by Laken Cane
“She’s alive because no one has staked her or taken her head.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to force away the cold terror that gripped her heart. The monster inside her was vampire, among other things. Her biggest fear was losing her mind—falling into the madness the vampires were cursed with.
“Visit Nicolas Llodra. Give me your opinion. Should we merely start an investigation or begin the purge? If he’s truly insane, I will sanction his death.”
“I’ll let you know.” Rune stuffed her cell back into her pocket and walked into the living room.
Lex peered up at her through dancing, sightless eyes, wearing a wry smile. “I’m sorry you had to witness yet another meltdown.”
Rune knelt before her. “Lex, you know we’ll protect you. COS won’t get near you. As far as I know, Emerson isn’t even aware you and the twins are in River County.” Fucking liar.
“He knows,” Lex replied, her voice toneless. “They all know. Every branch of COS in every city knows exactly where the hated daughter of their queen lives.”
“They’ve distanced themselves from Karin Love,” Rune said, knowing it wasn’t going to make any difference, but she’d try anything to make Lex okay. “They can’t possibly be as evil as that fucking bitch.”
Lex smiled, but it was weak. “You’d be surprised. People enjoy handing out pain. Especially to those they fear.”
Rune stood. “We won’t let them near you. Try not to worry, baby.” She looked at Denim. “I have to go—Peel wants me to talk to Llodra. We’ve gotten reports he’s gone insane. It’s not just Jeremy making shit up this time.”
He stood. “I’ll go with you.”
“No. Stay with Lex. I’ll call one of the others and have him meet me there.”
He crossed his arms, staring at her. Waiting.
She sighed and dragged her phone out of her pocket. “Fine. I’ll call now. You people have to start trusting me.”
“It’d be easier to believe you had you not ended up facing down the wolf alpha, Jeremy Cross, and a field full of Dark Others alone.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault. Not really.”
He said nothing. Lex reached up and snagged his hand, quiet and calm. Too calm.
“Levi,” Rune said, when he answered. “I have to visit Nick Llodra. Meet me there?”
“I’m almost home. Wait for me and I’ll ride with you.”
“Okay.” She clicked off and looked at Denim. “Good enough?”
“Yup. Will Jack and Z get a little pissed that you didn’t ask them?”
She shook her head. “They went with me to visit…” She looked at Lex and shut up.
“Got it,” Denim said.
When Levi arrived, he went straight to Lex. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “I’m alive.”
“Lex…” Mournful, he kissed her cheek.
“Let’s go, Levi.” Rune headed out the door, craving fresh air. Lex’s sorrow was so thick she couldn’t breathe through it.
She had a bad feeling things were only going to get worse at Llodra’s lair. After a kill order had been canceled, he’d gathered all his children in one place—before that they’d slept scattered about the county.
And that might have been what saved the ones still living.
The vampire lair was in the village of Willowburg—the same village that held the Other clinic to which they’d taken Lex after her attack. The place was almost as eerie as Wormwood.
When they finally reached the house all she could think about was how stereotypically vampirish it was. Huge, crumbling, old…
Yellow light shone from dozens of small windows, placed in neat rows on three levels. She knew there’d be a basement—in River County, all the old houses contained basements. Llodra would want a basement, which he’d have turned into a dungeon and a windowless place to sleep.
Compared with Llodra’s house, hers was a pretty little dream.
“Fucking spooky,” Levi murmured as they stood staring up at the yellow windows, their breath puffing in little white clouds.
She shivered. Sometimes she believed she should have made a different career choice. But even the thought amused her. She was exactly where she needed to be.
Levi glanced at her. “Cold?”
“No, baby. Not really.” She was full of nervous energy, and sweat ran in itchy trickles between her shoulder blades. Cold? No.
She drew the frigid air deeply into her lungs, gagging on the long fingers of ice that jabbed at the tender flesh. Not cold.
She was fucking terrified.
“Do you feel that?” she asked Levi.
He nodded, and when he turned to look at her she realized Levi was as freaked out as she was. Something bad was going on inside that house and the energy reached for them, begging, pleading.
Save us.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come alone,” Levi suggested.
“I’m as bad as any of those motherfuckers.”
“Oh yes? When is the last time you fed?”
Well fuck. She had no good reply to that question, so she remained silent.
“We shouldn’t have come alone,” he repeated.
And I should have fed.
Facing the vampires when she was less than she could have been was a bad idea.
She pulled her cell from her pocket and quickly punched in a number. “Jack. We’re in Willowburg at Llodra’s. Can you pick up Z and get here on the fucking double?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing yet, but bad shit is going on in there. We can feel it.”
“Stay outside,” he said. “Wait for us. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
She pushed the phone back into her pocket, nodding in agreement even as she went toward the front door. Everything inside her was demanding she stay put but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Levi walked with her, pulling a silver crucifix on a chain from inside the neck of his shirt. “Do you believe in God?”
She flinched away from the cross before remembering it wouldn’t hurt her. Not if she refused to let it. She was alive. She was not evil.
