by M. R. Noble
His other hand took my wrists’ bonds. He tossed me out of the van. I took the impact on my forearms and shins. The twinge from my funny bones shot up my arms, but I got a view of my surroundings. We were in an armory. The room was built like a giant concrete bunker, one built to house all the weapons one needed—to be a Russian vampire mob boss.
Metal rattled behind me. I looked back just in time to see the industrial-sized garage door close on the mountain landscape. The glimpse of detail I collected stood out in my mind. Miles out in the darkness was a low glow from the cluster of lights in a city. It was the closest civilization.
Dozens of vehicles filled the loading area. Blackened trails of old blood streaked across the floor to a set of lab doors. Computer screens lined one wall, displaying live security feeds of a modern mansion, but what stood out the most were the guns. Some of them were out on tables, others behind metal fencing secured by large keypad locks. Anything from a hand pistol to an assault rifle was at my captors’ disposal.
I had no idea how much money was poured into this place, but I knew one didn’t have security like this unless one had a treasure worth protecting, like a dynasty. This had to be Kazimir’s.
Two of the men walked toward me, one being the lout. Fire turned in my belly as he grew closer. I had a few mere seconds to form a plan. The woman hung back against the wall. Her hand rested close to a thick automatic. The leader hovered to my right, leaving only one man and the woman out of proximity. If I took the three closest to me out at once, it would only leave two. The added possibility of a wall of bullets wasn’t good risk mitigation. In any case, I was too weak.
I needed more blood.
“Move!” shouted the leader. He slammed his foot into my thigh.
I scrunched and toppled over.
The other two men stepped forward.
“Get up,” said the lout.
“I can’t.” My voice fluttered out as a pitiful whine. I strained meekly against the floor, letting my arms buckle and closed the distance to the ground.
“Grab her,” the leader said as he started to walk toward the door.
The lout scoffed at me and bent down. His colleague remained at his side.
I squished my chest against the floor, drawing the lout farther down, creating more distance between the man beside him. I drew my senses up. My fangs poked against my tongue. The moment I felt his rough hands around my shoulders, I pivoted. My face rushed toward his neck.
I ripped into him with a ferocity which sickened even myself.
Chapter Twenty
Kazimir
The bitter taste of rancid capers which was this man’s soul washed over my mouth once more. I swallowed the blood. My flesh sprung to life, fostering new connections between the tissues of my muscle. My wounds repaired. My vampire senses invigorated. Strength sailed through me, revitalizing me with every second.
The two vampires closest to me blurred forward, but they were too late. The charred bonds were broken. I unleashed a wall of fire from my outstretched palm. The air of the room sucked inward with a whoosh. Using the focus Gerel had taught me I kept the rest of myself from igniting.
The two men who charged skidded to a halt, their boots squeaking on the concrete. Their silent silhouettes disappeared behind the thundering flames, just as the first gun shot rang out through the garage. Within the same moment, the lout lashed out catching me in the jaw.
I jerked my head, gouging my fangs deeper and stripping his muscles from a tendon, all the while straddling him tight between my thighs. He froze in shock. I threw all my weight into a tuck and roll, carrying my new meal along with me. The world blurred as I traveled at a rate not humanly possible.
The bullets missed us by an inch, whizzing through the air. With a series of booms which deafened the ears, the shots rained into our trail as we rolled. Caught between our rapid escape and an all-consuming thirst, a monster awakened within me. I never felt more powerful, more formidable. The thirst intensified with every second. I needed more. His body grew limp. I heaved against his shoulder, syphoning more blood into my mouth. His body jerked. Like rapid fire, bullets tore into his legs, traveling up to my thighs wrapped around his torso.
I had to let go, but my fangs dug deeper. I felt the whoosh of the bullets cutting through the air above my skin. I yanked my face from his flesh and shoved him in front of me while I dove to the side. The bullets peppered into the lout as a momentary shield.
My sights set on the remaining man. A feral instinct overtook me. I could feel my mouth forming into a snarl above my fangs. Power from the fresh blood coursed through my veins. I crouched low, just as the woman with the automatic rifle was correcting her sights. In my split-second window, I sprung from the concrete and soared toward the man.
