OF ANGEL'S BLOOD
By Martyn Currill
Copyright © Martyn Currill
The author(s) assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author(s) of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library C.I.P.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
For Autumn,
whose story is just beginning.
PROLOGUE
Between then and now
People have asked me what happened between the end of my previous story and now, and quite often my response is “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Unfortunately for me they generally aren’t convinced, which has led me to write this second memoir. I guess when people learn that vampires are actually a thing they reckon nothing else will faze them.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If you’re reading this after reading my first story, then welcome back. If you’re new here, then I better give you the short, short version of events.
My name is Deimos Black. Shut up, I know the name is ridiculous, but you can blame my ancestors for it. Many of my family members are named after mythological figures, such as my dear younger sister, Tisiphone, my brother Remus, or Tyr, our father. I think there was a Medusa in our family, but I’m not sure - although some of the statues in our family graveyard are really lifelike.
Anyway, my family are vampire hunters. Some of the best, as a matter of fact...except I kind of failed at that and joined the other side, a vampiric organisation known only as The Order. In just a couple of years, I managed to get repeatedly injured, married a vampire, got turned, endured my wife’s death and then led a crusade against The Order’s leader, a woman named Sharriana Grey. She had been manipulating events in order to try and turn us into rulers of mortals, instead of following the ideals that the organisation stood for - namely, attempting to build a peace between us and mortal society.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of issuing a very specific challenge to her, which meant that when I removed her head, I inherited everything of hers...including leadership of the entire organisation.
This account follows on from there, or at least a couple of weeks or so afterwards. We’d managed to clear away most of the wreckage, and we were in the process of turning Sharriana’s vast fortress on the German coast into a proper headquarters.
By the way, I’ll try and add some information on the people around me at the time, for those of you reading this account first, but I can’t guarantee it. Besides, some people just defy explanation.
So this must have been January, around the 8th I think, in 2019. Just so you have an understanding of timescale here.
CHAPTER 1
Renewal
I leaned back in the immense leather chair, which even after three weeks still felt two sizes too big for me.
Much like the role itself, actually.
I frowned at the piles of paperwork on my desk, which was beginning to feel like the torture rack it resembled - I spent so much time at it without anything seeming to happen that I felt like I was being stretched out along it.
I threw my pen at the piles and swore under my breath, scrubbing at my eyes with my hands. Vampires may not fatigue like mortals, but the war against bureaucracy was one no-one got out of unscathed.
“Tired, boss?”
I thanked whatever gods there were for the distraction, then thanked them again when I realised who had walked in.
“No, Lori, I am fucking shattered,” I told Lorelei, my close friend and resident technical genius. If it involved anything computer-based, she was the one to call on - it had been her computer virus which had shut down the fortress defences only a few weeks previously, when we were attacking this base.
“I swear, it’s little wonder Sharriana was nuts,” I added, leaning forward again. “These piles of paper just don’t bloody end.”
Lorelei smiled crookedly, and gestured towards the chair opposite me, asking if she could sit. I made a ‘go ahead’ gesture, and she settled in to it with her usual feline grace.
“Well it’s a good job I just dropped by to give you a report then,” she said, her dark emerald eyes lighting up. “You could use a break, I’m sure.”
I nodded ruefully.
“Yeah, I could,” I agreed, “but sadly I can’t just up and leave on a year-long holiday, unlike some people.” Lorelei snorted humourlessly at my reference to Levaertes, another of my closest friends. Before we attacked Sharriana, she had asked permission to take my sister on holiday after our insurrection was over, and I had agreed. So, she’d made arrangements, spent christmas with us - more because Tis refused to go anywhere until she’d spent christmas with me again - but by December 27th they were gone, heading off to Mexico on their insanely long holiday.
Meanwhile, I was left behind, running a worldwide organisation and having zero time to myself.
“Haven’t you appointed an aide yet?” she asked me, looking mildly concerned, and I shook my head.
“I’ve got no desire to make anyone into a jumped-up secretary,” I told her. “The people around us have not long finished fighting for their lives against a lunatic, and they’ve all suffered loss of friends or people they loved. I have no right to ask any of them to do such menial work.”
“Deimos,” she began, her tone betraying her concern, “if this work is getting to you - and I can see that it is, you look like hell - you need someone to help out with the menial shit. Get someone to help you.”
I scoffed and sat back again, indicating my disgust at the prospect.
“Like who? I don’t know anyone who’d take on that sort of crappy work willingly.”
“How about a close friend, who owes you for saving her life?”
“It’s because you’re my friend that I don’t ask you, Lori,” I told her firmly, and she raised a hand to cut off any further arguments.
