Moonshade (Vampire Conclave: Book 1)

by S. J. West

“I strongly advise that you let the alfar deal with the situation,” Viktor says crossly, sounding exasperated by my stubbornness. “They’re trained to fight against not only physical but also magical combat. You are not, Sarah. You’re totally ill-equipped to manage either effectively. Now, if you had been raised the way you should…”

  “Stop it!” I interrupt heatedly. “I am sick and tired of people pointing out the fact that my parents didn’t ‘raise’ me the way they were supposed to. My mother didn’t tell me about Julian and the bond I would end up sharing with him. My father didn’t tell me I would one day inherit a throne…”

  “Throne?” Gage and Nathaniel ask at the same time, both sounding equally surprised.

  “I’ll explain it later,” I tell them off-handedly. I was trying to make a point to Viktor. “I am totally aware that my parents didn’t prepare me for this world of yours, but I understand the motivation behind what they did. All they wanted was for me to have a happy life for as long as I could. I ended up having that despite their deaths. I was raised by loving people and was able to experience life without many worries before now. Everyone needs to understand that I’m doing the best I can with the situations I keep finding myself embroiled in. All I ask in return is that you support me and any decisions I make. I am your future queen,” I tell Viktor with an authoritative quality to my voice that I didn’t know I possessed until that moment. “You will do what I say and not question me about it. Is that understood?”

  A slow, gratified smile spreads Viktor’s lips. “There she is,” he says, lifting his chin slightly higher as a look of pride glistens in his eyes. “There’s the leader of the House Moonshade I’ve been waiting to see. I knew it would surface eventually, but you’re exceeding my expectations, Sarah Marcel. I’m very pleased.”

  A part of me feels a sense of joy in Viktor’s praise, and a part of me feels aggravated that he’s wasting time.

  “I need you to help me come up with a plan that will work, Viktor,” I say, letting a little bit of my aggravation show. “Now, how are we going to get into the house?”

  “Give me your phone first so I can call Shael,” he tells me, holding out his hand. “Then we can discuss matters.”

  Viktor makes his call. It doesn’t last very long. The person on the other end of the line barely seems to ask any questions. Viktor simply tells them that I need help and where to meet us.

  “The princess is an impatient creature,” he complains to the person he’s talking to, “so I suggest you not dilly dally, and come straight away. I’ll do what I can to protect her, but she may be too stubborn to listen to reason when it comes to her vampire companion’s life.” Viktor grunts in agreement at something the person he’s talking to says. “Yes. I’ll do my best. Just hurry.”

  After he ends the call, Viktor hands the phone back to me. “Now, let’s see how we can get you inside the house without it looking suspicious.”

  The drive to Destin feels like the longest road trip of my life. It isn’t, of course. The longest road trip was one I took with Kaylee and her parents to see the Grand Canyon. It took us two days and a total of 24 hours of driving to reach the gigantic hole in the ground, but it was well worth it. However, the trip I’m on now won’t be as much fun. In fact, if I simply make it out alive I’ll be fortunate.

  When we finally reach our destination, Gage pulls off the road and parks next to the sidewalk two blocks down from the house we need to get into. I see both Julian’s Vanquish and Petru’s Mercedes parked on the street next to the home’s gated entrance. Even without the presence of his car, I would know Julian is inside the house. I can feel him in there. I look at Nathaniel in the back seat, and he nods his head at me.

  “I feel Petru in there,” he tells me, confirming what I already suspected.

  Thankfully the iron front gate is wide open, which will allow Viktor access to do his part in our plan. He quickly transforms back into a cat and prances his way down the sidewalk towards the house. I watch as he turns the corner to head directly towards the mansion. I lower the window on my side of Gage’s vehicle and listen for Viktor’s meowing. He said he could be loud, but I had no idea he would sound so distressed. His caterwauling is so pitiful you would think he was being tortured unmercifully. Eventually his cries subside, and I know he’s been taken inside the house. Well, either that or killed, but I’m trying to remain optimistic.

