Author: J. C. Diem
Date: 2013-12-04T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Romance; General; Vampires; Literature & Fiction; Genre Fiction; Horror; Dark Fantasy; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Fantasy; Paranormal; Paranormal & Urban
Description: After destroying a horde of fledgling vampires with the help of her friends and allies, Natalie Pierce's hunt still isn't over. Her enemy has fled to parts unknown and will shortly begin to build a new army. The ancient vampire's ultimate goal is to turn the entire human race into his cattle.Nat and her friends aren't alone in their hunt. They have managed to forge a fragile alliance between the Japanese and European vampire nations, as well as with the human soldiers.Their peace won't last forever and the signs indicate that death and darkness awaits their kind. A betrayal is coming that will
Publisher: Seize The Night Agency

Death Betrays

J.C. Diem

Copyright 2013 J.C. Diem

All rights reserved.

Amazon Kindle Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be copied, resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

Cover art: J.C. Diem

Images: ©Veronika Vasilyuk - Dreamstime.com

©Lio2012 - Dreamstime.com

Dedication

To Carolyn and Elizabeth – thank you for editing and proofreading my novels. Without your invaluable help, they would no doubt be riddled with typos.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter One

Surrounded by a moat of filthy water, I was almost glad I no longer had the ability or need to breathe. The ground beneath my boots was brown from more than just dirt. Various tide lines, demarcated by human waste in various stages of decay, indicated how high the water could reach.

This wasn’t the first sewer I’d descended into since becoming the undead but it was by far the most putrid. I wasn’t alone in my disgust. Both my kin and the humans wrinkled their noses at the stench. We’d been too busy fighting our common enemy to pay much attention to the unlovely atmosphere. We couldn’t help but notice it now that the battle was over.

It was still an adjustment to see vampires and humans working together. There were wounded on both sides but we undead tended to heal from even the most grievous of injuries fairly quickly. The injured American and African soldiers were being tended to by medics from both armies. Able bodied men had just been given the go ahead to carry their comrades out of the damp, disgusting tunnels and up to the surface.

Anyone who hadn’t been in the thick of battle might have wondered where the bodies of our enemies were. Clothing and weapons were all that remained of the fledgling vampires that we had slain. Although almost everyone in the entire world was now aware that vampires existed, it still wasn’t common knowledge that we turned to slimy puddles when our unnatural lives came to an end.

Speaking of slime, I was covered from head to toe in the black ooze of the fallen. I desperately wanted to peel off my clothes, take a shower and wash the clumps of goo out of my hair. Straggling to halfway down my back, my hair was usually brown with blonde highlights but right now it almost defied description.

Only minutes ago my friends and I, with the help of several thousand soldiers, had defeated an army of fledgling vampires. If we hadn’t teamed up together to eradicate the ravenous newly-made monsters, they would have spread quickly. Eventually, they would have overwhelmed the entire continent. In a few short months they would have become a threat to the entire human race.

Bending to snatch up a scrap of relatively clean cloth, my pasty white skin peeked out through the rips in my black leather suit. I’d been cut in half by unfriendly gunfire the instant I’d left the safety of the tunnels and had entered the centre of the sewers. As always, I’d managed to heal without any visible sign that I’d been injured.

The suit hadn’t been so lucky and it was now a write off. Luckily, I still had a couple of backup suits left. After our recent falling out, I doubted Emperor Ishida would be gifting me with any further replacements of the outfits. Ruler of the Japanese vampire nation, Ishida was still smarting that I had pulled rank on him. He had temporarily been downgraded from being in charge to being just another member of our team.

Luc slid a hand around my waist when Ishida’s gaze moved across me as if I were invisible. My one true love’s other arm lay in a sling. He was still healing from an injury he had sustained during the battle. His sympathy for my anguish was silent yet comforting.

“You’d think the Emperor would be grateful to you for saving his life, chérie,” Geordie said softly. Waiting for me to use the scrap of cloth to wipe my face, he linked his arm through mine, offering me physical as well as emotional support.

Ishida had come very close to being blown apart by the panicked soldiers when they had moved in to cut down the last of the fledglings. I had risked being blown apart to pluck the emperor from danger and move him to safety. During the four months I’d spent on his island learning their way of sword fighting, we’d come as close as it was possible for a mere commoner and an emperor to becoming friends. I’d ruined our chances of continued friendship after declaring myself as the overall leader of the vampires during the fledgling uprising. My Japanese kin were touchy about their honour and I had pretty much trampled their emperor’s pride into the ground.

Why does being Mortis have to suck so much? I was careful to keep my complaint to myself and didn’t want to embarrass myself by voicing it out loud. Sure, being a legend of dread had a few perks, such as the inability to die, added strength, speed and phenomenal healing abilities. But it also had many downsides. It wasn’t much fun being the strangest monster on the planet.

“Emperor Ishida’s pride has been wounded,” Gregor said. He was still growing one of his cheeks back after having half of his face shot off. It was hard not to stare at his wound as he offered his insight. His tongue was visible through the hole in his cheek, which made my stomach try to lurch. “He has been a king for ten thousand years,” he continued. “It would not be easy to adjust to following someone else’s lead after ruling for so long.”

Somewhere over three thousand years old, Gregor was easily the most diplomatic member of our small group. His usually natty tweed suit was stained with sewerage, human blood and vampire ooze. He flicked his hair back from his face in a habitual gesture. Dark blonde, his hair was now badly in need of a wash.

Igor, Russian, fifteen thousand years old and far too grizzled to ever be called handsome, made an impatient gesture. “They will have the time to mend their relationship once this is all over. For now, we still have a job to do.”

Geordie and I grimaced at the reminder. Our unhappy frowns were nearly identical and the teen cracked a smile. He’d been fifteen when turned and was still young enough to have a faint ring of blue showing in his eyes. In another hundred years or so, when he was the ripe old age of three hundred, his pupils would grow to their maximum size and the colour would disappear entirely. His hair was a shade of blonde that always looked like it needed washing. It currently hung in clumps around his face, much like mine did. “I guess this means the Emperor won’t be teaching me how to play any zombie games now,” he said sadly. Ishida had invited Geordie to visit his island shortly before our relationship had abruptly soured.

“Probably not,” I confirmed. Not unless we could somehow fix things between us and I didn’t think that was going to happen anytime soon. Like Igor said, we had a job to do and it was more important than repairing our shattered friendship.

Colonel Sanderson broke off his discussion with General Merwe and approached us. Both men were in charge of the armies that we had so recently teamed up with. As the head of all the remaining eighty or so vampires, I was the one they addressed. It may have been my decision but I was still getting used to the idea of being in charge. “A hotel has been cordoned off for your use if you’d like to get cleaned up,” Sanderson informed me. “There’s not a lot more we can do tonight, unless you have an idea where the Second is heading.” Tall thin and blonde, Sanderson had lost weight since we had first met in Russia. He would be under a lot of pressure from his government to prevent his kind from being turned into cattle.

I shook my head at his hopeful tone. “He’s moved out of my range and I’m not sure where he is going. Have your men started hunting down the caches of vampires that were left behind yet?”

General Merwe stepped in to answer me. “They are in position and will shortly be starting from both ends with the intention of meeting up in the middle.” Shorter and stockier than his counterpart, Merwe’s skin was very dark and his accent hard for me to understand. We had saved the vast bulk of his people from death and from being turned into slaves but I doubted he would ever trust any of our kind.

Our encounter with the being known as the Second and his rapidly growing army of fledglings had begun somewhere in the jungles to the south and had ended up towards the north of Africa. The Second and his fellow disciples had left caches of drained humans in their wake and they would soon be rising to feast on unwary villagers. At my suggestion, the American colonel had sent for special equipment that could detect bodies that had been buried beneath the ground. His troops would find any vampires that had yet to rise, if the equipment arrived in time. Otherwise we would have to wait for the new vamps to dig their way out of their graves before we could cut them down. We all knew how important it was to eradicate them before they could begin to infect others.

In a way, I was responsible for this entire calamity. Ten ancient vampires had been set free after I’d taken down their master, who had called himself the First. Out of the ten disciples, the Second, as he had liked to style himself, was the largest threat.

The second vampire to ever be created, he was fifty thousand years old but he and his elderly kin had spent the last forty thousand years banished beneath the ground. That had been their punishment for plotting to kill their master. The Second was now making up for lost time, feeding both his blood and flesh hungers to regain his strength. His goal was straight out of a cheesy horror movie; he wanted to create a vast army of vampire slaves and take over the world. We had destroyed all nine of his fellow disciples and now he was the only one left. Unfortunately, he was the smartest, most devious and by far the most ambitious of the group. He had been one step ahead of us since we’d landed in Africa just over two weeks ago.

Gregor shattered my silent musings by accepting the colonel’s offer to clean up. “I for one would be delighted to take my leave of this sewer.”

Cold, filthy water sloshed inside my calf high boots. I didn’t even want to know what was squishing between my toes. The boots would never be the same again after our journey beneath the African city. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, grimacing again at the smell of death and human waste that coated not just me but everyone who had descended beneath the ground to participate in the battle.

Sanderson nodded at one of his men. Stepping forward nervously, the soldier took a quick peek at my face before dropping his eyes. “Come with me, please.” He led the way from the large open space where we had congregated to battle our enemy. In a straggling line, we trooped towards one of the many tunnels that would take us back up to the surface. From the frequent looks our guide gave us, he didn’t like having us at his back. Our alliance with the humans had been an uneasy one from the start. Neither side particularly trusted the other yet we would have to continue to work together until the Second was dead and the threat has been neutralized.

Despite killing thousands of fledglings, our job still wasn’t done. The humans knew our worth and how vital it was to remain in our good books. Hundreds of soldiers had been injured during the battle and hundreds more were dead. Each person that had survived would have to be watched to make sure they didn’t turn into a new batch of fledgling vamps. The disciple’s blood was far more virulent than a modern day vampire’s. It only took one taste to transform humans into the undead. Unfortunately, their servant’s blood was just as virulent. They had the ability to create more of our kind far too quickly. Nowadays it took three infusions of blood over three nights to turn a human into one of us.

As we slogged through the tunnels, I ran through what I knew about the origin of our species. Apparently, an alien had crash landed on Earth a long, long time ago. It had been something of a demi-god with the ability to live for an unusually long time. According to Kokoro’s visions, it had had to wait for millions of years for humans to evolve to a certain level of intelligence before it could unleash its diseased blood on us.

The First had been chosen to be the receptacle for the infusion of tainted blood. He had turned into the first vampire and had set off a chain of events that would eventually doom our kind. Over the millennia, his blood had transformed him into a grey skinned, red eyed, eight foot tall clone of the alien. The tainted fluid that clogged his veins had a different effect on the generations of vampires that had originated from his servants. Their shadows had become sentient and eventually gained the ability to take possession of their hosts.

Drawing his offspring to him by some sort of mental siren song, the First only had to utter a single word to transform his offspring into even stranger monsters. Their shadows had been sucked inside their vampire bodies and new imp bodies had sprung forth. I’d seen this happen in a dream and with my own eyes and it was far more disturbing than I could ever adequately describe.

By the dubious luck of being Mortis, my shadow hadn’t taken possession of me when the First had commanded it to when I had been drawn to him in a vision. Instead, I’d briefly had four shadows trailing around after me. That had been a disconcerting side effect of being fed the blood of four different vampires. When I’d been forced to ingest the blood of four imps, I’d even more briefly had four imp shadows added to my collection. Thankfully, I was back to having a single non-sentient shadow again, which was a tale all of its own. My real shadows had sneakily murdered the imp shadows before then turning on each other. Two of them had killed a third then I had used my holy marks to destroy one and had torn the other one free from my body. My original shadow had been the only one left and it had been too lazy to be interested in possessing me. After I had killed the First, my shadow had thankfully returned to normal, as had all of the other sentient shadows.

A couple of prophecies had been written about me long before I’d been turned into the undead. Both spelled out the purpose that I had been meant to serve. They foretold that I would be the bane of our kind. I was supposed to go on a global vampire killing spree and only a remnant of our species would survive the carnage.

Contrary to the prophecy, the decimation of our kind hadn’t quite happened that way. Apart from the three hundred damned that I’d culled from Ishida’s warriors, I’d barely killed any of my kin so far. The First had begun calling in any vampires who were possessed by their shadows before I could start thinning down the Europeans. Most of them had been turned into imps as soon as they’d stepped foot in his cavern of doom.

Colonel Sanderson and his men had been instrumental in helping me to eradicate the imp horde inside the cavern. The prophecy had indeed been correct about our numbers drastically being whittled down. To my knowledge, there were now very few vampires left at all. Apart from our group, the remaining Court members and Ishida’s warriors in Japan, there were only small pockets of our kind left scattered around the world.

I’d hoped that killing the First would put an end to the prophecies but fate had another plan all lined up for us. We still had to hunt the Second down and no doubt we would lose more of our forces along the way.

Gregor had formed a theory about the fate that was intended for us. Despite how disturbing I found his theory to be, I was leaning towards believing it. He thought our kind was an anomaly that shouldn’t exist at all. The alien should never have landed on Earth and created the First. Gregor believed that fate, destiny or whatever it was that was ultimately in charge of all life was trying to undo the mistake it had made by allowing us to be created. Its solution was to wipe us out of existence. So far, we’d kept this theory just between the two of us. Kokoro, as a prophetess, had been given a message that didn’t bode well for the few of us who remained. Blind from the moment she had been turned, when she closed her eyes, she usually saw visions of the future. From the moment the ten disciples rose from their banishment, she had seen only death and darkness for us. I’d been inside her vision and had seen for myself just how dismal our future was going to be.

Climbing to the top of the rusty ladder, I hid my unease behind a smile as Luc offered me his uninjured hand to help me to the surface. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to us and that it was going to happen soon.

It had already been proven fairly conclusively, not to mention frequently, that nothing could kill me. If I lost Luc and the rest of my friends, would I go on for an eternity all alone? A chill raced down my spine as my inner voice roused itself to offer a reply. You’re one of a kind, remember? Eventually, your friends will die but you won’t. Not ever. How else do you think this can possibly end other than you living for an eternity all alone? Instead of being cuttingly sarcastic, this time my subconscious sounded full of pity. Somehow, that was far worse.

Chapter Two

We followed the nervous soldier across the road to a jumbled heap of baggage that turned out to be our belongings. Spying my backpack, I snagged it from the edge of the pile. My friends sorted through the heap until they found their own gear. A quick check told me the spare pairs of black leather suits were still inside. Thankfully, so was the extra pair of boots.

When my friends had gathered their gear, we headed for a hotel halfway down the block. Most of the million or so inhabitants of the town had been evacuated and the streets were eerily quiet. I cast glances back over my shoulder to see Aventius and his followers emerging from the sewer. They were quickly followed by Anna-Eve and her diminished band of courtiers and guards. The two groups of European vampires sent mistrustful glances at each other as they grabbed their belongings and hurried after us. The contingent of Japanese warriors came last.

Beautiful, blonde and generally unpleasant, Anna-Eve and her band had been sent to bolster our numbers by the Comtesse. Despised by almost everybody, the Comtesse was one of the nine Councillors who ruled the French Court. We had only contacted her and asked for help out of sheer desperation. The newly-made fledglings had been too fast for the humans to fight so the responsibility had fallen to us. Our numbers had been too few and we’d needed to increase them any way we could.

Ancient and evil, the Comtesse had a habit of collecting attractive men and women and turning them into her sexual slaves. The love of my unlife had been part of her collection until I’d pried him free from her cold, dead hands. Chopping one of them off had helped me to accomplish that feat.

Luc had been made by the praying mantis seven centuries ago and had been in her thrall ever since. Short and voluptuous, the Comtesse had white blonde hair and wide set, soulless eyes, hence the reason I’d named her after that particular insect.

Luc, or Lord Lucentio as he was known in Court circles, had partially won his freedom from her three centuries ago when his pretend maker, Monique had been executed for being a traitor. Monique had tried to arrange for the Comtesse to be assassinated but her plan had backfired. After his pretend master’s death, Luc had been elevated into the role of a Lord. That had given him the freedom to decide who he would share his bed with. His decision had been to share it with no one. That had all changed when he had stumbled across me while hunting my maker down in Australia. By the time he had found me, Silvius had no longer been with us. My first instinct when I discovered that Silvius was a vampire had been to spear a cross through his heart. The fact that I had survived murdering my master had been Luc’s first clue that I wasn’t a normal fledgling vampire. When he saw me holding the cross without bursting into flames, it had solidified his hunch.

My hand must have tightened on Luc’s waist because he shot me a concerned look. Six feet tall, black haired with a body that was long, lean and well-muscled and with a face as handsome as an underwear model’s, Luc was the hottest man I’d ever met, dead or alive. He had broken his three hundred year long abstinence the night my flesh hunger had woken. For reasons I still couldn’t define, he had been attracted to me even when I’d still been fairly ordinary of face and figure. I wasn’t sure exactly when he had come to love me but I’d been inside his memories and knew how he felt about me. I’d become a bit more secure about his feelings for me since I’d gained an unholy beauty in the early stages of my undeath.

I’d met many vampires since being turned but Luc was still the only one who turned me on. Somewhere along our strange journey, I’d fallen for him as well. How could I not when he was so superior to any other man I’d ever met? Sure, he’d beheaded me once but that hadn’t been his fault. He’d just been helplessly obeying the praying mantis’ order. Taking one of her hands wasn’t enough payback for having my head hacked off but it was a start.

Casting another look back over my shoulder, I met Aventius’ worried gaze. He appeared to be somewhere in his sixties, which was far older in mortal years than most vamps I’d met so far. Dark bags crouched beneath his eyes and his cheeks were hollow and sunken. If he’d been human, I would have strongly suggested that he see a doctor. I believed his decrepit appearance was due to lack of food rather than from ill health. As far as I knew, and my knowledge of our species was woefully inadequate at times, vampires didn’t get sick. We couldn’t catch diseases, age or procreate. We were forever frozen at whatever age we had been when undeath wrapped its chilly hands around our throats and strangled the life out of us.

Aventius was a fairly recent acquaintance who I had met under stranger than usual circumstances. After portents had appeared to signify that Mortis had finally risen, he had gathered a small band of followers and had started sacrificing humans in my name. Instead of feeding from their victims, they had simply cut their hearts out and had tossed their bodies aside like trash. I’d quickly put a stop to that after discovering their lair in Russia on my way to kill the First. I had made it very clear that slaughtering innocents wouldn’t endear them to me.

Aventius and his followers had sworn to serve me and, whether I liked it or not, they were my responsibility now. Joshua, one of Aventius’ followers, glared at me with his still mostly green eyes. Hot-headed and loud-mouthed, he was young in both mortal and vampire years. I didn’t know what Aventius had been thinking when he’d turned the young man into one of us. Whatever his reasons had been, we were all stuck with Joshua now.

The alliance between the three vampire factions was even more precarious than the one we had with the humans. Anything could shatter the truce at any time. Almost directly after I had that thought, Anna-Eve spoke.

“One night soon, Councillor Aventius, I will personally relieve you of your head,” she said in a low voice that she probably didn’t realize carried to me. The satisfaction in her tone made Aventius hunch his shoulders.

Predictably, Joshua turned to confront the courtier. “You’ll have to go through me to get to my master!”

Snatching a long knife from the hands of one of her entourage, Anna-Eve smiled widely. “That can be arranged.”

Before any black ooze that passed for our blood could be shed, I was standing between the pair. I held my hands up in front of their faces and they both cringed away from the holy marks on my palms. The marks were perfect impressions of the cross that should have killed me as soon as I’d touched it but had merely marked me as being Mortis instead. “The only one who will be doing any beheading around here is me,” I snarled at the pair.

Aventius hauled his servant away, shielding him from my wrath with his body. The rest of his followers gathered close, proving they actually cared for the ex-councillor. Anna-Eve’s people had stepped back a few paces. They were sensibly staying out of the splash zone just in case I reduced her to a puddle of sludge. Clearly, they didn’t hold much affection for her.

Handing the dagger back to her lackey, Anna-Eve smiled again but her black eyes remained cold. “If Aventius can keep his servant on a leash, I will behave myself until this is over.” Her appearance had been immaculate when we’d first met but she was decidedly bedraggled now. Clingy and once fire engine red, her dress was stained and torn. Her long blonde hair was splattered with clumps of ooze. As a pampered courtier, she was dealing quite well with the filth and ruination of her clothing. While she sounded French, for all I knew she might have been made way back when Vikings still went on the rampage and this was all quite normal for her.

Joshua quailed when I turned on him. He flinched back from my finger when I pointed it in his direction. “Keep your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself from now on. If you cause any more trouble, I’ll kill you myself.”

“She started it,” the young vamp whined and subsided when his master clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Forgive him, Mortis,” Aventius said. “He is still very young. Surely you remember what it was like to be newly-made?”

“I’m not like other vampires,” I reminded him. “I didn’t get the overwhelming thirst for blood and sex when I first rose. I didn’t need to learn how to control myself.”

Luc surreptitiously coughed, which was something none of us needed to do once we became the undead. Geordie sniggered at the subtle reminder that I did in fact have one insatiable hunger that Luc had sacrificed himself to feed the night we had met. “Ok, I didn’t get the overwhelming need for blood,” I amended. “So I don’t fully know what it’s like to be a normal newly-made vampire. I do know that a master is supposed to be responsible for their servants and that they should stop them from doing anything stupid. Joshua’s death will be on your conscience so I suggest you try to control him from now on.”

I raked my gaze across all of the Europeans and to the group that was gathered beyond them. The Japanese warriors had automatically moved to surround their leader. Ishida was short enough that he was hidden from my view. Kokoro’s blind white eyes met mine as one of the warriors shifted slightly. Compassion flickered briefly over her face. Kokoro wasn’t just a prophetess, she could also read minds. She knew I hated being in charge and disliked handing out threats. She also knew I would follow through on them if I was forced to.

Satisfied that the three groups would behave themselves for now, I continued following the uneasy American soldier. A gap opened up between my small group of friends and our increasingly reluctant allies. “I thought Nicholas was an ass,” Geordie murmured when I reached his side. “Joshua is nearly as bad as the muscle bound freak.”

My upper lip automatically curled at hearing the ex-courtier’s name. Nicholas had defected from the Court and had begged to join me after I’d killed the First. He’d been a constant annoyance from the moment he’d become part of our group. I still wasn’t entirely sure what his motives had been but he’d tried to awaken my flesh hunger on more than one occasion. Not particularly tall but very heavily muscled, Nicholas had the face of a fallen angel. If I hadn’t already been in love with Luc, I might have succumbed to temptation and sated my flesh hunger on him. He’d offered himself to me several times but I’d declined the invitation each time, much to his disappointment.

Nicholas had finally shown his true colours when he’d tried to force himself on me after we had chased one of the rogue disciples down together. If I hadn’t been gifted with unusual strength, I had no doubt he would have succeeded. It might not have felt like rape when my flesh hunger rose to match his but that was what it would have been.

I should have killed the ex-courtier when we had been alone in the cavern with no one around to witness the act but I stupidly hadn’t. Because of that poor decision, Luc had almost lost his life. Nicholas had come very close to ending my beloved by lobbing an explosive device at his back. Thinking fast had never been one of my strong suits but I’d managed it for once. I’d detached my left hand and had launched it at the explosive, catching it and deflecting it from its trajectory. My hand had disintegrated but it had grown back and was as good as new again. As for Nicholas, he’d fled before I could exact my revenge on him.

“Where do you think Nicholas is now?” Gregor asked. He’d increased his pace to match mine and asked the question over Geordie’s shorter head.

I shook my head bleakly. “I don’t know. I’m starting to doubt everything we knew about him.” Not that we knew much about him at all. He was two thousand years old and had been made by a rogue servant, or so he’d told us. He’d been employed as a guard by the newly formed Court after his master had been killed. When the First had started calling in the possessed vampires, the Court had slowly started to dwindle. The Comtesse had elevated certain guards to be courtiers in an attempt to make up for their decline in numbers.

It had sounded fishy then and his story was even more suspect now. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nicholas had had a secret agenda all along. He’d tried to seduce me and, when that had failed, he had tried to kill Luc. “All I know is that if I ever see him again, he’s a dead man,” I said with finality.

Luc slid his uninjured arm over my shoulder and hugged me to his side. “I think we can all agree that if any of us encounter Nicholas, we will stake him through the heart first and ask questions later.”

“I hope I’m there to see him bite the dust,” Geordie said fervently. He’d been tormented by the hulking ex-courtier when he’d been freshly made. Both had been made by rogue servants but Geordie’s origins had made him an object of pity. His maker had been a teenage girl. She had wanted him to kill her master so she could be freed from his cruelty. Nicholas saw this as a reason to make fun of Geordie. The teen had kept the teasing a secret because he hadn’t wanted anyone to know of his torment. Only Luc and I knew about it. Luc wasn’t one to tell tales and I would keep the knowledge to myself. The abuse was just one more reason for me to end Nicholas’ life.

Igor clapped his apprentice on the back, making Geordie stagger forward a couple of steps. “We all want to witness Nicholas’ death but that is going to have to wait until we have dealt with the final disciple.” The Russian had a knack for getting us back on track.

Gregor’s hand rose to his chin, a gesture he made when he was deep in thought. “After we have all freshened up, we should gather together to discuss our options.”

“Shouldn’t Colonel Sanderson and General Merwe be present when we have this discussion?” Geordie asked tentatively. Being the youngest, except for me, he tended not to speak up much when grown-up topics were being discussed. He was mischievous in nature and even I had a hard time taking the teen seriously at times.

Gregor smiled at Geordie with only the slightest hint of indulgence showing. “The Second has been moving northward at a steady pace. I believe he intends to leave Africa soon. We can advise Colonel Sanderson of any information that we think he should be made aware of. However, General Merwe will no longer be able to assist us in our hunt once we leave the continent.”

Luc eyed his crafty friend shrewdly. “What makes you think the disciple plans to leave Africa?” The pair had been friends for centuries, ever since Luc had become his own master. Gregor had shown Luc that there could be more to our unlife than blood and sex. He had my respect for that as well as for being suave, intelligent and generally likeable.

“That is what I would do if I were him,” the clever vamp replied.

I can’t wait to hear the theory he’s come up with. Whatever it was, it would probably turn out to be accurate. Gregor was a master planner and had an enviable ability to think up the most likely scenario when it came to the most ancient of our kind. If anyone could figure out what the Second’s next move would be, it would be Gregor. The rest of us would flounder around remaining utterly clueless without him on our side.

Chapter Three

Disappearing into the foyer of a moderately successful looking five story hotel, the soldier waited for us inside. Luc was the first of our group through the doors. His borrowed gun, a prototype that had been designed by American weapons experts specifically to blow our kind apart, was slung over his uninjured shoulder. I could see the gaping knife wound already healing through the tears in his cashmere sweater. Soon the injury would be gone without a trace.

While vampires could heal almost anything, I was the only one who could actually reattach limbs that had been sliced or blown off. I had attained several strange talents that no one else seemed to share. Until recently, I’d thought I was the only one who could sense others of our kind. That theory had been disabused after touring through the mind and memories of the Second during a dream. After thousands of years of entombment, he’d honed his senses enough to also be able to sense animals and humans as well as vampires. It might be petty but I was irked that his talent was greater than mine. I was the fabled Mortis, he was just my lowly nemesis. My, aren’t we getting a bit big for our boots? I made a face at the snarky jab from my inner voice.

The foyer was soon crowded with vampires and the soldier began handing out key cards. Wisely, he made sure each group was housed on a different floor. Waiting until everyone had headed upstairs, I drew the soldier aside. Luc stopped at the base of the stairs to wait for me.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” A trifle apprehensive, the American fiddled with the pistol on his hip. He wasn’t jumpy enough to use it but I wasn’t about to make any sudden moves. Unlike me, Luc couldn’t reattach his body parts and I liked his body just the way it was.

“I think it would be a good idea to station some soldiers on each floor.”

One of his eyebrows went up in query. “Why would we want to do that, ma’am?”

Heaving an internal sigh, I wished Sanderson was here. I doubted I’d have to explain myself to him. “Let’s just say that there is a lot of tension between some of our people. I’d like to discourage the tension from turning into assassination attempts.”

His dark brown eyes widened in belated understanding. “I’ll run the idea past the Colonel, ma’am.”

As he reached for his radio, I turned to find Luc standing right in front of me. I was startled but not quite badly enough to reach for the swords that crisscrossed my back. They had also been a gift from Ishida. Fresh grief that our friendship had been ruined hit me. I’d had no friends when I’d been alive and had only really learned their true value after I had died.

Putting his good hand around my waist, Luc hugged me to him and rested his chin on the top of my head. My average height of five feet four inches made this possible. We weren’t usually this touchy feely in public but after coming so close to losing him, I wasn’t about to complain.

“Colonel Sanderson is sending over some more men, ma’am,” our guide said. He averted his eyes from witnessing the affection of creatures he could only see as being unnatural.

I nodded then headed for the stairs. Our room was on the first floor and I was glad I didn’t have to climb any higher. I wasn’t tired in the physical sense but I was drained mentally. I’d lost count of how many fledglings I’d shot or sliced apart. When I’d waded into the mob and began unleashing my holy marks, it had become impossible to keep track of the damage I’d parcelled out. Every vampire in a fifty foot radius had exploded each time I’d used the dark power that resided within me. I had that tactic to thank for being utterly coated in ooze.

Luc unlocked the door and automatically checked that the room was empty before stepping aside to let me in. It never failed to amuse me when I was treated as if I was fragile. I’d been cut in half and had healed instantly as soon as my upper and lower body had re-joined. Meanwhile, Luc and Gregor were still recovering from their relatively minor injuries. It was probably male instinct to protect me so I kept my amusement to myself.

My unsalvageable leather suit and boots went into the trash after I peeled them off. Luc beat me to the shower and steam wafted out when I opened the bathroom door. His sling had been tossed to the floor and the cut in his shoulder was now half healed. He crooked his finger and his lips curved into a smile when I joined him.

His mouth lowered to mine and I went up on my toes to meet him. We froze when Geordie’s voice floated to us through the wall. “I’m showering right next to you two but go right ahead if you want to have sex. I promise I won’t listen.”

“Way to kill the mood, Geordie,” I murmured and was rewarded with a shrill giggle. The teen’s reminder of our exceptional hearing had just saved me from embarrassing myself yet again. Apparently, a pair of courtiers didn’t feel the same need for privacy as bedsprings began to squeak on the floor above us. A female moaned loudly and I was suddenly fighting down the urge to burst into my own fit of laughter.

Shampooing ooze out of his hair, Luc grinned at my horrified embarrassment. “Don’t worry, Ladybug, you don’t sound anything like that when we are intimate.”

“True,” Geordie snorted on the other side of the wall. “Nat’s usually much louder than that.” Footsteps sounded, a door was slammed open and a hand connected with the back of the teen’s head. “I was just kidding,” Geordie whined.

“You were not funny,” Igor told his apprentice before stomping out of the bathroom.

My sniggers turned to a silent sigh of pleasure as Luc’s hands began massaging shampoo into my hair. If we’d been alone, I would have returned the favour but on a piece of his anatomy that was situated below his waist. Since we were surrounded by our friends and allies, we forwent our usual sexual gymnastics.

Once we were all clean, dry and had changed into fresh clothing, our friends gathered in the room Luc and I shared. This was usually the case and I’d come to realize it was due to Luc more than my status as Mortis. Latin for ‘death’, the name was fitting considering how many fledgling vampires and imps I’d now eradicated. Luc was a natural leader and people were drawn to him. He was calm and intelligent as well as being easy on the eyes. I was pretty sure the last point wasn’t the reason the other three looked to him for leadership but it was one of the reasons I found it impossible to resist him.

Our room was small with only a queen sized bed and a tiny two seater table. Luc, Geordie and I crowded onto the bed while the other two sat at the table.

“Do you have any insights into the plan the Second has come up with, Gregor?” Luc asked to kick off our meeting.

Resting one arm on the table, Gregor’s expression turned grave. “The Second is now well aware that we aren’t about to sit back and let him create an army of servants. He has seen the resources the humans can call on and will have altered his original plans for world domination.” It sounded dramatic when he said the words out loud but he was merely stating the truth. The older a vampire was, the more grandiose his or her plans seemed to be. The Second would be happy with nothing less than total control over the entire human population.

“He is ancient but far from stupid,” Igor said. “He has learned to adapt very quickly.”

“What do you think he will do now?” Geordie asked. He was sitting as close to me as he could get without actually climbing onto my lap. We were pressed together from hip to shoulder. Sandwiched in between the teen and Luc, I felt strangely comfortable.

This is what having friends should be like, I mused. I can count on them to have my back. It was a lesson I hadn’t learned in my twenty-eight years as a mortal. After my parents had died when I’d been only nineteen, I’d needed to get away. I’d left New South Wales and had headed north to Queensland, leaving my few friends behind. I hadn’t really allowed myself to get close to anyone since then. Belatedly, I realized I’d been afraid of losing someone else that I cared about. It had been far easier to keep my distance than to take a chance and let anyone in again.

Frowning in thought, Gregor flicked imaginary lint off his pants before answering. “I believe he still intends to attempt to become the ultimate ruler of our planet. But I fear he will be far more circumspect now that he is the sole surviving disciple.”

“He may have sacrificed his brothers prematurely in his quest for domination,” Luc ventured.

Geordie leaned forward to see my most favourite companion’s face. “What do you mean?”

“He deliberately set up the other nine disciples and threw them to the wolves,” I explained. After taking a few trips through the Second’s mind, I was well aware of his ambitious nature and desire to be in charge. He had never planned to share the spoils with any of the other disciples. Fifty thousand years of brotherhood meant nothing to him. Any hint of his former humanity had been left behind tens of thousands of years ago.

Luc explained his reasoning to the teen. “He should have kept at least one or two of his brothers alive to help him create a new army of fledglings.”

Understanding finally hit Geordie. “Oh. I guess he’ll have to make another army all by himself now.”

Gregor proved that he’d put a lot of thought into this with his next observation. “I doubt his plans ever included using his brother’s servants. He will want to have absolute control over his fledglings. I doubt that he will allow his newly-made servants to create lackeys of their own. He would have no power over them and he would be incapable of trusting them to follow his orders.”

Igor nodded his shaggy head in agreement. I was pretty sure his coarse black hair had never been touched by a brush. “He seeks to rule an empire of vampires that have all been sired by himself. He will have to be careful and smart to succeed.”

I had a sinking feeling somewhere in my stomach at Igor’s comments. “He’s not going to make it easy for us to find him, is he? There won’t be any more mass attacks or eradication of whole towns to help us keep track of him.”

Gregor didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news even if he was just guessing at all this. “I sincerely doubt it. From now on, I believe he will be more cautious when choosing his servants.” Musing, his fist came to a rest beneath his chin. “He needs to make his lair in a land that is well populated. It will have many poor people who won’t be missed if they suddenly disappear. He will choose a remote lair that will be hidden from most humans.”

Geordie thumped a frustrated fist against the mattress and the springs squeaked in protest. “That could be just about anywhere! You have just described thousands of cities all over the world.”

Igor had an insight that made sense as soon as he voiced it. “The world is a vastly different place from the one the Second knew before he was banished. It would be very difficult for a creature that was isolated for so long to become used to living amongst the bustle of modern society. His hideaway will be somewhere quiet where he can escape from the unceasing noise that humans make.”

It was clear he was speaking from experience. When he’d been turned, people had still been living in caves and wearing animal skins. He’d had thousands of years to get used to the increasing numbers of humans and the technology that came with them. The Second had woken up to a world that now had over seven billion people in it. He’d never even seen a calculator let alone skyscrapers or cars. It must have been mind boggling to deal with.

Gregor turned an admiring eye on the grizzled one. “That is a good point, Igor. We will have to keep an eye out for news of multiple disappearances in a city that has wilderness nearby. I’m sure Colonel Sanderson will be able to help us with that.”

“Can’t you just sneak inside the Second’s head when you sleep next and pick his brains, chérie?” Geordie asked with a cheeky grin.

“I’ll try but I don’t have any control over my dreams.” I didn’t particularly want to take another trip through the Second’s thoughts. But if I found myself inside his head again, I’d go with Geordie’s suggestion and try to pick up as much information as I possibly could. After all, you could never have too much information.

Chapter Four

Our friends departed for their own rooms to get some rest and Luc and I retired just before the sun was scheduled to come up. When I finally managed to fall asleep, my slumber was shallow and restless.

I was bombarded with flashes of memory. They came from me, the First, the Second and even from Luc and flitted rapidly through my mind. They were random snatches that didn’t seem to have much correlation at first. I saw the making of the First all over again through the eyes of his disciple. The memory was ancient and murky but there seemed to be something strange about the eight foot tall grey demi-god, apart from the fact that he existed, that was. He offered his wrist to the First and I squinted as the moonlight reflected off something metallic. If the Second had been a vampire rather than a human when he’d seen this, I would have been able to make out more detail through his enhanced vision.

Switching abruptly to one of my visions of the cavern of doom, I replayed a scene where the First had long ago left behind his human body and had become a clone of the alien. He was sitting on his throne that had been made from human bones and was brooding moodily. Studying him closely, I saw subtle differences between him and the thing that had made him. The First’s ears were curled at the tips but his father’s had merely been pointed. Their eyes glowed with the same shade of red but I couldn’t remember seeing the alien blink. He’d seemed very stiff when offering his wrist and hadn’t made any effort to bend down when he had offered the human his blood.

My view changed again, this time to Luc’s memory of being amongst the glittering courtiers in the French mansion. I could see what the Second saw now, our kind were much weaker than they had once been. Modern vampires weren’t as fast as their older kin. They could only befuddle the wits of the opposite sex or someone of the same sex who found them attractive. The disciples were able to put any human under their spell.

If the Second had things his way, the entire planet would become populated with ravenous, pitiless monsters. Humans would be reduced to mere cattle, just as the First had intended before I had hunted him down and unleashed my holy marks on him.

I wonder if the Second knows that he’s following directly in the footsteps of the master he despised and held in such contempt? That thought didn’t come from my subconscious this time, it was all mine. Our nemesis thought he was so clever and perhaps he was but he was turning out to be exactly like his maker and that would be his downfall. I’d been created to make sure our numbers didn’t multiply until they were out of control and I was going to fulfil my purpose.

Up long before nightfall, I was dressed and had sharpened my swords before the last rays of the sun disappeared. Luc came awake with his customary alertness. He slanted me a look of invitation but there were already too many ears listening in for me to get into the mood for sex. Shaking his head at my continued squeamishness, he headed into the bathroom. After a quick shower, he returned and sorted through his bag for a change of clothes. As usual, they were black, expensive and complimented his pale skin and dark hair.

“I suppose everyone thinks I’m weird because I don’t like everyone in the world to listen in when we’re having sex,” I said crankily but quietly.

Pulling a cashmere sweater over his head, Luc paused before answering. No doubt he was searching for a diplomatic reply.

Geordie, who had woken only moments ago, beat him to it. “Don’t worry, Nat, we think you’re weird for many more reasons than that!” he said from the next room.

“Did he just call her a gnat?” someone muttered on the next floor up.

“It’s short for Natalie. She’s Australian,” someone else replied not quite quietly enough.

“Ah. That explains it.”

Luc’s hand clamped over my mouth an instant before I could unleash a diatribe and blast the unseen Europeans. He tried and failed to hold in a smile. He’d been the first to mistake my name for an insect’s but he’d been far from the last. Taking his hand away, he kissed my scowling mouth.

Before the kiss could escalate into more, my radio chirped. “Natalie, are you there?” Sanderson’s voice came through loud and clear.

“I’m here,” I replied after snatching up the radio.

“We have a pretty good idea of which direction the Second is heading in.”

“Great!” My enthusiasm was completely unfeigned. I wanted this to be over and done with and didn’t want the hunt to drag on for an eternity. “Which way is he going?” All sounds of movement had ceased on our floor and the one above us as every vampire in earshot listened in.

“He still appears to be heading north,” Sanderson said in a voice that was tense with the shared desire to hunt down our prey. Gregor would no doubt be pleased that his guess had been correct. “A couple of people have been found dead and seem to have been completely drained of blood. I presume the disciple didn’t want them to rise again because their hearts have been torn out. Their bodies were hidden but not well enough. Surely this has to be the work of our target?”

I hoped it was, otherwise that meant there was another rogue vampire on the loose. “Gregor has a theory that the Second is going to find somewhere remote but near a large city to build a lair. If he keeps being sloppy and leaving bodies lying around, we should be able to track him down.”

“Have your people ready to leave in ten minutes,” the colonel instructed me briskly. “We’re going after this son of a bitch.”

“Roger that,” I said only half mockingly and the radio went dead again.

From the room beside ours, Igor did the honours and saved me from having to scream out to everyone in the building. “Gather your gear!” he roared loudly enough for all the vampires in the hotel to hear him. “We leave in ten minutes!” His shout was followed by startled murmurs all the way up on the fifth floor. The sounds of hasty packing came from all of the occupied rooms on all floors.

Standing in four distinct groups on the footpath, we were ready when Sanderson’s jeep rolled to a stop in front of us. The past few weeks had left its mark in the deep lines that now grooved his forehead. His frown was deeper than usual when he leaned out the window. “There’s been a change of plans.”

Shouldering my backpack, I approached the jeep. “What’s going on?” We had only spoken a few minutes ago. What could have happened between then and now?

“I received a distress call from one of my teams a couple of minutes ago. They have been overrun by a fresh batch of fledglings that just rose.”

“I suppose we’re going to have to go to their rescue,” Joshua muttered sourly. Aventius shushed him and darted a sideways glance at me to judge my reaction.

Geordie had taken an instant dislike to the newbie vamp and rounded on him before I could threaten Joshua with death again. “I suppose you want to let a bunch of starving, freshly made vampires kill as many people as possible and do nothing to stop it?” Joshua opened his mouth to retaliate then wisely shut it again at my warning glare. Sometimes a single look could have more impact than a thousand verbal threats.

A small convoy of covered trucks had pulled up behind Sanderson’s jeep. “We’d better move fast and try to contain them before they begin to spread out too far,” I said to the colonel then climbed into the back of his jeep. Luc and Geordie joined me while Igor and Gregor headed for the truck behind us.

“We’re going to stop a couple of miles away from where the last call was made and send you and your people in first,” Sanderson explained as his driver took off. “My men and I will stay with the trucks while your team eradicates the fledglings. I don’t want to lose any more troops if I can help it.” His grief at already losing hundreds of soldiers was still fresh.

