by Devyn Quinn
“After I ditched the cops, I went on to the second body we had to check.” His fingers bunched into a fist, striking his thigh in frustration. “I was too damn late. The Kindred got there first and got the fledgling out. All I found was an empty coffin. We were definitely outnumbered tonight. Too many bodies were infected.”
Giving Reyen’s explanation half an ear, Maddox quickly dialed Sam’s alternate number. Ever the techno geek, Sam didn’t trust that one phone would be enough. He always carried two. This time he got a ring, but that was all. Nobody answered.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, snapping his phone shut.
“I think they had two in St. Louis Number Three. Should have been a hop and a skip to get them both.”
An inexplicable chill clutched at Maddox’s heart. “They could have run into trouble,” he said.
“St. Louis Number Three isn’t far from here,” Reyen said.
Maddox was already heading that way. “Let’s go,” he called over one shoulder. He didn’t look back, trusting that Reyen would keep up. Forcing his limbs into motion, he sped toward his destination. Even though he’d been wounded, the injury was nothing more than a minor annoyance.
Located some two miles from the French Quarter, the cemetery was one of the most popular with tourists. It wasn’t unusual to encounter private tour groups, and the cemetery was still very active, with burials occurring almost on a daily basis. Unless a family or organization already owned a private crypt, the waiting list to get in was a long one.
Reyen caught up with him, huffing like a steam engine running low on coal. “Shit, man. I haven’t run like that in years,” he groused.
Maddox struggled to catch his breath. “That’s what you get when you sit your big ass on a motorcycle all the time,” he chided. “We’ve all turned into a bunch of lazy slobs.”
“Speak for yourself,” Reyen grumbled.
Maddox ignored him, heading into the cemetery. The main aisles were named after other saints, while the cross aisles were named for various clerics in the Roman Catholic Church.
Even though the cemetery was huge, it didn’t take them long to locate the correct tomb. The McClain tomb was the only one with the door wide-open and a light shining from inside.
“This isn’t good news,” Reyen muttered as they headed toward it. The outside of the tomb had been desecrated; the white crosses and guardian angels bracketing the walkway had been pushed onto their sides. The stinking odor of sulfur lingered in the night air.
The stain of evil emanating around the tomb was frightening. Pulling out the rosary in his pocket, he hung it around his neck so it would be in plain sight. At least he’d have a little protection from anything lurking inside. He also gave himself a mental kick for leaving his backpack behind. Aside from the cross, he was essentially unarmed.
A grimace twitched on his lips. I’ll have to risk it, he thought, and passed under the threshold.
The signs of a violent struggle were immediately apparent to his searching gaze. Darkness closed in at the periphery of his vision, tunneling his view toward the two bodies in the tomb. They both looked too damn familiar. The horror outlining recent events was splattered all over the white marble. Appearing black in the amber glow of the lamplight, thick smears of blood surrounded the fallen.
Maddox quickly knelt beside the nearest body, which appeared to be a young female. Dismay coiled tightly in his gut. Breath freezing in his lungs, he slowly turned her over. Though a good portion of her skull had been blown away, he could still make out her features.
It’s not Jesse, was his first thankful thought. Though her skin was cool to the touch, her limbs hadn’t yet stiffened with rigor, but she was certainly beyond help.
Leaving the unfamiliar girl behind, he moved to the second body. Unfortunately, the man sprawled on his back was all too recognizable. Dagger still shoved in his gut and cell phone still open and pressed against his ear, Sam had clearly been trying to call for help when he’d lost consciousness. The yin and yang symbol he habitually carried lay halfway across the tomb, well out of reach. Maddox glanced back toward the dead girl. Kindred, no doubt.
“Shit,” Reyen cursed, stepping over the girl’s body. “Is he still alive?”
Maddox bent closer, checking for a pulse. It was there, but weak. Sam’s skin was unnaturally pale. “He’s still alive,” he announced with relief.
Reyen dropped to his knees, examining Sam’s abdomen. He tore at the stained material to get a closer look. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he assessed.