  As suggested, we wait a full fifteen minutes to give Viktor some time to search the interior for Julian and Petru’s whereabouts.

  I turn to look at Nathaniel in the back seat.

  “Stay here,” I order him. “You’re no good to Petru if you’re dead.”

  “Same could be said for you, Sarah,” Nathaniel says, disgruntled by the fact that he’s being left behind.

  “I know,” I cajole, “but one of us needs to keep a look out. Gage and I can pass for a married couple. If I go up to the door with you by my side, I’ll look like I’m robbing the cradle. It’s just easier if you’re the one who stays behind. You understand that, right?”

  Nathaniel sighs in disappointment but also in resignation.

  “I’ll call your phone if I see anything suspicious out here,” he begrudgingly answers, agreeing to play his role in our plan.

  I look over at Gage. “Are you ready?”

  He nods confidently. “Let’s go.”

  Gage and I walk up to the mansion and knock on the solid wood front door. I try to appear calm, but I’m sure my anxiousness is written all over my face. I just hope it works to my advantage in this instance.

  The door opens, and standing just inside the house is a dark-haired woman of exceptional beauty. She looks Eastern European with her petite frame, pale skin, hazel eyes, and ruby-red lips.

  “Hello, can I help you?” she asks, her voice tinged with a slight accent I can’t quite place. She glances at Gage and me, waiting for one of us to answer. She appears to be quite calm. I don’t sense that she’s a threat to us, which makes me question if Nathaniel got the address correct. Yet I know Julian is inside this house. I can feel him.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” I say, “but our cat is missing. We’re going door to door to see if anyone has seen him.”

  “Perhaps,” she says, eyeing us suspiciously. “Can you describe him to me?”

  “He’s an Oriental Blue Point Siamese cat,” I tell her. “He has white fur, pointy ears, and a black ringed tail.”

  The woman smiles. “Then, yes, I have seen your cat. He was mewling out in my courtyard, so I brought him inside to calm him down.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I say, feigning relief. “We thought we had lost him.”

  “Please,” the woman says, opening the door wider, “come in. I fear as soon as I brought him inside he jumped out of my arms and decided to explore my home.”

  “Well, that sounds like him,” Gage laughs easily, taking my hand as we walk into the house together. I don’t view Gage’s desire to hold my hand as a romantic overture. He’s feeling very protective of me right now, and I think he just wants to make sure I remain by his side while we’re inside the house.

  As we walk through the entryway, the first thing I see is the spiral staircase that winds around to all four floors of the home.

  “Wow,” I say in genuine awe as I look up and see the ceiling of the fourth floor, “that stairwell is amazing.”

  “Thank you,” the woman says, closing the door behind us. “I had the staircase especially built to get just that type of reaction from my guests.”

  “This house is huge,” Gage comments, briefly casting a glance to the few rooms we can see from the front door. “You must have a large family.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll need to help me search for your cat,” she tells us, deftly ignoring Gage’s comment. “I’m not quite sure where he got off to.”

  “Meow,” Viktor says. I look up the stairwell, and see him poking his head out between two of the iron rails there. “Meow.”

  It’s
then that my suspicions are confirmed. The woman is not as banal as she appears. Our plan was to have Viktor scout out the interior before we came in. If he was able to locate Julian and Petru, he was supposed to find a way to lead us to their position. Apparently he’s found them on the fourth floor, since he isn’t budging from his perch.

  “Oh no,” I say in mock dismay, “he hates heights. Poor thing is probably scared to death up there.”

  “Feel free to go get him,” the woman urges me with a friendliness I know is fake now. I’ve never met someone who is so adept at hiding her true nature from me. It makes me wonder how many people I’ve misread during my life.

  “Thank you,” I say gratefully. “We won’t be but a …”

  “Respiratio!” Gage says, casting his spell as he directs his gaze at the woman. With that single word the woman faints dead away, and falls to the wood floor like every bone in her body has melted. I feel absolutely no guilt as I watch her head hit the tile.

