by Ella Stone
Son of a Vampire
A Dark Creatures Tale
Ella Stone
The Dark Creatures Series
Prequel Novellas
Out Now
Mother of Wolves
Son of a Vampire
Coming Soon
Man and Wolf
Call of the Grimoire
Main Series (Out Aug 2021)
Dark Creatures
Dark Destiny
Dark Deception
Dark Redemption
Dark Reckoning
Copyright © 2020 by Ella Stone
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First published 2021
By
Darkerside Publishing
Edited by Carol Worwood
Cover design by Miblart
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Dear reader
Dark Creatures
About the Author
1
Northern France, October, 1918
There was nowhere to turn. Nowhere to run. On every side of him, bloodied figures fled into the night, screaming in terror, enough to shake the very earth beneath them. Hell. That was what it felt like. He had entered the gates of Hell. And he had no idea how to get out again.
“Private Sheridan, what are you doing? Why haven’t you gone? Move! Get a move on!” The officer didn’t wait around to see if his order was being followed, immediately disappearing into the smoke, fleeing the shouts of fear, as fast as he could.
Coughing against the caustic fumes, Calin tried to focus on his situation. More and more men pushed past him, not bothering to slow or apologise as they clipped him with the butts of their rifles, or trod on his already rotting feet. He didn’t blame them. They were running for their lives. It was what any sensible person would do. But he couldn’t leave like that.
“Get back! Get back!”
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
“We need to get out of here! We have to retreat!”
Voices screamed endlessly amidst the grenade blasts and the rattling of machine guns. The trench had been hit again, the walls collapsing at several points. More men stumbled past him. Some had managed to drag themselves across the battlefield and fling themselves over the edge, in hope of finding safety, and still the enemy fire was getting closer as the ground trembled with every blast.
“Retreat. Retreat!”
A grenade hit less than ten feet away, causing the trench to erupt again. Miraculously, the blast went in the opposite direction, as mud sprayed outwards, knocking him to his knees. In all his months at the front line, in all the time he had spent in the trenches, he had never once believed he wouldn’t make it home. They had been told God was with them in this war against tyranny, the great ‘war to end all wars’, and they’d soon be back home. His mind flashed back to his former life. His real life, in London, with Ruth. He could not retreat. Not yet. Not with the job only half done and while people still needed him.
If he closed his eyes, he could see her face, smiling back at him. In the rainstorm of mud and dirt he could feel her breath on his neck, her fair hair brushing against his cheek. His eyes reopened to the horror all around him. He couldn’t give up now. Lifting his rifle, he grabbed the ladder, and started up.
“What the hell are you doing, private?” A hand grabbed him from behind and yanked him back down into the waterlogged pit. “I told everyone to retreat. I told you to retreat.” Out of a face caked in grime and dirt, his lieutenant’s pale-grey eyes glowered at him. It could have been night, and Calin would still have recognised those eyes. Everyone in the platoon would have.
Another shell exploded somewhere behind them. Calin and Polidori flung themselves to the ground. From all around came the screams of injured men – the voices of hell.
“Cooper’s out there,” Calin said, tightening his grip on his rifle. “Hatter too. And Godfrey, and Simmons, and—”
“I get it. Our men are out there. I’ll go for them.”
“You can’t.” He was shaking his head, trying to push down the fear. “There are too many. You’ll never get them all on your own.”
“Trust me, I can do this.” Lieutenant Polidori’s grey eyes locked on his again. Dark Angel they called him, although never to his face. No one was that stupid. Never had a man fought on so many battlefields and returned unhurt, more often than not an injured comrade slung over his shoulder. He never sought acknowledgement, let alone acclaim, for these acts of bravery, brushing aside the gratitude of those who would have been dead without him.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. “Because we don’t have time for this.”
“Of course I do,” Calin replied.
Time and time again, he had put himself in the firing line ahead of his men. How the hell he had survived some of the situations he put himself in, was a mystery to all of them. Even now, when it felt like the end of the world was nigh, he seemed calm, as if accepting the fact that men were dying in their hundreds all around them. But what people showed and what people felt were two very different things. This war had taught Calin that, if nothing else.
“Get to safety. That is an order. I will save those who can be saved.”
“We can help more of them together,” Calin insisted.
“Calin, it is hell over there. And not figuratively. It literally is hell. You have a wife; you have a life ahead of you, not to mention the fact that you can barely walk on those feet of yours. If you step out of this trench, you will be a danger to us all and, I swear to God, I will shoot you myself. Do you understand?”
His lieutenant’s gaze bore into him once again. There was only one answer Polidori wanted to hear.
