by Keary Taylor
* * *
The next night, at two in the morning, Gunter bursts through the doors of the Great Hall, where Cyrus and I were meeting with Dorian and Malachi. He’s breathing hard, a heavy sweat on his brow.
“They’ve returned,” he says, his eyes jumping from one face to another. “They’re in the village just through the canyon.”
“How many of them?” I ask.
“I’d say around three hundred of them,” he says.
All of them.
“I want to see them,” I say, grabbing the sword laying on the table and slinging it around my waist. “Take me to them.”
Cyrus is instantly on his feet as well, followed by Dorian and Malachi. “Stay,” Cyrus growls at them. “I need you two to be here in case anything happens.”
Without another backward glance, Cyrus and I follow Gunter.
We’re more silent on foot than in a vehicle. We’re less noticeable creeping through the woods than in the helicopter. So, across the valley we dart, cutting around the stationed army. Through the canyon, off the road in the trees we race.
Gunter leads us along a mountain ridge, and off in the distance, I can see dim, glowing lights.
We round the ridge, and a rocky outcropping juts through the trees, providing the perfect overlook of the smaller valley. The village so tiny I can hardly call it that. It consists only of an inn, a gas station, a postal office, and the airport. There are only a dozen homes here, and every one of those occupants is employed in the businesses they’re surrounded by.
My eyes widen. My heart wants to stop.
There are so many bodies down below. Not one hundred, not two. There has to be at least three hundred of them down there.
They mill about the street, the main one that cuts through the heart of the village. They wander in and out of the homes, the businesses.
I see a human woman down there, limp and slack in a man’s arms as he drinks her blood. He passes her onto a woman, who drinks deeply. From the paleness of the human woman’s skin, I know there won’t be any recovering from how much they’ve taken.
As I look around, I realize there is more than one human being passed around. I can see five others from here.
I can only imagine the others are dead already.
They’ve taken over the entire village, and wiped out the human population.
“Any eyes on Lorenzo?” I whisper, barely audible to even my own ears.
Gunter shakes his head. “We have our best snipers watching the area. They all know what he looks like. At the first sight of him, they’ve been ordered to take him out.”
My eyes search the crowd, looking for any signs of the man with the dark hair and features, and golden-jade eyes. He’s nowhere to be seen. But as I search, looking over all those half-siblings of mine, I realize something.
“That has to be more than three hundred individuals down there,” I say. “Doesn’t…doesn’t that look like more than three hundred?”
The two of them are quiet for a good thirty seconds as they try to mentally calculate.
While I wait for their conclusion, my eyes whip to the right when a flash of light drops from the sky.
A plane dips toward the airport that isn’t visible from this vantage point.
No one travels into this airport unless they’re somehow connected to Roter Himmel.
“You’re right,” Cyrus says. “My rough estimate is closer to 380.”
I look back at the crowd, and my blood feels cold. “Lorenzo told me he has 308 children from around the world. We’ve killed twelve of them already. There’s the thirty-two Royals who betrayed us. But who…who are the others?”
More lights above us draw my eyes up. I see another airplane circling the valley, beginning its descent.
“Who the hell is coming?” I hiss. My heart is pounding and my brain is screaming a million miles an hour.
“Perhaps Lorenzo lied about how many children he has,” Gunter suggests.
My nerves are strung out. I’m ready to snap at any moment. And hopefully when I blow, I take every one of them out with me.
“Come on,” I say quietly as I slink back into the trees. “We need to see what’s going on at that airport.”
We’re incredibly careful. We slip behind trees. We melt into the shadows of the night. I take to the branches. I don’t even breathe as we slip around the town’s edges and head to the outskirts where the airport is located.
The three of us take position beside a hangar, silently slipping along the edge of the metal building, until the airstrip comes into view.
The three jets are taxied, side by side. And there, at the base of them, a good two hundred yards away, I see a crowd.
There are twenty-one individuals gathered together, talking in low voices.
“Do either of you recognize any of them?” I whisper.
Cyrus and Gunter both shake their heads.
Falling silent, we each strain our eyes, trying to pick up on the voices.
“…has been able to speak with their leader,” one voice faintly floats to my ears. “They won’t even say his name. But they all stem from the same father, obvious by their looks. It has to be him.”
“Are they causing any problems for us?” another sounds across the runway.
There’s a muffle I can’t quite interpret. “So far, they only have questions about our intent.”
There’s laughing, and it makes my skin crawl.
“From what little we’ve overheard, their goal is the same as ours.”
All of my internal organs disappear with the words. Automatically, my eyes flick to Cyrus, who looks at me with similar wide, but ready to fight eyes.
Word spread far and wide of King Cyrus’ death. And with it, all the greedy tyrants came out to play.
We not only have Lorenzo to worry about, but whoever these people are, as well.
The meeting seemingly over, the group before us heads toward the road that cuts into the village.
With a dark look at one another, Cyrus turns to Gunter.
“The stakes were just raised ten fold,” Cyrus breathes. “Double the amount of spies. Collect every word spoken in that village. I want hourly reports.”
