Blood and Fire

by Carrie Clevenger

  The two I’d felled were quite dead. The force of my attack had liquefied their brains, so far as I could tell. Empty eye sockets gaped at me, mirroring mouths wrenched open in what must have been a split second of exquisite agony. They hadn’t even had a chance to cry out.

  I’d killed again. They might serve my enemy but out there they must have wives and children. Always, that knowledge bit. Yes, it grew easier every time, but it didn’t settle nicely.

  I glanced up at Xan, who crouched over the men still. “You okay?”

  He held his hand at the gasping guy’s throat then glared at me. “Yeah, I’m fine. I hope you don’t mind…”

  “Mind what?”

  “I’d like to…you know…” He gestured at the man, whose eyes bulged. “I’m still healing from your blast, and this here would do the trick to finishing that up, you know?”

  His smile made me feel scratchy behind the eyes and I turned away. He meant to drink their blood, of course. “Don’t mind me,” I muttered and took a few steps down the passage from whence we had come.

  The liquid sounds of his feeding turned my stomach but at this point it was just a case of just damn well shut the fuck up.

  Chapter 5

  Xan

  There are times when I’m not proud of what I am, and that was one of them. Doing my vampire thing in front of him was awkward and vulnerable as hell, but I had to, since we weren’t exactly in a safe spot for me to sweet-talk some chick into following me into the hallway at Pale Rider. I didn’t really like feeding off dudes. My reaction to drinking blood was, well, uncomfortably close to erotic, for lack of a better word. Mr. No-Name turned away at least so I didn’t have to feel watched. I made it quick. Blood flooded my mouth and, for a minute, I forgot where I was as I drank deeply, not concerned about hurting the guy. I probably did. Hell, he would have killed me anyway, and that threw my usual caution out the window. Strangely enough, though I braced myself for it, he didn’t have the same wow effect on me, so I guess he was human all the way. When his body gave up the ghost, I stopped. Blood tasted different even one minute after death because the victim no longer took in oxygen. I dropped the corpse and stood.

  My partner glanced back at me, but not directly. “Are you quite finished?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s keep moving.” He turned and brushed past me to walk the same way from which the guards had come.

  Wall-mounted pods every fifty feet cast a soft glow in the corridor, and I frowned as I noticed the Egyptian-style paintings on the walls. Who the hell were these fruit loops? Some kind of born-again Ra maniacs? Instead of stopping to check the scenes out in greater detail, I followed my companion, rounding corner after corner ’til I almost felt dizzy as stupid as the maze was. Doors interrupted the drawings every so often, and everything had that heavy Egypt vibe and smacked of cult freak. Cults were scary because of their focused purpose and belief in something completely irrational. Usually they bristled with lunatics that probably didn’t need any extra help in the crazy department.

  He stopped in front of me when we reached a wire-glassed steel door and turned to me. “Stay quiet now and let me lead.” Sparks crackled from his hands and the door unlatched by itself. It seemed to have some kind of adverse effect on him, because another bead of blood tricked down his lip and his skin was glossy with sweat. I wrinkled my nose at the new smell, which while it wasn’t bad, wasn’t very fresh either. Instinctively, I plucked my shirt out to sniff at it. I had their smell all over me. He blinked at me, rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  I shrugged and jerked my head in the door’s direction. “After you.”

  We slipped through the door like mice, which was a funny feeling, because I wasn’t used to worrying about my surroundings. If shit went down at Pale Rider, I was the dude to handle it, and I had plenty of people to back me up. If they were as bad as this guy or forbid, worse? Fuck. I had to trust him. Either that or take my chances in this rat trap. And the place was goddamned immense, with all its twisty hallways and billions of doors. Who lived like this? Maybe they were the Feds. Maybe this guy was a nut. Maybe I was lying somewhere at Pale Rider passed out and this was just some whiskey-glazed nightmare. Nah, the pain was real enough, which had healed just fine, thanks to the double infusion of hot yummy blood. Especially his. It was like vampire coke or something. I smirked. Bottle that shit and lay it on the older vamps. They’d jump all over that.