The vampire had called for his magic the moment before I sprang, and with a clap a dark bolt of electricity was sailing where I once was.
He had expected me to charge him like a human—I hadn’t.
I collided with his shoulders, taking him to the ground. His neck snapped. I rose. The woman opened fire. My fire plumed, hissing as it expanded into the air and melting the concrete ceiling above. The rounds sizzled into vapor when they hit the inferno.
She dropped the gun and flashed toward the door, moving with a speed days ago I never could have matched. Now, with a belly full of vampire blood, my strength felt godly.
I flew after her, my flames licking at her heels. Just as she made it through the door, the fire around me bore down on the doorway. The concrete it touched liquefied and dripped down, making cracks streak into the structure. The ceiling crumbled as I dashed through the hole.
A dark and empty feeling seized the pit of my stomach. I stopped. I turned back as the icy fingers of fear trailed up my spine. My teeth chattered as an unexplainable force dragged my gaze to the lout—the vampire who’d been forced to bond with me. My gaze met his just as the last bit of life drained out of him. A shudder reverberated within me, dropping me to my knees. Tears clouded my vision, and an unbearable loss filled me. I hadn’t cared about the lout. The pain he inflicted on me would plague my dreams. What I experienced was magic at work. I experienced the bond being broken.
The rest of the concrete wall crashed to the ground like drumfire. I climbed into the hallway. The woman turned a corner at the far end of the lengthy foyer. I didn’t chase her. I looked at the football field sized aquarium at my side.
My initial view was blocked by a raised iron platform, but as I looked up, an array of tropical fish swam by. I peered through the tank into the luxurious interior of the mansion on the other side. Large dark shadows cut through my view. Inside the aquarium were sharks. The oceans’ most famous killers cruised above studying the shapes below. The sharks’ black eyes stayed fixed on me as they sliced through the water.
The trickling sound of water nearby originated from spouts in the wall, which formed tranquil streams of water lining the hallway path. The manmade creeks formed streams and fountains throughout the decor.
A stir of silhouettes pulled my gaze to the right. The opposite side of the hallway was lined with modern clear glass cells. At a glance, it looked like they housed the dead, skeletons strewn in a heap, until one moved. She was cadaver-thin and covered in bruises. One by one the corpses rose, like a chilling movie scene where the dead rise. Their frail faces fixated on me. Some ghosted forward and limply banged on the glass. From underneath the dead, more people revealed themselves. They looked plump enough they could have just arrived.
In the middle, a young boy in a red baseball hat smacked a photo against the glass. Tears streamed down his cheeks. The picture was of himself and his twin brother. The boys stood in a baseball field wearing wide grins. The Tzar’s personal bloodstock. I knew what I’d found, and I knew I had to help them. My fire, along with my blood lust, diminished.
Rubble from the wall had crashed down onto a nearby cell and scraped the glass, telling me it must have been shatter proof if it could withstan
d a concrete slab. I looked at the locks on the cells. They were the same electronic keypads which were inside the armory. I extended my hand to the lock and let loose a wave of fiery heat. It melted away.
The glass door swung open and the people inside flooded to the rubble of the downed wall. They didn’t head inside the mansion, which told me they had entered the compound the same way I had. They climbed over the debris and gathered at the garage door. I turned back to a row of at least twenty cells.
I ran and repeated the same action to the second cell, and then the third. By the time I had sprinted to the fourth cell and melted the lock, the female vampire rounded the foyer corner with a group of reinforcements. The people behind me cried out. The vampires ran at me.
I planted my feet.
A ghoulish shadow of a shark glided across the ground, and as the mass of vampires sprinted, their screaming jaws were painted in the lurking shadows. The faint glistening of dark magic oozed from some of their palms.
I gave up more ground.
The seconds rolled by, and with the lout’s blood in my belly, the vampires’ movement no longer blurred in my sight.
A man’s outstretched fist flew to my face.
