She looked up at Tera. The other icrathari nodded.
Rohkeus’s soul reborn…in a human.
Ashra threw her head back and laughed, a despairing sound.
Elsker stepped forward. The sole male icrathari was slightly taller than the female icrathari, and dressed in a black silk shirt and linen pants. His silver hair was cropped short, and his light blue eyes were wide. “Rohkeus reborn? That’s impossible.”
Siri shrugged, her red gown shifting around her curvaceous frame. Her silver hair, cut short, framed her face. “Stranger things have happened.” Her pale violet gaze raked over the human. “At least he had the good sense to choose a pretty body.”
Ashra shook her head, the movement jolting her out of her daze. Her prince, her love, reduced to a human? Her slender fingers coiled into fists. Her golden eyes glittering, she pushed away from him, though her body trembled from the loss of his warmth. No, the human was not Rohkeus; he could never be Rohkeus.
Steeling herself against the gasp of pain that escaped from his lips as the anesthetizing effect of her kiss faded, Ashra rose to her feet with sinuous grace. “He is not one of us. Not anymore.” Nothing had been more devastating than losing Rohkeus to a human assassin. To see his soul reborn in that contemptible and weak race was an insult to the person Rohkeus had been.
“Should we turn him into a vampire?” Tera asked.
“Kill him. Set Rohkeus’s soul free.”
Siri seized Ashra’s hand before she could turn away. Siri’s lips, painted the same provocative color as her dress, shaped an O. “You’re not serious. How many people are offered a second chance at the love of a lifetime?”
A second chance? Her traitorous pulse raced even as her lips curled with disgust. “He’s human.”
“We can make him immortal—a vampire.”
Ashra swallowed hard. “But not an icrathari.”
Siri’s gaze fell. “No, of course not.”
“Kill him.”
“You can’t.” Siri stepped forward, placing herself between Ashra and the barely conscious human. “This is amazing. It’s never happened before—a soul reborn.”
“Rohkeus is dead, and I rule Aeternae Noctis.” She turned to Tera. “I told you to kill him.”
Tera hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then she shook her head. “I won’t do it, and neither will Siri or Elsker. If you want him dead, you’ll have to do it yourself.” Tera released her grip on the human’s hair, and he slumped forward. The warlord glanced at the vampires who had observed the entire exchange with obvious fascination. “Take him to a holding cell. Make sure he’s fed and watered.” Her cool gray eyes narrowed. “There will be no vengeance meted out on him for Sasha and Raphael’s deaths.”
“For now,” a vampire murmured.
The barely conscious human was dragged from the chamber, leaving a streak of crimson on the steel floor.
Ashra fixed an indifferent expression on her face and turned to Siri. “What of his sister, the so-called child of prophecy?”
“She is with the other children who were culled tonight. They’ll be processed.”
“Anything unique about her? Did you taste her?”
Siri nodded. “I took a sip. She’s a precocious child, but quite ordinary.”
Ordinary, except for her brother.
“Should we process her, or dispose of her?” Siri asked when Ashra remained silent.
Ashra looked up, a thin smile pasted on her lips. “Do we fear a child?”
Apparently, no one dared answer her rhetorical question.
Good. Ashra turned on her heel. “Process her.” She walked past the silent icrathari and vampires. She had to change. She had to get the human’s scent off her clothes, and exorcise him from her mind and heart.
Chapter Three
Consciousness returned slowly. The chill of the floor seeped into Jaden’s bones. He shuddered, the motion shooting fresh spasms of pain through him. The cold, at least, had shattered the lethargy brought on by concussion and blood loss. Trembling, he dragged himself upright and pressed a hand against his midsection. His hand came away wet and sticky with his blood.
His teeth gritted against the pain, Jaden assessed his wounds. The deep incisions across his stomach were the worst of his injuries. The rest, mostly aching bruises and lacerated skin, would have been minor, if not piled on top of a weakened condition.
How long had he been out? He didn’t know. He did not know for certain where he was either, though he had enough hazy memories to hazard a guess.
