Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

by Vivienne Neas

  And I knew that what she was saying was right. That was how we had gotten out of it every time. So much had happened to us, and we’d made it out because we kept moving forward. Carl nodded but he didn’t look like he agreed. I moved slowly and finally sat on his other side. My throat hurt when I breathed in and out and I still felt like I was going to fall over.

  Carl made a sobbing sound, but when I looked at him there was no trace of crying. It was just the horrible sound of agony.

  After a moment of silence, he spoke again, and this time there was absolutely no trace of the despair and panic that had been there a short while ago.

  “Let’s go kill some vampires,” he said. His face was hard and the only person in the room that didn’t wince was me. Even Joel who was used to me and my killing, felt the hatred that hung in the air when Carl spoke.

  I was hesitant to speak up, but there was something Carl needed to know.

  “Revenge doesn’t make it better,” I said. Hell, I knew that from first-hand experience. But he looked at me, his eyes dark, empty and cold, so cold it chilled me to the bone. He nodded slowly.

  “I know that. But it’s a good way to deal with my anger, considering that he’s asking for a fight.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that. Part of me was relieved that Carl had gotten over the part where he blamed me for the change that was forced on him. I would blame myself enough for the both of us later, when this had blown over and there was time to think. It just never let up for me, did it?

  The moment I thought I was free of guilt the next one hit me.

  “Have you seen Blade?” I asked Carl. I doubted he’d been around lately, but it was worth asking. “He disappeared.”

  Carl nodded. “He was the one that found me.”

  I didn’t want to know the how and why of it all. I was just relieved it wasn’t another death, more blood on my hands.

  “So, when is this party of yours happening?” Carl asked, and I knew he was referring to my war with Masselli.

  “Tomorrow night, probably. He wanted to throw you at me first, a curve ball. See if I would buckle.”

  “Not your style,” Carl said and I knew he knew me well enough for that. “You’d have to think about more people that yourself for that.”

  The last words stung. Anger flared up inside me. As if I wasn’t already blaming me for enough? But Aspen caught my eye and shook her head, the movement so small only I caught it. I couldn’t explode now. Sighed and didn’t respond even though I felt like picking up the fight Carl had started earlier, and finishing it.

  We only had a couple of hours until sun up. Because Carl was allergic to daylight now, too, that meant we only had the darkness to help us out.

  We managed to track Blade down, and he came over. Aspen sat quietly on her couch while we talked strategy. Joel was on board with ammunition. He produced guns from somewhere, and I had the feeling even Aspen hadn’t known about it. If she was angry she didn’t show it – I had the feeling she would deal with Joel after we’d left.

  We were two and a half vampires going into this fight now, and we were going in there with guns blazing. I had my usual armor – my knife, my Smith & Wesson, my Beretta. I was banking on the chain as well to stop dematerialization from happening. And I had the Carbine that Joel had given me a year ago. The gun looked as scary as the punch it packed and I felt about as ready as I was going to be for this war.

  Which meant not at all.

  Blade and Carl each got a set of knives, a nine mil each and a machine gun I didn’t recognize. In the few hours we had left, Joel somehow managed to get us all silver shot.

  Blade looked unhappy. He was going into a fight with his best buddy who was now a vampire, and Carl didn’t look like he was comfortable handling his new body just yet. Besides that, he kept mumbling something about it not being his war.

  At some point I lost my cool with him.

  “If you don’t want to be here, then don’t. We’re not holding a gun to your head and forcing you to fight.”

  He mumbled something about not missing out on the action and shut up. Good, too, because I was really starting to get twitchy. I was on edge and as the dawn crept closer and closer I had the unnerving feeling that this was going to be my last look at sunlight. Ever.

  By the time the shutters rolled shut Aspen was in her wheelchair, making space for all of us to sleep. It was as good as any place now. With all the vampires in the house I doubted anything was going to come in and get us, and the sunlight was a hell of a guard, too.

  Still, it took me a while to get to sleep in Aspen’s spare bedroom. It wasn’t just the pending doom that lurked at the back of my mind. It was the fact that Carl was a vampire now, and that somewhere he was blaming me. Maybe it wasn’t showing now, and I trusted him with my life to have my back in this upcoming fight.

  But his anger was going to turn on me soon. I could feel it, and when I felt something in my gut, I never ignored it.

  That was what had kept me alive for so long, even though I’d been flirting with death since day one. Finally sleep dragged me under despite my struggling against the pull into the depths, and I was caught in a dreamless sleep until someone gently shook my shoulders.

  My first reaction was to head for my gun, and I clicked off the safety before I realized it was Aspen. Her eyes widened a little at the sound, but I clicked the safety back on and breathed out to calm myself.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Aspen shook her head. “It’s understandable. I wanted to wake you before the others.”

  I focused on the sounds coming from the rest of the house, and everyone else was still asleep. Aspen’s face was serious.

  “Come back alive, okay?” she said.

  “Of course I’m coming back. I’m not leaving you, ever. You know that.”

  She nodded but it didn’t look like the words made her feel any better.

