Dylan placed his bo staff on the chair. “Based on last night, you don’t need any lessons. You managed to deal with those deadheads well enough—”
Caitlin swung her stick in a half-arc and smacked Dylan on the hip.
Jaxon barked loudly, jumping in the air, his mouth chomping for the stick.
“Ouch! That hurt.”
Caitlin looked at Jaxon. “This is why we never got a pussy. Seems we’ve already got one living with us.”
She swung at Dylan again.
“Sis, I’m serious.”
“So am I.” She held the stick between two hands and tried to twirl it around. It slipped between her fingers and clattered to the floor. Caitlin laughed awkwardly and picked it up. “See? There’s only so much I can practice without a partner to fight back. I got lucky against the Mad, I know I did. If you hadn’t come to help, I’d probably be with Kiera right now.”
“No,” Dylan said flatly.
Caitlin swung once more.
This time, however, Dylan was ready. He grabbed the stick in one palm, twisted his arm to the side in a smooth motion, and ripped the stick out of Caitlin’s hand while forcing her off-balance. A second later, she lay on the floor with Dylan’s boot on her neck and her hand twisted in a lock she couldn’t escape from.
“If you’re going to play with fire, you best be sure you bring the heat,” Dylan said, a huge grin on his face. He released Caitlin and threw her stick back to her. “Now, go to bed. It’s been a long night and we need our rest.”
“Dylan…” Caitlin whined.
“There’s not enough time, sis. At this point, it’s better to rest up than it is to wear ourselves out by training.” He glanced towards her bedroom where he could see the tip of the sword poking haphazardly out of the sheets. “Take the blade she gifted you. Keep it hidden. Should the shit hit the fan, you’ll be sorted. At the very worst, you can take a swing with that sword and the vampire’ll turn to dust.”
Caitlin looked back at the sword in confusion.
“You really don’t pay attention, do you?” Dylan said, rolling his eyes. “The sword is tipped with silver.”
“So?”
“If we’ve learned anything from the old tales, it’s that silver is the ultimate killer of all things…vampire-y. I can’t say for absolute certain, but one poke from that should be enough to cripple her and leave her begging for mercy.”
Silver? How could that be? And if that is true, then…
“Why would she give the sword to me if it’s her weakness?” Caitlin picked the sword up again, looking closely at the polished silver that edged the body of the blade.
“Fuck knows.” Dylan stretched and yawned loudly. “A lot of weird stuff has happened tonight, and there’s only so much I can take. Now, get some shut-eye, sis. We have a long night ahead of us. We’ll need all the rest we can get.”
As Dylan headed into his room, he patted his thigh and called for Jaxon to follow. The Shepherd paused a moment, his head cocked to the side, before turning and wandering into Caitlin’s room. He hopped on the bed and rested his head on his paws.
Caitlin cast her brother a smug smile and closed the door.
Chapter Four
Carter Manor, Silver Creek Forest
Mary-Anne’s nose twitched before her stomach rumbled.
What is this I smell? An animal? Perchance another human?
The manor was filled with darkness, but as Mary-Anne opened her eyes, she could see perfectly, as always.
Thanks to her heightened senses, she could still smell the gut-churning stench of the tainted blood of the Mad that choked her foyer. It would be a while before she found the strength and motivation to clean that lot up, even if it did disturb her slumber.
She thought about them all lying there, their blood spilled. What a damn waste…
But that didn’t mean she could drink their blood.
Over the last seventy years, Mary-Anne had watched as her fellow vampires had struggled. The Madness was a killer of more than only humans. She had already gone far past the point of being able to count on her fingers and toes the number of companions she had watched fall to the plague.
The entire UnknownWorld had taken a colossal hit.
The vampire population had shrunk, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d encountered a Were. Humans were increasingly difficult to come by and, even on those days she did come across them, it was likely that they would be on the offensive.
Mary-Anne didn’t mind removing those who harbored intent to kill her, but she had made the conscious choice years ago to not drink their blood. She had seen too many vamps drink what they thought had been clean blood, only to fall sick with the Madness within hours.
It seemed that faster healing and vampire strength did little more than fuel the Madness to act faster than it did in humans. The end result was monstrous.
Mary-Anne closed her eyes and pushed away the thought, her mind now turning to the girl—the one who had come by the manor last night, the one she began to think of as ‘the honorable.’ She had been fine. Mary-Anne had watched from the shadows, and the Mad hadn’t even gotten close to her after she had handed over the sword.
Perhaps, if the girl comes back, maybe I could bargain a deal? Maybe I could use the sword I gifted her as leverage to taste some of her blood…
No. Mary-Anne shut down her thinking before it could spread. Her stomach roared in protest, a feeling that had never quite shifted. A hunger coded by evolution.
How can you guarantee that she isn’t tainted? More than that, how can you guarantee that you’d be able to stop yourself before you drained her completely?
She pictured the scene, even now unsure that, if given the chance to taste human blood, she’d be able to stop her hunger from switching into overdrive and draining the body until all that was left was flesh and bone.
And besides, the girl she had saved ignited her curiosity. She’d shown no sign of fear at the sight of a vampire, and no intent to kill her.
