by W. J. May
Forever Night
By W.J. May
Book 4
Of the
Blood Red Series
Copyright 2016 by W.J. May
Forever Night
Copyright © 2016 by W. J. May
Cover Art by Book Covers by Design
Printed in the United States of America
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Description:
What if courage was your only option?
With her mother now a Blue, her friends kidnapped, and Petra for an enemy, Kallie’s pretty sure things have gone as badly as they could go.
Unfortunately, she’s wrong—things are about to get a whole lot worse. If she ever wants to see her family reunited, she’s going to have to rely on the one person she most wants to see destroyed: Petra.
In a race against time and the enmity of the Rogue Reds, Kallie and Petra must seek out an artifact that can undo the damage of the vampires’ faction war. As Petra seeks to turn Kallie to her side, Kallie must weigh whether she’s right to place any trust in her birth mother, and if she must, is it worth losing her allies and the ones she loves?
Blood Red Series:
FREE!
Courage Runs Red
The Night Watch
Marked by Courage
Forever Night
Series
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Contents
Description:
Blood Red Series:
Find W.J. May:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Blood Red Series:
More by W.J. May
Chapter 1
There was a chilling silence, and then Petra laughed.
It made Kallie shudder. It should have sounded beautiful. It was a gorgeous ripple; well-practiced, a legacy of her years of immortality, but at the same time it spoke of everything dark inside her birth mother. She could hear what Liam had warned her of, the dark rites Petra had undergone to become a witch. She could hear the orders given to destroy, hunt down the Blues, leave nothing in their wake. And she could hear the careless sacrifice of human lives to feed her mother’s hunters.
Her hands clenched into fists, her back still to her mother.
“You don’t want to do this.” Petra’s voice stayed soft, persuasive, winding through Kallie’s head like a snake. Like an intoxicating poison.
It was as she turned her head, trying to free herself from the spell, that her gaze fell on the woman before her. Crumpled and defenseless, Petra had sacrificed any hope of life with her family in order to save their lives. She deserved more in return than Kallie’s weakness. She would not be weak. She’d stand tall and take control.
“You don’t want to do this,” the voice murmured again. It was a breath by Kallie’s ear, a whisper inside her head.
“Oh, I think I do.” Kallie drew herself up at last. “I really, really think I do.”
Even as Petra raised her eyebrows in lazy interest, Kallie began moving. Her fist shot out, a punch that caught Petra directly in the chest, and the witch stumbled back. Her hands lashed out, nails raking along Kallie’s arm, and bright blood beaded up along the lines. The Rogue Reds hissed and started forward, and Petra’s snarl held them in check—slightly.
“Mine.” She enforced her words with a veil of power, shimmering between the combatants and their audience. “Mine,” she repeated softly, her eyes fixed on Kallie.
“Then come and get me.” Kallie felt the words emerge as a growl. Kill her own mother? Petra would pay. She slid sideways to evade Petra’s charge, but the woman locked onto her, hands twisting Kallie’s arms up behind her back. Her teeth grazed the side of Kallie’s neck, her breath hot, red eyes shining in the light.
“Why are you doing this? Why fight me?”
“To save my family!” The words burst out of her and she wrenched herself free. She was no weakling anymore, no human. She was a vampire, the equal of her birth mother even if she lacked a talent in magic. A talent, she reminded herself, which had been won by cruelty and the blood of others. Her fingers locked around Petra’s throat and she snarled as she wrenched the other woman to the ground.
The veil flickered madly as Petra fought, her teeth bared and her fingers tearing at the skin of Kallie’s arms.
“You don’t know the half of what you are. What I made you.”
“I know enough to kill you,” Kallie shot back, anger rising inside her. “And you didn’t make me, bitch. I made myself. I chose this.”
“How would you know?” Petra was laughing now, hoarsely, Kallie’s fingers still pressing at her throat. “How would you know what thoughts I whisper in your head while you’re asleep? How would you know what I commanded my day-walker to do?”
“He’s not your day-walker!” Kallie threw the woman with all her might, taking a savage satisfaction in seeing her strike the wall of the veil and slide down against it. “If ever Caleb was yours, it was through loyalty you earned—and you betrayed him.”
“I—”
“I saw! I saw him strung up in the dungeons here, to be drained nearly dry by your pets! They did the same to him that they did to my father! Do you understand?”
“Your father—”
“Was the one you said you did this to save! And how did that work out, Petra? Huh? How did it work out when he became a vampire and you let him be beaten almost to death every month?”
