by DB Nielsen
Cooper considered this silently. It was the most he’d ever heard Caleb speak, and he realized that it might not happen again for probably an eternity. Zhenya’s arrival must have shook him up pretty badly.
Caleb nudged his drink, and Cooper said, “I’m letting it breathe.”
Caleb grunted.
It was as good an excuse as any. He certainly didn’t have the head for drinking that the ex-Navy Seal had. Biting the bullet, Cooper couldn’t refrain from asking, “So what did she do? Break your heart?”
“Not mine, kid.” Caleb gave a shake of his bald head.
For some reason, Cooper’s thoughts automatically turned to his maker.
So, it was both a relieved surprise and a horrifying shock to his system when Caleb said, “My entire unit. In Afghanistan. Her former comrades. Vampires she’d done more than simply train with, but bonded with, formed allegiances with, sworn blood oaths to—there’s no greater treachery. The entire Special Ops unit. And only I survived. She hunted them down and destroyed them. In a blood rage, she tore out the hearts of two dozen vampires. Betrayed and murdered them. And that was the last time I saw her.”
After that, he remained silent. And Cooper had nothing to say. Except after Caleb’s jacked-up tale, he desperately needed a drink.
By his third glass, he was in a blood stupor. And it was marvelous.
“What exactly is going on here?”
Aislinn’s voice cut through the pounding noise in his head, until he realized that the pounding was still there and coming from the direction of the stage.
“You both look like death warmed up.” She didn’t sound so happy, but he couldn’t work out exactly why. “Caleb?”
“Yeah? Hey, look. Can you do this?” A stupid smile spread over Caleb’s face as he showed Cooper his elongated fangs, then retracted them back into his gums, then snapped them down again. They both roared with laughter.
“You’re both drunk!” Aislinn said accusingly. Her eyes narrowed viciously on Caleb.
“Aww, don’t be mad. Have a drink. You should. It’s yours.” And they both broke out into drunken roars again.
“Wait. What?” The look the daughter of Kayne gave him was enough to light a bonfire.
Cooper picked up the bottle and waved it in the air. It seemed rather empty. He turned it upside down. A couple of drops of blood dripped onto the floor. And he looked inside. “It’s empty,” he said, stating the obvious. “Uh oh. Better not tell Aislinn.”
“Or Nik,” Caleb whispered conspiratorially, forgetting that Aislinn was standing in front of them.
Aislinn took the bottle out of Cooper’s hand and sniffed it. A low hiss emitted from in between her lips. “You two dumbasses! This isn’t from Nik—he’s just the delivery boy. This is laced with arsenic. Can’t you smell the sweetness like apple seeds? Holy Vlad!”
“C’mon, Aislinn. Don’t be mad. I’ve never gone drinking with Caleb before.”
“And you may never again.”
She called out to Lark behind the bar to lean over so she could speak to her privately. In an almost inaudible voice, she stated, “Lark, call the Blood Bank. These two morons have got blood poisoning.”
Lark’s eyes went wide as she whispered, “From something we served?”
“No. It was a message.” Aislinn gritted her teeth as Lark placed the call. She was heartily sick of messages tonight. First Zhenya, now this. And it could only have come from one place. “Looks like I’ll be paying a visit to Styx.”
“Ooh, Styx,” slurred Cooper, face flushed with fever. “Can I come with?”
Cole looked up at the mention of Styx, suddenly showing interest.
“No,” she flatly refused her youngest progeny. Her tone could have frozen water in Demura. “You’ll be getting your stomach pumped and veins flushed, along with asswipe here.” She gestured at Caleb who was still popping out his fangs and laughing as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
“I’ve got it!” Cole cried out suddenly. He was flushed as well but from his own success. Holding aloft the tablet, he looked up, excitement brimming in his eyes. “It just came to me. When you mentioned stomach pumping. It was inspirational. My latest composition. Listen! My first line: ‘You offer me eternal delights, you make me lose my appetite—’ What do you think?”