My forearm met his, and in a flick of my wrist I took his arm and ripped it off his shoulder. Sidestepping his body, I ducked and flipped a vampire over my knee. His back broke in half. My unearthly strength hijacked my mind. A blank bliss. I struck with the lightning fast precision I’d trained for my whole life.
I downed three more vampires before I recognized myself.
They regrouped and attacked again at the same time.
I dove into the air, twisting a man to the ground by his neck with my feet, just as a dark bolt of magic grazed my belly. The woman’s fangs rushed to my neck. I shattered her jawbone. A gargantuan blow to my side broke my ribs as I landed. I wasn’t the only one drinking vampire blood. Pain ignited with every breath I took. I clenched my jaw and scrambled back.
They flowed toward me like a stream, and I retreated up the iron stairs of the platform before the aquarium. A shark skimmed the glass beside me, kicking up debris in the current. A small red baseball cap tapped against the tank. I looked to the boy who still beat against the cell. He wore the same hat. It was the hat the missing boy wore in the picture. Vomit burned into my mouth. Kazimir’s empire was fed from the blood of innocent people, and once they were drained dry, their remains were shark food. No bodies to be found. No charges could be laid for the missing persons’ cases.
It was too insidious to bear. My fire flared out. As quickly as the mob advanced on my retreat, the blaze engulfed them. I leapt from the melting platform, incinerating the vampires beneath me. Blasts of fire soared through the glass cages, melting huge holes which served as escape routes for the terrified prisoners.
I kept going, cutting into the vampires with a fury which rivaled the pain of Mama’s death. As the last remnants of the group scattered, I ran to the boy in the cell.
The water from the stream which lined the walkway trickled upward defying gravity, forming a mass before me.
The boy backed up from the cell wall trembling in fear. I held my hand to the glass, hoping to melt it once the boy withdrew far enough. I wanted to tell him it would be okay—I wanted to hold him.
The water shot toward me in a pummeling stream. At first it evaporated on contact, and with a hiss steamed into the air. But more kept coming. It flowed like a fifty-pound broken water main. The torrent of water bore deeper into my flame, and in every second the water evaporated, it was replaced with more. The fluid carved deeper into the inferno, and closer to my face.
I dug deep, trying to channel my emotions. I had to save the boy. I dodged to the side, but it followed with the quick reflex of human life. The tidal flow of water hammered inches from my face. Sweat beaded from my brow and I forced my last bit of strength out into the flame. As quickly as the energy was spent, the colossal pressure of the water hammered into my face.
I was hurled into the floor. Water filled my nose and mouth. I opened my eyes. The spouting stream cut like sandpaper against my upturned eyelids. Shiny black shoes paced toward me, kicking ash and metal out of the way. They stopped at the pool of water, keeping the soles dry. A man crouched down, his hands moving rhythmically in front of him, like the fluid motion of water.
I looked onto the face I’d seen in Loukin’s office. His black eyes cut through the flow of liquid like the angular features of the sharks above us.
My vision spotted. He drifted away.
****
I awoke shivering against a cold metal table. My eyes flickered but I squeezed them closed. A voice I assumed I’d dreamt spoke in whispers which bounced off the walls.
“Come on, Kazimir. What are you waiting for? Kill her already. Secure your position.” She put sultry inflection on the word kill, giving it a convincing appeal, one even I felt spurred to act upon. I diverted my mind from her incantation, only to be lured in again as her voice lulled on.
“Loukin’s claim will be demolished. Not only will he be overthrown, but his desperate attempt to appeal to vampire Russia with Aleksandr’s heir will be squashed.”
The temptation was too real. I opened my eyes a sliver. I wasn’t dreaming. Bronwyn stood at Kazimir’s side. Her long blonde hair shimmered in the dark low light of the room, like it had magic of its own. She looked down at a white bird on her forearm. It was the albino falcon from the shop in Canada. She’d been the one tracking us.
“Yes, I’m finishing what you couldn’t,” Kazimir said. “You forget you failed me originally.”