  The hallway widened and terminated at another door hung about three feet from the floor, equipped with a fancy digital keypad. Nice, shiny, executive steps led up to it. He crept up those stairs and hesitated before touching the handle to do his magic thing on the door. I cleared my throat and he jerked at the sound.

  “This leads inside the mansion, I think.” He whispered like we were at the library in the reference section.

  I nodded once. “Gonna unlock the door then?”

  “Shh.” His eyes rolled up in his head and he kind of quivered in place. A green swirly form breathed out of him and penetrated the door.

  “Uh…dude?” I reached out to shake him, but thought better of it. Just as I started to get concerned, the green mist returned and settled back inside him. His eyes refocused on me and blinked rapidly.

  “They’re farther in. Stay close.” He reached for the keypad.

  “What exactly did you just do?”

  “I checked ahead.”

  I laughed. “Then why don’t you just use that power to find your thingie?”

  “I can only travel so far and exert a minimal amount of energy. Otherwise I stand a chance of allowing them to triangulate our exact position.” He rested his palm over the keypad and it flickered before going dark. Then it rebooted itself, but once again I heard the lock disengage.

  “I have no fucking idea what you just said. Triangulate? You’re one weird motherfucker.”

  He snorted softly then opened the door and went through it, holding it for me. “Come on, hurry.”

  I followed him inside and eased the door shut behind me without a sound. The hallway was very wide in there, measuring about twelve feet across, with open doors. The walls were papered with gilded fabric, and very expensive-looking paintings hung perfectly straight. Voices alerted me to the patrol before he heard them. I pulled him into one of the rooms, covering his mouth with my hand to stifle his surprised yelp.

  His wide-eyed look melted into a frown and he scooted away from me. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  I pointed to the door. Then he could hear them too and his frown smoothed out. He nodded. The patrol passed by without incident, the guards’ footsteps hushed on the padded carpet. My friend peeked out the door after they’d gone and motioned that the coast was clear. But I wasn’t paying attention because I’d just gotten my first good look at the room décor. It was painfully Victorian, with candlesticks and wing-back chairs that perched in front of an unused fireplace, but even that wasn’t the weirdest part. It was the trophy head hanging high above the mantle, almost all the way up to the crown-molded ceiling.

  A horse’s head. Not exactly white, but not tan either. Big brown glass eyes gazed at us serenely, and from the center of its forehead, a single twisted horn.

  “Will you come on?” My partner tugged at my arm because I just stood there gawking at the thing.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I said without looking at him and he sighed, following my line of sight.

  “Yes, a bloody unicorn. You act as if you’ve never seen one.”

  “I haven’t.”

  He snorted. “Some supernatural creature you are. Next thing you’ll tell me you’ve never seen a Sasquatch either.”

  I elected to keep my mouth shut. Good thing, because apparently the patrol we’d waited out had retraced their steps and now blocked the door. I scanned the room for an escape, but there was no way out except through them. The men had their guns out and shouted at us not to move. The lead guard, a young and really attractive female, brandi
shed a thick-strung crossbow. Even from my distance I could see the bolts loaded and ready to shoot in the thing.

  I held up my hands and walked slowly toward the group. My partner was ready to unleash some shit again, but since it was taking a toll on him, I decided to do things my way.

  And the girl. Why did it have to be a hot chick up front? Didn’t they protect their females in this nuthouse? Back when I was alive, my mother instilled a deep respect for women in me at a young age, which was reinforced by my dad when I went to live with him. The difference between the two was that Dad had definitely been a ladies’ man and had a weakness for beauty. He’d dated more than one at once, collecting them like Pokémon or some shit. Although I wasn’t a two-timer really, I did possess an ingrained fascination for pretty girls. Women. This one here? Couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

  She looked almost Russian, with smoky green eyes and black hair restrained in a braid draped over her shoulder. The crossbow leveled with the center of my forehead.

