Cursed Relic: (Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  I reached inside the pouch on my leather belt and pulled out a small glass vial, popped open the cork and swallowed the contents inside. It was a potion Arthur made for me in case something went wrong when I was hunting. Or if a vampire managed to get a hold of my gun. An antidote to the potion lacing my own bullets. Immortality was useful in healing me when I needed it but hunting required a quicker recovery than I was used to. Thank goodness Arthur recognized that.

  I started regaining some feeling in my legs. But that caused the searing pain in my side to reignite, reminding me that I had been shot. Twice. By Christophe no less! And that even with immortality, healing from such a wound wasn’t a quick process.

  ‘I was right. Tobias found a way to work against me through Christophe.’

  I was in too much pain to make it the five blocks down the road to my Jeep. I’d have to break into one the cars close by.

  I reached for the cylinder on my side and inched over to a car parked on the street, ready to use the hilt to break a window. People were still running about, unable to see me. I could feel their fear overwhelming my body, taking over my senses and spreading their panic straight through to my bones.

  ‘I have to get out of here.’

  Someone struck me hard as they ran and I toppled to the ground with a loud grunt.

  I rolled over and saw just how wrong I was. It wasn’t a person knocking me down. It was the curly haired blonde vampire I saw at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. There was a ball of fire swirling about in her hand.

  ‘Is every vampire in this city a day walker? There aren’t even enough kruxa left to kill!’

  Her entire face lit up in a strange orange glow as flames started to swirl around in her hand.

  ‘And they all appear to have powers over elemental magic as well.’

  Which could only mean one thing. Someone was supplying these vampires hiding out in the rural regions of the Rocky Mountains with vixra blood.

  ‘Tobias. You son of a bitch!’

  She threw the flames right in my direction.

  ‘Holy god! She can see me! She knows where I am even with the shadow charm!’

  I fell to the ground and felt the flames graze over my back. My jacket managed to protect me but I knew the material was being burned away. I tried throwing both my arms out in front of me to stop her with my magic but it was no use. My left shoulder was in so much pain that I couldn’t move it. I’d have to make do with one hand.

  ‘You’re not the only one who uses vixra blood, bitch.’

  I let the luminous glow of my magic shoot through my palm. And with all the force I could possibly summon I knocked her clean off her feet. But it wasn’t enough. Even with vixra magic and Arthur’s potion in my system, I was losing too much blood. I was starting to feel dizzy. And I wasn’t sure how much longer I would have before passing out.

  ‘Why am I not healing fast enough? It never takes this long.’

  “The sword,” Kitty screeched. “Use the sword!”

  “I’m too weak,” I mumbled.

  Kitty rained down over the vampire and started attacking with her long talons.

  “No!” I screamed.

  But thankfully Kitty was too fast for her. The girl shot more flames in the air toward Kitty but she flew off just in time. All she managed to accomplish was freaking out those who were left on the street running for cover anywhere they could find. Now they had more fears than a gunman. There was a woman in the streets with what they probably thought was some sort of flame thrower.

  “Let’s make this more interesting,” she said, taking her opposite hand and placing it before her as though she was going to blow fairy dust on me. Far from it. A gust of air blew straight through me and collapsed my shadow charm. Not that it was too difficult. The vixra blood was rapidly leaving my system with all the blood I lost.

  I was exposed in the middle of a street with Secret Service Agents running about. With a vampire wielding elemental magic no less. Somehow she used her elemental magic to manipulate the wind and completely disarm my shadow charm. Crafty.

  ‘And I thought Arthur was mad about the concert. Wait until he sees this displayed all over the news.’

  Kitty slammed back into her while she was distracted and blinded her for as long as she could before more flames shot up in the air. To my surprise, she avoided them with ease as she spiraled up. Just long enough for me to hobble to the driver’s side of a nearby Toyota Camry. I took out the cylinder from my belt and broke the driver’s side window. Then I reached inside and unlocked it. I used what was left of the vixra magic in my system to jump-start the engine and took off as fast as the gas pedal would allow.

  Through the rearview mirror I saw the vampire light half the street on fire trying to catch me with the flames as Secret Service Agents surrounded her with their guns and started shooting. She ran through their bullets completely unharmed only to leap over them and bolt right for the car with unfathomable speed. I didn’t have enough magic to stop her. She looked completely insane. Should could have bitten into any of the humans in the area to get her fill of blood but it wasn’t good enough. She wanted mine. And she was already a day walker.

  ‘What’s wrong with this girl? Did Victor personally give her orders to kill me? Or am I just her plaything? A new conquest?’

  Her body shot vertically into the air and disappeared. I expected her to land on top of the car. But she never did. She practically vanished. And I was left wondering what the hell happened until I heard the distinct sound of a helicopter flying above the buildings. Along with police cars that were chasing me.

  It must have been a sight for them. Seeing a woman shoot fire through her hand then run off with supernatural speed. And yet, they all circled around the car and chased me down the street with their sirens blaring.

  ‘Victor set another trap. This was a trap to ensnare me! He lured the police and the Secret Service to think I’m the culprit.’