Her melodic voice took on an edge. “If it wasn’t for Lukas, I would have finished her then and there. You forget; I have a cover to maintain.”
“The boy’s an issue.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s in love with me. He thinks we’re ridding the world of its evil, one righteous little battle at a time.” Her laughter chimed out, sounding like it was made of sunshine.
Kazimir scoffed.
“Oh, you aren’t jealous, are you Kazy?” She traced circles on his chest. “You know no one could ever be you…”
Kazimir took her wrist. “Save your magic for a svolotsch it will work on. She’s up. You know your way out.”
“I want to watch,” she said.
Kazimir walked toward me. “So be it.”
I opened my eyes. The walls of the room were dark and moving. A mass of Shadow Forged rippled above me, like tormented mounds of people covered in tar. The eight appendages of the misshapen arms and legs scuttled by along the walls in their spidery forms. By a sconce close to me, one reared its head and mouthed a soundless scream.
Kazimir flicked his hands like a maestro and water flowed up from a moat lining the room. The liquid formed tidal waves, and with a swish of his hand they rolled toward me. I jumped at the rushing waves and felt slimy bars against my skin. Fire flared up from my skin with a whoosh. I wrestled against the restraints expecting their incineration.
They remained.
Steam wafted into the air where the water crashed into the edge of my fire. The waves halted just before the table, raining down speckles of water as they towered overhead. The ceiling stirred like a dark cyclone above me. More Shadow Forged gathered in the mound. Claustrophobia set in. The memories of being smothered resurfaced.
“Karolina.” The waves parted for Kazimir to appear at my feet. “Welcome.”
Sheer motor reflex took over. The veins in my neck bulged as I screamed and used all my strength against the bars. They fought back. Like an eel they wriggled and tightened against me.
“Don’t bother. Bronwyn forged those bonds. Her light magic is impenetrable. Thanks to her, my whole compound is.”
“Great. Then our bonding time won’t be disturbed,” I said.
With my fire dispelled, the metal I lay upon cooled, chilling with the moisture in the air. He wanted me to feel cold and alone.
“I see you inherited my sense of humor
. How flattering. You also inherited my pious nature. Were it not for the boy, you would have seen me coming. You know…I thought I would be a priest. Like you, I wanted to save as many as I could.” He remained polite, but his face looked both calm and disturbed, like the man I’d seen holding the detonator in a bomb de-escalation video. “They demeaned me. A water user born into a family where fire reigned. A man of my skills could only be useful in the church. But as I studied my powers, and God, I realized I was God. Water…is…the…most…powerful.”
He signaled to Bronwyn.
She stepped forward and stretched out her palm. Her hair whooshed back as a rush of frigid air blew to us, freezing my skin. An eloquent twirl of Kazimir’s fingers, in a second of time, separated a wave from the pack which barreled toward her. The wave thundered as it met the gust, forming barbs of ice mid-air. But the water rumbled onward. Chunks of ice tossed in the wave, rushing into her, and swallowing her from view. Water splashed to the ground, leaving a human-like statue of ice.
“It can outlast you all, like the strength of the ocean tides grinding down the earth over time. And if you face it head on, you’ll be snuffed out.”
Bronwyn stepped out behind the ice statue.
“And I will eat your soul.”
The walls of water collapsed in on me with a force so great it snuffed my burst of flame. The circle of fire around me shrunk to a mere pocket of air around my chest. I focused, imagining my spirit, and forcing power into my blaze. It flared for a moment, only to collapse inward, closer to my skin.
Crushing weight bore down on my legs, uncovered by my protective cocoon of fire magic. The electric burn of the nerves in my ankles sailed up my spine. The water turned like rapids above my face, methodically delving closer to me. The bones in my legs cracked as I gathered more will.
Kazimir’s voice boomed into my ears. “You are mine.” Images of his face flooded my mind. His laugh, his grin, the tail end of his whisper tore through my chest like a blade. Water crushed downward, compressing my stomach. The strain of the blood gushing to my head was unbearable. The protection of my fire retreated to my throat. The water spun like a meat grinder inches from my face.