  “I know you told me that you could take all of the air out of her lungs to make her black out,” I say to Gage, “but I didn’t think it would be so instantaneous. How long will she be unconscious?”

  Gage grabs her underneath her arms and drags her body to the coat closet near the door.

  “She’ll wake up in a few minutes,” he replies, “so we need to hurry.”

  After we deposit her into the closet, Gage finds a chair and props the back of it underneath the knob to keep her locked inside. We quickly make our way up the staircase to the fourth floor.

  “Hurry up, you two,” Viktor says, standing by the railing stark naked as he watches our progress up the staircase. “I can’t tell how much blood these vampires have left in them. It doesn’t look like much, if you ask me.”

  I take a deep breath and practically run up the next two flights of stairs. When we reach the fourth floor, I see what Viktor was talking about.

  The fourth floor is almost completely empty of furnishings. It’s an open space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out towards the blue-green ocean. Both Julian and Petru are lying unconscious on stainless steel tables, like ones I’ve seen on TV shows in police morgues. Each of them has a bundle of three one-inch tubes protruding from of their chests. The tubes run down to machines that seem to be pumping out their blood and collecting it into three large plastic jugs.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should pull the tubes out or if that would do more harm than good,” Viktor explains as he stands beside Gage and me.

  “The only way they can die is if they lose more blood than their bodies can regenerate,” I say, remembering what I had to do after Julian was injured at Mira’s party. “Viktor, go down to the car and get Nathaniel. Petru will need to feed as soon as we pull the tubes out of his heart.”

  Viktor transforms back into a cat and makes a mad dash down the stairs.

  Gage and I go to Julian. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he’s already dead. His skin is the pallor of chalk, and his body is almost completely motionless. I stare down at his face, searching for any signs of life, but I don’t even notice his eyeballs twitch underneath their lids. Only the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he continues to breathe gives me hope that he can still be saved.

  “After I remove the tubes and Julian starts to feed, I need you to make sure he doesn’t kill me,” I tell Gage, not trusting Julian to be able to stop drinking my blood once he starts.

  “Does he lack that much self-control?” Gage asks in surprise and slight disgust.

  “Only when he’s near death,” I reply. I look down at the tubes jutting out of Julian’s chest and grimace. After they were inserted, the skin around them healed. There’s no way to remove the tubes without also ripping out a large amount of flesh.

  I know the task of removing them lies squarely on my shoulders. Being Julian’s companion means that I’m probably a lot stronger than Gage. The tubes will need to be yanked out in one swift motion to ensure their removal does the least amount of damage.

  I wrap my fingers around the tubes and tighten my hold. Just as I’m about to pull them out Julian’s right hand shoots up from the table and roughly seizes my wrist, preventing me from extracting the tubes. When I look up at his face, I see that his eyes are now open but they’re unblinking as he stares directly at the ceiling.

  “Leave this body alone. He deserves to die.” Even though I saw Julian’s mouth move and heard the strange detached voice order me to leave him alone, my mind is having a hard time accepting what I just witnessed. It wasn’t Julian’s deep voice that spoke to me. Instead, it was the high-pitched voice of a young girl that came out of his mouth.

  My heart begins to beat so fast I fear I might pass out from the rush of blood. I look over at Gage, wondering if I’m the only one who heard the voice. When I see his shocked expression, I know I didn’t imagine it.

  I look back at Julian’s face and ask, “Who are you?”

  “Who I am is none of your concern. Leave now and let this man face his fate.”

  “I can’t leave,” I say. “If Julian dies, I die.”

  “Then you die,” the voice says without a shred of mercy or pity.

  “Tell me who you are,” I beg. “Tell me what you are.”

  “A victim of unfortunate circumstance,” the voice answers.

  A victim?

  “Are you a ghost?” I have to ask.

  “Yes, she is.” This time it isn’t the ghost who answers.