“I’m offering, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she told me calmly. “I’m also not taking ‘no’ for an answer. However, before we get to work getting your affairs in order-”
She stood up, marched around the oversized desk and grabbed my hand, pulling me out of the chair.
“-We’re going to work on getting you in order. Let’s move.”
I allowed myself to be dragged from the chair, silently glad of seeing the back of that office for a while.
When we arrived at the dining hall, Lorelei pushed me roughly into a chair and stalked off to the service area, intent on getting us both some food and sustenance.
I watched her prowl along the counters, grabbing a selection of food items and getting two large bowls of what appeared to be a stew. She finished her food quest with two medium-sized glasses of blood, which all of our bases kept stocked for their vampiric staff, and returned to our table. Although as vampires it was only the blood that sustained us, we ate the food because it was still enjoyable, and it gave us something to do while we talked.
And it seemed at that point, Lorelei had much to say.
“Sorry boss, I admit I have a bit of an ulterior motive for dragging you out of there,” she confessed, and I sighed softly.
“Lori, I’ve told you before, you can just call me Deimos - I’d prefer it, actually.”
She smi
led at that, although it seemed to be tinged with melancholy.
“You sound a bit like Corvi when you talk like that.”
Corvi. Not a day went by when I didn’t think about her. For those not aware, Corvina Delacore was my wife. We’d fallen in love ridiculously fast, got married, and shortly after that, Sharriana had engineered events so that Corvina was fatally wounded. When I’d found her, Corvi had been bleeding from a dozen wounds that wouldn’t heal, and she had begged me to end her life and continue what she started.
I made sure Sharriana lived just long enough to regret ruining my life.
However, I hadn’t been the only one affected. Lorelei had been a close friend of Corvi’s for almost a century, and she had taken my wife’s death just as hard. Lorelei was very solitary by nature, deliberately keeping herself distanced from most people because generally she couldn’t trust them. Corvi had been one exception to that rule, and when I gave her the opportunity to open up and talk about how she felt, I became another.
Shortly before we launched the attack on Sharriana and her looming crusade, Lorelei and I had shared a bed - not in any sexual sense, but as a means of comfort. Neither of us had slept well since Corvi’s death, and the comfort we offered each other helped us both get some much-needed rest.
I smiled weakly at Lorelei.
“I guess I do, a little. She never did like being considered above those around her, either.”
“But you don’t have that luxury,” Lorelei told me sternly. “You aren’t just running a base now, you’re running everything - and that means having to set yourself apart.”
“Well, it’s not like I have any other close friends right now,” I replied, my tone bordering on sarcastic. “Kalin’s gone back to England, Lev’s fucked off to Mexico with my sister, and you want me to cut myself off from you as well.”
“How Corvi didn’t slap you more often, I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not saying you cut me off, you idiot - why do you think I’m offering to be your aide? Aside from the fact that you clearly need the help, we haven’t had much chance to talk since you beheaded the grand bitch. I’ve...well, I’ve kinda needed it, lately.”
I took a deep gulp from my glass, not realising how hungry I’d become. I really should have taken better care of myself - Corvi would have been furious.
“Then you should have come to see me,” I told her softly. “I leave the office door open for a reason, so that anyone can come and talk to me if they need to, but you don’t even need to wait until office hours. You should know that, Lori.”
“I know, boss, and I appreciate that, but...” her expression seemed pained as she struggled with what she was trying to say. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to bother you when you had so much of this place to deal with, the aftermath of the insurrection, your own personal grief...I felt like I would have been intruding.”
I stared at her levelly, watching those emerald eyes of hers.
“I could’ve really used a talk myself, the last couple of weeks,” I told her eventually, and she lowered her eyes.
“Sorry boss, I...I didn’t think.”
“Seriously Lori, don’t worry about it,” I said more cheerfully. “You free tonight? We’ll crack open some of Corvi’s favourite brew, talk about things again-”
“Actually...I hate whisky,” she said, looking slightly sheepish, and I raised my hands as if in praise.
“Well, thank fuck for that!” I chuckled, and that seemed to lift her own mood. “I hate the stuff too, so let’s get something else up, shall we? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. What would you like?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“I dunno. Got any good ales?”
“I’ll see what we’ve got later, and have some brought up,” I said with a grin.
“Awesome!” she declared, and finished her glass in a single swallow. I guess she’d been neglecting her feeding too.
“Anyway, eat up - the food’s getting cold,” I told her, and she laughed as she we finally started to eat.
We talked about a variety of things while we were eating - our grief was something we preferred to discuss in private, so instead I asked her about herself.