It was a sensible plan and I nodded my willingness to go along with it. Luc had tucked his gun between his feet with the barrel pointing upwards. After seeing the damage they could cause, we were all being very careful with the weapons. Geordie had handed his crossbow back to Igor. It would be of little use against beings that were incredibly fast and hungry for blood. My swords were a comforting weight on my back. The guns were effective but my twin swords were even better. I could slice and dice my way through a crowd of fledglings much more quickly than I could blow them up. I could always use my holy marks to rend them to pieces but that probably wasn’t going to be necessary this time. We should have enough warriors and firepower to take down a small pack of fledglings.

We sped through the night, closing in on the team of American soldiers that were in trouble. Sanderson’s chauffeur slowed at his signal and came to a stop. My head snapped to the side when I heard distant gunfire. Maybe they aren’t all dead yet after all. If some of the soldiers were still alive, then maybe the fledglings hadn’t scattered to the winds yet. Without a master to guide them, they could head in any direction. Hunting them down would prove to be very difficult and would take up far too much of our time. This was all part of the Second’s plan to slow us down and stop us from chasing after him.

Soldiers swarmed out of the back of one of the trucks and handed over weapons and ammunition to those who had handed them back before leaving the sewers. Geordie took a small cloth bag that held a couple of dozen explosives. Well aware of how easy they were to detonate, he handled the bag gingerly.

I declined one of the guns, having already decided to use my swords. Most of the Europeans took either one of the prototypes or a handful of small explosives. Ishida and his people stuck to their traditional weapons of choice, swords and crossbows for the most part.

At a tap on my shoulder, I turned to find the colonel holding a small device in his palm. I was pretty sure it was a miniature camera. “I’d like to pin this to one of your people so I can keep track of your progress. If it looks like you could use our help, I’ll send my soldiers in.”

Geordie sidled in beside me, looking at the device curiously. “I’ll wear it,” he volunteered. Sanderson raised a brow at me and I nodded. Knowing Geordie, he’d be sensible and stay back from the throng and throw his explosives at a safe distance from the enemy. I’d be in the thick of battle, which would be confusing to watch on the small monitor that one of Sanderson’s men held.

It took only a few moments to pin the camera in place and then we were on the move. I caught a brief glimpse of Anna-Eve sharing a look with the colonel before she flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder and took off. She had changed into a pair of tight black pants and a low cut black top. Her skin was so pale it almost glowed in the dark. I didn’t like the secret communication that seemed to be going on between her and Sanderson but what could I possibly say to either of them that wouldn’t make me sound paranoid? Maybe I was paranoid and I was just imagining that there was something sinister going on.

More gunshots sounded as we raced across scrubby ground towards the battle. The soldiers were holed up in the centre of the village that they had been sent to search. Wailing villagers were huddled inside the buildings. Most probably had no idea what was going on. If any were brave enough to peek out of their windows, they would have seen dozens of fledglings surrounding their community in a rough circle. The soldiers must have been running low on ammunition. They took single shots at the circling vamps instead of cutting them down with wild bursts of gunfire. That was good for us as there would be fewer bullets to avoid as we moved in for the kill.

The fledglings had no idea we were behind them until Igor fired the first shot. One of the newly risen vampires exploded but the rest barely even noticed being splattered with his gore. Enough of their numbers had been reduced by the soldiers that they had learned a rudimentary type of caution but they were far too intent on feeding from the humans to pay us any attention. We weren’t food so we barely registered to them at this stage in their undead lives.

Battle lust descended as my swords came free from their sheaths. Orange light, a side effect of being fed imp blood, burst from my eyes as I began to carve my way through the fledglings. Explosions rang out as the prototypes were fired or small bombs were thrown. The joy of the kill carried me away until there was suddenly no one left to fight.

Swords dripping with ooze, I turned in a slow circle and saw only a few remaining soldiers huddled together. As I came to a stop, I was faced with a terrified guard from the French Court. The prototype he had just used to cut down the fledglings was pointed at my chest. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” I asked him uneasily, secretly knowing what the answer would be.

His reply was to pull the trigger. A split second later, the bullet thumped home and came to a stop beside my dead and unbeating heart. I had enough time to meet Luc’s horrified eyes then my body was torn apart in a burst of fire that felt like it came directly from hell itself.

Chapter Five

I regained consciousness quickly, mainly because my head had been blown clear of my body instead of being disintegrated in the blast. Hands were clasping my head to a heaving chest. “Look what they have done to you, chérie,” a young voice moaned between dry sobs.

“Geordie? Is that you?” At my questioning croak, my head was turned and lifted.

“Natalie…you’re awake!” Geordie’s joy didn’t last long. He turned my head and angled it downwards. “Look what has become of your poor body.”

It was hard not to look at what was left of me when it was lying right in front of my eyes. From the knees down, I was fine. Everything above my knees wasn’t in such great shape. My flesh had been reduced to gobbets of meat, guts and gore. If I’d still had a stomach, I would have heaved at the sight before me.

Heated voices drew my attention. “I say we kill them all,” a gruff voice rose to drown out the others. “They have just proven how treacherous they are and how little they can be trusted.” I didn’t need to see Igor to recognize his voice. His Russian accent was so thick it was barely understandable.

“I agree,” Luc backed up his friend. “Let us put an end to them once and for all.” His usual calmness was gone and cold rage had taken its place.

Anna-Eve’s voice went up a few octaves. “You can’t prove that he was following my orders!”

“He was your servant, was he not?” Gregor damned her by pointing out. Even the most sophisticated one amongst us was barely managing to contain his anger.

Since I was just a head at the moment, I couldn’t move closer without help. “Geordie, can you join the others?”

“Of course.” Tucking my head beneath his arm, the teen ambled over and came to a stop beside his mentor. Igor did a double take when he saw me and his brows lowered in a heavy frown at my condition.

Anna-Eve was too flustered to take note of our arrival. I doubted she thought Geordie was even worth her notice. Her band of guards and courtiers were outnumbered by more than two to one. I was pleased to see Ishida’s warriors were on our side.

“None of you have the authority to order our deaths,” the blonde said with more than a hint of desperation in her tone.

I had no idea why she had ordered her lackey to shoot me but it had been a terrible decision that she was going to pay for with her life. “They might not, but I do.” Heads turned when I spoke. Those who hadn’t witnessed my miraculous healing abilities were stunned to see my detached head talking.

“What are your instructions, Mortis?” Luc asked me. He’d never called me Mortis before. It was a stark reminder to everyone exactly who and what I was. The guard who had shot me was nowhere to be seen. I assumed he’d already been turned into a sticky puddle by my beloved.

Before I could give the order to attack, a truck pulled in between our two opposing groups. Anna-Eve and her cohorts were cut off from our view and took instant advantage of it. Rapid footsteps quickly faded as the French guards and courtiers ran for their lives.

“After them!” At Ishida’s curt order, his warriors darted around the truck to stop the Europeans from fleeing but they were already too late. The child king recalled his people with a terse command before they moved too far away to be able to hear him. As much as I wanted to see Anna-Eve dead, I agreed with Ishida’s decision. Dividing our forces wouldn’t be a good idea.

Colonel Sanderson’s jeep lurched to a halt behind the truck that had allowed our quarry to escape. He wasn’t holding the small monitor anymore but he’d have watched our interaction. Why do I get the feeling that he deliberately stopped us from annihilating Anna-Eve? My thought was a mixture of confusion and annoyance. What possible motive could he have for interfering in vampire politics?

“What the hell happened here?” Sanderson asked in a near shout, raking his gaze across the remaining vampires.

“Anna-Eve tried to have Natalie killed with one of your guns,” Geordie explained with a scowl. “We were just about to execute them but, thanks to you, they got away.”

“You think she deliberately had one of her people shoot you?” he addressed the question to me. The fact that he hadn’t turned green at the sight of my head resting beneath Geordie’s arm confirmed that he had witnessed the whole thing on his monitor.

“He had been ordered to shoot me and he was Anna-Eve’s servant,” I explained. “He was terrified and didn’t want to shoot me but something forced him to. No one except Anna-Eve would have had the power to compel him to try to kill me.”

Putting his hands on his hips, Sanderson looked up at the sky for a few seconds. Geordie copied him, inadvertently tilting my head back as well. The night sky was clear and the stars were bright. They were different from the constellations I was used to seeing back home but they held zero interest for me right now. The teen didn’t see much of interest up there either so turned his attention back to the soldier.

“I realize you have issues to sort out,” Sanderson said to us all, “but I’m hoping you can put aside your vampire politics until after we’ve wiped out the remaining fledglings.”

“The courtiers can wait, for now,” I replied. “After all, we know where they live.” I hadn’t meant to be funny but low chuckles sounded throughout the gathering.

“You will not be hunting them alone, Mortis,” Ishida said. “Treachery such as this needs to be repaid.”

Geordie turned to view the child king. “So, you’re suddenly on our side again, are you?” His tone was slightly bitter and more than a touch belligerent. I’d never had a little brother, or particularly wanted one, but Geordie came close to filling that role for me. Except when he was trying to get me to sleep with him, that was. Since Luc and I had publicly declared that we were an exclusive item, Geordie had mostly given up on flirting with me. He still lapsed every now and then.

“Natalie saved my life,” the emperor said with quiet dignity. “I am in her debt.” His eyes touched on me briefly and he offered me a short bow. He was stiff and formal but maybe there was some hope that we could mend our shattered friendship after all. If my body hadn’t been splattered all over the ground at the moment, I would have returned his bow. Held tightly by my young friend, I couldn’t even nod.

Luc moved to Geordie’s side and gently lifted my head from beneath his arm. “How long will it take you to heal from a wound this grievous?”

He turned my head towards my remains so I could assess the carnage again, not that I wanted or needed to. “It will take at least a few hours to repair that much damage,” I told him. More startled murmurs were issued that I could repair myself so quickly. It might seem quick to everyone else but for me, it would feel like a lifetime.

“We need to head to the next village and check for more freshly risen vampires,” the colonel reminded me.

We really only had one choice of action. “Someone needs to scrape my bits and pieces together. I’ll heal as we travel.”

Geordie made discreet gagging noises at my terminology. “Does anyone have a bucket?” Igor asked, probably deliberately to goad his protégé. The teen’s gagging increased in volume.

Working together, Luc and Igor used a shovel one of the soldiers provided to scoop up my blasted body and tip it onto a small sheet of plastic. Gregor picked up my lower legs while Geordie cradled my head again.

I had to close my eyes when my gobbets were tossed onto the sheet of plastic. This wasn’t the first time that I had been reduced to a ruin but it still had the power to revolt me all the way to my core. Not that I even had a core in my current state.

Luc and Igor carefully climbed into the back of a truck, gingerly carrying the sheet of plastic. Geordie plucked the camera from his chest and handed it back to Sanderson before climbing inside. Gregor was the last to enter with my boots containing my lower legs tucked under one arm. Aventius and Ishida’s people took alternate transportation, for which I was grateful. I didn’t like the idea of anyone who wasn’t a close friend watching me as I slowly regenerated.

As I’d expected, healing was a long, slow process. When my limbs were cut off, they simply had to touch my body again to become reattached. When parts of me were blown up, they had to regenerate from scratch. Luc and Igor placed the plastic in one corner of the truck and Geordie gently put my head down next to it. As soon as Gregor placed my legs on the sheet and they came into contact with the jumble that was the rest of me, I started to reform.

Geordie wasn’t the only one to watch in fascination as my shredded torso slowly began to piece itself back together. “I’m sure this is all very interesting for everyone,” I said acerbically, “but would you mind covering me up?”

Luc flashed me a guilty smile and flipped one side of the plastic sheet over what would be my body, leaving only my face exposed. Except for the boots, I would be completely naked once I was whole again. I preferred Luc to be the only one to see me unclothed.

“Have any of you come up with any theories as to why Anna-Eve would order her servant to shoot Natalie?” Gregor asked.

Igor pulled a knife from his belt and began to sharpen it with the stone he had found somewhere. “Are you saying you don’t have a theory?”

“Of course I do,” Gregor replied. “I merely wanted to hear your thoughts on her possible motives.”

Luc supplied the answer we were all thinking. “I would bet my own life that the Comtesse is behind this assassination attempt.” Igor nodded in support of the idea.

Gregor smiled tightly and inclined his head in agreement. “Anna-Eve was a lackey for the Comtesse long before she became a Councillor.”

Although I was curious about Gregor’s origins, something precluded me from prying into his past. Igor had reluctantly coughed up his story and Geordie had spilled the beans about his origins readily enough but digging into Gregor’s private life seemed taboo. “You were there when the Court was formed, weren’t you?” It was as close as I could bring myself to pry into his personal affairs.

Inclining his head in agreement again, Gregor seemed to look back into his memories. “After a thousand years or so of living beneath the rule of the English monarchy, I wearied of the intrigue, backbiting and politics. I’d heard rumours that a faction had risen with the intention of overthrowing our King but I had already distanced myself by then.”

Geordie opened his mouth to ask a question but closed it again at a subtle head shake from Igor. “I was approached by delegates from both sides,” Gregor continued, “but declined to offer myself or my guards to join their feud. I wasn’t particularly surprised when I learned the Comtesse was behind the revolt. Mucia had always been ambitious.”

If I’d been able to, I would have held up a hand to stop him. “Hang on, the Comtesse’s real name is Mucia?” Geordie sniggered at my tone as much as at the praying mantis’ real name.

Humour glinted in the dark depths of Gregor’s eyes. “She would kill me if she knew I had let that slip.” Let it slip my backside, he deliberately told us her name.

Igor came very close to smiling but it died before it fully formed. “I once witnessed the death of a courtier when she forgot herself and spoke the Comtesse’s name. It took many servants to clean up the mess that was left.”

Luc was the one to bring us back on track this time. “It is agreed then? The Comtesse tried to have Natalie assassinated again?” The first time she’d tried to have me killed, Luc had been the one to swing the sword. It was painful for both of us to be reminded of that fact. He reached out and stroked my hair, offering me a silent apology. I’d forgiven him for beheading me but I doubted his guilt would ever fade completely. He seemed to think that having his bones broken nearly every time we had sex was some kind of cosmic payback.

“So it would seem,” was Gregor’s reply. “I find it strange that she would make the attempt after seeing just how difficult it is to kill Mortis.” I contained an eye roll at being referred to in the third person, as if Mortis was an entity that was completely separate from me.

Luc eyed his old friend, knowing he had an insight the rest of us didn’t share. “What is your theory?”

“I can only imagine blowing Natalie apart was intended to be a message to someone,” the crafty vamp said softly, as if regretting having to say the words.

“Who was the message intended for?” I asked.

Turning to study me, Gregor shrugged. “I am not sure yet but time will tell.”

On that uncomfortable note, we subsided into a morose silence.

Chapter Six

When we stopped at the next village, everyone jumped out and I was left to stew in my own juices again. Judging by the sounds of terrified screams, a band of fledglings had beaten us here and had begun to feed on the villagers. Geordie hesitated, clearly unwilling to leave me alone but Igor grabbed him by the collar and dragged the teen away. “We’ll be back soon, chérie!” Geordie called as their footsteps rapidly receded.

It was frustrating not being able to help them. It was also incredibly boring. I had nothing to occupy my time and all I could do was listen to the distant battle and heal slowly. Misshapen lumps beneath the plastic meant my body was beginning to reform, albeit unevenly. I was pretty sure my arms and legs were mostly back where they belonged.

Knowing the damage would still be extensive, I carefully shifted my right hand and was relieved when it obeyed me. It slid out from beneath the sheet and I winced at the sight of the malformed appendage. My palm was still raw and the skin hadn’t grown back yet. Neither had my fingers and they were still just stubs. Glancing away for a few seconds, I looked back and saw that they had grown slightly. It was going to be a long process but in time I would be whole again.

Curiosity got the better of me and I moved my hand up to the top of the sheet that rested just beneath my chin. Lifting the plastic away, my lips wrinkled back from my teeth in disgust when I surveyed the ruin of my body. I looked a bit like chicken guts that had been put through a blender. Once I adjusted to the grossness, I could see the outlines of my organs forming.

Feeling slightly ill, I let the sheet fall back into place. How can I feel ill when I don’t technically even have a stomach right now? Maybe Gregor could have answered the question but I sure couldn’t.

Somewhere in the distance, Geordie screeched in triumph. That seemed to signify that the skirmish was over as the explosions and gunfire petered out. Several minutes later, my friends returned.

Luc was the first to enter the truck. He settled beside me and made a move to check on the progress of my healing. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” I told him softly as the others climbed inside. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

“By morning you will be as beautiful as always,” he told me. Fishing my hand out from beneath the sheet, he held it gently.

Still excited from the battle, Geordie broke off recounting his heroics when he saw my mangled hand. “Ewww! Do you look like that all over?” Lifting my hand free from Luc’s, I held it up so the back was facing the teen. “Is that supposed to mean something?” he asked me with a puzzled frown.

“I’m giving you the finger.”

There was silence for a couple of heartbeats. “You don’t have any fingers, chérie,” Geordie pointed out to me gently, as if I’d suffered brain damage along with having my body destroyed.

“Let me assist you, my love,” Luc offered then lifted his pointer finger at the teen. “Does this suffice?”

I started giggling and Geordie quickly joined me. “It’s supposed to be your middle finger,” I explained to my sadly behind the times beloved. “But I appreciate the thought.”

My mood was lighter when we stopped at the next township. I still felt helpless and useless as the menfolk sauntered off to save the humans but I also felt slightly more substantial of form. Checking on my progress, my fingers had grown to the first knuckle and most of my organs had solidified.

Hearing footsteps approaching, I reached for my swords but my backpack was too far away. My palms were still raw and the holy marks hadn’t yet reappeared. A chill went down my spine at the thought that they might never grow back. Then I remembered Lefty had regenerated after being blown up and the holy mark had come back then. There was no reason why they wouldn’t reappear this time.

“May I join you, Mortis?” a female voice asked tentatively.

Recognizing the seer’s voice, I had a slight panic attack. I didn’t want anyone to see me in such a vulnerable condition. She’s blind, you idiot! Feeling sheepish at the reminder, I pushed myself up with my hands and hoped nothing would fall out or become dislodged. I then scooted backwards until I came into contact with the wall of the truck. “You can come in, Kokoro.” Thankfully, none of my organs slid out of place and plopped onto my lap. The wall was cold against the raw meat of my back so I hunched forward slightly.

The door swung open just as I secured the sheet of plastic by crossing my arms across my chest. My breasts hadn’t completely grown back yet and the sheet was distressingly flat across my chest.

Lifting her pure white kimono to her knees, Kokoro leaped lightly inside the truck. She had come without an escort and I wondered how she’d managed to find me without a guide. Reading my mind, she offered me an explanation. “I located you by your scent.”

Disturbed at the thought that I needed to take a shower asap, I bent to sniff my armpit. It didn’t smell particularly rank to me. She’s been blind for so long that her other senses have made up for it, I reassured myself. “How is your Emperor?” I asked her.

Daintily taking a seat beside me, Kokoro reached out and took my hand. She didn’t seem surprised by the damage and linked her fingers with my stubs. “He is well of body but his mind is troubled. Ishida deeply regrets his childish behaviour, Natalie.”

“I couldn’t let him kill Igor just because he smacked him up the back of the head.”

Kokoro gently patted my raw hand. “You know how men are. They have more pride than sense sometimes.”

“Do you think Ishida and I can ever be friends again?” I asked in a small voice.

Her smile was bright even in the dim confines of the truck. “Of course you can! Ishida simply does not know how to make things right between you two without losing face with his warriors.”

Not only did the kid have male pride to combat, he also had the tradition of his people to contend with. “What if I apologized to him in front of everyone? Would that help?”

Astonished by my offer, the seer stared at me as if she could actually see me. “You would do that for Ishida?”

Since I didn’t give a crap about saving face, it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship for me. “Sure. I’d like to kill some zombies with him again one day. If all I have to do is apologize first to repair our friendship then I don’t have a problem with that.”

“European customs are very different from ours,” Kokoro observed, either ignoring or forgetting the fact that I was Australian. “I will advise Ishida of your wish to make peace.”

We spent some time chatting about the Second and concluded that neither of us had discovered anything useful about him yet that would help us to narrow down where he was headed. While we didn’t come up with any plans or learn anything helpful, at least we didn’t have to wait alone during the battle this time.

Sensing the menfolk approaching about an hour later, Kokoro took her leave before I even heard their footsteps. “What did she want?” Geordie asked sullenly as he jumped inside. His admiration for the prophetess had waned when her ruler had turned against me.

“She wanted to know if you were single so she could jump your bones.”

Eyes suddenly wide with hope, the teen dropped to his knees beside me. “Really? She said that?”

“Of course she didn’t! I can’t believe you fell for that.”

Casting a wounded look at me over his shoulder, Geordie moved to the far side of the truck. “That was a mean thing to say, chérie.” His lower lip pooched out in a pout.

Patting the sulky teen on the shoulder, Gregor took a seat beside him. “I assume Kokoro approached you with a peace offering?”

“Yep. All I have to do is apologize to the Emperor and we’ll be friends again.” Looks were exchanged that I, and apparently Geordie, didn’t fully grasp. It must be a man thing. While Geordie was a male, he didn’t really qualify as a man, at least not in my eyes.

Igor had the guts to voice what they were all thinking. “You will willingly lower yourself to apologize first?”

“Do I have a penis?” I asked him.

The Russian’s eyes flickered down to my lower body that was hidden beneath the plastic before returning to my face. “Not as far as I am aware,” he said a trifle stiffly.

Sitting down beside me, Luc’s response was dry. “I assure you, Natalie is penis free.”

“My point is,” I broke in before any further discussions of my lack of penis could begin, “I’m a woman and we really don’t care about who apologizes first. Our egos are far, far, stronger than yours will ever be.”

“If Natalie’s pride will not suffer by apologizing to Ishida, then we must also put our pride behind us,” Gregor advised the menfolk.

Igor seemed to struggle with the concept the most but finally nodded his shaggy head. “You saved my life, the least I can do is not complain when you offer your apologies to the spoiled, bratty, child king.”

“Maybe you’d better not smack Ishida in the head in the future,” I suggested.

“I will try not to,” Igor conceded but it looked like it cost him mightily.

Chapter Seven

As the night wore on, my body steadily continued to regenerate. An hour or so before dawn, the truck pulled to a stop and my kin headed out to take down the latest batch of fledglings. Since I was alone, I checked beneath the sheet to see that my breasts had reappeared. My eyes closed briefly in silent relief. My skin was still growing back in a few places but everything else seemed to be more or less back to normal. My fingers had reformed and, best of all, the holy marks had returned to my palms.

Dressing in my final black leather suit, I could have joined the others but opted not to. From the lack of screaming and only intermittent gunfire ringing out, I figured there were only a few fledglings harassing the village this time.

The first to return, Geordie screeched in glee to see me dressed and waiting for them. Launching himself at me, he gave me a full body hug. One of his hands dropped down to my butt for a squeeze and he was suddenly yanked away. He ducked away from Igor, narrowly avoiding a skull cracking blow to the head. “I was just checking that everything was there!” he whined.

Elbowing the teen aside, Luc took his place. No one hauled him away when his hands dipped to my backside for a quick squeeze. “Everything seems to be intact,” he confirmed.

“Are you fully healed?” Gregor asked as the truck rumbled into motion.

“Mostly. My skin is still growing back in some places.”

Geordie made a face and opened his mouth. Before he could utter his wisecrack, the sun came up. Igor caught the teen as he dropped and eased him to the ground. Despite his gruff demeanour, the Russian cared for his apprentice. I had the fleeting thought that Geordie was a replacement for the son that Igor had unknowingly eaten after he had risen as a monster.

One by one, we settled down to sleep. The suffocating blast of dawn heat seemed to be less harsh than usual and barely affected me this time. Maybe I was finally settling into my new life as a vampire.

Closing my eyes, it only felt like seconds had passed before I opened them again. It took me only a moment or two to realize I was dreaming.

Wherever I was, I was pretty sure it was someplace new. A thick forest surrounded me on all sides. It was different from the jungles of Africa in both foliage and atmosphere. Drawn by some strange instinct, I followed an overgrown path that was too narrow to have been made by man.

Moonlight broke through the cover of trees and glinted on a building ahead. Reaching a clearing, I was somehow unsurprised to see a dilapidated castle looming over me. The forest had closed in on the castle and seemed to be trying to hide it from view. Crumbling grey stones were half covered in vines and lichen. Of the four towers that had once graced each corner, only one was still standing. I couldn’t help but feel that the scene was familiar despite the fact that I’d never been here before.

Firelight flickered from within the tower and a face suddenly appeared in the window. I recognized the Second instantly even though I’d never actually seen him in the flesh. His skin was still slightly grey from forty thousand years of starvation and entombment. His flesh was no longer withered and skeletal and he had filled out from repeated feedings. If I hadn’t known what he was, I would have considered him to be quite handsome and maybe even regal. He stepped away again, giving no indication that he’d noticed me watching him.

Judging by the repairs that had already been made to the building, this was my adversary’s chosen lair. Boards had been nailed over the empty windows from the inside and the door looked new.

Wandering closer, I heard a man moan from somewhere deep inside the castle. It wasn’t a sound of pleasure but rather of pain. The human began screaming and even above his ululating cries, I could hear sucking sounds of several ravenous fledglings feeding from him.

Another scream sounded, female this time, then another. I couldn’t understand how the Second had managed to locate a lair and begin to create a new army of servants so quickly. My subconscious heaved a put-upon sigh. Obviously, this is going to happen sometime in the future. Honestly, I don’t know why I put up with you sometimes.

Wincing at the sarcastic barb, I sat up. It was early afternoon and my friends were still dead asleep. I was amused to see Igor clutching a knife, as if he could somehow defend himself while being completely unable to rouse until nightfall.

Now that I had an inkling of where the Second’s lair was going to be, we just needed to locate it. A street sign would have been handy but I hadn’t seen any streets or signs of any kind. Wherever the castle was, it had been abandoned and forgotten long ago. It certainly didn’t seem to be a thriving tourist attraction. “Someone has to know that it exists,” I murmured to myself. How else would the disciple have found it? Through sheer dumb luck? That was highly unlikely.

Igor was the first to wake when the sun decided it had had enough for the day. One second he was absolutely dead and the next he was alert and sitting up. After a quick glance around to make sure there was no immediate danger, he tucked his knife away and nodded at me. “Did you sleep well?” he asked me politely.

“Not really,” I replied honestly. “But I did have an interesting dream.”

The Russian’s interest sharpened but he refrained from asking me any questions until the others woke. Last to wake as always, Geordie frowned when he opened his eyes and found us all staring at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” I reassured him. “We were just waiting for you to wake up so I could tell everyone about a dream I had.”

Wriggling back against the side of the truck, Geordie looked at me expectantly. “What did you dream about?”

“I was in a forest with a decrepit, mouldy old castle looming over me.” I suddenly realized why it had been so familiar. “It looked a bit like the Romanian Prophet’s castle but it was even more run down. It had four towers but only one was still intact. A light was shining in the window and I recognized the Second when he looked outside.”

Gregor leaned forward, gaze intent on my face. “Were there any signs telling you the name of the castle?”

“No. It isn’t a tourist attraction and it looks like it’s been abandoned for centuries.”

“If it is so remote and forgotten, how did the disciple manage to find it?” Igor asked, echoing the question I’d already asked myself.

Resting his chin on his fist, Gregor put some thought into it. “Wherever the Second has fled to, at least some of the locals must still be aware of the castle. There is probably a legend that it is haunted or cursed, which would keep most of them quiet about it. Some humans can be quite superstitious about relics that have been abandoned.” His lips twisted in a rueful smile at an aspect of human nature that he had given up thousands of years ago. Creatures like us had no need of superstition. After all, we were the things that went bump in the night then snacked on the frightened humans.

Luc curled his arm over my shoulder. “We need to narrow down which country our adversary has settled in.”

“I don’t think this has happened yet,” I told them. “I’m pretty sure it will happen sometime in the next few days or so.”

“Then he could end up practically anywhere in Europe,” Gregor surmised with a troubled frown.

“It’s too bad we don’t have a computer,” Geordie said and hunched his shoulders when we all turned to look at him. “We might be able to search for images of spooky old castles,” he said in a much smaller voice.

“That’s a brilliant idea, Geordie,” I told him and he immediately brightened at the praise. He might be young and mischievous but he was far from stupid.

Our vehicle lurched to a sudden stop, sending the teen tumbling head over heels with a squawk of surprise. I would have laughed at him if a fist hadn’t thumped on the side of the truck to gain our attention. “We could use your help!” Sanderson yelled with barely contained panic.

Distant screams and rapid gunfire alerted us that our job of hunting down fledglings wasn’t quite done yet. Leaving my sheaths behind, I grabbed my swords and was the first one out of the truck. Surrounded by his followers, Aventius spied me and offered me a tentative nod of greeting. Only my friends and Kokoro had seen me since I’d been blown apart but I figured everyone else had been given regular updates on my wellbeing. I nodded back and he smiled in relief. Since none of his people had tried to kill me yet, I still considered him to be relatively trustworthy.

Ishida saluted me with his sword and I returned the gesture. It was the first step in mending our relationship but we didn’t have time for more right now. Our reconciliation would have to wait until after the battle. We all raced towards what would hopefully be our final clash with the fledglings that had been left behind to impede us.

Numbering in the dozens, the newly-made vampires were intent on feeding. Some were several days old by now and had learned to be more cunning. They were the most dangerous and were consequently doing the most damage. A female vamp wearing tattered, bloody clothing, launched herself into the air and landed behind a soldier. Spinning him around, she bit into his neck and used his body as a shield as his comrades opened fire.

Laughing, she dropped him and sprang away, aiming for another victim. Her blood caked face reflected shock when I materialized between her and her next meal of choice. I didn’t give her a chance to escape and stabbed her through the heart. She disintegrated the instant I pulled my sword free. Nearly gibbering with terror at his close call with death, the African soldier sank to his knees, babbling thanks in his native language. Targeting the next wily fledgling, I quickly lost myself in the thrill of battle.

For a change, I wasn’t covered in gore and ooze when we were done. I picked up a dirty scrap of a dead vampire’s shirt and used it to clean my blades then jogged over to Colonel Sanderson. “I think that’s all of them,” I told him.

He almost seemed to eye me warily before nodding. “If there are any stragglers, General Merwe’s men can take care of them. We need to focus on where the Second is heading.”

“I might be able to help you with that. Do you have a computer that I could borrow?”

Sanderson didn’t waste time questioning me and merely signalled to one of his men. The soldier scurried away and quickly returned with a heavy duty laptop. Resting the computer on the hood of his jeep, the colonel indicated for me to get started on my search.

Kokoro’s white kimono caught my eye and I paused to shoot a thought at her. Do you know where this is? I sent her a picture of the castle and was disheartened when she shook her head.

“What are you looking for?” Sanderson asked when I fired up the search engine.

“A spooky old castle that few people are probably even aware still exists. I’m pretty sure its somewhere in Europe.”

The soldier’s brows furrowed at my unhelpful account. “I hope you can narrow it down further than that. There must be hundreds of castles that fit that description.”

My search quickly brought up an array of decrepit old castles that were spread all across Europe. A couple were similar to the one from my dream but none were an exact match. One came close to the image in my head and I leaned forward to examine it in more detail.

“Is that the castle from your dream, chérie?” Geordie asked. He’d worked his way in beside me and squinted at the bright screen as if the harsh light hurt his eyes.

“No, but I think it might be in the same country. The trees and shrubbery look just like the ones I dreamt about.”

Gregor’s face came over my other shoulder. “Where is this castle located?”

Clicking on the photo, I read the blurb that had been written on the derelict building. “It’s in Bulgaria.”

Sanderson sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. “It is going to take time for my superiors to negotiate our entry into yet another foreign country.”

Ishida tipped his head to the side and gave the colonel a sly smile. “I have transportation that can get us into Bulgaria quickly and with a minimum of fuss.”

Gregor immediately grinned but it took me a few seconds longer to remember that we’d travelled to Africa via a private plane. I wondered if the pilot had stayed with the aircraft or if his hypnotism had worn off by now. If it had, I could only imagine the man’s surprise at finding himself in Africa rather than Japan. Kokoro shook her head at my thought and smiled faintly. Her hypnotism must be a thing of legend if the pilot still remained bamboozled.

Turning to me, Sanderson sought an explanation. “Emperor Ishida has a private plane standing by. We just need to find an airport somewhere in the area where he can land and pick us up.” It would be far quicker than waiting for the US government to wrangle a deal with the Bulgarians to allow the American soldiers into their country.

Debating about it, the colonel finally reached a decision. “How many people can the plane carry?”

“There are enough seats for us and a couple of dozen of your men.” I hadn’t taken an exact count of seats but thought it was a fairly accurate guess.

“We’ll have to land in a remote airstrip or we won’t be able to bring any weapons with us,” Sanderson warned me.

“I’d advise you to use your computer to search for private landing strips,” Gregor said to the colonel. “We can make sure no one remembers us once we have landed.”

“Maybe our plane will have a small malfunction that will force us to land,” Igor proposed.

Geordie stared at his mentor in puzzlement. “You can’t possibly predict that that is going to happen.”

“I think he means we can fake a malfunction so we can land at the airport of our choice,” I explained to the teen.

“Oh. That makes sense.” Unable to flush with embarrassment, Geordie shrugged his narrow shoulders instead and gave me a sheepish smile.

Chapter Eight

While Sanderson took to his computer to search for a suitable airfield nearby, I moved to intercept Ishida before his people could surround him again.

“Emperor Ishida, can I speak to you for a moment?” I sounded strangely awkward and formal and completely unlike myself as I made the request.

Halting, the teen waved his guards back. His expression was neutral with a hint of trepidation. Call me petty but I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who’d been suffering. “You may speak,” Ishida said. From the corner of my eye, I saw Geordie puff up at the pompous sounding phrasing. Igor clapped a hand over his protégé’s mouth to prevent him from ruining the moment.

“I wish to apologize for any offence I or my friends may have caused you.” I could have listed all the things I’d said to upset Ishida but I didn’t want to drag this out. Either he would forgive me and we could move on or he could continue to be snotty. The choice was his.

“I also would like to make amends,” he said and offered me a stiff bow. I noticed my friend’s annoyance at the child king’s lack of apology in my peripheral vision but I wasn’t bothered by it. We had both been wrong and had admitted the fault in our own way.

“Maybe when Geordie comes to your island for a visit, I could tag along with him?”

Ishida smiled slightly. His warriors took that as a sign that all was forgiven and the tension seeped out of the air. “You may bring all of your friends, if you wish.”

Watching from the sidelines, Joshua couldn’t help himself and blurted out his opinion once more. “I’m guessing the invitation doesn’t extend to the rest of us,” he muttered sourly.

Ishida swept an icy glance across the disgruntled young vampire and chose to ignore the dig. Knowing him, Joshua was beneath his notice, much like Geordie was to Anna-Eve. Kokoro put her hand on her ruler’s arm and he guided her away. Someone handed her a phone and she quietly began giving instructions to their pilot.

I’d intended to head for the truck but my feet had another destination in mind. I stopped in front of Joshua and stared at him coldly.

His upper lip curled in a nervous sneer. “What?”

“Do you realize how precarious things are between Emperor Ishida and me right now?”

“So what? Why should I care if you two aren’t the best of buddies?” Crossing his arms, Joshua silently dared me to take action. Surrounded by his friends, he thought he was safe from my wrath. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realize that he’d put them all in jeopardy as well.

Aventius’ expression turned mournful at his follower’s continued belligerence. Our eyes met and he gave me a tiny nod. Placing a hand on Joshua’s shoulder, he turned the young vampire towards him.

Joshua’s bravado withered beneath his leader’s disappointment and he hung his head in shame for embarrassing him yet again. Aventius didn’t give his follower a chance to dredge up an apology. His hand dipped to the dagger at his waist then thrust it into Joshua’s chest. Everyone except Aventius took a step back when he pulled his dagger free. His youngest follower disintegrated, leaving behind only his clothing, weapons and the usual puddle of ooze.

Bowing his head, the ex-councillor walked away and his entourage moved to surround him. Not all of them had liked Joshua but all of them would mourn him.

Sidling up to me, Geordie took my hand. “Why did he kill his servant?” he asked me softly.

“Because if he didn’t, I would have,” I replied just as quietly. I felt bad for Aventius but I wasn’t sorry that Joshua was dead. He had been a liability and would have continued to cause trouble between the Europeans and Japanese nations.

The teen tried to make sense of what had just happened. “He was an ass but I do not understand why he had to die.”

Gregor took pity on me and tried to explain it to the teen. “Joshua had been repeatedly warned about his behaviour. He chose to ignore the warnings and paid the price because of it. As a species, our numbers are becoming dangerously low. We simply cannot afford to endanger ourselves by allowing fools to live.”

Staring into my eyes, Geordie’s bottom lip quivered. “Would you kill me just because I speak my mind, chérie?”

Pulling him in close, I hugged him tightly. “Of course not!” I was appalled that he’d even asked me the question.

Luc and Gregor exchanged a disturbingly knowing look, as if they knew me better than I knew myself. You’ve changed, my inner voice suddenly roused itself to say. Like it or not, you are their leader now, even if it is just temporary. You’ve learned to play their version of politics and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. It subsided again, leaving me feeling cold on the inside. I could admit to myself that I wasn’t the same person anymore. But I refused to believe I would ever be heartless enough to kill one of my friends just because he could be childish at times.

Sanderson handed the computer back to one of his lackeys then called his men together. They were too far away for me to hear what he was saying but I could read his body language easily enough. Picking a dozen men, he appointed one of his subordinates to be in charge of the bulk of his army while he and his chosen few joined us on our mission.

With his small group of soldiers in tow, he headed towards us. The colonel was the only human who was willing to mingle with their undead allies. His men had become slightly less wary of us but meal times were still a tense affair. We were all waiting for one of the vampires to take too big a bite out of someone. That hadn’t happened yet but that could change at any meal time.

“I’ve located an airstrip about an hour away from our current position,” he informed us.

“Emperor Ishida’s pilot is probably already in the air,” I advised him. I looked around for Kokoro and found her standing a few feet away.

“I have just given our pilot the directions,” she said as she handed the phone back to the female warrior.

“How did you…” Stopping himself, the colonel blew out a breath. “I don’t even want to know. I’ve picked the men who will be travelling to Bulgaria with us. We’re ready to leave whenever you are.”

With only a few of his men coming with us, we would have to find our food elsewhere. We would have to be very careful to bamboozle the humans into forgetting they’d ever seen us whenever we stopped for a snack. If the Bulgarian authorities became involved, the news that vampires were in the country might spread. The Second could catch wind that we were on our way and flee before we could track him to his lair.

Piling into the back of our trucks, we had a mostly silent and contemplative ride to the airport. Geordie was still shaken by Joshua’s death. He snuck frequent wary glances in my direction. Maybe he was beginning to think that he didn’t know me anymore.

Sensing my need to brood, Luc sat beside me but made no move to take my hand or to slide an arm over my shoulder. I hoped that was the reason he was keeping his hands to himself. Maybe he also thought I’d kill him if he annoyed me.

Should I have brought a gift? My inner voice suddenly asked. What for? I asked in return. This is a pity party, isn’t it? I hear its customary to hand out gifts at a party. Its unwelcome insight didn’t go a long way towards making me feel any better.

We arrived at a tiny airport and parked near the rundown building that was presumably the control centre. Colonel Sanderson strode over to inspect the seldom used runway to make sure it was usable. The airport wasn’t manned so we wouldn’t need to explain our presence to anyone. We could simply take off and head to Bulgaria without any fuss. I assumed our pilot had managed to refuel before taking off. If he hadn’t then we were going to have a very short trip before we crashed and burned.

Following Sanderson’s direction, we all chipped in to help make the runway smoother. This involved removing rocks and pulling out any shrubs that had taken root. We’d only just finished making the surface usable when we heard the plane approaching.

Sanderson’s men set up flares as the plane circled overhead. The twin lines of sporadic, flickering lights were better than no lights at all and the plane managed to land safely.

Only minutes after he’d landed, the pilot took off again with the aircraft almost filled to capacity. The colonel and his twelve men took over the back of the plane. I suspected this decision came from not wanting to have anyone at their backs. We may be allies but we were superior in both strength and numbers and they would see us as a threat.

Rows of male and female warriors separated Ishida, Kokoro, my friends and I from the soldiers. It would be suicide for the soldiers to use a gun or explosive while we were in the air but the warriors were still suspicious of the humans. They were subtle about it but they kept a close eye on our allies.

Two rows from the front of the plane, Luc chose the window seat and I sat beside him. Ishida and Kokoro sat across from me. Geordie and Igor had the seats in front of the Japanese ruler and Gregor sat in front of me. He put his luggage on the spare seat beside him.

“I wonder how long it will take us to find the Second?” Geordie said as the plane levelled off. Most of the vampires on board were nervous about flying. The teen covered his fear with chatter. “I hope we can locate his castle quickly. Maybe you’ll have another dream about him that might tell us more about where it is.” He gave me a hopeful grin then turned to speak to his mentor.

I shared his hope but feared it wouldn’t be that easy. According to the last dream I’d had, the Second would have time to create several fledglings and be on the way to creating more before we tracked him down. Who knew how many ravenous new vampires would inhabit the broken down castle by the time we managed to find it?

Chapter Nine

When dawn arrived, it engulfed the plane in what used to feel like a suffocating burst of fire. I barely felt the heat at all this time and subsided into a shallow doze. Half of Ishida’s warriors remained alert while the rest turned into unmoving corpses.

“They’re not exactly all that attractive when they die for the day, are they?” one of the soldiers at the back of the plane whispered to one of his comrades. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t speak quietly enough. Turning to glare at the man, I wasn’t the only one frowning at him. Shrinking into his seat, the soldier mouthed an apology to the Japanese and Europeans who were still awake.

I tried to settle into sleep but the whispers of Ishida’s people and the rustling of the humans kept me from dropping off. Beside me, Luc’s head lolled against the closed window shutter. The soldier wasn’t wrong, most vamps did tend to lose their sex appeal while in their unanimated states. I found Luc to be as attractive as always. Studying him as impartially as possible, I ignored his utter stillness and tried to find any flaws.

He’s damn near perfect in the looks department, I thought. At the mental image of his naked body, my flesh hunger tried to rise. Battling it back down took most of my concentration. Surrounded by my kin, some of them would be able to sense my hunger and I didn’t want to embarrass myself any more than I usually tended to simply by being me.