  “If you move, I will fire.” Her lips curled upward. Maybe she enjoyed doing that just a little bit much.

  One of the dudes behind her, wearing an expensive looking steel-gray sports jacket, spoke in low tones to his handheld radio. I was close enough to her to see the pale freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. Okay, so maybe not Russian. Hell, I didn’t know. Women were women, with different coloring, shapes and accents.

  ”You sure you can hit me, baby?”

  “Fuck you, vampire.” I could sense that same static electricity lurking in her. Before she could lay some hurt on me, I took a chance and lunged for her weapon and jerked it from her hands with my fancy vampire speed which took her by complete surprise, but the damned thing still fired. One of her escorts popped off a shot at me, but the bullet went wide. I shoved the girl back into the third guy, who seemed to be confused at whether he should shoot at me or the guy with me first. Number two was plucked up by the collar and introduced to the nearest wall face-first, courtesy of Yours Truly. I disarmed the third one still tangled up with the female and scraped the sole of my boot across his face at high velocity, shattering his nose. He covered it with his hands and howled in pain, blood flooding over his lips.

  A left hook surprised me from behind. It was the girl, agile as a spider monkey and obviously trained in hand-to-hand combat. While I recovered from the first swing, she performed a beautiful roundhouse kick on me. I saw the big black boot coming in enough time to move just a hair to the right and avoid a lights-out sort of contact with my skull. She screeched like a harpy and swung at me again before a psychic blast shoved her right into me. I let her drop to the floor. Of the three, one was dead. He’d stopped nursing his nose and lay still. The other dude just kind of curled up on his side groaning a little and the girl was already scrambling to her feet to have another try at me.

  “For bloody sake, kill her and be done with it!” My friend backed to a corner of the room and slid down the wall to land hard on his ass. I barely had time to register that he lay there on the floor with a bolt jutting from one side of his chest before she leaped up at me again. That time I caught her by the throat and slammed her to the floor. I picked up one of the discarded guns and aimed it point-blank at her face. She set her jaw, her eyes filled with daggers.

  I couldn’t pull the trigger. With my now-wounded friend screaming at me to just kill her and her lying there bracing herself for the inevitable gunshot to the cranium, I lowered the muzzle of the gun and shot her in the thigh instead. She screamed. I shot her again in the kneecap on her other leg. She screamed louder. I walloped her in the temple with the butt of my gun and she went quiet and slack.

  “You should have killed her,” my companion said, his voice wheezy.

  With the immediate danger past, I went to his side. He lay halfway propped against the opposite wall, looking like the world’s largest and most rockin’ voodoo doll with that wooden shaft protruding just under where his left nipple should be. I crouched next to him and prepared to pull it free, but he stopped me.

  “Don’t. Just leave it. It’s too deep.”

  I shook my head. “Dude, you have to trust me, but I gotta pull this thing out to help you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. His skin was clammy and I was sure he wouldn’t last long. The soft squeal in his breath told me that yeah, that pointed tip had gone between his ribs and probably had ripped into a lung. “What are you going to do then?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “What?”

  “I want to know who I’m healing. Tell me your name and I’ll help you.”

  His head lolled around on his neck. His eyes crossed a little then refocused on me. He took a couple of shallow breaths. “Ash…my name is Ash.”

  “Okay, Ash. This is gonna hurt…” I jerked the missile free and he cried out. He watched as I dug my right fang into the inside of my forearm and tore a small gash there to make my blood flow. His eyes widened when I jerked his shirt up and shoved his jacket aside to let the black liquid drip down into the gaping circular wound.

  Chapter 6

  Ash

  To the Inkarna, names held an inordinate amount of power, especially true names or Rens, as we called them, and for a moment I’d been tempted to share my own Ren, but the pain that screamed through my entire being went beyond anything I’d ever endured and blanked out all rational thought. When Xan pulled the crossbow bolt from my chest it was worse than not being able to draw breath properly, and whenever I did, a fresh blaze of agony had me coughing weakly.