  “This is just the first time someone has really been out to kill you. Everything else has been sort of… you being caught in the crossfire. And you’ve always hidden it from me. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I leaned forward and hugged my sister.

  “You won’t.” And that was a promise I made to her. She needed me. Even if she had Joel, she still needed me. For years I’d been the only one. And I was going to come back.

  There was movement in the rest of the house, the others were up, and Aspen looked at me with hazel eyes that carried too much emotion.

  “I have to get ready,” I said to her, scared she was going to get even more emotional on me. For a night like tonight I had to be switched off if I wanted to do it all effectively. I couldn’t let emotion get involved.

  The last time I’d let emotion really take over was when I was supposed to kill Connor and I’d fallen in love with him instead. That was where everything had gone wrong.

  It had been a blessing in disguise, but I hadn’t known it until later.

  No, tonight was not goodbye.

  There was a knock on the door ten minutes later and Blade popped his head in.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I nodded. I was as ready as I would ever be. I followed him to the hall, and when we were all assembled we looked quite deadly, even if I had to say so myself.

  I was dressed in my black leathers with a black shirt and all my weapons tucked in. I had my chain looped over my shoulder and the jacket hung lopsided because of the S&W, but I didn’t want a smaller gun on me. I had the Carbine on my back and still felt naked and vulnerable.

  The others looked just as deadly as I did. Carl, now a vampire, looked lethal with pure hatred in his eyes and a gun in his hand that was the length of his arm. I knew he had other weapons on him.

  Blade wore a black leather duster like they had in the cowboy movies and he wore thick leather boots with studs. He broke the black nicely with a grey shirt that sat loose enough for me to think there were even more weapons under there, but how he was going to get them out in time
was beyond me. Maybe he was more on the stealth side than the all-guns-blazing side. Maybe he had time.

  I took a deep breath. Aspen was in the doorway. Joel held her hand.

  We headed out.

  It took us most of the night, and it turned up nothing. We walked the streets and it was quiet. Too quiet. It was like every human being and civilian vampire out there had something better to do tonight than be out on the town. I was happy there would be no casualties, but I didn’t like the silence. We moved through the empty streets, adrenaline pumping, guns raised.

  But you could only keep a gun raised so long before your arm got tired and then started to cramp, influencing your aim. And adrenaline faded, too. It was heading toward sunrise and we were bored.

  The fight finally found, just when I was starting to think this had all been for nothing.

  One vampire materialized in front of us, only a few feet away. He was dark and menacing, with skin that placed him in a different ethnicity, white clothes which was ironic because they were the bad guys, and a gun that didn’t allow for confusion about his wardrobe.

  I was suspicious. There wouldn’t be just one.

  As if they knew what I was thinking they started materializing, one by one, all around us. Before I knew it we were surrounded.

  We took a fighting formation without thinking – three backs toward each other and we all faced out, pointing guns at the closing threat. Carl could handle his weapons and he wouldn’t have pal like Blade if Blade couldn’t do it, too. I had my own share of experience.

  But all the experience in the world wasn’t going to be good enough if we were outnumbered.

  I didn’t have more time to think. They closed in and started firing, and the circle broke up. So did our formation. Back-to-back meant nothing when the bullets were flying. We all found cover between the buildings, behind empty cars, around corners. The three of us were on one side, they were on the other, and a rain of bullets covered Main street with a noise like thunder.

  They dropped one by one. It took a while, but we had the ammo and the silver shot. I didn’t know if they had, too, but it was worth it to just stay out of the line of fire.

  Blade grunted somewhere behind me and when I looked back he was carrying himself like he’d been hit in the shoulder. It had to hurt, and by the way he was starting to wilt I guessed they had silver shot, after all.

  “Move back!” Carl shouted, and I listened. He covered for me while I ran out in the open and then ducked behind the building that had been behind me. I returned the favor, and after another quick move we were all together.

  “You okay?” Carl asked Blade. He nodded but his face was pale and it looked like he was struggling to breathe. Carl nodded as if the answer was enough and he didn’t notice the pain. In the middle of a battle you were only “not okay” if you were dead.

  “There are too many of them,” I said. “It’ll only be a matter of time.”

  “Then we make sure they don’t have time,” Carl said. I nodded. I wasn’t sure how he was planning on doing that, but then he produced a grenade. My eyes widened. Blade gasped but it was difficult to tell if it was surprise or the pain.

  Suddenly a vampire materialized right next to me and clamped a hand over my mouth. I screamed but it was muffled, and then I felt the business end of a gun press against my temple. The metal was cold and insistent.

  Carl and Blade both had their hands up and away from their weapons, their eyes on my assailant.

  “Don’t even think about shooting,” he said, and I recognized Zane by his voice. “You know I’ll kill her.”

  “What are you waiting for, then?” Carl asked and if my mouth wasn’t clamped up I would have sworn at him. What the hell was he doing? But Zane just chuckled.

  “That’s a good question. But you see, I had to see the fun first. I knew she would put up a fight, and seeing you here isn’t all that surprising.”

  Carl’s face clouded over. Blade folded at the waist, struggling to keep his arm in the air with his bad shoulder. I couldn’t see Zane’s face but his voice sounded bored and I guessed his facial expression would be too.