“I’ll wait here,” he replied. “But I’m not retreating. There are too many for you to carry. Drag them here to me. I can dress their wounds, while you go for another.”
Polidori’s lips twitched. He didn’t like being spoken back to at the best of times. And this was most certainly not the best of times.
“Fine,” he said. “Don’t move.”
With the swiftness of a man half his age, he was up the ladder and over the top.
Bracing himself and hugging his rifle, Calin searched the cacophony of noise for any distinguishable voices. They had said the war would be over by the first Christmas and yet he had endured four years of this. His feet were now turning blue with trench foot, and his body had endured injuries that he never imagined it would be possible to take and yet keep going. But perhaps this was it—the last battle he would see. Maybe after this he could go back to Ruth and the life they had planned together, all those years ago.
Closing his eyes, he attempted to conjure up her face again. It was getting harder to recall it. Harder to remember all the little details. When he had first enlisted, he could recall every last freckle and dimple. The crooked way her mouth lifted at one side when she smiled. Was it the right side or the left? And which side was her dimple? His pulse rose. A sudden fear grabbed his chest and he reached inside his jacket and fished around for his one remaining photograph of her, now just
a creased relic that showed him next to nothing, as meaningless to anyone else as if it were a note written in the foreign tongue of the barbarians they were fighting. But it was still her. He pressed it to his chest.
“Sheridan,” Polidori’s voice called from above. “I’ve got Cooper and he’s in a bad way.”
He was up out of the trench and by his side in an instant. The lower parts of both of Cooper’s legs were missing. Crimson blood pulsed into the mud. By contrast, his cheeks were white, almost translucent.
“Oh God.”
“God has no place here,” Polidori replied. “Now get him down. Godfrey is still out there.”
“Hatter?”
He shook his head. Another crack formed in Calin’s already shattered heart. Now Hatter was gone too. So many men lost.
“Medic!” Polidori yelled into the smoke, as he headed back to no man’s land.
Calin turned back to Cooper who, despite it all, managed a flicker of a smile.
“It’s not that bad, right?” he asked. “I bet I could still kick your arse at football.” Calin laughed. Gallows humour was all they had left. “He saved me. I knew he would. He’ll save us all.”
“It’s all right. I’ve got you now.”
Calin crouched down, preparing to hoist the injured man onto his shoulder, when something flashed through the haze. How he spotted it was a miracle. His eyesight was hardly its best, and the conditions had done nothing to improve it yet, in the gloom, he had caught sight of a flash of metal. A grenade! He followed its trajectory, just as his lieutenant reappeared.
“No!” he jumped up, leaving Cooper on the ground. Of all the men in the battalion, Polidori was the one who should get to go home. He was the one who deserved it more than the rest of them. There was no way he would be able to live with himself if he let him die, not when there was a chance of doing something to stop it. Throwing himself forward, he collided with Polidori, knocking him to the earth. The next moment, the whole world was white hot. And then it was black.
2
“Drink. You must drink.”
“Where am I? Where’s Ruth?”
“Just drink. There will be more than enough time for questions later.”
As the sweetness and warmth of the liquid hit the back of his throat, he gasped in relief. His eyes blinked open. The room he was in was unfamiliar in every way. The plush, purple blanket that he was lying under was a far cry from anything the army had to offer and the four-poster bed was superior even to the one which he and Ruth had slept in during their honeymoon. From the centre of the room hung a crystal chandelier that would likely have cost him a decade’s wages. Although, at that precise moment, he couldn’t have cared less about any of it.
“I need more. Give me more!”
He lurched forwards, his previous concerns about Ruth and his location forgotten. All that he wanted was that taste on his tongue, that comforting liquid flowing down his throat again.
“You’ve had enough for now, Calin. You have to be strong.”
“I need more!”
“I am not giving you any more.”
“Give it to me!” His fist slammed hard against the bedpost. With a crack, the heavy wood splintered. “What the hell?”
He started at the sight, but it was not just his strength that caused the air to freeze in his lungs. He turned his hand over before him. When he had been eight years old, he had been racing down the hill on his father’s bike when he’d lost control and gone straight through the butcher’s window. A piece of glass had ripped open the skin on his forearm. It had healed well enough, but it had left behind a wide scar, running from his wrist to his elbow. It had been a constant reminder to him of his foolhardiness. But it was gone!
“What? How?” He shifted back, clutching his knees to his chest. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
Only then did his eyes land on the man at his side. The man who had been there so many times in the trenches.
“Lieutenant? Where are we? What happened?”
Polidori sat on the bed.
“What happened is that you saved my life. The grenade that you saw, was heading straight my way. You got between it and me.”
