Cruxim (Paranormal Fallen Angel/Vampire Series)

by Karin Cox

  I worried on it until the sun colored the Breton Strait and the waves washed away my troubles and gave me an uninterrupted hour or two of sleep. When I woke, it was to the funk of seaweed and salt-air trapped beneath the skiff. I lifted the boat to look out. Seeing nothing, I flipped the skiff over and stood. My wings ached, my entire body ached, but none more than my heart. Joslyn and Sabine, both in the walled city, and me out here sleeping on a beach. I cursed myself again and set off in the direction of the wall, trying to avoid the sections where a parapet or guard tower topped the ramparts.

  After another hour, when the sun was higher in the sky, I found a place where a hillock and a tree made the height of the wall slightly less formidable. A slight rise hid the position a little from the nearest guard tower. If I could flutter up into the tree’s branches to rest, and then on to the top of the wall, I might have the strength in my wings to make it down the other side. If I did not, the fall was not too great. If they saw me, I had no doubt cannonfire would result.

  My wing strength was returning slowly, and each shot of Joslyn’s blood had helped, but although she had been gone just hours, already I craved more.

  Please, I prayed to whomever it was that might hear a Cruxim’s prayers. Please let her find Sabine. Soon.

  I decided to fly over the walls in the late afternoon, just before sunset, and conceal myself somewhere inside for the night, hoping I might be able to catch an unwary Vampire that night to enhance my strength. Tomorrow, my wings must be good enough to fly over the city, searching for the gleam of gold that would reveal the whereabouts of my two dearest loves and my two greatest enemies. No doubt, as night fell, hordes of bats would fly out from the castle in search of me. Beltran was no fool. As much as he would want to believe that Joslyn had returned for him, that she had seen the error of her ways and loved him, he would still have them hunt for me. It struck me that he and Gandler would love nothing more than to force her to kill me herself to prove her love for Beltran. Or Sabine, the thought suddenly struck me. What might they make her do to Sabine? After all, surely Gandler had realized the two had worked together to destroy him.

  My brain was numb with thoughts of losing them both by the time the sun began to dip toward the land. Testing my wings, I gingerly flapped up into the tree and perched there like a bird momentarily, waiting for the dull pain in my wings to either worsen or dissipate. It faded faster than I had hoped: a good sign. With a further flap, I was on the wall. I had not been seen. Without waiting this time, I launched myself off the stone and felt my wings coast me down to the ground on the other side. It had gone better than I had hoped. Now to find a place to conceal myself before the sentries began to make their rounds. I approached the nearest building and found a chink in the edifice to pull myself up the stone. Quickly, quickly, I cautioned myself. The roof was no good. Despite the old sayings, bats have good eyesight. No, somewhere inside, or by a window ledge, or perhaps even behind drapery would be better, or an alcove where I could conceal myself for a time in a place that was infrequently used.

  I continued to pull myself up the wall until I came to a section where the flintstone grew rougher, and I spied a window ledge above. The window was shuttered, but the next along showed a small chink of light. Perhaps, if I could hover long enough, I could work it open. What I might find on the other side was the question.

  Pulling myself up to just below the window, I put my ear to the cold stone. I could hear nothing at first, then a low murmuring and the staccato of footprints moving away. I inched further up the wall, grasping the thicker window ledge now, and put one hand up to tug at the shutters. They were barred, but loosely, as if not quite fastened. I listened again. Nothing. Moving my weight off the wall and onto my wings, I fluttered up. It was a bearable pain and one I thought I could endure for several minutes if I had to. I rattled the window again. Still shuttered. Bearing the weight of one leg on the windowsill, and thankful for the drab colors of my fisherfolk garb, which blended in with the dappled gray of the wall, I kicked the shutters inward with all of my might, splintering one and breaking the hinge on the other, sending it dangling. Without hesitation, I dropped back down to the window ledge and leaped inside.

  The room was not empty. A shriek rang out as a black-haired Vampire, who had clearly just arisen from a draped four-poster bed, sprang for me. From behind the floral silk that garlanded the bed, I could see another creature stir. I rushed at the first without a sound. Grabbing his long black hair in hand, I jerked his head to the side and my fangs met his jugular, forcing him to his knees, his shriek a dying gurgle as his strength ebbed into me.

