She caught up with them just in time to hear Caleb say, “You know, Vor, was it? I think I’m gonna like having you around.”
The Vampire turned his head, and gave the page a dark grimace. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. Then he shook his head, which made his long, white hair dance over his leather-clad shoulders.
“You know the Bible?” Kaelyn kept up a steady jog to match their stride. Her foster mother, Daria, had mentioned the verse to her during her childhood.
Vor’on raised his chin, and slid his copper gaze down to view her out of the corner of his eye. He turned his pale lips in a sneer. “I was around long before the creation of your human religion. Vampires do not age as humans do.” Though he wore a perturbed look on his face, he spoke in a light tone, as though simply explaining a change in the weather.
“How old are you?” Kaelyn asked, testing her assumption that he held no real aversion to answering her questions.
Vor’on seemed to consider for a moment. “In your human estimation of time, somewhere around fifty thousand of your years.”
“Jesus!” Caleb exclaimed. “How old are you in Vampire years?”
Vor’on sighed. “I have lived for five hundred cycles of revolution of our world around our sun.”
Caleb guffawed. “It takes a hundred of our years for every one of yours? No wonder you look so young for fifty thousand, or five hundred, or whatever. What’s your lifespan?” He almost seemed to have forgotten that he’d professed to hate these “monsters” to the core.
“No Vampire has ever died from old age. We live until we are killed, as is the way of any parasite,” Vor’on explained apathetically.
Caleb smirked, and nodded to himself smugly. “Glad to know we’re not the only ones who think of you that way.”
Vor’on abruptly stopped at the end of the stairway, and turned around to face the Vampire Page. Despite his stony expression, his eyes held an age-old contempt as he glared at the formerly human teenager. “Do not assume that Vampires have such lofty views of humans. To us, you are livestock, no better than your earth cattle,” he seethed in a low tone.
Caleb drew up sharply, and his electric blue stare grew cold as stone. “Thanks for the reality check,” he replied as he held the Vampire’s copper gaze.
Vor’on stepped into Caleb’s personal space, and stood nearly nose to nose with the boy. “What you should truly fear is when you come to think of them as we do,” he cautioned, “and it will come; have no misconceptions about that. It will creep upon you slowly, like a madness. It is an addiction, an itch in the back of your mind you will never be able to scratch. But you can ignore it. I will teach you. It will not be easy and it will not be pleasant, but you will learn, or you will die.”
The Vampire turned, and marched through the open gates.
Kaelyn walked up and placed a comforting hand on the boy’s back. “It’ll be okay, Caleb; we’re all here to help you. Even Vor, though he may be a little rough around the edges. You can beat this. Believe in yourself.”
Caleb looked down, shoved his hands into his pockets, and kicked the ground with one of his skater shoes. “The way I see it, I’ve got two options: live as the monster I’ve been training almost my entire life to destroy, or die as one of them. I suppose I’ll give the first one a shot. If it doesn’t work out, well, there’s always option two.”
Kaelyn pinned him with a commiserative stare. “Don’t forget option three: Starla figures out a way to change you back.” She looped an arm through his, and walked them both out into the open landscape of the Vampire realm.
“No offense to our all-powerful Druid leader, but I think if she knew a way to fix me, she would have done it already,” Caleb stated dejectedly.
Kaelyn stopped them both, and turned him to face her. “You can’t lose hope, Caleb. If you do, you might as well just give up now.” She held the boy in a pleading stare.
He held her gaze for a long moment, then let out a sharp breath, smirked, and rubbed the side of his nose. “You’re right,” he conceded. “It’s not over till the fat lady sings, right?”
Kaelyn reached up and ruffled Caleb’s hair. “That’s the spirit.” She pushed him off ahead of her, toward the portal. Vor’on had activated it, she knew, to send them all to the human realm. Caleb jogged ahead of her, but she held her steady pace. She let her smile fade slowly; a familiar worry niggled at the edges of her consciousness.
