The Vampire Gift 6: Secrets of Hope

by E. M. Knight

  “I could give it to you,” I continue. “I could give you the Dark Gift. It will restore you to the vitality you once had. It will augment any and all of the powers you currently wield. And, most of all—” one more step, “—because of the cure, it does not have to be permanent. You hate vampires. You hate what we represent? Well, then use us, but use us like this. You do not need an unwilling army. You could become part of us and rule over all the covens with your strength!”

  Her eyes narrow into tiny slits.

  “And you?” she asks. “What will be your role in all of this? What benefit do you possibly see for yourself?”

  My mind races, searching for the right thing to say.

  I know of only one. It’s a huge blow to my ego. But, sometimes a great gain requires great sacrifice.

  I swallow my pride and say, “I will bow down to you and proclaim you as our Queen.”

  She steps back and pauses in thought.

  “I will be the first to acknowledge your coming,” I vow. “I will be your first and most loyal subject. The bond between us will be that of maker and fledgling, but we will turn that into whatever you want. I hold great influence in the various vampire covens. I am Morgan’s oldest son, and she rules over the greatest vampire coven the world has yet known.”

  Second greatest, I correct in my head.

  “It will be an alliance of Queen and subject. I will answer only to you. I will advise only you. I will give you everything I have, but I will do it willingly, and that will make it so much richer for the both of us. You can elevate yourself above everybody, anybody else.

  “Vampires know and respect one thing,” I tell her. “Only one. Power. It is ingrained in us. It follows the vampire hierarchy. I can help you become the strongest vampire of all. And when that happens, all of the underlings will rally to your—to our—great cause.”

  I fall silent. She considers all this for a very long, drawn-out moment.

  Then she speaks.

  “The cure. I have never heard of it.”

  “A recent discovery,” I lie.

  “It exists?”

  “Without a sliver of doubt.”

  “Hmm,” she says.

  I wait for more.

  She starts pacing back and forth, the glass staff making a peculiar clicking sound against the floor with every step.

  “If I am to take you at your word,” she says, “and allow you to convert me… it would be a hideous oversight. No.” She shakes her head. “No, that is not how it will go. You must prove to me first that a cure exists. Show it to me, show that it works, and then...” Her lips purse in consideration. “…and then, we will see what I do.”

  Alarm bells ring in my head. I’ve delayed whatever she means to do… but not halted it.

  “I must say, I was not expecting you here at this hour,” she continues. She waves her hand. The force around me disappears.

  I can breathe freely once more.

  “How did you bear the sun?”

  “Vampires of immense strength can withstand the rays,” I tell her. Not exactly a lie. Maybe a half-truth. “I happen to be one of them.”

  “Chandler never went out into the light. Neither did the other he kept for company.”

  “That is why Chandler succumbed to me,” I tell her. “Pure strength.”

  “Your arrogance knows no limits,” she mutters. “In time, you will need to be taught humility. If we proceed in this fashion, I will teach you.”

  “How very kind of you,” I grumble.

  She stops again and shoots me a dangerous look. “You are on very thin ice, vampire.”

  I change the topic so that I don’t bumble any further. “If I demonstrate to you the cure, you will consider the offer?”

  “I will think about it,” she confirms. “Yes.”

  “It will require time,” I say. “I need to gather the necessary materials.”

  “Which are?” she asks.

  I smile in a cruel way. “… only for me to know. Do you think I’d give the secret away and lose my bargaining advantage?”

  “Well,” she chuckles, “You might be brighter than I give you credit for.”

  “A lot of people have made that mistake,” I blurt out without thinking.

  Immediately, I berate myself for letting my vanity get the better of me.

  But Cierra seems to appreciate the cockiness. She smiles.

  “Very well, vampire, you will have your time. How long do you need?”

  “A month,” I say with no pause. “At least.”

  She contemplates it. “I can do that,” she hedges after a moment.

  I’m grasping for straws, I know it, and yet I still continue to blunder on. “And we have to wait for the next full moon,” I say. “Once preparations are complete.” I draw on what little I know of the ceremony Mother intended for Eleira. “It’s a vital element of the cure.”

  “Moonlight?” she wonders. “Sounds like a distraction to me.”

  “You said you want to witness the cure,” I bluff. “Those are my requirements. Take them or leave them.”

  She cocks her head one way. “You really are quite sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  I meet her gaze. “I’d like to think that I am.”

  She nods. “Fine, then. You have your month. When it’s gone, I will find you again. And if you prove yourself false—” she smiles. “Well, then you’ll be the first vampire to understand just how much the others of your kind should fear me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  James

  The woods around Cierra’s lair

  I burst out of the underground layer coughing, choking, sputtering for air.

  After Cierra had made her decision, she opened a portal in the wall and stepped through. From what I know of the Paths, the other side of where she was going looked exactly like them.

  Except for one significant difference. All the crystals inside were tainted red.

  I could not tell if it was a feature of the spot where she opened the portal or of the magic that she used.

  Once she was through, the opening contracted… and the disaster began.

  All the blood that was on the walls burst into the air. It made a horrible, awful cloud of tiny red particles. I got one whiff of them and knew they had been corrupted to destroy.

