Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) Read online

  Jerusa Phoenix has always been close to death — and not just because of the congenital heart defect she’s bore since birth. Jerusa can see the lingering spirits of the dead. She is bright and beautiful, but her sickness, along with her otherworldly gift, has made her an outcast.

  When she ventures out one night, despite the warnings of her best friend, Alicia (who happens to be a ghost), and stumbles upon a group of vampires, a battle rages between immortals over Jerusa. She is transformed into a vampire, and is surprised to find that she enjoys it. For the first time in her life she doesn’t feel sick. But every light casts a shadow, and from the ashes of the battle arises a creature of incredible destructive potential — a savage flesh-eater whose very existence violates the most ancient of vampire laws.

  Now Jerusa must join with the other vampires and use her ghostly power to hunt down the savage beast before he can wreak havoc on the town and make others like himself.

  Jerusa has never been so powerful, but will she be able to find the savage before he attracts the attention of the rulers of the vampire race and bring their wrath down upon them all?

  Heart of the Dead

  Perpetual Creatures 1

  by Gabriel Beyers

  Before You Start

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  Chapter One

  Jerusa Phoenix watched out the tiny window above the kitchen sink at a man shuffling through her backyard. He was dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt that didn’t quite cover his round beer belly. He didn’t seem to be going in any particular direction, stopping from time to time to look at the leaves on the trees. He was one of those bland people that wouldn’t elicit a second glance. The only reason Jerusa even noticed him was that the man carried his own severed head under his arm.

  The man stopped mid-way across the yard, turned to see Jerusa watching him, and suddenly changed. One moment, his head rested in the crook of his armpit like a basketball; the next, it was back atop his neck as it had been in life.

  The man shuffled off, looking embarrassed.

  Jerusa massaged the long, vertical scar upon her chest, hidden away beneath her high-collared shirt, and wondered if death was as boring and confining as life was. A flurry of footsteps erupted on the floor above, breaking her train of thought.

  Jerusa glanced over to Alicia, who was sitting on the counter near the sink.

  “Sounds like my mom’s in another mood.”

  Alicia was a sweet-faced youth with bright, round eyes that always seemed set for mischief. She sat in a sparkling blue prom dress, kicking her bare feet back and forth. Her dark brown hair was pulled up in a stylish bun that Jerusa could never have managed with her own mop of auburn hair. Alicia rolled her eyes, showing her lack of concern for Debra Phoenix’s shifting mood swings.

  “You know how she is. Her life is a house of cards. But when she’s miserable, I’m miserable.”

  Alicia rolled her eyes again.

  “Thanks for your sympathy.”

  After a decade of cooking meals for her mother, Jerusa should have been a master chef, but, alas, she still maintained the culinary skills of a baboon with an eye patch. Even so, she managed to squeeze out a halfway edible breakfast before her mother’s high heels click-clacked across the kitchen floor.

  Debra Phoenix stepped into the kitchen, pausing only a moment for her daily split-second inspection, then moved to the table where her breakfast and a hot cup of coffee awaited her.

  “Hello, darling,” her mother said, spreading her napkin across her lap. “How did you sleep?”

  “Fine, I guess.” Jerusa turned back to the stove.

  “What are you doing?” her mother asked in that accusatory way she reserved for when she knew the answer but wanted to extract some guilt from Jerusa.

  “Cooking myself some bacon and eggs.”

  Her mother made that tsk sound that drove Jerusa crazy. “Have some oatmeal. It’s healthier.”

  Jerusa held her tongue back behind clenched teeth. The scar on her chest throbbed. She wanted to argue and point out that a little bacon and eggs never killed anyone, but with Debra Phoenix, you had to know which battles to fight. This wasn’t one of them.

  Jerusa placed the skillet in the sink. Alicia stuck her tongue out. She wasn’t sure if Alicia’s mockery was aimed at her or her mother, but either way, it brought a smile to her face.

  She sat with her oatmeal steaming before her, letting it cool a bit. Jerusa shot several glances toward her mother, but she couldn’t bear to look at her for long. She wasn’t a woman prone to smiling, and Jerusa believed her mother’s face would crack like brittle parchment if she were to ever break into a full laugh. Jerusa didn’t blame her mother for being so solemn, though. The woman had had a less-than-easy life, and most of the wrinkles on her narrow face could be traced back to Jerusa in one way or another.

  Jerusa’s mother finished her breakfast, consulted her watch, then rose from her seat, leaving her dirty plate for Jerusa to clean up. Alicia made circles with her fingers and placed them up to her eyes, which were crossed, like a pair of glasses. She poked her tongue out, stretched it toward her nose, then broke into silent laughter.

  Alicia was only fifteen when her life had ended, but she had the playful energy of a five year old. She always had a smile, which said a lot when you consider the cards fate had dealt her.

  “Don’t forget to do the dishes before school,” her mother said.