  “Giordano…?” came a woman’s voice, still thick with sleep.

  I slid back the draped silk a little and peered in. A titian-haired woman lay on her side, her back to me. Still half asleep, she patted the bed behind her with one hand, searching for her mate.

  “Shhh,” I said softly and reached out so she could feel my hand. Her hand was icy, and I noticed the line of fang-shaped welts along her neck. She had recently been mortal, too, this one, but no more. My weight sliding into bed reassured her, and she murmured and gripped my hand but did not turn over. Carefully, I moved close to her and lifted a strand of red hair from her creamy neck. She did not say a word, and she died so quickly, encircled in my arms.

  I might have felt sorry for the deception, had she not been what she was. Still, filling as they were, I enjoyed it less than I had Joslyn’s daily administrations.

  Their deaths enriched me, but even with a skinful of Vampire blood, I was no match for Beltran and his henchmen, and now I had bodies to hide. Late risers they were, but no doubt someone would come to miss Giordano and his lover eventually. No, I had to stuff them somewhere. If only it had been nearly sunrise instead of close to dusk and I might have tossed them out the window and let the sun and wind reduce their bodies to ashes.

  A wooden trunk sat at the bed end and looked as if it might be large enough to house them both. I emptied it of the jumble of clothes and linen, keeping only a shirt and trousers that appeared they might fit and kicking the rest under the bed. After I had forced the corpses in, I regretted the decision; the trunk would have made a good place to hide. However, I wanted to put some distance between myself and my kills, should they be missed.

  The trousers and shirt fit, so I crossed the room and took a hat and cloak off the stand near the heavy oak door. I peered out into the hallway.

  There seemed to be no one about. Not yet, but I was still wary. I snuck out of the room and down to the staircase. Craning my neck, I looked down it. Nothing. There was no one on the staircase coming from above either, so I made the decision to ascend. Higher would be better in the morning, when I flew out to look for Joslyn’s signal. After listening in the hall for movement beyond and finding it empty, I entered a room at the end. It was less sumptuously decorated, looking almost like a governess’s quarters, and had a vacant air. Thick, dark drapes concealed the window and made the room unnaturally dark. I shut myself away in the closet, buried beneath a coverlet, and tried to sleep.

  Daybreak brought with it screams from a room further down the hall. Was this entire city a nest of bloodsuckers? Clearly a Vampire on this floor was playing with his supper. Would their cruelty never end? Ignoring the swelling hatred inside me, I crept from my hiding place and pulled back the drapes. The sun was not yet fully risen. Soon, its rays would be strong enough to reveal what I was looking for: the glint of gold on gray. Until then, I may as well keep up my strength. Every death was one less Vampire in the army of them I knew I would face when I located Joslyn and Sabine. It occurred to me that I no longer distinguished between the two of them. Much as I knew that Joslyn had to die, the daily injections of her blood had both fuelled and quelled my need for her. She needs to be saved, I thought, as much as Sabine. Only from herself and her kind. Yet I knew that only He could save her.

  I left the sanctity of my room and stole down the hall, following the symphony of screams. When I gre
w closer, the screams turned to pleading. A girl’s voice. Cowards—they so often preyed on the weak. When I pushed open the door, I saw three of them, all men, holding down a girl of about seventeen, taking turns at her throat as she sobbed and begged for mercy.

  “My turn,” one said and nudged another off her.

  “No! Mine!” I sprang at him. With a surge of strength, I grasped his head and banged it full force into the skull of the Vampire that clambered over her body. It was enough to concuss both for a moment while I took care of their friend, draining him in seconds.

  “Sharing, were we?” I asked as I punched the first man—a blue-eyed, sharp-nosed, blood-spattered creature—in the mouth and then dined on him too, pinning him to the bed behind the girl, whose screams had intensified so much I worried she might bring someone running.

  “Shhh.” I held one finger up to my bloodied lips. “You’re not my type.”

