Prince of Shadows

by Tes Hilaire

  More precious seconds slipped past as she waited for her vision to clear, the dark edges that had funneled down around her sight eventually receding. The room was dimly lit, only the gas-powered lamp on the nightstand next to her seemed to be working. Even so, she could tell that it was a large room, though apparently sparsely furnished with only the nightstand and the dim outline of the bed behind her.

  She looked down at the nightstand, her brow bunching as she spotted the surgical tray precariously balanced on the back corner. Sutures, clamps, needles…a scalpel. She picked up the scalpel, careful to avoid the bloodstained blade. Why would this be here?

  Don’t look. You don’t want to look.

  Closing her eyes, she pressed her fingers against one pulsing point of pain across her torso, her fingers trembling as she followed the stitched cut across her body. Had she been in some sort of accident? Had her dad…

  Her breath came in great gasps as she forced herself to glance behind her and take in the bloodstained bed, her hand rising shakily to touch her throbbing face.

  Long, jagged welts, buckled up with stitches.

  A noise much like a keen rose in her throat as snapshots of remembered consciousness, nightmares really, filtered across the mental block in her mind. A block she must have put in place to protect herself. Her knees collapsed under the weight of the horrific images. Only the bed, that vile, disgusting bed, saved her from completely falling as she caught it on the way down.

  Ryan…the bites on his neck. He used a Taser on her and then…then…

  Get it together, Annie. You need to move. Get out. No one is going to save you but you.

  Her entire body trembling, she forced herself to make her way toward the end of the bed, pausing to pant when she finally reached the footboard. It had been a long time since the last scream; maybe the danger was past, maybe…

  The door creaked. Annie’s grip tightened on the scalpel, even as she leaned heavily on the corner post. A figure stood in the doorframe, barely taller than a child but obviously a woman, her curves caressed by the hall’s shadows, her long hair hanging in matted locks around her model-worthy face.

  “Gabby? Oh, God, Gabby, thank God…” Annie took a stumbling step forward, her legs trembling beneath her weight, then stumbled to a stop, reaching back for the bed once more. Gabby was in no state to help her. Like Annie, the only thing Gabby wore was the evidence of her own abuses. Half-healed wounds, yellowed blotches upon her gray skin, and her eyes…

  Annie shifted back just as Gabby took a step forward, her crimson gaze fixed firmly on Annie. Annie sobbed, shaking her head in denial. She’d only seen Gabby lost to a killing craze once before and had hoped to never see the results again. But there was no escape from this room, and nowhere to hide.

  “No…Gabby, no, it’s me,” she tried, even as she twisted to keep the scalpel in her hand hidden.

  “You’re one of them,” Gabby said, her voice cold, mechanical as if reciting something from rote.

  “No…It’s Annie. You remember me, right?”

  Gabby nodded, taking another step forward. “You brought me here.”

  “No. I’m your friend!”

  “Friend?” Gabby cocked her head to the side, her red eyes narrowing to slits.

  Annie nodded. “I was tricked, betrayed by one of our own.”

  “Ah…” Gabby paused thoughtfully. For a moment Annie harbored hope that her reasoning had broken through, her grip loosening infinitesimally on the scalpel, but then Gabby lunged. Annie raised her arm but Gabby was quicker, her hand tightening around Annie’s wrist and squeezing tighter and tighter until the bones popped, the scalpel falling uselessly to the floor.

  “That’s the thing: They. Always. Betray,” Gabby hissed, eyes smoldering as she visually caressed Annie’s neck. “But never again. Never again will they betray me.”

  Annie’s eyes widened, her cry of disbelief muffled beneath the sudden pressure of Gabby’s fangs as they bore down on her throat.

  Chapter 21

  Valin bolted for the door at the first scream, ignoring Roland’s curses as he and Karissa struggled to catch up. Valin might have completely outrun them—regardless of their vamp strength—except he was ten feet from the door when he smacked up against the wards surrounding the mansion.

