Exsanguinate

by Killion Slade

  An outrage of toxic energy flew from the Priestess and shocked the room with throbbing, painful blasts. The oxygen left the room. Her fiery fury caused the suckling to wail.

  I crouched in my bonds as I watched Ludovic and Edric scramble to remove the sharp implements off the birthing table. A fierce, banshee-like scream communicated the Priestess’ vexation.

  She slammed her fist onto the table, shattering it with one blow. Shards of wood and metal peppered the fumbling duo with table shrapnel.

  “This will be your heads if you continue to make any decisions without my permission. The Queen will have as she wishes, not what you choreograph.” The Priestess turned toward me as she continued to wail at the men. The child’s screams emulated the Priestess’ anger. “I want her inseminated tonight. I will not wait until you obtain the final sister. Am I clear?” The baby continued to scream with moxie. His little hands outstretched to grasp any form of safety. His face reddened to the color of beets as his wails echoed and bounced off the concrete cinder block walls.

  In unison, both Ludovic and Edric said, “Crystalline, my Priestess.”

  Then Edric turned and punched Ludovic square in the jaw. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you. Idiot!” Sensing the Priestess’ approval, he did it again until Ludovic fell to the floor clutching his jaw.

  An overwhelming scent of lavender filled the air, calming the energy and quieting the room. It seemed where fury emanated from the Priestess just moments prior, it now had been replaced with grandmotherly kindness.

  I felt the needle pin pricks gone from my face and I could open my mouth. The Priestess held up a hand of advice warning me to tread with caution.

  I touched at my lips. “What do you want from me? From my sisters? What are you going to do to the baby?”

  Rocking the infant gently, the Priestess fed him from her breast. I noticed it wasn’t milk she delivered to him. He was attached to the inside of her cleavage suckling away at her artery. “I believe I’ll answer your third question first. This child, being born dhampir gwrywaidd will be groomed and taught the finest art of slaying none other than impure, rogue vampire scum.”

  “Vampires? Is that what you are? Queen of the night? Nosferatu? I vant to suck yer blood kind of vampire? Are you fucking serious?”

  The Priestess raised a curious eyebrow. “Precisely, my dear one. We’ve hunted lineages the world over to find the truest, most pure-blood of our ancestry. And you, Cheyenne, and Sheridan are the purest I’ve found. Together with each of you, my dhampiric army will guarantee me the global domination I deserve in the vampyric realm.”

  I swallowed hard.

  The Priestess continued, “Once I have a son from each of you, the trinity will be complete. The prophecy upheld, and my plan will be in place.” She held the child sound asleep in her energy.

  “Are you telling me that you are planning to use me and my sisters to make – those?”

  “My, my, Dakota you learn fast don’t you?”

  I tried to get out of the chair again, I had to escape this insanity.

  “Relax, my dear. You are here to sire my generals. These other women are creating minions for your sons to command and control. Your sons will take over this rogue-infested planet and bring order to the race. You should be honored to be held in such esteem. Hold your head in the honored greatness you and your sisters warrant and join us willingly. Your every whim will be addressed.”

  The Priestess walked around the back of my chair. She rolled me to where my nose came within a hair’s whisper of touching the belly of the woman who had just given birth. “For if you don’t, this will become your fate.” The woman’s bowels let loose, splashing my legs with fecal bloody mess.

  I turned my head and stole a look at her. Her smile could etch steel.

  “Take your honored position of prestige in my lineage, and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest imagination.” The Priestess’ head turned to favor the men in the room. “Be done with it! Edric, continue with the protocol we discussed earlier.”

  “Yes, my Priestess.”

  Before I could blink, Edric had more strapped restraints around my arms and pressed my chest. The Priestess and the baby were gone.

  “No! No! Please, let me go!”

  Edric wheeled me into a room with four poles and a medical table. I thrashed up and down in the chair until Edric slammed his fist into my temple again. Everything went black as my vision blurred and swirls of colorful pain burst behind my left eye. I could’ve sworn I heard my brain slosh inside my skull.