Caleb groaned as if in excruciating pain. There were tears in his eyes. “Oh Vlad! Where’s Nik? Where’s that stomach pump? Please stake me now!”
Watching the large Malum in torment, Aislinn smiled beatifically. “It’s brilliant, Cole. Your finest yet. Keep writing. I think Styx is going to love it.”
The band had finished their gig and the majority of the crowd had dispersed by the time Nikolaus arrived. Only a few stragglers were left, gathering in dark corners for romantic trysts or having a last few rounds, and that suited Aislinn just fine since she had the reputation of the club to protect as well. Luckily, Nikolaus could verify that the source of contamination was from the bottle he’d delivered, which indeed had come from Styx. But as Styx was a den of iniquity where every rogue hunter, shapeshifter, and lowlife immortal criminal hung out without fear of being killed on neutral grounds, the bottle could have come from almost anyone.
Nikolaus had come to collect Caleb and Cooper, who were being treated at the Lamia Funeral Home, a globally known chain of hospitals and medical centers that were exclusive to vampires. As Aislinn had no desire to see them get their stomachs pumped, she agreed to visit as soon as the last of their patrons had left and she had locked up the Nocturne for the night.
The letter she was carrying was burning a hole in her pocket. She didn’t know whether she wanted to read it or throw it away, though the latter course wouldn’t be too smart since the underground Russian vampire mafia boss, Stanislav, wasn’t the kind of Malum one could ignore and hope to keep their limbs intact. She had no idea what they did with the excess of limbs—she probably didn’t want to know—but there were enough vampires missing fingers or hands, and sometimes even arms, to give the underground Russian vampire mafia a sinister name.
When the last patron had left and she’d sent Cole home with Lark and her latest boyfriend—some pumped-up, large biker-type Sanguis—she helped herself to a drink and sat down at the bar. The creased envelope lay in front of her unopened.
Swallowing a mouthful of a rather decent O-negative Italian, she picked up the letter, tore open the envelope sealed with Stanislav’s birthmark inked in his blood, and unfolded the paper. It was, of course, written in Russian. As luck would have it, Caleb had insisted she learn Russian during the Crimean War.
Prima Aislinn,
Your company is expected for dinner tomorrow evening at seven sharp. We have much to discuss of mutual interest to us both. I shall send a car for your escort. You may bring a few of your personal guards if it makes the head of your coven feel more comfortable.
S.
Stanislav had a real way with words.
She sighed, lifted the glass, and drained its contents. The letter was blessedly brief but as clear as mud. He was clever enough not to say anything at all. There was nothing to hint at what he claimed to be of mutual interest to them both. Yet he was sly as a werefox, implicitly suggesting that he knew his invitation would be perceived as a threat to the coven.
She just hoped Stanislav wasn’t going to propose a revolution and enlist her help. She could barely keep up with Benjamin’s and Dorian’s powerplays and would prefer to avoid an all-out war between the vampire mafia and the Atum Council.
Aislinn had not met Stanislav in all her almost one thousand years as an immortal. Their paths had never crossed. She had, from time to time, been aware of the dealings of the underground Russian vampire mafia through the security meetings of Atum Council members, but it had nothing to do with her since it was all geopolitics, the very last thing she was interested in.
Zhenya, however, she had met. Once.
Aislinn had taken Cole on a European grand tour during World War II
to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a good time to further Cole’s education since the world was in absolute chaos and it allowed for vampires and their feeding habits to go unnoticed throughout occupied Europe. Humans could be cruel and punishing on each other, and for the younger vampires, such horrifying events confirmed to them that they weren’t the only monsters on Earth. But vampires had been human once. And it showed—
Chapter 12
They moved soundlessly in the darkness, leaving no tracks. The British zone was up ahead beyond the birch trees. She could smell it, as well as the blood bathing the forest and fields in between.
“Let’s go. We want to get to the camp before dawn.”
Cole nodded, straightening up, as pale as the birch trees surrounding them.
Suddenly, there were shouts from across the clearing. Aislinn lifted her head to sniff the air. Humans. And vampires. Her hand fell to the hilt of her skean.