By the time we reached our destination, my hands were clenched on the armrests with enough force to leave finger marks in the upholstery. Thankfully, most of the vampires in the front half of the plane were unconscious and were unaware of my struggle. Someone a few rows behind me gave a low chuckle and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was at my expense. Losing control of my flesh hunger would be amusing for someone who was centuries older than me but I wouldn’t find it to be funny at all.

Our landing was rough and the aircraft bumped over rocks and other debris that had found its way onto the runway. Geordie had forgotten to put his seatbelt on and pitched forward when we bounced over a particularly large obstacle. He hit the wall that separated us from the cockpit then slid to his face on the floor.

Wherever we’d landed, it seemed to be as remote and abandoned as the airstrip we had left from back in Africa. I couldn’t hear any sounds of human activity outside the plane. Once we came to a stop, I undid my seatbelt and settled Geordie back into his seat. I strapped him in just in case we were forced into an emergency take off.

“Keep watch, I’ll be back in a minute,” Sanderson murmured to one of his soldiers then made his way to the front of the aircraft. He paused beside me as I took my seat again. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yep. Why?” Surely he couldn’t sense the struggle I was going through to control my flesh hunger?

“Your eyes are orange. I thought that only happened when you were in battle.”

Normally it did. It was a surprise to me that they were reacting to my rising hunger. “I’ve been thinking about taking down the Second and his new fledglings,” I lied. “His plan to take over the world makes me pretty angry.” As far as excuses went, it was a pitiful one. The colonel nodded in understanding but the quick glance he sent back over his shoulder told me he didn’t entirely believe my explanation.

Sliding the privacy curtain shut, the soldier knocked on the cockpit door. It was opened a few seconds later and the two humans exchanged a quiet conversation. As far as I could tell, the pilot had talked his way into Bulgaria and explained mechanical failure as the reason why he’d had to land. Whoever he was talking to was miles away from us. The sun was scheduled to set soon so we’d be long gone before we could be discovered and detained for questioning.

Leaving the cockpit, Sanderson closed the door to make sure none of us would be fried before ducking around the curtain back into the main cabin. After a short and almost curt nod at me, he made his way towards the back of the plane again.

I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that something had changed between us. We would probably never be friends but I thought we had at least become firm allies. I tried to pinpoint exactly when the colonel had started to cool towards me. Before I could put my finger on it, the sun waned then vanished and my kin began to rouse.

When he woke, Luc’s flesh hunger rose as well. His control was usually absolute but not this time. Seeing a raw need in his eyes that matched mine, I grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. I was glad Geordie was still dead to the world as I wrenched the door open and leaped to the ground. The knowing grins from Gregor, Igor and pretty much every other vampire that was awake were bad enough to endure. Geordie’s ridicule would have been far too embarrassing to suffer through.

Landing noiselessly, we sprinted towards a building far in the distance. Up close, it turned out to be a rundown office that hadn’t been used in years. Luc peered in through a cracked window to make sure the offices were unoccupied. They were, so he shouldered the door open, dragged me inside and kicked the door shut. I pounced on him and wrapped my legs around his waist. He didn’t bother to undo the laces that kept my suit together and simply tore them apart. Peeling my suit down to my waist, he lifted me up and his cold mouth closed around my nipple.

It was difficult but I managed to get the rest of my suit off without my feet touching the ground once. Luc spun us around so my back was to the door. Nipping my neck almost hard enough to draw blood, he plunged inside me and proceeded to pound out his need. The door protested with each thrust and I figured it was about to break when it gave a tortured squeal. Beyond having the ability to care about the welfare of the door, I moaned Luc’s name and my legs tightened as I found my release. The door chose that moment to break, joining several of my beloved’s bones as we thumped to the ground. Luc barely even noticed our new position and increased his pace until he found his own ecstasy. Rolling off me, he gave me a rueful smile as his shattered bones began to mend.

At a faint yet heartfelt wolf whistle, I realized our friends and allies could see us lying there butt naked. Scrambling to my feet, I scurried back inside. “Frigging vampire sight,” I muttered as I turned my suit the right way around before donning it. With the laces broken it gaped open at the back. If I wasn’t careful, it would fall down to my waist. I was certain Geordie wouldn’t mind if I walked around half naked but I sure as hell would.

Luc’s self-satisfied smile remained in place as we sauntered back to the others. From the way Geordie was rubbing his head and glaring at his mentor, I surmised he’d been the one to issue the whistle and had been duly punished for it.

“I see your suit has suffered an…accident,” Gregor said with a straight face.

I cut a look at my beloved, who smiled at me innocently. “You could say that,” I muttered. We all knew there had been nothing accidental about the damage.

One of Ishida’s female warriors approached me and handed over a pair of long black laces. “Kokoro said these could be of use to you, Mortis.” Unlike Gregor, she couldn’t control her amusement. Her hand rose to cover her mouth in a polite attempt to hide her grin.

Taking the gift, I closed my eyes and tried not to die from embarrassment. I was still new to all this and that was what caused most of their amusement. I reacted like a human instead of simply shrugging off my needs as being a necessary aspect of life.

Turning me around, Luc plucked the laces from my hand and deftly threaded them through the holes then tugged the suit closed. Geordie opened his mouth and I stopped him before he could utter a, no doubt, snide remark. “Don’t.” After a short pause, his lips parted again. “Not. One. Word,” I told him ominously. It was a struggle but the teen mastered himself and earned a pleased nod from Igor. Maybe he was finally growing up. Or maybe seeing Joshua being stabbed to death by his own master for insubordination and being a general pain in the butt was enough of an incentive for him to try to control his mischievous nature.

While Luc and I had been otherwise occupied, Colonel Sanderson and his men had disappeared. “Where did Sanderson go?” I asked Gregor.

“The soldiers have gone in search of transportation,” he replied. “A few of the Emperor’s warriors went with them in case they come across any resistance.”

That had been a good idea. If we wanted to remain as incognito as possible, we’d have to wipe some memories along the way. The soldiers would have to ditch their uniforms and find something else to wear if they really wanted to remain unnoticed.

I saw that I wasn’t alone in that thought when the men returned. Their uniforms were gone and they were all wearing civilian clothing. Most of it was ill fitting but they stood out far less than they did when wearing their camouflage gear. Sanderson had donned cargo pants and a light blue button up shirt. Despite his casual clothing, he still looked like a soldier to me. He couldn’t have stood straighter if he’d had a ruler strapped to his back.

The transportation they’d managed to beg, borrow or steal consisted of two smallish trucks and a car. The car could seat five, if the people in the back didn’t mind being squished in together. As for the trucks, they were noisy and ugly but the cargo areas in the back were free of holes and would be safe for us to hide in during the day.

“The pilot landed as close as he could to the castle you found on your internet search,” Sanderson told me after he exited from the car. “We have a three hour drive ahead of us so I suggest we get moving.”

Four of his men were already inside the car so I guessed the rest of us would be riding in the trucks. Gregor leaned in to speak to me as we headed for the closest vehicle. “Have you and the Colonel had a falling out?” Eight of the soldiers would be forced to travel in the trucks with us and he didn’t want the ones currently trailing behind us to overhear our conversation.

“Not as far as I know,” I replied quietly. So it isn’t just my imagination, Sanderson really is acting weirdly. Not being paranoid in this instance wasn’t much of a relief. It seemed that I had somehow lost the soldier’s trust. I racked my memory for whatever might have turned him against me and a picture of the sewers formed. Something had caught my eye at the time but I couldn’t remember what it had been.

Four of the soldiers split from the others to drive and ride up front. That left two each to ride in the back of each truck. With a pair of armed and nervous soldiers riding along with us, our conversation was stilted. Aventius and his remaining people had opted to travel in our truck rather than to mingle with the Japanese warriors. Crammed in side by side, no one seemed to have anything to say. Most of my kin avoided my gaze, as if they were afraid they might inadvertently enrage me into ordering their deaths.

Stuck to my side like glue, Geordie rolled his eyes at the skittish Europeans. “Is it just me or does this feel seriously awkward?” he murmured.

I had no idea why but his observation struck me as funny and I started laughing silently. Luc elbowed me in the side, which made me laugh even harder.

“What’s wrong with her?” one of Aventius’ followers asked. “Is she having a fit?”

Geordie sniggered and we were suddenly holding onto each other, howling with laughter.

“Great, our fearless leader has gone crazy,” someone else muttered.

If I’d been human, tears would have been streaming down my face at my hilarity. “F-f-fearless leader,” I choked out, totally unable to explain why I found this to be so damn funny.

Igor helped to snap me out of it by calmly reaching over and smacking me up the back of the head. The brief moment of pain helped me to regain my composure. Geordie winced and rubbed his cheek. It was the only spot his mentor had been able to reach. All movement stopped as everyone watched me to see how I would react.

Turning to face Igor, I gave him a brief nod. “Thank you. I needed that.”

“Anytime,” the Russian replied gruffly.

Quiet conversation finally broke out when it became clear that I wasn’t going to unleash my holy marks on my friend or anyone else within my reach. Standing near the doors, the soldiers eased their grips on their weapons. They both carried a prototype that would blast us in half if they decided to use us for target practice. They would no doubt also be carrying some of the explosives that were tiny but could wreak a lot of damage. Any one of us could kill the men with one hand but maybe not before they could take some of us down. It was a sign of my nervousness that thoughts like these were creeping into my head.

As our small convoy made its way towards the area where we hoped our quarry had chosen to set up his lair, I pondered at the turn my thoughts seemed to take lately. Thanks to Nicholas and Anna-Eve, I now looked for treachery everywhere. You just never know who is going to betray you next, my inner voice agreed darkly.

It was still early enough for humans to be out and about when we came to a stop. I was puzzled at the general lack of noise until one of the soldiers pushed the door open. We had pulled off the road and had parked behind a copse of trees. I could faintly hear traffic somewhere down the road but I had to strain to do so.

“Does anyone speak Bulgarian?” Sanderson asked when we’d all gathered around him. I was unsurprised when Gregor nodded. “There’s a small town nearby,” the colonel explained. “I’m going to take a small team out to question some of the townsfolk and see if they can point us in the right direction.”

“I will be happy to be of assistance,” Gregor said and headed for the sedan. Luc tensed but didn’t protest at seeing his friend driving away with four American soldiers for company. It made me nervous as well. I just didn’t like the idea of any of us being separated from the main group.

“He’ll be ok,” Geordie said, probably more to reassure himself than any of us. “Sanderson needs him and he won’t let anything bad happen to him.” The teen had picked up on the tension the Americans were exuding.

Holding their weapons in a seemingly casual manner, the remaining soldiers gathered in a small group while we all waited. They weren’t exactly standing guard but the frequent glances they sent in our direction gave me the impression that they were watching us closely.

Sending out my senses, I zeroed in on Gregor and kept track of him remotely. I couldn’t see or hear what he was doing or who he was talking to but at least I could tell roughly where he was. After a couple of hours presumably spent traversing the town, I sensed him moving back towards us. “They’re coming back,” I said to alert the others. Luc gave me a tense smile, grateful to hear that his friend was still with us.

With our exceptional hearing, we detected the sedan drawing closer and gathered into one group to wait for them. I was slightly amazed to see Japanese warriors mingling with the Europeans. They appeared to be trying hard to get along rather than making snide comments and insulting jabs at each other. Joshua’s death had served a purpose after all. He had set an example of what would happen to anyone who deliberately caused trouble. I just hoped everyone would continue to work together until this mess was resolved. I’d rather not have to narrow our numbers down any further.

Finally hearing their leader approaching as well, the soldiers turned to face the car as it nudged its way through the trees. A glance at Gregor when he disembarked from the car was enough to tell me he had stopped to feed. We always seemed more vital after topping up with blood. I could have used a snack and presumed the rest of the group were hungry as well. I’d have to make sure we all had a chance to feed soon. If I was really going to be their leader during this crisis then I had better start acting like one.

Sanderson stopped to converse with his men before they moved to join us. I’d already deduced that their mission had been a bust when Gregor shook his head regretfully. “We didn’t have any luck questioning the townsfolk,” the American leader confirmed. “The next town is about half an hour away. Hopefully we’ll have better results there.”

I’d been warned by my dream that the Second would have already begun to build his new army by the time we located him. I had a feeling we could question every person we met for the next week and we would come up empty every time. If fate was behind this then it would make us wait until it was ready before unleashing more trouble on us. One thing I had learned about fate was the it didn’t like to make things easy for us.

Chapter Ten

I turned out to be fairly close in my estimation. Six days passed before we stumbled across our first clue. While Gregor and his entourage of American soldiers questioned befuddled humans, I’d taken to skimming through news reports on the colonel’s laptop. A headline about missing vagrants caught my eye and I clicked on the story to read the article in full.

According to the report, during the past week several homeless people had disappeared from one of the larger cities of Bulgaria. The reporter didn’t come right out and say that someone was murdering the hobos but it was strongly implied in his wording.

Sitting on the ground beside me, Geordie sensed my sudden alertness. “Have you discovered something, chérie?”

“I think so. Someone has kidnapped a bunch of homeless people,” I told him. Clicking on the map beside the article, the town and surrounding areas came into view.

Luc and Igor crowded in close to view the screen. “Have you checked to see whether there are any abandoned castles in the nearby area?” my one true love queried.

Thankful that he was as intelligent as he was gorgeous, I searched for information on the town. A couple of castles were mentioned but neither was the one from my dream. Intuition told me that this was the right place and that our search had just been narrowed down.

Our hunt had drawn out for far too long and I just wanted to get this over and done with. Unfortunately, our people were currently scattered around the area and we wouldn’t be able to leave until they had returned. Ishida and a few of his warriors were in the closest town, scrounging for a meal. As always, Gregor and the colonel were questioning more townsfolk about their local landmarks. I hoped they would all return soon.

Emperor Ishida and his warriors began straggling back to our group a couple of hours later. Moments after the last warrior arrived, the sedan also appeared. I beckoned to Sanderson and he jogged towards me as soon as he exited from the car. Gregor’s morose headshake indicated they’d been luckless once more.

“I think I’ve found the city the Second is holed up in,” I told the American when he reached my side. “Or I’ve at least narrowed our search down a bit.”

Hunkering beside me, the soldier took the laptop and quickly read through the news article. “That’s the best lead we’ve had so far,” he said and smiled. It was strained and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Sanderson had grown increasingly distant and I still had no idea why.

“Are we going to leave straight away?” Geordie asked. “I haven’t fed yet.” His lower lip wasn’t quite pooched out in a pout but he was on the verge of it. A hungry vampire was a cranky vampire.

“We’ll stop somewhere before dawn so you can take care of your…needs,” Sanderson promised the teen. Was I the only one who noticed his slight hesitation?

As promised, we halted an hour before dawn in a mid-sized town that had several thousand inhabitants. Igor stayed close to his protégé as they headed out for a meal. Everyone else who had missed out on a feed also took to the streets. Most of them moved in pairs. Maybe they shared my unease at the thought of wandering around alone.

Being in a much more populated area, most of us had to remain hidden in the trucks. So many strangers wandering the streets might be noticed so it was safer to remain out of sight. We were all tired of being crammed in together. I had an inkling of how the caged humans waiting to be spitted then roasted in the cavern of doom had felt. Even for those of us who no longer had to breathe, it was suffocating.

Not particularly hungry, I shook my head when Luc raised his eyebrow in silent invitation to join him for a stroll. He disappeared into the darkness in search of a tasty morsel.

I wished I could send my senses out far and wide to search for unknown vampires. But that could alert the Second that we were closing in on him. He couldn’t possibly know that we were on his trail and I was determined to put an end to him this time. I wasn’t going to leave him any wriggle room to escape from us again. He might be crafty but we were tenacious and we weren’t going to stop until he had joined his fellow disciples in death.

Everyone returned from feeding to bed down in the trucks well before the killing rays of the sun burst into life. Aventius chose to remain awake. He brooded quietly as he watched over his followers. He’d been silent and withdrawn since ending Joshua’s life. Feeling me watching him, he turned his head. The bags beneath his eyes had darkened, making me wonder if he ever slept anymore or if he just pretended to. I read no hostility or blame in his gaze, just a deep and abiding sorrow. He turned away to contemplate his thoughts and left me to mine.

Surrounded by my sleeping friends, I brushed a greasy clump of hair out of Geordie’s eyes. He always tried to lie down beside me when we slept, seeking either companionship, safety or both. Luc was on my other side, lying on his back with his hands clasped on his chest. It was a classic vampire pose I’d seen a hundred times in the movies. All he needed was a coffin for the picture to be complete.

Despite the slight chill emanating from the pair, I found their nearness to be comforting. A feeling of doom had begun to grow inside me like a cancerous tumour. I’d questioned Kokoro last night and she still hadn’t received any new visions. My dreams hadn’t given me any fresh insight into the Second’s plans. I couldn’t account for my presentiment of calamity but it refused to go away.

I hid my misgivings as well as I could when everyone rose for the night. Sometime during the day, we’d reached the town where the homeless people had mysteriously begun disappearing. Pushing open the door of the truck, I saw that our vehicles had been parked inside a large, empty warehouse. Boards covered the windows and shattered bottles littered the corners. Flattened cardboard boxes had been made into makeshift beds, reminding me of my brief stay in the sewers beneath London. Several people appeared to have been squatting here sometime in the recent past. I wondered if they had become inhabitants of the grey castle from my dream. It seemed more than likely.

Unable to speak the native language and unwilling to make their presence known, Sanderson had opted to wait for Gregor to rise before attempting to question any of the townsfolk. “Let’s head out,” the colonel said impatiently as the dapper vampire ambled over to the sedan. Gregor took the soldier’s impatience in his stride and climbed inside the car without complaint.

“All this sitting around doing nothing is starting to get to me,” Geordie complained as the car containing four soldiers and our friend drove away.

Since we were hidden from view of the public, everyone had taken the opportunity to escape from the trucks. Overhearing the teen’s comment, Ishida and Kokoro joined us. “My warriors are also becoming restless,” Ishida said.

“Surely some people in this town can speak English,” Geordie whined. “I don’t see why we can’t all spread out and ask if anyone knows about the castle.”

I had to admit, the idea of sneaking out and trolling the streets for people who knew about the castle appealed to me more than sitting around waiting for Gregor to finally have some luck did. “Ok,” I agreed. “Let’s head out and start asking around. Just make sure no one remembers you.” I received impatient nods at the reminder that we had to remain stealthy and unseen. They had all been at this a lot longer than I had.

Offering me his arm, Luc nodded at the soldiers who had stationed themselves near the warehouse doors. They nodded politely back and I felt their eyes on our backs as we walked away. An imaginary itch started up between my shoulder blades at the feeling that one of them was pointing his gun at me. A quick glance backward dispelled the idea. Aventius and Ishida’s people were leaving the warehouse in dribs and drabs but the soldiers were still inside.

“Are you becoming suspicious of the Americans, my love?” Luc asked me.

“Yes,” I replied truthfully. “Thanks to Nicholas and Anna-Eve’s treachery, I can’t shake the feeling that everyone is out to get us.”

Studying me silently, Luc’s brows lowered in a frown. “I wonder if this is a side effect of being fed imp blood.”

“What are you talking about?” A few side effects had cropped up since I’d ingested the imp blood. He would have to be more specific.

“Your increasing paranoia.” He said it calmly and without accusation, which took a bit of the sting out of it. “From what I understand, the First suffered from mistrust quite badly. The Second engineered the deaths of his closest companions, which is a sign he also lacks the ability to trust even those closest to him.”

Putting some thought into it, I tried to ascertain whether I was harbouring secret doubts about everyone on the planet. “I trust you, our friends, Ishida, Kokoro and most of the Japanese warriors,” I decided. “I trust Aventius and his people to a certain extent.” Now that Joshua was no longer a problem, my trust towards the Europeans had increased slightly.

Luc bestowed a relieved smile on me. “Then hopefully you are just feeling natural caution instead of true paranoia.”

The thought that I might become like the First or his head disciple was disturbing. Both were or had been power mad megalomaniacs without a shred of concern for anyone else. I’d rather be dead than end up like them. My subconscious stirred at that thought but I stomped it down before it could voice its opinion. I didn’t need yet another reminder of my inability to die.

Chapter Eleven

Strolling along arm in arm, Luc and I appeared to be just a normal couple out for a late night walk. Wearing the long black coat he’d stolen for me in Russia, most of my distinctive leather suit was covered. Also dressed all in black, Luc’s pale face seemed to float above his cashmere sweater each time we found ourselves in a pool of darkness between each street light.

Spying movement ahead, we increased our pace and caught up to a lone man. He was staggering along rather than walking and alcohol fumes wafted off his clothes. We had passed a bar a couple of blocks back and I assumed he had recently left it. “Excuse me,” I said to his back. “Do you speak English?”

Turning, he almost tripped over his own feet and squinted at us. His eyes widened when he saw my face. They dropped down to my chest before performing a full body sweep. He wouldn’t be able to see my figure with the coat blocking his view but he licked his lips in a decidedly creepy manor. “I don’t speak English,” he replied in his native tongue. “Do you understand Bulgarian?” It sounded slurry but my innate talent managed to translate his words.

“We do not speak your language,” Luc replied, accurately guessing the man’s reply, and moved to leave.

“In that case,” the drunken man grinned as he reached for what I assumed was a weapon in the small of his back, “I’m going to stab you to death then screw your woman’s brains out before slitting her throat.”

My hand was moving before I could stop it, not that I particularly wanted to. A slap, followed by a snapping noise, rang out. The human fell to the ground and made no move to catch himself. His nose crunched and blood spurted as he landed on his face. I nudged him with my boot, rolling him onto his back, but I already knew he’d never get up again. His eyes were wide, surprised and unblinking. Hunkering down, Luc felt the drunk’s neck for a pulse and shook his head.

“He deserved it,” I said darkly.

“What did he say to anger you so much?” Luc asked as he hefted the man over his shoulder and stood. The knife lying on the ground would have partially answered his question but I relayed what the dead man had said anyway. “You are a beautiful woman,” he said philosophically when I had finished my explanation. “It is no wonder some men are driven to murder just to have a chance to touch you.”

“I’m only beautiful because I’m a vampire,” I reminded him. “I was pretty ordinary as a human.”

Entering a narrow alley, Luc looked at me askance. “To me, you have always been beautiful.” I’d already been a vampire when we had first met but it had taken a few days for my face and body to be transformed. I had only attained true beauty after some horrible things had happened to me, most of which had involved my dismemberment.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” I confessed and earned a wink. “Did you become more gorgeous when you were turned or were you always this hot?”

Slightly uncomfortable with the question, Luc dropped the body into a half empty dumpster and closed the lid. The drunk would be found soon enough once his corpse began to ripen. “According to the courtiers I was ordered to…entertain, I became more attractive once I became a monster.” He glanced at my face to judge my reaction at the reminder that he had been used as a sex toy for several hundred years. That had been one of his maker’s favourite past times. The Comtesse would order him to have sex with anyone who was horny and sometimes he had to perform for an audience.

Keeping my expression as bland as possible, I wanted to tell Luc that he wasn’t a monster but that would have been a lie. We were supernatural creatures that drank blood to survive. What better description could there be for us? With our mood far more sombre now, we resumed our hunt.

Several hours later, most humans were asleep and our pickings were slim so we decided to head back to the warehouse. We’d both fed, which had improved our mood enough to stop for a quickie. Our tryst was held on the rooftop of an apartment building. If any other vampires in the area heard our antics, they kept it to themselves.

Using the fire escape, we climbed down to the first floor then jumped the rest of the way to the ground. Landing quietly, I came very close to stepping on a pair of legs. By the odour of unwashed flesh wafting from the body, I knew it had to be a homeless person. He was lying still and I assumed he was either dead drunk or dead in reality. When he suddenly let out a resounding belch, I cleverly ascertained that he was neither.

Even in the dim light of the alley, Luc’s expression was easy for me to read thanks to my enhanced vision. He lifted an eyebrow in query. I debated about skipping questioning the wino but decided we might as well give it a try. So far, we’d only found two people who had spoken English and neither had known anything about the mystery castle.

Crouching beside the vagrant, I was glad I didn’t need to breathe. The fumes coming off him would have been enough to make my eyes water if they’d still been capable of it. Somewhere between sixty and four hundred years old, his face was mostly hidden by a bushy grey beard. Layers of wrinkles made his eyes seem small and squinty even when they were shut. A jug of wine lay in the crook of one arm. It was held tightly enough and was in no danger of smashing to the ground. He would be well practiced at securely cradling bottles of alcohol.

Aware that I’d have to wash my hands after touching the hobo, I reached out and touched his arm. Eyes snapping open instantly, he cowered away from me. “Don’t kill me!” he whisper-screamed in Bulgarian. He’d clearly heard the news reports of his fellow homeless people going missing.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said soothingly. “Do you speak English?”

Glaring at me suspiciously, he hugged his wine bottle to his thin chest. “What do you want?” His English was pretty good, for a street bum.

“Do you know of any castles in the area that aren’t generally known to the public?”

It took him a moment to translate the words and his fear increased. “Why do you want to know about that cursed place?”

Gregor had been right, the castle did have a reputation of being unsavoury. I could have made up a lie about being a tourist but I decided to go with the truth. “I’m pretty sure the person taking the homeless people of this city is holed up in there. We’re planning on making sure he doesn’t kidnap any more of your friends.” I had no idea whether he had been friends with any of the missing people but ‘associates’ just didn’t seem to be the appropriate word to use to describe them.

Eyes flicking past me to study Luc, the wino took a long gulp from his bottle. He belched out fumes almost putrid enough to make my hair fall out then motioned for me to move closer. Moving closer was the last thing I wanted to do but I obligingly leaned in. “Are you a vamphyri?” he whispered hoarsely. I assumed that was an archaic term for vampire. I nodded and he grinned at me, revealing a mostly toothless pair of gums. The few teeth he still had were black and canted in different directions. “I knew you were! I can tell by your black, soulless eyes.” He lifted a shaky hand and pointed at his own eyes and then at mine.

“What can you tell me about the castle?” I asked him, ignoring the comment that I was soulless. For all I knew, he was right and my soul had departed from my body the instant I had died and been reborn as a creature of the night. That would explain why my kin couldn’t abide holy objects. Since I could abide them, maybe my soul was still intact. Now wasn’t the time to bring the subject up so I let it go.

Taking another swig, the wino tucked the bottle back into the crook of his arm and sat up straighter. “My grandmother told me about the cursed place when I was small.” He indicated a height that meant he’d probably been about five or six at the time. “She was a superstitious old crone but she knew how to tell a story.”

His smile was fond and far off as he recalled his long dead relative. “She said the castle had been built a thousand years ago by an evil vamphyri.” I started slightly at that revelation and a shiver went down my spine. “The creature took many of the nearby villagers, turning them into his devoted slaves.” I doubted they’d really been particularly devoted to him. Like any servant, they had been helpless to resist following the commands of their master.

His gaze turned inwards, remembering the story he’d heard many decades ago. “After three hundred years of terror, the villagers grew tired of their oppression and revolted. They stormed the castle on a bright summer’s day, dragging every evil creature they found inside out into the light.”

Luc shifted uncomfortably, probably at the thought of being roasted to death by the sun. It wasn’t pleasant knowing how vulnerable we were during daylight hours. I could picture the scene of humans swarming through the castle all too easily.

Still staring into the past, the hobo continued. “The vamphyri master was awake and expecting the villagers, almost as if he’d known they were coming. He put up a fierce fight but they slew him with holy water and fire.”

Neither was harmful to me but for any other vampire, it was a deadly combination. The holy water acted like acid and fire couldn’t be put out once it touched our flesh. “Do you know where the cursed castle is?” I asked him quietly, snapping him out of his memories.

His expression turned crafty and he wiggled his eyebrows. “What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

Personally, I’d have thought the prospect of not being turned into my slave would have been enough but I was wrong about that. Luc stepped forward and his hand came over my shoulder. I took the notes he offered and handed them to the bum.

Quickly tallying the money, the wino made the notes disappear inside his filthy shirt and took another swig from his bottle. He gestured me even closer and I leaned in again, cringing on the inside at the amount of germs that had to be crawling all over him. “The castle lies to the north and east,” he divulged in a hushed whisper. “It will take you an hour to get close to it by car and then another hour on foot. It is surrounded by a dense forest. I journeyed to the castle when I was a young man. Even then the paths had become overgrown. It is as if the earth itself is warning humans to stay away.” Lucky for us, we weren’t human.

He’d sobered while telling us the story and his eyes became slightly clearer. He had a final warning for me and stopped me from standing with a grimy hand on my arm. “Beware, vamphyri, the castle still retains its curse to this day. Any of your kind who steps foot inside those crumbling walls will die.”

Despite myself, I felt a flare of fright rise up and had to force it back down. I could have hypnotized him into forgetting he’d talked to us but I didn’t bother to. Who’d believe a crazy old drunk like that anyway? My subconscious had a response ready. Are you telling me you don’t believe every word he just uttered? It had me there. He might be old, he might be a bum but he’d also been utterly believable in his conviction that the castle was cursed.

Chapter Twelve

Gregor and his entourage of soldiers had returned while Luc and I had been out for our stroll. Everyone was waiting for us by the time we made our way back to the warehouse. I could tell instantly that something had happened during our absence. Ishida stood with his arms crossed and his face was even more expressionless than usual. Kokoro stood close beside him with her hand on his shoulder. She was speaking quietly but urgently into his ear. All of their warriors were on full alert. Some had donned their masks, hiding their faces from just beneath the eyes down to their chins. They were poised for battle and it didn’t look like it would take much to set them off.

Igor, Gregor and Geordie were huddled together in a small, worried group. Geordie gave me a relieved smile when we entered the warehouse but it immediately turned into a frown again. Aventius and his followers were off to one side, standing very still and mostly speechless. I had the sense that they were trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Colonel Sanderson whirled around when one of his men pointed at us. Fury had turned his face an unnatural shade of red. Striding over until he was standing right in front of me, he bent down until his face was only inches away from mine. “I did not give you authorization to unleash your…people on this city!”

Luc tensed beside me. I wasn’t sure if it was due to affront on my behalf or concern at how I was going to react to being shouted at. “I know where the castle is,” I told Sanderson quietly, cutting off his tirade before it could get into full swing. I surprised myself and everyone else by staying calm in the face of his rage.

Veins bulging in his forehead, the colonel strived for control. I wasn’t sure what had him so worked up. Did he think my ‘people’ had been out slaughtering humans indiscriminately? Uh, you did slap that guy to death, remember? I mentally snarled at my inner voice for pointing that out. It seemed safer to take my annoyance out on it rather than unleashing it on the soldier. He had twelve armed men to back him up and their weapons had been designed to take us down. Getting into a shouting match probably wouldn’t be the brightest idea.

“Where is it?” Sanderson snapped, straightening up and putting some distance between us. His soldiers had moved closer to surround their leader. They weren’t pointing their guns at anyone but their tense postures made me think they were ready to do so.

“A street bum told us about it. He says he went to see it when he was young and that it’s somewhere to the north-east,” I replied. “It’ll take us an hour to reach it by road and another hour on foot.”

Rubbing his face with both hands, the colonel let out a sigh and snapped his fingers at one of his men. “Bring me the laptop. We need to find this castle. It might not be marked on any maps but satellite photos might be able to help us narrow the search down.”

Sensing that the danger had passed, some of the tension eased. Ishida’s warriors didn’t relax their vigilance and remained on high alert. Luc strolled over to our friends but I detoured to speak to the emperor first. “What did we miss?” I asked the teen bluntly.

Still too annoyed to speak, Ishida clamped his lips together and allowed his seer to respond on his behalf. “Colonel Sanderson raised his voice to Emperor Ishida,” Kokoro said with a hint of ire. “He seems to be under the impression that we defied his orders by leaving the warehouse to question our food.”

One thing I’d learned about being in charge was that it was difficult to sit on the fence and not favour one side over the other. Sanderson had told us only to leave in small groups so we’d have a better chance of remaining unnoticed. Then again vampires were well used to not being seen and making humans forget that we existed. I agreed with both of their arguments but couldn’t outright support either side.

“I’m sorry the Colonel treated you with disrespect, Emperor Ishida.” Good manners and ten thousand years of tradition made him return my bow. “Thanks for not beheading him,” I said to the teen less formally.

A tiny smile broke through Ishida’s reserve. “The only reason I did not give the order for his death was because I thought it might displease you.”

“I appreciate that.” We clasped forearms, which was their version of a hug. Kokoro gave me a small nod of thanks for my diplomacy but worry creased her forehead. I’d try to speak to her alone and see what was on her mind if I got the chance.

I checked on Aventius and his group next. The ex-councillor had managed to keep his followers calm but the strain was showing in their frightened glances and worried whispers. “This will all be over soon,” I told them. They would all have heard me telling Sanderson that I’d found the castle but more reassurance couldn’t hurt. “Once we’ve killed the Second and his fledglings, we can all return to our homes.” I felt a sharp stab of pain that I had no home to return to. My old life was gone forever and my new life had been chaotic from the first moment I had become aware that I was now undead. Luc had promised me that we would have a house of our own one day. If we managed to live through this, maybe I’d even hold him to it.

“We are with you, Mortis,” Aventius said and offered me his hand. It was a brave gesture since I had a deadly holy mark embedded on my palm. Some of his people flinched when I shook with him and were relieved when he didn’t turn into a puddle of ooze.

Finished with calming down my allies, I joined my small group of friends. Geordie hugged me tightly. He was still trembling slightly. His level of fright told me just how tense it must have been during our absence. “I am glad you are back, chérie,” he murmured. “I thought Sanderson’s men were going to open fire on us at one point.”

He might be young but Geordie had a built-in radar and good instincts that could judge the mood of a crowd. “Everything is ok now, right?” I asked him quietly.

Pulling back, he glanced around and gave a reluctant nod. He wrapped his arms around himself, still unconsciously seeking comfort. “I hope we can leave this place soon. I do not like this city.”

If he didn’t like the city, I was pretty sure he was going to hate the castle. Luc and I were the only two who knew of the castle’s evil reputation. We exchanged a glance and silently agreed to keep the details to ourselves. Our kin were already on edge and the soldiers didn’t seem to be handling themselves much better. Finding out that the castle was reputedly cursed probably wouldn’t help much.

Smiling, Gregor also gave me a hug. It wasn’t usual behaviour for him, unless either of us was heading into danger. “I think we should keep a close eye on the Colonel,” he said almost beneath his breath into my ear. “He seems to be near breaking point.”

Since he’d spent several nights in a row in the American’s company, he’d have a better insight into Sanderson’s mood than anyone. “Ok. I’ll keep that in mind,” I murmured back.

Igor gave me a gruff nod, which I returned. Even he was displaying signs of nervousness. His eyes kept flicking to the soldiers that were guarding Sanderson. It looked like I wasn’t the only one who mistrusted them. Maybe my paranoia was transferrable and was starting to spread to my friends.

Resting his laptop on the hood of his car, Sanderson spent half an hour searching for the castle. I presumed he was successful when he gestured for me to join him. My four friends followed me but everyone else remained where they were. With hearing like ours, there was no need for us all to crowd around close to be able to listen in.

“I think I’ve found it,” the colonel said and pointed to what I guessed was a satellite photo. I could just make out the outline of a large stone structure in a dense forest. He clicked on the screen and the picture changed to a zoomed out view of a vast sea of trees. With some rapid key strokes, he mapped the route we would have to take. “The intel the vagrant gave you is solid,” he said when he was done. “It will take an hour by car and at least another hour on foot to reach the castle.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the wino’s words of warning that made my feeling of doom swell to the surface but it was suddenly back with a vengeance. I knew with utter certainty that my friends and allies would die if they stepped inside the crumbling structure. Curse or no curse, none of them would be going with me when I stormed the decrepit structure.

“What is it, Nat?” Geordie asked, sensing my shift in mood.

“I think we should head there now,” I said as calmly as I could.

Gregor checked his watch. “There isn’t enough time. It will be dawn in two and a half hours. We’d never be able to get everyone inside before the sun rose.”

“I’m going in alone.” My quiet words were met with an immediate uproar. Letting the protests wash over me, I watched Sanderson’s face closely.

Surprise was followed by speculation and another emotion that he smothered too quickly for me to be able to identify. “Agreed,” he said, overriding the protests. “We should leave as soon as possible.”

Luc wrested my attention away from the soldier by marching me off to the side. “I will not let you hunt down and face the Second alone,” he said tightly.

Reading fear in his expression, I swallowed down a lump in my throat before it could fully form and choke off my words. “It has to be this way, Luc.”

“Why?” His hands were almost painfully tight on my shoulders as he searched my face for answers.

“Something bad is going to happen in the castle,” I replied. “I can feel it.”

Overhearing my prophecy of doom, my kin came to surround me. Geordie slipped through the crowd and pressed himself to my side. “What can you sense, chérie?”

“Death and darkness,” Kokoro replied and the crowd made way for her. Ishida led her to the centre of the crowd.

“None of you can enter the castle,” I told my friends and allies. “I don’t know why, I just know that if you do, you will die. With my ability to heal, I have a better chance at surviving whatever is going to happen in there.”

Ishida’s anger returned, mixed with frustrated impotence. “Do you expect us to remain behind and sit on our hands while you fight our battle for us?”

Feeling time slipping away, I knew I had to leave now or we would all be doomed. The death and darkness wasn’t meant for me alone but was intended for all of us. Maybe keeping them away from the castle would keep them safe “I want you all to promise me that you’ll watch out for each other while I’m gone.” I met every single gaze and all nodded, however reluctantly.

Forgoing tradition for once in his lengthy unlife, Ishida hugged me. “Stay safe, Natalie.”

Kokoro was next. She brushed a delicate kiss across my cheek. “We will wait for your return, no matter how long it will take.” I sensed a deeper meaning behind her words but she melted away before I could question her about it.

Aventius shook my hand again, murmuring his ongoing support and then I was left alone with my friends. Gregor, Igor and Geordie squished me in a three-way hug. Geordie was already dry sobbing as his mentor led him away. He was too distraught to speak and sent me tragic glances that conveyed his unhappiness about being separated from me. A lump had formed in my throat again and it wouldn’t take much to have me breaking into dry sobs as well. That wouldn’t exactly boost my reputation as a fearsome figure of legend.

Turning to Luc, it almost broke my heart to see the desolation on his face. “Why do I have the feeling that I’ll never see you again?” he said as he brushed this thumb over my cheek lightly.

“Whatever happens, I promise you that we will be together again, Luc.” It was a promise I meant to keep. Nothing would stop me from being with the only man who I had ever loved and who miraculously loved me in return.

He bent down and I stood on my tippy toes to meet him. Our kiss was poignant and all too brief. Sanderson cleared his throat impatiently, not so subtly reminding me that we had a deadline to meet.

“I love you,” I said to Luc.

“And I love you, more than life itself,” he replied.

Gregor stepped forward to hand me my backpack and offered me a weak smile that did nothing to bolster my courage. Nodding my thanks, I turned my back on my friends and allies and strode towards my destiny.

Chapter Thirteen

Three of the colonel’s men squeezed into the back of the sedan while I took the front passenger seat. As usual, Sanderson was behind the wheel. Two of his soldiers swung the warehouse doors open, nodding to their superior as we drove past them. I caught a glimpse of my friends in the side mirror. Geordie blew me a tremulous kiss, Luc smiled bleakly then the doors were swung shut again. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach as they were cut off from my sight. Luc’s own words of doom that we might never see each other again echoed in my head.

A tense silence shrouded the car as we sped through the waning night. Sanderson gripped the steering wheel like he was trying to strangle it. His men shifted uncomfortably in the back. They darted nervous glances at me that I caught out of the corner of my eye.

Their uneasiness was making me nervous. I didn’t like having them at my back when they were acting so skittishly. They were all armed but so was I. My backpack was on the floor at my feet with the swords nestled inside rather than strapped across my back. If any of the men were stupid enough to try to shoot me, the swords would be in my hands and slicing them apart before they could pull the trigger.

They eventually settled down and began to talk quietly. The soldiers had become used to Gregor riding along with them but I was the dreaded Mortis. Despite my notoriety, I was only a five minute wonder to them. I tried to remember if my attention span had been that short when I had been human. That seemed like a long time ago now and in a life that might have happened to someone else.

During the drive, I refined the plan that was brewing in my head. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a plan. I aimed to sneak up to the castle and enter it just after dawn. If I was lucky, the Second wouldn’t even know I was there until I crept up behind him and stabbed him in the back.

It was a risky move but I cautiously sent my senses northward. Finding a large number of vampires roughly where the castle was supposed to be, I pulled back before the new master of the decrepit ruin could feel my mental probe. “We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” I advised the colonel. He gave me a terse nod without asking how I could be sure and concentrated on driving. He knew about some of my abilities and was aware that I could sense other vampires.

Watching the city slide past the window, the buildings quickly gave way to trees and fields. We passed through a few smaller towns then left civilization behind entirely. The roads became more and more worn and untended until we were bumping in and out of potholes along a dirt track. One of the soldier’s teeth clicked together after we hit a particularly deep hole and he gave a muttered curse. The scent of fresh blood bloomed before he swallowed the salty liquid down.

Following the route he’d mapped out, Sanderson pulled over at what was presumably the closest point the road was able to bring us to the castle. Our car would be safe enough during our absence. No one was likely to stumble across it way out here. We hadn’t passed another vehicle since leaving the last small town behind. If any houses had been built out in this wilderness, I hadn’t seen them. Fences indicated the land to either side of the dirt road was owned by someone but the barbwire was rusted and the fence posts riddled with termites. In some cases, the fences had fallen down and hadn’t been replaced. I doubted they ever would be.

Sanderson popped the trunk open and grabbed a blanket. I took the offering and inspected it for holes. It was intact but musty. Instinct told me to leave my backpack and sheaths in the car. Trusting the feeling, I carried the swords in one hand and used the other to fend off branches as we began pushing our way through the trees. Stepping over a fence that had fallen long ago, we entered the forest. Any fledglings that had been sent out to hunt for prey would have returned to their lair by now. Dawn was just over an hour away and no recently made vampires would want to take a chance against being fried to death.

Sanderson took the lead, doggedly forging a path through the dense underbrush. I went next and had to stop myself from glancing backwards at his men. As well as carrying the large prototype guns, their pockets bulged with the tiny explosives that were also highly effective at rending us to pieces.

Stumbling across a narrow path that appeared to have been made by animals, Sanderson checked his compass to make sure it would take us in the correct direction before taking it. I recognized it as being the same path from my dream but didn’t bother to advise him of this fact. The men were already nervous enough without me reminding them of my other strange abilities.