  Coming to, I desperately tried to maintain consciousness. My left eyelid must have been swollen shut because I couldn’t open it. I felt as if I had been hit upside the head with a crowbar. The pain was so intense vomit erupted and ran down the front of me. With every ounce of energy, I fought the notion that I would either die in this room, or my fate would be the same as Sheridan's if I didn’t. Ludovic grabbed my face and tried to calm me.

  “Dakota, listen to me. We don’t have much time. Edric will be back any minute.”

  I tried to focus on Ludovic as he wiped my mouth clean with a towel.

  “Please. Help me.” My words were barely audible to my own ears as my vision faded once again.

  “Stay with me, okay? This is what’s going to happen, but I need you to play along. I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to stop fighting. He’s going to seriously harm you if you keep fighting him. I’ve seen him do it. It’s what gets him off.”

  I nodded. Tears filled the corners of my eyes. “How could you do this?” I tried to calm my voice, but my words shook with sobs. “Why would you do this to me? I thought we had more than this. You said. You said you loved me.”

  “Shh. I know. He’ll be back any second.”

  “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t do this to me. I’ll do anything. I’ll be your eternal mate, whatever. Just don’t impregnate me like that. Ludovic, please don’t do that to me!”

  Edric walked in through the door. I braced my leg to kick him. He lunged at me and grabbed my ankle. He squeezed my shin until I heard my ankle crack.

  “Ahhhhg!” Raw, hot razorblades ran up my nerves and into my low back. No matter how I moved, the pain down my leg was excruciating to the point of absolute paralysis. My foot sprawled in a grotesque backward heap.

  At that moment I knew there wasn’t any more reasoning. They weren’t going to listen to any amount of pleading. Weakened as I was, Edric shot a syringe of yellow goo into my arm with no resistance.

  Ludovic shoved Edric away from me. “What the hell, Edric? Why did you shoot her full of that?”

  Edric shrugged as if it were an everyday event. “Dakota here is prepped to become a part of the Solunarae blood testing. I needed to bathe her muscles in relaxant, or she could have fugued on us.”

  Ludovic shut his eyes and took several long, deep breaths. When he opened his eyes, he looked down at me.

  “Why?” I tried to shake my head. “Why?” The muscles in my body were seizing.

  Helpless to move or defend myself, all I could do was wait in terror as to what they were going to do to me next. I prayed Cheyenne would understand my message for the geo-cache and, find us. Would she get it?

  “We should put her in the same ward with her sister Sheridan,” Edric mused. “How fun it will be to have all three redheads swinging in their hammocks, in a row.”

  I heard every foul scheming word fall out of Edric’s mouth. I swore to the Mother Goddess that if I ever got the chance I would run a hot poker through his eye and feed him to zombies if I didn’t eat him myself first.

  “Shut the hell up, Edric. I’ve had enough of your shite tonight. I’ll set them in the same bay. Soon we will have Cheyenne in our possession and we can deliver the Priestess what she wants.”

  I watched through blurred eyes as an evil shroud consumed Edric. A black aura hovered over him. Ludovic held his face over mine for a moment, perhaps to check if I was conscious. I couldn’t mo
ve my lips, my face absolutely frozen from the injection.

  He bit his lips.

  “Edric, don’t perform the insemination until I get back. Do you understand? I’ll handle it myself. Just prep her for surgery. We’ll Cryo a bunch of her ova tonight just to be safe if for any reason she can’t carry. The follicle stimulating hormone injection should have her releasing several of them.”

  Edric opened his mouth, but Ludovic exploded. “I said, DON’T touch her.” There were a few additional words in Romanian that I couldn’t understand. Whatever they were, Edric backed off from his brother and nodded in acknowledgment.

  Ludovic turned to look at my face again. His forehead furrowed in what looked like concern.

  Grateful for his help this time, no matter how slight it might have been, I watched as he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dakota.”

