Young Blood: The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1

by Phillip Tomasso²

  She was mindful of the treetops as she approached. She could not sense any vampires around. They had to be there. Everywhere. Neal was surrounded, she just couldn’t figure out how. Yet.

  Staying low, Madison made her way closer.

  She’d bet Julius knew right where she was, that he was watching her.

  The handle of her dagger pulsed inside her palm. She almost dropped it. The sensation was unexpected.

  One of the missing pendants was nearby.

  That was fortunate.

  The trap was simple enough to see. Neal was the bait. They wanted her to rush in and cut him free. While she was busy doing that, they would attack. There were too many to fight. She had been nothing more than lucky up to this point. They would be more experienced, she assumed. More dangerous.

  And yet, she sensed that Julius feared her.

  There didn’t seem to be any way to approach, other than head-on. She walked toward the tree. She looked up and left and right.

  She heard something, but didn’t stop.

  Someone laughed. She kept on walking.

  When she was feet from the tree, she stopped. Neal’s face was red. The blood was all in his head. His eyes were open wide. He saw her, but struggled to talk.

  “Shh,” she said. “You okay?”

  “I think I have a double ear infection,” he said.

  She tried not to strangle him. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  It was an empty promise to make. She felt like she needed to say something, to reassure him somehow. She saw the tears start at the corners of his eyes and watched as they rolled along his temples, and were lost inside his hair. The ropes securing Neal’s legs to the tree branches were thick. She had no doubt the dagger would cut through it easily, but thought it might be more effective fighting the vampires without Neal getting in the way.

  Madison put her back to Neal and held the dagger in her right hand, ready to slash at anything that moved.

  “You brought the dagger.” A man stepped out of shadows. He must have been behind a tree, or up in one. She could not see his face.

  She had no response for him. She had the dagger, but wasn’t going to give it over to him. Madison wished the moon was out. Her eyes were well adjusted to the dark, but some moonlight would help. She wanted to see his face. She knew this had to be Julius now walking toward her.

  Second-guessing her first thought, Madison backed up and spun around, swinging the dagger; she severed the ropes. Neal fell hard on the ground. He let out an, Oompfh! “When I say run, run,” she said.

  She watched the swirling smoke spread thin, covering a lot of ground.

  “There will be no running,” the vampire said.

  “Julius?”

  “The one and only,” he said, and bowed, one hand across his midriff, the other in the air. He wore a goatee, his hair nearly shaved on the sides, longer on top and slicked back. Dressed in a black coat that went to mid-thigh, Julius also had on blue jeans and boots with pointed toes. “And you, Miss Young, have been nothing but trouble. When we saw on the internet that you weren’t dead, that you were in the hospital and police were looking for your attackers, I knew right then there was a problem. I figured you were from a bloodline, like my family around you. I just did not realize it was Peter’s bloodline.”

  Madison stood with one arm back, keeping Neal between her and the tree. The ambush was coming. She sensed it. Julius indicated his family was all around her.

  “Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of meeting my Uncle Peter,” she said. Dry humor worked to relieve tension in most situations. She thought she would try it now. The tension, if anything, increased.

  “No? How about your grandmother. Did you know her?”

  Madison felt her left eye twitch. Her lip lifted into a snarl. He wasn’t going to get to her that easy. He wanted her to ask questions, but she refused. Two could play this game. By not giving in, she knew she’d be pushing his buttons as well.

  “Wonderful lady, wonderful. Well, when she wasn’t begging for her life, that is.” Julius smiled, lips pursed tightly together, but with fangs visible at the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d gotten a rise out of her.

  Two vampires charged. One from the left. The other from the right. The smoke swirled into action, lifting off the high grass and weeds. It moved like a tempest, crashing useless into the male vampire. It startled the creature; he threw his hands up to protect himself, stumbled backward, and fell.

  Using the distraction to her advantage, Madison faced the other male. He came at her like a tank. He was big, biceps bulging beneath a tight fitting thin coat. There was no time to think, only a split second with which to react. Madison dropped to a knee. She plunged the dagger into the giant’s gut and stood up, yanking the blade up his stomach and into his chest.

  In one motion she removed the dagger from his chest as vampire blood sprayed from the jagged incision, and then spun around to face the second assailant. His arms were spread wide like he wanted to grip her in a bone-crushing bear hug. She dropped onto her back and kicked out her legs, tripping him. He fell fast and hard beside her. She raised the blade and brought down. The dagger cut through his back, skidding across bone, and through the heart.

  She scrambled back onto her feet, stepped on the vampire’s head, and pulled her dagger free.

  When she turned around, Julius was gone.

  So was Neal.

  “This way,” the lingering smoke said.

  She didn’t need a ghost to tell her where to go. Neal’s fear was like a beacon from a lighthouse. She could follow after him with her eyes closed. Regardless, the smoke moved like a serpent, moving sinuously between and around trees leading deeper into the woods.

  Julius was fast. Carrying Neal didn’t slow him down.

  She couldn’t help but wonder where the remaining five or six vampires were. They had to be in the woods somewhere. They had to be.