“Yeah,” she answered. “And I believe in Satan.”
They’d each taken a vgun from their kill kits. Vguns were created for staking vampires—they shot long, deadly splinters of wood. Silver bullets hurt vampires. Wooden stakes killed them.
“There’s something wicked evil about this night,” Levi said, as they slowly climbed the rickety porch steps.
“No,” she replied, and forced herself to speak above a whisper. “The night is not evil. The creatures inside the night are.” And we’re about to face them.
He didn’t even ask her to wait for the backup. She was his captain. He’d follow where she led. Even into hell.
But they were Shiv Crew.
It was what they did.
Chapter Seven
She beat on the door, her entire body reacting to the bad energy of the house. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from clattering together. Her stomach muscles were so tight it hurt her.
Her gut screamed at her, telling her there was no time to wait for Jack and Z. Something bad was going on in that house and she had to be inside. Had to be.
The door was pulled open by a young female vampire who looked no older than thirteen. Some fucking vampire had turned her young.
Her eyes were hollow and black and nothing moved behind them—not surprise, not fear, not life.
“We’re here to see your master,” Rune said, trying not to feel pity for the girl. Pity would get a human killed.
Even if that human was not quite…human.
The girl backed up, then turned and ran into the dark bowels of the house, leaving the visitors to follow.
The entrance hall was bare, no coat trees or pictures or rugs. The plaster was missing in spots, showing old planks of wood beneath. Ahead of them a thick tapestry hung over a wide doorway. It was through that doorway the girl had gone.
T
he tapestry was no barrier to the whispers and voices and screams that came from behind it. No barrier to the cold, insidious fear that seeped through it and gripped her heart and refused to let go.
She was part of that darkness. Part of her was vampire. Did it beckon her or repel her? She could not tell the difference.
The hall was long and skinny and dark, illuminated by a lone yellow light attached to the wall. Rune was sure the black splotches on the broken walls were bloodstains, but didn’t stop to find out.
Vampires didn’t need pictures to adorn their walls, not when they had decorations of blood.
But as she pushed aside the tapestry and stepped into the main part of the house, she was forced to rethink that assumption.
Llodra had gutted the main floor—now it was one huge room, full of vampires and luxurious, thick carpets and ancient tapestries. His people roamed the room, some feeding from what Rune hoped were willing tools.
Red velvet chairs were scattered with sad abandon throughout the room, matching the red sofas. In the mess of cold bodies and furniture she caught sight of a couple of velvet covered beds.
And at the very end was a throne, carved and gleaming.
Nicolas Llodra sat there, watching the room with an expression she couldn’t quite read through the hazy shadows. The air was thick with smoke from the huge fireplace on the left side of the room and candles in candelabra nearly as tall as she was.
Candlelight flickered upon the walls and the empty faces of Llodra’s children, and they all watched silently as Rune and Levi walked down the center of the room toward their master.
Oh God, the pain. The sorrow. It hurts.
“Stop crying, Rune,” Levi begged, his whisper echoing through her mind.
She turned toward him in what seemed like slow motion, surprised. “I’m not crying.” But when she lifted a finger to her cheeks, it came away pink. And she had no blood to waste.
“Look,” Levi said.
She saw it. Nailed to the wall beside Llodra’s throne was a male vampire, the skin flayed from his bones. He was hardly recognizable as something that had once been a human being.
Now he was just a savaged, brutalized piece of meat. A tormented child of the mad master of Spiritgrove.
She had never seen someone so tortured and could only hope the man had gone beyond any sort of realization. Dead, no…his heart and head were still attached to that pitiful body. But surely…
And even as she wished otherwise, the man opened his eyes and looked at her.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to jump out of the way of those haunted, burning eyes and hide, to deny that such a thing could exist.
“No,” Levi whispered, and in that one word lived every terror they were seeing.
Because the man nailed to the wall, he wasn’t the only horror they were forced to witness. There were many horrors in that room, in that house.
Llodra’s eyes were glittering and hot as he watched her approach. One corner of his red, red lips turned upward in a half-smile. He said nothing when she and Levi stood in front of his throne.
She stared up at him and had no idea what to say. What to say to make everything less of a reality, to take the reins of power from his strong grip and make him just fucking disappear.
His hand moved and when she followed the movement she realized he had a dog—or some kind of dog-like animal—tethered by his side.
The animal was enormous and shaggy. Once upon a time it might have been beautiful. Its dark fur should have been gleaming, healthy, and black, but it had become matted and patchy.
He noticed her watching. “This is Blood.” He petted the huge but thin animal on its head, then pointed to his right. “And this is Fire.”
Shit. There were two of them. The other dog might have had red fur—it was hard to tell in the flickering light. It was in the same bad shape as the other one.
Both dogs eyed her, and Fire half-rose as if taking notice of her for the first time. In his eyes some emotion sparked—hope, maybe, or…
Recognition.
In her dreams she’d walked with these dogs. How, why, when…she did not know. Only that somehow, she knew them.
And they knew her.