Dawn hovered just over the horizon when we reached the edge of a clearing. The trees blocked the sun but I could feel it ready to appear and bathe the area in its killing rays. Just like in my dream, a light shone in the only tower still standing in the castle. For a brief moment, a pale face appeared in the window then the light was cut off as the opening was covered by black cloth.

I couldn’t be certain but I didn’t think that the Second had spied us hidden amongst the trees. In the brief glimpse I’d had of his face, he hadn’t seemed to be alarmed. I could only hope he was arrogant enough to believe we were too stupid to be able to track him down. With luck, he was still complacent and hadn’t sent out his senses to make sure no one was lurking around.

In the few moments I had left before the sun would arrive, I studied the castle. As per my dream, the door had been replaced recently. I doubted it would be unlocked and it might have been reinforced. I didn’t want to waste time trying to break it down. The windows were all boarded over as well but I figured using one of them would offer me the quickest mode of entry.

“What’s your plan?” Sanderson whispered. The predawn air was cool yet sweat stood out on his forehead. Nerves had both him and his men shifting from foot to foot and compulsively checking their weapons.

“I’ll go in alone, take down the Second, hunt down his servants then let you know when it’s safe for you to enter.”

“You’re really going in alone?” He met my eyes then dropped them as if he was afraid I would try to hypnotize him. I was puzzled by his lack of trust. Doesn’t he know me better than that by now? I’d never done anything to give him a reason not to trust me, apart from being a creature of the night that preyed on humans for food of course.

“It will be safer for you and your men if you wait outside,” I told him. Feeling the sun inching closer by the second, I pulled the blanket up so it covered my head but left my face exposed. “Wish me luck,” I said quietly then stepped out into the clearing.

“Luck,” muttered one of the soldiers just before I broke into a run.

Aiming for the window to the left of the doors, I launched myself at the opening. I flew headfirst with my swords pointed backwards so they wouldn’t be harmed. My fists smashed through the boards just as the sun made an appearance. Daylight shone through the blanket, momentarily blinding me.

Rolling to my feet, I held my swords ready for attack. Steam rose from the blanket that covered my head and upper body. I dropped it and then my coat to the grimy stone floor and turned in a circle. None of the fledglings would be capable of staying awake during the day for another several hundred years. Only one occupant residing in the building had that capacity. I wasn’t expecting to find any enemies yet searched for them anyway. I flinched away from the weak dawn light that spilled in through the smashed boards and saw an empty foyer.

The stone floored foyer was long and narrow with high archways branching off to either side. I could sense the corpses of fledglings all around me. Just like my dream had predicted, the Second had been busily building his new army. He had already made a head start on his new attempt at world domination. His unconscious servants could wait, for now. My main goal was to hunt down the master of the crumbling castle and finally put an end to our lengthy hunt.

Striding quietly to the end of the foyer, I paused at the largest archway. All of the rooms I’d passed had been empty of furniture. Unfortunately, they had been packed with either the undead or bodies of drained humans that would soon become the undead. Beyond the archway was a large room that had probably once been the throne room. It was also devoid of furnishings. Newly-made fledglings lay side by side on the floor. I counted over thirty bodies and wondered how the Second had managed to kidnap so many humans without being discovered. As I’d suspected, most had been homeless going by their ragged clothing and unkempt appearances. They had a home now but it wasn’t the safe haven their master had thought it would be. If the rumours were true, the castle was cursed and for them, I was the embodiment of that curse.

I had a choice of four more archways to explore. All would most likely lead to the towers. Walking through the nearest doorway to the right, rubble at the far end of the narrow hallway had probably been caused by the tower’s collapse. A staircase to my right wound out of sight and had to lead to the only tower still standing.

Remaining very still, I listened intently and heard no movement coming from above. I could almost feel the Second’s malevolent presence up there. Something told me he was waiting for me and it wasn’t my inner voice for a change. My survival instinct was screaming that I was in danger despite my inability to die. I had no choice but to ignore it and continue with my pursuit. Holding my swords tightly, I readied myself for battle then took to the stairs.

Chapter Fourteen

My intuition of danger turned out to be correct. The Second was waiting for me when I reached the top of the spiral staircase and entered the small, circular room. The light had been quenched and smoke from a fire in one corner that had been burning moments ago wafted over to me.

Standing utterly still, I didn’t see the Second hiding in the shadows at first. When I spied him a second later, alarm clenched my insides. Every inch of his flesh was covered, including his face. He’d progressed from beyond wearing a simple loincloth to wearing modern clothing. It was just one sign of his ability to adapt. One gloved hand was wrapped around the curtain over the window. “Welcome, Mortis,” he intoned in his ancient African dialect. “I have been waiting for you.”

I didn’t get a chance to brace myself before he pulled the curtain aside. Light blazed through the window and even my enhanced speed wasn’t enough to carry me to safety quickly enough. Searing pain flashed through me as the sunlight hit the side of my face. My left eye burst and my skin sizzled and popped. A smell a lot like roasting pork wafted from me, making my stomach clench in revulsion.

Throwing myself to the side, I rolled into the shadows. I dropped my swords and clutched at my face. This wasn’t the first time I’d suffered the unbearable pain of direct sunlight. The agony was just as enormous as I remembered. It rendered me momentarily helpless and unable to defend myself let alone to go on the attack.

Darkness returned as the Second dropped the curtain back into place. He gave a dry chuckle, pleased that his plan had succeeded. His feet were rapid and nearly silent as he crossed the small room. Knocking my hands out of the way, a whooshing sound was accompanied by my head becoming detached from my shoulders. It rolled a couple of feet away before coming to a stop. It landed on my left cheek so my right eye had a distressingly clear view of what was about to happen.

Grinning triumphantly, the Second pinned one of my wrists down with his foot and hacked off my hand. He repeated the act with my other hand. My body was still trying to writhe in agony despite the pain being localized to my head. Most of the flesh on the left side of my face had been eaten away. My tongue slipped out through the hole where my cheek had been and lolled on the filthy stone floor.

Observing his handiwork, the Second kicked one of my hands away. It hit the far wall and landed on its back like a crippled crab. Resting his ooze stained machete over his shoulder, the Second pulled off the balaclava that had kept him safe from the sun. Almost fully restored to health now, his skin held only a hint of grey. His features were strong and proud but an arrogant expression spoiled his handsomeness. Utter contempt for me poured off him in waves. “The sheer audacity that you believe you have the right to end my life is almost beyond my ability to comprehend,” he said quietly. “Did you really believe that a being as insignificant as you would be able to kill me?”

It was difficult to gather my wits when I was in so much pain but I managed a response. “That’s pretty much what your master said right before I killed him.” Thanks to my tongue not being inside my mouth where it belonged, my speech came out slurred and mushy but he understood me well enough.

“It was you who killed my master?” Shock made him back away a few steps. Checking that my hands were still detached, he shook off his fear and barked out what I surmised was supposed to be a laugh. “The First had always been inferior to me. You might have managed to kill him yet look how easily I bested you.”

Tired of waiting for me to figure out how to conquer the pain, my subconscious gave me a mental shake. Stop screwing around and possess your hands already! Grateful for its suggestion, I split my consciousness and sent it into Lefty and Righty. The pain in my face immediately faded and became just a distant annoyance. Flipping over onto its palm, Righty gave the Second the finger behind his back then scuttled closer to him. I came close to sniggering then went cold when I realized I hadn’t made my hand make the gesture. Lefty remained where it was, waiting for the command to strike.

Closing the distance between us again, the Second nudged my body with his toe. Hunkering down beside me, he squeezed one of my breasts and smiled at the disgust that swept across my face. “While you seemingly cannot die, your body is utterly helpless without your head,” he mused. I suddenly remembered his plan to turn me into one of his concubines. Reading the knowledge on my disfigured face, he smiled and turned my body over so he could reach the laces of my suit. “I am going to use you in every way possible while you watch, helpless to stop me.”

While he’d been baiting me, Lefty had roused itself and crept into position. Both hands were poised to obey my mental command. Coldly watching the Second undressing my unresisting body, I decided to show him just how helpless I wasn’t rather than going straight in for the kill. This must be what a cat feels like when it is toying with a mouse. A cruel anticipation crept over me at the thought of making the Second pay for his crimes against humanity.

Moving stealthily, my hands worked their way over to the Second’s feet and grasped his ankles. Stiffening at the contact, he tried to whirl around but it was already too late. I unleashed the power of the holy marks and my hands sank through his flesh and bone until they were holding nothing but melted ooze.

Screaming shrilly, the Second scrambled backward. His eyes shifted from his severed feet still sitting in their shoes, to the stumps his shins now ended in. He screamed even louder when Lefty and Righty scuttled towards him. He made a lunge for his machete but Righty beat him to it and tossed the weapon to the far side of the room.

A wintry smile curved one side of my mouth upwards. The other side had been eaten completely away by the sun and was in no condition to obey me. Working in tandem, my hands settled around the Second’s wrists. His hands thumped to the ground and the newest master of the cursed castle flopped over onto his stomach. With surprising speed, he wormed his way towards the stairs. “Oh no you don’t,” I muttered and my hands went on the chase.

Lefty grabbed hold of the Second’s leg and stopped his forward momentum. Rolling over, my adversary tried to beat Righty away with a stump but my hand was far too nimble for any of his clumsy blows to land. Lefty joined its twin and they danced up to sit on either side of the ancient vampire’s skull.

“Don’t kill me!” he begged, holding out his stumps in appeal. “If you allow me to live, you can rule at my side as an equal.” His eyes slid to the left, which was a sure sign he was lying if what I had learned from watching documentaries on TV were true. He gave a final plea that did nothing to help his cause. “Together, we can turn this planet into a paradise for our kind.”

“No thanks. The last thing this planet needs is for monsters to be in charge of it,” I said and released my holy marks on him for the third and final time.

His head imploded in a gush of black ooze and his body quickly followed. My hands leaped clear of the mess and scurried back to me. Working together, they rolled my head over to my body then scuttled down to the stumps of my arms. With triple flashes of pain, I became whole again, except for the damage that had been created due to my brief exposure to the sun. That was going to take a lot longer to heal. Lifting one of my swords, I checked my reflection and winced at the sight. It would be nightfall at least before I would cease to look like something had just escaped from a graveyard. If I were to lose my memory and awaken looking like this, I’d think I was a zombie for sure.

With the Second now dead, I was left with the job of eradicating his caches of servants. I could have called for the soldiers to join me but didn’t. Battle lust was calling me and orange light from my good eye bathed the stairs as I made my way back down to the ground floor. My strange new lust didn’t give me the usual thrill as I stabbed the first insensate fledgling through the chest. I guessed my victims had to be able to fight back for the experience to be enjoyable.

Methodically moving from one body to the next, I made precise thrusts through hearts and worked my way through the unmoving mass of inert hobos. Not all were reduced to watery stains. The humans that had only been fed blood recently apparently hadn’t finished their transformation to the undead yet. Their corpses would rot just like any normal person’s. I would have to warn Sanderson to burn their bodies just in case. You could never be too careful when it came to vampires.

Locating every cache that had been stashed inside the castle, I finally finished off the last fledgling. As a precaution, I sent out my senses and checked the castle and surrounding area. It was a relief to find it was vampire free. Without any enemies to combat, the battle lust began to ebb. My feelings of doom had all been for nothing. I felt idiotic for letting the old wino’s superstition get to me.

“Sanderson!” I yelled loudly enough through the door for the soldiers to hear me even if they were still hiding in the forest. “The Second and his fledglings are dead and I’m all done in here!”

“Well done!” he called back from much closer than I’d expected. “We’ll be there in a minute! Will we be able to get in through the door?” His voice was growing in volume as he came closer.

Inspecting the door, I found a key sticking out of the brand new lock. “Well that’s handy,” I murmured to myself. It turned easily and the lock clicked open. “It’s unlocked!” I called out then hurried over to retrieve my coat and the blanket that I’d dropped earlier. The sunlight pouring in through the broken boards had moved halfway up the wall during my killing spree. I had to duck beneath it to avoid further injury.

Using the blanket, I cleaned my swords as the men entered the castle. I was startled when the soldiers broke into a run and turned to see what had spooked them. Blinded by the sunlight at the far end of the hallway, I turned away, blinking away bright spots of light from my good eye. Feet rushed towards me and hands grabbed my arms. “What’s going on?” I asked, wondering if another threat had risen while I’d been killing the fledglings. In the middle of battle lust, everything else tended to fade into insignificance. I sent my senses out again but they found no threats in the form of the undead. My confusion increased and my feeling of doom was suddenly back but much worse this time.

“I’m sorry, Natalie,” Colonel Sanderson said with what sounded like genuine regret. “This isn’t my choice but I have to follow my orders.” Someone tore the blanket and coat from my hands and someone else grabbed my swords. Then I was being lifted off the ground and turned towards the door.

Bewildered and still blinded by the bright sunlight, I didn’t grasp what was happening until I was propelled through the door and flung to the ground. Exposed to the unrelenting rays of the sun, my exposed skin immediately began to dissolve. My body began to boil inside the protective covering of the suit. This time I wasn’t just melting from the waist down like I had in the Japanese pit of death. I was being destroyed from my head to my toes.

Shrieking in agony unequalled by anything else I’d ever felt before, I managed to roll over onto my stomach and crawl a few inches towards the protective covering of the forest. A boot in the middle of my back halted my progress and pinned me to the ground. Bubbling inside the suit, my flesh sluiced away and my bones burst from the heat. Scrabbling at the ground, I felt my hands break apart but I was beyond being able to see them. Both of my eyes were now gone, as was most of my face. Exposed skin, meat and fat sizzled, liquefied and ran off my degenerating skeleton like water.

“Jesus, can’t we put her out of her misery?” The plaintive question was voiced by one of the colonel’s soldiers. His words were muted due to my ears having melted away and my ability to hear quickly being rendered nearly inoperable.

Now I understood my feelings of doom and paranoia. I’d already been double crossed by both Anna-Eve and Nicholas but this betrayal was by far the worst. With my rapidly decreasing hearing, I heard their weapons being readied.

“Let’s end this,” Sanderson said. “On my count. One. Two. Three.”

As the countdown ended, they opened fire and blew what was left of my body apart. The sensation of being caught inside a nuclear blast only lasted for a second or two before it was suddenly cut off.

Chapter Fifteen

My consciousness fled just after the first bullet thumped home and exploded. It was a profound relief to be freed from the agony. Without any type of physical senses, I couldn’t see or hear what was happening to me and that was probably just as well. I’d seen the aftermath of what just one of the prototypes had done to me. Seeing the ruin that would have been left after several bullets had hit me would have been far from pleasant.

Hovering over my remains, I had no way of knowing how much time had passed before I was suddenly on the move. Still connected to what had to be just gobbets of meat and splinters of bone by now, I floated along helplessly as what was left of me was shifted. Just like when Anna-Eve’s servant had blasted me apart, my body would have to be scooped up before it could be transported.

All attempts to possess my body failed. I could sense it but it remained stubbornly resistant to being taken over. It was hard to tell how long we travelled before we eventually came to a stop. Still hovering powerlessly, I was confused when the direction changed and I suddenly seemed to be descending in an elevator. The sensation lasted for far too long before I finally came to a stop.

Disembodied, I hung in limbo, vainly trying to force myself back into my body. Wherever I was, I could no longer sense the sun. Away from the killing rays of light, I should have immediately begun to heal. I began to think that I had finally been damaged beyond repair when I remained inert. The most likely possibility was that Sanderson had found a way to reduce me to a state that I couldn’t come back from.

More time passed and there was no change in either myself or my location. Remaining calm was easier to do when I was just pure thought. I reasoned that my body had always been able to heal itself before so there was no reason why it shouldn’t be able to this time.

Flinging out my senses, I searched for my friends and allies. No matter how far I sent my consciousness, I couldn’t locate any of my kind. They had either moved out of my range or, a far worse thought to contemplate, they were dead.

All alone, floating in a void of nothingness, even my subconscious seemed to have abandoned me. I’d been betrayed and left to exist in a never changing stasis.

It could have been either weeks or months later when my persistent prodding at my remains finally paid off. Hope suddenly flared when I felt an answering twitch in my ruined flesh. Whichever part of me was responding to my mental command, it seemed to be infinitesimally small. A few more particles obeyed my order to move and they massed together into a shapeless clump. Even combined, they were so miniscule they would probably have been all but invisible to the naked eye.

Feeling around with the tiny cluster of particles, I discovered why my body had refused to respond to my attempts to possess it. I didn’t really have a body at all anymore. My flesh had been reduced to the consistency of ash. There were no limbs or appendages for my consciousness to inhabit. Only sheer stubborn persistence had allowed me to infiltrate the tiny particles at all.

Worming its way over my ashes until it met resistance, the clump traversed an area that turned out to be square. I’m in a box again, I concluded in despair. My remains might be small enough to fit into a shoebox but at least they were together. This time my enemies had only used one box to imprison me in instead of splitting me up into several containers. I’d escaped from my underground coffins once and I hoped I could do it again.

A painfully slow and careful inspection of all four sides as well as the top and bottom of the box told me that there were no hinges or locks to exploit this time. The box had been sealed tight but that didn’t mean it was completely impenetrable.

Slowly and methodically, not that I had much choice about that, I felt for flaws in the design. I couldn’t tell what material the box was made from but figured it was probably metal. Sanderson would have made sure my prison was as secure as humanly possible. Then again, I was no longer human so maybe his precautions would fall short of his expectations. It was the only hope I had as I persisted with my inspection.

Focussing my attention on the corners since they would probably be the weakest areas, I was finally rewarded when I stumbled across an irregularity. Exploring it carefully, I found the tiniest of holes and manoeuvred the clump inside. They squirmed through the hole and were suddenly floating.

Puzzled at finding the cluster now immersed in water, I prevented it from being washed away by squishing the bits together and anchoring one end inside the tiny hole. Ok, I’ve been imprisoned inside a metal box and the box has been put in water. At first I thought it might be holy water but the fluid shifted constantly. As far as I knew, holy water didn’t usually have a current.

The reason why and how I’d ended up where I was finally dawned on me as I remembered the last thing the colonel had said to me. I now understood why Sanderson had been acting so strangely. Aware that I couldn’t die, he’d come up with a plan on how to incapacitate me. He might have been ordered to turn on me by his superiors but that didn’t make his treachery any less painful to bear.

After tossing me out into the sun then blowing me apart with their guns, he and his men had probably broken what was left of my skeleton down into small pieces. The sun had finished off the job by reducing me to ash. They’d sealed me in a box and then driven to the closest sea or deep lake and tossed me into the depths. That explained the sensation I’d had of descending down a never ending elevator before I’d finally come to a stop.

Emotion was difficult to feel when I was disembodied but a spark of rage flared within my consciousness. Putting my anger aside for now, I shifted the clump of particles underneath the box. A sandy surface met my touch but at least it was stable and safe from the current. Leaving the particles in a small hollow, I shifted my consciousness back to the rest of me.

It had taken me several days to reassemble all of my parts after I’d been beheaded by Luc then hacked into eleven pieces by the Comtesse’s guards. All I’d really had to do was gather them together and the dark magic that made me Mortis had put me back together again. It was going to be different this time. The damage was so extensive that I didn’t know if it would even be possible for me to be able to reform.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, I freed my remains from the box. I had some hope that my dark magic would work when my molecules automatically clumped together instead of breaking down into single cells again.

At last, the entirety of my remains was nestled in the now far larger hollow beneath my metal prison. Hovering over the waterlogged ashes, I was at a loss of what to do next. Possessing one of my hands had been simple once I’d gotten the hang of it but they were easily identifiable when they were whole. Right now I couldn’t tell what part belonged where. I was currently just a hodgepodge of unrecognizable molecules.

As if in response to the thought, the ashes began to move. Tentatively touching the mass with my disembodied consciousness, I found it to be a writhing, teeming confusion of cells attempting to realign themselves into some kind of order. Recoiling from the sensation, I was caught and couldn’t pull free. My consciousness was sucked inside the mass only to be torn apart before being reassembled once more.

When I could think again, I was amazed to find that my body had already begun to reform. The process was so slow it was barely noticeable but my cells were fleshing out again. The healing began in the centre of my body and worked its way outwards. Nestled on the bottom of whatever body of water I’d been interred in beside the dislodged box that had been my tomb, I slowly began to gain substance.

When my eyes regenerated and my eyesight returned, I inspected my condition. My flesh was still more or less raw meat that had yet to be covered by skin but I was relatively whole again.

I had plenty of time to plot my revenge against Colonel Sanderson as I healed but concern for my friends far outweighed my rage. More specifically, I was worried about Luc. I’d made him a promise and I wasn’t about to let him down. Sanderson had been acting strangely for several days before he had turned on me. I had to assume it wasn’t just me his superiors had ordered him to eradicate but all of our group. My hope was that Kokoro had been sent a warning and my friends and allies had managed to escape from the soldier’s treachery in time. I didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that they were dead. Bleakness at the thought I might never see my friends again tried to overwhelm me but I wouldn’t let it. I couldn’t give up hope before I’d even started to search for them.

When my skin had finished growing back, I swam towards the surface. It was well after nightfall and the new moon cast weak light on the water. Thrashing around in a full circle, I couldn’t see land anywhere. Picking a direction at random, I began to swim. I was far from elegant in the water but I was fast and indefatigable. Sanderson could have dumped me in the most remote stretch of water that existed and I would still eventually be able to make my way back to land.

It seemed I hadn’t been tossed in the most remote stretch of water because I spied land after an hour or so of swimming. Checking that I was headed in the right direction frequently, I angled towards the beach. Reaching land at last, I squeezed salt water out of my hair and examined the area. It was a fairly typical beach with a stand of trees only a few metres away.

I quickly ascertained that I had no idea where I was. It wasn’t as cold as I’d expected it to be but I was still shivering. Having zero body heat meant I was almost always cold. A hot shower would chase away the chill but I had to find civilization for that to become a possibility.

Intermittent sounds of traffic came from somewhere nearby so civilization couldn’t be too far away. Leaving the beach, I pushed my way through the trees until I closed in on a road. Ignoring the rocks that painfully jabbed my bare feet, I searched for somewhere to hide. A dense bush was thick enough to conceal my white flesh and I hunkered down to wait for a likely target to appear.

I’d chosen a spot near a sharp bend in the road where cars would have to slow down to navigate it safely. That gave me plenty of time to assess the occupants as they neared. Several cars approached but all held couples, families or women. When a car carrying a lone man appeared, I stepped out onto the road.

Startled at my sudden naked appearance, the car swerved then lurched to a stop. Throwing the door open, the concerned driver ran towards me. “Are you alright, miss? Are you hurt?” He was speaking Bulgarian so at least I was in the same country that I had last seen my friends in.

I didn’t bother to answer his questions and instead captured him with a long glance. “Give me your shirt,” I ordered. A goofy smile spread across his face as he complied, revealing an out of shape body and small pot belly. The t-shirt was far too large for me but it was better than walking around naked. Hearing another car coming, I gestured for my temporary slave to climb back into his car. “Take me somewhere private,” I told him after closing the door then turning the heater on full blast. Headlights flared to life behind us but we were already in motion again and were already halfway around the bend.

My shivers had finally begun to peter out by the time my chauffeur pulled into a driveway a few minutes later. While I was barely warm, he was soaked with sweat from the heat blasting out of the vents. “This is my house,” he told me in mangled English. “It is very private.” His tone was both suggestive and hopeful but he was doomed to disappointment if he thought he was going to get lucky with me. I hadn’t met a human that appealed to me on a sexual level since I had ceased to be one of them. Come to think of it, I’d barely met any humans I’d wanted to sleep with when I had still been one of them.

My captive kept trying to look at me over his shoulder as he led the way to the front door. He tripped over the top step and pin-wheeled his arms to catch his balance. I grabbed him by the shoulder and righted him before he could crash into the door and knock himself out. Tall, pudgy and pale, he was only in his thirties but his hair was thin and he had fashioned it into a comb over. His shiny scalp shone through the sparse strands of his hair and I wondered why he didn’t just pre-empt nature and shave it all off. Being completely bald was usually far sexier than being in denial and attempting to disguise the fact.

Once inside, he led me through the tiny, unkempt house directly to his bedroom. His expression was a mixture of lust and longing as he came to a stop. My fangs had already descended in anticipation of a meal. I had a feeling that drool would have been dripping from my fangs if I’d still had saliva. I couldn’t remember ever being this hungry before. Even when I’d first been created my hunger hadn’t been this intense. “Lie down and go to sleep,” I ordered him. Shoulders drooping in disappointment when he realized he wasn’t going to get to jump my bones, he complied reluctantly. He was out the instant his head touched the pillow.

Lying on his back made it awkward for me to feed. I didn’t want to straddle him, that would have made the feeding far too intimate. Lying down beside him would have been just as bad. I opted to kneel beside the bed and roll him onto his side facing away from me.

My teeth broke through his skin and sweet, salty blood flooded into my mouth. This time, I didn’t stop when the hole in my stomach was half full. I drank until I was full almost to the point of overflowing. Luckily for my meal, my stomach could only hold so much blood and I didn’t even come close to draining my snack dry. His pulse was a trifle slow when I pressed my fingers against his throat beside the already healing puncture wounds but not alarmingly slow. He would probably be tired for a few days but he would recover quickly enough. Humans were very resilient and that was what made them such a reliable source of food.

Next, I took a shower then raided his wardrobe for something other than a too large and not very clean t-shirt to wear. I found a pair of sweatpants with holes in the knees that were too small for my meal to squeeze into anymore. I tied the drawstring tight enough for them to stay up then rolled up the bottoms so I wouldn’t trip on the hem. Searching through his dresser, I picked out a clean t-shirt and grey sweater and donned them both. His shoes were far too large for me so there was little point in stealing a pair.

Picking up the car keys from where my meal had dropped them on his kitchen table, I glanced at a folded over newspaper and did a double take. It had been on the verge of winter when I’d been betrayed by Colonel Sanderson and it was now the middle of spring. That meant I had been in the box for eighteen weeks. The likelihood that my friends would still be where I’d last seen them was minimal. It had been impossible to tell how much time had passed while I’d been imprisoned but I was still shocked that it had been four and a half months. That’s not shock that you’re feeling, my subconscious told me, that’s panic.

I didn’t want to admit it but my inner voice was right as usual. Anything could have happened to my friends and allies while I had been incapacitated. Even if nothing had happened to them at all, I doubted they would still be waiting for me at the warehouse where I’d seen them last. I hoped that, if they had been safe and sound when they had left the warehouse, they had left me a clue to follow. I didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that I might not find any clues at all.

Chapter Sixteen

After one brief stop to ask for directions and two hours of driving, I located the city where I had left my friends. When we’d first arrived in the city we had been hidden in the back of a truck so I hadn’t seen anything to help me orient myself. When I’d left to confront the Second, I hadn’t paid much attention to the layout of the area. I rued my lack of attention now as I drove up and down streets that all looked the same to me. I hoped I would get lucky soon and spy something familiar.

Finally I did glimpse something that I was sure I’d seen before and pulled over to investigate. The dumpster where Luc had tossed the drunk that I’d slapped to death was still hunkered in the same spot in the dark alley. There was no smell of rotting corpse oozing from within. I assumed my victim had been located by the police and had been removed from his resting place.

Orienting myself, I re-traced the steps that I and my beloved had taken several months ago. Minutes later I was standing outside the warehouse and had my face pressed up against a grimy window. Despite the lack of lighting within, my vision was good enough to tell me that it was utterly deserted inside.

A sturdy chain and padlock had been attached to the door, probably by Sanderson’s men to keep out nosy parkers. Even with my considerable strength, I wasn’t able to break the chain. The door was made of flimsy wood and was nowhere near as durable. A couple of solid kicks created a hole large enough for me to squeeze through.

The warehouse hadn’t changed much during my absence. The nest some hobos had made in the recent past was still in the corner. I had no doubt destroyed all of the former occupants of the warehouse when I’d purged the spooky castle of fledglings. I was fairly certain new hobos would find the building and make it their own again one day.

Several suspicious blotches on the ground caught my eye. I recognized the traces of vampire ooze and smudges of ash that probably meant the prototypes had been used to kill them. I counted over a dozen dried up puddles that had once been my kin. The rest had either managed to escape from the soldiers or they had been taken elsewhere.

Concentrating hard, I sent my senses out as far as they could go and came up empty. Dread had taken up residence in my chest right about where my unbeating heart lay. Kokoro’s vision had foretold death and darkness for us all. I had been trapped in darkness for months, did that mean the rest of my friends had been visited with death?

The cement floor was cold beneath my bare feet so I retreated to the car and turned the heater on. “Now what do I do?” I asked myself and no immediate answer sprang to mind. As I’d feared, no clues had been left behind. That wasn’t a surprise since my friends had left under duress.

After one minute of silence stretched into several, my subconscious heaved a sigh and came to the rescue again. I hated to admit it, but I would be lost without my inner voice. Have you really not managed to figure out who really betrayed you yet? I was confused by the question since the answer was obviously Colonel Sanderson. Think back to when he started acting suspiciously, my inner voice instructed me. I did so and a picture of the battle in the sewers beneath the town in Africa formed. The colonel had been talking to someone that he really shouldn’t have had anything to talk to about. Straining my memory, I pictured long blonde hair, a tight red dress and a superior sneer.

“It all started when he had that private conversation with Anna-Eve,” I said to my subconscious. That’s right, it responded. What happened a couple of nights after they had their little chat? I didn’t have to think about the answer to that question. “Her servant blew me to bits.” Right again. My subconscious gave me the mental equivalent of a pat on the head. She showed him the most effective way to take you down. “Why would she do that?” I knew the Europeans weren’t my greatest fans but I was bewildered why they would be in cahoots with the American soldiers.

It was strange to be having a conversation with myself but it helped me to work my way through this conundrum. Who is Anna-Eve’s master? My subconscious sounded rather sly as it asked me that question. “The praying mantis,” I said slowly. What did the Comtesse promise you the last time you spoke to her? “She promised me that she’d make sure everyone I cared about was taken from me.” What else did she say to you? My answer came slowly and with great anguish. “That if she couldn’t have Luc then no one could.”

Putting my hands over my face as the reality of the full betrayal finally crashed down on me, I had no tears to shed for my one true love. My tears had been stolen from me right along with my mortality.

Finally tiring of my dry sobs, my subconscious roused itself again. You don’t know for sure that they’re dead, it pointed out. But we both know who you can question to find out exactly what has happened to your friends.

Grasping my inner voice’s hint, I dropped my hands. Orange light bathed the interior of the car. It seemed that any strong emotion could now trigger the imp blood that had spread through my body.

It was going to be a long drive to France and the sooner I got moving, the sooner I’d be able to question the praying mantis. We had unfinished business and it was long past time to put an end to it. I only hoped I would find her in the Court mansion and not have to search the whole of Europe to find her.

An hour or so into my journey, bright red and blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror made me check how fast I was going. I’d been doing twenty over the limit and now the police were pulling me over. Their siren sounded, just in case I’d somehow missed the flashing lights. Pulling over, I wound down the window and waited for the cop to appear.

Instead of a single police officer, there were two. One stayed inside their cruiser, checking the license plate of my stolen vehicle. The other approached my car slowly. His hand hovered over his gun but he wasn’t quite ready to pull it. Reaching my window, he cautiously bent down. “Can I see your license…” His words petered out when our eyes met. Swaying towards the car, his expression turned dreamy.

Opening the glove box, I pulled out a piece of paper. “Pretend to check my license,” I told him and handed the scrap to him. He glanced down at it then handed it back. “Go back to your car, act normal and tell your partner that everything is fine.”

Ambling back to his cruiser, he climbed inside and had a short conversation with his partner. Whatever he’d said mustn’t have been very convincing because the passenger door opened and the other officer climbed out. Short and slightly chubby, the female officer pulled her gun and stalked towards me, shouting orders. “Get out of the vehicle and put your hands on your head!” Rolling my eyes at being delayed, I did as instructed. “Show me some ID!” she barked, coming to a stop a few feet away. She flicked a glance at my clothes, noted I had no pockets to hold any form of identification in then met my gaze.

Our eyes locked and her fright turned to puzzlement. To my surprise, her expression turned blank and she dropped her hands to her sides. Holy shit, I just hypnotized her! She wasn’t wearing a look of adoration but she had definitely lost her will and ability to think. Judging her size, I gave a mental shrug and decided not to waste the opportunity to upgrade my clothes. “Take off your pants and shoes,” I instructed her.

Putting her gun away, the cop complied without complaint. She handed over a sturdy pair of black shoes that were roughly my size and pants that were several sizes too big. At least they were the right length. “Go back to your car. When you snap out of it, tell your partner you were hit on the head and don’t remember what happened.”

As she followed my orders, I changed, tossed the sweatpants onto the back seat then took off. This time I kept to the speed limit to avoid being pulled over again. Even my subconscious didn’t have a theory for why I could now bamboozle women as well as members of the opposite sex. It seemed that every time something catastrophic happened to me, I received a new power. This one could certainly come in handy.

Stealing new cars several times over the next few nights, I tried to curb my impatience and increasing worry. Nearly five months had passed since I’d been separated from my team so there was really no need to rush towards the Court mansion blindly. Yet something told me to hurry anyway and my speed continually crept up over the limit.

Finally, I was back in France again. Parking a safe distance away from the mansion, I moved in closer on foot. Even from a distance, I could see that a drastic change had taken place. Instead of vampire guards patrolling the grounds, the property was now being guarded by humans.

Crouched down low between a pair of shrubs, I noted the camouflage uniforms the men were wearing. On closer inspection, I realized they were soldiers rather than mere guards. It was close to dawn and I only had enough time to examine the mansion briefly. The sounds of merriment I’d heard the first couple of times I’d been to the grounds were greatly reduced and held a touch of hysteria. Their gaiety sounded forced, as if they were putting on a show for the humans. If it was supposed to put the meat sacks at ease, it wasn’t working. Heads turned uneasily and grips tightened on guns each time a torrent of high pitched laughter rang out.

Busting inside the mansion without a plan in place would most likely result in disaster. Being so close to my quarry, I itched to get my hands around the Comtesse’s throat and start squeezing until her head popped off but I forced myself to walk away instead. I hadn’t expected to find humans standing guard and needed to think my way through this new development.

Returning to my car, I headed to the only other place I knew in the area. Passing through the familiar sleepy little village, I headed for the safe house where I’d stayed a couple of times before.

Igor’s black car was absent from the garage as I pulled inside. The cold feeling in my gut intensified. If my friends had managed to escape from Colonel Sanderson, this was where they would have headed. That meant Igor’s car was still probably in the tiny airport in Kazakhstan and my kin were either dead or had been imprisoned.

At a glance, the house seemed to be deserted but I’d fallen for that ruse the last time I’d been here. The front door was unlocked so I entered and closed the door. I waited to be attacked but no one shot me with a crossbow bolt, staked me through the heart or threw an axe at me this time. The house truly was deserted.

Locking the door, I headed upstairs and took a shower. Dawn light enveloped the house by the time I had dried off. I felt a pang of sadness as I searched Geordie’s room for spare clothing. I was out of luck and he hadn’t even left a ratty pair of shoes behind. As annoying as the teen could be at times, I still missed him. He had the ability to lighten my mood when things were dark. All I had for companionship now was my inner voice and it was rarely comforting or a particularly good companion.

I hunted through Igor’s bedroom and found a spare machete tucked under the bed. Rusty, slightly bent and dented, it was nowhere near as elegant as my lost samurai swords but something about its stark crudeness appealed to me. Climbing into the bed that I had previously shared with Luc, the scent of his shampoo still lingered on the pillowcase. Worry, fear and loneliness kept me awake for a long time. Clutching the machete, I closed my eyes at last and slipped into darkness.

I floated in a void but I knew I wasn’t alone. Death was all around me. Opening my eyes, I reached out and touched the dull silver wall. It was cold, as I had known it would be.

Just like the last time I’d had this dream, something bumped into my back. I was expecting it yet I still started in surprise. Floundering around in a half circle, I was faced with a wizened vampire that seemed familiar. A roadmap of wrinkles lined his face and grey threaded through his dirty blonde hair. This time, he didn’t croak a plea for me to help him. His stillness was as profound as it was disturbing.

Almost against my will, I touched his face. His eyes opened a crack, revealing a thin sliver of blue. The vampire who should have looked fifteen and instead looked at least a thousand years old silently beseeched me to end his suffering.

Sitting up, I forgot I was holding the machete and almost stabbed myself in the chest. “Geordie!” I whispered. I didn’t know how the wizened, seemingly ancient vampire could be my young friend but I knew it was true. This meant he still had to be alive. If Geordie is still alive then maybe the others are, too! I was torn between feeling excited that they might all still be alive and worried at the condition I would find them in when I managed to locate them.

Once the sun had tucked itself away for the day, I returned to the mansion. I ducked down each time a patrolling human came close and made my way around the outskirts of the property. Thanks to the First’s silent siren song, most of the courtiers, guards and assorted servants had been called to their deaths in Russia. The unkempt state of the grounds told me that no new servants had yet been made. If Gregor had been handy, he would have formed a theory about what was going on inside the mansion by now. I was clueless and I wasn’t sure why the soldiers were keeping the Comtesse and her lackeys under guard. It was difficult to tell if the humans were there to protect or to contain the vampires.

Four stories tall, the main section of the mansion was made of sandstone. Two wings, one on either side, were made of a darker stone. Another building nearby was a barracks for the guards and was made of the same dark stone that the wings had been constructed from. It was now inhabited by human guards, who probably worked and slept in shifts.

Completing my inspection of the grounds, I kept out of sight and waited patiently. I might not be a master strategist like Gregor but I’d come up with a plan that would hopefully allow me to obtain the answers I sought.

It was excruciatingly boring watching the guards go about their patrols but I’d decided to wait until just before dawn to launch my plan. As the sun drew closer and the night waned, the few remaining vampire guards inside the mansion began closing the shutters on the lower floors. Paranoid to a fault, the Comtesse and her fellow Councillor’s bedroom windows on the fourth floor were permanently boarded over. It was a toss-up whether they were more worried about the sun frying them to death or being invaded by their Japanese kin. Ishida’s nation of warriors had been vastly reduced after I had purged them of their damned. They had lost even more during our scuffles with the fledglings. What was left of the Court would no longer have to fear invasion from their enemies now that there were so few of them left to launch an attack.

After watching humans patrol both inside and outside, I knew the mansion doors were unlocked. I was also aware that the soldier’s vigilance would relax once the sun came up and most of the monsters died for the day.

With only seconds to spare before the first rays of killing light appeared in the sky, I slipped into the mansion through a side door. Padding through the halls silently, I heard the heavy footsteps of a human approaching. It was easy to avoid him as he made his way through the ground floor. Ducking into one of the rooms, I hid behind the door. Through the tiny gap, I watched the soldier glance briefly inside before continuing on his patrol.

Another soldier was bound to make his way through the mansion soon but I would have a few minutes to hunt down any vampires that were still awake. Now that the human was no longer clomping his way through the halls, I heard quiet whispers coming from the other side of the building. They spoke too quietly for me to make out what they were saying but their voices drew me down the main hallway and down another long corridor. Stopping at a door, I eavesdropped on their conversation.

“How long will we have to stay imprisoned like this?” one of the men complained.

“Forever,” was the sour reply that came from his colleague. “The Comtesse bargained for our survival and remaining inside the mansion was one of the conditions she agreed to follow.”

“We can’t leave the grounds, they expect us to drink animal blood, we might as well be dead!” the first to complain hissed and was immediately shushed by the others.

The Comtesse made some kind of bargain for their survival? I wonder who she made the deal with? Even as I asked myself that question, I knew the answer: Colonel Sanderson. Anna-Eve may have been the mouthpiece to offer the deal to the Americans but the praying mantis had been the brains behind it.

Sanderson probably thought the soldiers could actually stop the Comtesse and her people from leaving the grounds. I doubted any of them knew about the catacombs that had been dug out beneath the mansion. The vamps could sneak out any time they liked and their human guards would have no idea how they had managed to escape. Frankly, I wondered why the vampires hadn’t fled yet. Maybe the Comtesse was so used to the comforts of the mansion that she couldn’t bring herself to leave it. Somehow I couldn’t see her squatting in the sewers like the vamps I’d met in London.

With the task I had ahead of me, stealth was going to be essential. It would be unwise to leave the vampire guards free to wander about the lower floors. Turning the doorhandle slowly, I pushed the door open a crack and peered inside. As per the rest of the mansion, the furniture in the small sitting room was antique and exquisite. A chandelier hung high above, casting crystalline light on the four occupants of the room.

A human sneezed somewhere outside, startling the guards into staring at the window that was covered in thick drapes. They were only distracted for a few seconds but that was long enough for me to act. Hefting my machete, I leaped into the room. As I landed, my weapon burst through the back of the closest vampire. It then sliced through the chest of the next closest guard. I’d moved so quickly that half of the guards had been reduced to puddles of ooze before the remaining pair even knew I was there.

Before they could scream, I stabbed the third guard through the heart then sliced the other across the neck. The wound wasn’t fatal and the lone vamp staggered backwards with his hands clasping his throat, making pained gargling noises. Black blood dribbled out from between his fingers but the cut would heal eventually. I wasn’t planning on giving it a chance to heal and the machete bit all the way through his neck this time, chopping through his hands as well.

Luckily for me, the carpet was maroon and was dark enough to hide the stains of the fallen, at least from a human’s eyes. Bundling the deceased’s clothing and weapons into a pile, I hid them behind one of the sofas. I then made my way to the staircase that would carry me to the upper floors.

Halfway up the second flight, I froze momentarily when a sound echoed down the stairwell. Someone moaned and it was still hard to tell if it was due to agony or ecstasy. I was pretty sure it had come from somewhere on the fourth floor.

I encountered two more guards on my way to the top floor and they met the same fate as the previous four. Surprised to see a strange vampire in their mansion, they were slow to react. My machete made sure they couldn’t rouse the alarm and bring the soldiers to investigate. My mission was to confront the mistress of the mansion, not to kill the humans. I would have little choice but to defend myself if the soldiers turned up and began shooting at me.

The moaning had finished and quiet conversation came from the far end of the hallway as I reached the top of the stairs. Sneaking down the corridor, I listened intently at each door and heard only silence from within every time.

As I’d guessed, the low conversation came from within the Comtesse’s suite. I had hoped to find the praying mantis alone but someone else was in the bedroom with her. For a wild moment I actually hoped that she had recaptured Luc and had forced him into her bed once more. But the voice was deeper than his, if slightly familiar. The pair spoke in a whisper that was too quiet for me to overhear even with my ear pressed up against the door. When their whispers stopped, I assumed they had relinquished their consciousness and had sunken into slumber.