“Your father had no idea the power he would have unleashed otherwise! I tried to warn him. If only he had just been willing to listen, to feed.”
“You let it happen to him because he’s better than you!” Kallie screamed back. “Because he wasn’t willing to kill to get ahead. You let it happen because he shamed you! I know. Don’t try to lie to me. I’m not your little pack of beasts following you.”
“You think you know everything.” Petra was acr
oss the gap in a second, her strength feverish. Kallie heard her father cry out but she was helpless, Petra holding her against the veil. Words swirled in her head and she felt her muscles tremble with the effort of trying to escape. “You don’t know a damned thing about me,” Petra hissed in her ear. “Do you hear that? Do you understand? I did this for you.”
“Maybe…it…started that way.” Even to admit that felt like capitulation, and Kallie grasped desperately for the surety Petra was draining away. She had always thought magic was explosions and fire; she had never known enough to be afraid of someone twisting her very thoughts against her. Summoning all her strength, she fought the whispers with everything she had. “But you’re twisted now. You’re not that woman anymore. I wonder if you even know who you are now.”
“You never knew me before.”
“I know you aren’t the woman my father loved. He loves my mom.”
They were so close, mind upon mind, that she felt Petra recoil.
Pain bloomed across her mind in an instant, and anger as hot as a forge, Petra shrieking her rage into Kallie’s mind. Kallie screamed, overloaded, crying out with the pain of Petra’s hatred.
“You know nothing! Nothing about either of us!”
“I know that—”
“No.” Petra bore her down onto the floor. Kallie watched the core of her power dwindle in her mind’s eye, and there was only now, and Petra, and fear, and pain. “You think you’re so pure, do you? And what have you done? Taken the power that was offered to you by the world, brought the day-walker into danger, brought the blues. And you know why my sister changed, don’t you? For you. And that’s why they’ll all die, Kallie. Because of you!” She laughed again, this time it sounded like a witch. “You and I…are more alike than you know.”
Kallie didn’t even have to try to find her power. It burst on her like a tidal wave, and a yell broke out of her as she fought her way free. She was striking with everything she had, fists lashing against Petra’s face, blows raining down on Petra’s torso as the woman cried out in pain. “I’m not like you! I am not like you!”
The veil flickered, sputtered, and died. Petra was trying to fend Kallie off, her blocks weak and far, far too slow. Kallie laughed, she could not help herself—it was like fighting a human, a weak, puny human. Petra was nothing, her power useless next to Kallie’s own.
And yet, she had one thing Kallie did not.
“That one!” She pointed to her sister. “Take her to the dungeons!”
“No!” Kallie’s scream came at the same moment as her father’s. She directed one last desperate strike at Petra before she launched across the floor.
There was a blur of pale skin and dark hair, and Liam was there once more. He bared his teeth as the Rogue Reds bore down on him, and he and Caleb launched into motion at the same time, fighting in a blur. Caleb yelled something, and Kallie saw Liam pick up her mother’s inert form. He gave a nod to her and was gone, leaping his way free as Caleb held the others from following him.
“Kallie!” her father’s voice echoed in her ear. “Finish Petra! Do it now!”
“Caleb!” Kallie called in response. She glanced quickly at her father and pointed.
Caleb was being overwhelmed, slowly but surely. Petra had given him more power than the others, daylight’s siren call giving him a strength the others could only dream of. But there was one of him, and a dozen or more of the others. As Kallie watched, one broke free and made to follow Liam, and Caleb was forced to break off his attack on another to take the runner down. The second one scored along his back, rending his shirt, and his cry of pain hit Kallie in the gut.
She was there before she had any conscious thought of going to him. Her fist shot out and she heard the terrifying crack of bones breaking. The vampire who had hurt Caleb screamed in pain and stumbled away, and Kallie was on him again in a moment, summoning all her strength to hit at his jaw, his throat, his shoulder, until at last he lay still.
It wasn’t permanent, but it was enough for now. A glance showed Petra still unmoving on the floor, and Kallie lashed out at the other Rogue Reds. One snuck a hit under her guard and pain bloomed across her back. With a scream, Kallie struggled upright and drove her elbow back to catch her attacker in the gut. She turned, swinging her elbow to hit at his temple and between his shoulder blades even as her knee jerked up to catch him in the stomach again.
“Kallie, she’s waking!” Her father was fighting desperately alongside her. Bruises stood out vividly on his pale skin, and there was a desperate fear in his face. “Leave us to fight here; you take her on!”