“What is it?” Cole asked on a whisper, eyes darting in the darkness. He too could smell the carnage but failed to make the connection between the humans and vampires.
She shushed him, hearing boots and the snap and slide of metal. A rifle was fired. And another in succession. More bullets. She could see the pinpoints of light in the darkness from the explosion of gunfire. Each bullet as it whizzed toward its target in the dark created a ripple of air in its wake, easily tracked by vampire eyes.
“What are they firing at?” Cole’s voice was low, below the frequency of human hearing.
“Humans killing humans. Their senseless war. They’re firing on their enemy.”
She narrowed her eyes and tracked the movements of the soldiers in the darkness. And several vampires. Part of the unit? Rogue or mercenary? It wouldn’t be the first time. War was profitable, and not just for dictators.
“Stay here, Cole. Quietly. Make that silent as the grave or you’ll be in one. Until I tell you to move. Understand?” She felt the air shift with his nod. It was all the confirmation she needed.
She held herself as still as a marble statue, invisible in the moonlight, hearing the succession of short clicks and more gunfire from the trees.
Then in the long grass in the middle of the field, a small patch of blue. The breathing was shallow, little more than a sigh being pushed out of small lungs. A child. No more than ten years old.
“Shit,” Aislinn spat.
Caught in the crossfire, she could now easily smell the child’s fear-filled sweat as the night breeze shifted. And if she could smell him, then so could the other vampires. What was he doing out here? Then she realized that, like themselves, the child was trying to make his way to the British zone. She admired his courage to risk such danger, but she guessed that survival came in all forms.
Another rifle fired, two, three times in rapid succession.
A small yelp came from the field and instantly fell silent. But the child’s heartbeat, though faint, continued to sluggishly thrum. He’d be dead soon.
The smell of his blood was pungent and ripe. Just inhaling it made her hungry. She flicked a glance at Cole and saw his eyes were obsidian, his fangs down and salivating. Hard to resist such a siren’s song as the child’s enticing, young, pure blood.
She heard rushing in the undergrowth and branches snapping. More gunfire. Two Russian soldiers moved out from the cover of trees on the edge of the forest, crawling toward the vulnerable patch of blue. They were fast on their bellies.
But she was faster. And there was no need for her to crawl.
She was barely a pale blur to the humans. But it was not from them that she sensed the greatest threat. The difference between their diet of soldiers’ blood compared to the child was mutton to lamb. They were coming for him.
Whirling around as soon as she stood over the child, she staked her claim. But she arrived only seconds before the first of the vampires.
He was exceedingly tall, even for a vampire, and palely handsome. Yet his smile was ugly. He raised his hand as she hissed a warning. In it was a sickle, sharp and ornate. Its curve caught the moonlight as he raised it, bearing down on her.
Aislinn’s response was so fast that even Cole stared in stunned disbelief from the cover of the birch trees as the vampire’s head flew across the clearing in an arc, tracing the path of the moon, accompanied by an eruption of scared shouting from the human soldiers, as rapid and discordant as gunfire. She could sense the humans retreating from the battle, even as the next vampire rushed toward her.
He was dispatched in the same manner.
Aislinn was angry, and her gorge rose at the intent of the vampires. They would not prey on an innocent, even if the child had little chance of surviving. She let the blood rage fuel her, making her stronger, faster.
Blood, like rust, left stains across her weapon and splattered the long grass of the field. The child’s life was ebbing now. She could sense it. There was little time left.
Then she saw the bullets fly out of the trees toward her, and, as she evaded them, a force barreled into her from the opposite direction. It was only her incredibly quick reflexes that saved her as the sharpened blade met flesh, whispering across her jaw. Blood trickled down her neck as she instantly healed, and she turned to face her aggressor.
Despite the height, the hair cropped in a very short style, and the squarish jaw, Aislinn instinctively knew that the Malum facing her was a woman. She was lithe and economical in her movements, and her skills far exceeded her comrades’.
