In his eyes flickered the same hope that I had once felt. He still held that simple belief that love conquers all. Only time had proven that wrong—at least for me.
Tristan watched my waking with that same adoration I had once felt so keenly. I could actually feel his belief that I was not a monster.
But, in fact, I was. And always would be.
Monsters are not made. We. Are. Chosen. That's what the true Blooded always said. And I had done a hundred—no, a thousand monstrous things, enough that the doors of any distant heaven were long since sealed against me and mine. But I wasn't looking for redemption—not anymore. I wasn't looking for hope or faith.
Truth was more than sufficient to my needs.
Loyalty would be my guiding star—worth every drop of precious blood that fell.
And she was here, safe. My Peggy nestled at the center of the one chance that I had uncovered to stop the coming madness.
And make no mistake, Madness was the end of every living thing.
Vampires ruled the world already, lying in wait in the shadows of every major city, eating the heart out of frail and corruptible humans. We were too successful. Too smart for our own survival. We were the vast horde of death crawling across the face of the Earth. Soon, too soon for a creature of my years, the last human would die.
The cities would writhe with starving vampires, wasting to animated, greedy bones. And the whole purpose of this world would die that very day. Vampires could only ever be a solitary part of the ecosystem—select apex predators. Vlad and I had had too many conversations about the brutal, primal destruction that came from Immortalis unchecked.
Created better, faster and stronger, being remade in the image of Gods and sorcerers, our gift came with a price. We needed to stop the slaughter of humans in order to continue, in order to claim our Reborn place.
A hundred years ago, I had such hope.
Once upon a time… we were going to change the world.
That dream died. It ended with a whimper under the harsh sun of Arizona.
We needed one perfect truth. When I found my Peggy, I knew we had a chance to survive. She changed the zero sum game that played out faster and faster with every turned vampire. She was the bridge vampires could walk across. On her shoulders, we might finally be able to stand in the pure light of the sun.
Peggy was my very own miracle.
Whether or not I clung to this flesh, she had to survive.
I could see her standing there just over his shoulders. While Tristan looked at me, Peggy, my Peggy—she looked only to the outside. It was in her nature, to protect. Instinctively, she was a shield to danger, a constant, steady guardian against a cruel universe of lies.
Above her head, spreading around the crypt in every direction I saw them all, clinging to the dark. One hundred pairs of reborn eyes, all intently watching me, waiting. They needed me. My baby chicks, they were the heart of a new nest to raise to the Blooded.
Each newborn stared at me—the source of their bond to power, to conquering illness and the ravages of time, to living beyond death. So many of these men and women had been miserable, downtrodden, poor, drug-addicted, sick, despised. So many had lost everything. The trash of the modern selfish world, they had clung to the scattered bits of their dissolving lives until every support had vanished and the streets claimed their broken bodies for the greedy shadows and the never-ending dirt.
Venom’s Gift fixed some of the damage. But there was so much feral need battling in their bloodless bodies, that the energy that coursed through the newborns spiralled toward frantic and wild.
Without me, they would be destroyed—easy to spot equaled easy to kill.
Flush with the new power that I had gifted them in the dead of night, my reborn newborn army surrounded the crypt where I lay. I did not yet try to rise. I could see them, feel each one of their fragile reborn lives, and the clamoring, insistent, banging, screeching signals that their minds sent to mine—pleading for me to wake.
All of that emotion filled my mind, chaos in my head.
Silence. I spoke my will. The venom I shared with each of my army spoke the same word—maker to made. As it should be. Each one of them could speak to me through the same connection. But only I could reach them all at one exact moment. Into the madness, I sent a simple demand.
And all around me, the frantic minds of my newborn vampires hushed. Not perfectly quiet, but close enough for the wild things that they still were, so perilously close from the moment of their transformation.
The crypt became as still as a cathedral on Monday morning. It was that moment of creation, the calm right before the Big Bang.