  The potion inside the bullets was enough to do damage even with the antidote. I still wasn’t healing fast enough. Blood was spilling out of my side and my shoulder. I could feel the car starting to slow down as I began losing consciousness. My foot was easing off the pedal more and more no matter how hard I tried to keep the car going. There was nothing I could do.

  My head slammed into the steering wheel as the car ran right into a parked car at a street light. I was left there with broken glass from the windshield shattered all over my bleeding body, wondering if I had broken a leg from the impact or if the wound in my side was simply pulsating down into my leg.

  Red and blue lights flashed through the blur of my vision. I was surrounded by men with guns pointed right at me.

  ‘It’s not like I can run, gentlemen. You take two bullet wounds and a shot of a paralysis potion. We’ll see how you hold up.’

  The driver’s side door burst open. A pair of strong hands latched onto me and dragged my body out of the car from under my arms. I could barely keep my eyes open let alone summon my magic. It was too weak to even warn me of danger close by.

  My mind got foggy. The images in my mind appeared warped and distorted.

  When I opened my eyes the last thing I saw was four men getting out of an armored car in black suits that covered them from head to toe carrying handguns and sniper rifles in their arms as they pulled me into a car. And these weren’t regular suits. They were the same suits I saw the military convoy wearing in the vision I had in Tobias’s bathtub.

  Then my mind gave way to the lightweight sensation of being carried elsewhere.

  ‘These men know about vampires. They came prepared.’

  I was being taken away but I didn’t know where.

  I had been discovered but I didn’t know by who.

  And I had been betrayed. I knew exactly who’s feet I could lay that one on.

  And worse, I wasn’t sure if the vixra would even be bothered enough to rescue me.

  7

  The woods before me were dreary. Fog laced th
e ground and curled over the random fallen branches and grass covering the moist dirt. There was a peace to the silence until the sound of heavy footsteps slamming against the earth broke the harmony of the early morning.

  A man was running with all his might. Air heaved in and out of his lungs as he pushed himself harder with each passing second. Only once he was deep inside the forest where light dwindled into darkness from the trees covering the rising sun did he allow himself to stop and look back.

  I could sense his desperation. His fear. It coursed through me and spiraled out of his body like a tidal wave colliding with my consciousness.

  No one was chasing him. At least not from what I could see. But the one thing I could distinctly make out was his face.

  It was Tobias. Only there was one quality to him that had changed.

  He was human. Mortal. And frightened beyond his wildest dreams.

  Gold magic seeped through his palm and into his hand. He was ready to fire it at anyone who got close enough.

  ‘Tobias was a kruxa?’

  Something stirred in the trees. But not at his eye level. Above.

  He glanced up to see something moving from tree to tree. He was being hunted. Not by an animal but a beast of a completely different nature.

  A vampire.

  I could see him in the distance as he swiftly jumped down from the trees where he had been leaping from one to the other. Watching as his prey ran helplessly, hoping that he could escape if he just pushed himself a little harder. The vampire was enjoying the hunt. He watched as hope left Tobias’s eyes and he started realizing just how bleak his future was about to become. If he was granted a future at all. I knew death would have been a mercy compared to what was about to happen.

  The vampire whispered through the trees, allowing his voice to reach Tobias and only cause more fear to grip onto him and refuse to let go.

  I couldn’t make out his words. Out of all the language I tried to master with the extended time I was given on this earth, Latin wasn’t one of them. It was a dead language. And therefore no use to me. Only now was I wishing I took some time to learn it. Because whatever the vampire said, it terrified Tobias to his core.

  Tobias looked so strange to me as a mortal. Seeing fear in his eyes and his hair down to his shoulders, and even stranger was that he was wearing animal furs with his face painted in blue streaks. He was still strong. Still a warrior by even modern standards. But he was defeated. Lost. Wishing there was a way out of this and seeing no other option but to keep running. Mortal swords couldn’t kill the being chasing him down. And he couldn’t outrun him.

  His emotions were barreling out of him. I could sense each one as they passed through his mind and seeped through his skin. His pride wouldn’t permit him to stand there and gently take being slaughtered. It was against his honor to run. He wouldn’t do it anymore. He wanted to fight. To stand at the moment of his death and defend himself. He withdrew his sword, knowing how pointless it was. And yet, he did so anyway.

  The vampire sped toward him with a speed Tobias couldn’t fathom or even catch with his mortal eyes. The vampire got closer and appeared before him. Tobias lurched backward in surprise. And if I had been there in physical form, I had little doubt that I would have done the same. Not because the man was a vampire. And not because of his speed. He wore armor that was only recognizable to me after having seen too many historical films. The snob in me loved tearing them apart for accuracy. The armor was Roman. The man was of high rank. Perhaps a general. And his face was one I instantly recognized.

  It was Victor.

  He took a few steps closer to Tobias. With each lingering step forward Tobias took a few back until he stumbled over a branch to the ground.

  Victor didn’t give him time to get back up. He jumped in the air and landed sprawled out over Tobias’s body.