The grenade. Images stirred somewhere in the back of his mind, but they were fuzzy and disjointed. He turned his attention back to Polidori who continued to speak.
“You sacrificed yourself for me, and so I have repaid the favour the best I can. But I’m afraid this is going to be hard for you to take in. It may be easier to show you than to try and explain. Tell me, how fast is your heart beating?”
Still unable to explain this strange arm that gripped his knee, it took Calin a moment to realise a question had been asked.
“My heart?”
“Yes, feel it.” Demonstrating what he wanted him to do, Polidori pressed two fingertips at the base of his thumb, on his own wrist.
Calin watched, wondering if the man had lost his mind. His knew his heart must be racing. He could feel goose bumps on his arms and a sweaty heat building on the back of his neck. And yet, when he rubbed the back of his neck it was dry, and when placed his fingers against his own skin, there was nothing. He pushed them deeper, then moved them to his neck. Then, when he found that the flesh there seemed as unresponsive as stone, he placed a palm against his chest. Again … nothing.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” he asked, pushing himself up off the bed. “What is this? Why have you brought me here? What about the war?”
“The war is over, Calin. We’ve returned to my home in London. But I am so sorry, you did not make it.”
“What?” Calin’s face wrinkled in confusion, as he shook his head. “What do you mean I didn’t make it?
The war must have sent Polidori mad, he realised. That was the only answer to what was going on. All that fighting. All that blood. He felt sorry for him. He was a good man. A hero. But he couldn’t be subjected to this madness any longer. God alone knew what harm a man in his frame of mind could inflict. Moving from the bed to the door, he pulled on the brass handle and stepped into the hallway beyond.
Once again, he was faced with opulence unlike anything he had ever encountered before. Plush, red carpets, oil paintings in massive frames, stained oak banisters, the air was filled with the smell of silver polish and beeswax. At the sight of the staircase, he quickened his pace and took the steps two at a time.
“Please don’t do this.”
Somehow, Polidori was at the bottom of the stairs and standing in front of him, despite the fact that he had just left him behind in the bedroom. A back staircase? He shrugged.
“Please, just get out of my way.”
“You will regret this.”
His teeth ground together as he glowered at his lieutenant. He had never been one for unnecessary violence. Or to break rank. But if what Polidori said was the truth, then the war was finished and he was no longer subject to military regulations anyway.
“I have to go and find Ruth.”
“You must forget her. You have to move on with your life.”
That was enough. Shoving him to the side, Calin twisted the front door handle and prepared to step outside.
The intensity of the light that blasted through the open door knocked him back in surprise. What followed was pain. Pain unlike anything he had ever experienced before, including the knife he had taken in the shoulder and the gangrene that had infected his feet in recent days. It felt as if his skin was burning. He was immediately transported back to the trenches. Mustard gas! But it couldn’t be, not here. However, glancing down at his hands, he saw blisters erupting.
“What’s happening to me?” Rooted to the spot, he watched the blisters deepen and then darken to a rotting green colour.
“For crying out loud, get inside!”
Yanking him back into the house, Polidori kicked at the open door with his heel. Calin continued to stare at the wounds that pulsed and grew as he watched.
“What is this? What have you done to me?”
3
He led Calin to a room he called the drawing room. More paintings hung on the walls and the seating here was in the form of chaise longues, with curved arms and velvet cushions. Although the place seemed clean, Calin’s nose caught the scent of stale air and cobwebs.
“We are immortal.”
Polidori stood by the fireplace as he spoke. Despite the warmth of the house, a fire was blazing in the hearth. Perhaps it was a necessary in a place like this, Calin thought. A way to prevent damp although, at that moment, he wasn’t aware of any. With a jerk of his head, he drew his attention back.
“Immortal? No. That’s not possible. That is heresy.”
“Many things do not seem possible until they are. You felt it yourself. You no longer have a pulse. Your skin blisters in the sun.”
“So, I’m what? A ghost?”
For the first time, Polidori laughed, although it was shallow and short lived.
“We have had many names throughout the centuries, although none do justice to our skills and abilities. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it is our failings that seem to define us.”
“Our failings?” An uneasy sensation was roiling through his gut. Around him the room seemed to have fallen silent as if it too was holding its breath.
“You will have to learn soon,” Polidori continued. “Better now, in the safety of these four walls.”
“Learn what?” he asked. His mind was flitting back and forth. With all the things he had seen and done, he already knew that he was no longer the same person he had been before he went to war but, whatever had happened, his place was not here, in some lavish, London mansion, it was at home, with his wife. Whatever it took to return to her, he would do it. “What do I need to learn?” he asked again.