on the note, and while he had no idea whose name he would find scribbled upon the piece of paper, the wait would have been enough to make his skin begin to tingle if it could.
“There must be a better way,” Daniel finally said.
Branor turned his head slowly. “Ah, the last Knight joins us,” Branor said, “it is good to see you here, brother.”
“A blood hunt cannot be the only way to settle this.”
“This man was once an honored member of the Count’s Guard, but ever since he left he has been nothing but trouble. At first, his actions were a nuisance more than anything else. But his actions have now become hostile toward the court, as well as the Count himself. How would you have this resolved?”
“They should be brought to trial, and their fate should be decided by a jury of their peers, not by a cadre of elders gathered in a dark chamber.”
It was as if the note being passed around had magic powers of its own. With every vampire who looked upon the name written on the paper, a static charge seemed to rise up, like dogs salivating at the smell of fresh food and the promise of a good meal, or sharks who were so consumed by their instinct to follow the blood and eat the source they could not turn away if they wanted to.
“And you think a vampire would subject themselves to scrutiny by their peers?” Branor asked. “No. This cannot be settled democratically. There is only room for one kind of justice here, and it is the justice we can serve.”
“This is archaic justice,” Daniel said, “the rest of the court will never accept, or even understand, your reason for initiating a blood hunt.”
“They will when they learn the name of the wild dog who must be put down for the good of all.”
The note finally came to Daniel, and he took it. The time it took for his eyes to fall upon the writing on the note seemed to stretch like the passage of time during a nightmare. There was only one word written on the note, but in that instant the word which was otherwise entirely innocuous, had an immense capability to inflict fear—or bloodlust.
For Daniel, it was fear which came bubbling up to the surface.
He turned his eyes toward Branor. “Very well,” he said, understanding that his refusal here—any further display of defiance—would be unwise. “I defer to your judgment on this.”
“Good,” Branor said. “Let it be said that, under your guidance, the Knight clan has once again flourished into a valued member of our society.”
“I thank you,” Daniel said, though he wanted to plunge the chalice into that smug chin.
Instead, he handed it back, and Branor then placed it on the tomb. He brought his wrist to his lips, and with a quick nip opened a seam in the flesh wide enough for blood to come oozing out. It didn’t pump and gush like a human’s would, but dripped slowly, lazily, into the cup. When Branor had poured enough, he passed the cup around as he had the note, and one by one each of the vampires in the room took of their own blood and dripped some into the chalice until it returned to him filled with sloshing, cold, near black liquid.
“Tonight,” Branor said, raising the cup to the center of the room, “we revive a centuries old tradition. Let the blood in this cup whet your appetites, so you may better hunt your prey.”
Branor took a sip of blood, licked his lips with his tongue, and passed the cup around. Each vampire followed in turn as the cup arrived in their hands. Once they were done, each made their way back up the spiral staircase they had descended to get here. When the cup came to Daniel, he held it in his hands and stared into the bottom before drinking.
He saw the note sitting in the cup, the paper now soaked through with blood. On it, there were only three letters. He turned his eyes to the Count’s aide. If he didn’t drink—if he refused—then maybe he’d find his own name dropped into the cup one night without his knowing. If he drank, he would be accepting a blood oath knowing full well he would have to break it.
Daniel pursed his lips, pressed them against the cup, and drank his share. He could almost feel the smirk spread across Branor’s face, but he had no choice. Ever since he turned Jessica into a vampire, he could no longer think only about himself.
CHAPTER ONE
The tractor-trailer stopped in a dimly lit spot just beneath a bridge overpass, and two predators watched it from a distance. Cyanide’s jaw started to throb, her teeth aching with anticipation at the fight about to begin. It was as if her fangs were alive, and desperate to be plunged into somebody’s jugular. But the time wasn’t right yet. She had to restrain herself.
Neo brought his vintage Firebird Trans Am to a slow halt about half a block down. There were no residencies here, only warehouses—some abandoned, some still in use—and only scarce lighting. That didn’t matter much, not to vampires anyway. Creatures of the night were accustomed to the dark.
“That’s the truck,” Neo said.
“What’s it doing?” Cyanide asked, “Why’s it stopped here?”
“They’re waiting for a signal.”
“Should we go?”
“We should wait too,” Neo said.
“Wait? For what? The truck is there, the women are in there, what are we waiting for?”
“Just wait.”
She watched him, scanning the side of his face for any tell of what he may have been thinking, but Neo was about as readable as a rock. The yellow street lights turned his candy red hair a fiery orange, and his eyes into black holes from which no emotion could escape. When she’d given up trying to read him, she let herself fall back into her seat and turned her eyes on the truck again just as another car came into view, rolling out of a side street.
The black sedan parked alongside the eighteen-wheeler. From the larger vehicle’s cab, a man disembarked. He placed a cigarette in between his lips and lit it before approaching the sedan’s driver side window. Cyanide couldn’t see who he was talking to; the car’s windows were tinted, and she had a view of the passenger side.
When two men stepped out of the car and circled around it, she tightened her grip on the door handle, ready to pull it open at a moment’s notice and get right into the thick of things. She thought she could close the gap between Neo’s Trans Am and the truck in about three seconds if she moved fast enough, but she had to wait fo
r Neo’s say so.
That was the rule.
“Do the plates mean anything to you?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Looks like a local plate,” he said.
The smoker stepped away from the car, patted the top of the sedan, and headed toward the back of the trailer to join the other two men who had now circled around it. When the sedan’s break lights flashed red, Cyanide knew it was about to make its move.
“Now?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Neo said.
“That car’s about to leave, Neo.”
“I know that.”
“So, you’re just going to let it go?”
“I’m going to follow it. You’re going to go for the truck. Wait until I’m out of sight, and then go and get those women.”
Cyanide didn’t need to say anything else; there was no time to waste on words. She pulled the door handle and stepped out into the cold, dark night. A freak breeze worked its way into her green hair and tugged it out of her pale face. When she shut the door, Neo rolled the car along the street, following the sedan as it made a right turn and disappeared, out of sight.
Walking with conviction down the sidewalk, she had one objective in mind—get them to drop their guard. She knew exactly how she would do it, too, but nevertheless, if her heart could beat, it would have been hammering hard in her chest, beating up a storm and causing all manner of emotions to come bubbling up.
She could smell the cigarette smoke as she neared the end of the block, and she could hear their hearts thumping dully, as if behind walls. Two of them were wearing suits, while the other wore blue overalls. Standard goons, she thought, not even vampires. This would be easy. And yet, in the pit of her stomach, her own nerves cried out in protest.