Darkfell vampire clan bo.., p.5
Darkfell Vampire Clan Boxset, page 5
I took off at the same time the sound of gunshots echoed against the trees, impossibly loud in the darkness, and I raced up the driveway, determined to get there before she drew blood.
By the time I arrived, Gram had the gun braced to her shoulder and was staring down the sights at Luthor, stopped at the bottom of the steps, those strange shadows wrapping around him. When they faded away, my mouth fell open when two spent bullets fell to the ground.
“Gram, put the gun down, I can explain.”
Not really, but I could try.
Surprisingly, she did just that, a look of utter confusion on her face. I took another step, intent on launching into some rational explanation of the past twelve hours. Her confusion only deepened as she looked between us, then lifted the gun again, the barrel fixed on Luthor’s chest.
He didn’t so much as twitch.
“Luthor Fontaine. What in the hell are you doing with my granddaughter?”
10
LUTHOR
I hadn’t seen Claire Marvelle since the night Viktor had invaded the throne room, killing everyone in his path as he made his way to Queen Lyra.
Seeing her, everything made sense.
The girl descended from the Marvelle royal house, one of our oldest and most precious bloodlines. A line that Viktor thought he’d wiped out a hundred years ago.
Claire looked older but the same, the way vampires do when they don’t feed properly. Her dark hair was now streaked with gray, and she was thinner these days. Still could handle a weapon, though.
“Grandma Claire, what the heck are you doing?”
Pure disbelief radiated from my Queen.
I knew I shouldn’t, but I reached out and tasted her emotions. I had to know where the girl stood because my next decision depended on it. Walk away? Or stay by her side and protect her?
All I found was confusion, relief, exhaustion.
No hint of lies.
Which meant she didn’t know. Not that she was vampire. Not that she came from a distinguished line of queens. Not why she’d been abducted.
Claire, on the other hand, stank of duplicity.
“It’s been years, Claire,” I drawled, knowing that while a direct gunshot wouldn’t kill me, it would slow me down enough for her to finish me off.
Some latent trace of male pride balked at the thought of going down before my Queen, failing her before I was even able to serve her.
“This is quite a change for you.” I indicated the ramshackle home surrounding us.
“Grandma Claire…” the girl cautioned gently, as if she was talking someone down off a ledge. “Put down the gun. He’s not a threat.”
“He’s the biggest threat this side of the Atlantic. Step away from him, Fina, do it now.”
She bit her lip, her gaze fixed on me. “No, he’s a friend and I won’t let you hurt him.”
“Viktor is after us,” I told Claire… Grandma Claire… and knew she believed me when the barrel dropped away. “A raiding party captured…” I lifted my brow at the girl.
“Seraphina,” she answered quietly. “My name’s Seraphina.”
For a moment, I rolled the name—Seraphina—on my tongue. It was a fitting name for a queen, steeped in the history and tradition of our kind.
“One of the King’s raiding parties captured Seraphina, and she ended up in the cell next to mine. She was bleeding…” I cringed, knowing this was yet another conversation I didn’t want to have in front of her. Not when she knew nothing about our world.
But that wasn’t my fault.
That was the fault of the gristly old female in front of me.
The gun fell from Claire’s hands as she rushed to her granddaughter, looked her over quickly, then enfolded her tightly, rocking slightly. Seraphina’s arms wrapped across the female’s bony back as she began crying. “It’s true, Gram. I thought they were going to kill me.”
With her arm around the girl’s shoulders, Claire gasped. “You’re covered in blood, Fina. How badly are you hurt?”
“I… just beat up, I guess, from when they caught me. But my arm won’t stop bleeding.”
The scent of her blood filled the air around us, and Claire glared at me as if I’d done it.
“I knew exactly who she was, the second I… uhm…” I left out the smelled part. I really didn’t think Seraphina would like me saying that.
Seraphina lifted her head long enough to peg me with a dark glare.
“Seriously? You knew who I was? And how do you two know one another?”
“Inside,” Claire said, touching Seraphina’s arm to guide her up to the porch. She shot me a look. “Once we’re inside, I’ll explain everything.”
I hadn’t taken one step when Claire ordered, “Luthor, fix the wards you broke on the way through, then come inside. If I know my granddaughter, she’ll have a million questions. It will probably take both of us to tell this story.”
I turned toward the wards, eyeing the hole I’d ripped in them. I couldn’t grasp the wisdom of letting an untried vampire roam freely in New Orleans, of all places, but maybe Claire had her reasons.
“Just wait, Cyrus,” mocked the guard through the bars.
“This time, the King won’t just play with you.” The bastard spoke in Middle French, Viktor’s preferred version of the language, and I replied in the same.
“Perhaps it’s me who’s done playing with him.” I snapped my teeth together for effect, the hollow click forcing him back a step.
An hour ago in the clearing, Viktor had kicked my ass.
Now I was chained to a chair in the dungeons, and I tested my bindings again, hoping after a few hours the swelling would go down enough to get free.
But the cuffs held firm, the silver band across my chest sizzling as I leaned into the bonds I was too weak to break. My neck was ravaged where Viktor had almost torn it out, and I wasn’t healing because I was fucking starving.