  “Not a good sign for the null,” Roland said behind him as Valin cursed and stumbled back to his feet. “You guys thought her powers would negate the ward, right?”

  “Fuck.” Valin shook his head, not wanting to think about what it meant if Annie wasn’t in there. “I’m shifting,” Valin said, knowing he could cross the wards that way—the shade didn’t play by the same rules.

  “Valin, wait!” Karissa grabbed his arm. “We can take this down if you work with us. And your knife alone will be worth the cost of time.”

  Valin’s hand closed instinctively over the blade. His knife, the one Gabby had given Bennett with instructions to return to him. If she’d kept it, brought it with her, instead of sending it with a fucking I’m-so-sorry message, would she be in there now?

  Now who’s wasting time?

  “One minute,” Valin growled, knowing Karissa was right. Fighting hand-to-hand took time, but since he did have his knife, he could cut through a horde of vampires as if they were nothing more than tissue paper.

  She nodded, slipping her hand into his and reaching across for Roland’s, like they were at some sort of kumbaya jamboree or something. Not that he gave a shit how corny it looked as long as it got the results.

  He took a deep breath, easing back on his shields until he felt the heady mix of her light and Roland’s power. Beyond was her link to Bennett and the echoing support of Jacob’s soldiers lending their aid. That was good; a double-fronted attack on the wards should weaken them quicker.

  They began chanting, the spell to dissolve the wards no more than a banishing spell. Unlike the various wards the Paladins used to keep baddies out of their home, these wards were formed from evil, their power coming from decades of blood spilled. Just touching them with the edge of his power made him feel sick to his stomach, but it also gave him the incentive to put his all behind it. This had to end now. No more pain. No more suffering. The bastards who’d made this place were going to crawl back into the hellhole from which they came.

  The ward fell. Valin dropped Karissa’s hand and launched himself at the door. Cocky bastards hadn’t even locked it, let alone barred it, so it was a short trip into the front hall of horrors where he drew up short. Bodies and blood. The destruction was so ultimate he had to pause and really look to assure himself that one of the bodies wasn’t Gabby. Someone must have been in a real pisser of a mood to mete out such violence. And though he could appreciate the poetic nature of these monsters ending their existence this way, he sincerely worried for the mental state of the person doling out this kind of justice.

  “She’s not here,” Roland said, even as he moved past Valin and bent to inspect one of the corpses.

  “Yeah, got that.” Valin breathed deeply through his nose, then cringed. Death was never pretty and it normally smelled worse than it looked. A half-dozen bodies, and unless his mojo was completely shot, not another soul in the place. “The question is, where is everyone else?”

  Roland didn’t respond, his focus on his examination of the corpses.

  “I don’t sense anyone either.” Karissa drew up beside him. “Well, other than…” She jerked her chin toward the doors at the back of the cavernous foyer. Bennett, Jacob, and their team pushed through, their attention immediately catching on the rather morbid attempt at decoration the last living party in the room had done.

  Bennett was the first to recover, his gaze lifting to meet Valin’s. “I’m getting a whole lot of nothing—you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “It’s possible the others took the hidden tunnel out, but…” Roland trailed off, moving on to another dead vampire.

  “Hidden tunnel?” Jacob asked sharply.

  “
But what?” Valin prompted, figuring the tunnel was the least important part of that statement.

  Roland sighed, twisting the vampire’s head to the side and exposing the relatively intact bite marks flanking the ripped out throat. “Fang marks are kind of like a primitive form of fingerprinting. I can’t definitively tell who bit whom, but I can tell you that all these,” he gestured around the room, “seem to match.”

  “What are you saying?

  “I’m saying whoever killed them was one person. And I have to wonder, why would a coven numbering close to a hundred flee from just one little vampire?”

  Little vampire. “You think Gabby did this?”

  “I do.” He stood, his face pulled tight as he averted his gaze from the corpse. “Which leaves us with one question.”

  “Why?” Bennett ventured.

  Roland turned his hard gaze on the Paladin. “No, I know why. The question is where is she now?”