Running through my plan again, I decided to revise it. I hadn’t expected to find most of the remaining Councillors and their lackeys asleep. Even their ruler had apparently gone down for the day. I’d figured I would be forced to fight my way through fifty or so courtiers and guards before reaching their leader. It seemed an epic battle wasn’t going to be necessary after all.

Stealth had worked for me so far and I hoped it would continue to do so. I crept back down the hallway, checking each room to determine whether they were occupied or not this time. I’d only had brief glimpses of the occupants but I recognized all seven of the remaining Councillors. I also found Anna-Eve in residence. Unlike the others, she wasn’t alone. An off duty guard lay beside her. I recognized him from the group that she had brought to Africa. It seemed the Council had relaxed their rules enough to allow the courtiers to mingle with their minions. Either that or she was deliberately flouting their laws, which wouldn’t surprise me at all from the little I knew about her.

It only took a few minutes to determine that every vampire on the fourth floor was dead to the world. Backtracking to the Comtesse’s suite, I tried the door and was mildly surprised when it was unlocked. The hole I’d made when I had rescued Luc had finally been repaired and only a faint hint of varnish fumes remained. Just like the rest of the bedrooms and general décor of the mansion, the theme inside the suite was blood red. Heavy, dark furniture scattered around the sitting room gave me the impression of great age as well as great expense.

Uninterested in the furniture, I headed for the door to the left. The red theme continued in the carpet, wallpaper and bed linen. The complete lack of motion from the pair on the gigantic bed told me the praying mantis and her latest toy were down for the count.

Even without seeing his face, I knew who she had chosen to be her bed partner. I’d only met one vampire who looked like a contestant for a body building competition. Nicholas looked almost ridiculously oversized lying next to the dainty form of the Comtesse.

I had to admit that I was stunned for a few seconds to see the heavily muscled ex-courtier in the sack with my arch nemesis. The betrayal just gets worse and worse. Studying Nicholas’ face, my brain whirled in circles, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. My subconscious took pity on me when it became apparent that I would remain clueless. Nicholas was a double agent right from the start, it explained. The praying mantis sent him to infiltrate your group. He tried to seduce you and when that failed, he tried to kill Luc.

Being undead, blood was unable to rush to my face in a combination of embarrassment and rage at being duped so easily. If I had still been alive, my face would have been scarlet. I’d never trusted Nicholas and should have listened to my instincts and killed him instead of allowing him to join our group. Everyone had wanted to kill him. Even vampires who he had just met hadn’t liked or trusted him. The next time an opinion was universal, I would act on it and save myself and my friends from possible hassle.

Stepping over to the crimson coloured bed, I used the no doubt expensive coverlet to clean the black ooze from my rusty blade. Naked beneath the silk sheets and layers of blankets, the Comtesse looked deceptively vulnerable. The stump of her left arm was covered by a red glove. It had been stuffed with something to give it the shape of a hand and was strapped to her wrist with a red ribbon.

With two stabs of the machete I could end their lives but that would be far too easy. Staring at the pair coldly, my lips began to curl upwards as I altered my plan yet again. The Comtesse had made Luc’s life a misery for centuries. She had also done her best to kill me several times. It was about time I had some payback.

When the praying mantis woke for the night, she was going to get the greatest shock of her lengthy unlife.

Chapter Seventeen

I had a busy but productive day as I executed my plan and made sure it was as perfect as I could make it. Everyone was in place well before nightfall and all I had to do was wait for them to rouse.

Two of my prisoners came awake within seconds of each other, which meant they had to be roughly the same age. Since the Comtesse was Anna-Eve’s maker, she must have been older but maybe only by a few hundred years or so.

Anna-Eve woke, realized she was lying on the floor and moved into a crouch. Her nakedness was mostly covered by her long blonde hair. She stared at the bars of her cell in confusion then became aware that she wasn’t alone. Her gaze moved to her master then to me and comprehension slowly dawned.

The Comtesse had grasped the situation immediately when she’d woken a few seconds before her minion. Standing unhurriedly, her wide-set eyes had narrowed at finding herself in one of the prison cells where their food had once been kept. The look she gave me was full of contempt but it couldn’t quite mask her shock at being held captive in her own dungeon.

Nicholas was in the cell opposite hers and Anna-Eve was two cells down. I’d kept them close together, secure in the knowledge that none of them could escape from me and the punishment I had planned for them. I wanted them to be able to see the fate that befell their cell mates. Call me a bitch but I intended for all of them to suffer for what they had done to me and my friends.

Nicholas came awake and sat up with a start. Like Anna-Eve, he stared around in confusion, unable to understand why he wasn’t still in the crimson bedroom lying beside his ruler. His confusion turned to alarm when he spied me and he scrambled to his feet.

“So,” the praying mantis said, displaying admirable calm, “Colonel Sanderson’s plan to contain you indefinitely seems to have failed spectacularly.” Her black, soulless eyes darted to the makeshift crosses I had attached to the doors of their cages. They had begun their lives as candleholders but were serving a far more useful purpose now.

Ignoring her for the time being, I turned to face her lackey. Anna-Eve still cowered on the ground, darting terrified glances at the cross. “Did you tell Sanderson you were going to order your servant to shoot me?”

Sneaking a quick look at her ruler, the blonde sneered at me. “You can’t force me to answer your questions.” Despite being naked and defenceless, she was still as haughty as ever. It should have been difficult to look down your nose at someone who was standing over you but she managed to pull it off.

Swinging her cell door open, I stepped inside and pulled it shut again. Anna-Eve stood and backed away until she hit the bars. Her arms crept up and crossed over her chest but it was more for protection than from a sense of modesty. I brought the machete up until it was resting against her throat. Our gazes locked. “Did he know?” Her defiance slowly changed from puzzlement to fear. She tried to tear her eyes away from mine but couldn’t. Then her expression turned blank. I didn’t know how it was possible but I knew she was mine.

“The Comtesse ordered me to convince Colonel Sanderson that it would be in his best interests to ally himself with her rather than with you,” she explained. Her tone was as devoid of expression as her face.

“I order you to be quiet!” the praying mantis hissed, moving as close as she dared to towards her prison door. She grimaced at the crude cross but didn’t back away.

“Tell me everything,” I countered and my new vampire slave obeyed me.

“I first spoke to Colonel Sanderson in the sewers. At first he did not want to listen to me when I told him how dangerous it would be to allow you to remain free. I had to order my servant to shoot you with one of their guns so he could see for himself that you had to be…disposed of properly.” Even deep under hypnosis, she was wary of angering me. “Once he saw you heal after being blown apart, he was finally convinced of the wisdom of becoming allies with the Comtesse.”

“What deal did you make with him?”

“We agreed to remain on the mansion grounds, not make any new servants and to drink only animal blood.” Even with her will sapped, her nose crinkled in automatic distaste at the thought of being forced to feed from animals. “As long as we continue to obey his rules, he will allow us to live.”

I doubted Sanderson had the authority to make these decisions alone. His government and the French government must have hammered out an agreement since the soldiers patrolling the area were all French.

While this was fascinating information, I was more concerned with what had happened to my friends and allies. “What did he do to Luc and the others?”

She shook her head with regret that she didn’t have an answer for me. “I do not know. I advised him to kill them all, especially the Japanese dogs.” Her upper lip curled slightly at the mention of her hated enemy. Thousands of years of rivalry were hard to shake. She and her merry band of misfits had fled before we had travelled to Bulgaria. Anna-Eve truly might not have any idea where the colonel had taken them.

Something flickered in the corner of my eye and I instinctively took a step back. The projectile hadn’t been aimed at me but rather at my slave. Snapping out of her trance, Anna-Eve looked down at the sliver of human bone that protruded from her chest. The blow hadn’t been a perfect hit but I was pretty sure her heart had been pierced. Gregor had once informed me that even a slight nick to our heart could kill us. It looked like I was about to see whether his claim was true or not.

Pulling the bone free, Anna-Eve sent a despairing gaze towards her master before falling to her knees. A slow trickle of black blood oozed from the wound. Long blonde hair slid forward to hide her face as she slowly toppled to the ground. She disintegrated, leaving behind the usual slimy pool of sludge.

The Comtesse held another sliver of bone in her only hand, ready to throw. She debated about the wisdom of using me as her next target and decided against it. I’d never admit it out loud but I was impressed by her accuracy with such a rudimentary weapon. Tossing the bone aside, she stared at me with arrogance pouring from her tiny frame.

Nicholas stood in the centre of his cell, unaffected by his nakedness. A contemptuous smile twisted one corner of his mouth up. He crossed his arms in a deliberate effort to make his biceps bulge. He was still beautiful to look at but his ability to make my flesh hunger rise had vanished. I couldn’t imagine my need for sex ever being strong enough that I would jump the bones of the man who had tried to kill Luc.

“Nicholas was your mole all along, wasn’t he?” I turned to the praying mantis to ask.

Futilely attempting to pat her badly mussed hair back into place, the Comtesse gave up and made a dismissive gesture with her good hand. “I knew you would take pity on him and allow him to join your pathetic band of misfits. I also knew none of you would be smart enough to guess that he belonged to me and was following my orders.” She spoke in French, knowing I could understand her perfectly.

“Was Luc his main target all along or did Nicholas try to kill him when he failed to get me into the sack?”

My query had the impact I hoped it would and the blonde whirled towards her current lover. She was furious that he had tried to murder her favourite sex slave.

“She lies!” the courtier blurted before his mistress could speak.

“He threw a bomb at Luc when his back was turned,” I informed her and watched her rage grow.

“I did not order you to harm Lucentio,” she bit out. “You were merely supposed to take his place in the servant’s bed so he would come back to me where he belongs!”

Bitterness flooded across Nicholas’ face. “Your precious ‘Lord’ Lucentio hates you! He would never voluntarily return to your bed. Only your direct order could force him service your insatiable lust.” His jab was as cruel as it was true. Luc had only returned to her the last time because she had ordered him to. His disgust and hatred of her had been strong enough that he had broken free from her spell when she had been possessed by her shadow. Again, I regretted not killing her when I’d had the chance. I comforted myself with the fact that she wasn’t going to survive this time.

The praying mantis quivered in fury at her lackey’s insubordination. “You have always been jealous of Lucentio,” she snarled. “Your skills in the bedroom are crude compared to his. You could never satisfy me as he could.”

Nicholas sneered but I sensed his deep hurt and rejection. “You act as if you love him,” he scoffed. Love was a concept few of our kind believed in and he meant the observation to be an insult.

Drawing her dignity around her, the Comtesse tossed her head, choosing to ignore the comment. I was disturbed to realize she might have feelings for Luc that extended beyond mere lust. Maybe she did love him, in her own way. “What do you hope to accomplish by holding us captive?” she asked me icily.

“I want to know what Sanderson did to Luc and the rest of my friends. Tell me where they are and I’ll let you go.”

Something that may have been regret flickered to life briefly before she shook the emotion off. “I made you a promise, servant, and I always keep my promises.”

“Are you telling me that you allowed the Colonel to kill Luc?”

“Colonel Sanderson followed the orders his government gave him,” she replied evasively.

I could see us going around and around in circles all night so I walked towards Nicholas’ cage. He backed away a step before forcing himself to stand still. “You will not kill me,” he said softly and with great confidence.

“Where is Luc being held, Mucia?” I asked the Comtesse.

Rage instantly flared to life. “You dare to speak that name in my presence?”

“I dare,” I replied dryly. “It’s pretty hideous. I can see why you kill anyone who is brave enough to use it to your face.”

Nicholas made a sound of amusement and the praying mantis’ expression hardened. “Go ahead and kill him,” she said with a careless wave of her gloved stump. “I have grown weary of him anyway.”

For an instant, I felt sorry for the over muscled courtier. He wasn’t faking the pain her words caused him. My brief moment of distraction was what he’d been waiting for and he leaped towards me.

I’d hesitated to kill Nicholas the last time but this time there would be no escape for him. The machete punched through his chest and burst out of his back. Shock coursed over his face and his hands clamped down on my shoulders, shattering my clavicles. They healed even before I drew the machete back and shoved it into him again. Blood burst from his mouth, splattering my face. His hands ground down on my shoulders again. The Comtesse’s lackey had survived a nick to his heart once but he had come very close to dying from the wound. I kept that in mind as I continued to carve away.

Despite her careless attitude towards her lover, the praying mantis went onto her tippy toes and craned her head to try to see what I was doing.

When I was done, I turned and tossed her a present. Droplets of black ooze splattered the Comtesse as she reflexively caught the shrivelled lump with her good hand. Staring at Nicholas’ heart in horror, she screeched when it suddenly disintegrated. The muscled courtier dropped to his knees as his eyes glazed over with death. His beautifully sculpted body, marred only by the messy hole I’d hacked into his chest, turned to slush.

Rusty hinges squealed and was followed by the pitter-patter of bare feet as my prey made her escape. I turned to see the Comtesse fleeing for the staircase with the arm bone of a dead human clutched in her hand. It had been long enough for her to push the door open and to escape from her prison. I shook my head at her ingenuity. I’d known she would be a wily foe and she wasn’t letting my estimation of her cunning down.

She began screaming for her guards as I loped after her. My hands and machete were still dripping with the blood of her latest sexual conquest. Mucia could scream all she wanted. No one was coming to help her. It was just us two girls left in the mansion now. We would have all the time we needed to finish our business once and for all.

Chapter Eighteen

I caught up to the Comtesse in the same sitting room where I had dispatched four of her guards hours earlier. She had given up on shrieking for help when it became apparent that rescue would not be forthcoming.

Still naked and holding the arm bone like a spear, she whirled to confront me. “What have you done?” Fear warred with anger, making her almost ugly instead of exotically beautiful.

“I did what you would have done if our situations had been reversed, Mucia.”

Loathing at her hated name pushed all other emotion away for a moment. Then my words filtered through to her. “You have killed all of my fellow Councillors, courtiers and guards?” Fear was winning now and her voice dropped to a horrified whisper.

“Every last one of them,” I replied and smiled. It was devoid of amusement and she blanched away from it.

“You are no longer the naïve, stupid servant that I first met many months ago,” my nemesis observed.

“You mean the servant you ordered to undress in front of the entire Court?” I reminded her. She made a dismissive gesture with her stuffed glove. “And the servant you ordered Luc to behead and your guards to dismember?” I added.

Desperate and knowing she was trapped, the Comtesse clutched at the only straw she had left. “Colonel Sanderson will know that you are responsible for our deaths. My government will inform the Americans of what you have done when they discover that my Court has been decimated. The Colonel and his people will scour the earth looking for you and they will not stop until they have found a way to contain you forever.”

“Actually,” I disagreed, “the men standing guard will tell their leaders that they have no idea what happened to you and your people and that they saw nothing strange at all tonight. No one will ever know I was here at all.”

Disbelief and even a momentary admiration for my cleverness crossed her face briefly. “You have enthralled them all and have altered their memories,” she correctly surmised.

After systematically stabbing every vampire in the mansion to death, I’d waited for a human to wander inside during their next patrol. I’d bamboozled him into calling the other soldiers inside one by one. I’d then hypnotized them all into believing everything was fine. After questioning the last man, he had informed me that they rarely interacted with the vampires. They might not even raise the alarm until night fell again once they snapped out of their hypnotism. I would be long gone and far away by then. No one would know it had been me who had murdered everyone in the building. Unless they dredged the bottom of the sea to retrieve my metal coffin, they would continue to assume I was still imprisoned.

“You can scream your head off and none of the humans will even hear you,” I told her.

Bowing her head, her shoulders slumped. “You have won, Mortis. Kill me so that I can join Lucentio in whatever afterlife awaits creatures such as us.”

I hated to admit it, but I fell for her humble tone. Maybe I was still the same naïve, stupid young vampire she had first met right in this very mansion so many months ago after all. I drew my machete back to stab her through the heart but she beat me to it and struck first. She speared the arm bone through my right eye and took off.

I pulled the bone free and my thoughts were scrambled for only a moment before my brain repaired itself. I dropped the makeshift weapon to the carpet and sprinted after my quarry. With my depth perception ruined, I misjudged the doorway and slammed into it with my shoulder. My eye regenerated as I stumbled sideways, returning my vision to normal and I was back in business again.

The Comtesse might be short but she was fast and she had a head start on me by the time I exited through the front door. A flash of her naked white body caught my eye. She was heading for an army jeep parked in the long driveway. I put on a burst of speed and caught up to her just as she reached for the handle.

Body slamming her into the door, bones splintered and the praying mantis turned to face me with her broken fingers curled into claws. Her stuffed glove had come off and she beckoned at me with her stump. I evened up our fight slightly by tossing the machete a few feet away. Using my bare hands to end this fight would be far more satisfying than giving her a quick death by machete.

We circled each other warily, searching for an opening. She feinted with her stump then clawed at my eyes with her fingers. I knocked her hand away then slapped her hard enough to make my palm sting. If she had been human, it would have taken her head off. As it was, a sharp crack meant something had broken. Steam rose from her skin and she screeched in agony as a red welt in the shape of a cross rose against her pale skin. I hadn’t activated the holy marks but this tended to happen when I used my hands in anger. The mark would feel like acid burning into her skin but it wouldn’t kill her.

The soldiers on patrol ignored us completely as we fought. I was glad I’d had the forethought to bamboozle them into believing everything was fine. Punching, clawing and slapping at each other, I had no doubt our battle would have been entertaining for them if they had been cognizant of it.

While bitch slapping the praying mantis was satisfying, I was hit with the sensation that time was running out. I had learned the hard way to listen to my instincts and they told me it was time to end the fight.

Grabbing the Comtesse’s right forearm, I released the power of my holy mark. Her horrified screams were shrill and ear splitting when the limb came free. I threw it aside and it hit the ground with a meaty thump. “Where is Luc?” I asked her. Backing away from me, she stared at her now matching stumps in a stupefied daze. “If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll start at your feet and begin melting everything off until you talk,” I warned her.

That broke through her shock and she threw her stumps into the air. “I told you, he’s dead. You have taken everything from me,” she said with utter desolation, completely ignoring the fact that this was exactly what she’d promised she would do to me. “Go ahead and kill me. I have nothing left to live for now.” Her voice was hollow and I believed that this time she was truly broken. She would make no last ditch attempts to escape.

Stepping forward, I took her face in my hands and stared into her eyes. Bitterness and loneliness stared back at me. We both knew she was facing an endless future alone if I allowed her to live. “We are the same, you and I,” she told me softly. “We would both do anything to keep Lucentio in our beds. Let me die so my servant and I can be together forever.”

She couldn’t hide her anguish and it hit me then; Luc was gone. He and my friends had been killed after the Comtesse had bargained with Sanderson to save her own life. She may have been infatuated with Luc but she hadn’t truly loved him like I did. If she had cared for him, she would have done more than just try to keep him in her bed. She would have done anything to try to keep him alive.

“Go to hell where you belong, Mucia.” A surge of power had built up in my hands as my fury and heartache grew. Before she could retaliate to my usage of her hated name, I unleashed the holy marks. My arch nemesis exploded in a wash of ooze, guts and gore. Drenched in crud, I covered my face with my hands and dropped to my knees. Luc and the rest of my friends were gone and I would be alone forever. Wracked with dry sobs, I muffled my howls of anguish with my hands.

Sometime later, my grief was interrupted when I realized I was surrounded by humans. They had been drawn to me by my torment and stood clustered together. For a change, none of them were smiling goofily or telling me how beautiful I was. Their expressions were solemn and solicitous.

Dully dropping my hands, I climbed to my feet. Sorrow and loneliness had settled over me and the emotions were weighing me down. “What do you want?” I asked the closest human without interest. Couldn’t they see I was in no mood for company? My life had been altered beyond repair with the deaths of my friends. To borrow the late praying mantis’ line, I had nothing left to live for now.

“We want to make your pain go away,” the soldier replied in his native language.

“How do you propose to do that?” If any of them offered to have sex with me, heads would roll.

“We might be able to help you find your friends,” the bedazzled man replied.

I had him by the shirt and had pulled him down to my level before I registered my intention to move. His neck was bent backwards at an awkward angle so he could meet my gaze. “Tell me what you know,” I demanded.

“Some of the vampires resisted when they were captured in Bulgaria and were killed to set an example for the others.” I already knew that so waved for him to continue. “Colonel Sanderson had the rest of them taken to an airfield and then shipped to a secure facility.”

“Where is this facility?”

“I overheard one of the Americans say that it is somewhere in Denver.”

“Denver as in Colorado in America?” I asked him incredulously. For some strange reason, I’d expected my kin to still be somewhere in Europe.

“Yes, I believe so.”

I let him go and he staggered to his feet. His army training was strong enough that he automatically smoothed his shirt back into place. “Thank you, I feel much better now,” I told them. Happy to have helped, they dispersed and returned to their patrols.

While cautiously hopeful, I was far from ecstatic at the news I’d just been given. My friends and allies might have been shipped from Bulgaria to the U.S. but I had no way of knowing if any of them were still alive.

I’d always wanted to visit America but had never had the time or money to do so. I’d never imagined I would travel to the U.S. on a secret rescue mission. God help Sanderson if my friends are dead, I thought grimly. One way or another, justice would be served. As Mortis, there could only be one form of justice. It would be swift, brutal and final.

Chapter Nineteen

My arch nemesis had finally been purged from Earth but the celebrations would have to be postponed for another time. I was too worried about my friends to spare a few moments to dance on the Comtesse’s slushy remains.

Before leaving the Court grounds, I ducked inside to take a shower and to raid one of the courtier’s wardrobes. The black pants were a size too big but the snug shirt and jacket fit me well enough. I found a pair of black shoes that were only slightly too big but had a three inch heel. Far from comfortable, they were better than nothing. Checking my reflection, I looked like a stylish ninja and would probably stand out more than I’d like but it would have to do.

As I headed for the airport, I ran through the disturbing dreams that had plagued me over the past few months. At least I now knew who had been in the dark void with me now, or who would be in the dark void with me when this vision came true. I had only been imprisoned for a few months rather than years. Even if Geordie hadn’t fed at all during that time, he couldn’t possibly have become so wizened so quickly. It would take far more than a few short months of starvation to reach such a decrepit state, surely? Maybe the warning had come to me in time to prevent it from happening. That isn’t very likely, my inner voice said darkly. Every vision I’d had so far had come true. Why should this one be any different?

Leaving the stolen car in the short term parking lot at the airport, I scurried inside and searched for the next flight to North America. The next one that was scheduled to leave was heading for LA and it was due to leave in half an hour. Noting the gate number, I took off at a fast walk. My shoes clomped noisily with each step, drawing stares that I did my best to ignore. The shoes were even more uncomfortable to walk in than I’d expected.

I didn’t have time to check whether there were any empty seats on the flight. The cargo hold would have to do. With my newly enhanced hypnotic powers, it was almost too easy to talk my way outside and onto the tarmac. A baggage handler emerged from the belly of the craft that would be ferrying me to the U.S. and prepared to close the hatch. He started in fright when I appeared beside him. “You never saw me,” I instructed him after capturing him with a glance. With a jerky nod, he waited for me to climb inside before shutting the door tightly.

It was roomier than I’d expected inside the cargo hold and far less icy than I’d thought it would be. Several animals were along for the ride so I guessed the pilot had to make sure they didn’t freeze to death during transit. The pets had wisely been placed so they couldn’t see each other. They growled, yipped and meowed but came short of trying to kill each other through their cages. One of the dogs, a small thing with a lot of fur, showed me its teeth in a silent snarl when I walked past its cage. All of the animals subsided into nervous silence when I was out of sight. Maybe they could sense that I wasn’t human.

Bags, suitcases and packages of all shapes and sizes had been stacked in untidy rows. Making my way to the back of the hold, I started shifting the suitcases around. I built a low wall so no one would see me when they came to feed and water the animals. It would be easy enough to hypnotize them into forgetting I was there but staying out of sight was a low risk solution. Turning the flight attendants into walking cabbages might be noticed and I preferred to reach the U.S. with a minimum of fuss.

Making myself as comfortable as possible on one of the larger suitcases, I spent the next twelve hours bored out of my mind yet far too keyed up to sleep. Worry was my constant companion. I formulated and rejected a dozen plans, wishing that I had been given enhanced intelligence as well as enhanced beauty. My plans all had a similar theme revolving around finding the secret facility and breaking inside it. Until I actually saw what I was up against, it would be impossible to come up with a final plan.

After a stop somewhere to refuel and to exchange existing passengers for new ones, my fight continued on. It was dark when the plane landed in Los Angeles. I slipped out of the cargo hold when the baggage handlers’ backs were turned. Stepping inside the airport, I was astounded by the sheer size of it. Huge and confusing, LAX was the biggest airport I’d ever been in. A harried security guard gave me directions to the domestic terminal, which turned out to be on the other side of the gigantic complex.

After an underground train ride, I found the correct terminal and searched for a flight to Denver. It was going to be a close call this time, the plane was due to leave in a few minutes. I made it to the gate just as they were calling for a missing passenger a final time.

Spying me jogging towards her, the flight attendant put the microphone away and smiled in relief. Her smile slipped a bit when I was close enough for her to see my face. “Are you Akira Chen?” she asked doubtfully. The name sounded Asian and I was obviously Caucasian so I could understand her scepticism.

“Yep, I’m Akira,” I told her and stared into her eyes. “You’ve already checked my boarding pass and everything is fine.”

“Welcome, Ms Chen,” she replied woodenly. “You are free to board.”

Settling into my borrowed seat after bamboozling my way through two more impatient attendants, I ignored the hostile glares coming from my fellow passengers. None of them were happy that I’d held up the flight. This trip was going to be much shorter than the last at just over two hours and twenty minutes. I was pretty sure I could endure the wrath of dozens of people for that short length of time.

I was still being sent an occasional stare of annoyance at holding everyone up when we landed. I waited patiently for my turn to disembark instead of pushing my way through to the front of the crowd. Drawing undue attention to myself wouldn’t be smart considering I was on a rescue mission to save my friends from the U.S. government.

Freed from the plane, I mingled with the crowd and slowly dropped back towards the rear. Spying an exit, I hypnotized a security guard into letting me out. My time was rapidly being eaten away and I didn’t have the patience to wait in any lines. Jogging around to the main entrance, I took another short trip back inside. A few minutes later I held the keys to a hire car and was headed out of the doors for a final time.

Climbing behind the wheel of the small Mazda, I sent out my senses and caught a trace of vampires in the distance. Zeroing in on the area, I sagged in relief when I found a cluster of my kin. There was no way to tell whether they were my friends or not but some strange instinct told me they were.

Leaving Denver behind, the view quickly became monotonous. The landscape was mainly flat to start with but it gradually began to rise into hills. Scrubby trees began to make an appearance and then the occasional fir or pine tree showed up. Pale moonlight from a waning moon shone on a mountain range ahead. I sensed the vampires somewhere on the other side of the range. Some of the trees at the top of the range were white with snow and I shivered at the thought of how cold it was going to be up there.

Dawn drew close before I could tackle the mountains. Nudging the rental car onto a little used dirt track, I parked behind a stand of trees and climbed into the boot. I guessed I should think of it as a trunk since I was in America now. This time, I allowed myself to sleep but it was thin and riddled with dreams of my friends calling out to me for help. The images were fleeting and didn’t help me to figure out exactly where they were or what condition they were in. All I saw was white walls and humans wearing either white lab coats or army uniforms. The general emotion I felt from the captives was despair and terror.

Come nightfall, I hit the road again and the small rental car gamely attempted to climb the mountain range. The clouds were low enough that it almost seemed like I could reach out and touch them. Snow still lingered despite it being mid spring. My heater was going full blast to combat the chill. I didn’t relish being out in the cold and wished I had stolen something warmer to wear. The three inch heels wouldn’t exactly be ideal for sneaking around in. At least if any of my toes fell off due to frostbite I would be able to reattach them when they thawed out again.

I finally cleared the range and drove for an hour or so beyond them before my senses told me I was closing in on the place where my friends had been taken. I turned onto a side road and it came as no surprise when I was confronted with a sign warning me that I was entering a restricted area. The high fence topped with razor wire to my right was a dead giveaway that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be.

Hoping my car hadn’t been spotted, I stopped and reversed back onto the mostly deserted highway. There had to be cameras watching the area as well as guards on patrol. If I was caught on film I could be identified with the facial recognition programs government agencies were so fond of using. If Sanderson was alerted that I had escaped from my watery prison, he would kill my friends and allies in a heartbeat. To break them out with a minimum of casualties on our end, I was going to have to be stealthy again. I only hoped I would have as much success this time as I’d had when infiltrating the Court mansion.

Further down the highway, I stopped at a sleepy little ski town and parked in a supermarket car park. A light dusting of snow covered the ground and my teeth started to chatter the instant I climbed out of the rental car. Apparently, they were having a long winter this year. Then again, I’d never been to Denver before so maybe this was normal.

One of the shops still had a light burning inside and I crossed the street to investigate. I felt the icy hand of fate guiding me when I saw that it was a ski hire store. Shoplifting wasn’t a pastime I usually felt compelled to engage in but it was going to be called for in this instance. I hadn’t bothered to steal any money during my journey and had no spare cash on me.

A man in his mid-twenties approached when I knocked on the door. His wary expression turned to dazed wonder when I caught his eyes. He let me in without me needing to give him a verbal command to. “You are the most-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I broke in before he could start raining praise down on me for how gorgeous I was. “I’m hot, get over it.” His grin didn’t waver but he stopped trying to compliment me. “I need clothes that will keep me warm while traipsing around in the snow,” I told him. Tall and wiry with an impressive afro, the clerk was all too happy to help.

Minutes later, I was decked out in thermal underwear and a blindingly white ski jacket and matching pants. He even gave me waterproof snow boots and thermal socks. The white balaclava he handed over would stop my face from freezing as well as help me to blend into the landscape.

“What do you know about the army facility just down the highway?” I asked him.

“Uh, it’s an army facility and it’s just down the highway,” he replied unhelpfully.

“What do they do there?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Experiment on aliens maybe?”

“Never mind,” I said with a silent sigh. My inner voice didn’t have to point out that the clerk could be right. Technically, vampires were descended from aliens and no doubt scientists had been called in to probe my surviving kin. They would want to find out how we ticked so they could discover better ways to kill us.

The clerk had one final service to offer me before I left. I filled up on his blood before I braved the cold again. I left my meal in blissful happiness as he continued his job of stocktaking. The tiny puncture wounds in his neck would fade until they looked like insect bites in a few hours.

With no idea what kind of security measures the not so secret facility used, I was glad for my all white gear. Taking the car would be a bad idea so I went on foot. The snow crunched beneath my new boots as I sprinted back down the highway. Reaching the turnoff that led to the restricted area, I stuck close to the tree line on the left side of the road.

Headlights blazed as a car approached me from behind. I ducked deeper into the trees and hunkered down to watch it pass. It was an army jeep, the kind without a roof, and carried several armed soldiers. Their faces were red from the cold as they searched the area for possible threats. I was far from warm but my outfit kept me from seizing up in the frigid temperature. I shuddered to think how bitter the cold would have been if it had been the middle of winter.

Somewhere up ahead, the jeep slowed down and turned off. So far, I hadn’t spotted any cameras but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I stuck to the trees and stealthily made my way to where the jeep had turned off.

A gate, complete with more razor wire as well as a pair of guards, barred the way. The road disappeared into the trees beyond the barrier. The jeep had already moved out of sight but I heard the engine as it receded deeper into the compound. I needed to get inside the grounds but going in through the main gate was out. The cameras I’d been expecting were in place here. Two were pointed directly at the gate and several more had been directed at the road. There were enough of them that it would be very difficult for anyone without the proper authorization to enter.

Staying low and moving slowly, I snuck past the guards. They chatted quietly, only occasionally glancing up and down the road to check for possible intruders. Their faces were also red from the cold. One of the men was smoking and his cigarette jittered up and down with his shivers. He raised his eyes heavenward and cursed as snow began to fall. “Just what we need,” he complained. “More snow.”

“I’m so tired of standing out here freezing my ass off,” his partner responded. “I don’t know what they’ve got stashed inside the complex this time but they’re being way too paranoid about it.”

Nodding and making his cigarette smoke whirl around his head, the other guard barked a laugh out of the side of his mouth. “Are they expecting someone to come in with their guns blazing and try to storm the place?” Patting the strap of gun that lay over his shoulder, he uttered another laugh. “If anyone even stops to ask for directions I’ll blast them in half with this baby.”

“Speaking of paranoia,” the other man said. “What is it with these new guns? They have enough firepower to take down an elephant.”

A chill raced down my spine when I recognized the weapons. They were the same type of gun that had been used to reduce me to chunks of meat. Not all of the personnel knew vampires were being held within the facility but they had been armed accordingly anyway.

Continuing down the road until I was out of sight of both the guards and the cameras, I crossed the asphalt to examine the fence. The trees had been cleared on the other side for a stretch of about fifteen feet. Checking to make sure the area was still clear, I backed up then ran a few steps and launched myself into the air. Landing on the other side of the fence, I was only a few steps away from the trees.

Turning around and walking backwards, I moved in an awkward hunch. Using my hands, I smoothed down the snow as best as I could to obscure my footprints. I obliterated my tracks until the snow ran out and dirt took over. Remembering a trick I’d read about years ago, I picked up a branch that still had leaves on it. Dragging it behind me, I swept away my footprints as I continued on through the forest.

Deeper inside the thicket, the trees were dense enough that very little snow reached the ground. I crept closer to the road the jeep had taken and followed it. After hiking for some distance, the trees suddenly petered out and stark white snow took over once more. Hunkering down, I studied the area in puzzlement. Apart from a couple of buildings that looked like airplane hangars, the place was empty.

Sending out my senses again, I felt the vampires somewhere beneath my feet. The entrance to what must be an underground facility was probably in one of the hangars. My chances of getting inside without being noticed were minimal. There was no way to tell how extensive the facility was or how many soldiers and personnel were in the complex. I needed to find a way inside that wouldn’t alert Colonel Sanderson that I had arrived and that all hell was about to break loose.

Wishing Gregor was there to offer me advice, I wracked my brain for a solution that wouldn’t result in the deaths of my friends and acquaintances. I’d come too far to just give up without a fight. God help us all but they needed me.

Not for the first time, I felt far too inadequate to be the dreaded Mortis. Not that long ago I’d sold clothing for a living. Now I was the only hope of survival for vampirekind. If this wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke, I didn’t know what was.

Chapter Twenty

Several soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the grounds and seemed to be on a timed schedule. Each one detoured to check inside both hangars during their patrol. They were disturbingly vigilant, shining heavy duty flashlights at any movement that caught their eyes. There was only a short window when no one was visible.

A vast expanse of snow lay between me and the twin buildings. I figured my best bet would be to grab one of the soldiers and drag him into the woods to ask him a few questions.

Waiting for one of the brief moments when all of the guards were out of sight, I streaked across the snowy field. Halfway to the hangars, my foot thudded on metal and I stopped to investigate. Crouching down, I wiped the snow away and revealed a grate. Peering inside the hole, a long shaft led to darkness. Perfectly square, the passage was narrow but not too narrow for me to be able to fit inside.

Movement in the corner of my eye had me flattening myself on the ground. Lying still, I waited for shouts to ring out and for explosive bullets to fly. Cautiously lifting my face out of the snow when neither happened, I waited for another break in the patrol before springing into action.

Glancing around to make sure I remained unobserved, I lifted the grate and slipped inside. Bracing myself with my feet against one wall and my back against the other, I lowered the grate back into position gently. It would have been far too heavy for a normal woman to lift but it was easy enough for me. Soft snowflakes immediately began to fall through the grate and onto my face. I hoped the snowfall would become heavy enough to hide my footprints. All it would take for the alarm to be sounded was for one guard to wander close enough to see my tracks. They would lead him directly to the grate. The soldiers would put two and two together quickly enough and the hunt would begin.

It was a long way to the bottom of the tunnel and I made my way downward carefully. I would heal if I fell and broke every bone in my body but the impact would hurt like hell. Stopping just above the end of the shaft when it came to an end, I peered downwards. Water ran sluggishly about twenty feet beneath me. It was far too clean to be from a sewage pipe and no noisome smells wafted upwards. With a mental shrug, I dropped and landed in the liquid. It was only ankle deep and my boots protected my feet and legs from getting wet.

Sloshing over to a narrow path that ran beside the shallow trough of water, I turned in a full circle. The walls, ceiling and floor were all made of unpainted grey concrete. The tunnel stretched far into the distance in both directions. With only two choices, I headed left. My progress was eventually blocked by a set of bars that disappeared into the ceiling and floor. The bars were as thick as my wrists. A hallway leading deeper into the facility tantalized me from the other side.

Tugging and kicking the bars had absolutely no effect. They were far too strong for me to break. Giving up in defeat, I headed in the other direction and eventually came to a blank wall. The water flowed into a narrow shaft that dropped down even deeper beneath the ground. Now what? My subconscious had no answer for me so I grumpily jogged back the other way.

Staring at the hallway that remained stubbornly out of my reach, I leaned against the cold bars and stretched out a hand as if I could will myself through them. At that thought, a red line appeared on my wrist where it had previously been severed. My hand came free and dropped to the ground. Instead of scuttling off down the path under its own power as I half expected it to, Righty lay on its palm, waiting for me to possess it.

Putting my head against the bars, I tested whether there was any possibility that it would be able to fit through them. As I’d already known, the bars were too close together. My head would have to be broken down into pieces right along with the rest of me before I would be able to pass through the barrier.

Again, as if it had just been waiting for me to form the thought, my body took action. Lefty dropped to the ground first then bits and pieces started falling out of my clothes. My head wobbled on my neck then fell to the ground and shattered like a dropped pumpkin. It didn’t hurt but it was disconcerting to suddenly find myself in so many pieces. Looking through both eyes at the same time was dizzying with them being several feet away from each other.

With my eyes watching the process as well as they could since they were looking in different directions, I possessed both hands and set them the task of shifting my pieces to the other side of the bars. They worked quickly and efficiently, scooping up the pieces of my head first and depositing them into a small pile. With my eyes now sitting side by side, it was easier to oversee the job.

Most of my parts remained in my clothing and were dragged through the bars in a shapeless bundle. It seemed Sanderson’s method of reducing me down into a chowder like consistency had ended up working in my favour. I could now break my own body down into small enough pieces that I should be able to fit them just about anywhere.

When their job was done, Lefty and Righty joined the jumble of flesh and I immediately began to reform. There were no flashes of pain this time, it was a seamless, quick procedure and I was whole again in seconds. I was even still wearing my clothes.

Shaking my head at just how strange I’d become now, I headed down the hallway and stopped at a recess where a plain white door waited. Pressing my ear up against it, I detected no sounds of human activity coming from the other side. Machinery hummed, making the door quiver slightly and bringing to mind gigantic generators. I tested the handle and was unsurprised to find the door locked. Increasing the pressure, something inside the handle snapped and it became loose in my hand.

More grey hallways were on the other side. A confusing rabbit warren of intersections spread out beneath the facility. I could sense the vampires a few levels above me. They seemed to be in the same general area, which was a bonus for me. It would be far easier to rescue them if they weren’t spread out over several levels. Now I just needed to find a way to reach them and break them free. Yeah, I’m sure it will be a piece of cake.

Nearing the source of the humming machinery, I spied a staircase and climbed up to the next floor. Somewhere in the halls nearby, a pair of humans were chatting. I stopped to listen to their conversation, just in case I’d been spotted during my entry. It was also possible that someone had found my tracks and that they were now on the lookout for me.

“What do you think they’re working on up on the fifty-seventh level?” a hushed male voice asked.

After a brief hesitation, he was answered. “Personally, I think its aliens.” The response was equally hushed and echoed the thoughts of the clerk who had supplied me with my snow gear.

“Aliens? You can’t be serious! Aliens don’t really exist.”

“What do you think is up there then?”

“It has to be vampires.” The human’s scorn at the idea of aliens would have disappeared in a heartbeat if he had known about my kin’s true origins.

“Everyone knows most of the vampires have been wiped out. That small group of them in France are the only ones left now.” My eyes widened at his casual statement. “I heard a small Japanese island had been teeming with them. Rumour has it that they had turned hundreds of humans into their willing blood slaves. The Colonel bombed the whole lot of them to smithereens.” I clenched my hands at the satisfaction in his tone and had to brace myself when he continued. “They found the lair beneath that mountain in Romania and cleaned out all of the vermin. Thanks to the creepy blonde French vampire ratting them all out, we’ve hunted down and destroyed pretty much every monster on the planet.”

“How do we know they were really destroyed?” the first man whispered. “Sure, every government and ruling body agreed they had to be eradicated but what else could they be hiding up on level fifty-seven?”

Even after being blown to pieces, boxed up and thrown into the sea, I was shocked that the entire world had decided my kind would be better off dead. Obviously, the Americans had kept a few of us around despite the apparent worldwide agreement to terminate our kind. Why were my friends and allies being kept in this underground prison instead of being eradicated along with the rest? While I was inordinately glad at least some of them were still alive, I was beginning to wonder if they would have been better off being blown apart.

At the next landing, a sign told me I was on level sixty-four. Amazed that I was so deep beneath the ground, I climbed up to level fifty-seven. A warning had been painted in bright red on the door: Restricted Access – Authorized Personnel Only. The door was locked, of course, and I couldn’t just barge inside. I had to think of a way to scout out the area before I could form a plan of action.

If only there was some way I could see through the door! Frustrated, I sat down on the top step. Minutes passed and I was no closer to a solution. Heaving yet another internal sigh, my inner voice took pity on me. What are the two round things in your head that sit on either side of your nose? It sounded like a rhetorical question but I answered it cautiously anyway. Um, my eyes? Giving me a mental pat on the head, my subconscious helped me out a bit more. What purpose do your eyes serve? This one was easy. They let me see things.

It took me a few more seconds but I finally got what my subconscious was trying to tell me and swivelled around to face the door. The crack at the bottom was far too narrow for my eye to roll beneath but maybe it didn’t need to roll at all. My right eye popped free at my mental order, amazing me all over again that I could command any of my body parts to detach at will. I placed the orb at the base of the door. A poke of my finger popped it and it became a tiny puddle of jelly. Possessing the watery substance, I made it slither beneath the door to the other side. My vision was blurry in this form and all I could make out was a sea of white.

