by Rye Brewer
League of Vampires Box Set
Books 4-6
Rye Brewer
Contents
Retribution
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Revelation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Salvation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Afterword
Retribution
Half-fae Anissa, a former vampire assassin finds herself embroiled in a new dilemma to save her sister Sara from a set of suddenly appearing elemental skills—a death sentence to a vampire.
Sara finds herself in a witch stronghold, surrounded by a hot sorcerer who’s making her forget her boyfriend, while sparks fly between them. Real sparks. She needs help with her elementals skills. Now.
Interim clan leader Philippa is torn between spending her time guarding the body of the Ancient who possessed her former lover Vance, and following Vance so she can save him from the Ancient.
Gage can’t get the blond human who saved his life out of his mind. The problem is, she can’t get him out of hers either. And it’s putting her in danger.
1
Anissa
As I had promised my sister, Sara, our trip through the shade portal lasted almost no time. It was much less frightening than my first trip. There was no way Sara could know how lucky she was, of course, but she handled it well. She only lost control of her elemental powers once, crackling a tiny bit of lightning a moment before the air around us changed, becoming warmer and softer. I bit back my frustration as I thought of the elemental powers that Sara now had. The ones she wasn’t born with.
I could hear the twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves.
Where had our half-brother, Allonic, brought us? “We’re here. You can take off the cloak.” The cloak imbued with the essence of spiritwalkers. Which made crossing through shade portals possible. The only way non-shades could go through
I opened it and glanced around, squinting a little at first. It was night here—of course, or else we would’ve burned up—but even the moonlight was brighter than the almost complete darkness I’d gotten used to in the tunnels that Steward and Allonic called home.
Sara’s reaction was stronger, since she had been in the tunnels much longer than I had.
“Where are we?” Her voice trembled dangerously.
“Calm down. Take a deep breath,” I whispered soothingly, stroking her hair.
Tiny sparks jumped from her head to my palm, but I didn’t jerk my hand away.
She nodded and did her best. After a moment, the sparks stopped jumping from her to me.
Only then could I get a good look around me.
It was beautiful. That was what I noticed first.
We were in a forest—no, the countryside. There weren’t as many trees as in a forest. Much more open space. Rolling hills covered in lush, green grass, dotted here and there with trees and stone walls. What a charming place. Soothing. This was perfect for her. She needed a place like this, where she could see and feel safe.
There was a mountain range in the distance with snowcapped peaks. They glowed in the silver moonlight. I could’ve stood there and stared at them all night. A few clouds floated past, and the moon painted them, too.
Sara’s eyes were wide as her mouth fell open. “It’s so gorgeous,” she murmured, awestruck. “So peaceful.”
Peaceful. Good description. “Are we the only ones here?” I asked Allonic.
He nodded then corrected himself. “You’re the only ones out here. Don’t you recognize this place?”
I looked around again, more critically than before. Far off, toward the foot of one of the mountains, there was a small forest. I remembered a forest in the woods. “Are we where Sanctuary is?” Sanctuary held the Custodians—shades who were the keepers of all of Earth’s history. Our half-brother lived with the Custodians but had always felt out of place, being part-vampire, part-shade.
He nodded. “This is ShadesRealm. This is what you stepped into when you first came to us.”
“How? We didn’t take a portal,” I said.
“There’s another portal which leads to the entrance of the cave that leads to Sanctuary from the outside world. That’s the portal you took with Jonah. You didn’t realize at the time what you were stepping through.” That made sense. There was so much I didn’t know back then.
“But that portal was different. I didn’t need a cloak or to have a spiritwalker in me to enter it.”
“True. That one serves a different purpose. It allows other types to enter.”
“This is where shades live?” Sara sounded as naïve as I’d felt when I first arrived with Jonah.
Allonic gave her a nod. “Yes. You’ll find that most non-human creatures live in realms of their own. Not like vampires and were-types, who try to live alongside humans. It’s safer this way.”
I swallowed hard at the thought of Jonah. It seemed a lifetime ago when we first met and fell for one another—he gave up being head of his clan for me. But then things went off-track, and he kept secrets from me. I told him I needed space to deal, to think things through. Of course, the thought of Jonah Bourke made my heart ache, and I wondered where he was right now. Was he okay? Did he miss me?
I chewed on my bottom lip then released it. “Now that we’re here, I have so many things to tell you.” Including telling Sara about Allonic’s relation to us. It would be best to tell her in a wide, open place like where we stood. Less chance of me getting fried with her newly acquired electrical skills.
“Not here,” Allonic warned, holding a hand up to silence me. His golden eyes swept over the surrounding area. “There might be shades around here.”
“You think that’s a problem?” I asked, suddenly wary.
“You remember what happened to you, don’t you?” His eyes bored into me.
“What happened to you? Why don’t I know about any of this?” Sara asked.
The spiritwalker. Like I could ever forget. “I’ll catch you up.” I turned back to him. “And yes, I do remember.”
I would never forget the way they tortured me in that little chamber, making me crawl around like a worm on the floor.
