“Wait,” Jerusa said. “What happens now?”
Heidi was the only member of the High Council to stop and turn. “Tomorrow evening, you will go with the Crimson Storm back to the United States. You will penetrate the quarantine communities and search for the savage, Suhail. I trust you are smart enough to discern the rest for yourself.”
“What about Shufah and Thad?” Jerusa sensed that she should be quiet, but after what she had just endured she didn’t much feel up to being obedient. “What about my mother?”
“Your mother must stay here,” Heidi said. “We still don’t know what affects this new blood will have on her. The human must also stay.” Though Thad remained standing, Jerusa could see crippling pain in his eyes. “He will serve with the other human staff. When this ordeal is over, then perhaps he can be moved to one of the other communities. He may even earn his right to the blood. We shall see.”
“And Shufah?”
“I’m coming with you,” Shufah answered. Marjek shot a sullen glance over his shoulder, but said nothing. “At least for a while. I have promised to return once we have made contact with my brother. If he is killed or it’s determined that our sibling bond no longer holds any sway with him, I am to report back here.”
We’re going home, Jerusa thought. She wanted to cheer out loud, but held her joy behind a solemn mask. Not everyone had cause to celebrate. Her biggest fear was over. Thad’s had just begun.
Heidi turned and joined the High Council and they exited the room through a door at the back of the stage. The Crimson Storm left through the door they had entered through.
“So, how did you convince them to let you come with us?” Jerusa asked Shufah.
“I just reminded them that Suhail is my twin and my responsibility. If anyone is going to destroy him, it should be me.”
“Is that really what you told them?”
A coy little smile brushed across Shufah’s face. “Well, that and I reminded them of how bad I can be for the morale of the house and the living hell I would almost assuredly put them through.”
Even Thad managed to laugh at that.
“So, what’s our plan?” Jerusa asked.
“We’ll do just as the dwarf instructed,” she whispered. The shock on Jerusa’s face brought another smile to Shufah. “Don’t seem so surprised. The dwarf and I have a long and interesting relationship. Not quite a friendship, mind you. More like a mutual respect.”
“Who is this dwarf and what does he have to do with us?” Taos asked.
Shufah motioned for Jerusa to explain.
“His name is Sebastian. He is an augur with the Watchtower. He said that we should escape the Hunters the first chance we get and go into hiding.” She used the word we when in fact the dwarf had suggested this plan to her alone.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Taos said. “We’ll be outcasts. They will hunt us for sure. We should just go with them, find Suhail and kill him.”
“The Crimson Storm will never let it get that far,” Shufah said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Jerusa said. “Marjek has given them special instructions. Make sure we die and bring Shufah back here.”
Taos looked as though he might argue, but he held his tongue. After a moment of silence he asked, “So what do we do?”
“First we lure them back to our house,” Shufah said, a feverish twinkle blazing in her eyes. “I had the security team install a special little feature. Once the Hunters are in the basement I will activate the UV Shield. If they try to approach the exit, the motion sensors will bring a set of UV lamps online until they retreat out of the blast zone. It won’t keep them locked up forever, but it should give us a good head start.”
Thad shook his head like he had a thought trapped in his ear. “Why would you have something like that installed in your own home?”
“It was for me, wasn’t it?” Jerusa asked.
“Yes. The longer your condition continues, the more dangerous you become, not only to yourself, but to us as well.”
Jerusa wanted to tell her about feeding from Alicia, how that had taken away the thirst, but the words were like a bad taste in her mouth now and she no longer wanted to talk. Shufah didn’t push the conversation, but she didn’t apologize for building a secret prison cell in their home, either. Instead she turned to Taos and Thad.
“Once we are away from the Hunters, we will make our way back here.”
“Here?” Thad asked. “They’ll be after you. Why come back here?”
“To get you, silly,” she said with a smile. “And Jerusa’s mother, too. I’ll not leave you two here one day longer than necessary.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Back in her room, Jerusa ripped off the tattered remains of her clothes and spent the next several hours in the shower. Thank goodness the house had unlimited hot water, because she needed every drop to thaw the ice crystals out of her blood.
Afterward, she sat on the edge of her bed until dawn broke over the eastern horizon. She stared at the heavy steel shutters that protected her from the sunlight. If the Stewards wanted her dead so badly, why didn’t they just hit a button and let the light spill in on her?
Her skin crawled at the thought, but she refused to cower in the closet. She was done cowering.
When night began to close in, there came a knock to her door. Her heightened senses told her that Thad was out there. She opened the door and he stepped inside uninvited.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jerusa said. “Shufah will be angry if she finds out we’re alone together.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.” He still didn’t understand just how close she had come to killing him in the tunnels. “It’s not safe for—”
He cut her words off with a kiss.
Jerusa’s reflexes were quick enough that she could have easily evaded Thad, but the truth was, she wanted to kiss him, had ever since she had first met him. The heat of his body flowed through her. Her heart matched his. A tickle of the thirst rose within her and her fangs yearned to pierce his tongue, but she willed that side of her away, burying it beneath the last remnant of her mortal self.