Cautiously, I concentrated on the jelly and it reformed into a solid orb again. Holding in a slightly hysterical giggle at the mental picture of my detached eye rolling up down and from side to side, I made it do exactly that as I looked around. As I’d already determined, white was the predominant colour. A long hallway stretched ahead with several intersecting hallways to either side. There were no humans in sight so I slowly began to roll down the hall.

At the first intersection, I peeked around the corner and saw several doors branching off on either side. Making my way to the first door, I flattened my orb down and slithered inside. If my eye hadn’t been reduced to jelly, I would have had trouble squeezing through the gap. A tight seal around the door meant it was most likely sound proofed. The only reason I could think that sound proofing would be needed would be to muffle screams. Why do I have the feeling that Colonel Sanderson’s days are numbered, I asked myself rhetorically. While my priority was to rescue my remaining kin, thoughts of retribution began to stir.

Reforming again, my eye examined the room but found little of interest. At first glance, it appeared to be a hospital room. This assessment was based on the narrow metal bed with a thin mattress and wheels so it could be moved. A cart with a couple of monitors on top sat beside the bed. They looked like the sort of monitors that were supposed to measure vital signs. They would be useless to gauge our vital signs because we didn’t have any. About the only thing they would be able to measure about us would be our brain waves.

The next three rooms were the same but the fourth one was occupied. Staring up at the bed, I could make out twin foot shaped lumps beneath the blankets. A pair of IV stands stood on both sides of the bed. Thick, black ooze was slowly dripping into a half empty bag on one side. Rolling several feet across the floor, I peered up at the other IV. Bright red blood flowed down the plastic tube towards the patient. It disappeared from my sight and presumably into a vein.

Back in the stairwell, my body stirred at the implications of what I was seeing. Due to my orb’s small stature, the bed seemed to be as high as a mountain. I rolled over to it and used my dangling optic nerves to climb upwards. It wasn’t an easy journey and I kept sliding down the slick metal leg but I finally made it to the top. Alternately rolling and climbing over the body, I eased up onto the captive’s chest. Multiple bands of thick metal across the legs, waist and chest held the vampire down. His arms had been positioned so his palms were facing upwards and his veins were accessible. His arms had also been strapped down so he couldn’t dislodge the needles that were stuck in both arms.

Focussing on the patient’s face, at first I didn’t recognize him and thought he was a stranger. His body was small and wasted and his face was wrinkled and aged. For a horrible moment I thought my vision had come true and that it was Geordie strapped to the bed. Then I noticed his hair was black rather than dirty blonde, where it hadn’t turned grey. Looking beyond the unnatural aging and taking in the size of the prone form, I realized it could only be Ishida. The blood that kept his ten thousand year old body young and unalive was slowly being drained out and human blood was replacing it. I was far from an expert but it was obvious even to me that the experiment wasn’t working. Instead of changing him back to a human, it was slowly killing the emperor of the now almost extinct Japanese vampire nation.

It was still dark outside but Ishida had retreated into unconsciousness. To my knowledge, I was the only vampire who could fall asleep at will when the sun wasn’t up. His coma like state must have been due to the persistent removal of his blood.

Until I saw the rest of the survivors, I couldn’t work out a rescue plan but I couldn’t leave the kid like this. Inching my way up his arm, I used my optic nerves to pull out the needle that was draining his vampire blood away. I left it beneath the tape holding it in place. Only close observation would give what I had done away.

Next, I made my way across to his other arm and pulled out the second needle. I dropped it over the side of the bed and bright red blood immediately began to drip to the floor. As soon as a human came to check on Ishida, they would begin the process again but I hoped I’d bought him at least a little more time. Judging his condition, even a few hours of not having his blood drained away might be crucial.

I knew that at least several of my friends and allies had survived Sanderson’s treachery but now I had to find out who else had made it. My body sitting in the stairwell stirred uneasily at the thought that some of my loved ones might already be beyond saving.

The colonel’s future balanced on who I would find locked up in these pristine yet cold prison cells. So did the futures of the people who had given him his orders. No force on Earth would be able to save them if I didn’t find Luc and my friends alive somewhere within this secret underground facility.

Chapter Twenty-One

I found several European and Japanese vampires in the cells near Ishida’s. All had been experimented on in ways that were as disturbing as they were diverse. Sliding beneath yet another door, I only half formed my eye before realizing two humans were in the room.

Oozing rather than rolling along the floor, I hid behind a stainless steel trolley that presumably held medical equipment. Peering around the corner to make sure I hadn’t been spotted, I tilted my eye upwards and saw a familiar face. My body surged to its feet in the stairwell but I stopped short of bursting through the door and coming to my friend’s rescue. To do so would almost certainly result in his immediate death.

Shirtless and wearing only a pair of white drawstring pants, Igor’s hairy chest was covered in electrodes. More were stuck to his face and arms. He’d been chained to the wall with his arms outstretched horizontally, almost as if his captors were mimicking crucifixion. Without ears, I couldn’t hear the Russian scream but his body thrashed and his face contorted as electricity surged through him.

Gesturing with a hand that held a pen, one of the white coated scientists instructed his colleague to turn the machine off. Igor sagged and hung from the manacles that were cutting into his wrists and ankles. I wasn’t sure what alerted him to my presence but he lifted his head slightly and focussed on my eye. Astonished shock made him stiffen but the humans didn’t notice. They were too busy taking notes and adjusting their machine, presumably to administer a higher dose of electrical shock next time.

“Natalie?” Igor mouthed. I rolled my eye backwards and forwards in the orb’s version of a nod. My grizzled friend grinned savagely before dropping his head again and feigning defeat. I didn’t want to leave him but there was little I could do just yet.

Kokoro was three rooms down and had also been chained to the wall. Her hospital gown was white but it was nowhere near as elegant as the kimonos she usually wore. A scientist sat on a stool a few feet away, asking her questions. The seer ignored him completely. It was a reaction he seemed to be used to. Her blind white eyes zeroed in on me as soon as I reformed. A tiny smile settled on her otherwise expressionless face. She didn’t appear to have been harmed recently but God only knew what the scientists had done to her during her captivity. Although she couldn’t actually see me, she nodded to indicate she was aware of my presence.

Aventius was my next find. His room was different to the other cells. It was devoid of beds, monitors and wall shackles. Instead, it was dominated by a long tank. The tank was full of clear fluid. He’d been immersed for so long that his skin was completely shrivelled. He floated on his side, staring at the door with utter desolation. The black bags beneath his eyes were bigger and darker and his cheeks were even more hollow now. None of the captives looked like they were being fed regularly. Starving them would undoubtedly help to keep them docile. Thankfully, he was wearing swimming trunks. Neither of us would ever be able to forget it if I had seen him naked. Not that he was even aware that I was observing him at the moment.

I came across Geordie next and my orb went still in shock when I saw what had been done to him. Chained to the wall like most of the others had been, his form of torture was worse than the rest. Over a dozen thick metal bars had been inserted into his body. They stuck out of his legs, abdomen, torso and arms. He looked like a vampire version of a voodoo doll. His young face was drawn with pain that wouldn’t end until the rods were removed. I oozed back beneath the door before he could spot me. Knowing the teen, he would be unable to contain his reaction once he realized I was there to save him. I felt sick with rage but forced myself to contain it. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool and I had to think more clearly than I ever had before. The last thing I needed was for orange light to start blazing from my roving eye and lighting up the hallway.

Gregor was a few doors down from the teen. He looked strange without his usual natty tweed suit. He was also naked from the waist up but was far less hairy than Igor. His body rippled with muscles I hadn’t realized he’d possessed. I was puzzled to see a thick sheet of metal bolted to the wall behind him.

Two scientists were conferring while a soldier stood to the side. The soldier’s hand toyed with the pistol that sat in a holster on his hip. The scientists ceased their discussion and one of them pointed at Gregor. At the order I couldn’t hear, the soldier pulled his weapon, aimed and fired. My friend jerked when the bullet tore into his abdomen but his lips stubbornly remained closed. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of reacting to their torture. The spent cartridge fell to the ground to mingle with the others that had already been fired. I counted ten and my rage flared up again.

I left the room so I wouldn’t have to witness any further torture and risk losing my control. I’d counted a total of twenty-seven vampires in captivity so far and worry gnawed at me when I realized there was only one hallway left to be searched.

The first few rooms I examined were bigger than the others. They lacked manacles on the walls and held the usual plain hospital bed and monitoring equipment. My worry increased with each room that I searched that turned out to be empty.

Reaching the end of the hall, there was only one room left to search. My dead heart was doing its best to try to lodge itself in my throat. Oozing beneath the door, I reformed my eye slowly.

In the stairwell, my hands covered my face as if it could block out the sight that was before my detached orb. I had found Luc and he was intact but his torture was a different variety to the others. Naked and perfect of face and form, my beloved studied an equally naked human woman. Crying and trying to cover herself with her hands, she cowered against a wall. Luc shook his head, presumably in response to a command coming from a set of speakers that I could see but couldn’t hear. He shook his head again then winced at what I assumed was a threat. Finally, he nodded in acquiescence.

Shaking in terror, the woman tried to run but had nowhere to go. They were both locked in the cell but only one of them would really suffer the coming torture. Her fright would shortly melt away and she would become happy, even if it was a false happiness. My one true love caught her, pulled her hands away from her face and stared into her eyes. All the terror ran out of her and she became helplessly mesmerized.

Luc’s fangs descended and he bit gently into her throat. Her hands went around his waist and she pressed herself against him, offering him her body. With an expression of profound regret, my beloved drew her over to the bed and complied with the scientist’s demands. Well aware of his usual passion, I could see he was just going through the motions as he sated himself on the human. Turning my eye away so I didn’t have to witness the entire act, I waited for it to be over.

When Luc was finished with his task, several soldiers entered the room. A booted foot came close to stomping on me but I rolled out of the way just in time. All were carrying the prototypes that Sanderson and his men had first loaned to us and had ended up shooting me with. Luc placed his arm over his eyes and made no move to stop the men from retrieving the woman or to escape. She left with a dreamy smile, utterly compliant and unresisting. She’d been hypnotized deeply enough that her nakedness no longer bothered her.

Although it wasn’t his fault, I was still furious with Luc for having sex with the human. After a few moments of reflection, I decided it wasn’t really him I was angry with. Sanderson and his superiors were the source of my rage. We’d helped to save humanity from two beings that had threatened the safety of their world and they were treating us like lab rats. I had personally killed both of the creatures who had tried to take over their world and they had done their best to imprison me for eternity. If I’d known this would be the eventual outcome, I would have been tempted to let the First turn the humans into cattle instead of hunting him down and killing him.

I still didn’t have a plan of action but I wanted Luc to know that I had returned from my watery grave and would try to save him. He was well used to guarding his emotions and I was pretty sure he would be able to hide his surprise when he figured out what was going on.

Climbing up to the thin mattress of the hospital bed, I was aware that cameras had to be watching him. Flattening down into ooze, I inched up to the hand that lay across his stomach.

Luc started when my orb reformed in his palm. He turned his hand and peered down at me through the fingers covering his eyes. In their black depths I read wild hope mixed with self-loathing. He mouthed a word and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. “Ladybug?”

I did my orb version of a nod again and his eyes closed in relief. He didn’t try to stop me as I oozed out of his palm and made my way out of the room again. Only three out of the twenty-eight captives knew I was there and they had no way of helping me to break them free. It was going to be up to me to bust them all loose without anyone knowing what I was up to.

Spotting a pair of scientists leaving one of the cells, I quickly rolled after them and caught up to the pair as they paused at an intersection. After a brief conversation, they parted. Undecided for a moment, I chose one of the men and hurried after him. He pushed open a door and I rolled inside just before it swung shut.

White tiles covered the floor but it wasn’t until I’d snuck up behind the man that I realized we were in a bathroom and he was peeing into a urinal. Flattening myself down, I climbed up his shoe and clung to the back of his white sock. I couldn’t watch every direction at once and I would be spotted sooner or later if I continued to roll up and down the hallways. Hitching a ride seemed to be the smartest way to get around. It also had to be a lot quicker.

I heard a door open on the floor below my body and a speck of my consciousness was drawn back to the stairwell. The door swung shut and a pair of boots began clomping upwards. Reaching the bottom of the stairs that I was seated on, a soldier stared up at me in surprise. Drawing the rest of my consciousness back to my body, my single eye captured him. “Come here,” I instructed him then stood.

He complied with a happy smile and climbed the stairs to join me on the landing. “You are so gorgeous,” he breathed.

“So I’ve been told,” I replied. “Do you have access to that door?” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder. My minion reluctantly shook his head. “Who has access to this level?”

“Scientists, some of the guards, Colonel Sanderson and a few other high ranking officers.”

My eyes narrowed at hearing the colonel’s name. “Is Sanderson here right now?”

Frowning in mild distress at my sharp tone, he shook his head again. “He has been called away for a few days, ma’am. There was some kind of problem in France, or so I’ve heard.”

I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was. Sanderson’s tame vampires were all dead and he had no idea who had killed them. The Comtesse had ratted out every vampire she knew about in an effort to save her own skin. Little did she know that she and her cohorts would be the ones to end up dead and my small band of friends would be the ones to survive. At least they would if I could get them out of this death trap.

“Return to your duties and forget you saw me,” I instructed the meat sack. Nodding, he trudged up the stairs to the next floor. I hoped the dreamy look would leave his face quickly.

Switching my consciousness back to my roaming eye, I blurrily saw that the scientist had moved to a new room. It had a high ceiling, an open floor plan and dozens of work stations lined up side by side. Men and women dressed in white lab coats bustled around, conferring and apparently testing samples. A few soldiers stood around the edges of the room, bored and hiding yawns in a few cases. My fury rose again that they felt no remorse for what they were putting my friends through. These people almost seemed to be bored, as if they were so used to us that we no longer held any mystical appeal.

A door that was being guarded by two slightly more alert men caught my attention. A sign stated that it was a restricted area and only authorized personnel could enter. I hoped I would find something useful behind that door because I hadn’t found anything that would help me to rescue my friends so far.

Waiting until the scientist that I’d hitched a ride with stopped at a work station, I quickly slid to the floor then slowly began oozing towards the restricted door.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Squeezing beneath the door, I stared up at a wall of monitors. Each one displayed an image of my friends and allies in their cells. Luc still lay on his bed with his arm over his face. He’d pulled the sheet up to his chest, probably more to ward off the chill rather than out of modesty’s sake.

Kokoro was still ignoring the scientist who sat a few feet away from her with a clipboard in his hand. I couldn’t see his face but from the way his head was moving, I figured he was still asking her questions. The seer lifted her head and stared directly at me through the camera lens. I could almost hear her urging me to free them before the Americans decided to put an end to their experiments.

Three uniformed men sat at a table to the right. All had numerous medals pinned to their chests. I assumed these were the ‘high ranking officers’ the soldier I had hypnotized in the stairwell had mentioned.

Another pair of soldiers sat at a console. They watched the monitors, presumably scanning for signs of trouble. Dawn was only a few moments away and most of the men in the room were flagging. It had to be tough for them being on night shift and having to sleep through the day but I had no sympathy for these torturers. Their discomfort paled in comparison to the agony they were inflicting on their captives.

The instant the sun came up, every vampire on the monitors succumbed to the slumber that reduced them to death. Even Aventius closed his eyes and became limp inside his tank. It was the only way they could escape from the horror that their lives had become. Sagging in his manacles, Geordie looked closer to twelve instead of fifteen. He resembled a frightened kid who was being picked on by much larger bullies. A stab of sorrow for all that he had endured went through me. The rage I felt was far stronger and was harder to control. A faint orange glow lit the carpet in front of my orb. Stamping down on my anger, the glow quickly faded.

When the men around the table stood, I figured it was time for a shift change. I flattened my eye and slid it out of the way before I could be stepped on. As the old batch left the room, a fresh group of men entered and sat either at the console or at the table. Over the next couple of hours, none of them left the room. They had their own private bathroom and mini kitchen so there was no need for them to step outside.

Watching the monitors, I noticed the scientists and soldiers pausing each time they were about to enter one of the cells. One of the men sitting at the console would push a button and the door to the cell would pop open.

I need to get a look at the console, I decided. Keeping the table in my peripheral vision, I snuck over to the console operator on the left and reduced my eye to jelly. The climb up his leg was long and slow but remaining unnoticed was more important than speed. Reaching his arm, I climbed up to his shoulder and reformed. Perched just beside his neck, he couldn’t see me out of the corner of his eye and I was hidden from the other men in the room. There was little chance anyone would enter the door behind me and spot me. I had a feeling only dire circumstances would make the door open before the next shift change. By the time any of the humans realized their circumstances had turned dire, my friends would hopefully be free.

At first the console was a confusing array of buttons. After watching the two men in action for a while, I figured out which buttons opened the doors and which ones opened the manacles. After they’d been prodded with guns to make sure they really were dead to the world, several of my kin were released from their bonds. Each one fell to the floor and lay there without moving.

A plan began to form as the sun marched through the sky high above. I would only have one shot at freeing my kin. I had to hope that they would figure out what was going on quickly enough to be able to help me release the rest of the survivors.

Taking over everyone in the control room would be crucial but I would have to wait for the next shift to arrive before putting my plan into action. It wasn’t much fun watching my friends and allies being manipulated like mannequins while they slept. A small team of nurses bustled into each room, washing and changing my kin under the watchful eyes of soldiers. They spent a few moments too long washing Luc before sliding a pair of drawstring pants up to his hips.

Their faces went wooden when they entered Geordie’s cell. They washed him as best as they could with a dozen metal bars sticking out of his thin body. Gregor’s wound had mostly healed but they dabbed around the edges as if they were worried it would hurt him. Apparently they still knew little about us even after almost five months of experimentation. They didn’t realize yet that we didn’t feel pain when we were in our unanimated states. When we woke up, we felt every injury that hadn’t yet healed.

Igor’s hairy torso was free of electrodes now. They scrubbed him and I was careful to look away when they changed his pants. Some things just didn’t need to be seen. While I couldn’t close my detached eye, I could at least avert my gaze.

Aventius was left to float in the tank and no one even bothered to enter his room. They probably just checked him every few days to take notes and to make sure barnacles hadn’t begun to form on his flesh.

Kokoro, and the other remaining female vampires, were surrounded by the nurses when their gowns were changed, giving them at least some privacy. It was the only sign of humanity the humans had shown towards their prisoners so far.

Poor Ishida was sponged clean and grim looks were exchanged by the women. His withered body was enough to make anyone with a heart feel pity. One of the nurses noticed the dropped IV tube and earned a few points in my favour by surreptitiously kicking it beneath the bed. Another saw that the second needle had been pulled out. She looked around to make sure the soldiers weren’t watching and made a small adjustment. At first I thought she had inserted the needle back beneath his skin. At her guilty expression, it was more likely she had just settled the needle under the tape more securely. Maybe not everyone was happy about the treatment my friends were receiving after all. Luckily for the nurses, neither of the soldiers watching the monitors was paying close attention. After spending twelve hours a day watching the screens with nothing untoward happening, they had grown complacent.

By the time my friends and allies woke for the night and the shift changed again, I had formulated a plan. Step one was to capture every soldier in the control room. To accomplish that without being discovered, I would have to catch them when they were alone.

Oozing beneath the bathroom door, I waited for my first victim to arrive. Without a watch, I had no way to accurately judge how long I waited. My body in the stairwell sent another soldier on his way when he happened across me. I was peckish but leaving bite marks in his neck probably wasn’t a good idea. At least some of the employees believed vampires were being kept on level fifty-seven. Leaving such a clear sign that one was roaming free would be idiotic. I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer sometimes but I wasn’t stupid.

At last, the bathroom door opened and my first victim entered. I’d stationed myself beside the basin to wait. As a small puddle of goo on the bench, I fuzzily watched the man go about his business. When he stepped over to the basin to wash his hands, I reformed my orb again. Starting when he noticed my eye, the soldier did what I’d hoped he would do and picked it up. In seconds, he was mine. One down, four to go.

More time passed and the soldier dreamily stared at my eye without moving and barely even blinking. It was frustrating having no way to order him to do my bidding. I would just have to wait for someone to come and investigate his absence.

The door eventually opened as one of the other men came to check on his colleague. His face came into view over the first man’s shoulder and he also became mine. Only one of the high ranking soldiers would be left at the table now and he was my next target.

Rolling off my minion’s palm, I dropped to the bench and both men’s eyes followed me. I dropped to the floor and they turned to keep me in view. Neither made any move to follow me as I rolled through the open door. The third soldier wearing a chest full of medals was sitting at the table, engrossed in a newspaper. He didn’t notice my eye climbing up his leg then oozing across the table top. I reformed my eye on the middle of the page he was reading and he became as mesmerized as the other two.

Rolling to the far side of the table, I dropped to the floor and hurried across the carpet to the closest soldier watching the monitors. Time was weighing on me. While I’d been waiting for my first victim to arrive in the bathroom, the experiments had begun on my kin. Igor flailed as an electrical shock surged through him. He was probably wondering what the hell was taking me so long to break him free.

On the other monitors, the rest of my friends were also suffering. Gregor was shot through the chest by the same soldier. Thankfully, the bullet lodged on the right side of his chest so there was no danger of his heart being hit. He gritted his teeth, refusing to scream for the scientists who calmly took their notes. Kokoro stared at the camera, silently pleading with me to hurry. Geordie’s mouth opened in a shriek as a scientist yanked out one of the metal rods out of his stomach. The other man leaned in, fascinated to see the wound slowly attempting to close. The teen’s face twisted and I knew he was dry sobbing in pain, humiliation and terror. Luc prowled his cell, fists clenching and unclenching. I knew he would be ready to act when the time came. No one brought him a fresh victim to feed his blood and flesh hungers on. In his current mood, it was probably wisest for them to leave him alone.

The console operator was so focussed on watching the monitors that he didn’t see my eye reforming beside his hand. I had to nudge him to get his attention. One short glance was all it took for him to become my slave. I quickly rolled across the console, drawing the attention of the other soldier who was watching the monitors. He fell beneath my spell and I was finally ready to act.

Most of the monitors showed the insides of the cells but several were dedicated to watching the hallways. My eye had been too small for the soldiers to see it rolling around the hallways on the screens but my body would have been spotted instantly. Now that I was in control of the room, I could see exactly where every scientist and soldier was and could act accordingly.

I’d tried to memorize which buttons controlled the cell doors and manacles and hoped I wouldn’t screw this up. Choosing a button, I rolled over to it and waited for the scientists to cease torturing their captive. Using the optic nerves as springs, I propelled my orb into the air and it landed squarely on the button.

When the manacles holding his wrists and ankles snapped open, Igor reacted instantly. Grinning fiercely, he pounced on the closest scientist. His fangs descended and he bit into the horrified man’s throat. I wasn’t sure if it was instinct or a deliberate act when he shielded himself with his victim as he fed. His eyes were locked on the second scientist, who posed no threat to him at the moment. The human was too busy screaming and covering his face with his hands. In his urge to block out the sight of seeing his colleague being savaged, he had forgotten the gun at his side.

Blood continued to spurt from a severed jugular when the Russian dropped his meal to the ground. Treating vampires like test animals hadn’t been a very well thought out plan by the humans. Starving them had been even more stupid. Every single one of them, minus Luc, would be ravenous. Worse, they would be colossally annoyed at the treatment they had received. Put the two together and a lot of humans were about to die.

Turning to run, the second scientist uselessly pounded on the door. I couldn’t hear him but he was probably screaming for help. He could scream all he wanted to, the rooms were soundproofed and no one else in the complex would be able to hear him either. Igor didn’t bother to feed from the second man, he put an end to the scientist’s terror by placing his hands on his head and wrenching it in a semicircle. The man’s head canted at an awkward angle when his body was dropped to the ground. Igor gave the camera the thumbs up then stood near the door, ready for action.

Reading my mind, Kokoro was ready when I released her manacles. Her pet scientist had carefully avoided being hypnotized by her sightless eyes. They became impossible to evade when she grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him in close. Losing the will to resist her, he became pliant in her hands. The seer fed far more daintily than Igor had. She then surprised me by punching her fist into the man’s chest and pulling out his heart. She squeezed it to pulp, dropped it to the floor then calmly bent to wipe her gory hand on his coat. Clearly, there would be no mercy for the humans from the few remaining Japanese warriors.

The instructor who had taught me how to fight with a sword wasn’t in any of the cells and I presumed he had fallen already. Grief at the loss of so many of my kin made my body in the stairwell shudder. We were all that was left now. A remnant shall remain, my subconscious whispered. It was my job to protect the few that were left. The humans would rue the decision they had made to turn on us. Death awaited anyone who stood in our way to freedom.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Splitting my consciousness, my detached eye watched the monitors as my body stood and turned to the door. Bearing down on the handle, it gave a groan of protest before something snapped and the handle became compliant. Stepping inside the pristine white hallway, my eye in the control room spotted me on one of the monitors and my body orientated itself. The hallways were confusing and it was difficult to tell where each cell was even while I was watching the monitors.

I could have released the manacles of every vampire one by one but I didn’t want to risk losing anyone. Many of the scientists carried guns and the ones who didn’t have a weapon were accompanied by armed soldiers. Letting Geordie go without warning would most likely end in his death. I could picture him standing there, gaping in confusion until one of the scientists put a bullet in his brain.

Igor’s cell was close so I jogged to it then pushed the button with my eye to unlock it. He was ready to rend the intruder to pieces but relaxed when he saw it was just me. “What kept you?” he asked gruffly then enveloped me in a crushing bear hug.

“Sorry it took me so long. I don’t exactly have Gregor’s knack for formulating plans,” I explained when he let me go.

“Who does?” he replied sardonically. “What is your plan?” was his next question as he surveyed the deserted corridors.

“I have an eye in the monitor room so I can see where all the scientists and soldiers are.” He turned to examine my empty eye socket and nodded in understanding. “I think we’ll have a better chance of getting everyone out alive if we break them out one by one.”

“Good plan,” he said after a short pause while he thought the problem through himself. “How many of us are left?”

I hesitated before breaking the bad news to him. “Twenty-nine, including me.”

He closed his eyes and braced himself. “What is Geordie’s condition?” Unspoken was the question whether his apprentice was even still alive.

“He’s…fine.” A glance at the monitor told me how big a lie that was. Igor’s protégé was trying to claw his way through the wall to get away from the scientists. Bleak eyes met mine in disbelief. “Ok, he’s not fine but at least he’s alive. Do you want to bust him out next?” While I wanted Geordie to be rescued as much as Igor did, I kind of hoped he didn’t want to free his apprentice just yet. It was going to be difficult to calm the teen down when he was finally set loose. It would be smarter to let our kin who would be able to get on board with the plan quickly free first.

Thinking about it, Igor came to the same conclusion and shook his head regretfully. “Geordie will be safer where he is for now. Are Gregor and Lucentio still with us?” I nodded and his relief was palpable. “Which of them is closest to us?”

“Gregor.”

“Let us free him first and then Lucentio,” Igor decided. He was close on my heels as I trotted down the hallway and made a turn.

We only had to back track twice before I found Gregor’s cell. My orb launched itself into the air and landed on the door release button before springing over to the manacle release button.

Igor burst into the room and slammed one of the scientists into the wall. He hit the man with enough force to shatter his skull. Blood and brains splattered across the white paint, leaving a reddish-grey stain. I grabbed the second scientist and copied Igor’s earlier move by snapping his neck. He dropped in a boneless heap, dead before he even felt any pain. It was a far more merciful death than he’d deserved.

Gregor sprang forward with a roar and tackled the soldier to the ground. The terrorized man’s gun went off for a final time as he reflexively pulled the trigger. He screamed shrilly in agony as fangs tore into his throat. Gregor jerked when the bullet ripped through him but he was too busy feeding to be concerned with the gaping hole that had appeared in his back.

When he was full, Gregor gave me a shamed look before turning away. His mouth and chin were covered in blood. His longish hair was a tousled mess and swung forward to hide his eyes. Crouched over his victim, he was far from the usual elegant vampire that I’d known. He had been reduced to a monster and again I felt no pity for the people who had put us here. Maybe one day I would be able to feel for humans again but tonight mercy had taken a back seat to vengeance.

Pulling a handkerchief out of the weakly struggling soldier’s pocket, Gregor wiped his face then stood. A well placed stomp with one foot ended the soldier’s life. Gregor regathered his dignity and pulled it around himself like a tattered coat that might be forever beyond repair. The smile he gave me was pained. I believed he was embarrassed that I had witnessed his regeneration to a primitive state. “I am so very glad to see you, Natalie.”

I stepped over the bodies of his captors and into his hug. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find you guys but I was, um, indisposed for a while.”

He gave me a sharp look but we all knew now wasn’t the time for a question and answer session. “Who are we freeing next?” he asked instead.

“Lucentio,” Igor responded. He made no move to pick up the dead soldier’s gun. I completely identified with his desire to fight with his fangs and bare hands.

Wending our way through the halls, I motioned for my friends to stop. My watchful orb had just noticed a pair of scientists leaving a cell just around the corner from us. Waving the others forward, we converged on the pair silently. I didn’t protest as the men pushed past me to deal with the white coated torturers.

My orb unlocked the door the scientists had just vacated. A European vampire stared at me in surprise when the door swung open. He rubbed his wrists as the manacles suddenly clicked open and his arms and legs were released. His gaze moved past me and fastened on the human that was struggling in Igor’s tight grip. Both scientists were hustled back into the cell and I pushed the door shut. Gregor dropped his lifeless meat sack to the ground. He had squeezed the man’s life away with one hand around his throat.

Needing no invitation, the European yanked the human out of Igor’s hands and drained him to the point of death. After he’d torn the scientist’s throat out, he let the body fall and gave me a formal bow. “I am Cristov. I am in debt to you for saving my life.”

I recognized him as being one of the Europeans that Aventius had brought to Africa. He hadn’t been one of the followers that I had busted sacrificing humans in Russia so he must have been picked up somewhere along the way. “I’m glad to see you’re ok, Cristov.” He smiled when I clapped him on the shoulder, revealing bloody fangs. Deep scars marred his flesh from where he had been burned by acid. Almost ordinary in appearance with sandy brown hair and nondescript features, he was trying to control his rage at being kept prisoner but he was losing the battle. As we stepped out into the hallway, his black eyes sought for more humans to rend.

Stopping just around the corner from Luc’s cell, I pointed at another door. “One of Ishida’s people is in there,” I told my small band of warriors. “You help him out while I set Luc loose.”

Realizing that I needed a private moment with my one true love, Igor and Gregor nodded. Cristov nodded as well and readied himself for action. My orb was busy for the next few seconds releasing the locks and manacles of the first cell before then releasing the lock to Luc’s door.

I pushed the door open and Luc stoped pacing. For a few moments we simply stared at each other in silence. Then I crossed the distance between us without being aware that I was moving. My feet left the ground as Luc hugged me. “I thought you were lost to me forever,” he said. The desolation in his voice was matched by mine at the thought of losing him.

“I made you a promise,” I reminded him.

He put me down then held my face in his hands. Even with a gaping eye socket he looked at me as if I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “Can you still love me knowing that I have betrayed you with many human women?”

My nose scrunched up at the ‘many’ women. “If you’d actually enjoyed yourself, it might have been hard to get over but I could see you had to force yourself to hump that last woman.”

For an instant he looked shocked before his face resumed its usual serenity that I was used to. “You saw me with that human?”

“If it makes you feel any better, my shadows used to watch us when we were getting it on,” I told him. He was momentarily flabbergasted by that news. The arrival of our friends and allies precluded him from asking for more details.

“It is good to see you alive, my old friend,” Gregor said and followed up his pronouncement with a rib creaking hug. Even Igor stepped forward and gave Luc a brief hug.

Nodding a greeting to Cristov, Luc remained at my side as we set out in a group. Working systematically, we freed our allies from their confinement with the aid of my eyeball. Each vampire fed from one of their torturers, replenishing much needed energy after weeks of forced starvation. No matter how brutally the scientists and soldiers died, I made no move to stop my kin. They had earned the right to end the lives of their captors however they saw fit. In their place, I would have been just as savage.

Kokoro gave me a deep bow when her door clicked open. I returned it out of habit. She nodded to the others that she could sense if not see. “Have you freed Ishida yet?” she asked me anxiously.

“Not yet but we’ll get to him soon,” I assured her.

“I have not been able to sense his thoughts for many nights,” she told me in a low voice. The Japanese warriors that we’d freed gave her disturbed glances at the news that their leader might be fairing even more poorly than any of them. All were sporting injuries that would take time to heal.

“He’s still alive,” I told her. “But I think he’s in a coma, which is probably why you can’t read his mind.” My words did little to reassure the Japanese warriors and their seer. Vampires didn’t usually spiral into a coma so they knew his condition had to be fairly precarious.

Geordie was the next to be freed. Igor stepped up beside me and the others crowded around us in the hallway. “Brace yourself,” I told my dour companion before releasing the lock on the door. “He’s in pretty bad shape.”

Lowering his head for a second, Igor made himself as ready as he possibly could without knowing exactly what he would find on the other side of the door. I didn’t release the teen’s manacles. It was too dangerous with a scientist standing right in front of him holding yet another steel rod ready to ram into his body.

When the door suddenly clicked open, the pair of white coated men glanced over their shoulders. Confronted with a pack of furious vampires, they immediately panicked. Dropping the metal rod, the guy on the right reached for the gun at his hip. Igor crossed the room and broke the human’s wrist with a twist of his hand. I slapped the second scientist hard enough to knock him out but not hard enough to kill him. Maybe I was finally getting a handle on my supernatural strength.

The scientist with a newly broken wrist screamed loudly enough to drown out Geordie’s dry sobs until Igor clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle him. The teen didn’t even know he had been rescued yet. His eyes were squeezed shut and his body shuddered with agony. My orb pressed the manacle release button and I caught him before he could hit the ground.

“Geordie.” He didn’t respond to me at all and didn’t seem to realize he wasn’t chained to the wall anymore. “Geordie!” I got through to him that time and his eyes snapped open.

Staring at me in bewilderment, Geordie looked beyond me and spied Igor then Luc and Gregor standing in the doorway. Turning back to me, the teen raised a shaky hand and touched my face with his fingertips. “Chérie? Is it really you?”

“It’s really me,” I replied around the lump that had formed in my throat. Geordie tried to hug me and made a sound of pain as the foot long metal rods dug deeper into his flesh. I knew removing them was necessary but I didn’t want to cause him further suffering. Apparently, neither did Igor. He just stared at his apprentice bleakly so I sent a beseeching look at Luc and Gregor.

Moving behind Geordie, I held him by the shoulders as Luc and his long-time friend yanked the rods free. The teen’s body jerked each time but he didn’t make any sounds of protest. Gaping holes sluggishly oozed black blood when I moved around him to view the damage. More blood had dribbled down his chin from biting his bottom lip.

Geordie’s gaze hardened when it fastened on the human who was still struggling weakly in Igor’s grip. Bending, the teen scooped up two of the rods and stalked forward. Shaking his head frantically, the scientist screamed beneath the Russian’s hand. Geordie ignored his pleas and punched the rods into the man’s stomach. “Now you know what it feels like,” the teen said. He then pulled the man out of his mentor’s grasp and bit savagely into his neck.

Geordie’s wounds had already begun to heal by the time he’d had his fill of blood but it would take hours for them to close completely. Igor gave him a hug that made his apprentice wince then pointed at the unconscious scientist. “What do you want to do with him?” Since Geordie had been his prisoner, it was only fair that he would be allowed to decide the man’s fate.

“Is anyone hungry?” Geordie asked the mob milling in the hallway.

“I could eat,” a European replied. Several more agreed that they wouldn’t mind topping up.

“He’s all yours,” the kid offered. The five of us stepped outside as half a dozen of our kin entered the room and snacked on the human. Drained to death, he was almost as pale as we were when they were done with him. Still unconscious from my slap, his demise was painless. He would wake up in hell wondering what had happened. I hoped an imp spent the next several centuries sticking a spear up his butt.

“Where is Aventius?” Cristov asked. “Is he still alive?” All of the Europeans showed signs of genuine relief when I nodded.

We reached the ex-councillor’s room and angry mutters were exchanged when Aventius’ followers saw the state he was in. Their leader opened his eyes and smiled when he saw us, as if he’d just been waiting to be rescued all along.

It took four of us to break him free from the thick plastic tank. Cristov handed his leader a white coat that he’d stripped off a dead scientist. The ancient ex-Court ruler tugged it on gratefully. “Is this all that remains of our numbers?” he asked after stepping out into the hallway and casting a glance at the mob.

“There’s one more,” I replied.

Seeing Kokoro hovering behind me anxiously, Aventius came to the correct conclusion. “Then let us free Emperor Ishida from his confinement immediately.”

Shaking and traumatized, Geordie clung to me as I led the group through the maze of hallways. The rage I had fought to keep under control slipped from my grasp. The white walls of the hallway as well as the monitors in the control room became bathed in orange light from my eyes.

I was highly disappointed that Colonel Sanderson was in France investigating the disappearance of the Comtesse and her people. If anyone deserved to die for what had been done to my friends, it was him. He’ll pay, I promised myself silently. One way or another, he will be held responsible for the torture and death of my friends.

Chapter Twenty-Four

We moved in almost complete silence towards the cell that contained the emperor of the now almost extinct Japanese vampire nation. For the first time, I was actually glad that Kokoro had lost her sight so long ago. She had been the one to turn Ishida ten thousand years ago and she loved him like a son. To see him in this wizened state would have been heartbreaking for her.

My orb activated the last lock and I pushed the door open. Dead silence continued as Ishida was revealed. Then one of the female warriors gave a cry of dismay and rushed forward to free her leader. Igor put his arm around Geordie’s shoulder and gently pried him from my side when Kokoro reached for me. I led her into the cell and held her tightly when she started to shake. Through the minds of her people, she saw Ishida almost as clearly as the rest of us did.

“He needs blood,” one of the male warriors muttered. I kicked myself mentally for not thinking of that myself. None of the scientists or soldiers we had encountered so far had survived our rage. Then I remembered there was a group of humans in the room right next door to the control room where my orb was hiding. I’d missed seeing exactly where the room was but it had to be on level fifty-seven as well, which meant it couldn’t be too far away.

“There are more scientists and soldiers nearby, but I’m not exactly sure where,” I told the warriors as they worked together to free their unconscious leader. The metal bars were strong enough to hold a lone vampire down they weren’t strong enough to stop several of them from prying the bars off.

Gregor took charge of the rest of our group. “Spread out and search for doors. Stay in pairs and be on the lookout for armed soldiers.”

Two of the Japanese warriors stayed behind with Kokoro while the rest of us took to the hallways. “Over here!” one of the Europeans whispered loudly. It echoed through the hallways and drew us to him. We converged on a door near the bathroom where my orb had hitched a ride with the scientist.

“If this is the correct room, we have to be careful. There are half a dozen armed guards inside,” I warned my team. “You’d better let me go in first and take them down.” No one liked the idea much, especially Luc but they knew better than to protest. I’d survived pretty much the worst damage that could be done to our kind and I was still unalive to talk about it. Nothing the soldiers could do would be able to keep me down for long.

Igor stationed himself in front of the door and kicked it open. Startled scientists and soldiers gawped at him before he ducked back out of sight.

“The vampires have escaped!” one bright spark shrieked and pandemonium broke out.

A few of the scientists fumbled for their weapons clumsily. The soldiers were far quicker to react and opened fire. Thankfully they held pistols rather than the explosive prototypes. Diving through the door and kicking it shut again, I moved too fast for most of the bullets to hit me. The few that did were expelled and the wounds healed instantly. Popping up behind two soldiers, I bashed their heads together then leaped away as bullets plucked at my clothing. The men fell to the ground and I was confident neither of them would get up again. That might be a bit difficult with their brains leaking out of their cracked skulls to stain the carpet.

Concentrating on the soldiers first, I dispatched them all then turned to find a terrified scientist pointing his gun at my face with a hand that was trembling badly. He pulled the trigger before I could react and a bullet zoomed towards me. I felt no pain and the projectile seemed to pass through me as if it hadn’t caused any damage at all. I assumed my healing abilities had reached new levels of power. Stunned amazement with a trace of consternation passed across the scientist’s face. Before he could pull the trigger again, I snatched the gun out of his hand.

Pinning the rest of the armed men and women with my stare, they threw their guns at my feet and backed away. All were white faced and trembling as they huddled together against the wall. “What?” I snapped at the scientist who had tried to blow my face off. “Why are you all staring at me like that?”

“Your head just…” his words petered to a stop.

“Healed really quickly,” I finished for him.

“No.” He shook his head in disagreement. “The bullet didn’t even hit you, it went right through you.”

Baffled, I stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

A brave female scientist ventured an explanation. “Your head split in half, leaving a gap just wide enough for the bullet to pass through.” If they hadn’t been scientists and used to vampires by now, they would have been screaming in terror. Some appeared to be on the verge of screaming anyway. I kind of felt like joining them.

Hiding my unease that my body had once again taken matters into its own hands, I wondered how long I would be able to keep this a secret. I was confident that none of the humans would live to spread the word of my increasing strangeness.

“It’s safe to come in now,” I called out to my friends. The door opened and screams began to ring out as my kin entered and converged on the helpless humans.

Ishida was carefully carried inside and Kokoro followed closely behind. Her hand rested on the shoulder of one of the emperor’s bearers for guidance. Sorrow was carved into her features. I wondered if she knew that their home had been bombed to pieces. Glancing up, she caught my gaze and I knew that she was aware of the tragedy. She would have read the knowledge from the minds of her captors weeks ago. She and I alone knew of the devastation of their people. One of us was going to have to break the news to the others but it would have to wait until we were safe.

Sitting their emperor down on the ground gently, one of the few remaining female scientists was chosen to be his first meal. Geordie made his way to my side and slipped his trembling hand into mine. His thin body was pressed against me, he was still shaking from his ordeal. Luc was on my other side, also pressed against me. I slid a hand around Luc’s waist and tightened my grip on Geordie’s hand as the human was forced to her knees.

One of the female warriors positioned their victim over Ishida and another gently opened their emperor’s mouth. A knife that had been scrounged from one of the soldiers sliced through the scientist’s neck. Blood splattered Ishida’s shrivelled face, bathing it in red. At first nothing happened and he remained oblivious. Then the teen’s throat convulsed as he swallowed. His hands reached up blindly, found the human and pulled her down towards him.

His warriors helped him to drain the human dry then gestured for another sacrifice to be brought forward. Moans and pleas for pity came from the few scientists that were left. Knowing their leader’s preference, another female was chosen. When she was also bloodless, Ishida opened his eyes. Kokoro dropped to her knees beside him. He stared at her in confusion then looked down at his once young and smooth and now aged and wizened body. He was either too weak or too shocked at his condition to speak.

