Kaiden
Page 29
“Hello?” I called.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim environment, a dark shape shifted in the shadows between the dumpsters. Empty pizza boxes and other garbage spilled out from the overflowing bins.
“Hey, look, I know you’re there, and I only want to talk. This isn’t the best place for hunting, so you should probably head out of town. The local sentinels are strict, dude.”
His hunger permeated the air like a tangible force. While vamps weren’t expressly forbidden from hunting for a sip, underage snacks and murder were off the table. The king and queen of Hearts, rulers of the Sanguine Court governing all vampires across the world, had created a rigid set of rules to protect their people, and it was up to all of us to enforce it whenever we saw an infraction.
“Hey, I called the emergency hotline,” I bluffed. “They know you’re here, but you didn’t hurt anyone yet. It’s not too late for you to go.”
While dropping into a territorial posture, the vampire hissed and revealed his yellowing fangs, resembling a ravenous dog guarding his food dish. I skidded backward across the wet pavement and began to reassess my stance on negotiating. This guy didn’t want to talk. He was starved to the point of frenzy, little more than a beast in human skin.
So I backed away, nice and slow, and pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Faerie.” His low, smooth voice rumbled through the air. With the grace typical of all his kind, he abandoned his hiding spot and stalked toward me. “Fae is delicious. Sweetest most powerful blood.”
“Crap, crap, crap.” I jammed my thumb down on the redial button, fumbled, and watched the four-hundred-dollar device tumble into a puddle. If I didn’t die, Dad would murder me for wrecking the phone I’d promised to cherish till the end of freakin’ time. “Crap!”
Telling myself I could handle a vampire wasn’t the same as actually facing the dude. All that bravado and confidence melted in the rainy breeze. As he closed in, I twisted and ran for the mouth of the alley, feet pounding the pavement and water sloshing over the tops of my ankle boots.
Before I could get far, the noise of flapping wings filled the alley, and a few dozen little bodies slapped against me. Biting. Scratching. Tasting. My attacker must have transformed. I shrieked and slapped the bats tangling in my hair, the initial explosion of terror making me forget one essential fact: I had magic. I wasn’t helpless, and I refused to let someone find my bloodless body facedown in a rain puddle.
Light bloomed from my fingertips, and the tiny sparks multiplied in size until it seemed I held a cluster of miniature suns in my hands. The light released in a burst and illuminated the entire back alley for one moment of brilliance. Each individual member of the bat colony shrieked as my attacker was thrust from the swarm and back into the body of a man. A hungry, salivating man hurling himself at me in defiance.
I threw punches. I kicked. I squirmed and struggled until he slammed into me and I crashed to the ground. Rain soaked through my jeans, and I tasted blood in my mouth. It couldn’t end this way. Not in a dirty alley, alone, with the smell of greasy pizza and garbage in the air.
Now that diplomacy had failed, a single, risky alternative loomed before me. I could try to shadowstride and flee into the spiritual realm, but that was a risky strategy when other supernatural creatures could sometimes do it too.
As I gathered my power and propped my weight on both palms, I prepared to leap to my feet and run for my life. The vampire rose above me, and to his rear, I saw a stately figure standing tall, shrouded by the weight of a black rain slicker.
“This just won’t do,” the figure stated. He made his matter-of-fact commentary in a heavy baritone, each word ringing with power. Waves of energy fell over us with the vibration of a double bass drum as he removed a staff from beneath his coat. The crystalline tip of it flared with sustained light. My attacker shrank away from it and shrieked.
From the opposite end of the alley, a sandy-furred shape streaked past my shoulder. It bounded over my huddled body and straight into the vampire. Jaws snapped, teeth gnashed, and I wasn’t sure which of them growled, but in the end, an enormous wolf stood above his prey with a set of powerful jaws closed over the vampire’s neck. With the Daylight spell flooding the alley, he couldn’t escape in bat form.
“That will be enough, Sebastian.”
Fur vanished, giving way to skin and clothes. The shifter put his boot where his jaws had been seconds before. He was a tall man, easily 6’2 or 6’3 with the build of a rugby player, and a crooked nose, like it had been broken multiple times but never set the right way to heal. He eyed me with shrewd blue eyes and grinned, half-canine teeth flashing in the light.
The vamp writhed beneath the intense spotlight, and steam rose from his skin as the rain mellowed to a calm drizzle. He was closer to becoming a nosferatu than I’d predicted. Scratch that. Vampires never burned in sunlight unless they’d already taken human lives!
I’d almost committed suicide by vampire. If I had been thinking, I would have charged into the pizzeria, ordered a large pepperoni, and held Mindi up until some adult gave us a ride home. But I hadn’t been thinking. I’d become emotional and impulsive.
My parents would finish what the vamp began and kill me for him.
“Skylar Corazzi?”
“Um… yes?”
The man reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. Once he pushed his hood back, I saw a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and smooth, dark skin like he’d been carved from an obsidian block. His kind brown eyes calmed me. They were soft despite his chiseled features and the stern set of his mouth.
“Chief Wizard Examiner Simon Bostwick,” he introduced himself. “I came to administer your test.”
“This was my test?” My voice squeaked up an octave, so I cleared my throat and took in a deep breath through my nose. The placement exam was the paranormal world’s best kept secret, our relatives and older friends sworn to a blood oath never to utter a word about its details. Now I understood why.
“Yes.”
“Did I pass?”
“Test results will be released by your guidance counselor during registration. Now, give me your hand.”
I held out my left hand, and he pricked it with a deft stab from a knife I hadn’t seen in his hand. “Ouch.” Blood welled up from my thumb, and the vampire on the ground gnashed his teeth.
“You are sworn to a blood oath, Skylar Corazzi. What you faced here shall never be shared with the uninitiated. Do you so swear?”
“I swear.”
Simon pressed my thumb to a yellowing page in an aged book. Energy zipped up through the small cut as a rune flared beneath the bloody print I made.
“It is done. Head on home and get warm before you catch cold.”
“What about him?” I nodded toward the vampire. Even from the ground he appeared ominous, his bloodshot eyes following my every movement.
“Sebastian and I will take him to the depot where he’ll be processed and delivered to the Sanguine Court for trial and punishment.”
Which meant he was as good as dead. I’d heard the king and queen had become more intolerant to poaching in recent years, staking lesser vampires on the first offense whether blood was drawn or not.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. After fishing my phone from the puddle, I scurried from the alley and beat feet home.
Nothing had gone right. My friend thought I was a judgmental creep, I didn’t guide her to the appropriate path, and to top it all off, I had to be rescued from a vampire. So much for passing my test.
And Dad was still going to rip me a new one for busting my brand new-to-me phone he’d bought used off Amazon.
The Hidden Court is the first in a new magical university series, and you don’t want to miss it. Get your copy today.
About the Author
Vivienne Savage is the pen name of two best friends who write everything together. One works as a nurse in a rural healthcare home in Texas and the other is a U.S. Navy ve
teran. Both are mothers to two darling boys and two amazing girls.
All of their work varies in steam level, so pop by the VS website for details on which series is right for you!
For more information
www.viviennesavage.com
vivi@viviennesavage.com