Kallie took the second vampire down before evading the grasp of another. She could only pray, as she skidded across the floor to Petra’s side, that her father and Caleb would be able to hold off the horde of Rogue Reds. She lifted her arm as she moved and brought it down with all her might on Petra’s stomach as the woman opened her eyes.
Petra cried out in pain and Kallie made sure the woman saw her. Kallie knew she was smiling, and even her horror at her own savagery did not stop her. “Remember me?”
“I remember you before you could walk,” Petra gritted out. Her fingers raked down the side of Kallie’s face as she scrambled free. “I remember birthing you. I remember the talent you always had for magic. You didn’t know about that, did you?”
Kallie hid her emotions. “I might have talent, but I’ll never do what you did to earn my place as a witch.”
“And what do you know about that?”
“I know what Liam told me!” Kallie’s words were a hiss. “I know what I saw in his eyes.
“And you know it was a lie, don’t you? All lies. Maybe he believed it, your knight in shining armor.” Petra spat the words, clearly disgusted. “But he knows nothing. The Blues never told him what they did to me. They tried to assassinate me when I was human! They tried to kill you; they knew what you had the potential to be. They wanted you dead!”
What? Kallie faltered, and it was space enough for Petra to land a solid blow. She stumbled, her head racing. She had seen revulsion in the Blues’ eyes, hadn’t she? They had awoken her powers, but it had clearly been a choice they did not like. They were counting on Liam to keep her loyal, she guessed. But if they had tried to kill her as a baby…
And then she remembered the test itself, the desperate fight to give her the powers she had now. Had it just been to unlock her hybrid powers, or had it been a test beyond that? If she’d known witchcraft, after all, surely she would have lashed out with it. Kallie wondered whether the others had been lying in wait, ready to kill her if she showed the signs of her mother’s craft.
She knew with sickening certainty that they had been.
And still…
“I’m nothing,” she said quietly, “like you.”
“Then try to save your family,” Petra spat. “Just try. If you’re nothing like me, prove that you won’t go to the gates of hell itself to save them!” Her foot lashed out to catch Kallie in the chest and Kallie went sprawling, head hitting the floor with a crack as Petra ran for a hidden door at the back of the dais.
“Kallie!” Her father was at her side, pulling her up. “We have to get her!”
“But Caleb!” She wrenched herself free. He was not winning any longer, a single glance showed that.
Caleb heard her words, however. He fought his way free of the others for one moment, a single moment, and caught her up in his arms.
She looked up into his eyes and felt tears start in her own as he brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Go,” he said seriously.
“They’ll kill you.”
“They won’t kill me. They know how much I’m worth.” She thought he might kiss her, but his lips only brushed her cheek near her ear, and his words were so soft she could hardly hear them over the hiss of their enemies. She knew her father couldn’t hear as well. “You should know what you are.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Please don’t tell me I’m a voodoo ma
gic witch who’ll eventually turn into Petra.
“You’re a day-walker, Kallie. I don’t think even Petra knows it, but I’m sure of it. I’ll explain why when I see you next—and I will see you again, I promise.” And then the Rogue Reds were on them, and he shoved her hard. “Go! Get Petra!”
Chapter 2
They pelted for the stairs to the dais, and it was only when they ascended that they skidded to a stop.
“Oh, hell,” Kallie muttered.
“Language,” her father said reflexively.
It was almost funny, she thought, that he should be acting like a parent at a time like this when both of them were smeared in their own blood and that of countless others. Or the fact that both of them were now immortal and fighting for their family. She scoffed. Her dad wanted to have her watch her tongue instead of the three Rogue Reds standing there waiting between them and their quarry.
As Kallie pulled her father back, the Hunter stepped forward. Old and frail she might have been as a human, and she might not have come into her power yet, but it was clear that she held rank beyond the other two. Kallie remembered the pleasure the woman had taken in drinking her father’s blood. This woman would stop at nothing to win, and she was old enough to have seen treachery in her lifetime, more than Kallie could imagine—her red eyes said that clearly.
“Hello, dear.” Her lips curved in a smile, and Kallie saw bloodstains at the corners of her mouth. “Going somewhere?”
“Get out of my way,” Kallie hissed quietly.
“Oh, I don’t think—”
“Get out of my way. Take this one chance to run. It’s your last one.” Anger was coursing through her now. Her voice turned sharper than the blade of a double-edged sword, “I saw you the night you left my father for dead. I know what you did to him. And I can smell on your breath what you’ve done to my friends. So get out of my way, and pray I never catch up with you.”