  He said something more. Words I didn’t understand. But Tobias sure as hell did because he started struggling with all the strength he possessed. A part of him knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man hunting him wasn’t human. And no matter what he did, there was no winning. There was only defeat.

  Victor grabbed Tobias’s long hair on top of his head and forced the side of his face into the ground, leaving his neck wide open and exposed. He dug his fangs deep inside Tobias’s neck. Tobias tried to scream in pain.

  Just when I thought Victor had his fill and might finish him off, he leaned back up and pulled away the armor over his wrist, shattering it to the ground in pieces. Then he sank his own fangs into his wrist until there was a gaping wound. He let the blood drop directly into Tobias’s neck wound, filling the gash he made with blood until Tobias’s veins started accepting the new blood and absorbed it.

  Tobias wasn’t moving. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he might be dead.

  I didn’t know much about the process of changing a mortal into a vampire. Or a kruxa in Tobias’s case. All I really knew was that witchlings who became vampires were slightly different from humans. It took them longer to recover. The change wasn’t automatic. It took time for the heart to start beating again even though the vampire blood was coursing through the veins at a rapid rate. I could hear it. Victor’s blood was already charging through Tobias’s bloodstream and shifting his entire life form and physicality into something new.

  Then Victor stood up and reached for Tobias’s limp body, throwing him over his shoulder and carting him away.

  The sun was starting to get higher through the trees. And Tobias wouldn’t survive the change if he was exposed to sunlight before feeding on a kruxa and killing one.

  I never saw where Victor was taking him or how fast the change happened. I only saw bright lights invading my sight as I slowly started to stir and wake up from the dream that felt more like a glimpse into the past.

  ‘Weirdest vision ever.’

  Every once in a while I got a glimpse into my past lives. Just snippets, like a movie scene opening up before me and then getting swiftly tucked away by a curtain closing me off to the tides of time. But rarely did I see someone else’s past. Normally it was only things that involved my life. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how this vision involved me.

  “You’re coming around finally,” a voice greeted my ears with unwelcome sharpness.

  I shuddered from the sound of the deep voice as something broke through my skin and sunk into the flesh in my right arm.

  “Ouch!” I whined. It felt like a bee sting. Then the sting gradually moved down to my elbow and through my hand.

  My vision started to clear but the room was still too bright for my eyes to adjust quickly. I could barely open them. The walls were white. That much I could make out. I was lying down. And the more I tried to move, the tighter the contractions around my wrists and ankles became.

  “What the hell?” I muttered.

  “Shhh,” a male voice urged me to be quiet as I continued to struggle.

  The restraints weren’t the normal sort. They were made of magic. Blue magic that wrapped around my wrists and ankles like a rope made of nothing but electricity. It was locksin. A tool the vixra invented in the 12th century to help capture vampires. I’d seen witchlings use it before to tie people up and restrain prisoners. But never had I seen it in the hands of humans against a witchling.

  ‘First time for everything.’

  “Where did you get that?” I demanded.

  “Oh, you’d be shocked by how much we’ve been able to obtain. I’ve learned a great deal about your kind over the last few months.”

  My eyes finally got adjusted to the bright lights and I saw a man standing over me, drawing blood from my arm. But he wasn’t using a normal syringe. It had a full bottle on the end of it. He was withdrawing some of my magic along with my blood.

  ‘No wonder it stung so much. How is he even doing that?’

  My magic spiraled in a beautiful tornado of gold light in the bottle as he took it to a nearby table and set it aside, then he gently dabb
ed a cloth over the spot where he punctured me only to find that the puncture wound was gone.

  His eyes lit up through his glasses. “Fascinating. You do have something in common with the others.”

  He was an older man. Maybe in his early sixties. His hair was a mixture of speckled gray and white down to his shoulders. And his face was filled with curiosity. Not the kind that leads to great discoveries. The sort that leads a man to do horrible things because he assumes the ends will justify the means. Or maybe that was just me reading into the excitement seeping from his body.

  “Others? What others?” I demanded.

  “The other vampires. But you are not one of them, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  ‘You don’t know nearly as much as you think. And I’m not about to give you more answers.’

  “Their blood didn’t have the same qualities as yours. Why is that?”

  I lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling while trying to avoid looking into the harsh bright light above me.

  Many kruxa had been captured over the centuries and tortured for more information about our kind. I wouldn’t dishonor them by giving in so easily.

  “I can make you agreeable, you know,” he said with a little too much confidence.

  I didn’t say a word. But I did grunt in pain. He tightened the locksin around my wrists. It sent bright blue sparks into my skin making me jerk away, which naturally only made it tighter.

  Lucky for me, the way my body healed so fast allowed me to recover just enough to refuse his questions.

  I heard screaming from a short distance away. Whoever it was had pipes on them, that’s for sure.

  “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “They’ll take her back to her cell in a moment or two. She won’t be in pain for long.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You answer my questions, I’ll answer one of yours.”

  I looked up at him with a furrowed brow. I didn’t need him to answer my questions. The blonde vampire never landed on the roof of the Toyota Camry I stole. He had her in his clutches as well.