  I pleaded with my eyes for him not to leave me with his brother, but my body held me prisoner, incapable of talking or moving. He stole one more glance and kissed my lips. He sighed hard as tears ran down my cheeks and into my ears. He turned and walked away.

  Please don’t go. Please don’t abandon me!

  I had heard the soft swoosh of the door close behind Ludovic. Edric was already posed against me. I could feel his excitement pushing through his pants. My face and body frozen, I had no weapons but my eyes, as I glared at him.

  I swear to the heavens above, if I ever get out of this place, I will kill you!

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Penthouse

  Cheyenne O’Cuinn

  “Khaldon, I haven’t heard from him for over fifty hours. There should be emails, instant messages, texts, voice mails – but there isn’t a single one.” My voice grew more hysterical with each word.

  “Calm down, take a deep breath. It’ll make you feel better.”

  I tried to calm down, but it was impossible knowing Roxas was nowhere to be found. My thoughts spanned to every detail of Ludovic’s message about taking the rest of my loved ones. Who could that mean?

  “We have to go, Khaldon!”

  “Go where?”

  “We have to go to Roxas’ house. I need to see if he’s safe.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight.” He looked at me if I had eaten a stupid pill or something. “You want to go find a guy’s house to check on him because you think this Ludovic character has kidnapped him?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but yes. After what we just saw in that haunted barn, do you think he’s joking about anything? What would you do if the woman you loved all of a sudden fell off the face of the planet?”

  Khaldon frowned. “I’m gonna call Stovall and put in an inquiry on this. Do you know anything else about him?”

  “He has a Romanian type accent. Hell, if he’s vampire – he could be Romanian, right? Or is that considered preternatural profiling?”

  “That’s a strong possibility, yes. Profiling, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s the Hollywood stereotype. We have three times as many vampires in Asia as we do in Europe.”

  I blinked. “Yeah, okay – I’ll leave that story for another time. Ludovic works at a bar on City Streets, but I don’t know which one. There’s at least twenty bars there. He has a brother. What was his name? Eric? Cedric? No. Edric! Yes, he has a brother named Edric. Unholy hell!”

  “What?”

  “In the hospital. That guy who kept taking my blood. It was Edric. I couldn’t make the connection then, because of the morphine, but he was Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Never mind. The point is – they knew I was in the hospital. His brother probably told Ludovic I had checked out.”

  Khaldon called Stovall on his cell and relayed the information. “Stovall says he’s never heard of any vampires registered by those names. Doesn’t mean they aren’t using pseudonyms. He’s cautious about who to trust in this situation because if it was an internal tip off, then he could easily cause more issues. He’s going to make in-person inquiries and get back to us.”

  He snapped his fingers as if a thought just occurred to him. “Can we pull up your servers and filter out Roxas’ IP address? Maybe check his login status?”

  “We certainly can.” Clicking away at the keyboard, I filtered out Roxas’ internet protocol address. “Here - it says he’s been idle since the day I left the hospital. We have to go. We need to go now and get back before Ludovic contacts me again.”

  Even though it was still raining buckets outside, I hurried to the foyer. Khaldon grabbed his umbrella while I reached for our raincoats.

  “What’s the address of this guy anyway?” he asked.

  “It’s here in my wallet. I sent him one of my 3D rendering suits a few weeks ago.”

  Khaldon stiffened his back and opened up the umbrella over us as we stepped out into the unforgiving rain.

  After we got into the car, he turned to me. “Listen. Whatever we find out tonight, I’m here to help you. I am your friend, all right?”

  I nodded. I hoped I could trust him. I wanted to … I needed to.

  I wiped a tear away from my cheek. “Gah! This is driving me crazy. Why do my eyes bleed? This is so messy and inconvenient.”

  “Now that your body supports vampyric DNA, there are some human fluids not used anymore. Tears are one of those fluids. In time, you will have fewer tears as your inner vampire takes over the human emotions.”

  “Lovely.”

  I wonder if I’ll still have my monthly periods too, but I’m sure as hell not going to ask him about that!