  I look away from Julian’s face and see the woman we locked in the closet on the first floor now standing at the head of the stairs. Viktor is in her arms. She has one hand wound around his thin fragile neck in a threatening manner. I’m not sure why he doesn’t just transform into his human form to negate her threat on his life. All I can assume is that she’s preventing him from doing it somehow.

  I fear she might break Viktor’s neck before Gage can get a spell off to incapacitate her. My warlock friend seems to be of the same mind since he remains silent beside me.

  In an effort to keep her calm and talking, I ask, “Why is she speaking through Julian? Is she one of your victims?”

  The woman’s haunting laughter fills the air. “Oh no. Not one of mine. One of his.”

  “How is she one of his victims?” I immediately ask, assuming the woman is a liar.

  “When a person dies violently,” she starts to explain, “sometimes their soul becomes restless, like the one you just heard speak. When this vampire and the others were made, some of the souls lingering within Cachtice Castle were able to inhabit the bodies of those they held most responsible for their deaths.”

  It takes me a few seconds to fully comprehend what she’s saying, but I eventually catch on.

  “Are you telling me that Julian is possessed?” I ask.

  “I suppose that’s the easiest way to view it,” the woman agrees with a small shrug. “When the curse was cast, the souls found new homes inside those who were chosen to suffer for Bathory’s disgrace. I brought these two here to find out which souls each of them possesses.”

  “Why?” I have to ask.

  “I’m searching for one soul in particular,” she tells me. “One very important soul, and the only way I could communicate with the spirits trapped inside them was to bring them to the brink of death.”

  “Who’s inside Julian?” I ask the woman, but gain the answer from a different source.

  “No one of importance,” the voice tells me. “I was only one of many serving girls in the countess’ household.”

  “What do you want?” I ask the spirit. “Why have you remained inside Julian all this time?”

  “I want retribution,” the spirit tells me angrily. “I want him to suffer just like I did.”

  “Hasn’t he suffered enough?” I ask.

  “No.”

  I don’t know what to do or what else to say to the soul trapped inside Julian. It’s obvious she holds him directly responsible for her death, but how do you appease a malevolent s
pirit?

  I look back at the woman and ask, “Whose soul are you trying to find?”

  “That’s none of your concern,” she replies snidely. “I really don’t like it when someone doesn’t understand their place, and you, my dear, don’t seem to realize just how dispensable you and those you care about are to me. I think it might be time you learned that very important lesson.”

  Before I can take another breath, I watch in horror as the woman tightens her hold around Viktor’s neck and snaps it.

  My whole body goes completely numb, and I feel like I’m trapped inside a never-ending nightmare. As Viktor’s body goes limp with death, everything looks like it’s happening in slow motion. When the woman holds what remains of my friend’s body over the rail of the staircase, she smiles at me just before she loosens her grasp. Two seconds later, I hear a faint thud as Viktor’s body unceremoniously hits the first floor.

  “Urgeo!” I hear Gage yell, flexing his arm out and pointing a finger directly at the woman.

  I hear a whoosh of air as a strong gust of wind pushes the woman backwards. Instead of causing her to tumble down the stairs, her body simply levitates in the air as she laughs at us.

  “Is that all you’ve got, young warlock?” she taunts. “A parlor trick that any child of air magic can do? What a waste of your talents. I sense you could be great if only you gave into true magic.”

  “What you practice isn’t magic,” Gage states, almost sounding like he pities her. “You’re destroying yourself by delving into the hate that resides in this world. Stop it before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” the woman claims proudly. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have the gumption to do what I have. Too bad you’ll have to die because of your cowardice.” The woman holds her arms up and chants, “Souls of those who guard and protect, hear my voice and come to collect.”

  After the utterance of her words, ten cloudy black figures rise up through the floor and surround us. They look like shadows, but their forms are more pronounced than that. I know if I reach out and touch one of them, I’ll feel something solid against my hand.