  “So, this is how it ends, isn’t it?” Carl asked. I wanted him to tend to Blade, but he didn’t seem fazed. Instead, his eyes kept flitting to mine, as if he was trying to tell me something with the way he looked at me. And I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t just the panic and the fear and the threat of the gun against my head, Carl and I just weren’t on the same level that way.

  We hadn’t been, ever. Maybe that was a bad thing. We’d both always insisted on working alone.

  I suddenly felt like having a partner really wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. But then, people felt a lot of things before they were going to die.

  Carl tried one last time, but I still didn’t get it. As if giving him, he launched himself at the vampire. Zane hissed in my ear, but Carl took us down. The hand released my mouth and I screamed, and the same thing happened that always happened when I was in a life-threatening situation.

  I dematerialized.

  I ended up in a dark room and the first thing that I noticed was the tingle of dust in my nose. I recognized the place, and it took only a moment to realize I was in my parents’ home, the one where I’d grown up. I stood in the kitchen, barely recognizable now with the thick layer of dust on the counters and the absence of light.

  There was a strange feeling in the room, almost like sucking that came from somewhere behind me, and the next moment Zane appeared.

  Dammit.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked. I thought he knew, but apparently he had no idea. He was just as clueless as I was. I shook my head.

  “Did you do that on purpose?” he asked. It was strange seeing him rattled, hearing words from his mouth that weren’t a threat, and I answered him before I thought about it.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well then you sucked me in,” he said. I’d heard about that, somewhere. If there was enough panic the dematerializing could pull others through. That had happened to me before, too. With Sydney, Ruben’s daughter. She’d also followed me through, even though she was a human.

  I caught myself in time, and lifted my gun to point at Zane. He laughed like it was no big deal. Maybe he didn’t believe I’d do it, but then again, he’d seen firsthand.

  “I like it this way,” he said and he was casual about it. “Just me and you, so no one will hear you scream and interrupt.”

  “What will happen to Carl and Blade?” I asked. Zane shrugged like it didn’t matter.

  “Depends on how they react to my men. You’re more worried about them than yourself?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, but apparently I was. Well, it was never too late to be selfless, I guess. Zane stepped closer and I fired a shot that nicked the tile behind him. The splinters shot across the kitchen. He raised his own gun.

  “We can play this game all night, honey,” he said. “But come sunrise, I’ll see you dead.”

  I swallowed hard and forced the panic down. I wasn’t going to believe him. We were stuck in the one place that held every single nightmare, the place that started the hell I’d lived for years. He couldn’t know that this place fueled me more than anything else, that this was the worst place for revenge for him.

  “Hand to hand,” I said. He tipped his head to the side. “We surrender our guns and we fight hand to hand.”

  “And how do we decide who wins?”

  I felt my stake that hung by my side.

  “You get to have a stake; I’ll have one too. Those are our only weapons. What do you say?”

  He looked at me like he was trying to figure out the catch. He sized me up, tried to gauge my strength. I knew that I would lose. He was older, stronger, and purebred. No arguing with the blood in his veins.

  But the dawn was on its way. I could taste it in the air, felt the sun just behind the horizon. My vampire instincts kept track of it, even though the human in me didn’t need to. I
dropped into battle stance, and so did he. We circled each other for a while, and I tried to see pattern in how he moved, tried to find a weakness.

  He had none.

  He was the first to launch and he jabbed the stake at me. His movement was just a blur and even though I could move fast, I wasn’t fast enough. He nicked my side and I hissed, heat licking through the wound. His smile was devilish. It was like he knew that I wasn’t fast or strong enough.

  But I kept my eye on that horizon and prayed for the sun. Zane was like a maniac, focused on me instead, and I knew that revenge had clouded his judgment. Or maybe he’d been waiting for the shutters to come down. There were signs that this had been a vampire house.

  But I knew the electricity had been cut. There had been no shutters for years.

  Zane attacked again, and this time he was even faster. I was going to die if something didn’t give. He had me pinned against the wall next to the window, and his hands were on my throat. He positioned the stake underneath my ribs, ready to drive it into my heart.

  This was the second time in a month I was on the other end of the stake, and I really didn’t like it. Death had a foul smell, and it was so close that I could taste it. I didn’t look into Zane’s eyes as he looked at me, ready to take my life. I had my eyes on that horizon, waiting for the light that would save me.

  When the first rays of sun licked over the horizon and Zane started smoking, he realized what I’d been staring at. The window faced east, and the sun poured into the room. His hold on me slackened and he dropped the stake as if his hand had stopped working. He sawed his jaw back and forth, open and closed, but the scream was a silent one. His eyes were full of horror, black and haunting, as he started going up in a whoosh of smoke and ash.

  And by the time the sun peeked over the horizon, there was nothing of him left.

  I sank to the ground. As many times as my vampire side had saved me over the last couple of months, my human side had saved me tonight. I was alive. And I was going to stay that way.

  I didn’t know how to get back to Carl and Blade and hoped they were still alive. I found my phone and dialed Carl’s number. He answered, sounding out of breath but strong.