“It will take time but you will be restored to your former youth again,” the seer promised him.

Nodding, Ishida allowed her to take his hand. If they had been alone, he probably would have curled up into a ball on her lap and cried. Being surrounded by friends and allies, he put on a brave face and motioned for his warriors to help him to his feet. A white coat was slipped over his shoulders, hiding his wrinkled form. His old face hovered over his wasted body as he offered me a bow. “I knew you would save us, Mortis,” he croaked.

“I haven’t saved us yet,” I reminded him after returning his bow. “We still have to get out of here.”

“Where are we?” Gregor asked. “I know we are somewhere in America but not which state we were flown to.”

“We’re in Colorado, near Denver.”

Assimilating this information, Gregor started towards one of the female scientists. “If you will give me a few minutes, I might be able to work out an escape plan.”

With Geordie clinging to me like a baby monkey that had just lost its mother, I didn’t like my chances of freeing myself from him long enough to kick down the restricted door. “There are five men in that room that are under my control,” I said to Luc. Nodding in understanding, he strode forward and sent the door crashing open.

Finished with its task, my orb rolled off the console and plopped to the ground. Luc bent and picked it up, shaking his head in wonder that I’d managed to hypnotize five men with only a detached eye. After confirming that the men inside the room were in my thrall, he left the room and handed me back my eye.

My orb reattached itself after I poked it back into its socket and Geordie gave me a grateful smile. “You know I love you, Natalie but the weird things you can do kind of give me the creeps sometimes.” Igor debated about smacking his apprentice up the back of the head then merely shrugged. Maybe I gave him the creeps, too. Why not when I often made myself shudder at the things I could do?

Gregor took his chosen subject into the restricted room and chased out my five slaves. They stared at me worshipfully until I ordered them to join the other humans. At least my minions were quiet. The rest of the survivors were babbling prayers or pleading for their lives. It was common knowledge amongst us vampires that we weren’t leaving anyone alive. But the humans would continue to hope right up until the moment our hands tore their heads off their shoulders.

After several minutes of questioning his bedazzled slave, Gregor ended her life with a swift blow to her neck. She sagged to the ground, lifeless and he walked away from her without a backward glance.

“Do we need these anymore?” a Japanese warrior asked, pointing at the cringing humans.

“No,” Gregor said with a negligent wave of one hand.

Geordie buried his head in my shoulder as our kin waded in. The slaughter was quick but bloody as the Europeans and Japanese meted out vampire justice. It almost made me sick to watch the carnage. I thought I wouldn’t be able to feel any pity for the torturers but I was wrong. For once I felt no hint of battle lust lurking anywhere inside me. The light had faded from my eyes without me even realizing it, taking my rage with it. I’d been designed to kill monsters, not humans. After what they did to your friends, do you really think they aren’t monsters? My subconscious had me there, yet I still couldn’t enjoy watching the rending and tearing.

When the screams petered out, we gathered around to listen to Gregor’s plan. The bullet wound in his chest was well on its way to closing but the hole in his back was far larger and still sluggishly oozed blood. “We’re fifty-seven levels beneath the ground and there is only supposed to be one way up to the surface.” He turned to me with a quizzical look.

“Technically, there are two,” I told him. “But none of you would be able to get out the way I came in.”

Taking my word for it, Gregor continued. “We’ll have to use the elevators but they’re being monitored by soldiers up on the first level.” He waited for the murmurs to fade before stating his plan. “Two of us will have to dress in uniforms and take care of the soldiers.”

“I’ll go,” I said immediately.

Geordie frowned and looked me up and down pointedly. “You do not look very manly, chérie.”

“I can dress as one of the scientists.”

“I will accompany you,” Luc said and no one argued with him.

“We’ll give you ten minutes to kill the soldiers then we will begin making our way up to the surface,” Gregor told us. “There are two buildings on the ground level. The elevators are in one and transportation is in the other. There are a dozen men patrolling the area. We will have to neutralize all of them if we want to escape from the grounds without being followed.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” I said to Gregor then motioned at Luc. “We should get a move on before anyone figures out we’re making a break for it.” We split up while he went in search of a soldier’s uniform that wasn’t covered in blood. I didn’t have to go far, just into the control room where Gregor had left the female scientist. Her coat was a couple of sizes too big but it would have to do. A key card for the elevator was in one pocket and her ID was in the other. Geordie watched me anxiously with his arms wrapped around his chest. He gave me a tremulous smile that I returned before I left the room and went in search of Luc.

I found him as he was exiting one of the cells. His borrowed uniform was an inch too short in the arms and legs but fit him well enough. If we kept our heads down, the soldiers watching the elevators wouldn’t know we were vampires. Unless they had other ways of monitoring the elevators, such as infrared vision. It would become obvious fairly quickly that we weren’t human if this was the case.

We located the elevators on the far side of the cells after a quick search. Luc placed my arm through his after pushing the button to call the elevator to our level. “It might be strange for us to be leaving partway through our shifts,” he explained when I sent him an enquiring look. “If you pretend to be ill, it might make our exit seem more plausible.”

“Good idea.” Any excuse to lean on Luc was a good one. He gave me frequent solicitous glances as we stepped inside and the elevator climbed up to the first floor. I clung to him, keeping my head down and pretending to be dizzy. We didn’t speak, just in case there were hidden microphones in the elevator. Luc’s European and my Australian accent would have been a dead giveaway that we weren’t U.S. citizens.

As the elevator slowed then came to a stop at the first floor, we shared a brief glance then braced ourselves for battle.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A door halfway down the hallway to the right popped open when we stepped out of the elevators. A concerned soldier stuck his head out. “What’s wrong with her?” If I was working in a top secret underground facility, I’d have been scared of any sign of illness as well.

“A nasty bout of gastro,” Luc replied in a credible American accent as he helped me down the hallway. “It’ll probably spread through the whole place by morning.” The soldier drew back at the warning. He either didn’t notice I was wearing snow gear beneath the coat or it wasn’t an unusual sight.

Groaning, I hunched over. “I could really use some water.” My accent was terrible but the soldier didn’t seem to notice.

Blocking the doorway, he looked up and down the hallway then gestured for us to enter. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in here so make this quick.”

Luc shuffled me inside what turned out to be a much larger monitoring room than the one on the fifty-seventh floor. A gigantic screen with dozens of monitors flickered continually as the pictures changed from room to room and hallway to hallway. As I’d already guessed, the fifty-seventh floor wasn’t shown on any of the screens. We never would have made it up to the first floor otherwise. Every soldier in the complex would have come at a run to shoot us to pieces if our escape had been caught on the monitors.

Two more soldiers swivelled around on their chairs when we entered. We didn’t give them time to ask questions. I darted forward to silence them while Luc took care of the man who had let us in. Contracting gastro was never going to be a concern for any of these men again.

Piling their bodies off to the side, we studied the monitors. A large car park was half full of sedans and family cars that I assumed belonged to the civilian workers. Luc pointed to a large open area with a range of vehicles lined up neatly in rows. “That must be the second hangar that Gregor spoke of.”

We spent a couple of minutes watching humans patrolling the surface. The hangar with the vehicles was deserted. All we had to do was kill all of the guards, steal one of the enclosed trucks and leave. The truck would no doubt be linked to their tracking systems so we would have to ditch it quickly and find another mode of transportation.

Entering the elevator again, it was a short journey up to the ground floor. Separating, we spread out and hunted down the dozen soldiers wandering around on patrol. By the time we met back at the hangar, ten of our Japanese and European kin had joined us. All wore either flimsy hospital gowns or drawstring pants. None wore shoes. It was bitterly cold outside and I winced inwardly at the thought of running around in the snow in bare feet.

Some of the Japanese warriors waited near the elevators while the rest of us exited the hangar through a side door. We raced across the snowy cement path to the second hangar. Choosing one of the trucks at the front of the convoy, Luc climbed inside. I expected him to have to hotwire it but instead he held the keys up with a smile.

Stripping off the white coat, I offered it to a shivering European who was roughly my size. She smiled gratefully and tugged it on overtop of her thin hospital gown. Several of my allies eyed my snow gear enviously but I wasn’t about to hand any of it over when I still needed it myself.

We only had to wait for a few minutes for the rest of our kin to join us but it felt more like eons. Ishida was carried inside the hangar and hustled into the back of the truck. Everyone climbed inside, except for Igor. He jogged over to operate the hangar door that would allow us to finally leave this hell hole. Luc started the engine and I was in the seat beside him when he drove through the doors and out into the open. More snow began to fall and tiny white flakes hit the windscreen. Sitting beside my beloved while watching the snow fall would have been magical under any other circumstances. Since we were on the run for our lives, we didn’t have time to appreciate the wonder of it.

Igor pressed the button to shut the hangar door again once our vehicle was clear. He disappeared from view as he jumped into the back of the truck. A fist thumped on the wall that divided us from our friends and allies to indicate they were all settled and that it was time for us to leave.

Displaying his usual calm, Luc drove back down the road through the path that had been cut through the forest. I ducked down out of sight before he reached the gate. “Turn left,” I told him as the gate swung open. He gave one of the soldiers a casual salute and eased the truck onto the road.

Our getaway seemed anticlimactic after the slaughter we had just dispensed. I’d expected a grand car chase with hundreds of screaming humans firing at us from their vehicles and a chopper hovering overhead shining a blinding light on us.

I waited until we were well out of sight before sitting up. “We need to ditch this truck asap and find other transportation,” I told Luc.

“Is there a town nearby?”

I nodded while fiddling with the heater. “Turn left at the intersection. There’s a small town a few minutes up the highway.”

With warm air blowing on my face, my shivers quickly petered out. It was probably freezing in the back of the truck but our passengers would only have to endure the discomfort for a short time. I knew a place where all of our shopping needs could be met. I just hoped the shop wasn’t alarmed or that one of my kin would be able to disable the alarm if we set it off.

Following my directions, Luc drove to the small town and parked near my rental car. Lights were on inside the ski shop again. The same clerk was there, performing another round of inventory. He was probably trying to figure out why he was missing a ski suit and the rest of the gear he’d given me. Thanks to my former job, I was very familiar with the task. He ambled over at my light knock and I recaptured him with a glance.

Luc opened the back door of the truck and a small flood of shivering vampires crossed the snowy ground and entered the ski shop. Even beneath his hypnotism, my minion seemed flustered at having so many people to serve all at once.

Gregor moved into the centre of the room and held up his hands for attention. “I suggest we all find something warm but not quite as warm as the clothing Natalie is wearing.”

“But its freezing outside,” one of the Europeans complained.

“We will not be in Denver for long,” Gregor said. “We should head to the airport and leave Colorado as quickly as possible.”

“Where will we go?” asked one of the pair of female warriors who was supporting Ishida. Their leader was still too weak to show much interest in our fate. His head lolled forward, hiding his wrinkled face from view. I hoped the blood he had ingested would kick in soon and help him recover his strength.

“Anywhere that is far away from here,” was Gregor’s suggestion.

Everyone bustled around, finding clothes to fit their size. Modesty was left behind as we all changed. My slave watched on helplessly. Even deeply hypnotized, he wrung his hands as his merchandise was stripped from the shelves.

We weren’t out of danger yet so Luc and Igor headed outside to find us suitable transportation. Kokoro looked unlike herself in a pair of tight black pants, sneakers and a sweater. Being twelve, Ishida suited the clothes much better than his prophetess did. Gregor grimaced at donning cargo pants and a hoodie jacket but Geordie took to them like a natural. He admired himself in one of the mirrors then pointed at me and giggled. We were both wearing dark blue hoodies and black jeans. With our similar height and build, we could almost have been siblings. I was glad his trauma had lessened and his sense of humour had returned.

A horn beeped outside. I glanced out the window to see a school bus pulling over with Luc behind the wheel. “Forget we were ever here,” I advised my minion as we left his shop and piled into the bus. He nodded dazedly, eyes scanning the shelves that now had gaping holes that he would never be able to explain.

Geordie took the seat beside me as the bus lurched into motion. We sat just behind the driver’s seat with Igor and Gregor in the seat across from us. The rest of our small team took up almost all of the other seats. Sorrow hit me again when I realized we were all that was left of our kind.

“What happened to you after you left with Colonel Sanderson and his men to kill the Second, Natalie?” Gregor asked and the quiet murmurs immediately ceased.

It seemed everyone was interested in hearing my tale of woe and betrayal. It was a long story but it would take us hours to reach Denver so I might as well tell them. “We found the creepy castle and I snuck inside alone, as planned. The Second was waiting for me in the tower. He’d set a trap.”

Geordie’s face darkened at that news. “What kind of trap?”

“He pulled the curtain covering the window aside and I wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the sun.” I paused while the expected sounds of shock sounded. “Half of my face was burned away and while I was incapacitated, the Second chopped my head and hands off.”

“I think we can guess what he planned to do to your body,” Gregor said with a twist of distaste to his mouth.

Baffled, Geordie looked at me for clarification. “He was going to feed his flesh hunger on me,” I explained. It was a much nicer way of saying he had planned to rape me repeatedly.

“You did not give him a chance to, though,” the teen said with utter confidence in my abilities to protect myself.

“Of course not.” I didn’t mention that my subconscious had had to come to my rescue and tell me what to do. If word got out that I listened to voices in my head, my kin would start to think I was crazy. If they didn’t already. I described how I had put an end to the nemesis that we had all banded together to hunt down.

“It was a fitting end to the Second,” Ishida declared weakly. He was still being propped up by Kokoro but he seemed to have regained some of his strength.

“What happened next?” Geordie asked me impatiently.

The colonel’s betrayal would be hard to tell so I put it off by explaining how I had tracked down and dispatched the caches of fledglings that had been stashed inside the castle. “Then Sanderson and his men tossed me out into the sun and blasted me apart with their prototypes,” I finished quickly, glossing over the most horrendous event that had ever happened to me.

“Even when your entire body was exposed to the sun, it still didn’t have the power to kill you?” Cristov said incredulously. He sat beside Aventius, who was still wrinkled from his long immersion in water. I didn’t know Cristov very well but he was already far less of a pain in the butt than Joshua had been.

“I’m pretty sure by now that nothing can kill me,” I said without a hint of boasting. It was fact, pure and simple. “The sun has the power to hurt me, though.” Some of the Japanese warriors nodded knowingly. They were well aware of what had happened to me after I’d been thrown into their pit of death. “Once I’m away from it, I tend to regenerate again.”

“What did the Colonel do to you after they shot you?” Geordie asked in a small voice. He slipped his hand into mine, either offering me comfort or seeking it.

“My consciousness became detached from my body but I’m pretty sure they crushed my bones to pieces then let the sun turn the rest to ash.” His hand trembled in mine or maybe it was the other way around. Luc’s shoulders were hunched as he drove. It couldn’t be fun for him hearing what I’d gone through. “They scooped up what was left of me and put it in a metal box. Then they tossed the box into the sea.”

One of Aventius’ people posed the question on everyone’s mind. “If you were ashes in a box at the bottom of the sea, how are you now whole and with us once more?”

This was going to be hard to explain since I didn’t really understand it myself. “I can take control of my body parts when they’ve been severed.” Again, the Japanese warriors nodded in understanding. They’d witnessed this for themselves after Ishida had ordered his right hand man to chop my right hand off. “I’m still not sure how I did it but I took control of some of my particles and found a tiny hole in the box. Once I shifted my remains into the water where they had room to move, I regenerated.”

At my explanation, looks of amazement were shared amongst the survivors. “I wish I had that talent,” someone muttered.

It was pretty awesome but I wasn’t about to rub it in. “I found the warehouse where I’d seen you all last and saw that some of you had been killed.”

“Chenku saved my life that night,” Ishida said barely loud enough for me to hear him. “He stepped in front of a bullet that had been meant for me.”

I knew who he was talking about instantly. The man who had taught us both how to fight with swords, whose name I hadn’t known, had died an honourable death. “Chenku was the greatest warrior our kind has ever seen,” Kokoro said and bowed her head. We all did, mutually mourning someone that we had all admired.

“What happened next, chérie?” Geordie asked impatiently, inadvertently shattering the mood. It was just as well, we needed to be sharp and not to allow ourselves to wallow in sorrow.

“I had no idea if any of you had escaped or if you’d been taken hostage. If anyone had escaped, I figured they would have headed back to the Court mansion or the safe house nearby.”

Luc glanced into the rear view mirror and met my gaze. His was full of a mixture of dread and anticipation.

“I headed back to France and found the mansion and grounds crawling with French soldiers.” The Europeans weren’t happy to hear that and some muttered darkly. “I snuck inside the next night and overheard one of the Court guards mention that the Comtesse had made a deal to save herself and her remaining courtiers and lackeys.” No one appeared to be particularly surprised by that revelation.

“What was the deal she made?” Igor asked. His dour expression told me he had already guessed the answer.

Glancing back at Ishida, I saw his eyes were closed but he appeared to be listening. “She convinced him to ally with her after Anna-Eve ordered her minion to blast me to pieces. As well as showing him how dangerous I was since I can’t die, Anna-Eve also demonstrated the quickest way to incapacitate me.”

Gregor’s probing look at my face was shrewd. “What other information did she offer the Colonel in trade for her life?”

Taking a deep mental breath, I answered his question reluctantly. “She agreed to remain on the Court grounds, not to feed on humans or to make any more servants. In return for being allowed to survive, she told Sanderson the location of every vampire that she was aware of.”

Silence descended. Then Ishida’s eyes opened wide as the implication set in. “Did that include my people?”

I hated to be the one to break the news to him but Kokoro was in no condition to do so. She sat on the seat beside him with her head bowed in sorrow. “I’m sorry but they’re all gone, Emperor Ishida. I heard one of the soldiers say that Sanderson bombed your island.”

A babble broke out amongst the Japanese warriors as Ishida tried to contain his anguish. He had been the ruler of a small but thriving empire and now he only had a dozen people left. Geordie gave a dry sob for their loss and I folded him into my arms.

“A remnant shall remain,” Gregor whispered. Despite the prophecy, no one had anticipated that the remnant would be a bare twenty-nine vampires out of the thousands that had once existed worldwide.

“How long will we be able to survive with Colonel Sanderson and his people hunting for us?” Geordie asked in a hushed whisper.

No one had an answer for that, not even Gregor.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dawn was still a few hours away when we reached the airport near Denver. We avoided the terminals and headed straight for the tarmac. There were few people around this late at night and we had no trouble bamboozling our way over to a plane that was about to take off.

“Where is this plane headed?” I asked a baggage handler as my kin climbed into the cargo hold.

“New York first then on to Montreal,” was his dazed response.

“I’ve never been to Canada,” Geordie said when we were settled inside. “I’ve heard it is nice.”

Gregor shifted a few suitcases around, turning them into a semi-comfortable chair. “We will not be there long enough to enjoy the scenery.”

“Do you think we should split up when we reach the airport in New York?” Cristov asked.

Kokoro shook her head. “We must remain together from now on.” Her tone was quiet but adamant.

“What else could possibly happen to us now?” her young ruler asked. He looked exhausted beneath the layers of wrinkles that lined his face. “Have we not already suffered the ‘death and darkness’ that you foresaw?”

“I am afraid not.” I wasn’t the only one stunned by her answer. “That is yet to come, my Emperor. We must all remain with Mortis or we will perish.”

Every eye went to me. Our kin had spread out amongst the baggage, each making a comfortable nest. Some had opened the suitcases and were rifling through the contents. They paused as they waited for me to say something. Luc put his hand on my leg and Geordie took my hand. I wasn’t one for making speeches but it seemed like the time for one. “I didn’t exactly sign up for this job,” I began. Several sniggers were hastily stifled, Geordie’s included. “But since it looks like I’m stuck with it then I’ll do my best to keep you all safe.”

Gregor gave me a tired smile. “You have already saved us from torture, Natalie. We should all be grateful to you for that.”

“If she had never been turned in the first place, we wouldn’t be here right now,” a sullen European muttered.

Geordie immediately bristled. “Well, Nat was turned and we are in this predicament so learn to deal with it!”

“If you want to blame someone,” I cut into the babble of raised voices. “Blame my maker.” A few heads swivelled to Luc. When Luc and I had first arrived in France, the courtiers had assumed I was his newly-made servant. We hadn’t corrected their mistake and the rumour still persisted. “Luc didn’t turn me. It was Silvius who had that dubious honour,” I told them.

Aventius’ already water-wrinkled face crinkled more with distaste. His skin was beginning to dry out but he still looked a bit prune-like. “I can easily believe that Silvus could have created the being that would result in our eventual destruction.”

“You knew him well?” I asked the ex-councillor.

He grimaced and nodded. “We were created by the same master nearly five thousand years ago. In a way, we were brothers.”

“What was he like?” Since we were speaking of the vampire that had killed me, I was fascinated. All I knew about Silvius was that he had been ancient, bald, ugly and completely insane. He had been the first vampire I’d met who’d had a shadow that was capable of acting independently. I could still remember my creeping horror as it had pointed and laughed at me soundlessly. He had been the first of the damned vampires that I had killed but he had been far from the last.

“Silvius was evil from the first moment we woke as the undead,” Aventius responded. “He took to being a vampire far more quickly and easily than I.” He gazed inwardly, dredging up long dead memories he probably didn’t want to bring forth into the light. “When our master was slain, we remained together for a time. We joined the Comtesse’s revolt when she planned to overthrow the King. Then the Council was formed and I was chosen to be one of the Councillors. Silvius was less than pleased that he had been overlooked for the position. He chose to go his own way from then on. It was common knowledge that he in turn plotted to overthrow the Council and to destroy the Comtesse.”

Reminded of our earlier conversation regarding the praying mantis, Geordie turned to me. “You never finished your story about how you found us. What happened after you heard the Comtesse had betrayed us all to save herself?”

Luc’s hand tightened on my leg. “Are you sure you want to hear this?” Heads nodded, even my beloved’s. “I waited for dawn then killed the Court guards. I bamboozled all the humans so they wouldn’t come to investigate if they heard anything strange going on inside. When everyone had died for the day, I, uh, killed most of them.” My voice dropped down low when I admitted that. I darted a quick glance around but no one was staring at me accusingly.

“Who did you leave alive, chérie?” Geordie asked me.

Gregor held up a hand to stop me. “Let me guess. The Comtesse, of course.” I nodded. “Anna-Eve would no doubt have incurred your wrath.” Again, I nodded. Studying me, one eyebrow went up briefly then lowered in a frown. “Do not tell me that Nicholas was also there?”

“Yep. Mucia wasn’t alone when I went to her room.” Shocked sniggers sounded when I dared to use the praying mantis’ real name. “Nicholas was in her bed.”

“Nicholas was a double agent?” Geordie said in wonder. “So, Anna-Eve was lying when she said she wanted to kill him?”

“It sure looks like it.” I squeezed the teen’s fingers in sympathy at being duped. She had tricked all of us. “Anyway, after killing the Councillors, courtiers and guards, I took Anna-Eve, Nicholas and the praying mantis down to the catacombs.” A few chuckles sounded at my pet nickname for the late Court ruler.

Thinking back, transporting all three of the vampires who had betrayed me into the catacombs had been the fun part. I’d dragged the praying mantis by her immaculate white blonde hair while her tiny bare feet had clonked down each step. I’d grown tired of dragging her after a couple of flights so had tossed her to the bottom instead. I’d done the same with the other two. Nicholas had been far heavier and bulkier than the women but I’d manipulated his unconscious body as easily as I had theirs. “I put them in separate cages then made some crosses with candle sticks and put them on the doors.”

“That was a clever move,” Luc complimented me and I smirked at his rare praise.

“I bet they had the shock of their lives when they woke,” Igor commented.

“I wish I’d had a camera handy to record the moment,” I said in agreement. “To make a long story short, Anna-Eve confessed her part in setting me up and Mucia killed her by spearing a piece of human bone through her heart.” Thankfully, no one asked me how I’d managed to get Anna-Eve to confess. Admitting that I could now hypnotize our own kind probably wouldn’t be received very well.

“Did you torture Nicholas before you killed him, chérie?” Geordie’s tone was hopeful.

“Not as badly as the Comtesse did.” The pain I’d caused him had been physical but the mental anguish his lover had meted out had been far worse. The teen seemed puzzled by my answer so I clarified it for him. “She told him he was crap in the sack and couldn’t compare to…others she’d been bedded by.” I flicked a quick glance at Luc and saw that he knew I was talking about him. “He attacked me and I stabbed him with one of Igor’s old machetes. I hacked his heart out and tossed it to the Comtesse, since it belonged to her anyway.” The Russian looked gratified that he’d played at least a small part in the ex-courtier’s demise.

“While I was distracted with Nicholas’ body disintegrating, Mucia used another human bone to push the door open. I caught up to her upstairs and we had what was possibly the most epic girl fight in history.”

Geordie squirmed on his suitcase in excitement. “Did you dismember her? Did you tear her intestines out and strangle her with them? Did you tear off her leg and hit her with it?”

“Ok, maybe not the most epic,” I corrected myself. He was crestfallen at my words. “We did the usual punching, slapping and eye gouging until I got the upper hand.” Luc may have hated his creator but he didn’t need to hear all the gory details. “She told me you were all dead and that she had nothing else to live for so I might as well kill her. So I did.”

Luc withdrew his hand from mine and crossed his arms, distancing himself from me. It hurt but maybe he needed time to assimilate the fact that the monster that had tormented him for seven centuries was finally and irrevocably dead.

“One of the soldiers I’d bedazzled told me that you had been captured and taken to Colorado. So I hopped on a plane and came to your rescue,” I finished up my story.

“If anyone else had told me this tale, I would not have believed them,” Gregor said.

Igor gave a snort. “I would have put them out of their delusional misery.”

“I also would have not believed them and most likely have had them put to death for telling such lies,” Ishida admitted. “We are all in your debt, Mortis.” He and his people bowed and I bowed in response.

“Now we just need to find somewhere safe to hide where Colonel Sanderson can’t find us,” Gregor mused out loud. This opened up a flood of suggestions.

“We could return to Japan,” one of Ishida’s warriors said. “There are many islands where we could remain unnoticed.”

“No. They’ll look for us there,” a European responded. “We need to go somewhere our kind wouldn’t naturally be drawn to.”

All answers were shouted down and it came to the point where there were very few options left. “How about the moon?” Geordie said with a frustrated sneer. “They probably wouldn’t be able to find us there.”

Kokoro looked at me with a strange expression but looked away again before I could ask her what was wrong. I had the feeling she’d just been sent a vision. She hadn’t had a vision since the ten ravenous disciples had woken from forty thousand years of slumber. If she had been given a snippet of our future, she didn’t seem to be inclined to share it with the rest of us.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

We only had a short wait at the airport in New York before the plane continued on to Canada. One of Ishida’s female warriors hypnotized two of the baggage handlers into feeding her ruler. Ishida wasn’t happy about feeding from men but he had to replenish the blood that had been extracted from him. We could only hope that Kokoro was right and that he would be able to recover his youth. Experiments by humans had never been performed on our kind before and this was a first for all of us.

It was full daylight when we landed in Montreal. Geordie was the only one still too young to remain awake at will. I was even younger than the teen but I was also a freak and the normal rules didn’t apply to me. Igor tossed his unconscious apprentice over his shoulder and we all moved as far away from the cargo door as possible. When the baggage had all been removed, a heavily bamboozled handler told us the plane would now be taken into a hangar for maintenance.

Shut inside once more, we waited for night to fall. Few of us chose to sleep the day away. After spending the past few months being lab rats, my friends weren’t about to trust their safety to anyone now. Not even to their allies.

“I’ve been thinking,” Gregor said about an hour before the sun was scheduled to fall from the sky. He instantly gained everyone’s attention. “I believe our best chance of survival would be to head back to Africa.”

“Why Africa?” Cristov asked.

“None of us come from there originally,” the dapper one reasoned. “Since most of us are European or Japanese, Sanderson will most likely focus his search for us there.”

“We could hide out in the jungles for decades,” I said with an attempt at enthusiasm. None of us particularly wanted to live in the jungle like animals but what choice did we have? At the rate the human population was growing, we wouldn’t have anywhere left to hide before too long.

Ishida turned to his seer to judge her reaction. Kokoro gave a preoccupied nod while avoiding my gaze. She knew something and she still wasn’t willing to share her knowledge. “It is agreed, then,” the child king said. “How will we get to Africa?”

“By sea,” Igor offered. “If I am correct, Montreal is a port city. With luck, we will find a cargo ship heading to Africa.”

“We’ll be trapped on a ship for weeks. Sounds like fun,” someone said glumly.

“At least there will be plenty of rats to eat,” I pointed out. “Just kidding,” I said quickly when I received expressions of disgust. In truth, I’d been serious. The ship would probably be teeming with vermin. But it would probably also have several dozen crew members on board. We wouldn’t be in any danger of starvation as long as we were careful to bamboozle our meals.

As soon as night fell, Igor foisted Geordie off onto my care and disappeared with Luc in search of transportation. The teen came awake a few minutes later and snapped upright with his hands raised to protect himself. Seeing me sitting beside him, he dropped his hands sheepishly. “I thought I was back in the cell for a moment.” Being surrounded by white walls again, I could understand his confusion.

“How are your wounds?” I asked. He lifted his hoodie, revealing his skinny, pale ribs. The holes were gone and his flesh was unblemished again. Everyone seemed to have recovered physically from their torture. Aventius’ skin was unwrinkled, or as unwrinkled as he had been before being immersed in water for the past several months. Only Ishida still showed the effects of experimentation. After multiple meals, he was starting to flesh out again and his frame was slightly less withered. Some of the grey had even receded from his hair. It gave me hope that he would be back to his usual self again one day.

A short while later the cargo door whooshed open and Igor gestured for us to follow him. Two of Ishida’s warriors hastened to help their leader and we all hurried from the plane. It was a long trek to the car park and we moved in a nervous cluster. Our mode of transportation turned out to be a tour bus. Luc opened the door for us and we piled inside.

Igor took the wheel and I was relieved when Luc slid into the spare seat next to me. His arm went around my shoulder and he slanted me a smile. I hoped this meant he’d forgiven me for killing the Comtesse. He’d hated Mucia and had wanted her dead yet some small part of him mourned her loss at the same time.

“The port is only a few miles from here,” my beloved turned to tell the group who had taken the seats behind us.

His nearness was making me warm somewhere deep inside. It was a figurative warmth rather than literal. I only realized it was my flesh hunger awakening when it became hard not to straddle him and have my way with him. Sensing my sudden need, Luc fought to contain a smile. It was disconcerting to have my needs flaring up at the most inconvenient times. If our situation hadn’t been so dire, I would have asked Igor to pull over so I could quench the fire building inside me. With super human effort, I managed to control myself until we reached the port.

Well aware of my problem, as was everyone else on the bus, Gregor motioned for Igor to open the doors. “Does anyone want to volunteer to search for a ship that is bound for Africa?” he asked with a sly glance at me.

One of my hands shot into the air. The other one clasped Luc’s arm tightly. “We’ll go. Back soon. Bye!” I said as I dragged my most favourite companion towards the door.

“Gee,” Geordie said with heavy sarcasm, “I wonder what their hurry could possibly be?”

Racing through the dark streets, the smell of salt water and pollution predominated. My need was reaching desperate levels and we searched for somewhere private so we could satisfy our flesh hunger. Finding an abandoned building, Luc kicked open the door and we stumbled inside.

A musty pile of blankets heaped in one corner wasn’t the most romantic of spots to get naked together but we were beyond caring. Our clothes went flying then I was on my back and Luc was plunging into me. It had been too long since I’d fed my flesh hunger and it was frantic for release.

Luc’s tongue flicked out and caught my nipple and he began to suck, grazing my skin with his fangs. My legs went around his and began to tighten as his speed increased. Pressure built inside me as long denied ecstasy beckoned. When it burst, orange light bathed the ceiling and several bones in Luc’s legs snapped.

Groaning in either pain or pleasure, Luc pounded me into the hard cement floor while his bones popped back into place and he finally came. Lying on the sacks, he turned to contemplate my blazing eyes. “I thought that only happened when you were in the midst of battle.”

“Me too. Who knows how my body works?” I asked rhetorically. Thoroughly satisfied, I was about as far from being in the mood to kill and dismember as I could get. I decided to ignore the fact that my eyes were orange again. There was nothing I could do about it anyway so what was the point of getting myself all worked up about it?

With my need sated once more, we dressed and walked hand in hand towards the docks. It didn’t take us long to find what we were searching for. A line of gigantic cargo ships stretched out in a neat row. The vessels shifted slightly on the waves, rocking from side to side in an almost hypnotic motion. They might be enormous and weigh several thousand tons but they were still at the mercy of the ocean. Even the Titanic hadn’t been impervious to the perils that deep water held. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be encountering any icebergs on our journey.

Dozens of men scurried around on each vessel. From a distance they looked like ants traversing the carcasses of rotting elephants. Cranes struggled to offload large metal containers filled with cargo. This close to the ocean, the stench of salt water and pollution was much stronger.

A security guard spotted us and ambled over before we could get close enough to the first ship to start asking questions. Being Canadian, he was polite but he eyed us suspiciously. “Can I help you folks?”

Catching his gaze, I made him mine within seconds and the usual dreamy smile appeared. “Are any of these ships leaving for Africa anytime soon?” I asked him before he could start rhapsodising about my beauty.

Half turning without taking his eyes off my face, he pointed at one of the ships further down the line. “The Dancing Mermaid is scheduled to leave for South Africa in a couple of hours.” In this ship’s case, cargo was being added rather than subtracted from the hulking vessel.

“Thanks. Go about your duties but ignore us if you see us again,” I instructed him.

We hurried back to the tour bus to give everyone the good news. Geordie gave me a sour glance but neglected to comment on the activity that he knew Luc and I had been engaged in. I wasn’t looking forward to a trip that would last for several weeks. It was doubtful any of us would be able to find much time for privacy during our coming journey.

“We’ve found transportation,” my brooding companion told the group when they piled out of the bus to surround us. “A ship called the Dancing Mermaid is due to leave for South Africa in a few hours. The only problem is that the docks are crawling with humans. I don’t know how we are going to be able to get on board unseen.”

Igor must have foreseen this problem because he had a solution ready. “Our best bet would be to swim to the ship and climb up the anchor chain.” The ocean was bound to be cold, not to mention stinky and polluted, but we had little choice. Sneaking twenty-nine people on board without being spotted would be difficult, even for the stealthiest of us.

Everyone paired up with one lone Japanese warrior left on his own. Luc and I were the first to head for the water. We chose a dark spot on the docks, checked that we were unobserved then jumped in. Without the ability to breathe, I couldn’t gasp in shock at the frigid temperature when I surfaced. The best I could do was to make a sound of protest from between my chattering teeth. Treading water wasn’t going to warm me up, not when I had zero circulation. We would have to move quickly before the cold could leech our strength to the point where we would be unable to function.

Luc treaded water beside me, staying close enough that our arms kept brushing. It didn’t look like he was planning on being parted from me anytime soon, not that I was complaining. We had been separated for far too long and I was reluctant to let him out of my sight as well.

Igor and Geordie came next. The teen let out a yelp of surprise when his head bobbed to the surface. His teeth immediately started chattering as well as he swam towards us. To my surprise, Gregor escorted Kokoro and solicitously entered the water with her. She trusted him implicitly and calmly put her arm over his shoulder when they surfaced. I was pretty sure she read my idle thought that maybe they should try dating because she frowned at me disapprovingly. It might not have dawned on anyone else yet but they were going to have to let their old prejudices go now that we were so few in number.

Ishida insisted on only one of his warriors accompanying him and they soon caught up to us. Shortly, our entire group had entered the water and were swimming towards the ship that hulked in the distance.

When we reached the Dancing Mermaid, Igor inspected the chain. It was huge, rusty and slick but he proved that it was easy enough to climb. None of the sailors were on the lookout for an invasion by sea and he remained unnoticed. Climbing the chain next, Luc slipped over the railing then offered me his hand when I reached him. We darted into the shadows as our friends took turns climbing on board. Containers loomed over us, stretching upward towards the sky. They gave me the dizzying sense that they could fall and crush us at any moment.

Igor found a hatch leading to the interior of the ship and gestured for us to follow him inside. We remained clumped together and moved almost silently down the long, narrow corridor. We froze as one when footsteps sounded ahead. We’d never make it back out through the hatch without being seen and there were no other doorways in sight. I sprinted past Luc and Igor just as a sailor rounded the corner. His surprise and alarm changed to happy devotion after I captured him with my eyes.

“Ask him what the quickest way to the cargo hold is,” Igor told me. He and Luc had caught up to me and were standing at my back. Luc slipped past my new servant and I to keep watch and to make sure no one else was heading in our direction.

Dutifully repeating the question, my brain almost went to sleep at the long and complicated answer I received. The ship was even larger than I’d realized and it was going to take us several minutes to descend several levels to our intended destination.

“Did anyone get all that?” I asked when the sailor stopped speaking.

“I believe so, Mortis,” one of Ishida’s female warriors said.

“Great, you take the lead,” I suggested. With an enquiring glance at her ruler, she eased past us at Ishida’s tired nod. I instructed the sailor to go about his duties and to forget about us. Continuing along the corridor, he started whistling a sea shanty that echoed eerily through the metal walls of the vessel.

We encountered several more sailors on our way to the depths of the ship. The female warrior in the lead bamboozled the first three but the fourth one showed no sign that he was going to fall beneath her spell. Before he could scream for help, I was standing in front of him with my hand clamped over his mouth. He succumbed to my dark mojo as easily as the first sailor had despite the fact that he preferred men to women.

“How did you do that, chérie?” Geordie asked me. He had been following me closely enough that he was almost treading on my heels. “I thought we couldn’t hypnotize humans who weren’t attracted to us.”

“It looks like I might have changed a bit after Sanderson reduced me to ash,” I replied quietly, hoping only my closest friends could hear me. With the loud metallic groaning that seemed to emanate everywhere from the ship, it was a possibility.

“You can control any human now?” Igor asked in surprise.

“It looks like it.”

Luc knew me well by now and gave me a sharp glance. “Is there something you’re not telling us, Natalie?”

“It can wait until we get settled,” I replied evasively, hoping to avoid the question for as long as possible.

Deep in the depths of the Dancing Mermaid, our temporary home was dark and dank. I could already hear the furtive squeaking of rats. Geordie screwed up his nose but a sharp glance from his mentor stopped him from voicing a string of complaints.

My hope that no one else had overheard Geordie’s comment was dashed when Ishida and Kokoro approached me. “Did I hear correctly when you said that you can now hypnotize any human?” Ishida asked.

It was bound to come out sooner or later so I might as well confess to my new talent now. “Yep. It looks like I can also bamboozle vampires as well.” Someone laughed and unsuccessfully turned it into a completely unnecessary cough. “Anna-Eve told me everything I wanted to know after we had a staring match,” I explained.

“I would like to see a demonstration of your new power,” the child king said. The last time he’d wanted to see a demonstration of my power, one of his people had ended up dead. I was pretty sure killing someone wouldn’t be necessary this time.

At first no one stepped forward, then Cristov offered himself to be my guineapig. Aventius made a sound of protest but his follower just patted him on the shoulder. “I am willing for you to try to put me beneath your control,” he said to me.

I had to admire his bravery. At an enquiring look to make sure no one objected to the experiment, I stepped forward. Coming to a stop when we were only inches apart, I started into his eyes. Within moments, Cristov’s body relaxed and his expression became utterly blank. He didn’t smile goofily or tell me how beautiful I was yet he was under my control. His will had been taken away and there was nothing in its place, not even adoration for the one who had bemused him.

“Tell him to do something, Nat,” Geordie urged me.

“Cristov, put your left hand on your head.” He did. “Put your right hand on your stomach.” He did that too. “Stand on one leg.” He followed my direction and Geordie sniggered at the spectacle before him. “Now hop, rub your stomach and pat your head all at the same time,” I instructed him. My puppet complied woodenly, hopping on one foot, rubbing with one hand and patting with the other. I looked around but no one seemed convinced that he was really beneath my spell. “You try it and see how hard it is,” I said in exasperation. Several of the men complied and it quickly became apparent how much trouble it was for them to do all three tasks at the same time. The women didn’t share the problem and darted smug looks at their male counterparts.

“Tell him to kill Aventius,” Ishida suggested. The Europeans rounded on him in outrage.

Actually, that was probably the only way anyone would believe this was real. “Cristov, tear Aventius’ head off.” He immediately stopped hopping and started forward with his hands outstretched. Aventius blanched and stumbled backwards. The look he sent me was full of shocked disbelief. His followers surged forward to try to protect him but Cristov ignored them as if they didn’t exist and continued to reach for his leader.

“I am convinced,” Ishida said in a slightly shaky voice as the bedazzled vampire’s hands closed around the ex-councillor’s neck.

“Stop, Cristov.” He became motionless with his hands still in the act of trying to behead Aventius. “Come here,” I told him, uncomfortable at treating him like a robot. He dropped his hands, pivoted and came to stand before me.

After another staring match, he blinked and came out of his daze. “Did it work?”

“Oh, it worked alright,” Geordie said with a disturbed look in my direction. Suddenly, no one was brave enough to meet my eyes. Once again, I had proven that I was the strangest of all the monsters in the land. Now everyone knew just how very different I was from them and every other creature on the planet.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Our long, boring and painfully slow trip came to a shuddering halt after only three days at sea. It was midday and roughly half of our group was asleep. Only fifteen of us had chosen to remain awake. We had stupidly grown complacent, believing we had actually managed to elude Colonel Sanderson. I didn’t know how but he had tracked us down and we would shortly be trapped. It didn’t even occur to me that the ship might simply be malfunctioning. My instincts told me we were in danger and I wasn’t about to ignore them again.

When the engines powered down and came to a full stop, Luc and I exchanged glances that were full of fear. Practically nothing could stop these ships quickly once they were in motion. We coasted for some time before the ship came to a stop and began wallowing and rocking unpleasantly from side to side. Waves slapped at the hull but they didn’t mask the sound of sailors high above us on the top deck shouting queries at the people who were invading the ship.

Kokoro had chosen to remain awake again even though she had stood watch the day before. I wondered if her instincts had told her to or if it was just a coincidence. She tilted her head backwards as she scanned the minds of the newcomers. “It is Colonel Sanderson,” she said calmly. “He and his men have been ordered to kill us all and to leave no survivors.”

I took quick stock of who was awake and who was dead to the world. Ishida and Geordie were both asleep and wouldn’t wake even if their inert bodies were hacked apart. Gregor and Igor were also down for the count and I wished they weren’t. We needed their advice now more than we ever had before.