  They didn’t have to wait for the answer. A second later, from deeper in the house came the most bloodcurdling scream Valin had ever heard.

  ***

  Bennett jerked as if he’d been hit with a live wire. The next second he was bolting past the closest soldier and running headlong down the nearby hall. Never had such a short distance seemed so long. Bennett knew it was Annie who’d screamed. Not because it was truly discernible from any other female in distress, but because he hadn’t sensed another soul in the mansion. She was alive—though only barely to not have broken the wards—and in immediate danger.

  His gut, already twisted and cramped, churned. Acid pooled at the base of his throat. Whether the unprecedented chink in his composure was from guilt or something more, he didn’t bloody know. All he knew was the annoying organ in his chest that was pounding like it was on its last leg might as well just give up the ghost if he couldn’t get to her in time.

  He reached the end of the hall, the pure absence of power announcing he was at the correct room. The others were behind him, but he didn’t wait, setting his shoulder to the door with all the force of his rage behind the assault. Hinges and bolts groaned and gave, the old hardwood cracking and tearing free from the frame. The door burst in, Bennett right on top of it. And there she was: his Annie.

  All doubts that she wasn’t his were answered. Because there was no way he could stay detached after seeing the ruin of her body. And no way the creature sucking the life out of her was going to leave this room alive.

  With a roar, Bennett drew his knife and launched himself across the room.

  ***

  Valin had almost caught up to Bennett when the Paladin went all commando and burst through the bedroom door. He’d made it inside the room as far as the Paladin’s heels when the warrior roared. And because of the shock that Valin, too, experienced when he saw what was in that room, it was still almost too far away to stop what happened next.

  Bennett drew his knife and lunged; Valin had no doubt he truly meant to kill with the blade.

  Terror displaced shock and he dove after the warrior, tackling him around the waist and bringing him down just feet from where Gabby was stretched over Annie lapping at the jagged wound at the base of her neck. He needed to go to her, needed to stop this madness, needed to…fuck, he didn’t know. But he couldn’t do anything until he’d knocked some reason into Bennett.

  “Bennett, wait—” An elbow jabbed into his side, taking away his breath and anything else he might have said. From there, their struggle devolved into a whole lot of hitting, rolling, scrambling, and cursing. Precious moments slipped by, fear spiking anew when someone leapt over them.

  “Don’t hurt her!” he yelled, even as he slammed Bennett’s arm with the knife into the floor. Bennett swore, trying to roll, but Valin latched onto his wrist, twisting the arm behind him as he ground his knee into the Paladin’s back. From the other side of the room rose an enraged scream. A second later Gabby’s slight form went sailing across the bed and landed in a heap in the far corner.

  Valin glanced up in time to see Roland leap over the bed, his feet barely making noise as he landed and began stalking across the floor after her, his eyes boiling a deep crimson as he cowed her into the corner of the room.

  “Annie!” Jacob yelled and rushed by toward the crumpled form of his daughter.

  “Back off!” Bennett growled from beneath Valin, straining against Valin’s hold.

  “You won’t go after Gabby,” he told the Paladin, though he saved his glare for the handful of soldiers who were piling up behind the five-foot-six barrier named Karissa who blocked the ragged doorframe.

  “How can you defend that thing?” Bennett asked.

  “She’s not herself,” Valin said from between clenched teeth.

  “She’s a rabid dog!” Bennett yelled, then closed his eyes, taking a long breath. “Just let me up.”

  Stiffly, Valin rose to his feet, his body tense and ready, but all Bennett did was rush over and kneel next to Jacob, who was quickly and efficiently binding his daughter’s wound.

  “Her pulse is lower than I’d like but steady,” Jacob told Bennett. “The wound was already stitched once. Looks like it was only reopened.”

  A rumble rose from Bennett’s throat, but all he did was nod as he carefully began checking her over for signs of injuries beyond the visible obvious, which, shit, numbered a whole hell of a lot.