  The third Vampire leaped back to his feet. His shirt off and his trousers still unbuckled, he sprang at me with a hiss. The girl’s blood stained his mouth, and as he wiped at it with one hand, I kicked out, striking his kneecap and dropping him to the ground.

  “You, on the other hand,” I said and delivered a blow to his mouth that snapped one of his fangs. It skittered off across the room. Impressed by how quickly their blood had strengthened me, I bit down hard into his shoulder. He struggled, but I put my hand over his mouth and nose, until he, too, went limp.

  The girl, still on her back, scrabbled away from me. White showed around her terrified eyes.

  “All will be well,” I told her, as I wondered what to do about her. If she ran out there babbling, Beltran and Gandler were sure to have their minions find me in no time. Yet I had no way of keeping her in here either, and her face told me that she bore me no love for killing her attackers. No doubt she, like countless others, considered me one of them. In the end, I did the only thing I could do: I revealed my wings. Bedraggled as they were, when I flapped them I was surprised to find them fanned out around me, replete with new-growing feathers. My strength was returning, more suddenly than I had imagined.

  “I am an angel of the Lord,” I lied to her. “Go now, little one, and spread the word of His light, but tell no one you have seen me lest they call you a liar. The Lord loves you. As they brought you darkness”—I gestured to the dead Vampires—“He brings you light. Now, hurry.” I pointed to the door.

  Clutching her torn dress, she ran and did not look back.

  When she had gone, I opened the window again. The sun had fully risen. Pulling the drapes all the way open, I opened the window and tossed the bodies out one by one. They speckled to gray ash as the sunlight struck them and made no impression against the stone edifice. When I had hurled the last one out, and the sun had begun to scale the blue heavens, I launched myself out too. Power, exhilarating power, coursed through me. I am stronger than they. I smiled, feeling like myself for the first time since my escape from Sezanne tower. The thought gave me hope. Wheeling east on my recovered wings, I soared over the city of St Martin de Re.

  I had nearly given up, when I finally saw it: the faint glint of something on a ledge down near the ruined church of St Martin. My soul sang for Joslyn. You have offered me far more than I ever offered you. I had wronged her in many ways, and she in just one: Beltran. If only he had not been there that night.

  I swooped down closer to look. Yes! There it was. She had set the book on the body of a gargoyle that jutted out from a turret.

  I longed to swoop down immediately and enter the church, but I knew that where Joslyn was, Beltran and his allies would be too. I would not let him escape this time. I had to be cautious. Down there, I would be even more exposed than I was up here, flying in the sunshine in broad daylight. Instead, I fluttered down onto the gargoyle, picked up the book, and stared in through the stone archway.

  As I had expected, I could see nothing inside the darkened church. By day, they would be sleeping, or at least most of them, but there would surely be sentries. So far, my incursion into the walled city had been too easy. Were they watching me, awaiting the moment to capture me, or was there a host of guards inside who would bar my way? I guessed the latter. Mumbled voices came from below, moans and whimpers, as if someone were in pain.

  Sabine, I thought, and then realized it could not be her. It was day; she would be absent unless Gandler had found her anchorstone.

  Joslyn? Grabbing the ledge above, I hauled myself in through the window. A shiver gripped me at entering a tower so like the one I had recently escaped at Sezanne, but the thought of Sabine and Joslyn made me press on. I followed the voices to a stone antechamber. Carefully, my body pressed to the wall, I peeked in. Sleeping Vampires hung from the ceiling, cocooned in their cloaks. More slumbered on the floor, folded into each other’s arms. In sleep, they were beautiful, limbs entwined, some curled into each other like a litter of sleek kittens. Beautiful as they were, a bitter taste filled my mouth, a dry longing that preceded the darkness of my rage: my need for their deaths. I wanted to rush in headlong and destroy them one by one, but even I could see that would be pointless. There were too many, forty at least.

  Controlling my bloodlust, I searched for Joslyn. She was not there. Not among them. How could that be when the incunabulum was here for me? A great weariness gripped me. She had to be here! She would never have left it for me otherwise. I searched the faces of the sleeping Vampires again, one by one. She was not there.