A rare sight indeed, these days.
The unexpected encounter was a sad cry from several hundred years before. Then, vamps—and even Weres—could roam freely amongst the people.
It was a part of her history, ingrained deeply from generation to generation of vampires. The story told of how the world had almost ended in a fireworks display of nuclear missiles. How the survivors of what had come to be known as the “World’s Worst Day Ever” had struggled and fought to rebuild the cities and towns of old. How the world had been on the brink of recovery before the light switch had been flicked—
And the Madness had come.
In one swift movement, Mary-Anne rubbed her eyes and ran through the manor. She didn’t move at top speed. She simply couldn’t anymore, her energy drained from the exertion of her intervention for the girl the night before.
She waited by the back door, her back to the wall, and listened. Something was rummaging outside. Something big. The door was slightly ajar.
She chanced a peek, greeted by the moonlit glow of her backyard, overgrown and falling to the forest around it.
A dark shape, the size of a car, sniffed the floor. The bear let out a low moan, a sadness which communicated its own hunger.
Yeah. Don’t worry. I know how that feels.
Mary-Anne let a small smile play on her lips, remembering a Were she had once met who could transform into a bear with shaggy, matted fur. He had been half the size of this one, though.
Her stomach rumbled once more.
Sorry, brother. Mama needs to feed.
She made death quick for the bear. She didn’t even use a blade, merely leapt onto its back, sank in her own claws, and drank until the bear went woozy, stopped thrashing, and fell.
She wiped the blood from her mouth and panted heavily, feeling the warmth of it coursing through her body. It did little to sustain her.
Then, she caught the whiff of another smell.
A human smell which drove her crazy
and made her mind cloudy. She looked down at the corpse of the bear, inhaled deeply, and identified that the smell was still somewhere inside.
She ripped at the bear’s skin, her hunger driving her wild. Her instincts craved the true sustenance it needed.
And there, inside the stomach lining, was the source of the scent—several human limbs the bear must have ingested fairly recently. Human blood slimed the body parts like a coating of oil.
Mary-Anne stared at the limbs for a moment, her mind shouting at her to leave them alone. It wasn’t worth risking the Madness for the small portion of blood she could lick clean from the bones.
What if the owner of that body had the early stages of Madness? The bear wouldn’t have shown it at all. It would not even have been affected. How could she be sure that she’d be okay?
Her mind waged its internal battle for a moment longer, then she pulled herself away. Her stomach hurt at the idea of leaving it behind, but she had to do it. Survival in a world of Madness meant pain, and that was the world she now knew.
She returned to the manor, leaving the door ajar, and crumpled to the floor, feeling the warmth of the bear’s blood inside her. That tiny amount of satisfaction made her feel like she was dying of thirst in a desert and had found nothing more than a couple of drops of water in an egg cup.
When was the last time she’d felt truly full? Would she ever feel full again?
She closed her eyes; she could see the girl now. A pretty thing with a fire in her heart. Maybe…just maybe…
Mary-Anne lay a while on the dusty floor, her mind full of memories of better days. She closed her eyes and began to doze out in the open.
After all, what did she have to fear? Anyone else wandering into her domain after the attempts of the last few guys would either have to be a lunatic or an animal with a longing for death on its brain.
Prison District, Silver Creek
Halrod Trisk kept to the shadows as he made his way along the parapets of Silver Creek. All activity down below in the main streets of his town had ceased some hours ago now. The curfew had been decreed under his orders which were, in fact, nothing more than a thinly veiled effort for him to show the people who was boss. There was no threat of anything coming from the outside world without his guards knowing about it.
No sirree.
He navigated the darkness, and his heart fluttered with excitement. He thought back to his old mentor, Jeremy, a man nearly twice Halrod’s years who had been his guide for the best part of several decades. Jeremy had always held the firm belief that there were still others out there besides the Mad. Other creatures from the UnknownWorld. Closing in on nearly a hundred years of age before he passed, he was one of the few who had actually been around to see them before the Madness came.
Weres, vamps; even Nosferatu and lycanthropes. He had seen them all. Yet it was a secret knowledge he had only ever shared with Halrod and a handful of others.
Halrod was always careful to keep the truth to himself. The rest he had turned into fairy tales for the town. So many years had passed that he had almost started to believe that maybe Jeremy had been lying all along. Years of searching had turned up nothing.
Until his men had discovered the fabled vamp. How he had leapt for joy.
And now…
Well, now his heart raced with perverse excitement at his men’s latest discovery.
It was dark out, the moon hidden by a thick layer of clouds. Torches burned on the lower levels, flickering and making the world swim. The odd sensation would make the average man queasy, but Halrod knew the layout of his town better than anyone else and walked the wooden boards with the confidence of a panther stalking its prey.
He traversed his determined route down a set of steps and through several long corridors leading away from the residential quarters. Soon, Halrod began to hear the moans. He nodded to a pair of guards who immediately moved to let him pass.
Oh, he loved the feeling of power. Of being an unstoppable force in Silver Creek.
Doorways appeared on either side of him, now, with bars that crisscrossed the entrances so that the prisoners couldn’t escape but could be watched by the steady eyes of his own law enforcers.