  I ran as fast as I could. But the fog was everywhere. It was impossible to move without being inside of it, without being touched by it.

  In the few moments I was lost in the mist, screeching voices sounded in my mind: Blood, blood, blood so sweet. Marrow, marrow, suck the bone. Hearts, hearts, hearts to crush. Pulse, pulse, pulse to kill!

  It was a horrible sort of sing-song melody that pierced through my mind. Only when I got out of the lair and into the clean forest air did it cut off.

  I steady myself, and, after a moment, look back.

  The red mist is still visible. It hangs around the broken stump like a festering disease around a wound. But at least it does not expand past the circumference.

  I take a deep breath and look around, noting how absolutely empty the clearing is.

  So the scampering away of all these woodland creatures, I wonder. Was that because of me or because of the Sorceress?

  Something tells me it’s the latter.

  I look up toward the tree where I thought I saw movement before. Had that been Cierra up there, emerging from a summoned portal and then camouflaging herself so I would not find her?

  Given all I know, it seems the most likely of explanations.

  Like an arrow shot from a bow, I speed back to where the others are. How much should I tell them? How much have things changed now that I’ve made an impossible deal with the devil?

  I arrive at the entrance to the cave. The waterfall shielding the entrance glimmers with the last reflections of the dying light of the sun.

  I burst through and discover an incredible scene.

  The nine pack vampires have my coven members surrounded. They’re holding
back April and Liana, who look ready to kill Sylvia. The former member of the Order is staring daggers at them, her eyes channeling pure hatred. Victoria is off to one side of the circle, conferring in hushed tones with Smithson, who has, for whatever reason, tears and blood all over his clothes.

  “What happened here?” I demand. As soon as I entered the commotion paused. Liana and April relented, pushing away from the pack vampires holding them at a distance from the others.

  “I said,” I repeat, when nobody moves to answer, “What happened here while I was gone?”

  “We caught Smithson trying to escape!” Liana bursts out. “Sylvia was helping him.”

  “Lies!” Sylvia snarls. She glares at me. “Your two fledglings started harassing Smithson. I told them to stop.”

  “We weren’t harassing him, we caught him trying to flee!” Liana screeches.

  I hold my hands up. “And where were you for all of this?” I inquire of the pack group.

  “Asleep, in our coffins,” Paolo answers. He shoots me an accusing glower. “Where you should have been, as our leader!”

  “I woke early and took a walk,” I say casually. “Nothing prohibits me from acting on my will.”

  I come into the middle of the group. “Victoria,” I say sweetly. “Help me corroborate somebody’s story.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you what happened. I was slumbering, too. I woke up when I heard the sounds in this room.”

  “He was trying to escape!” Liana reiterates.

  I look at April. “You’ve been with me longer. Is what Liana said true?”

  She nods. “You told us to keep watch. You said we are his escort. She and I discovered Smithson trying to sneak away while everybody else was asleep.”

  “And you two stopped him?” I ask. “That’s very impressive, considering he has more than twice your strength.”

  April scowls. “We’re not as helpless as you think,” she says. “You tasked us with something, and we took to it. We were fulfilling our duty. That’s all.”

  “And not a scrape on you,” I murmur. “Yet look at Smithson. You did all that?”

  Victoria speaks. “The rest of us woke up when we heard the fight. We ran out and discovered the girls teaming up against Smithson.”

  “And you did not try defending yourself?” I ask the former Captain Commander.

  “I wasn’t trying to escape, James,” he hisses. “Your idiot girls assaulted me for no reason. And no, I did not fight back. I did not think you would treat me fairly if I had.”

  I look at April and Liana. “You two are unscratched?”

  “Yes,” they affirm.

  “Let them go,” I tell the pack vampires. “Nobody is going to do anything stupid with me around.”

  They step away from the two girls. The other ones back away from Sylvia.

  “You came to his aid?” I ask my newest-made fledgling.

  “They were killing him,” Sylvia answer. “Look at his body!”

  I glance at Smithson. He has no open wounds.

  “It’s healed up nicely, I’d say.”

  “Yes, after they were split up,” she stresses. “If we hadn’t interfered they would have torn his heart out!”

  “Now, now, wouldn’t you say that’s a little extreme?”

  “No,” she counters, standing tall and facing me directly. “They were possessed by the blood lust.”

  My eyebrows go up. “What do you know of it?” I ask. “You’ve only been a vampire for a short time.”

  “Yes, but I studied all of the supernatural in The Order,” she says. “Ghosts, witches, vampires, telepaths, shifters, demons, mages, the lot!”

  “You’re telling me all those exist?”

  She scoffs. “No. Of course not. But I know more about the world you inhabit than even you.”

  “That’s a mighty strong assertion.”

  “You’ve lived in it, but you were blind to its wonders… and horrors,” she says. “I studied it from the outside. I was fascinated by it all.”

  “My, but isn’t that a revelation,” I say. “At one point you claimed to know very little about our kind.”

  She scowls at me, caught in the lie.