  Whimpering distracted me again, and I turned to make out a cage set in the corner of the room. Crammed into it were several young men and women, all of them pale with blood loss. Three sleepy-looking Vampires stood by them, brandishing a sword. I took a step backward, bile rising into my throat. It would never do for them to see me.

  Still searching the room, I noticed that while neither Joslyn nor Sabine were there, nor were Gandler or Beltran. I backed into the hallway to consider my options. If I rushed in there now, I might kill the sentries and twenty or so of the sleeping Vampires. But even if I were stealthy enough to kill most of them while they slumbered, the mortals would surely give me away. If Joslyn were here somewhere, I might save her, but Sabine, if indeed she were still alive at all, would still be captive. And Beltran and Gandler would still be at large.

  Drawing attention to myself would also expose Joslyn’s lies. No, better to wait, to think of another way to find them, and to save them. Quickly, I backed out the way I had come, the sunshine a welcome respite from the grim room.

  Stuffing the incunabulum under my shirt, I inched along the chequered flint and sandstone wall to the next window. The next room was empty, and the next, but the street below was beginning to wake. In despair, I dove from the window ledge and flew quickly back down onto the street.

  With the hat tugged low on my brow, I put on my coat to conceal my wings, placed the gilt book into my pocket, and examined the Eglise de St Martin from every angle, running my hand over the sandstone walls, peering in the windows on the lower floors. The church, the vestry, and the small temple beyond all seemed empty; the only presence was of death. I could smell it loitering in the high, vaulted ceilings. If this church had ever been a place of God, it was no longer. I wondered what had happened to the parishioners and then remembered the cage in the room above. If there was any sign of Joslyn or Sabine, or a concealed door that might reveal them, I found none. I left disillusioned, filled with rage at them and disgust with myself for having let Joslyn walk into a trap.

  I did not fly back to the room that had been my earlier hideout; it was too dangerous. Men were awake now, and I had to conceal myself among them. It seemed as if the men and women I passed in the streets knew that a scourge of the undead filled their city, defiled their churches. No doubt some of the mortals were in their employ, or indeed hoped to join their ranks. Did they feed here, I wondered, or fly out as bats to rid La Rochelle, Aytre and La-Tranche-sur-mer of their inhabitants? Probably the latter, I considered. As I hurried on, cries rang ou
t from an alley to my right.

  “Step away, Mademoiselle, lest you catch it too,” a robust, bearded fellow cautioned a woman, who kept flinging herself, distraught, onto the wagon he pulled. I glimpsed bodies stiff with rigor mortis, and on the very top, the corpse of a child, her fair flesh ringed with the red roses of smallpox.

  No doubt the pox is feeding them too, I thought. Every day, more corpses join their ranks. I thought of the youth I had tried to catch in Paris on my release from the tower, and I wondered if the vile creatures were turning even innocents into monsters. Keeping my head down, I hurried away from the grieving mother and the pox cart, in search of a safe place to sleep. The silver Lee had paid me from the circus soothed the landlady of a boarding house, Madame Bourret, whose skeptical expression might otherwise have seen me turned away for my pale skin and gleaming teeth. Once inside, I hurried to my room. Sleep evaded me. Why had Joslyn not been there? Where was she? A chill told me she had been there until taken elsewhere. To have left the book, she had to have been forcibly removed. I flipped through the pages, stroking the likely places where her hands had touched. At the page headed Vampire, I stopped to read the entry:

  Creatures of the night that feed voraciously on human blood, the Vampire/Vampyre or Nosferatu is a member of the undead risen to life. As guileful as they are beautiful, Vampires are capable of gifting mortal men and women with eternity and are known to frequent many locations throughout Europe and Africa. To turn human beings is recorded as a reciprocal process. The Vampire must first drink from the human, who in turn must drink from the Vampire in order to receive the gift of eternal life. Although likely fanciful, folklore in parts of Eastern Europe ascribes to Vampires the ability to raise a corpse and turn it into a Vampire. Superstitions also have it that plagues of the undead follow pandemics throughout the Continent, and there are indeed reported sightings of Nosferatu following increased incidence of human death.