“Peggy—” I whispered to Tristan, “you kept her safe. Thank you.” It was more than I had hoped. But now, we desperately needed a plan. We needed a future. I had to lead this group and to do that, I had to know everything.
A ragged cough seized me. Shuddering and out of breath, I could see Tristan’s horror at my weakness. The hunter bastards’ silver had done untold damage.
I was barely alive.
But still I stood against them and their war. I stood for life when even heroes of humanity wandered off the path and were lost. Besides, it wasn’t the living hunters I feared the most though.
No…
It was the undead ones. Make no mistake, they were coming soon.
“Hunters?” I managed to ask in between coughing fits. Because those were who I really feared. Not death. No, I didn't fear death.
But the undead hunters—they would take everything that I loved.
The same way they left Dracula to die in the scorching sun of Arizona.
Those betraying bastards left Vlad tied to a stake in the middle of a desert where no one could save him. Not even me. Sunlight permeated the soil in that godforsaken land. Even in the darkest night, the redrocked dirt could kill on contact. Dracula died there, alone. No one who was a creature of the night could change that.
The hunters were malicious, desperate, nasty little creatures. Warped humans who'd grown too big for their station. Monsters that humans themselves created to hunt vampires. Monsters all on their own now.
Make no mistake about it, the hunters were coming.
“Tristan,” I tried to warn him, “we have to get out... of here,” But again, my voice faded off. My body lay against the cold embrace of mother earth, too exhausted to protect those of my new nest. My spirit, whatever was left of it after the cleansing of the vampire venom, my will power wasn’t going to be enough, not if the Hunters came before I could heal.
Coursing in my dead veins, the vampire venom was ready to fight.
I was not.
Literally, I could not. “We have to… run.” I whispered into the precious silence of the crypt. “Guard the doors, my reborn army. When the hated bastards come, they will not stop. Now, they know that we hide… somewhere in the city.”
A wave of dizziness passed over me, leaving me breathless and trembling. Only human blood would save me, restoring what was lost. A great deal of blood.
There was none of that precious liquid in the crypt that I was willing to shed.
My eyelids drooped, too heavy to keep open. I tried. There was much left to say. And no time to spare. My eyelashes kept flickering and then like a child, I fell into the heavy arms of slumber. Even as deep fatigue took me down into the little death of sleep, I knew real fear. I needed to be alert.
I needed to fight. But I could not wake. No one would protect my last guardians.
What could they do, the untrained vampires, Tristan, and Peggy, my Peggy…?
What could they do to save us all when the hunters from hell came calling?
7
Chrysallis
Tristan St Dennis
I didn't know what god to praise. Buddha? Bastet? Apollo?
When Celestine opened her eyes, my heart swelled in my chest to the size of the ocean.
“Celestine,” I whispered, awed at her fragile beauty. Even now she
looked like an angel with fire-singed wings. “Celestine, I've got you,” I couldn’t look away from the darkness in her eyes. Looking into them, I swore I could see forever. So much pain. So much darkness, true.
That was all there in the depths of her black eyes.
But so was something incredible: an actual vampire. She possessed knowledge so different and alien to my own. Everything in her world collided with everything in mine.
She had the experience and wisdom to grasp what life really meant.
I felt that in my bones. I had lost that three years ago.
That moment when she turned her fathomless eyes to my face, when she gazed at me in wonder and calculation, I was in awe, flustered, and ashamed that I didn't have better clothes, a cleaner face—that I wasn't some fairytale prince who came to rescue the sleeping beauty. I was only Tristan. Peggy and I had accomplished the impossible. We managed to bring back a vampire from the clutches of poisoned silver.
Together.
Alive. That was a miracle.
Now neither one of us spoke. It wasn't time to share the adventure, to talk about plans for the future. Instead like the vampires above us who stalked the crypt, we stopped moving, stopped hunting. When Celestine moved, she became all that mattered.