  “Gabriella, stop this!” Roland barked, snapping Valin out of the surreal haze he’d been watching events unfold through. Annie fighting for her life, Gabby reduced to little more than a rabid animal. This was wrong. A nightmare.

  Now if only I could wake up.

  Valin eased over behind Roland, his focus completely on the snarling and spitting creature crouched in the corner that looked so very much, and so very little, like the woman he loved. After seeing the destruction in the hall, he half-wondered why she hadn’t ripped them all to shreds yet, but then he realized that she’d de-evolved even further since that bloodbath and was acting purely on instinct. Thank God Roland was the more dominant vampire; otherwise he might not be getting this chance to bring her back.

  “Gabby…” Reaching for her, he stepped past Roland, but stopped when she lifted her head, her lips parted as she panted through her blooded fangs. There was positively no sign of recognition in her crimson eyes. Not even the most tentative thread of connection between them. The only thing he felt emitting out of those crimson eyes was pure, unadulterated hate.

  Hollow horror settled around his heart, his lungs clamping down on the soiled air he breathed as the reality of his nightmare hit home. Gabby stood before him, her body painted in blood, her hair matted, her eyes red, and he couldn’t see one bit of the woman he’d made love to just hours ago. His Gabby was already gone.

  You failed, again.

  In his mind he fell to his knees, crushed beneath the impotence that seemed to be his curse. Why could he never be enough? As little more than a second-class Paladin he hadn’t been powerful enough to save Angeline, hadn’t been the protector of their child. And now…Gabby…

  Not her too.

  The world twisted, scents and colors becoming too sharp, the air like jagged blades sawing in and out of his lungs. Something snapped in his mind, sanity slipping askew as he tried to make sense of this reality. What did you do when there was nothing left to be done?

  Rabid dog. What do you do to a rabid dog?

  No! He wasn’t strong enough…he couldn’t…he wouldn’t survive…shouldn’t survive…

  Then go with her.

  A calm eased over him, a hidden pathway opening up before him. This wasn’t the end. He’d do what he must but they’d be together after, even if he had to follow her into hell.

  “—all I can do for her. The sealant properties should help, but you still need to get her to a hospital.” Karissa’s voice, soothing, yet matter-of-fact as she spoke with the others over Annie, brought him back. That’s right; there would be witnesses to his fall unless he got them to leave.

&n
bsp; Gabby’s gaze kept on shifting between the others and him, or more specifically the others and the hand he held on his knife. In fact, he sensed that knife was the only thing that kept her from attacking.

  “Get Annie out of here,” he commanded, his eyes tracking Gabby’s own. She hissed as he switched the blade from his right to his left as if she knew it was his killing hand, which would suggest a state of memory and awareness that wasn’t evident in her crazed eyes. More likely she just didn’t like any sort of movement involving the knife.

  He knew the moment Bennett, Jacob, and his team got Annie down the hall by the comfortable weight of the shade filtering back into those gaps in reality and easing the sharp focus of colors back out. Good—when he’d done what he needed to do, that is where he’d go. Only this time he wasn’t coming back.

  “Valin,” Roland growled from behind him, alerting him to the fact that not everyone had left. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Guess Roland had, at one point, seen him fight with his knife in battle.

  Despite the surreal sense of detachment, it was still difficult to draw enough breath to speak and even more painful to put the knowledge of necessity into words, so it was amazing to him when his voice came out steady and strong. “You know who Gabby was in her heart, Roland. Tell me, would she want to live like this?”

  “Fuck…FUCK!” Roland roared, his own pain and loss exponentially fanning Valin’s. Valin clenched his teeth, trying to tone out Roland’s explosion.

  Rabid dog. Put her down. You’d want her to do the same for you.

  “Look at me, Roland. I need you to look at me,” Karissa said, her voice alone like a soothing bit of coolheadedness in a room burning with misery.

  Roland growled again. Valin spared the briefest of glances to see Karissa wrapping her arms around her mate. It was only a split second, but long enough that their eyes met, a silent moment of understanding passing between them before she looked away and flickered out, pulling Roland along with her as she teleported.