A set of hands touched her shoulders and she knew, without looking, that Alicia stood behind her. Jerusa obeyed the ghost’s warning and broke away from Thad before the predator side of her nature could sneak up on her.
Thad didn’t seek another kiss, nor did he seem upset that she had broken contact. He merely rubbed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Don’t be gone too long,” he said, then turned and vanished into his own room.
Not long after that, Celeste came to the door.
“It’s time to go.”
Jerusa had no belongings, nothing to take with her except the clothes on her back, so she followed the augur out, without even a glance back. She climbed into the back seat of the SUV with Taos and Shufah. She didn’t notice the cold. She didn’t watch as the great house dwindled into the blowing snow. They boarded the jet and took to the air without incident.
Jerusa sat alone. She didn’t want any company. She missed her mother. The Stewards wouldn’t even allow her to say goodbye.
Taos approached but turned away, possibly sensing her mood. Jerusa was still mad at him for tempting her to kill Thad. That had upset her more than she could say, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. She was weary. Not just from the trial in the tunnel or the lack of feeding, but in a way only a person with a divided heart can be.
She had kissed Taos in the tunnel and Thad just before leaving, and though different parts of her leaned toward each man, right now all she could think about was Silvanus. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad had happened to him.
The jet landed at the same air strip, outside of town, that they had left from. They had only been gone a few days, but it seemed as though a whole life time had unraveled since she had last been home.
The air here
was cool, but not frigid. The bare trees danced in the breeze, but at least the fallen foliage wasn’t hidden beneath two feet of snow. She had forgotten that it was still autumn here, not yet Halloween.
From the tiny airport they moved on foot through the forest back toward the house that Jerusa, Taos and Shufah shared. She still wasn’t sure how Shufah had managed to convince the Hunters to come back here. Maybe it was because sunrise was only a half hour away. There was no time to find another shelter, let alone make an assault on the nearest quarantine community.
Jerusa felt heartsick as she stepped through the front door. Not far from here, her mother’s house sat empty. Debra Phoenix wasn’t coming home. Did anyone even notice that she was missing?
Shufah stood talking with Ming, Ralgar and Celeste, discussing the multiple safety features of their basement sanctuary. She did, however, leave out the part about the UV trap she intended to lock them in just as soon as the other two Hunters finished their reconnaissance of the property.
The sky was quickly turning from violet to the soft pink of dawn. Though Shufah’s face remained calm and placid, Jerusa knew her well enough to see the signs of stress eating at her. If they didn’t get all of the Hunters down into the basement at the same time—somehow without going in themselves—the plan wouldn’t work. And if it didn’t work, there might not be another chance to escape.
Shufah subtly glanced out the open door. “Dawn is coming. Should we expect your comrades or will they be lodging somewhere else?”
A sullen look of annoyance passed over Ming’s face. She looked toward Celeste. “Go find Quinn and Mikael.”
Celeste started for the door without question, but Shufah stopped her.
“It’s all right. I’ll get them. You three go on down and get comfortable.”
Ralgar and Celeste started down the stairs, but Ming held back. “What of the giant and the fledgling? Are they not joining us?”
Ming had been a Hunter for a long time. It was in her training to sense impending traps.
“They will be right down,” Shufah answered without missing a beat. “Just as soon as they finish securing the shutters and door reinforcements.” She didn’t wait to see if Ming would go down the stairs, but instead turned to go find the missing Hunters.
Just as she crossed the threshold, Shufah made a quick snap as if something had startled her. “Oh my,” she said in a calm, hushed voice as she turned on her heels.
Taos jumped to his feet and Ming emerged from the basement door like a feral beast, but it took Jerusa’s weary mind a moment longer to understand what she was seeing.
Two holes, rimmed in blood, had appeared in Shufah’s shirt. She dabbed at them with her fingertips, staggered forward, then fell to her knees. That’s when Jerusa saw them standing silhouetted in the doorway.
The pair of umbilicus creatures stood smiling—a ring of still-wet blood coating their lips—at the dumbstruck vampires. They were dressed in a mix-matched ensemble of clothing that looked like it had come straight out of the lost-and-found somewhere, but in truth probably came from whatever victims they had come across in town. Their skin was no longer burnt, nor was it the malformed lump of clay that she remembered. They emanated a power that hadn’t been there before. Their black eyes drank the light of the rising sun.
Jerusa and Taos rushed the beasts at the same time, but the umbilicus were too fast. In one smooth motion they slipped a heavy black bag over Shufah and pulled her through the door.
Jerusa tried to follow them, but Taos snatched her around the waist. “No,” he said. “The sun is up. We can’t go after her. She’s gone.”
Jerusa continued to fight him, to the point that she ripped the door from the hinges and left the jamb in splintered ruin, but he was right. The sun was upon them. She allowed herself to go limp and as Taos pulled her inside, Jerusa caught sight of Quinn and Mikael’s bodies on the ground, already beginning to break down in the daylight.
They made it into the basement sanctuary just as the sunlight blasted through the front door. Taos pushed the others down the stairs and Jerusa jerked the steel gate down.
“What are we going to do?” Celeste asked.