Maddox dared a glance. Several of the slices in Sam’s abdomen had already begun to heal, closing into thick red welts. “Can you get the knife out without damage?” he asked.
Reyen nodded. Taking off his jacket, he slipped out of his T-shirt. Bunching it into a thick wad, he pressed the material to Sam’s skin before easing the dagger out of its place.
At that moment Sam groaned piteously. Though his eyes remained closed, he seemed to be coming back to consciousness.
Worry pressed against Maddox’s heart for release. “Sam? Can you hear me?”
“Maddox?” Sam rasped, his eyelids fluttering open.
“Don’t let him move,” Reyen warned. “He still needs a little time to stabilize.”
Maddox laid his hands on Sam’s shoulder. “You heard Reyen,” he said, attempting to keep his voice steady and controlled. “Just be still and concentrate on healing.”
Staring up in stark misery, Sam blinked again and looked confused for a moment before his focus sharpened. A gurgle escaped his quivering mouth. He swallowed and clenched his teeth. “As if I have any choice,” he whispered.
Maddox placed a hand on Sam’s forehead, silently willing his strength into his wounded friend. Even though it was a wishful gesture, it was better than sitting there feeling totally helpless. “What happened?” he asked, already fearing the answer he dared not think about. “Where’s Jesse?”
Still more than a little dazed and weakened by his blood loss, Sam closed his eyes a moment before continuing. “They jumped us,” he answered in a shaking voice.
Maddox bent closer, straining to hear. “Who?”
Sam drew in a pained breath and moistened dry lips with the tip of his tongue. “Consanguines . . . ,” he said, then forcefully cleared his throat. He tried to lift an arm, pointing vaguely toward the coffin. “We got . . . the fledge . . . but the Kindred . . .”
Reyen grimaced as if a sour taste filled his mouth. “The dead girl?”
Sam pulled in a painful breath. His eyelids fluttered, but he forced them up again. “She attacked me. Jesse shot”—his head lolled to one side, then to the other—“but they had us.” Mouth wide-open, he breathed laboriously for a few seconds, then locked eyes with Maddox. “They took her . . . ,” he finished ominously.
The first thought through Maddox’s mind was the one that immediately popped out of his mouth. “We have to get her back.”
Chapter 16
After a fitful night of disjointed dreams and tossing and turning, Jesse woke to a new morning. Despite her initial grogginess, she sensed she was in a strange place, somewhere quite out of the norm. Pieces of the strange nightmare she’d had last night reared up to taunt her. Menacing voices whispered from the abysmal darkness inside her skull. She was vaguely aware of her mind working to establish her surroundings. Then suddenly, a rush of unbidden images overwhelmed her.
Each was worse than the last.
By the time the final pieces unspooled across her mind’s eye, a gasp of horror tore from her lips. “Sam!”
Jesse struggled to sit up. The cool softness of silk sheets slid across her bare skin. Barely aware of her nudity, she cast her gaze around the unfamiliar surroundings. Thick, heavy draperies hung over the windows, effectively shutting out most of the sun’s illumination. Shadows flourished throughout the spacious chamber.
She had the distinct, sickening feeling something was watching her. Cool incense-laced air stirred to her left, as
if someone had passed through the space.
“Je . . . sssss . . . ee.” Her name was a hiss on invisible lips. The zephyrus-like voice caressed her. She’d heard it before; she knew it well. Except this time the undertone had a threatening quality.
“Is anyone there?”
But no one answered. The silence and absence of familiarity only served to magnify her anxiety.
She looked around. Enough illumination filtered through the drapes to give her an idea of the room’s interior. Luxurious white carpeting stretched out like a glacier. The walls were covered with plush, rich wallpaper in an embossed toile ivory print. Fashioned out of heavy dark wood, the furniture looked old. An ample hearth stood ready for a fire.
Jesse felt the invisible observer’s presence. As if on cue, the door to her room ghosted open on silent hinges. A familiar figure stood outlined in sharp relief at the threshold; pale, blond, and wraithlike.
Jesse gasped as recognition slammed into her. “Amanda.” The single word slipped past lips that had gone numb. At the same time the demon inside her stirred. It knew one of its own.
