A Vision of Vampires 1-3 (A Vision of Vampires Collection)

by Laura Legend

  Cass looked from Kumiko to Zach. Zach sat still as a statue, his eyes fixed on his cup and saucer.

  “You were not ready, Cassandra. But now you are. And because of Zach, you are safe and you are with us. Please, forgive him. Please forgive both of us. And please, above all, agree to join us in pulling this world back from the brink of annihilation.”

  Cass felt rooted and centered. She felt, for the first time in many years, as if she could, with time and patience, unchain the rest of what had been locked away inside of her all those years ago.

  She reached for Zach’s hand and squeezed it. He looked up from the table and met her eyes. Cass’s weak eye wandered, but Zach was untroubled by it.

  There was more to the story—perhaps much more—than Kumiko had just revealed. But she had to trust someone. And if she couldn’t trust Zach, then who? At least for now, this was where she belonged.

  “I’m in,” Cass said, still looking at Zach rather than Kumiko. “I will be a sword for the Shield.”

  “Excellent,” Kumiko replied, pleased. “In that case, I have an urgent mission for you.”

  40

  The view from Richard’s penthouse office in the York Tower was spectacular. The lights of London, hugging the curves of the Thames, twinkled seductively.

  Richard leaned on his cane, his face nearly pressed to the glass. He was anxious for that day—soon his doctors said—when he could dispense with the cane and walk upright like a man. Given the scale of his injuries in the castle, his recovery had been miraculously quick. Being more than human certainly helped on that score. But, still, Richard found himself impatient. With all that was happening, this was no time to be on the sidelines.

  “You have lived in London for hundreds of years,” Maya said, pouring herself a shot of whiskey from Richard’s bar. “There is nothing new to see out there.”

  Maya downed the shot in one go and poured herself another.

  “On the contrary,” Richard countered, his gaze still fixed on the city, “everything is new. Nothing is the same. The world has changed dramatically beneath our feet and the dust is far from settling.”

  Maya held up a second glass, offering Richard a drink.

  Richard didn’t turn around but admired her reflection in the window. They had worked together for a long time—from the beginning, really, for Maya. She was as striking as ever in her sleeveless dress, her hair loose to her waist. But he didn’t feel the pull of desire for her. Whatever had once been between them had long since settled into the dependability of trust and friendship.

  Richard shook his head slightly, declining the drink.

  “Things could be worse,” Maya continued. “We recovered the real chains of St. Paul and Paul’s lost gospel. These relics will be valuable to us. More importantly, we kept these relics and their power out of the hands of the Lost, crippling their new leader’s attempt to consolidate and control their numbers. We will have to think hard, now, about how to use that increasing instability to our advantage.”

  “Yes,” Richard allowed, “this will have to be carefully considered.”

  Maya downed another shot, refilled both glasses, and wandered over to Richard, leaning against him. Richard put his arm around her and she nestled closer. She offered him another drink, but again he declined. Maya shrugged and took sips from both. She already knew what question was coming next.

  “And Cassandra?” Richard asked.

  Maya sighed.

  “Of course. Cassandra Jones. She still understands very little. About herself. And about this new world she has wandered into.”

  Maya clinked the ice in her glass.

  “She is working with the Shield now. Despite the debacle with Miranda, Kumiko successfully recruited her—in no small part due to the ‘work’ done by Zachary Riviera.”

  “Hmmm,” Richard mused, frowning, “yes.”

  It was clear to Maya that they had moved on, now, from discussing geopolitics to something else. And she didn’t care for it. She didn’t like the fact that something other than logic and calculation were at stake. She didn’t like how the worry lines radiating from the corners of Richard’s eyes felt personal.

  Maya pulled away from Richard, finished both their drinks, and set the glasses down on Richard’s desk.

  “She worries me, Richard,” Maya said, forcing eye contact. “She worries me about you.”

  Richard nodded thoughtfully, sidestepping the argument.

  “It’s a delicate balance,” he offered. “Cassandra is the Seer. Her powers are immense. We need her on our side.”

  “Right,” Maya echoed skeptically, turning to go. “It is certainly true, at least, that you need her on your side.”

  Thank you for reading Hopeless, book 2 of A Vision of Vampires! If you enjoyed this book, would you please leave a review on Amazon? I would be so grateful!

  Would you like to know when the next book in A Vision of Vampires comes out? Sign up here:

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  Other books by Laura Legend

  Faithless: A Vision of Vampires 1

  Blameless: A Vision of Vampires 3

  Fearless: A Vision of Vampires 4

  Timeless: A Vision of Vampires 5

  Ageless: A Vision of Vampires 6

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  Hopeless. Copyright © 2018 by Laura Legend. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be produced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover art by Momir Borocki

  First edition

  EPub Edition September 2018

  Print Edition September 2018

  ISBN: 9781723768170

  Blameless

  Book 3

  Of

  A Vision of Vampires

  By Laura Legend

  For Buffy and Faith, my favorite badass vampire slayers

  1

  The casino’s neon lights contrasted sharply with the darkness of the cloudy and moonless night. The floor of the casino was packed with senior citizens. It was late enough that the energy in the room was high, but early enough that the excitement hadn’t soured. Everyone was having a good time.