She just couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all still in very grave danger.
* * * *
Starla slowly opened her milky, pearlescent eyes in response to some disturbance. She had made this place for herself; it existed neither here nor there, but floated out in the oblivion between a hundred different worlds and realities. She turned her pale, white face toward the disturbance. She knew every single particle within this space, so she immediately grew aware of anything out of place.
“This is familiar,” a male voice sounded out around the silver bark of one of her fabricated trees. The stark blackness of his choice of dress slashed through the clean, white landscape like a malignant cancer, soaking up the radiant life of the scenery and drowning it in a shroud of darkness.
Starla immediately went on guard. “Cynric, how did you get in here?” she breathed, her tone wary. She tensed her entire body in anticipation of whatever despicable act he had planned.
“Very carefully,” the Druid answered slowly. He ran a pale finger over one of the silver-lined green leaves that littered the landscape.
“What do you want?” She circled widely outside his reach.
He placed his hands behind his back, and locked his dark gaze on hers. “To talk.”
Starla drew her delicate brow down in a frown. “About what?”
“The war,” Cynric drawled. He turned his gaze back out across the white landscape, which she had encased in the protective bubble of her Druid magic.
“There doesn’t have to be a war, Cynric,” she responded carefully.
He rolled his gaze back over to her, and pinned her in a chiding glare. “Of course there has to be a war, Starla. You should expend a bit less effort trying to persuade me against it, and a little more in finding a way to fight it.” Despite his light tone, Starla read the thinly veiled threat in his words. That he even expended the effort to threaten her confused Starla, and she relaxed a bit under his careful scrutiny.
“Why did you really come here, Cynric?” She regarded him quizzically. He’d gone out of his way to find her, which had no doubt cost a great deal of effort. He’d even crafted a way to invade her space, simply because he wanted to talk. Starla definitely sensed something else going on.
“To warn you. I know who the next Medium is.” Through the corner of his eye, Cynric regarded her with his blackened gaze.
“That’s impossible,” Starla breathed. Her heart dropped into her gut at the open threat. Cynric could not possibly have tracked a Medium. Even if he’d found one, they were protected by a magic much older and more powerful than even Cynric’s bastard of a Sleeper wielded.
“You know, she was actually the first, before Kaelyn.” Cynric sank down to lounge on the bank of the stream that ran through her sanctuary. “I doubt the Hunter even understood at the time that the babe he rescued was eventually going to grow up to be his Medium. Or perhaps he did, and that is why he has spent every waking moment since the Vampire Medium’s return watching over her.”
Starla immediately flew away into her mind, and in the span of an instant, traversed the connection she held with each of her Hunters through their blood seals. She locked onto the flaring beacon of one Hunter in particular, and drew back sharply with a gasp.
“Byrne...” She trailed off under her breath.
Of course Starla had become aware, around thirty years before, when he’d first laid his hands on the infant, that she was his Medium. The child had been much too young at the time for him to know her, however, and so Starla had taken the memory from him. Even still, sh
e knew, their brief contact had seared the physical memory into him.
“Ever the mother hen,” Cynric quipped in response to her thoughts, as though reading her mind. It wouldn’t surprise her if he had; Druids of their power did such things as simply as breathing.
“Drop the bravado, Cynric. You know we’re alone here,” she replied caustically, tired of his wiseacre attitude. Brushing her hands to one side, she then called forth a chair and plopped herself down.
“This place...” Cynric’s hushed voice drifted over to her. It had lost its edge, bearing more resemblance to that which she remembered from their youth. They had been close once, long before. She had crafted her sanctitude after the gardens they’d once played in as children, back in a much simpler, much happier time.
“I often come here when I need to be alone to think, or just to get away.” Starla relaxed a bit back into her chair, and stared out across the manufactured sanctuary of Druid magic.
“Why did you do it?” she suddenly asked. She turned her piteous gaze on her unwelcome guest.
“Caleb,” he surmised from her vague question, his dark gaze not meeting hers.