Gasping, I held my garlic-infused breath.
Leaning in as close as I could to her restored body, I strained to hear the few words she managed to utter. Only human, I still heard some of it. Enough to chill the hot blood of victory in my coursing through my bones and skin.
“The hunters—know. And they're coming.” I tried to think like a vampire—obviously that was never going to succeed. But as a tactician? I could manage that after years of Goh.
Yeah, we had raided the hunters’ fortress hidden under the Hollywood sign a day ago. We destroyed one of their secure locations, hidden so perfectly under the shell of the city, revealing what no one else would have guessed. They were pissed.
Celestine had known exactly where they were.
With the loyalty of a mother, and the vengeance of the wronged, she had come for Peggy. No matter the distance, no wall, no period of time is enough to erase a parent’s devotion. Furious, she had raised this Army of newborns to the fight. Burning with an ice cold rage, she had turned my Palisades dojo of martial arts students into undead vampires, just to rescue this one girl.
No cost would be too high. If it had been Marian… I couldn’t say I wouldn’t choose the same.
Despite of the traps and the hunters’ deviousness, the reborn army stormed in. And then improbably we had escaped, clutching Peggy in our arms as we fled the destroyed hunters’ base. We got away narrowly, hiding, licking our wounds.
But now they knew, didn't they?
That there were vampires still alive in Los Angeles. that the girl that we had rescued was important. Immediately, they would have begun searching for any trace of us, bent on curiosity mixed with deadliest revenge.
Again, Celestine whispered the hunters were coming.
The moment she said those words I knew I had fallen. My inexplicable bond with a vampire had flipped my life upside down.
I was changed, and it wasn’t for the better. It wasn’t for the forces of life, at least not on the surface. Her beauty ensnared me.
It was true. I didn’t want to be free.
Just being a part her world made my head spin. The glamour of Hollywood corrupted me, but not more than my love for this creature. I didn't want to spend a moment apart from Celestine. Anyone who came between us was disposable.
My moral center shook. How could I be human in the middle of the otherworldly? Like a starlet seduced by the diamonds, the money, the fame, the old movie theater glamour, I had allowed vampires to feast this evening. I hadn't stopped them from killing the young man outside the bathrooms. I hadn't stood up for Humanity.
Unlike me, the hunters wouldn't have any hesitation.
Where I failed to protect a fragile mortal life, they would not stop to kill us all.
When they found this hidden crypt, there would be no mercy. Not from humans. Not from vampires.
I looked around the crypt, knowing the outcome of the battle that was fomenting: Kill anything that moves. There will be time later to sort the dead.
At all costs, save Celestine. Save Peggy. That was the sum of my personal war.
As I knelt there next to her, it was obvious that Celestine had not recovered, not completely. Her voice faded in and out as she tried to talk to us. Then it was all too much for her body. She faded in and out of consciousness. Holding her in my arms, I felt so damn useless.
I didn’t know anything about vampires. No idea how to help her.
Strange, unfamiliar forces were at work: the magic surrounding the gold, combined with the purpose of the chain of Icarus, and the essential nature of immortalis.
I had nothing, no clue, no defenses other than martial arts and the oil of the garlic cloves racing through my veins, absorbing through my skin.
Frankly, the horde guarded their mistress. The vampires had to feed, and soon. They gathered here at her command. But, the fact remained—they were starving. Peggy and I were tantalizing morsels past our sell by date. Mortal intruders into the realm of the sacred crypts of immortalis, the creatures on the walls, ceiling, and floor hadn’t yet decided what to do with us. Without Celestine’s word to hold their instincts back, we had a few hours, a day at most.
Use the time wisely. Think. She was still too ill to move, really. And expertly trained warriors were coming to kill us all.
Think.
Just the amount of garlic odor coming off of my body would have been enough to make a vampire flee the room. The stench preserve my life and Peggy’s, but the sooner I could be free of the noxious herb, the better for Celestine’s health.