  Jerusa ignored the passive aggressive tone. “I won’t.”

  Her mother searched through her purse, gingerly at first, but as the seconds passed, Jerusa could see the panic setting in.

  “You haven’t been messing with my car keys, have you?”

  “Of course not.” Jerusa wanted to point out that even though she was eighteen, her mother would hardly let her ride in the car, let alone drive it. She didn’t even have a learner’s permit.

  “Then where are they?” She tossed her purse down on the table, then stomped out of the kitchen. “I can’t be late. Not today.”

  Her mother’s frantic murmurings wafted through the halls. Jerusa sighed. The house of cards was falling early today.

  “Will you do something?” Jerusa asked Alicia.

  Alicia crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Please. The sooner we find the keys the sooner she leaves.”

  Alicia shook her head, her chin protruding in defiance.

  “C’mon, you know how she is. Those keys could be anywhere. The longer she looks, the more she’s going to freak out.”

  Alicia glanced at her from the side of her eye and her lips pulled into a tight scar across her face. Then she rolled her eyes and nodded.

  “Thank you so much.”

  Alicia waved her off. She hopped down from the counter, stood for a moment, thinking, then left the kitchen. Jerusa followed her into the hall, into the living room. Alicia stopped every couple of feet and looked about, a confused dreaminess resting in her eyes, as if all that was commonplace in this world was an enigma to her.

  Alicia stood straight and looked to her left, toward an antique sewing desk that sat near the front window. The desk was clean with nothing visible except the embattled sewing machine itself. Jerusa couldn’t see any keys, but Alicia was hardly ever wrong.

  The pair of girls walked to the sewing desk in tandem, but when Jerusa stopped to have a look, Alicia passed through the
desk and the wall, not so much as wrinkling the prom dress she had worn since the night she had died over two years ago.

  “I hate it when she does that,” Jerusa murmured as she shuffled to the side to look out the window.

  The morning sun had just topped the trees, painting the few lazy clouds drifting by a cotton candy-pink. Long dark shadows stretched westward across the Earth, but the thin, gaunt girl wearing the strapless azure gown cast none. Alicia walked across the dew-dappled grass leaving no tracks and didn’t even wince when she placed her bare feet on the gravel of the driveway.

  Alicia leaned down and pressed her upper half through the closed door of the PT Cruiser parked in the driveway. She stood up, her head passing through the roof like wind through a screen, a triumphant smile perched upon her face.

  Jerusa went to the bottom of the stairs and called for her mother three times before the clamor upstairs ceased. Her mother appeared on the landing like a harpy; eyes flaring, hands clenched into bony fists.

  “Your keys are in the car.” Then, as an afterthought, Jerusa added, “I’ll bet.”

  Her mother’s features soften and her eyes drifted up as she mentally retraced her steps. “You know, I think you’re right.” She came down the stairs in a graceful little trot.

  She kissed Jerusa on the cheek as she passed, grabbed her purse, and headed toward the door. Before her hand reached the knob, Alicia reentered the house, passing through the steel door — and Debra Phoenix — without resistance. Debra shuddered a bit, then looked back at Jerusa and smiled.

  “Someone must’ve walked over my grave.”

  Jerusa suppressed a giggle. “Have a good day at work.”

  Her mother’s face puckered with suspicion. “I will. Don’t be late to school. And don’t forget to take your medicine.”

  After her mother was gone, Jerusa finished cleaning the kitchen then went to the bathroom to get her medicine. She pulled the collar of her shirt down a bit and stared at the reflection of the thick pink scar on her chest. It was strange that this scar, the result of the heart transplant surgery that had prolonged her life, seemed to perpetually make that same life more difficult for her. She opened the mirrored door of the cabinet and pulled out a prescription bottle with a long and unpronounceable name written across it. As Jerusa shut the door to the medicine cabinet, she caught the reflection of a silhouette passing before the dining room windows behind her.

  She turned with a start, dropping her rejection medicine into the sink. The bottle clanked about, echoing in the close confines of the bathroom, and she winced at the noise. Jerusa stepped into the dining room, making her footfalls as silent as possible. The dark shadow that had passed before the windows had been too tall, too broad, to be Alicia. Someone else was in the house.

  Jerusa took slow, measured breaths, trying to slow her raging heart. She crept from the dining room into the kitchen, which was where the shadow had gone. She glanced about, but the room was empty.

  “Alicia,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  Every rustle of the wind against the house, every creak of the floor beneath her feet, set her nerves aflame. She pressed her ears to hear beyond the rattling white noise, but for what, she had no idea.

  She turned back into the dining room, and right into a large man riddled with bullet wounds shambling toward her. Jerusa screamed, tried to scurry backward, stumbled over her own feet, and fell hard on her butt.

  The man had three roses of blood on his chest and a small, dark hole in his forehead, near his left eye, that issued a tiny tendril of black smoke. His hands were outstretched as if pleading with Jerusa, and though his mouth worked with fervent passion, his words were silent to her.