“Damn it.”
A bone-deep shudder went through me. I’d attacked the girl.
Almost bitten her.
Only my ingrained obedience to a queen’s command had saved her, along with Luthor’s screamed order to get off her. Oh, and the rock to the face, which might have cracked a tooth.
Thankfully, my mind had obeyed, even as my hunger drove me to suck her dry. Even as I’d seen the fear in her eyes. I’d been so close to violating every rule I’d set for myself.
If Luthor hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed a queen.
But the Commander, as always, came through. Now she’d be safe.
I, on the other hand, was doomed.
We’d wiped out the night guard, plus the raiding party that remained at the prison. We’d broken through the prison’s archaic wards, into the world beyond.
Those few gulps of fresh air had been my first in a century, and while I hadn’t gotten as far as I’d hoped, at least I’d breached the walls. I could have died inside of them.
Would die inside them.
I stilled my mind and reached out, through the bars and the stone and the endless corridors. Viktor was here and heading this way. Perhaps I’d die quick, though I knew Viktor liked to take his time with things. Especially things he enjoyed.
Sooner than expected, the King peered through the bars, careful not to touch them and ruin his bespoke suit. It was a nice one, probably from Saville Row, if that place even still existed.
“I’m surprised you helped him escape, Cyrus. I thought you two were on the outs.”
Sure, we were—we’d fought, off and on for most of our hundred-year imprisonment. But as usual, Viktor was confusing his perception of reality with the truth.
Luthor and I were like brothers.
We’d taken the same vows, made the same promises, felt the same sense of duty.
Things Viktor couldn’t feel and would never understand.
“Well, he opened up my door, so really, I…”
“Shut up,” the King said pleasantly, and my mouth did just that, despite me resisting with everything I had. Goddamn him and his unholy magic.
Our King had terrible powers. Some I’d only heard about.
Others I’d seen up close.
And here I was, starved and nearly drained, unable to do much more than squirm.
“You are going to be of service to me, Cyrus. You are going to find that want-to-be-queen and bring her back here where she will be snuffed out of existence.
You will orchestrate Fontaine’s downfall, and you will do it without him ever knowing.
“Until you kill him. Before he dies, you’ll tell him the truth, that you’re my thrall.
“And he’ll know he allowed yet another queen to die on his watch.”
A tendril of magic floated through the rusting bars, brushing my cheek with searing pain.
“I want him to go to his grave, knowing he was betrayed by his last remaining friend.”
“I thought you said we were on the outs?” I grinned when I said it, just to piss Viktor off.
There was no way he’d turn me into a fucking thrall. If I could piss him off enough, maybe he’d kill me outright. And sure, once I was dead, there’d be no more fancy suits, no shiny cars. No wild parties or women or hedonistic, frowned-upon behavior.
But being dead was far better than being a slave.
Viktor’s eyes grew brighter, and the tendril wrapped around my head. My face ignited, my flesh peeling from my bones.
“I’m not going to kill you, Cyrus. I’m going to use you. My magic will strip away your mortality and leave behind something far more useful than a mouthy former High Guard.”
I fought with every ounce of myself against the stranglehold of his magic and managed just two words. “Fuck you.”
“Let’s see what my magic does to your insides, shall we?”
I knew what Viktor could do. We all did. For a hundred years, I’d been spared his death-eater magic. But my luck was gone, along with my soul, which was currently being consumed by his ravenous magic.
Of course, he was hungry. The King was a necromancer, a soul eater.
His magic had been a macabre parlor trick when he was young, rumored to have caused his mother’s death. Death magic was what made him so powerful, ruling over a cowed kingdom, kept in line through the fear of becoming mindless slaves.
“I must know where the girl came from. Who raised her.” I could barely even see him anymore as the pain ate away inside me, while his instructions rattled around in my skull. “I want to know which family hid her all these years. You will find all this out and report back to me.”
His command—his purpose—took hold, burrowing deep inside the center of my brain, where I knew I couldn’t dig it out.
But I wouldn’t obey him. I couldn’t do this.
I’d kill myself before I ever left this cell. Throw myself into the incinerator in the basement, burn myself to ash before I’d touch a hair on that girl’s head or betray my former commander.
“I sense your resistance, and it tastes… lovely.” He licked his lips. “I haven’t told you the very best part. You’ll wake up and not remember a thing. I own your memories now, as well as your body. Make good use of your time, Cyrus. I want to settle this matter before the end of the week.”
His magic pried my mouth open, then stretched it wide until I thought my jaw broke. Viktor stretched his arm over my open mouth, then flicked his finger, and opened up a wound on his wrist.
I thrashed. Even with the pain, even though I knew he would eventually kill me, nothing was as bad as what was coming.
A drop of black blood, oil-slick shiny and corrupt, seeped out, then dropped into my mouth, and there was nothing I could do about it. With this inside me, Viktor would be able to track me anywhere in this realm or any other. He’d be able to call me back to him, which essentially, made me little more than a dog.