“You’re good,” the Russian Malum spat, her voice strongly accented. “But not good enough. I hope you are not afraid to die since tonight you shall meet your fate.”
Aislinn avoided the edge of the bloodsucker’s blade while maintaining her position between the boy and the ravenous vampire. “Not tonight. And not by your hand.”
Her opponent lunged at her, and Aislinn gave a high, right kick, throwing the vampire off balance.
“I know who you are,” the other Malum spat. “Hard not to recognize the daughter of Kayne. Caleb’s been waiting for your arrival. Won’t he be surprised when you never show up?”
Aislinn was too well schooled to let her surprise show on her face.
“Well, perhaps I am at a disadvantage. I certainly don’t know who you are. But if you have been training with Caleb, I’m fairly certain he’s told you never to underestimate your opponent.” Aislinn launched a devastating combo that left the other vampire with blood crusting her cheek, forearm, and throat. She’d managed to cut across the Malum’s neck, but it was not a deep enough cut as her adversary drew back at the last microsecond and healed easily enough.
“You’re dead, whore,” the Malum said, her eyes glittering viciously.
Aislinn laughed. “Well, unless you can outrun the dawn, I’d say you don’t stand much of a chance either.”
Around them, the sky was changing to a fluid-midnight velvet. Stars wanly filtered through the pre-dawn twilight but were slowly beginning to wink out. The sun was about to peek over the horizon.
“Vlad! Bitch!” Becoming aware of the approaching dawn, the other Malum weighed up her options. There wasn’t much cover for miles around, except the British zone, but she wouldn’t be able to explain all the blood away easily, and she had no desire to be roasted looking for shelter. The daughter of Kayne was a far stronger fighter than she’d given her credit for, and she wouldn’t be going down in a hurry. No meal was worth this much angst. “See you in Demura!”
As the Malum cut and ran, Aislinn scanned the distance to the British camp. It was a fair way to travel still.
“Cole, move it!” Aislinn cried and, picking up the child who was barely alive, started to run. The sky took on the fiery glow of hell, the sun creeping silently and malevolently over the horizon.
As soon as Cole caught up with her, she checked that he had his appetite in check and, assured, handed the child over to him.
“Hold him!” she instructed, and, grabbing Cole by the scruff of his neck, she put on a burst of speed.
She ran, extending her senses to their limits. Farther beyond the undulating fields was a farm. She could smell the human inhabitants. She made for the barn.
With barely moments to spare, she kicked open the barn door and threw Cole and the child inside, whirling around just as the sun crested the horizon and the barn door slammed shut. Backing away, the sunlight sinisterly crept through the gaps in the timber walls, lighting the dust motes that drifted across its path.
Aislinn roughly pushed Cole and the child into the darkest stall, causing the skittish horse to whinny in alarm. “If you’re hungry,” she advised her progeny, “feast on the livestock, but don’t you dare touch the child.”
It was difficult to control oneself with the blood seeping from the child’s wound. He’d lost a lot of blood.
“You can’t save him,” Cole whispered, feeling saddened. He was no monster, even if he was a vampire.
It was forbidden to turn a child, even if he and Aislinn felt compassion for the boy.
His maker didn’t bother answering him. Through obsidian eyes, she gazed upon the outpouring of his lifeblood. She pushed her fingers into the wound carefully and retrieved the bullet. More blood bubbled up from the gaping hole.
“Aislinn, what are you doing?”
“Help me,” she said. “I can’t stop him from bleeding and hold him still at the same time. Give me your finger. My blood’s too strong.”
Not waiting for his protest, she grabbed his hand in a vise-like grip. Piercing his finger with the point of her fang, she applied a few drops of Cole’s blood to the wound. “Vampire blood heals on contact. Don’t worry, Cole. I’m not making the child a vampire. I’m saving his life. There’s no chance such a small amount, applied topically, could turn him. Besides, he needs to ingest it, and I’m not going to give it to him. But your blood will allow his cells to regenerate, at least enough to save him. Then you are going to help me strap him to this horse and send him into the sunlight.”