“What you did to that poor boy…” Starla trailed off. The atrocity he’d committed against that Vampire Page, one she had no idea how to correct, had motivated her to contemplate in the privacy of her sanctuary.
“It was a backup plan, in case the experiments failed,” Cynric admitted. He pulled one of the leaves from its stem, and tossed it into the stream. It disintegrated upon contact, then floated back up to reclaim its rightful place on the branch. The Druid rolled his eyes at the action, and rose to his feet with a slight scoff.
“Can you fix it?” Starla somehow solemnly knew the answer.
Cynric cocked his head to the side, and regarded her blankly. “What has been done to him cannot be reversed. Not without great peril to the boy. I expect you’d rather avoid that if necessary.”
His gaze darkened as he stalked toward Starla. She remained in her seat, but every muscle in her body tensed in response. Within the sanctitude of her pure Druid magic, Cynric’s Sleeper could not enter. Even without its menacing presence, Cynric’s own barely-contained madness lurked right below the careful calmness of his exterior. His complete unpredictability unnerved her no end.
“You should prepare yourself, Starla. We weren’t able to get a viable sample of the Vampire Medium’s blood. She is still a target.” He stopped right in front of her, leaned over, and placed his hands on the arms of her chair. He leaned in so close, she thought that she could almost see a spark of clarity in the deep darkness of his black gaze.
“I’ll keep her safe,” she muttered, almost on instinct in response to the warning, her gaze never breaking from his.
A slow smirk twisted Cynric’s lips, and he cocked his head to the side. Any semblance of light Starla thought she may have sensed within him vanished.
“I am not telling you this out of the nonexistent goodness of my heart, Starla. I’m giving you a fighting chance. I will come for her; I will come for all of them. You need to be ready,” he said slowly, punctuating every word clearly.
And then he vanished, his vow echoing prophetically in his wake.
Preview of
Awakened In Flame
O’Shanahan’s Pub had all but emptied. One of the triplets began turning chairs up on tables, while another headed to the back to help the third clean up the kitchen. The solitary form of the Dragon realm Hunter hunched over the far end of the solid oak bar, dark gold eyes staring fixedly upon the tiny redhead currently stacking glasses.
Ember O’Shanahan was an absolute vision. Her flame-red hair fell in huge, natural ringlets halfway down her back, spilling over her shoulders when she leaned forward to place a tray of glasses on a shelf beneath the bar surface. Her dark green eyes, shot through with hints of gold, had captivated him from the moment he’d caught their gaze. He’d watched her move effortlessly behind the bar, for how long he didn’t know, talking animatedly with customers and commanding her three brothers with ease.
Ember was a natural-born leader; he had no doubts about that.
The front door opened suddenly, ushering in his lanky Page. The boy shuffled his hands through his short blond hair; snowflakes flew every which way. He shucked his jacket, sending more snow falling about the entryway, and saluted to Declan. In the midst of cleaning the floor, the young man now glared openly at the mess the boy had just made.
Asher made his way over to Byrne, and sat down. When Ember sauntered over to take his order, he grinned broadly at her.
“What can I get you?” she asked, her light Irish brogue clear in her enunciation.
Asher opened his big mouth to respond, but Byrne abruptly shut it for him.
“He’s not staying.”
Ember turned her cynical gaze upon Byrne then. “Are you?” she asked. “You’ve been sitting here for over four hours, and you haven’t touched your Scotch.”
Four hours? Had it really been that long?
Byrne looked down at his glass. After lifting the tumbler, he inspected the contents briefly, then tipped the whole thing back without so much as a grimace. He’d long since grown desensitized to the burn of strong liquors. He set the glass back down in front of the small bartender, and gestured for her to refill it. She narrowed her eyes at him warily, pulled a heavy bottle of single malt Scotch from under the bar, and without breaking his gaze, refilled his glass. He nodded to her in appreciation. She let out a breath and shook her head. Then she slipped a white towel from the edge of the ice bucket, and headed back over to the other end of the bar.