Malum Turris.
Had anyone ever entered Malum Turris and escaped to tell the tale? Not in his lifetime, certainly, and not in the collective memory of the people of Aeternae Noctis.
His gaze traveled around the featureless room. Only a few feet longer than his own height, it was differentiated on one side by a sealed door. He inhaled a shaky breath. He had to find Khiarra—somehow—but first, he had to stay alive.
Jaden dragged himself to a metal plate and cup in a corner of the cell. The water in the cup was cold and clear; it eased his parched throat, and the dry crusts of bread on the plate softened when he dipped them in water.
The food and drink gave him strength to push to his feet and examine his cell. The walls and floor were constructed of a polished metal much harder than steel. The door had no keyhole, lock, or handle, yet it was sealed fast, separated from the wall by a thin opening, too narrow to slide a blade through, not that he had any.
He threw his weight against the door, but it did not move. He pounded his fists against the door until his hands were bloody, but could not dent it. No one came.
Drained, Jaden slumped to the floor. The wounds on his stomach had started bleeding again. He pressed his hands against his abdomen, and clenched his teeth against the groan of pain. How could he find Khiarra when he could not even find a way out of his cell?
He scanned the room again, but the only other thing he saw was a thin, cylindrical object tucked into a corner of the ceiling. The tube swiveled to a fixed rhythm, as if scanning the cell. His brow furrowed. What was it? What kind of magic did the icrathari command?
Exhaustion washed through him. He dragged his knees to his chest, curling into a small space to preserve his body heat. He closed his eyes, and the dreams that haunted him for five years returned—flashing glimpses of a pale-skinned, golden-eyed woman with waist-length silver hair. For the first time, a half-formed name tickled his mind, and his lips shaped around an unfamiliar word.
“Ashra.”
In the comfort of her suite and in a fresh change of clothes, Ashra turned away from the screen and from the images of courage mixed with desolation. The human was a fighter. Slumped against the wall, obviously exhausted from his efforts to free himself, his gaze searched the room, still seeking an escape. He was in pitiful shape, though, and would likely die within the week.
It would be a slow death, an erosion of his health from hunger, thirst, cold, and blood loss. With his death, Rohkeus’s soul would once again be free, no longer trapped in a human body.
“I can give you no greater mercy than this, my love.” Her voice caught on the edge of tears.
On the screen, the human turned his head and seemed to look directly at her. He must have seen the small camera attached to the corner of the room where the ceiling met the wall. His eyes were Rohkeus’s eyes, down to the flecks of gold set in the emerald depths. Like Rohkeus’s eyes, they were windows into his soul. In the human’s memories, she had witnessed his strength and devotion. Did he have Rohkeus’s compassion and wisdom too?
The human curled into a fetal ball. Despite the distance enforced by the camera, she could see him shiver, trembling from the cold. She raised her chin in defiance of the throbbing ache in her chest. Three days. She’d give him three days to live, no more.
His eyes closed.
With relief, she drew in a deep breath of air. When his eyes were closed, she saw the human, not Rohkeus.
She
turned away from the screen and reached for a glass of water.
His hoarse voice whispered her name. “Ashra.”
Her glass fell from her fingers and shattered upon the metal floor. She spun around and stared at the screen. He was a human, a pitiful mortal, injured and dying, but he had called her by name.
Her heart pounding in her chest, she leaned closer. His lips moved, shaping unintelligible words interspersed by soft groans and grunts of pain. Had she only imagined her name?
Ashra took a single step back from the screen. She had wasted enough time on the human. She moved to turn off the screen, but she hesitated, her hand hovering above the switch—waiting, hoping to hear another word from him.
Her lower jaw tightened, clenching against the spiking hope. I am a fool.
The screen faded to black.
The communicator set into the wall buzzed softly before resolving into Siri’s voice. “Ashra? We need you at the chamber. Dana and the scouts are back.”