Again, she closed her eyes. Exhaustion etched her forehead and I began to panic, doubt settling deep in my heart. She didn't have enough time to recover. The hunters were a few hours or a few days away from destroying this last sanctum.
We had to do something. Now. Do. Something...
“Peggy,” I said to the guardian who stood above us, calling her attention from the menace. Fiercely she smiled as she look down at Celestine and me huddled in the crypt. Not unlike a snarling dog, I thought.
“Is she fixed? Did it work? She’s well? Because we’ve gotta get out of here, Tristan. Quickly, tell her to call off her army! I can't do this much more.”
Shaking my head, I looked at Celestine, wishing…
But her eyes were closed. Again, she slept the deep kind of slumber that speeds healing. Our immediate problem? She had failed to command or release the newborn army.
She hasn't relinquished my students back to their old lives. She hadn’t rescinded her gift.
In icy perfection, beautiful and dangerous, she lay there, unreachable. The damage across her chest from the hunters’ silver slowly knitted together like the edges of a stone mountain moving in a tectonic shift.
Celestine would live. In time, she would be well.
She would be able to take care of herself and the snarling army. But would it be soon enough?
“The hunters are coming. You heard Celestine,” I said. “We have to go. We have to get out of here now. Before they find the exact location. Where can we go, that isn't already known to anyone else?”
Peggy answer was blunt, “There is nowhere I know of. Nothing developed. We have to find a place and make it our own.”
“We don't have to move her just yet, do we?” I countered, “Let her sleep. There's only so much time before we have to run. But the hunters don't know where she built the last fortress in Los Angeles, right? Huge city. That’ll take time, precious days or weeks that we desperately need.” I pressed my point, “For now, this is the safest place.”
Peggy never stopped moving, dancing with the dojo vampires, but she glanced at me, weighing our options.
Holding Celestine in my arms, our hearts and lives linked by the chain
of Icarus, I focused on the vampire’s best chance at surviving. There wasn’t a lot more to say. My sacrifice meant an echo of her pain transferred to me. Even that tiny portion was keenly felt.
But that didn’t change the ongoing war. I could see the doubt in Peggy’s face, but at last, she grudgingly agreed, “You’re right, Tristan. We don’t have to run this very second. Not exactly, not yet. Let her rest. Let Celestine heal.”
“Okay,” I agreed, “but you can't continue to guard us both. Pretty soon, they're going to get past my students and your ancient weapon of sunlight. And then what are we going to do?”
That decision was made for us.
In the distance, back through the broken door, down the hallway, the elevator shaft, and in the deepest shadows, a massive explosion rocked the stones on which the crypt lay. A wave of energy ripped through the building.
Even the walls shuddered.
Damn it! I hoped we had more time. Catching her gaze, I saw the same regret in Peggy’s eyes. Words neither one of us wanted to acknowledge. Future plans turned to smoke.
This will be a slaughter.
“When the foundations themselves tremble, you know that the demolition men are coming,” I whispered. Every vampire in the room heard me.
Dust and sewer stench flooded into the basement area, a fog of poison and dirt. That explosion sent pockets of shattered earth into the crypt and blinded those newborn vampires nearest the doorway.
A rolling cloud of concrete and ash of pulverized rock preceded them. That was all the warning we had.
Above me, I saw the first reborn vampire fall—or rather, I happened to be looking at the monster as it screeched and immediately turned to dust.
In the blink of an eye, the space between two heartbeats—an eerie humming sound filled the air. Regrettably familiar, the irritating buzzing grated on my nerves. Dangerous. Volatile. Deadly. Distinct.
Unforgettable. That sound was something that I had heard two nights previous, no three nights now. I even knew the weapon: enchanted silver shuriken. Throwing stars encanted by hunters, bound by an ancient magic. Bitterness filled my mouth. Unpleasant, the metal had its own ominous vibration.
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