  Madison knew Julius was surprised by her strength and probably never expected his plan to go south so fast. That realization just gave her more courage, more energy. She ran faster, hoping to catch him before he reached whatever location he was headed toward.

  She could hear her own breathing. It almost echoed inside her head. They were quick shallow breaths. It did not tire her out. She felt like she could run forever.

  A vampire dropped from a tree directly in front of her.

  It was too late to stop.

  Madison slammed into him. It could have been a her, she wasn’t sure. All she saw was an opened mouth and elongated fangs as they crashed onto the ground and tumbled one over the other.

  A gunshot cracked.

  Madison felt a searing heat shoot up and down her left arm. She was pushed over and onto her back. The vampire threw a punch. It connected solidly with the fresh bullet wound. She shouted out in pain. Her arm felt as if it were on fire.

  The vampire took a firstfull of her hair in one hand, and pulled her head off the ground. He threw another punch. She felt her nose crush flat against the rest of her face. Her eyes welled up with tears. There were floating black and white spots in her vision. Blinking did not get rid of them, but only made the number of them seen increase. She thought she might black out.

  If she lost consciousness, it was over.

  Neal would be drained of blood and discarded; insignificant as road kill.

  The vampire still held her head by the hair, and as he drew back his fist, Madison reacted. She bucked under him and twisted, trying to roll onto her right side.

  It mostly worked. He was thrown off balance, but still managed to deliver a blow. The punch cracked against the side of her head. She thought she heard, or felt, his knuckles shatter against her bone. Her ear rang, buzzing like a church bell inside her skull.

  He did fall off her, but pulled her head with him. She thought her bangs would be plucked from the roots. Her forehead hurt, the skin pulling away from bone.

  The smoke came up on the
vampire, spinning around his head. It moved back, and transformed. Madison saw the smoke become a face, a head–the top half of a body. Its mouth opened wide. Smoke spilled from it like breath as it roared.

  The vampire released her hair.

  Madison would have to nurse the pain later. Focusing, she swiveled her position; her legs now under her, she jumped up and came down on top of the vampire. She stabbed him over and over, fast and hard, the blade pierced new sections of skin with each angry thrust. The vampire blood exploded from his chest with each penetrating ramming of steel through flesh. The brilliant reddish-yellow blood covered Madison’s face and hair. Serrated ribs snapped under her weight as she knelt on his chest before getting to her feet.

  The ghost swam in the air around her, rose above her, nose-dived toward the ground, and then snaked away. She looked once behind her, just to ensure they weren’t being followed, before running after the smoke. There was still the sweet aroma of Neal’s fear in the air, but it grew faint. Eventually she would lose the scent, and Neal would be gone.

  She could not let that happen. This was her chance to make a difference. There was nothing Neal wouldn’t do for her. She owed him so much more. Saving his life was the least she could do. He was in this predicament because of her.

  Her legs moved so fast. She felt the burn in her thighs.

  He thought he was getting a double ear infection. She knew when he said it that she either wanted to strangle him or start laughing. If they weren’t in the woods surrounded by vampires, she might have laughed.

  Her eyes spotted roots and tree limbs. She leapt over them and continued on picking up speed with each step she took. She thought she might start to fly from running so fast.

  She used her forearms to swat branches out of the way, ducked under branches that couldn’t be swept away, and then stopped.

  Julius stood alongside a white, but otherwise non-descript, work van. Neal was in front of the vampire.

  “I’m not surprised by your strength.” Julius had one hand on Neal’s forehead, one arm across the top of his chest, the hand on a shoulder. It was clear if Madison made any sudden moves he’d be able to snap Neal’s neck in a heartbeat. “I have no idea who your ghostly friend is, but I must admit I am curious. Quite curious.”

  You and me both. “Let Neal go, Julius. This has nothing to do with him.”

  “Wrong. It has everything to do with him. He is the key.”

  “The key?”

  “To my safety, Miss Young.”

  He was scared. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “You’ll make me a deal?” He sounded insulted.

  “You let Neal go. You give me your pendant. I’ll let you live.” His hand went to his chest. He must wear the pendant on a necklace like she did. “You don’t have to die.”

  He laughed. It was not a fake or forced laugh. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

  “You are from the bloodline of Thaddaeus.”

  He shook his head. “That’s true. That is not what I meant. I have managed to hang onto my pendant for some time. Do you think I’m going to hand it over to some cocky teenager? I mean, I could. If I did, I just want you know that I have more family than you have ever had. I am not alone like you. Even if I give the pendant to you, that doesn’t mean you’ve won. It just means you have to live out your life looking over your shoulder. Because I’ll be coming for you. Hell. You will have more than just my bloodline after you, but you already know that don’t you?”

  She walked out of the trees and onto the blacktop. She narrowed her eyes and listened. Certain this was still a trap, she wasn’t about to be fooled into believing an empty surrender. “Let Neal go.”

  “I am going to break his spine in two if you take one more step toward me.”

  She stopped.

  Wondering where the ghost was, Madison tried to smile. She felt alone. This was her battle. It was up to her to finish what the vampires had started. “Let Neal go, and we can talk.”