Her full name was Lorelei Selano, and contrary to the roots of her name she was actually of Italian descent. She was an only child, born to a family that had once been a member of the Italian aristocracy. However, the family had been stripped of their titles and lands since seventeenth century, meaning that by 1855, the year of Lorelei’s birth, the family were virtually living on the streets. Her father had been killed when she was four, because he had been kidnapping people to feed his family - all of them born vampires. Those who killed him had followed him to their hovel, and promptly killed Lorelei’s mother as well, and they had thought that without sustenance Lorelei would die soon after.
However, even then she had been a determined soul, and that was when she began her life of crime.
For sixteen years she lived as a criminal - stealing, killing, doing anything for money regardless of the legality, until one of her lovers had tried to murder her when she was twenty. That prompted her to seek out and join The Order, where she met Corvina, and the rest was history.
It was little wonder she didn’t like or trust people very much.
“I have wondered something though,” she told me, after finishing her life story. “What is it like, being turned? I mean I was born like this, I’ve never known anything else. You weren’t.”
I leaned back in my chair and pushed the remains of my food away, shaking my head slightly.
“It was agonising. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and I sure as hell won’t be turning anyone any time soon.”
“That bad?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, it’s deeply unpleasant.” I checked my watch, and realised we’d been talking for an hour and a half.
“Alright, Lori, I’d better be getting back to work, so-”
“You mean we.”
“What?”
“We better be getting back to work,” she said. “I may not have mentioned, but I intended to start immediately.”
I just chuckled.
“Well, I can’t say I’m not glad. Come on then, let’s get to it, see if you can’t take some of this work off my hands.”
The first thing we did was re-arrange my office. Because of its size, it could easily accommodate desks for me and my new ‘aide’, while still allowing both of us the space to work in peace. To that end, we moved my desk away from the massive window and over by the wall-spanning bookcase, which still bore the gouges where I’d pinned Sharriana to it with my sword, then beheaded her with Corvi’s. This meant that if I needed any information I could find it easily, without a small trek across the room. It also allowed us to set up a desk for Lorelei closer to the door, so that if anyone wanted to see me she could either let them in, or send them off with an appointment to return later.
With that arrangement settled, and Lorelei’s laptop settled into its new home, we set about dividing the workload. Well actually, what I mean is that Lorelei took a thick wad of request forms, files, reports and assorted other bits of paperwork and moved them to her desk, and she would bring anything to me if it warranted my attention or signature. The reports she would compile into one overall summary, filing everything away neatly so that if I needed the specifics I could view them at will. The requests she organised according to priority, so that urgent matters or matters that required my authority were dealt with quickly by me; the other, more minor requests she handled.
She kept an eye on the time, making sure I fed when appropriate and that I wasn’t disturbed during those times. She arranged meetings, took calls, fielded questions from staff members around the globe...in short, she made herself indispensable.
“What the hell is a ‘Revenant’?” I asked suddenly, looking through some of the older files Sharriana had kept around in the database.
“A Revenant is...hm.” She paused for
a moment, frowning in thought. “You remember that feral you fought at Oxford last year?”
“I remember his teeth fucking hurt, if that helps.”
“Well, he was about two stages up from a Revenant. He’s what they become if their condition isn’t managed. Why, where’d you get that?”
I indicated the computer screen before me.
“This ‘persons of interest’ file,” I informed her, and her frown deepened.
“Wait, you don’t mean Kara Silvaine, do you?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
Lorelei shook her head.
“She’s a dangerous one, Deimos,” she said. “I was on the team that originally assessed her, and we decided that she really shouldn’t be joining us any time soon.”
I looked at the screening, my own brown furrowing in thought.
“Sharriana must’ve kept her on this file for some reason, though.”
“Yes, and you have any sense you’ll take it off. She’s not right boss, and I would feel a lot better knowing you weren’t going to do something insanely stupid.”
I looked at her with a grin.
“And when have I ever done that?”
“Oh, let’s see,” she said, raising a hand and counting her reasons off on her fingers. “You locked yourself in a room with a feral, you agreed to a challenge from Irenae Delacore, you let Lev date your sister, knowing exactly what she’s like with relationships - shall I continue?”
“You don’t trust Lev, do you?”
She turned her attention to her share of paperwork as she replied to me.
“I don’t trust anyone, Deimos, you know that.”
“Not even me?”
“Except you. You know that as well, idiot.”
I grinned at her, and she shot me a quick smile back before she turned to her work.
Of Angel's Blood (Chronicles of The Order Book 2) Page 1