He continued down another set of stairs and into a dark so black that even the torches failed to provide much light. Another set of guards stood to attention. This time, Halrod paused beside them.
“How is he?”
The one on the right—a man as short as he was wide—answered. “Quiet but still in containment. No sign of any shifts.”
“Damn.” Halrod swept past, the trails of his cloak flying behind him.
He stopped when he could go no further at a final jail cell filled with shadows and darkness. Without a word, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a dead mouse, stiffened and brittle. He tossed it through the bars and onto the floor.
Still and silent, he waited.
At first, nothing happened. Then, he saw the twinkle of a pair of eyes appear in the gloom. A voice spoke, casual and cocky, though with cracks between words and dry lips.
“That’s not what I ordered.”
“Tell someone who gives a shit,” Halrod replied.
“I want to see the manager.”
“You’re looking at him.”
The sound of shuffling ruffled the silence. Halrod grabbed a torch from further back and brought it closer to the bars. A man limped forward, naked as the day he was born. Thick hair sprouted in random patches across his body. His eyes glowed a keen green that seemed to absorb the torchlight, making it look like a fire burned around his pupils. His body, between the tufts of hair, was a mass of scars.
“Eurgh,” Halrod exclaimed, recoiling slightly.
“You’re not exactly a pretty sight yourself,” the man replied.
The man was Kain Sudeikis. Earlier that day, Kain had stumbled across the borders of Silver Creek. Under Halrod’s orders, Hank and a handful of men had been conducting a lap of the forests within sight of the town’s walls—they liked to leave the more dangerous patrols to the ranger groups at night—and discovered Kain when one of the guards had heard a rustle in the bushes.
At first, they figured it might have been a fox or even a squirrel. When they approached the bush, weapons drawn, none of them had expected what they found.
A human leg poked out from between the twigs and leaves. When they grabbed the leg and pulled the man out, the upper half of his body looked to be more like the shape of a giant wolf. The result was horrific, and as Kain transformed back into a naked man, as if in slow-motion before their eyes, one of the guards had hurled on the floor.
“You don’t like, you don’t watch,” Kain had growled, his body contorted and twisted with the effort of the shift.
Hank Newman couldn’t believe it. He had thought the governor mad when he had first commanded them to keep an eye out for anything that could be taken for a Were or a vampire, yet there they were, watching one in the flesh.
Oh, how pleased Trisk had been when Hank had delivered his find.
Despite the story of his capture, Halrod had yet to witness a transformation himself.
“I know what you’re here for,” Kain said, holding the mouse up by its tail and licking his lips. He was thin and so malnourished, his ribs stood out like blocks on a xylophone. “That channel is no longer on the air, though, I’m afraid. I’m a changed man now.”
“What’s a channel?” Halrod asked pleasantly enough, hiding the anger that burned at the dismissive mockery with which Kain addressed him.
People didn’t deny the governor anything.
Kain didn’t reply and merely teased his own lips with the mouse’s face.
Halrod pulled a chair up from the corner of the room, turned it so its back faced Kain, and straddled it. His fat spilled down the edge of the seat like dripping custard. He rested his head on his chin, and when he spoke, his words were soft. The kindest tone he could muster.
“I can see that you’re hungry, Kain. Th
ere’s a feast, y’know? At the end of each month. A tradition that has gone back since way before our humble beginnings. Food piled as high as you can imagine. Plates stacked with meats, with vegetables. Goblets of wine and ales all brewed here within these walls. Everyone here is invited, coming together to eat under the stars on tables which run the length of the streets.”
Kain licked his lips. His stomach rumbled loudly.
“In fact, we often have so much food left over that it goes to waste. It’s one of the saddest sights I know, watching the leftovers get discarded into our mulch containers to be used as fertilizer.” Here, Halrod shook his head. “Such a shame. Such a damn shame.”
Kain came closer, hands gripping the bars as his face pressed against the opening. “I can’t do it, bucko. I know you know shit-all about my kind, so I’ll say this nice and clearly for you to save us a lot of time. I can’t…shift.”
Halrod’s eyes lit up at that. The first admission he’d had of what this man truly was.
“I want to make a deal with you.”
Kain rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go. It’s always a deal with you people.”
“Show me what you are. Shift—”
“I’ve just told you—” Kain tried to interject.
“Change into your true form, and I’ll release you.”
Kain paused a moment, staring into the depths of the governor’s eyes. He exhaled slowly. “What’s the catch?”
“You join my side. Become a law enforcer of Silver Creek. Help sniff out more of your kind and bring them to my cause.”
Kain fell into thought. Halrod watched eagerly, his heart thudding a steady beat in his chest.
This was perfect. With a werewolf by his side, no one in the town would fuck with him. There’d be no more disobedience. No more betrayers. No more liars. He could use fear as his ally, and there’d be no more Monica Chapmans. With a Were there, he’d have the town under his thumb.
And what about the other colonies? The other towns which fell under Halrod’s guardianship? The ones only his closest advisors knew of.
The Caitlin Chronicles Boxed Set Page 4