League of Vampires Box Set: Books 1- 3

by Rye Brewer

  I let out a cry of relief as I watched—but then nothing changed. He was still immobile.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Gage asked.

  “We have to do something else,” Fane growled.

  “Wait.” Allonic held out his arms to block the rest of us from going to Jonah. “Just wait.”

  Slowly, slowly, he started coming back to us. His skin went back to its normal color. His face moved. His shoulders. His arms and hands.

  I closed my eyes and leaned against Gage for a second.

  The way he trembled showed me he was as overwrought as I was.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Jonah roll onto his side and start gagging. Thick, black blood poured from his mouth as he vomited. His entire body clenched as he expelled it. Once it subsided, he sat up and opened his eyes.

  “Oh, Jonah.” Anissa threw her arms around him, while the rest of us gathered close.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. Fane helped him to his feet.

  “I think so?” he murmured. “That was… different.”

  Anissa stepped back and took Allonic by the arm. “Why did you do that?” she whispered.

  I was sure she thought none of us were paying attention, but I was.

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Feed off Valerius. You don’t need to do that to survive, the way I do. Why did you do it?”

  Good question. It didn’t seem to make a difference on the surface. It didn’t change anything.

  “Valerius’s blood is concentrated, more powerful than any other vampire’s.”

  “Right…” Anissa prompted.

  “He’s an Ancient, and a fae. That’s a special combination, especially strong. And I’m descended from the Archein.”

  “Yes? And?”

  I glanced at them.

  Anissa’s hands were on her hips as she glared at her brother.

  He shook his head. “Now’s not the time. We can talk about it later.” He stared at me—he knew I was watching—and I shifted my gaze away.

  They rejoined us.

  As usual, I had more questions than answers.

  I turned my attention back to Jonah, who was looking more like himself. “My brand is almost gone,” he said, lifting his arm.

  Gage did the same. They were barely visible anymore.

  “Do you feel them?” Fane asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “I wonder if that’s really all Valerius wanted from us,” Gage muttered. “I feel like we got out of that too easily.”

  Jonah snorted. “Maybe you did.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Fane broke in. “I have to wonder if sharing your blood with him tied you together somehow.”

  He glanced at Allonic, who shook his head.

  “I don’t know the full repercussions, especially when dealing with an Ancient—the original Ancient, at that. He probably knows enchantments none of us have ever heard of.”

  “I hope it’s not the case,” Fane said, but there was no hope in his voice.

  I looked around at all of them. They were all forgetting one very important thing. “What about Vance?”

  “What about him?” Fane asked.

  The rest of them stared at me like I’d suddenly started speaking another language.

  “Well… I mean, what do you think I mean? We have to go after him! We can’t let Valerius inhabit his body that way! We need to go after him!”

  “No, we don’t,” Fane said.

  “We do! Somebody has to help him! I’ll go by myself.”

  “No.” Fane stood in front of the doorway, blocking me.

  Allonic spoke up. “There’s another way.”

  “Oh, what?” I whirled around with my arms crossed. “You didn’t know what we were getting into when we got here, but now you’re going to tell me what’s going to happen in the future? That makes a lot of sense.”

  It didn’t seem to faze him. “Valerius will come back for his body. When he does, Vance will be free.”

  “I don’t understand. If he wants his old body, why did he take Vance?”

  Allonic shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe a younger, stronger body would work better. Maybe Vance’s body is specific to his goals.”

  “Maybe they know who he is to Lucian,” Jonah mused. “They’re using Vance to get closer to Lucian.”

  That made sense, at least. And I wanted to see Lucian pay for everything he’d done. That would take an eternity.

  “What about my mother?” I asked Allonic. “Will Nivia leave her body? What happens when she does?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged again, appearing sorry. “Since I don’t know what happened to her, I can’t say.”

  I thought back. The only thing Fane had ever said was that she was gone. Not that she was dead. Maybe something else had happened besides death?

  He stayed silent on the matter. Instead, he said, “We should go. Who knows what else is down here?”

  I looked back at Valerius, still entombed. “What about him? His body is unprotected now.”

  “So?”

  Fane’s tone surprised me.

  “So? So somebody should protect it.” Why was that not as obvious to him as it was to me?

  Fane sneered. “Both he and Vance can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.” He sounded like he meant it, too. “We’re leaving, right now.”

  “No. I’m staying with him.” I went to the body. “I won’t leave him here.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” He stared at me like he thought I was. So did the rest of them. “You can’t stay here. I won’t leave you so far away, alone. You must be kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  His eyes hardened. “I forbid you to do this.”

  “Forbid?” I laughed. “Who are you to dictate policy to me now? You think you can walk back into my life, tell me you’re not my father anymore, then tell me what to do? You don’t get the right.” I hardened my face to match his. “You don’t lead the clan, and you don’t lead me.”