“What do we do?” Cristov asked. He was watching over Aventius, who had chosen a very poor time to rest. He rarely did so, preferring to remain awake most of the time. Even a being that had lived for almost five thousand years had to sleep sometime.

“Do we fight?” Luc asked the seer as the others gathered around. There was an even split of Japanese and Europeans awake and ready for action. All were terrified and weren’t hiding it very well.

Kokoro shook her head. Her expression was heavy with the dread we all felt. “There are too many of them.”

Frozen with indecision, I didn’t know what to do. If we went up to them, the sun would kill everyone but me and even I would be badly injured. If we waited down here, they would surround us and shoot us from above like fish in a gigantic barrel. The only consolation we had was that the soldiers couldn’t use their explosives. Not unless they wanted to sink the ship but that would be a useless venture. Thanks to the experiment they had performed on Aventius, they now knew we could survive being under water indefinitely.

Booted feet stomped on the deck far overhead and hatches were yanked open as men flooded inside the ship. Within minutes, my friends and allies would be dead and I would be alone. I would be the only remaining vampire on the planet, un-killable and conceivably able to live until the end of time.

Panic flared and I came very close to giving into it. Luc took my hand, dragging me away from the mental picture of my possible future and anchoring me to the here and now again. I had one chance to try to save my kin and one chance only. “Gather everyone together inside the container,” I told Luc. Out of sheer boredom, Geordie had pried open a door to one of the gigantic containers that were stacked one on top of another. The container he had chosen to investigate held refrigerators of all sizes and shapes. It should offer everyone some protection from bullets if my gambit failed and the soldiers opened fire.

“What are you going to do, Nat?” Luc’s rare use of my nickname meant he was feeling the stress even if he still looked serene on the outside.

“I’m going to try to bargain for our lives.” If the praying mantis could convince Sanderson and his government not to kill her and her people, maybe I could, too. Luc bent, gave me a swift kiss then hefted Geordie under one arm and Igor under the other. I cradled Gregor in my arms as if he was the damsel in distress and I was the hero of the story. Sadly, I always seemed to end up being the hero. As always, I didn’t feel up to the task.

When everyone was safely squished inside the container and nestled between the narrow rows of refrigerators, I closed the door and strode out into the open. Holding my hands up in surrender, I didn’t have to wait for long before I heard feet shuffling on the stairs. No matter how hard the humans tried to be silent, they always made some noise.

“There’s one of them,” a soldier muttered and about a hundred red dots suddenly appeared all over my body. They barely wavered as the soldiers descended the stairs to the floor of the cargo hold.

“Colonel Sanderson?” I yelled and my voice echoed around the confines of the ship.

“I am here,” he called back after a slight hesitation. “Who am I speaking to?” His tone was suspicious, as if he was expecting a trap. I hated to admit it but he had outfoxed us all. Even Gregor hadn’t anticipated that we would be caught at sea. We had been just as complacent as the soldiers and scientists in the secret underground torture chamber. I just hoped we wouldn’t suffer the same fate that they had.

It was as dark as hades down here and the men were wearing night vision goggles. They didn’t work on us the same way they did on humans and I would merely show up as an indistinct outline. “You haven’t forgotten my voice already have you?” I asked the leader of the troops. “It’s only been a few months since you tossed me out into the sun, blew me to pieces then put me in a box and threw me into the sea.” My sarcasm was almost thick enough to wade through.

“Natalie? Is that really you?” Sanderson’s tone turned incredulous. “It can’t be!” he muttered almost beneath his breath. Someone switched on a torch and shone it on my face. I blinked against the brightness and shaded my eyes as Sanderson pushed his way through the circle of men who had me surrounded.

“Anything is possible when it comes to me, Colonel. You should know that by now.”

“You and your…friends shouldn’t have slaughtered my people.” His voice was tight with anger.

“You slaughtered us first,” I shot back. “Then you kidnapped the rest of my friends and either killed or tortured them. As far as we’re concerned, we were just defending ourselves.” He struggled with that one. No matter what argument he came up with, he would sound like a complete hypocrite.

“Why are you talking to it instead of killing it?” a tiny voice said from within the colonel’s ear. It took me a moment to realize he was wearing a small earpiece.

Sanderson spoke into a receiver on his wrist. “The vampire known as Natalie has somehow managed to regenerate again, sir.” He winced in anticipation of how that news would be received.

“What? How is that possible? I thought you told me she was permanently incapacitated!” Whoever the person on the other end of the radio was, he was furious at the news.

“I thought she was, sir.”

“Ask her if she was responsible for the deaths of the vampires in France.”

“Yep. That was me,” I responded before Sanderson could voice the question. “My new policy is to track down and kill anyone who betrays me.”

“She says she was responsible, sir.” The colonel’s face went a few shades paler than normal as he realized the full implications of what I had just told him. He now knew that nothing would stop me from exacting revenge on my enemies. It didn’t need to be said that he was at the top of my shit list.

Heavy breathing came through the microphone nestled in the colonel’s ear. “Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. Kill all of her friends as planned then box her up in one of the containers and sink the ship.”

Before Sanderson could issue the order, I crossed the distance between us. Spinning him around, I wrapped my hand around his throat. He held up a hand before anyone could try to blow my head apart. “This is the vampire known as Natalie and I have a warning for you,” I said quietly into the colonel’s wrist that Sanderson had conveniently placed near my mouth when he’d raised his hand. “It would be a very grave mistake to threaten me and my people.”

“Why is that, young lady?” the voice asked in a falsely calm tone.

I was pretty sure I recognized the voice. I’d seen the speaker on the foreign news often enough when I’d still been alive and living in Australia. “Because I can’t die, Mr President.” He gulped at being recognized. “No matter what sort of prison you put me in, I will escape and I will come for you. There is nowhere on this planet that you will be safe from me if your men harm any of my friends.”

A babble of voices erupted through the earpiece and Sanderson winced. “Quiet! Let me think!” the President shouted and the voices hushed. Silence descended for a few seconds. “Colonel Sanderson, I need to speak with you privately,” he said at last. “Make sure none of your people fire their weapons at any of the creatures.”

I released the colonel and he gestured for his men not to shoot. “Keep your eye on her but do not fire unless I give the order.”

Dozens of tiny red dots continued to light up my face and body as Sanderson climbed back upstairs. He was smart enough to move out of my hearing range, much to my disappointment.

“Is everything alright?” Luc asked softly from within the container.

I moved closer so we could talk in relative privacy without actually giving away which container my friends were hidden in. “Sanderson and his President are having a private discussion while they decide our fate.”

Kokoro’s voice floated through the metal walls next. “Your threats have swayed the American ruler. He has decided not to kill us.” I heard the relief in her words even as Sanderson’s feet clomped on the stairs.

“Let me know if he changes his mind,” I told her then moved back to the centre of the open space again.

“The President has agreed not to destroy your people,” the colonel said in a clipped tone. He was pissed that I’d threatened his boss but I really couldn’t care less. Our alliance had been shattered the instant his men had tossed me out into the sun to fry. It had been destroyed beyond any hope of repair after my friends and allies had been killed and the rest had been turned into lab rats.

“So, does that mean we can go free?” I asked. Deep down I knew what the answer would be but I hoped I would be wrong.

“No.” His answer was curt and final. “We’re turning the ship around and heading back to port. A decision will be made about your future during the next few days. I’ll let you know more when I’ve been updated. I want you and your people to remain down here. If any vampires are spotted on the upper decks, they will be shot on sight.” With that grim warning, he and his men retreated back up to the surface.

Luc pushed open the container door when I knocked on it softly. He gave me a strained smile then pulled me in for a hug. Kokoro wrapped her arms around us both. “You have saved us once more, Natalie.” The gratitude in her tone brought a lump to my throat. I hadn’t saved us but had merely put off our deaths. The devious humans would have three days and nights to come up with a plan. I doubted whatever solution they came up with would appeal to us.

When the sun went down, we didn’t have good news for those who began to wake from their slumber. Geordie’s young face crumpled in fear when Luc explained what had happened while they had been unconscious. “They are going to kill us all!” he said shrilly. I hugged him to my side, unable to think of a suitable lie to soothe his fears.

Gregor thought furiously as Ishida grilled Kokoro about what she had gleaned from the President’s thoughts. Igor looked bored but his eyes were tight and gave away his tenseness. Aventius gathered his followers together and tried to keep them calm. Cristov sent me frequent glances, as if waiting for me to offer a solution that would save us. I hated to disappoint him but I was fresh out of ideas. If Gregor couldn’t come up with a way out of this mess then we were screwed.

One of Ishida’s warriors suggested that we should fortify the container in case the soldiers changed their minds and decided to attack us. Gregor seconded the idea so they went to work. From Igor’s sardonic look, I guessed their efforts would be a waste of time but at least it would keep them busy for a while.

While a team of determined vamps tore the refrigerators apart, I drew Kokoro aside. We moved far enough away that no one would be able to overhear us. “Do you know what the U.S. government has planned for us?” I asked her bluntly. Ishida had already asked her that question but she had replied in the negative. Since she was the kid’s master, she could lie to him whenever she wanted. If their roles had been reversed, she would have spilled her guts to him in a heartbeat.

She shook her head regretfully. “I lost contact with the President as soon as the Colonel switched his radio off. I am no longer privy to his thoughts.”

I glared at Geordie when he attempted to sidle closer to listen in on our private exchange. Turning, he pretended to examine the insides of a dismantled fridge. “What about Sanderson? Have you learned anything from him?” I lowered my voice even further and the seer copied me.

“He has not been informed of their plans as yet. I do not believe he will be until they have been finalized.”

I wished I’d never told the soldier about Kokoro’s ability to read minds. It would have come in very handy to know what they had planned so we could try to think up a counter move. Our fate would be sprung on us without any prior warning and we wouldn’t have a chance to think of a way out of whatever dilemma we would face.

“I will advise you if I discover what our future holds,” she told me and turned away.

“We already know what our future holds,” I said to her back. Death and darkness. She hesitated then nodded at the thought I sent to her. Despite all that we had been through already, we still had that disquieting and mysterious event to look forward to.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bored with our forced inactivity and anxious about our future, we spent most of our time huddled together inside the newly fortified container. Igor had come up with a roster and had chosen four people to stand guard at a time. We would all have a turn to keep watch and make sure the soldiers weren’t trying to sneak up on us. Personally, I found sentry duty to be even more boring than sitting around discussing our lack of options.

Geordie was the one to discover how the soldiers had managed to track us down so easily. Futilely rubbing his arms for warmth, he frowned and fingered a spot under his left bicep. Picking at his skin through his hoodie, he gave me a puzzled look. “Why do I have a lump in my arm? I don’t remember having one there before.”

One by one, they all checked and each had a similar lump. “I should have thought of this sooner,” Gregor said. He was angry with himself for not figuring it out. “The scientists have implanted us with tracking devices.”

“Wait,” I said as Igor reached for a knife he’d stolen from one of the sailors. “I don’t think you should take them out just yet.”

Luc nodded his support for my idea. “We don’t want them to know we are aware of the devices.”

“Why not?” Geordie asked, still picking at his arm.

“We should wait until we have a chance to escape from the soldiers and then destroy them,” Ishida explained. Although only a few mortal years younger than the other teen, he was many more vampire years older and wiser than Geordie.

“Oh.” Crestfallen, Geordie gave the emperor a sheepish smile. “I did not think of that.”

It was our second night of travel and we had only one more night left before we would be back in Canada again. Everyone was understandably tense but few fights broke out. We were a species on the edge of extinction and we couldn’t afford to lose any more people. As I had hoped, all prejudices had been put aside. We weren’t Europeans, Japanese and one Australian anymore. We were merely vampires trying to survive in a world that had turned against us and now wanted us dead.

Geordie seemed to pluck the thought out of my head. “I still can’t believe Sanderson turned on us after we helped him to kill the First and his horde of imps and then the Second and his fledgling army.” Technically, I had been the only one to kill the First and help destroy the imps but it wasn’t worth reminding him of that fact. We were sitting on the cold metal floor of the container, surrounded by fridge walls that would act as shields in the case of gunfire. It was far from comfortable but it made us feel slightly safer than if we had been sitting out in the open.

Gregor chose to play the devil’s advocate. “If you were in their shoes, would you allow us to survive?”

Mulling over the question seriously, the teen unconsciously copied Gregor’s favourite pose of resting his chin on his fist as he thought. “I don’t know,” he finally said, clearly conflicted by the dilemma.

“I would wipe us out if I were the humans,” Ishida said almost casually. “We are far superior to them in many ways; speed, strength, stealth.”

“Sex appeal,” Geordie said then cut a glance at me and giggled. Ishida’s still heavily wrinkled face broke into a rare smile.

“What would you do, Ladybug?” Luc asked me and grinned at my sour glare at the nickname.

Like Geordie, I put some thought into it. If I were in charge of the safety of the human race, what would I do with us? It was a tough question and there was no easy answer. “I wouldn’t lock us up and torture us,” I said at last. “I’d probably do what Sanderson did with the courtiers and keep us somewhere where we could be monitored but still have some form of freedom.” I grimaced even as I said it. What kind of existence would that be? We’d be like animals in a petting zoo or fish in a bowl.

“What would you do, Gregor?” Geordie asked.

Deep in thought, Gregor smiled but it seemed almost forced. “I agree with Natalie. I would contain us where we couldn’t bother humans ever again.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, it sounded far too final. Kokoro frowned at whatever was on Gregor’s mind but didn’t venture her opinion on the topic.

After dawn, Luc and I snuck off to the far side of the cargo hold for some alone time. Neither of us was particularly in the mood for sex, we just wanted to be close while we still could. One thing led to another and we ended up naked anyway. I muffled my moans by biting my own hand. Sluggish blood flowed and I indelicately spat out the horrid tasting ooze. Luc found that to be hilarious and subsided into a laughing fit. He lost concentration and had to stop while I was in mid orgasm.

Rolling him over so I was on top, I rode him hard and fast and his laughter disappeared. Our gazes locked as we realized this might be the last time that we would ever be intimate together. Whatever the Americans had planned, we all shared the feeling that it wouldn’t end well for us. The general opinion was that our lives would never be the same again.

Luc’s hands rose to cup my breasts then he sat up and enclosed one with his cool mouth. My head went back and my fingernails sank into his shoulders as he gripped my hips and forced me to ride him harder and faster. Orange light blazed to life as I gave a strangled moan and reached my peak. For once, I didn’t break any of his bones. Resting his forehead on my shoulder, we remained locked together until the cold seeped into my flesh and I began to shiver.

Now that I had finished making so much noise, it became clear that we weren’t the only ones taking the chance to be alone while we still could. Sounds of pleasure rang out from the darkness as we returned to the container that we had turned into a fort. Shortly after we sat down, Kokoro and Gregor appeared. They were arm in arm and looked decidedly cosy. The seer gave Gregor a coy smile when he lifted her hand to his mouth and planted a kiss on it.

Luc nudged me and I closed my mouth. If Geordie had been awake, he would have made a snide remark that would have ruined the pair’s mood instantly. Taking a seat across from me, Gregor smiled widely. “Nice morning,” he commented as if we were sitting out in the open and taking in the breeze rather than cowering deep in the bowels of the ship.

“Nice for some,” one of the Europeans who were still awake muttered jealously. Unsurprisingly, Igor reached over and gave the vamp a smack. Rubbing his head ruefully, the offending European curled onto his side and promptly died for the day.

Resting would probably be a good idea so Luc and I lay down next to Geordie. I trusted Igor to watch over us and to wake me if necessary. Closing my eyes, I drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

Opening my eyes, I blinked in confusion and turned in a full circle. Wherever I was, it was somewhere I had never been before, either awake or asleep. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of a dull silver metal. I was in a hallway that stretched out in two directions. Regular intersections with smaller hallways branching off to both sides gave me the impression that the place was huge. It vaguely reminded me of the underground lab where my friends had been imprisoned.

Undecided for a moment, I chose a direction and started walking. Stopping at the first intersection, I glanced both ways to see the slightly smaller hallways had more intersections. This place must be gigantic, I thought uneasily and wondered where I had managed to dream myself this time. The air was warm enough but it smelled bad and reminded me of rotten eggs.

Finally reaching the end of the main hallway, I looked left and right and saw more hallways. Choosing a path at random, I picked up the pace until I was jogging. Hearing voices ahead, I closed in on them and slowed when I spotted a door. The glass wasn’t quite see through and I had a fuzzy view of the inside of the room.

Examining the door, I looked for a way to open it but there were no handles and it didn’t open automatically when I approached it. Leaning in close to the window, I peered at a gathering of people on the far side of a gigantic room. Their voices were muffled and strangely guttural.

Squinting hard, all I could make out was that there were eight of them and they seemed to be having a heated discussion. “Where the hell am I?” I murmured and their conversation broke off. Heads whipped around to stare at the door and I stumbled back in surprise. Tripping over my feet, I sat down hard and bit my tongue when I landed.

“Son of a bitch!” Sitting up, I clapped a hand over my mouth so my pained shout came out slightly muffled. My tongue continued to throb for a second before it healed. I swallowed the blood that had welled up instead of spitting it out. There was very little space to lie on inside the container let alone to spit on.

It was still daytime but the sun was due to fade shortly. Igor shot me a curious glance and one of the appointed guards peeked in through the open door. “Bad dream,” I muttered to them both and settled down between Luc and Geordie again. I had no intention of subsiding back into sleep, not after what I’d just witnessed.

Closing my eyes, I saw the faces of the creatures again. Their features had been distorted but their eyes had stood out clearly enough. Each and every pair had been bright red. The only other creature I’d ever seen with eyes like that was the First. Even his clones had had orange eyes rather than scarlet. I didn’t want to think of the implications that there might be more of the ancient vampires hidden somewhere on Earth.

A tiny part of me rebelled at my instinctive concern. So what if there are more of them around? Screw the humans, they can deal with the problem themselves. It was selfish and petty but I had to agree with my inner voice. Whatever disaster was destined to happen next, the humans would have to face it alone this time. Sanderson should have thought of this possibility before he’d stabbed me in the back then turned my friends into guineapigs. Of course, he could simply threaten to kill them if we didn’t help to take down the new menace. The peril hadn’t even arrived yet and we were already at a stalemate. I decided to keep this knowledge to myself for now. Like it or not, the humans would need us if these red-eyed beings showed up. It would give us some leverage to use against them if and when another attack came.

Waiting for the sun to disappear and for the long night to begin, I realized I was mentally drained. I was weary of having to go to the rescue all the time. Why couldn’t I just be left in peace? Why did I have to be in the thick of the battle all the time? Because I’m Mortis, I reminded myself before my subconscious could berate me for whining. It was my destiny to battle evil and to dole out death to my enemies.

Before I’d become one of the undead, I’d been just an average, ordinary person. Sure I hadn’t had any friends or family to leave behind and my life had been utterly boring and meaningless, but look at it now. I was a walking disaster that had been designed to kill most of my own kind. Rolling onto my side, I looked first at Luc and then at the rest of my friends. They aren’t your friends anymore, my subconscious told me. They’re your family. You have to keep them safe, no matter what happens. The weight of responsibility was easier to bear with the knowledge of how much these people meant to me, even the ones whose names I still didn’t know.

Chapter Thirty

After the ship shuddered to a halt back at the same port we’d left from six nights ago, we waited in tense silence. I wasn’t the only one expecting the soldiers to rain bullets down on us at any moment. Geordie jumped with every sound that echoed throughout the hold. He was pressed up against my side, shivering with fear.

“Are you aware that your eyes are glowing?” Gregor asked me. His sudden statement startled several people into turning to stare at me.

“Are they?” Now that he mentioned it, I could see the soft glow radiating out from my face.

Luc tilted my face so he could see my eyes. “What emotion are you feeling right now?”

“A mixture of worry and anger.” Worry was winning right now but that could change at any time.

“Hmm,” Gregor mused.

“What?” I asked him, wishing I could borrow Kokoro’s ability and sneak a peek inside his head. Rummaging through people’s thoughts must come in handy sometimes. From the sly smile she directed at me, I guessed Kokoro agreed with my thought.

“The imp blood is reacting to your emotions more strongly,” Gregor said. “It has already increased your hungers for blood and flesh. I wonder what other changes will occur?” For a couple of seconds I had the uncanny feeling that he would have liked to have studied me much like the scientists had studied him.

“She enjoys killing now,” Geordie said.

Luc raised a brow. “What makes you say that?”

The teen shrugged his thin shoulders. “You saw Nat in the African sewers. She really got into exploding the fledglings. Also, when she was telling us about slaughtering the courtiers, she was smiling the whole time.”

It was hard to deny it, especially when I found myself smiling again at the memory. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him, “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to turn into a mindless killing machine and turn on you all.”

“Pretty sure?” one of the female Japanese warriors muttered and disturbed looks were exchanged.

Our awkward conversation broke off at the sound of a hatch opening at the top of the stairs. “Natalie!” Sanderson shouted down into what would have looked like total darkness to him. “You can start bringing your people up. Stay in single file, keep your hands in the air and make no sudden movements.”

“Kokoro, do you know what’s waiting for us up there?” I asked.

She peered blindly upwards. “They have arranged transportation. I do not know where our destination lies.”

“Probably somewhere in the North Pole,” Geordie said sourly. “We’ll have to live in igloos and eat polar bears.”

Ishida forgot himself enough to snigger before schooling his wrinkled face to impassivity again.

“We’d better do what the Colonel says,” Gregor advised. “I doubt he and his men will have much patience for us after we slaughtered their people in the underground laboratory.” His expression held a mixture of shame and self-loathing that he had allowed himself to regenerate into a mindless monster even for a short while.

“They got what they deserved,” I told him almost grimly. “They’ll think twice about experimenting on any of us again now.” Most heads nodded in agreement. No one else seemed to feel any remorse for murdering their captors. Gregor truly was the most humane of us if he felt pity for the scientists and soldiers we had mauled to death. Despite the squeamishness I’d felt at the end, if given the choice, I would do it all again to save my people.

I went first and Luc was right behind me. At the top of the stairs, I found the hatch standing open and dozens of armed soldiers waiting on the other side. Feeling like a condemned prisoner, I put my hands up and stepped out into the open. A ring of high powered flashlights did an effective job of blinding me for a few moments. Adjusting to the light, I wasn’t surprised to see that each soldier was armed with the prototypes that had been designed to blow us to pieces. A shiver went down my spine at the thought of what a single bullet would do to my friends.

A narrow corridor of soldiers kept us moving in single file across the deck and down a steep ramp. A small convoy of army vehicles was lined up at the bottom. The twin rows of soldiers led directly to a large armoured truck. Waiting until everyone else had climbed into the back of the vehicle, I entered last. The door was swung shut and then a padlock was added for good measure. It might make the soldiers feel safe but I doubted it could stop us from breaking out if we really wanted to. Tearing the door off its hinges would result in our immediate extermination so I pushed the thought aside.

Conversation was non-existent as the convoy rumbled to life. Expressions were grim, reflecting the opinion most shared, that we were heading to our deaths.

After a short journey, we lurched to a stop and the door was unlocked and thrown open. Again, flashlights were shone on us and we were surrounded by armed soldiers. Holding up a hand to block the light, I saw that we were back at the same airport we had landed at nearly a week ago.

An army jet that was large enough to hold hundreds of troopers had been flown in from the U.S. to pick us up. We were ushered in first and the soldiers crowded in after us. Sanderson had to be somewhere in the crowd but he was wisely hiding from me.

“Turn around,” one of the soldiers said to me tightly when he caught my glance. “We don’t want any of you creatures trying to hypnotize us.” I turned away and met Luc’s eyes. The humans were frightened of us to the point where they were just seeking an excuse to pull the trigger. Luc offered me a faint smile and I dredged one up in return. He linked his fingers through mine and Geordie did the same on my other side. Dread, my constant companion since we had been caught, flared up when I wondered what doom waited for us. Kokoro might not know where we were going but we all knew how it would end. Death and darkness had been our fate all along and we were finally on our way to meet it.

It was a long flight and the soldiers shifted restlessly. The undead bore the lack of activity far more stoically. We felt no need to move frequently to avoid deep vein thrombosis since we didn’t have any form of circulation anymore. That sparked a question that had been floating around in my head since I’d become one of the undead. I almost turned to ask Luc how the male vampires could have sex without live blood running through their veins. Surrounded by humans, now probably wasn’t the best time to ask. Also, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. The alien blood in our veins defied the natural order and it had to be the reason why the male vamps could get it up despite technically being corpses.

At last, the plane began to descend. “Where are we?” a European asked. He’d spoken far too quietly for the humans to overhear him.

Gregor had an answer ready as if he had been expecting the question. “Considering how long we were in the air and the direction we travelled in, I’d say we are somewhere on the east coast of the United States.”

I wracked my brain trying to figure out why they would take us there but came up blank. Whatever theory Gregor had come up with, it made his normally ruggedly handsome face glum and far older than usual. My dread increased even more and I started wondering if there was a fate that could actually be worse than death or captivity.

Dawn was closing in by the time we landed and taxied to a stop. The rumble of the engines began to echo and I guessed that we had moved inside a hangar. It was a sign that we wouldn’t be shoved out into the sun to fry but trust wasn’t an emotion I was capable of after Sanderson’s betrayal. I would always expect treachery from him and his people now. My benevolence towards humankind had been ruined after what they had put my friends through, possibly forever.

The cargo door of the plane slowly opened and the soldiers began backing out. They were careful to keep their weapons trained on us. Sanderson appeared and his men cleared a space for him. “We’ve prepared somewhere for your people to stay until our government has reached a decision about what we are going to do with you.” At a wave of his hand, thirty of his men stepped forward. One of them crooked his finger, beckoning for us to follow him. Left with little choice, we filed out of the plane and were quickly surrounded by the group.

Our temporary prison was an area at the back of a gigantic hangar. Privacy screens had been erected, creating twenty-nine small rooms with narrow cots for beds. For Geordie and Igor, it was a step up from the bare cells with a thin pallet on the ground they were used to. For me, it was barely adequate. I could only imagine how insulted Ishida would feel at being offered such poor accommodations.

“Remain in this area,” the same soldier instructed us. “If any of you step over this line,” he pointed at a red line that had recently been painted on the cement, “you will regret it.”

“But not for long,” one of his colleagues said slyly and hefted his gun meaningfully.

Turning on his heel as low chuckles sounded amongst the troops, the soldier marched off, leaving the other twenty-nine men behind to stand guard. We had each unwillingly been assigned a guardian angel. Only these angels would shoot us in the face rather than rescue us from harm.

“If any of you step over this line, you will regret it,” Geordie mimicked in a high pitched voice that was still low enough that the humans couldn’t hear him.

I pinched my lips together to keep in the laugh that wanted to boil out. Luc hustled me through the confusing path of privacy screens and I clapped a hand over my mouth. When my laughing fit petered out, I wiped away an imaginary tear and collapsed onto the flimsy cot.

Luc’s solemn expression almost set me off again then a wave of despair hit me and I put my hands over my face. Pushing his way into the tiny space, Geordie dropped to his knees before me. “Do not cry, chérie. Everything will work out for us in the end.” He patted me on the thigh and Luc sank down on the cot beside me. The springs protested at our combined weight but it didn’t collapse. His arm came over my shoulder and he rested his forehead against mine.

When my emotions were under control again, I dropped my hands. The group had been busy while I’d been having my small breakdown. They’d rearranged the privacy screens so they blocked us from the view of the humans. A large open space replaced the tiny rooms. Most of the cots were now neatly lined up on both sides, reminding me of an army barracks.

Everyone was watching me apprehensively. I was supposed to be their leader, if I lost it, who would they be able to rely on? “I’m ok,” I said softly, knowing they could all hear me and the soldiers standing beyond the screens and the dreaded red line couldn’t. “I just had a bad moment there.”

“We trust you, Mortis,” Kokoro said and murmurs of agreement followed.

“If anyone can save us, it is you, Natalie.” Gregor was putting on a brave face but his despair was even deeper than mine. His theory that fate, destiny or whatever it was that decided who would live and who would die was correcting a mistake it had made millions of years ago wouldn’t leave my mind. We should never have been created and somehow, someway, that mistake was going to be rectified. I had a feeling that we would all discover what fate intended for us much sooner than we would have liked.

Chapter Thirty-One

After two agonizingly long weeks of remaining in our designated space without food or the ability to take a shower, our wait came to an end. The rumble of an approaching engine alerted us that something was finally happening. We gathered at the barrier as an armoured truck rolled into the hangar. Recognizing it to be similar to the truck that had ferried us to the airport in Canada, I figured it was here to transport us to a new location.

Standing on our side of the red line, we were clustered together like frightened children. Gregor and Kokoro stood arm in arm with Ishida standing in front of them and their hands resting on his shoulders. They would never have the chance to form a family unit now. Fate had another plan in mind for them.

One of the soldiers gestured for us to climb inside the truck. All twenty-nine men remained silent as we slowly moved to obey. “Where are they taking us now?” Geordie wondered out loud. He stepped over the forbidden line in trepidation that was shared by us all.

“Not far, I suspect,” Gregor said glumly. Kokoro bowed her head and it looked like she was about to cry. She had read the minds of our captors and knew what they had planned for us. From her reaction, it wasn’t going to be the same deal that had been made with the Comtesse. We wouldn’t be allowed to live in a mansion if we agreed to drink animal blood to survive. We had something far worse to face. I flinched when the armoured door slammed shut when the last vampire climbed inside. It sounded a little bit too much like a portent of doom.

Gregor was correct and our ride was fairly short. That meant we were still on the airport grounds. I wonder which country they decided to dump us in? After a few moments of hesitation, my subconscious answered my unspoken thought. I don’t think a plane is waiting for us this time. It sounded both nervous and resigned and I wished it would let me in on its insight. If a plane isn’t waiting for us, then what is? My inner voice refused to answer me and remained stubbornly silent.

My question was answered when I climbed out of the armoured truck. I went still at the sight of our new mode of transportation. Tilting my head back, I took in the length of the shiny white vessel. They can’t be serious! Whirling in fury, I was faced with over a hundred men wielding the deadly prototypes that now seemed to be standard issue for the soldiers.

“The master plan your President and his minions have come up with is to send us into space?” My voice went high on the last word. I couldn’t sufficiently express my incredulity or my anger.

Sanderson pushed his way through his men to confront my wrath. He almost took a step back when my glowing eyes landed on him but he managed to control his fear. It was emanating from both him and his men in invisible waves. “You and your people have no place on this earth,” he stated as if he actually believed his own words. “According to your legends, you were created by an entity that came from somewhere up there,” he pointed up at the stars. “So we’re going to send you back where you belong.”

“There is no use fighting it. This is our destiny, Natalie,” Gregor said heavily.

“Fate has spoken,” Kokoro agreed. “This is meant to be.” Both were resigned to our total rejection by the entire population of the planet we had all been born and raised on.

Luc and Igor took me by the upper arms and turned me towards the ship. Igor’s teeth were gritted and his expression was stoical. He wrapped an arm around Geordie’s shoulder and pulled him in close. Aventius moved to Luc’s other side and linked arms with him. One by one, my people clasped hands or linked arms in solidarity. We all had to face this but at least we wouldn’t have to face it alone.

“If they start singing ‘Kumbaya’, I swear I’ll start shooting,” a smartass soldier muttered. A meaty smack sounded as a hand connected with the back of his head. Geordie sniggered but quickly broke into quiet dry sobs.

With a ring of soldiers surrounding us, we allowed ourselves to be herded to the lift that would carry us up to the ship. It stopped halfway up the rocket and disgorged us onto a narrow walkway. The ship didn’t look like the vessels I was used to seeing on TV. It was far bigger than the shuttles I usually saw on the news or documentaries. I guessed it would have to be to carry so many passengers.

A hatch was waiting for us and was already open in unwelcome invitation. I had to both step over the edge and duck to enter. It seemed fitting that I should enter first since I had gotten us all into this mess simply by existing. If I hadn’t been turned by Silvius, vampirekind would have been free to roam the planet at will. Now we were all that was left and Earth no longer wanted us.

Silver walls enclosed us as everyone boarded. We had plenty of room to stand but lying down might be a problem. Tilting my head back, I saw that the ship narrowed the higher it went. I realized the ship would be horizontal once it cleared Earth’s orbit and we would have all the room we needed then.

Sanderson stayed well back and addressed me as one of his men poised to shut the hatch. “It will take an hour or two before the ship will be launched. Sit tight and enjoy the ride.”

“Sanderson,” I said before he could turn away. “If you’re thinking about blowing us up or sending us directly into the sun, remember what I told you. I can’t be killed and I swear I’ll come back for you.” Somehow, someway, I would make it back to Earth and he and his superiors would die slowly and hideously. I caught and held his eyes but refrained from hypnotizing him. I didn’t need to, fear would be enough of a motivator to make sure he didn’t betray me a second time. Giving me a reluctant nod of acknowledgement, the colonel moved out of sight and the hatch clanged shut.

Cocking his head to the side, Geordie listened intently as soldiers bustled about outside the door. A hissing noise burst to life and he frowned in puzzlement. “What are they doing out there?”

“They are making very sure that we can’t escape,” Igor replied dourly. “They are welding the hatch shut and sealing us in.”

“What do they think we’re going to do? Bust open the hatch when we’re in outer space and somehow make our way back to Earth?” one of the Europeans muttered.

Geordie looked at his mentor to see if that was possible. Igor shook his head doubtfully and his protégé’s shoulders sagged. That was exactly what I had told Sanderson I would do but I had to agree with Igor. The likelihood of that scenario happening was very slim.

Close to three hours later rather than one or two, the ship began to rumble beneath our feet. We’d all had plenty of time to examine our metal tomb. A hatch high above had also been welded shut. We had no access to the controls to try to change our course and we had no way to see where we were heading.

When the ship finally took off, we were pressed helplessly to the floor by the G forces. I found myself sandwiched between Luc and Geordie. The kid was beneath me and Luc was on the top. Unfortunately, I was facing the teen. Out of habit, Geordie tried to grind his pelvis into mine. Despite our predicament, I found myself laughing and his eyes crinkled in amusement in return.

At last the pressure lifted and we began to float. It felt weird to be utterly weightless. Proving just how childish he still was despite being over two hundred years old, Geordie pretended to swim through the air. “This isn’t so bad, chérie.” His grin held genuine amusement but Gregor’s was strained.

Igor floated in mid-air with his arms crossed, wearing a grumpy expression. His apprentice pointed at him and started giggling then shrieked and tried to swim away when the Russian reached out to slap him.

Even I had to admit it was kind of fun hanging suspended in the air. Luc grabbed my hand and pulled me in close. Tangling our legs together, he glanced down at our bodies. “I wonder if it would be possible to have sex while weightless,” he mused.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said dryly. Not when we were surrounded by our kin and everyone was watching us.

“Don’t let us stop you,” Cristov said cheekily. “We’ll turn our backs.” He tried to follow up on his promise and clawed helplessly at the air. Bumping into Aventius, he earned a warning frown from the ex-councillor.

Eventually, the novelty wore off for all of us, even for Geordie. Igor had positioned himself at the hatch to the control room early on during our journey. He studied it carefully, tapping on it with a knuckle and the wall around it as well. He re-joined us when he was done, quickly getting the hang of propelling himself through the air far quicker than I was able to. He shook his head regretfully. “The walls are too thick for us to break through and the welding appears to be flawless.”

Geordie looked at me hopefully. “You can make your bits and pieces fall off whenever you want to, right?”

“Yep, but I don’t know how that’s going to help us this time.”

“Can’t you make really tiny bits of yourself fall off?” He saw my confusion and elaborated. “When you were just ashes in the box, your particles managed to find a way out. Maybe they’ll be able to find a way through the hatch.”

Gregor looked thoughtful at the possibility. “Even if Natalie could do such a thing, I doubt she would be able to turn us around and take us back home. If she did manage to, the soldiers would simply blow us out of the air before we could land.”

Dejected, Geordie’s expression fell. “What is going to happen to us? Are we just going to float around in space forever?”

“We will run out of fuel soon,” Igor said, dropping our morale even further. “When that happens, we will begin to drift and the temperature will also begin to drop. Within days we will probably freeze. Of course, we could be hit by a meteor, be drawn into a planet’s atmosphere and be burned up on entry or even be sucked into a black hole.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, Igor,” I said dryly.

“Will we really freeze?” his young apprentice asked.

“Most likely,” Igor responded.

“Won’t we die if we become frozen?” The teen trembled at the idea of floating around like a popsicle and I shared his fear.

“I didn’t,” one of Ishida’s warriors said. We did our best to turn to face him. I braced myself with a hand on Luc’s shoulder so I wouldn’t blunder into anyone else.

Gregor turned his shrewd gaze on the warrior. “I presume you are referring to an experiment the scientists performed on you?”

Nodding, the warrior reached out a hand to the chilly wall to anchor himself. “They locked me in a freezer and left me there. When all of the heat was leeched out of my body, I lost consciousness. We were all amazed when I became conscious after they thawed me out. According to their tests, there were no discernable side effects.”

“Even if our bodies freeze, without sustenance we will eventually starve to death,” Ishida said. He already looked halfway there, thanks to the experiment that had been performed on him.

“How long will that take?” I asked.

Gregor fielded this one. “That depends on several factors.”

“Such as?” I prodded when it didn’t look like he was going to elaborate.

“Being frozen will most likely slow the process down but much depends on our age, our innate abilities and our will to survive.”

We were all silent for a few moments and then Geordie spoke. “So, I’m screwed then. I will be the first to go.” His bottom lip quivered and Igor put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m younger than you,” I reminded him. “Compared to you I’m still an infant.”

“That may be so, but you are Mortis,” Kokoro reminded me, as if I needed it. “You do not need to feed as often as a normal vampire. I doubt you will be affected as badly as the rest of us shall be.”

Typical, I thought bitterly. As if I need something else to set me apart from everyone. I noted that Gregor had neatly avoided answering the anxious teen’s question.

Hours passed and no one felt the normal urge to die for the day. As we headed away from the sun, the rules didn’t seem to apply to us now. How long could we survive out here in the cold without food or sleep? Even if we were simply reduced to being corpses for the day, it was still a form of rest. If there had been any possibility of having a moment of privacy on the ship, I would have asked Gregor the question that was on my mind. Just how long will it be before our unnatural lives start being snuffed out one by one?

Chapter Thirty-Two

Without windows, watches or any other way to tell the passing of time, I quickly lost track of how long we had been drifting. Our fuel had run out several hours into our journey and we’d been floating aimlessly ever since. If I had to guess, I’d say it had been several days since we had been ejected from our home world. So far, we hadn’t run into anything, crash landed on another planet or been sucked into a black hole.

It was useless to complain of hunger or the cold but everyone did. I felt the hunger for blood but it was a distant annoyance rather than a pressing need. The subzero temperature was far harder to bear. Even brushing up against the hull resulted in patches of skin being stripped off.

Huddled together, my friends and allies could offer each other no warmth and little comfort. Ice covered the hull and would soon coat all of us. My bones ached and my muscles were rigid. It was becoming harder to blink. Soon, my eyes would freeze and blinking would no longer be an option.

Ishida’s condition had rapidly worsened until he looked even older than the prophet that Luc and I had once consulted in Romania. The prophet had starved himself for a couple of hundred years, probably because a vision had told him to. The lack of food had reduced him into something that looked like a mummy and smelled like a cinnamon stick. No one here smelled like cinnamon yet but they eventually would.

Geordie’s young face had aged but he hadn’t yet become wizened and grey haired. I felt a deep chill when I saw specks of ice in his hair. He’d lost his energy a couple of days ago and spent most of his time curled up in a foetal position. Igor watched over him but his black eyes were bleak. It was common knowledge that the teen would be the first to die. But he wouldn’t be the last. Everywhere I turned, I saw desolation and hopelessness.

If the ooze that sluggishly ran through my veins could have sustained them, I would have gladly offered it to everyone. Maybe I should anyway. A quick, if hideously painful death had to be better than this long drawn out one.

Luc, floating beside me as always, offered me a faint smile. His lips were blue from the cold, as was everyone’s. I tried to smile in return but my lips were too stiff to move. Guilt coated me like an invisible shroud. I had failed him. I had failed everyone. I was supposed to save them and instead I’d managed to have us all thrown off the planet and sent into space to slowly freeze and then starve to death.

I’d begun to take refuge in oblivion more and more often as my kin faded around me. Most drifted in the middle of the ship like deadwood on a tide, gently bumping into each other. At times, I could almost convince myself that their motion was intentional and that they weren’t really sliding into oblivion but I was just deluding myself.

One by one, my kin slipped into comas as the ice slowly spread through our group. Luc was the last to succumb to the freeze. Sheer force of will kept his eyes open. They stared into mine without blinking and eventually I realized he wasn’t looking at me anymore. My one true love had turned into a vampire ice cube.

It took great effort to force my limbs to move but I managed to brush my hand across Luc’s face in a silent farewell. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to drift off to sleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I slept for but when I tried to open my eyes again they refused to move. I was beyond the ability to feel cold now and felt nothing at all. With shock, I realized I had frozen solid just like the others.

There was no movement around me from my kin. I couldn’t sense or feel anyone near me. Kokoro’s final vision had come true, death and darkness had descended. It had been foreseen that I would save a remnant of our kind but instead I had managed to doom us all.

Fear wrapped its cold and clammy hands around me. I pictured myself floating all alone in the white ship that would be my tomb. I would drift through space forever as I grew more and more insane. Mental peals of mad laughter echoed inside my head.

On the verge of utter madness, I sensed a faint spark of life beside me. Straining to my limits, I felt my kin floating in the void all around me. They weren’t dead yet but they soon would be if I didn’t do something to get us out of this quandary.

From the moment that Silvius had kidnapped me, I had been set on a path that would lead us all to this disaster. Fate had decided that we weren’t worthy and it had done its best to finish off our species.

Screw fate, I thought more with desperation than defiance. I will find a way to save us. None of us is going to die on this ship. My silent vow would have been more comforting if I’d had even the faintest clue of how to follow through on it.

Note from the Author:

If you are like me, your time is valuable and I am very glad you enjoyed this novel enough to read it through to the end. As you no doubt know, reviews are an excellent tool to help new readers find my work and decide if the book is for them. I would very much appreciate it if you would take a brief moment to click on the link below and leave a review:

Death Betrays

Also by J.C. Diem in the Mortis Series:

Death Beckons

Death Embraces

Death Deceives

Death Devours

Due for release in February 2014: Death Banishes