She wanted them. More even than she wanted the freedom of the flayed man on the wall, she wanted the dogs.
They were not meant to be enslaved. They did not belong here.
It was at that moment she realized all the sorrow, all the horror she’d felt before entering the house had been arising from those animals. The evil drifted from the vampires but the sorrow…that was all Blood and Fire.
Blood and Fire.
They would die, their souls withering and drying up with the confinement. They were ancient, these animals. Old knowledge lived in those eyes. And something else. Despair.
“How did you capture them?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Llodra heard her.
“Capture them,” he said. “I did not capture them. They were always mine.”
But that was a lie. And he knew she knew it.
He narrowed his eyes at the truth in hers, his long, cruel fingers tightening in Blood’s fur. The dog merely sighed, but Fire strained against his tethers, trying without success to reach his mate.
Terrified he’d hurt the dogs, she changed the subject, buying time until Jack and Z arrived. She would take Llodra down—she had no choice.
But then, he gave her a choice.
“You’ve come to destroy me,” he said. “But you will not.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak, but finally forced the words out. “No…” But why lie to a vampire master? He knew.
He knew.
“Yes, Ms. Alexander. Yes. But you will not.”
She wished she didn’t have to. He’d fought with her, back to back against the Dark Others. If not for him and his children, the battle at Hawthorne might have gone a different way.
But he had succumbed to the madness that took so many old vampires.
Her biggest fear was staring her in the face. Madness. Insanity.
Levi asked the question when she could not. “Why not?” He had his vgun pointed at the vampire’s chest, but it trembled. No one could stand in this house of horrors and not feel fear.
“Because,” Llodra answered, never taking his stare from Rune, “as with any vampire, something inside you clings to life. You do not want to die.” He nodded at Levi. “You will not risk your young friend’s life, either. And if I sense a threat, he will die as you watch. I swear it.”
Her heart stuttered. She’d been stupid. No matter what Peel had asked of her, Rune knew the vampires. She should have had a plan. “Llodra—”
“I have the answers, Ms. Alexander. I know your deepest fears. Ask me. Ask me for answers.”
He was offering her a gift. The fear inside her, the fear she lived and breathed every moment…could his answers ease it?
She couldn’t have resisted the temptation. “Why do we go insane? What is it? Where is it?” She could not ease the anguish in her voice. Didn’t even try. “Where? In our blood, in our brain, in our past? Where?”
He didn’t even hesitate. His voice was sonorous, almost musical as he answered her. “It is in the rivers of blood that travel through our veins. In the darkness of a brain too delicate to hold all it must, and in a soul that cannot exist. It is in a lack of hope and a total absence of faith. In the memories of those we've lost, of pain so exquisite it is almost life. It is in the knowledge of what we are. In the wisdom of all we were.” And tracks of red overflowed from his black eyes, running down his pale cheeks.
Oh God, the grief. The sadness.
“You were meant to die,” she whispered. Not you. We.
“To rest.”
She did not want to be immortal. She did not want to live an eternity with this…this.
He gestured at the vampire hanging from the wall. “This is nothing. It is but a speck of sand in all the sand there is and will ever be.” He bent forward from
his throne, his eyes almost hopeless enough to drown her. “Nothing matters. Do you understand that? Can you grasp that? Nothing matters and nothing will ever matter.” He smiled and leaned back. “That, Ms. Alexander, is the cruel truth.”
He was insane, yes, but she could feel his despair. Could feel it twisting and tangling with the strings of the same baby hopelessness that grew inside her.
Did she want to live only to come to that? No. Fuck no.
And she would have to put Llodra down.
He smiled as though he knew what she was thinking. “You know what the worst part is?”
She shook her head. “No.” I don’t want to know.
“It is the all-encompassing will to live.” He shrugged. “There is nothing you can do about that. We struggle to survive even as we wish someone would sneak up on us some sunny day and drive a stake through our black hearts.” Again, he leaned forward, as though she would not hear him otherwise. “That is our punishment for being immortal. We may live forever but it is not a good life. We may wish to die but something inside us forbids us to do so.”
He beat at his chest. “I want to find death, but I will destroy anyone who tries to send me there. That darkness, that unknown, it is so frightening. It is terrifying, Rune.”
She was crying again but didn’t care. She knew what he meant. It was so scary. Life was scary, dying was a horror full of shadows and demons and darkness. The unknown.
“And I miss the sun,” he said, his voice plaintive. “I want the sun like you want…” He shook his head. “There is nothing to compare it to. The sun would chase away the constant gray winter.” His words came slower, heavier. “I want the warmth. I want the sun.” His eyes dulled. He knew he would never have the sun.
“Maybe in death,” she whispered, pity smothering her.
I will have to kill him.
But she couldn’t kill him tonight.
She was in hostile territory and not equipped to deal with a roomful of vampires with nothing to lose and obedient only to the sorrowful master who commanded them.
“A death I cannot allow,” he murmured.
“It won’t come tonight, Llodra.”
But she had the answer to Elizabeth Peel’s question. Was Llodra insane?