  I didn’t know what to expect from him—so when he rushed at me and took me by the wrists, the surprise gave him an advantage. I struggled, baring my fangs and hissing.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Jonah’s voice was strong, but it was only in the background of my mind.

  I was too busy wishing I could hurt Fane the way he’d hurt me.

  “Let go, damn you!”

  But he wouldn’t. He was too strong for me, no matter how I kicked at him. It didn’t take long before I was exhausted, out of breath.

  I stopped fighting.

  “You’re not staying here alone,” he said again. “I won’t leave you here unprotected, handling who knows what all by yourself. You are coming with us.” He pulled me closer until we were eye-to-eye. “You don’t have a choice in this, Philippa.”

  My chin trembled, and I cursed the way I cried whenever I felt as overwhelmed as I did just then. Crying was a sign of weakness, or I had always thought of it that way.

  Only when I was as full of rage and helplessness and despair as I was at that moment, crying was the only thing I could do. “I can’t leave him, Dad. What if Vance comes back for the body? What then?”

  His expression softened a little, but his hands didn’t release my wrists. “This is the way it has to be.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jonah approached. “I think I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” I dared to hope.

  “What if we take the body with us? We can keep it safe somewhere nearby instead of leaving it here. This way, if Vance comes back, we’ll know.”

  “Where could we leave it?” I asked.

  I looked at Fane.

  “Not in Duskwood,” he said.

  “Oh, come on. I thought you said it was safe there. Don’t let personal issues get in the way now.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t say for sure that somebody or something won’t get through when I’m not around.”

  “The only option we have is
to take the body back home,” Jonah decided.

  “Sure. We’ll leave him in the living room, in front of the fireplace,” Gage muttered. “How about we mount him like a trophy?”

  “I don’t mean there,” Jonah fired back.

  “So where?”

  He appeared guilty all of a sudden. “I have a vault.”

  My eyes widened. I glanced at Gage, who was just as surprised as I was. “A vault? Since when?”

  “Since always. It doesn’t matter.” He faced Fane, who probably knew about the vault. The whole head of the clan thing. “We can leave him there. Nobody knows about it.”

  “Okay. That works. As long as he’s not alone.” I never thought I would care so much about the body of an Ancient I’d never met.

  Everything hinged on him.

  We went to the roots, which had been impossible for me to tear up earlier. But Allonic had managed to rip some of them out, and that seemed to weaken them.

  We worked together to free the body then Fane lifted it.

  “He weighs next to nothing,” he murmured, slinging Valerius over his back. “Let’s go.”

  We retraced our steps through the tunnels and through the portals, all leading to the rooftop outside the penthouse.

  By the time I stepped through, I was sure I had never been more exhausted in all my long life.

  And I couldn’t stop thinking about Vance.

  Where was he?

  What would he do?

  24

  Jonah

  Home had never looked so good.

  We stumbled into the penthouse without checking first whether Scott was there. I guessed he was out somewhere, doing clan business. The place was empty, the fireplace dark and cold.

  Fane lowered Valerius into an overstuffed chair then stretched. He’d been carrying the body for hours.

  “I need to get back,” he said with a grimace as he rolled his head on his neck. “I can’t stay around here. You remember what I told you.”

  “What about Scott?” Gage asked. “You said you were going to meet up with him.”

  “I also said I can’t let anyone see me with you.”

  “Can you wait a little while?” Philippa asked.

  She appeared completely worn out, physically and emotionally. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  I had no idea she still cared so much about Vance. They’d been over for ages. But the way she’d attacked Nivia and fought Fane to stay in Sorrowswatch told a different story.

  “I can’t.” Fane glanced around, saw how disappointed that made us, and he melted a little. “Maybe I can come back when you have Scott with you, and we can all go to Duskwood. It’s safer there. But I need to go, right now.”

  “How will we know how to reach out to you?” I asked as he walked to the doors leading outside.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” With that, he was gone. I looked at my brother and sister, and it was clear we were all wrung out. Seeing our mother… and the way he held her…

  “I should go, too.” Anissa’s voice behind me was a surprise. For a second, I almost forgot she was there. “And I’ll take my sister with me.”

  That got Philippa’s attention. She seemed happier than I had seen her in a long time.

  “She’s probably with Scott,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah. I know. I’m sure they haven’t gone far. When I tell her our mother’s waiting, she’ll come with me.”

  I left Philippa and the others to look after Valerius while I pulled Anissa aside. “Are you sure you want to go alone?”

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll have Allonic with me. He proved himself back there, didn’t he?” She looked impressed, proud. Maybe a little concerned, too.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe I just need a break from all the excitement, too. I mean, it’s been a lot.”

  “Tell me about it.” I could still remember the sensation of turning to stone while the silver infected my blood. I still wasn’t sure what Vance did to me with that blade, but I never wanted to feel it again.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “I mean, are you feeling yourself?”

  “As much as I can be, I guess. I wish I could sleep.”