Her twin slipped into the room, gliding toward the bed. She was dressed in straight-legged jeans that had deliberate tears and a tank top covered by a bejeweled black T-shirt, also deliberately ripped by the designer. Kicky heels with ankle straps completed her fashionably young ensemble.
Jesse immediately recognized the clothes as Shadow Chic Goth apparel. The T-shirt was emblazoned with the image of a decaying skull clutched in a clawed hand. Splotches of red were meant to indicate clots of blood. It was just the sort of stuff Amanda loved to wear.
A year had passed since Amanda’s mortal death, yet she walked again, forever young, forever frozen in time. It was unnerving to look at her dead twin. This thing, she reminded herself through a shiver, is not Amanda.
As the demon animating her twin’s corpse neared, its strangely colorless lips curved into an upward arc, but there was sparkle in the depths of her eyes. Amanda’s pale blue-gray irises had changed, taking on a strange, shimmery silver color.
“Jesse,” she murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed and extending a hand. “I’ve waited so long for you to come home.” Her voice was clear enough, but it was tinged with . . . What? Layers of time? It was a ridiculous notion, but she couldn’t shake off the impressions bombarding her mind. Time and darkness were somber companions, feeding off each other.
Time and darkness.
Jesse felt cool fingers entwine around her own. Amanda’s skin felt strangely rubbery, having none of the elasticity or warmth of a living human being. Recoiling, she immediately pulled her hand away. “This isn’t my home,” she grated. “And you’re not my sister.”
This thing, this creature instantly repulsed her. Her sister had a bubbly, lively personality, always joking, laughing, and kidding around. Yes, it was true that Amanda’s body still walked the face of this earth. But the demon presently animating her corpse was a soulless abomination.
Amanda’s lips didn’t deviate from the cool smile the demon had pasted on her face. “Of course I am,” she corrected in the same murmur. “For we are all birthed from the same dark master.”
“I’m not like you!” Jesse spat. “I’m still alive. I still have a soul and a mind of my own.”
A sardonic smile twitched on Amanda’s lips. “I know what you are,” she crooned in that same flat tone. “We’ve all been waiting for you to come.”
Scooting toward the edge of the bed, Jesse kept the sheet pulled high. “I’m not what you think I am.” After she’d been attacked by the vampire women, she remembered nothing. She didn’t know how she’d come to be in this place, or what had happened to her clothes. Everything was a big black void.
Thousands of questions teemed through her unquiet mind, but she had no answers. She wasn’t even sure whether Sam Chen was dead or alive. Knowing the Telave, he was probably very much dead. She hoped he hadn’t suffered.
Amanda smiled, but her features held no warmth or liveliness. “Oh, but you are,” was all she said.
Trying to reason with the undead was maddening. The thing reminded her of one of those dolls with a string at the back of its neck. When the string was pulled, the toy would spit out some inane remark, usually something chirpy and positive. Sam had told her it took at least a decade for a fledgling to develop a personality of its own, to learn to think and react the way a human did. The demon inside Amanda had risen only a year ago. Despite its outward appearance, it was still very much a child.
She looked around for a way out. A window was a few feet away. If she had to, she would go right through the glass.
Taking care to make no fast movements, Jesse slowly slipped off the bed. “You’re mistaken,” she said evenly. “I’m nothing like you.” She tucked the sheet around her body to conceal her nudity. Though she and Amanda had shared the same room all their lives and had often seen each other naked, she was uncomfortable with the idea that this thing should see her so vulnerable and exposed.
Rushing toward the window, she pulled aside the drapes. The bright morning sun flooded over her skin. Below her second-floor window was an immaculately groomed garden, surrounded by high stone walls and a towering menagerie of trees. It was a stunning view. But she had no chance of ever seeing it from the outside.
The windows, she noted with a frown, were barred. Even if she was brave enough to throw herself through the glass panes, she wouldn’t get very far. Like the bird in the gilded cage, she’d obviously have comfort, but no freedom.