“It’s better for us to be someplace farther away, where prying ears can’t overhear.” He lifted one arm, and pointed a long finger in the direction of what appeared to be a tower climbing into the sky. We were so far away that, from where we stood, it was roughly the size of the span between my thumb and forefinger.
“Wow. Do you think we could get any farther away?” I asked.
He shook his head and scowled, before stepping between Sara and me, then wrapped his arms around us.
“We have to course there,” he announced.
I didn’t have the chance to draw a breath before we were on our way.
He practically lifted us off our feet and did all the work for us.
That was a relief.
I was exhausted, and I knew Sara was, too.
We slowed, then stopped at the base of the tower. It was much, much bigger than it had appeared from far away—almost the side of the Bourke high-rise where Jonah’s clan lived, if not taller. Instead of glass, the tower was made of big, irregular stones of all colors and shapes, held together with what resembled mortar but which, on closer inspection, sparkled like glitter.
“What is this?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Legend has it, the stones are held together with diamond and gold dust. I’ve never actually found out for sure whether that’s true, but it makes a certain sort of sense. Diamonds and gold mean little to us. They’re as good for holding stones together as they are for anything else.”
I shook my head in amazement. The stones were cool to the touch and seemed to vibrate with magic. I could feel the magic moving up my fingers then across my palm.
I looked again at the vines which had wrapped their way around the height of the tower, vines covered in flowers of every color in the rainbow. I could imagine how beautiful they’d be in daylight—and imagining was all I did, of course. What with the whole thing of vampires and daylight.
“How old is it?” I asked, still marveling at its beauty.
Here and there, windows dotted the otherwise smooth appearance. They were narrow and tall, and all I saw through them was inky darkness. What was inside?
“Not sure, but some of the records I’ve found mention this tower as early as seven-hundred years ago.”
“And it’s still standing,” I murmured.
Of course, it would be. It was probably enchanted. No way something so beautiful could exist for so long without an enchantment or some other kind of spell.
Sara craned her neck and stared straight up. “Don’t tell me we’re going to the top,” she muttered.
“What if we are?” Allonic asked in a tone that was as close as he got to teasing.
“I would say you’re crazy. The roof touches the clouds!”
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” he asked in the same half-teasing tone.
“No. I’m afraid of falling from heights.”
They glanced at each other and exchanged a shy smile.
My heart warmed.
“Come on. We can course up the stairs the way we coursed here. It will take much less time than taking them one step at a time, trust me.”
Allonic led us inside, and I realized I was holding my breath as I stepped across the threshold and onto the stone floor.
It was just like the exterior. The interior walls, however, were framed in wood, and the stairs circling the inside in a spiral going all the way to the top were wood as well. It made me dizzy to stand in the center and look straight up.
Allonic took us both under his arms again and coursed to the top, which took longer than I had expected.
It really did touch the clouds.
By the time we reached the end of the stairs, which led to a wide landing and a closed door, the air felt much cooler and damper than it had on the ground. I took hold of the railing to keep myself steady as I adjusted to being so high. I couldn’t even glance out a window to get an accurate idea of how far up we were, but just knowing how tall the tower was seemed to be enough.
I felt a little woozy at first.
Sara started to crane her neck to look down. “Don’t do that,” Allonic warned. “Trust me. You’ll get dizzy.”
“I believe you,” she murmured with a shaky laugh.
“Why are we so high up?” I asked. “I mean, did we really have to go so far out of our way to be alone?”
Hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air, up thousands of steps? It seemed a little much.
“We aren’t here to be alone,” he said. “This is how our mother stays safe.”
I let out a strangled gasp. For years, Sara and I had believed she’d died in the Great Fire. But after I’d found myself in Sanctuary and learned she’d survived, I’d dreamed of seeing her again. “Our mother?”
I’d had no idea he was taking us to her. I’d only thought he wanted to keep us safe.
Our mother.
My heart beat double time and rang in my ears.
Our mother.
He nodded. “Shades can’t portal to the top of the tower and can’t course, either, so she would be able to hear anyone who walked along the creaky stairs well in advance of their reaching the top.”
“Except for you, of course,” I added.
“Of course, since I’m not a full shade, and I can course.”
In the middle of all this, I’d hardly noticed when Sara started to spark and sizzle. I should have been paying better attention to her.
It was so easy to forget sometimes she didn’t know nearly as much as I did—and besides, I was too caught up in the thought that I was about to see Mom for the first time in so many years.
“Our mother?” Sara’s voice seemed to crackle like the rest of her. “What does he mean by our mother?”
I gasped. “Sara. Let me explain.”
She ignored me. “First of all, our mother” —she pointed to me then to herself, back and forth a few times— “is dead, and she has been for a long time.” Then she turned to Allonic. “And she’s not your mother.”
Allonic didn’t say a word.
“Sara, please. You have to calm down.” I wondered if the wood all around and under us was flammable.
She w
as working herself into a massive emotional state. I would have warned her if I had known we were going here, to the place where our mother had been living.
I threw Allonic a dirty look as I tried to quiet my sister before she lost control again.
Suddenly, the door opened. Our heads turned in that direction—and the figure standing in the entrance.
“Anissa. Sara.” That voice.