There was a scuffling behind him, and I was still fighting Viktor’s magic as they thrust a guard into the room, shoved him to his knees right in front of me. Viktor pointed, and a gash opened up on the man’s neck, then blood poured out in gouts. The bonds holding me down released, and I was on him, feeding like a rogue vampire.
“Eat up, Cyrus, you’ll need your strength.”
I woke alone in the clearing.
The last thing I remembered was fighting with Viktor, and I raised my hand to my neck. There was nothing there, and I wondered if maybe I’d imagined it all. But the images were so real, I could almost feel the pain.
There was no sign of anyone, not Viktor, not Luthor. Not the girl.
Pain arrowed through my head when I thought of her, and the air shifted, carrying a hint of her essence from the north. It was a siren’s call to my blood, a queen’s call to her protector, and I could not resist.
I hadn’t been outside the prison in a century, and I knew the world had changed.
I’d watched them update the prison every twenty years or so. I’d seen colorful, plastic cable replace copper. I’d seen the guards lift the slim, glowing screens from their pockets—checking their phones when they thought no one else was watching. But all of that was different from being out here, not knowing how any of it really worked.
Even so, I set off, stronger than I’d been in years, chasing her scent through the wind.
11
SERAPHINA
I thought I’d escaped the worst nightmare I’d ever known.
But I realized it wasn’t over, as I watched Gram, or Claire as Luthor called her, hand me a warm compress with shaking hands.
Wondering about so many things, it was like my brain was on super speed, rattling down the rails toward a cement wall.
She’d wrapped my arm, but blood already bloomed through the gauze. The pain hadn’t gone away either. If anything, it was growing worse.
Luthor had tried to help, but Gram had pushed him away, saying it was her job to fix her granddaughter, and he’d done quite enough, thank you very much.
Images of the prison popped back up. I pushed them back down, because compartmentalizing that shit show was the only way I’d get through these next few hours without falling apart.
I was doing my best, but Luthor looked at me like he could see right through my defenses, like he knew my secrets, which should have freaked me out. But it didn’t.
Luthor cast me a worried look but silently obeyed when Gram pointed him to the bathroom, ordering him to wash off the blood, before she began fussing over me again. She set a steaming cup of tea in front of me with a smile that faded as fast as it appeared.
Who was she?
Who am I?
“We have a lot to talk about, Fina,” Gram said, settling herself next to me and reaching out to touch my face but drawing her hand back almost immediately.
“I’d send the brute away, but something tells me that would only raise more questions.” Her mouth thinned out. “And I suppose I should thank him properly for saving you.”
“I think we pretty much saved each other.” I re-adjusted the compress, wincing as it settled over my still-swollen-shut eye.
“Regardless.” We sat closely on the sofa, neither of us saying anything when the water shut off, the pipes clanging like always.
Luthor emerged from the bathroom, a worn towel draped over his shoulders, those dirty, bloodstained excuse for pants back on.
But I wasn’t looking at them.
His dark, tangled hair dripped water down his torso, but now that it was pushed away from his face, I got my first good look at him.
Holy hell, he took my breath away.
Even in his ragged pants. Even with his hair matted into tangles.
Even the uneven scar that ran the length of his face, from forehead to jawline, only made him look dangerous. Wicked, even.
No, this male was the kind poets wrote about, a compelling face with a slash of cheekbones, a sharp jawline, and bottomless eyes I couldn’t look away from.
In the prison, they reflected blue, the color of an aquamarine, but in Gram’s living room, they looked muddy.
It took me a second to realize I was staring, that I wasn’t dwelling on the horrible things that happened these past hours, and I swallowed hard.
I was only thinking about him.
But Luthor wasn’t even looking at me.
His unreadable face was focused on Gram. When his eyes did find me, they turned glacial at the sight of the compress, and I knew he was about to explode.
“You did a fine job protecting her, Claire. Viktor’s raiding party snapped her up before it was even dark. You know better. And the fact that she has no training makes her a sitting duck out there. What were you thinking?”
“I think about my family and keeping them safe.” Her words turned into a sneer. “You’re the one who screwed up. You, who allowed Viktor to kill our Queen. You failed us, Fontaine. You failed her.”
Gram twisted toward him, her voice louder. “Besides, who said she has no training? You? You’ve been in a hole for a hundred years. A lot has changed.”
“I would expect so.” He strode forward until he loomed over us both. “But what stayed the same is we always protect our…” He looked at me, and his words tapered off. I wondered what he’d been about to say.
“I’ve spent my life protecting this girl,” Gram shot back. “She’s my goddamn blood, Fontaine. Mine. You’re overstepping your bounds.”
As confusing as this was, my biggest question hadn’t been answered. How did these two know each other? Right now, my life was imploding. Not that either of them noticed since they were too intent on winning their argument.
I’d been abducted, rescued, returned home, only to find out everything I knew was a lie.
Or at the very least, Gram hadn’t told me the whole truth.
Things started to make sense. Gram’s near-obsession with privacy. Her insistence I walk home, a full mile down the dirt road, after the bus dropped me off downtown. No phone. No TV. No trail for anyone—especially a vampire king—to follow.
Not for the first time, I wished Mom hadn’t died. I realized—with startling, vivid clarity—how much I missed her right now, how much I needed her advice.