Amanda leveled a look at her, one penetrating enough to make her fidget. Her twin’s unblinking stare and silence were filled with accusation before she slipped off the bed. “Did you think it would be that easy?”
Silently cursing her stupidity, Jesse pressed a palm against the glass. If only she’d listened to Sam, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. He’d warned her that the Kindred were just as dangerous, if not more so, than the undead.
A thought niggled in the back of her mind. Turning away from the window, she said, “I thought you things were supposed to be asleep in the daytime.” Knowing how lethargic she often felt during the high heat of the day, she wondered how something that shunned the sun’s light could even be up and around.
“It is always a new day somewhere in the world.” To demonstrate, Amanda stepped into a shaft of light. Unlike the skin of a living being, hers did not warm or flush from the change in temperature. She remained pale and wan, more of a translucent phantom than anything alive and breathing. “By day, our energy wanes, but we are able to move around freely. Unless we are wounded, exposure causes little damage.” One corner of her mouth twitched. “We are still beings made of human flesh.”
Jesse vehemently shook her head. “You’re nothing but body thieves,” she accused.
Her demonic twin raised her hands, sliding her palms around Jesse’s face. Her silver eyes narrowed, glinting ominously. “We have the right to survive”—she chuckled softly, then brushed her lips across Jesse’s in a feathery kiss—“and the right to take what we want, when we want it.”
It was all Jesse could do not to bolt from the window and run from the room. Her twin’s touch was stirring wild sensations behind her breast. Her sister’s strangely masculine aggression expertly strummed Jesse’s sexual awareness. Her bones were becoming rubbery. Heat suffused her.
“Stop it!” she cried as embarrassment surged through her. “Don’t touch me!”
The demon Amanda persisted. It nibbled at Jesse’s left earlobe while its right hand cupped and kneaded one of Jesse’s breasts beneath the silky sheet. “I could taste you here and now,” the creature whispered into her ear.
Jesse felt a stab of revulsion. With a forceful shove, she slammed her palms against Amanda’s chest and extricated herself from the creature’s hold. “You sick bitch!” she fumed, then swiped an arm across her mouth to erase the feel of dead lips against hers. “You were my sister,” she whispered.
To
her chagrin, the demon threw back its head and laughed, emitting a high tittering sound. Still clutching the sheet, Jesse knotted her fists. “I’ll kill you,” she said between clenched teeth.
The smirk on Amanda’s face mocked her anger. “Ah, my sister, you’ll do nothing of the sort. You belong to us now. You always have.”
Without hesitation, Jesse replied, “No. I never have and I never will.” Suddenly, she thought she heard a voice calling from far away, but the words were too indistinct to recognize.
The Amanda creature dealt her a brooding look. At the same time, a vivid green vein pulsed at its left temple. The demon winced as if in pain. Lifting a hand toward its head, it stopped short of making contact. An immediate change came over its demeanor. “Mistress is summoning us,” it stated in a flat, emotionless tone. “She is ready to see you.”
“No. I won’t go anywhere.”
The demon gave her a narrowed look, which heightened the unnaturally silvery sheen of its pupils. “Unless you wish Mistress to send her servants to do it for you, you will present yourself before her as she wishes.”
Jesse made a futile bid to appear calmer than she felt. She didn’t like the way Amanda’s features hardened. “I can’t,” she snapped. “I don’t have any clothes on.”
“You are to wear these.” The creature walked toward a large mirrored armoire. Though its reflection was perfectly cast in the shiny depths of the glass, there was one distinctive feature that failed to appear.
A chill passed through Jesse, and darkness appeared at the perimeter of her vision. It closed in, tunneling her view of Amanda’s head. Her twin’s eyes were blank, black holes, as though the sockets had been carved out and the skull’s contents drained away.
As if disbelieving what she saw, Jesse blinked hard and shook her head. Damn. That wasn’t just odd to look at—it was downright scary.
The prospect of actually becoming such a creature was frightening. At the same time, she feared death and its corrosive state; the rotting away of the flesh and the insects that feasted on it. The mere image of it happening to her wasn’t anything she wanted to think about, either. She wanted life. She wanted to live.