  “We are talking. We have been talking. Your friend is not going anywhere. Now I will make a deal with you. I want the dagger. I am done discussing things. You are going to toss it toward me, and then go back into the woods. And your friend, the ghost, I know about you. I know you are not here, just the spirit. And the spirit is as thin as smoke. You have no physical presence here. So honestly, flit about all you want.”

  Madison wondered where the ghost was, but did not look around.

  “I’m not going to count to three. If I even think three seconds have elapsed, your friend is dead.”

  That was it. He’d won. She had no choice but to relinquish the dagger. She had it all of what, two days? She sucked in a deep breath. There was one final option. A long shot. One shot. Instead of tossing the blade aside for Julius to retrieve after killing them, she felt a strength surge through her arm, and flicked her wrist.

  The dagger sailed across the darkness, flying through the air end over end. She never lost sight of it. It moved in an almost slow motion fashion.

  She cringed at the last moment, expecting the pommel to smack Julius in the forehead.

  That wasn’t what happened.

  Julius’s jaw went tight, his muscles visibly tensed. He had to have been watching the dagger with equal intensity. And while the dagger appeared to move in slow motion, it wasn’t. It had speed and velocity and accuracy.

  Julius hesitated, as if torn by a decision. Should he move out of the path of trajectory, or kill Neal? Before he could snap Neal’s neck, the dagger punctured his eyeball. The blade was buried to the hilt in his skull and protruded out the back of his head.

  When he collapsed onto the pavement, as the vampire blood gushed from his eyeball socket, Neal squirmed free and ran toward Madison. He was covered in vampire blood. He fell onto his knees in front of her.

  “I don’t feel good,” he said. “I don’t fe–”

  His chest heaved, and he vomited. The hot chunky fluid hit the cold pavement and pungent steam rose into the air. It smelled of bile, stomach acids and bologna.

  Madison walked around Neal, and over to what little remained of Julius.

  She retrieved her dagger from his still melting head, and ripped open his shirt. The necklace was gold. The pendant was jasper, a reddish black stone that was dull, but compellingly alluring. She gripped the necklace in her hand; the pendant sat like a trophy in her palm. As Julius disappeared, all that was left was the necklace and the set jasper.

  The dagger did more than pulse, it vibrated in her hand, as if hungry to have the pendant returned home.

  Chapter 28

  Living in Rochester, Madison had a math teacher who was famous for saying, You can get to Syracuse by way of Buffalo, but would you want to? In this case, Madison led Neal back to the Jeep in the parking lot across from the mall. It took nearly an hour. She did not want police or news crews noticing them.

  “Are we going home?”

  They sat in the Jeep while the engine warmed up.

  As suspected, there were still police cars and news vans behind the mall, in the back parking lot.

  “We are out of here,” she said.

  She was drained. The fighting took a lot out of her. Thankfully, the bullet that grazed her arm was clean. She didn’t think anything was lodged in the meat of her triceps. She felt the pain of the gunshot now. Her body craved blood to restore and rejuvenate.

  Neal fell asleep almost immediately. They drove through the night.

  At a rest stop, after filling the gas tank, Madison pulled the Jeep over.

  Neal was up, had just returned with two coffee’s and some fresh baked doughnuts. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she didn’t want any of it.

  “What do you do with that necklace,” Neal said, tucking a doughnut in his mouth so he could free up a hand to close the door.

  “Want to see?”

  “Think I’ve earned it,” he said.

  She looked over the hilt and the case. “It’s jasper. And it
should fit right. . . here.”

  The opening was on the left of the handle, opposite the stone from her grandmother, from Peter’s bloodline.

  “Wow. It looked like it sucked it into place,” he said.

  “Like it was magnetic,” she said.

  “You still have a few to collect.”

  “I know.” She wasn’t sure what it meant. She couldn’t imagine dropping out of school. She was close to graduating. What about college? Was it possible to do both, continue schooling while tracking down the remaining pendants?

  “Now what?”

  “Let’s not think about it. Let’s just get home.”

  # # #

  The last leg of the road trip seemed to last forever. It was not yet four in the morning. The sky was black and starless. It wasn’t snowing in New York, but it was cold. The Jeep’s heat fought against it valiantly, but the chill could not be easily defeated. Neal hugged himself tight, shivering to keep warm.

  She dropped him off at the top of his street. “I don’t want to pull into your driveway.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going home. I need to talk to my father.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t have a choice. He was married to my mother. My family history became his on that day.”

  “How do you think he’s going to take it?”

  She had gone on a killing spree. The bodies were spread across state lines. She could never be arrested. No one was going to report a missing vampire, she thought. The only stain on her soul was killing her mother’s boyfriend. It was before she had known anything about who she was or what she’d become. She supposed she’d have to atone for that sin. Eventually. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  In truth, she had no idea how her father would react, or what would happen next. There was no plan in place. She was pissed at her cousins. They’d dropped a heavy responsibility onto her shoulders, and then left the country. Forgiveness wouldn’t be easy. It might be necessary, because she needed answers. She craved help. She knew she could not do any of this alone.