Chapter Four
The return of the scouts typically ushered interest and hope, but the mood was bleak when Ashra stepped into the chamber for the debriefing. The other three icrathari had gathered too. The vampire Dana, the leader of the scouts, slumped in a chair, the rips in her leather clothes offering glimpses of bruises and scrapes marring her pale skin. Ashra’s gaze swept over the two weary vampires hunkered around Dana. She tensed; too few had returned.
“What news?”
“Little, and none of it good,” Dana said, her voice faltering. She dragged a hand through her short dark hair. “We saw two roving bands of daevas, but could not get close enough to plant a tracker.”
“Did they see you?” Ashra asked.
Dana shook her head.
“Then what happened to your team?”
“We ran into an immortali.”
Ashra’s eyes widened. “Which one?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t stop to ask his name, and he didn’t seem like the chatty type. He killed Tyrone and Cade before we realized he was there, and shredded through the rest of us while we fled.” Dana shook her head. “Loth and Mord didn’t make it. We couldn’t stop to kill them. He was…” Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard. “He ate them alive.”
Elsker drew his breath in sharply. “How many more immortali do you think are out there?”
Tera shrugged. Her leather wings rustled softly as she shifted her weight. “At least a dozen. It’s hard to get an accurate count. Thank the Creator, they’re solitary hunters.”
Elsker shook his head. “By rights, they shouldn’t exist. The responsibility…the fault is ours. We should have known better than to transform humans into elder vampires. All we’ve succeed in doing is creating insane elder vampires—the immortali.”
Siri folded her arms across her chest. Her voice was cool. “Do you fear research and experimentation, Elsker?”
“Only when it leads to disaster.” He threw his hand out in a gesture that encompassed the city. The soft glow of lights emanated from houses and buildings beneath the eternal moon. “The immortali are unthinking, unfeeling monsters.”
“Not so unthinking if they’ve found a way to survive the sunlight.”
“Our experiments have yielded tragedy. The humans can’t handle full infusions of pure icrathari blood, not anymore. We haven’t produced an elder vampire in generations. It’s folly to keep trying.”
“We have to keep trying. Elder vampires are infinitely faster and stronger. They heal quicker. They can do anything the icrathari can do, except fly. Using a mixture of icrathari blood and vampire blood to transform humans is subpar. The potency of icrathari blood in vampires has waned. We need stronger vampires.” Siri threw Dana a glance. “No offense intended.”
Dana shrugged. “None taken.” She pushed to her feet, probed one of the many lacerations on her abdomen, and winced. “I’m going to get my nutrient injections and some rest before I take my team out again. Are there any suitable recruits in the most recent batch of humans chosen last night?”
Her question was innocent, even expected. Talented and capable adult humans were recruited at each full moon to fill the vampiric ranks; the unending burden of protecting Aeternae Noctis demanded it.
Ashra looked up. She met and held Dana’s quizzical gaze. “Jaden Hunter was taken.”
Dana’s green eyes widened. “No! You promised.”
“Not all promises can be kept. The humans look to him as one of their emerging leaders—”
“So you took him to eliminate a threat?”
“He killed two vampires, Dana.”
“He did?” Surprised pride flashed through her eyes.
“He is also the protector of the child of prophecy.”
Dana scoffed. “Do you believe the nonsense that humans tell themselves to keep hope alive?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what they believe, what they’d be willing to fight and die for.”
“But you can’t turn him. We had a bargain.”
“A bargain that became void when he became a threat to Aeternae Noctis.”
Dana spread her hands. “He is one human. How can he be a threat to the city?”
“I will be the judge of that,” Ashra said.
Siri chuckled softly. “Can you? With your heart on the line?”
Dana’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze flicked between Siri and Ashra. “Her heart?”
“Jaden has an ancient soul. You might even say that he’s older than all of us here,” Siri said.
“Stop the clever repartee,” Dana snapped. “What’s this about an ancient soul in Jaden?”
Tera’s slender shoulders moved in a graceful shrug. “Rohkeus.”