  Everyone except Miranda Byrne.

  Miranda was lost.

  “Dammit,” she swore, turning in a tight circle, trying to get her bearings. Her heels clicked on the cement floor. She ran her fingers through her dark hair. Even after months of practice, she couldn’t navigate the casino’s service hallways. They always made her feel like a rat in a maze. When a waitress walked by with a tray of drinks, Miranda gladly gave up trying to sort it out herself and just trailed her back onto the casino floor.

  Now she knew where she was. Mostly.

  The slot machines were ringing and the card tables were busy. Miranda wove her way through the tables, looking for Amare, but she lost the thread of what she was doing when she neared the casino’s expensive buffet and her stomach rumbled angrily.

  She was hungry.

  In the abstract, the idea of food excited her, but once she got close enough to the restaurant to smell it, her stomach rebelled. She just couldn’t eat this stuff anymore. Despite what her head remembered, buffet food wasn’t what her body wanted. She lingered at an uncleared table and took a sniff from a half-full glass of red wine. She loved red wine—she knew she did. But, once again, she couldn’t bear the smell of it anymore. The scent soured her
already tender stomach.

  She crinkled her nose, put the cup down, and took a deep breath, trying to calm her stomach and clear her head. But her head didn’t clear. Instead, her keen nose caught the musky scent of an attractive man in his early fifties at the next table. He was fit with a thick head of gray hair and waiting for his date to return from powdering her nose. Miranda cocked an eyebrow. Her appetite roared back to life. Surprised by the strength of her own response, she immediately felt that, though she couldn’t eat food anymore, she might happily sample this fellow.

  She straightened her jacket with its gold “Manager” lapel pin and narrowed her eyes seductively. As she leaned in to ask if he needed another drink, she could feel the sharp tips of her eye teeth pressing against her bottom lip. She caught the man off guard. He jumped a little in his seat and then apologized. In response to her question, he leaned over the wine list, exposing his neck. Miranda’s mouth filled with saliva and, despite herself, she licked her lips.

  But before it could develop any further, their “moment” was interrupted.

  “We’ve already ordered our drinks,” a woman said curtly as she slid back into her seat at the table. She wore a tight dress and was half the man’s age. Her eyes shot daggers at Miranda.

  Miranda bit her tongue. She didn’t care for the woman’s attitude, but Miranda was relieved at the interruption. She would surely have taken a small bite out of the man—just to see how he tasted—if his date hadn’t returned.

  Embarrassed, Miranda nodded and withdrew. Walking quickly in the other direction, she swallowed hard. That was a close one. She was still adapting to the changes in her body, to her new height and additional strength, to her new appetites and sharpened senses. Her body felt younger and stronger than it had in years. All the little aches and pains that used to plague her were gone. She felt profoundly alive. But not all of the changes were good. Although her body felt stronger, her mind felt weaker. She felt less rational and less in control.

  She was no longer who she’d been. She wasn’t quite herself anymore.

  At the thought of all she’d lost—of the fragile grip she barely retained on her own humanity—her fists balled and anger flared inside of her. Her mind flashed to Kumiko and to the time she’d spent imprisoned and interrogated at the Shield Monastery. The anger swelled. Miranda would never forgive Kumiko for forcing her down this path. At any number of points in the past thirty years, Kumiko could have helped them carve out a third way. They could have chosen a different path. They could have made a new world. And, more, they could have done it together. Instead, at each turn, Kumiko had wilted at the uncertainty and potential cost of the better future Miranda imagined. Hiding behind layers of tradition, Kumiko had insisted on redrawing all the old battle lines between the Shield and the Lost.

  A single hot tear had sprung from the corner of her eye, and Miranda wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her mascara smeared. Her emotions were just so raw and so close to the surface these days. She didn’t regret her choice to abandon the Shield—she would make the same decision again—but she did resent that Kumiko had forced her to make it.

  Miranda was shocked out of her reverie by the sound of pans crashing and people yelling in the restaurant kitchen. It sounded like trouble. She ducked into the service hallway and followed the noise through swinging double doors. Inside, she was greeted by the sight of Amare with an enormous butcher’s knife in his hand—that’s right, she’d been looking for Amare—trying to corner something big and ugly. The kitchen staff were ducking for cover as dishes smashed to the floor and unattended pans on the range caught fire, flaring.

  “Another one?” Miranda diagnosed.“Shit.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Amare replied in his thick Moroccan accent. He kept his eyes glued to the creature and didn’t turn to greet her.

  This was the third time this week that a Lost vampire had gone feral and tweaked out. The whole Lost community was teetering on the brink of the same fate. Even Miranda could feel the viral call in her own blood—the call to give in to her body and its hungers, to set aside consciousness, to lose her mind and finally be free of all her human fears and scheming.