  “Me, too,” she smiled. “I would sleep for days. But we can rest. You should. Get your strength back, regroup. We’ll all get through this.”

  She took a step back, away from me. I grabbed her hand to hold her in place. “Hey. Wait a second. I have something else to say.”

  “What is it? I think your sister is in a hurry to get Valerius to the vault.” Sure enough, Philippa was pacing the floor, biting her nails. She would have to wait a minute.

  “I wanted to apologize for not telling you about Fane—my father. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you would take it that way.”

  “I know you didn’t,” she murmured. Emotion washed over her face, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “Are you still, you know…” I trailed off because I didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “Unsure about us?”

  “Yeah.” It broke my heart to think it.

  She nodded.

  “But what about everything that happened back there, in Sorrowswatch?” I remembered being in her arms. I remembered her screaming for help when Vance stabbed me.

  She didn’t sound like a girl who didn’t have feelings anymore.

  “I haven’t stopped caring about you,” she whispered. “I never will. I just don’t know if you and I are what I thought we were. So much has happened. I need time to think, you know?”

  I couldn’t deny how much it hurt, so I didn’t bother. “I understand.”

  It was all I could say, although it didn’t seem to scratch the surface of what I was going through. How was I supposed to be without her? It felt like couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t in my life, even when I had lived for decades before we met.

  “Be careful with yourself, okay?” She reached up to touch my face.

  I told myself to remember how it felt, in case she never came back. I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t, but there was always a chance she would decide we didn’t have a future.

  “You, too.”

  Allonic joined us. “We should go.”

  She was right, he had proved himself—but I still I wondered why he’d fed from Valerius. It didn’t seem to do anything to help us, and he appeared the same. Valerius’s body, on the other hand, looked almost as feeble as it had before Nivia gave him our blood.

  “There’s only one thing,” he said. “I can’t go through the building to leave, but we can’t port without Sara.”

  “Oh. Right.” She chewed her lip, frowning.

  “I can show you a back way to leave through,” I offered.

  “I still don’t think it’s safe for me to go through the high-rise—I don’t mean any offense,” Allonic said.

  “None taken.”

  He looked at Anissa. “I’ll find you when you have our sister. We’ll portal out then.” Allonic nodded to me, as though bidding me farewell.

  “Take care of her,” I said.

  “I will.” He went out to the roof, and I just made out the flash of a portal before the light went out.

  He was gone, too.

  She looked as resolved as ever, so even though I wished she’d change her mind, I led her out to the hall and to the back stairwell.

  “It’s a lot of stairs to the ground floor, but it’s better than getting spotted alone on the elevator. Nobody takes the stairs.”

  “Thanks. I’ll go look for Sara in her room… or Scott’s first.” She gave me a half-hearted smile. “See you soon.”

  “I hope so.” I watched her disappear through the door and felt like I was losing part of myself. It took all my self-control to keep from following her. How could I survive not knowing whether or not she was all right?

  The sound of a throat clearing, and a hand on my elbow shook me out of it, and back to reality.

/>   I still had issues to take care of.

  Philippa was standing behind me. “We need to get to the vault. What happens if Scott comes and finds him?”

  “Right, of course.”

  We went into the penthouse. Valerius was still in the chair, sitting upright. He might as well have been dead. He barely breathed and didn’t move at all.

  I lifted him with Gage’s help while Philippa kept a lookout in the hall. She gave the all-clear, and we carried the body out to the elevator. Philippa inserted her key into the lock above the panel, turning it into a private elevator. It removed the chance any curious clan members would come across us.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  “The sub-basement.” I hadn’t been down to the vault in a long time.

  Years.

  “How come you didn’t tell us you have a vault?” Gage asked.

  Maybe because I never trusted you. “Dad told me not to tell anybody, not even family members.”

  It was tough, working alongside Gage, and remembering all the grief he gave me for so long over wanting to lead the clan. There was still just the slightest bit of resentment in his eyes, too. I was used to that.

  “Why is there a vault in the first place?” Philippa asked.

  “In case there’s something that needs hiding. You know. Like the body of an Ancient.” I left it there.

  Fact was, I didn’t know why we had a vault. I had never used it, even though Dad had more than once. We had lived in relative peace for so long, I hadn’t worried about it.

  The sub-basement was dark except for the few utility lights strung up at intervals along the hall. It was dank down here, cold, and it reminded me of the tunnels leading to Sorrowswatch.

  Only I knew where we were going, and, instead of running water, the buzz of generators filled the air.

  The door leading to the vault looked like any of the other metal utility doors on that floor. I used my key and swung it open.

  “It’s… just a room.” Philippa stepped inside what resembled a mostly empty supply closet.

  I went around her and pushed in on the specific cinderblock which sprung the lock and opened the hidden door behind a set of metal shelves.

  “Help me move these.”

  We pushed the shelves aside then I opened the inside door.