“Rohkeus. The founder of Aeternae Noctis?” Dana shook her head, the motion desperate, almost frantic. “No, that’s crazy. That’s impossible.”
“It’s true,” Tera said. “I tasted his soul too.”
Consternation flashed across Dana’s face. “Where is he now?”
“He is not your concern,” Ashra said.
Dana stalked up to Ashra. At five and a half feet, the vampire loomed over the diminutive icrathari. “He will always be my concern.”
Ashra remained unmoved.
Dana’s brow furrowed. “You and Rohkeus were lovers, weren’t you?”
Ashra arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
Silence filled the space between them. The vampire chuckled, the sound hollow. “You’d make a terrible daughter-in-law.”
Ashra exploded into laughter. The amusement that bubbled up caught her off guard, the first flicker of humor that had dared shine on the dull grind of endless responsibility in years, perhaps even decades. She extended her hand to the vampire. “I think we can agree not to be family.”
Dana stared at Ashra’s hand, but did not accept it. She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line. “But what would that mean for Jaden? I have to see him, please. You can’t deny me my son. It’s been twenty-three long years.”
Deal with it. I survived for a thousand years without Rohkeus. “Jaden was five when you were taken. He has no memory of you.”
“I must see him.”
Ashra could think of a hundred reasons why not, yet Dana was right. A mother had a right to her child. “Very well. Come with me.”
She could have dived down the shaft next to the tower’s palladium glass core—Rohkeus had designed the tower for icrathari—but since Dana accompanied her, the two women stepped onto the waiting elevator instead. The elevator, little more than a square platform without any doors or walls, glided down through the many levels of Malum Turris.
In a race against time, against annihilation, Rohkeus had designed and built Malum Turris and Aeternae Noctis to be functional, not pretty. A millennium later, “pretty” still had not found its way to the city of eternal night. The tower, the central support structure for the dome, was constructed of a carbon steel alloy, which guaranteed a perpetual chill in the air. The b
lack-sheened walls and floor stole the body heat of every living being. Fortunately, the icrathari and vampires were immune to the cold. As a human, though, Jaden would suffer, his torment unrelenting.
Ashra gritted her teeth against the sudden ache in her chest. She needed no reminder that there was no place for humans in Malum Turris. There was no place for Jaden in the tower or in her life.
Dana dragged her lean fingers through her hair. “What is he like? How is he?”
“He was hurt.”
“What? How badly?”
Ashra shrugged. “Tera was gentle with him.”
“He fought Tera?” Dana shook her head. “And she didn’t break all the bones in his body the way she did to the last human who challenged her?”
“No, she tasted his soul instead, and found enough reason to hold back.” The elevator passed the narrow entrance to the ark, and then continued toward the lower levels where machinery churned, their oiled gears and meticulously maintained engines keeping Aeternae Noctis aloft and functioning.
The holding cells were on the lowest level, tucked among the carbon steel foundational pillars that held up the city. The cells were rarely used; rogue vampires were quickly executed. Ashra had neither time nor patience for insubordination; life in Aeternae Noctis hung by too thin a thread to risk sabotage by a disgruntled underling.
Dana followed Ashra through the maze of corridors. The icrathari paused beside the biometric scanner that controlled the lock on the door. Dana walked past her to stand in front of the door.
Ashra threw the vampire a glance. “Are you certain about seeing him?”
“Yes.”
Ashra inclined her head in acknowledgment and leaned forward into the iris-recognition device. The biometric confirmation of her identity took only a moment. The lock snapped back, and the door slid to one side.
Jaden lunged out, tackling Dana. He spun her around in a smooth motion and shoved hard, the momentum hurling her into the cell. His leather boots made scarcely any sound as he raced down the corridor.
A smile, rare and involuntary, curved Ashra’s lips. With a chuckle, she took to the air; her wings spread and beat down, carrying her aloft. Like almost everything else in Malum Turris, the corridor was wide and high to allow the icrathari their greatest advantage, flight. She overtook the human and landed in front of him on soundless feet.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 148