  The rain pummeled the night. The wiper blades were hypnotic as they swished the water away from the windshield. We drove to Roxas’ address via the GPS in the dashboard. I was surprised to learn just how close he was to me. I looked over at Khaldon. He looked a little green, and bit his lower lip.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? What if he’s in there? Have you considered what in the world you are gonna say to him?

  “I know, I know. But I don’t have a choice. We can say you’re a part of the detective team helping me look for my sisters.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  I sighed and finished. “Yeah … lame. No use in lamenting on something that might not happen anyway. C’mon let’s go.”

  We got out of his car and ran to the building’s entranceway. He ran his hand through his hair. I tried to stay optimistic and think how I wouldn’t kill Roxas in the first minute if I found him home.

  Finally the doors opened. I bolted through them.

  “Which way?” Khaldon asked.

  “Not sure, I always choose the wrong way.” The hallway didn’t give any numeric direction to the units, so I choose a path. Looking for his unit number, I learned I needed to turn around. “Crap.”

  Walking back towards his apartment I heard a familiar sound. The closer to his door I walked, the louder I heard classical music. I recognized it and froze.

  We stood outside the door. Khaldon pushed his hair away from his face and rubbed his neck. “That’s the online music Rox and I listen to when we we’re in the dungeon.” Realizing what I said to Khaldon was wildly inappropriate for the moment, I swallowed hard and turned around.

  The door hung slightly ajar. My knock pushed it forward without resistance. No answer. I knocked again. “Roxas, are you here?” Still no answer, only the classical music.

  We stepped into the room and Khaldon closed the door behind us. I stood there inside Roxas’ domain and covered my mouth with my hands.

  On almost every surface of the room were images of Lady Cazenove and Roxas Morgwain.

  I gasped at the life-sized canvas oil painting elegantly mounted over the fireplace. “Khaldon, this is from the night Roxas and I were engaged inside the game. We’re standing on a bridge I built near our virtual home.”

  “It’s stunning.” Khaldon looked around the condo and then whistled. “This guy has the blazin’ hots for
you.”

  “You mean the human me before I became vampire. I guarantee you now that I walk with the living dead, he isn’t gonna be all that into me.”

  I suddenly realized how my immortality would outlive him, and every other mortal person I loved. Logically I knew this would happen, but until now the emotional impact had not set in. My heart ached at the losses before I ever experienced their realities.

  I crossed over to his fireplace mantel to admire a bronze statue. “Looks like Roxas had this commissioned from our last anniversary. He took me dancing on the Titanic.” My eyes glassed over as I held the sculpture in my arms as if it were a newborn child.

  Khaldon looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?” He lifted my chin. I must have been feeling rather addle-minded at the moment. I could have sworn he sounded like Roxas just then.

  Keep it together Chey. Don’t lose it here and now.

  I nodded my head and explained to Khaldon what I was holding.

  He smiled and nodded back.

  We searched the apartment and found no one home. I walked through the house looking around getting to intimately know the man I had been virtually in love with for so long.

  “I dunno. Seems kinda creepy stalkerish to me.” Khaldon shrugged and continued to look around. He fingered the top of a picture of the Lady Caz and Roxas riding horses.

  “It’s not. It’s how we’ve had a relationship for the past two years. This is how we dated. Don’t you have pictures of your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, I see your point.”

  “These are just pictures of our avatars, instead of us. It’s the only way we’ve known each other until I met him in the hospital the other day.”

  Khaldon fingered a knife blade mounted on the wall. “Well, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s home. Let’s see what he keeps in the fridge?”

  I didn’t say anything, but kept studying the shrine this man held for me, or rather, for my avatar. Roxas obviously felt the same love for me that I did for him. I found his office and went inside. He had an ancient weapons collection adorning the walls that could have put any museum on its knees. My fingers lightly stroked the edge of a pair of battle-axes hung in a crossed pattern. The intricate carvings on the wood revealed an ancient medieval dragon fight.