“We are going to go after them,” Jerusa said, her voice incredulous, yet flat. “We are going to get her back.”
“We have orders,” Ming said. “You are a Hunter now. We must make our move on Suhail.”
“And how long do you think Marjek will allow you to live after he discovers that Shufah is gone?” Jerusa held Ming’s fierce gaze. “It won’t matter if you wipe out Suhail and his vast savage army. If Shufah dies, so do you.”
Ming turned in a fit of rage and the entire house quaked.
“How are we supposed to find them?” Taos asked. “They can move day and night and we have no idea where they are going.”
“You said you thought they were Light Bearers, right?”
Taos nodded yes.
“First we find the Light Bearers, then we hurt them until they take us to Shufah.” The calm malevolence in her own voice shocked her.
“The Light Bearers operate in splinter cells,” Ralgar said. “Even we don’t know where they operate from.”
“I know someone that can take us to them.”
“Who?” Ming asked.
“Silvanus.” Saying his name brought a cold chill to Jerusa’s flesh. “He knows where the Light Bearers are hiding.” She didn’t have the heart to tell them that she didn’t know where Silvanus was, either. She glanced over at Alicia who stood in the center of the room. Foster stood beside her and behind them was the legion of vampire ghosts. “We’ll find them,” Jerusa repeated. “And if they’ve hurt Shufah, I’ll make them pay.”
The End.
Storming Purgatory
Perpetual Creatures 3
CHAPTER ONE
The stars salting the black sky were so bright that they seemed to diminish the power of the headlight spraying the cracked asphalt that spilled like an inky river before the car. Massive alien forms, that in the daylight would prove to be the unique stone structures of the Arizona desert, stalked them from behind their cloak of night, their silhouettes only visible against the celestial pageant of the Milky Way.
The wind kicked up suddenly, rocking the car to the side and blasting the windshield with sand. The tires slipped from the edge of the road over the shoulder, and soft earth threatened to pull them off course. Doug jerked the wheel to the side too hard, over-corrected, nearly went off the other side of the road, and after a bit of cursing, placed the car back in the right lane.
Connie’s feet were planted firmly on the floorboard, her hand was smashed against the passenger-side window. She had uttered a screech of terror when Doug had nearly flipped the car, and her throat still burned.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice already growing hoarse.
Doug had reclaimed his two-handed grip on the steering wheel and was leaning so far forward his forehead nearly touched the windshield. “I’m fine. You know where we’re at yet?”
Connie bent down and scooped her cell phone up from the floorboard. She swiped at the screen, huffing in annoyance as she searched for the page she had been looking at when Doug had nearly killed them.
“No, GPS is still down.”
She and Doug had decided to celebrate their three-year anniversary by taking a trip out west. They would just go where the road took them, see the country, and rack up some memories before they decided to settle down to married life where jobs and kids would strip away any chance of adventure. So far, it had been going well. Up until just a few hours ago, when Doug decided to turn down this thin, unmarked stretch of road vanishing into the desert.
After an hour of driving, with no sign of any civilization whatsoever, they began to grow a bit uneasy. Connie had tried to pull up their location on GPS, but the strange thing was, it didn’t show a road where they were driving. According to the satellites hiding up there with the stars, they were just
driving through the unspoiled desert at sixty miles per hour. Then, about fifteen minutes ago, the GPS just quit working.
The road seemed endless, a perpetual black cord stretching forever into an even more endless night. The veins in Doug’s neck flared as thick as tree roots every time he clenched his teeth. Connie shifted around in her seat, restless, as though a deep, unscratchable itch had taken hold of her.
Doug let out a long, slow sigh with a relieved giggle trailing at the end.
“What? Why are you laughing?” Had he gone mad?
Doug sat back in his seat and took a relaxed grip on the wheel. He pointed out the front of the car with his free hand. “Would you look at that? That’s a sight for sore eyes.”
Connie stared out the windshield, not sure what to expect. She was about to ask but then she saw it for herself: a road sign.
It was a small, unassuming sign, nestled near the ground, painted (or maybe sun-bleached) the color of the sand and almost obscured by a clump of scrub brush. The word on the sign—which looked to be hand-painted—read SHEOL.
Connie turned in her seat, following the sign with her gaze as they passed it. “Sheol? Isn’t that another word for Hell?”
“Welcome to Hell,” Doug said with a snort. “I can’t wait to meet the town’s people.”
The road made a bend and not long after that, they passed the first house. From what Connie could tell, it was a nice looking home. Modest, well-kept. But there were no lights either within or without, so all she could go on was the brief flash of the headlights. They passed another house, this one larger, on the other side of the street. It, too, was as dark and lifeless as a catacomb.
They crept along the main street of Sheol, easing past one darkened house after the next, like a man trying to tip-toe his way through a den of sleeping lions. Connie noticed several of the homes had broken windows, and a few even had the front doors knocked off their hinges, the frames imploded inward, as if some massive creature had forced its way inside. One house even had a hole dug through the side wall. Connie thought she spied claw marks in the stucco, and a terrible shiver overtook her.
Perpetual Creatures, Volumes 1-3: A Vampire and Ghost Thriller Series Page 57