“Yes, your majesty,” he responds with a deep bow.
Not another word, Cyrus and I streak like lightning back to the castle.
Chapter 6
I stalk through the doors to Cyrus’ office and fling the first thing my hands find across the room. The glass jar filled with teeth shatters against the far wall.
Teeth. From all the liars who have crossed Cyrus’ path over the centuries.
“This is insane,” I hiss. “This is so damn insane and it just keeps getting worse and worse!”
I seethe, placing my hands on Cyrus’ desk, glowering at its polished surface.
I’m overflowing with anger. With kinetic, destructive energy. I could burn down all the forests that surround me with the heat washing over me.
I look to the side and see Cyrus close the doors behind him. He studies me with those intense eyes as he leans back against the door.
And suddenly, I need an outlet. I need to pour some acid out of me.
Cyrus knows what’s coming. I can see it in his eyes as I stalk across the room. I see his body tense and prepare for it. I see the hunger and excitement alight in his eyes as I close the distance between us.
My hands instantly tangle into his hair and I roughly pull his face to mine. Cyrus’ lips aren’t gentle when they connect with mine, and I don’t hesitate in taking his lower lip between my teeth.
His hands go to my hips and I just don’t have any kind of patience right now. I climb him, assisted as his hands clamp onto my ass and he lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist, pressing myself against him tightly.
A needy, greedy grunt works its way out of my chest, over my lips. I wrap my arms behind his neck, shifting my kisses from his lips to his neck, nipping and sucking as I work my way across his skin.
Cyrus carries me across the office. With a sweep of his arm across his desk, he clears everything from it and lays me on my back across it.
Even better.
He can press himself all the harder into my center now.
We’re both angry right now. We’re both filled to the brim with revenge and spite. And we’re taking it out on one another’s bodies.
And it’s everything.
My hands dig into Cyrus’ shirt, and a moment later, it shreds to pieces. I smile as he meets my eyes for a moment, and I let the pieces fall to the floor.
Cyrus lifts the hem of my own shirt and I let my head fall back and my eyes slide closed as his lips come to my stomach.
“Cyrus,” I moan as he works his way up, pushing the fabric further up my torso as he climbs higher.
“Say it again, Logan,” he growls against my skin.
I fist my fingers in his hair, making sure he can’t escape. “I want you, Cyrus,” I pant. In one quick movement, he splits my shirt, ripping it clean in half. He flings the fabric across the room. “I never wanted anyone else in my entire life. Because every other man was too boring. To calm. To clean.”
Cyrus kisses his way over my bra, up between my breasts. His hand comes to one side of my throat as he licks his way up the other side of it.
“I want a king who can burn down the entire damn world,” I breathe, hardly able to speak through the raging desire inside of me. “I want you, Cyrus.” My hands travel south, reaching for the belt around his waist. Greedily, I pull at it, unlatching the leather. “I want you, now.”
“I will take you, Logan,” Cyrus growls against my skin. I feel his fangs lengthen, and a small prick as they pierce my skin. He climbs up on top of the desk, sliding me forward to make room.
Nearly falling off the edge, I throw out a hand to brace myself, all reason in me gone, replaced entirely by need and desire, when my hand falls to the chair at the desk. And it meets something sharp, and something else wet…and hairy.
Annoyed at the distraction, my eyes momentarily dart to the chair, even as Cyrus undoes my own belt and the button of my pants.
But a scream erupts from my lungs, over my lips.
My hand is smeared with blood.
And sitting on the chair is Cyrus’ crown. And carefully placed in the center of it, is a bloody scalp of snow-white hair.
I know whose it is immediately. Only one member of Court has hair that void of color.
Fredrick.
Confused, Cyrus rises onto his hands, and the moment his eyes meet the scalp bloodying his chair, his face pales.
“Moab,” he breathes.
My lungs are swallowed up by the roiling pit of acid that is my stomach.
Cyrus pulls me to my feet and I walk around the desk, staring down at the white hair on the chair.
I shake my head. I try to speak, but the words get caught in my throat. I swallow once. But my mouth is too dry.
I’m flung back in time, falling through nearly twenty centuries.
“He’s still alive?” I finally manage to speak.
Cyrus reaches forward as if he’s going to grab the scalp of his assistant, but seems to think better of it, instead, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Do you remember?” he asks, “when we interrogated a man over some peculiar deaths? When you wore Edith’s face?”
I nod as I fight the urge to vomit. I do remember. I remember it very specifically as Cyrus interrogated and tortured the man.
“He implied Moab had escaped. That what had happened during that time was him.”
I search my memory for what came after that. But all I can find is darkness.
I know what that means.
It means I died another death shortly after the memory.
“I went to the tomb and confirmed myself,” Cyrus says. “He’d somehow escaped and has been missing for the past 367 years.”
“How?” I breathe. My mind is tracing a path mentally, going through tunnels and secret passages through the castle.
Down into the dark.
Down into the heart of the mountain.