  What got me in the end was not the fear of death, but rather the concern in his eyes—as though a creature such as he were capable of truly caring about fellow sentient beings.

  His blood was viscous and black, and where it seeped past the broken skin to dribble through the torn flesh, it burned as it sent its questing fingers of fresh fire into the very essence of my being. Beyond that, I could feel it act upon my Kha. It knit the muscle and skin, and restored my physical self to an undamaged state even as it imprinted its signature upon my Ka and Ba.

  Some trick of the dark magic he worked sent a slew of memories flashing through my consciousness.

  Bright lights shine in my eyes so I can barely make out the sea of faces turned toward me in adoration. My fingers slide along a fret board as I ready myself. The opening notes of Summer Breeze give me a shit-eating grin.

  A blue-haired girl smiles at me, takes me by the hand and leads me into her bedroom. She smells sweet and I allow her to drag me down into the fluffiness of her bed where I nuzzle her throat and gift her with soft nibbles that lead to her collarbone.

  The whiskey bottle is empty by the time I look up to see the paling sky outside. Through the window the light makes my eyes water and, for a moment, I try to snatch at the remembrance of sunlight playing across my skin. I can’t hold the memory without phantom prickles of pain sliding along my flesh.

  “Can you sit up?” Xan’s voice pulled me out of the reverie. His hands were so strong and assured I allowed him to raise me into a seated position. At this point I couldn’t complain, as he was the only solidity in my world.

  The room slashed in and out of focus. The pattern of the Oriental carpet blossomed into a three-dimensional profusion of plants and flowers. The iron tang of blood was heavy in the air—so much so that I could taste it at the back of my throat.

  Urgency pressed me to my feet and if it were not for his grip on my upper arm as he rose with me, I would most likely have staggered into a large oak armoire and brained myself on its scrollwork.

  I pressed my hand against my forehead and surveyed the carnage. Bodies sprawled everywhere. The young initiate lay groaning slightly but remained unconscious.

  “Why didn’t you finish her?” I asked.

  “She’s a female.”

  I managed a rasp of laughter. “And you’d still say that when she rips your ’nads out and hands them to you on a silver platter.” I stumbled forward to snatch at a pi
stol that lay discarded on the floor but he stopped me.

  “We need to get out.”

  Slowly I turned to face him. Xan probed at a fang with his tongue. Whether he did it unconsciously because he was out of sorts or because he knew it made me uncomfortable to be reminded of his true nature, I wasn’t sure.

  “I know we need to get out, but I need to find what I came for originally. I won’t get a second chance.”

  He snorted. “You’re crazy.”

  “Well, if we carry on standing here arguing, they’re going to catch us. There are nine others in this house we seriously need to worry about now that you’ve incapacitated the girl.” I gestured at her. “Let’s keep moving.”

  I didn’t give him the chance to disagree and made for the exit, pausing at the door long enough to make sure no one used the passage. Hide and seek had never been my favorite game when I’d been a kid. Invariably I’d crouched in terror while my friends or siblings had searched for me. I hadn’t had the pluck to change hiding places or stalk the seeker.

  The house was full of people on the go. About the only advantage we had now was me having taken out the security system, but that wouldn’t stay down forever. The vampire tailed me but this time at least he didn’t mutter anything. His nerves made me twitchy. Three times we hid just in time to avoid patrols. I got my first glimpse of one of the House Montu Inkarna; an older man with florid features, he nonetheless moved with surprising alacrity with two youngsters in tow—initiates I was sure. That was one group to avoid.

  This man’s features didn’t match the visuals I’d been given of Master Goodkin, whose photo suggested he was in his mid-forties, with iron-gray hair and a patrician nose. A formidable foe then, I was certain. It was best that we slink out as fast as possible. The only clue to the relic’s whereabouts was that it was in a study on the west wing. Which floor, I wasn’t told, which meant it could take us a lot longer to randomly search. I blew my breath out in frustration. This wasn’t working.