  “It would have been simpler,” I tell her in a soft voice, “if you had just related it to your own experience of blood lust, when you were first made.” I shrug. “But obviously your allegiances lie with him.”

  I point to Smithson.

  Victoria steps forward. “No, James, it’s true. April and Liana were attacking Smithson like animals. If the others hadn’t stepped in, he’d likely be dead.”

  I narrow my eyes. “I leave you all alone for an hour, and all hell breaks loose,” I mutter.

  “We wouldn’t have killed him,” Liana offers sweetly. “We would have stopped in time.”

  “So, tell me what you discovered him doing that made you attack in the first place.”

  “He’d broken free from his cuffs,” April says. “Somehow. He was sneaking away, trying to get out.”

  “He broke the silver?” I snort. “I find that hard to believe.”

  But I can see that both of Smithson’s hands are free.

  “I thought you did it,” Smithson says. “I awoke and found the cuffs unlocked. I saw you weren’t in the place you laid down to rest. What other explanation was there? I went looking for you, James. I wasn’t trying to escape.” He scowls. “Your two girls don’t seem to think I would have been successful had I wanted it.”

  “We caught you sneaking out!” Liana accuses.

  “Do you know how fast I am? Do you know how easy it is for me to hunt? I can make myself silent, and I can make myself all-but-invisible. It is the mark of any strong vampire. If I had wanted to escape, I could have gotten by you and April without you even knowing it.”

  I look at the speaking vampire. Just to be sure, I concentrate, and focus on his strength. I compare it to Liana’s and Victoria’s.

  “He’s right,” I admit after a moment. “He has it in him.”

  “Vindicated at last,” Smithson drawls, in the most sardonic way. “Thank the Lord somebody here has a head on his shoulders.”

  I frown at him. “You’re not in the clear yet,” I say. “How did you get out of your silver cuffs?”

  “I told you,” he repeats. “I woke up and found them undone. I thought you did it.”

  “No.”

  “Then I couldn’t tell you how.”

  “They just magically opened?” I say, voice drenched with sarcasm.

  “Could be,” Smithson shrugs. “We are in a very peculiar place.”

  I shake my head. “Whatever. Enough of this. Nobody is harmed. Smithson’s clothes are a little worse for wear, but I don’t consider that a major problem. April, Liana—you will continue to serve as Smithson’s escorts. The rest of you?” I look to the remainder of the crowd, “You get a congratulations for a job well done, splitting up the fight. But now I’m back, it’s over, and we all move on.”

  “But,” Sylvia begins.

  I fix her with a stare and exert my vampire influence. “No ‘buts,’” I say. “Not a word of protest. Not from anyone. I don’t care about who’s to blame, only that whatever disaster was brewing has been averted. Next, of course, we must figure out how to proceed.”

  “You know what to do,” Victoria says. “You told me last night. We’re going to find the Crusaders.”

  Sylvia blanches. This is the first she’s heard of the plan.

  “You don’t… you don’t really mean that?” she asks.

  I smile at her. “Oh, I certainly do. And you, dearest, along with Smithson, will lead us all there!”

  Her complexion totally changes. She looks like she’s going to be sick.

  “You’re mad,” she utters. “You want me to lead you into a den of wolves. We’ll be ripe for slaughter!”

  “Do you really have so little confidence in your vampiric strengths?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says. “I hav
e respect for what the Crusaders are capable of.” She removes her wig with an angry flourish and reveals the markings on her head. “I’m the only one here who’s actually been on the inside.”

  “That’s why it’s going to be me and you who go in,” I tell her with a bloodless smile. “Victoria will cloak you. Your precious Crusaders won’t know either of us are creatures of the night.”

  By the look Victoria gives me, I can tell she thinks I’ve just asked for the impossible.

  Chapter Twenty

  Eleira

  The stronghold

  I take a deep breath just before I enter the assembly room where all of The Haven’s vampires are gathered.

  Felix is on one side of me. Raul is on the other. After my announcement to replace Phillip as Captain Commander, he skulked off somewhere without a word.

  I put him out of my mind for now. The spell I cast will keep him at bay.

  Even if Raul does not like it.

  Two guards salute me. All members of The Haven’s Royal Guard took to me as the new Queen the fastest. They respect The Haven’s laws, and once they heard Raul’s royal decree that his Mother is dead and I have taken up the crown, they fell in line and immediately supported me.

  I do not think The Elite will be as easily won over, however.

  “Ready?” Raul whispers. He squeezes my hand.

  “Yes,” I say with a solid nod. I squeeze his hand back, and then I let go.

  The Queen cannot be seen as relying on anybody else for strength.

  “Then let’s go,” Raul motions to the guards. They turn, in unison, and open the doors.

  I step through and emerge on the other side at the top of a balcony overlooking all the coven vampires. The same one, in fact, that Phillip made his pronouncement from before my capture.

  An immediate hush falls over the crowd.

  I walk slowly, gracefully, to the very end of the ledge. I feel every single eye on me. I feel the collective strength of so many vampires down there.

  Felix comes to my side. “Vampires of The Haven,” he promulgates. “I give you… your new Queen!”

  And, suddenly, such a large roar of applause and cheering breaks out that I am staggered.