When Asher once again opened his mouth to comment, Byrne held up a finger. He closed his eyes, and waited for the telltale clatter of his obnoxious Page’s teeth. He clasped the rim of the glass between his fingers and swirled the liquid around inside, his golden gaze again following the movements of the young bartender.
Asher’s leg started to twitch on the stool next to Byrne. “What do you want?” he asked, more than slightly exasperated.
“You were right. They’re here.” The boy suddenly fixed his wary brown eyes upon the closed front door.
“Calm down,” Byrne growled. He ceased stalking the bartender, and turned his eyes to the door as well.
One of the reasons Byrne had sat there for the past four hours had to do with the owner’s relationship to the newly discovered Vampire Medium, Kaelyn Hamblin. The Druid who had captured her and the Vampire Page, Caleb Stanford, had failed in securing what he’d needed from her. Therefore, it stood to reason that he would come after her again, as she was the only Medium whose whereabouts were currently known. There was no better way to drag people out of hiding than to threaten the lives of those they held dear. Byrne had gambled on the possibility that the enemy would come after Ember and her family.
The door opened once more, and four large men filed in one by one, each one practically glowing with menace. Byrne cursed under his breath; sometimes he really hated being right.
He caught Asher’s eye out of the corner of his own. The Dragon Page nodded in understanding, and moved to slip behind the bar. While Asher was sometimes the most obnoxious cad Byrne had ever known, he knew when to keep his mouth shut and do what the Hunter told him. Byrne sighed heavily, and placed the thick glass back down on the bar top. He slid from his own seat, and faded back into the shadows along the edges of the room.
* * * *
Ember caught her brother’s stare behind their four new patrons, and shook her head. She’d dealt with all kinds of bar brawlers and nasty drunks over the years, but these four struck her as cut from an entirely different breed of bad-ass cloth. They reeked of former military, probably mercenaries. It would do no good to try and run them out with violence, not without expecting to end up in the news the next morning as victims of an unsolved homicide.
She leaned forward, rested her hands over the barrel of the shotgun she kept there for emergencies, and offered them a tight smile. “We�
�re just closing up shop now, boys. I’m afraid you’ll have to find elsewhere to hang your hats this evening.”
The biggest one, in the middle, stepped forward and gave her a once-over. “We are looking for Ember O’Shanahan,” he responded in a low, gravelly voice. It sounded like the distant rumbling of thunder, deep and rich, and it frightened her.
Ember’s pulse quickened, and her fight-or-flight response kicked in. With her suddenly sweaty palms, she gripped the shotgun tightly, and eyes wide, followed with rapt attention every twitch of movement each one of the men made. She clenched her teeth, swallowed heavily, and schooled her features to not give away the fear that had suddenly clenched her gut when he said her name.
She took a deep breath, inclined her head, and cautiously replied, “I’m Ember O’Shanahan.”
All of the men’s faces morphed, horrifyingly, right before Ember’s eyes. Their pupils narrowed into slits, and their eyes widened until the lids disappeared. Noses shrank back as jaws protruded forward; their lips stretched back to the middle of their cheeks as razor-sharp teeth slid from their gums. She watched, transfixed, as the light caught the surface of their skin, the sheen of iridescent scales becoming visible.
The one in front blinked, fleshy lids sliding over its eyes from the sides. It lunged forward, and thick claws dug wide gouges in the lacquered surface of the bar. Ember jumped back reflexively, brought the shotgun up, and lined the sights up right between the monster’s eyes. It stopped abruptly, its monstrous face an inch from the end of the barrel, but it hadn’t stopped because of the threat of her blowing its head off, Ember saw. A sharp-looking, thin black sword pressed against its throat, the hilt held in the grip of the mysterious stranger with the pretty eyes who had sat at the end of the bar. She hadn’t even seen him move. Granted, she had focused her attention elsewhere at the time.
Immortal Sleepers Page 27