  Amare tossed the knife from one hand to the other, looking for an angle of attack. The creature bore all the telltale signs of ferality. Its arched spine had grown ridged and pronounced, it favored loping on all fours, its fingers and toes had lengthened and curled into claws, and a second row of shark-like teeth were visible behind its bloody tongue.

  Was this going to be Miranda’s own future? Would she be overrun by her passions and hungers? Would her own appetites break her and eat her alive?

  No, she wouldn’t let it happen. She had to trust that—as the Heretic had promised—something else, something entirely new, was possible. They were so close to unlocking the secret. They had to succeed. In a very real way, Miranda had already bet her life that they would.

  For the moment, Miranda couldn’t do anything about that all-consuming problem, but she could solve this one.

  She skirted a stainless steel countertop, grabbed a butcher’s knife of her own, and flanked Amare. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to finish this quickly.

  The creature reared up on its legs, roared, beat its chest, and flexed. Its veins bulged and its eyes bugged. Miranda could have sworn the thing was actually growing larger before her eyes.

  Amare went high. Miranda went low.

  Amare’s knife flashed, aiming for the heart, but the creature was fast and shouldered him into the wall, knocking the breath out of him. Miranda took a simultaneous swing at its leg and drew a deep, bloody line across its thigh. The cut, though, barely slowed the creature down as it pushed past her, crashed through the kitchen, and ran for the door to the service hallway.

  Everyone else in the kitchen—Lost vampires all—dove for cover.

  “Cowards,” Miranda spat at them as she gave chase. Amare was right behind her. Two vampires in hairnets, white aprons, and leather pants smirked from their hiding place and shrugged in response. Miranda gave them the bird and burst into the hallway.

  The creature was already halfway down the hall. It ran past the door to the buffet and was headed for the exit at the far end—the exit that led directly onto the packed floor of the casino.

  “Mother . . .” Miranda said, redoubling her speed. They wouldn’t be able to sweep this under the rug if their backroom brawl burst onto the casino floor. All hell would break loose as scores of fainting grandmas and doddering grandpas were eaten and dismembered.

  The creature barreled through a cart loaded with dirty dishes, hurtling them to the floor. Miranda angled for the wall and bypassed the wreck. Amare leaped over the debris in a single bound and caught up with her. They were making up ground but not fast enough.

  “Merde, merde, merde . . .” Amare was chanting to himself. He dove for the creature’s ankles just before it reached the door. He locked on but, instead of bringing the thing down, he just got dragged through the door with it.

  Miranda caught up. Amare had the creature by the knees and it tumbled to the ground. A couple of gray heads turned their direction to see what was going on. In a moment, every head in the casino would be swiveling toward them.

  Miranda couldn’t let that happen. As her mind had been weakening, her grip on the magic she’d practiced for decades had also become increasingly tenuous. But she didn’t have time now to wonder if she could still use it. Her eyes glinted with a hint of green as she spotted a blue haired woman in a scooter at a slot machine near the center of the room.

  “Congratulations,” Miranda whispered as she cast a spell, her hands dancing. The woman pulled the lever and won the jackpot. Lights flashed and bells rang and every head in the casino, instead of turning toward them, pivoted to see who had won. A landslide of coins cascaded out of the machine.

  With the distraction in full swing, Miranda looked back at Amare. He was barely hanging on. The creature had almost broken free. Miranda didn�
��t waste any more time. Knife in hand, she dropped an elbow into the creature’s face, smashing its teeth, and then plunged the knife into its heart. Its body dissolved in a cloud of ash.

  One older gentleman with a walker was still looking their way. He’d seen the whole thing.

  “What . . . what was that?” he croaked, pointing a shaking finger at the ash settling to the ground—marking the spot where the feral vampire had been.

  “That, sir,” Miranda said as she stood, dusting off her hands and straightening her jacket, “is why smoking is prohibited in the casino. We take that policy very seriously.”

  Amare gripped Miranda by the elbow. “Well done,” he said quietly. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re welcome,” Miranda returned. “But we both know this is just a finger in the dike. If we don’t secure an additional relic soon, this kind of ferality will spread like wildfire. And then it won’t just be a handful of senior citizens in danger. The whole world will be overrun.”

  Before Amare could respond, a voice spoke directly behind them.

  “Fortunately,” the Heretic said, “I know just where to find that relic.”

  2

  Cassandra Jones was running.

  The sun was barely up, its light slanting through the dark trees as she flew down the trail. It was theoretically spring in Japan, but this high in the mountains the thin, sharp air was still cold in her lungs. She wasn’t worried, though, about the temperature. She’d known that once she got moving, it wouldn’t be hard to keep warm. A pair of running shorts and a sports bra were plenty. Her dark ponytail bobbed as she kept her eyes fixed on the trail in front of her, dancing through the maze of roots and rocks that broke up the path. She worked her way higher and higher into the mountains. She was only two miles into the run, but her skin was already beaded with sweat.