“I still do not know,” Cyrus confesses.
Long ago, long, long ago, Cyrus and I had a son. After he Resurrected, after he forsook us and turned his back against every one of our fears, he went out into the world. And his mission was to create others like him.
He succeeded.
He conceived and different mothers bore him seven sons and thirteen daughters.
In the end it came to the great war. A division split. Those who stood with us, who knew we had to remain hidden, in secret, if we did not wish to be eliminated. And then there were those who sided with our son. Who wanted to take over the world.
Only two of our grandsons sided with Cyrus and I. Dorian and Malachi, the third and seventh sons.
Five sided with their father.
Two were killed.
Two were banished. They left Roter Himmel in shame, and were killed only years later by some of the loyal.
But the other, the first born to our son, Moab—Cyrus never let him escape.
Deep in the castle, down a tunnel that allows not a sliver of light, located behind a locked gate, there is a lightless room.
In the floor, there is a tomb.
It is hewn from the granite of the mountain, a hole only three feet deep and six feet long. There is a boulder that rests over the top of it, so many thousands of pounds that it takes six vampires to move it, inch by inch.
When the war was over, when our son was dead, and the disloyal disowned and chased off, Cyrus took his firstborn grandson, and with his most trusted soldiers, he laid Moab in the tomb and closed it up.
For over sixteen centuries Moab had been trapped in the belly of the mountain.
Vampires are immortal. They cannot die without a stake through the heart, or a beheading—save Cyrus. So he lay in the ground for centuries, starving and withering into desiccation.
But somehow, when I was Edith, Moab escaped.
Moab was the most devoted to his father of all my son’s children. The first born, all he wished for was to help his father rise to power and fame. He worshiped his father.
It was in his very name.
Moab—Hebrew for of his father.
In life, in the horror leading up to the war, Moab had his signature kill proof.
The beheading and scalping of any vampires who stood in his way.
“It seems we have not one enemy to wipe from the face of the earth,” Cyrus says solemnly, “but two.”
Chapter 7
Fredrick’s body is found discarded down by the lake. His head is nowhere to be found. The guards go into lockdown mode, searching for any signs of Moab or how he, or one of his spies, entered the castle.
None are found.
Within twenty-four hours, there are another hundred Born outside the city. Our spies report there still have been no signs of Lorenzo, or Moab. Wherever they are, they’re hiding well. They’re being careful.
And one week since this all started, the world goes to a new level of insanity.
“Come again?” Cyrus says, raising an eyebrow at Brynn.
“They’re all fighting,” she says. “So far there are only a few that have actually been killed, but there’s definitely a rift. A division. Lorenzo’s children and those who rallied with Moab, they don’t exactly seem to like each other.”
Neither of us can believe it. So together, Cyrus and I once more carefully sneak our way to the settlement, watching from our lookout point.
She was right. Down below, the masses argue in the streets. Fists fly. Guns and swords are drawn.
I can physically see a split happening. It’s easy to pick out Lorenzo’s children. They all have the same eyes as me, that same bright, golden-jade. Apparently, it’s a heavily dominant trait. And the others, they are pushed to the edges of the small town. They take up residence on the airport side.
It’s advantageous. They continue to have more Born ar
riving almost hourly.
Not daring to speak here where we may be overheard, where there are likely scouts and spies circling their encampment, Cyrus and I head back to Roter Himmel.
“There can only be one reason why they’re waiting to attack,” I say as we walk up the road back to the castle. “They know they’re outnumbered right now with Matthias’ army. They’re waiting for more reinforcements to arrive.”
We step through the castle gates and head back toward Cyrus’ office.
“The time has arrived,” Cyrus says. “We must strike now. We must put this to bed before they grow stronger. We will attack in one hour.”
Stepping through the doors, we both falter, finding four individuals inside, waiting for us.
Dorian, Malachi, Mina, and Matthias.
Gravely, they look at us, and my heart instantly sinks.
“What is it?” Cyrus demands, his expression full of dread.
Matthias steps forward, his face grave and fallen. “My soldiers are sick.”
“Sick?” I repeat. “Like, they’ve all got colds or something?”
Slowly, Matthias’ expression shifts into anger. “No, as in they’ve been poisoned. The water supply to this town comes from that canyon, from a lake up above where that mutiny is forming. I’m saying that us humans are dependent on water. And while none of you vampires might have even noticed that there’s something wrong with the water, we humans have been drinking it, and now we have failing livers and kidneys. We are literally dying out there.”
I feel my face blanch. My fingers feel cold. “How many of them have been affected?”
Matthias steps forward, eye to eye with me, his hands on his hips. I didn’t notice the sweat on his brow until now, the bloodshot look in his eyes. “Every single one of us, to some degree. Some are still standing, at least. Aren’t puking their guts up. But seventy percent can’t even walk right now.”
I swear.
Looking over at Cyrus, my eyes widen, and I know he’s thinking what I am: how did we not anticipate this? Those humans were our greatest defense because of their numbers. They were our back up. Our safety net.