  Alicia materialized before the man, waving her arms and screaming something at him, though it remained unheard to Jerusa. She often wondered what the dead said to one another, but though she could see lingering spirits, she was deaf to them.

  Alicia buzzed around the man like an angry hornet. She was a fierce little sprite when she wanted to be. The man’s bullet wounds vanished. He looked at Jerusa longingly, and she felt a stab of pity for him. As much as she wanted to help the dead, that was outside of her power. After a heated moment, the man turned and skulked away, passing through the wall.

  “Thanks, Alicia,” Jerusa said as she stood up. She would have hugged her, but she could no more touch the spirits of the dead than she could hear them. “I don’t know how I ever survived before you came along.”

  Alicia winked at her then vanished from sight.

  Chapter Two

  His mind surfaced as a waterlogged corpse might in placid waters, drifting slowly in the current, in no real hurry to rise to the top. He caught the drone of distant, unfamiliar sounds: whispers, screeches, hissings and mumbled speaking in a language he could not understand. After a time, he became aware of the constricting force surrounding his body, touching every part of him as if he was buried at a great depth. He tried to see, but all was darkness.

  The clamor in the darkness grew more frantic. Strange trumpets sounded out in alarm. He sensed movement all around him and he understood, with a sudden awakening, that he was not buried, crushed and blinded by an unbearable pressure, but was, in fact, in a room, being watched by others.

  He shifted his body side to side. The tightness confining him gave way in several places and cool air washed over his skin. He filled his lungs with a large draught of air and realized, for the first time, that he hadn’t been breathing. He forced his arms and legs outward in a yawning stretch and the prison surrounding him fell away.

  Bright yellow lights flashed all around him. The thundering trumpets roared louder than ever, spilling forth from a tiny grated hole in the ceiling. The words speaker and siren came unbidden to his mind and he realized that he had somehow plucked the meaning from the thoughts of someone nearby.

  A lifeless voice rang out, repeating a single statement:

  “EMERGENCY QUARENTINE OF SUBSECTION D-13.”

  He found that if he pressed his hearing, the voice — which he now recognized as something called a recording — quieted and he could detect the sound of panicked conversations, feet running across the concrete floor, even the thunder of a multitude of hearts beating at all different speeds. He cycled back through the sounds, returning to the sirens and back to the heartbeats.

  He tuned out the sirens and allowed his hearing to settle on the voices outside the room. He didn’t understand the language they were speaking, but he could feel the weight of their words, picking up the meaning from their very minds.

  They were frightened of him. But why?

  He looked down at the shards of black stone, shiny like volcanic glass, littering the floor around his feet. Much of it was in ruin, but a few larger pieces remained intact. The outside of the shards were smooth and indistinguishable, but within, he could see the negative molding of his body. One piece was shaped like his fingers. Another set looked to be his ankle. In the largest piece, he could even make out the semblance of his face.

  He did not understand. How had he survived being incased within the shell of black stone?

  He moved toward the door in the opposite wall, but before he could lay hold of the knob, a terrible pain, a soul-wrenching hunger pang, dropped him to his knees.

  The pain was quick, but it left him feeling drained and empty, not just in his stomach, but in every fiber of his being. The act of shedding the black shell had devoured part of him and left, in its wake, an insatiable thirst. But a thirst for what?

  The people beyond the door would know.

  He rose to his feet, gripped the doorknob, but the door was locked. He twisted hard and the metal knob broke free from the door as if it were made of pottery. Frustrated, he slammed his fist into the door and the thick steel dimpled. He threw the knob aside and punched the door again, this time buckling it in its frame.

  He punched all the harder, and the metal rang like a great bell. He poured in all of his strength until the tiny
bones in his hands shattered and the flesh around the knuckles split on impact, leaving tiny smears of blood across the now-rippled surface. The wounds on his hands healed just as fast as they formed, the bones resetting before the next blow fell.

  The thick steel door would not be displaced, and he caught from their minds why. A thick metal panel had risen from the floor to reinforce the door, and though his strength far surpassed what a normal person’s should be, he knew he would not be able to move it.

  Those on the other side of the door were not here to help him. They were here to imprison him, to study him. They would not give him the answers he desired.

  A thick yellow mist plumed up from several small grates in the floor, burning his eyes and throat. He didn’t know if the fumes had the power to kill him, but he didn’t intend to find out.

  He scanned the room. The walls were made of concrete block, thick and reinforced. The ceiling was poured concrete, as was the floor. The vents from which the noxious gas entered the room were too small to be of any use.

  He held his breath, closed his eyes, and rested his head against the door. There had to be a way out of this room. Then something unexpected happened.

  The door vanished. The air was different — felt warmer, cleaner. He opened his eyes and found that his surroundings had changed, that he had somehow passed through the mangled door and the reinforcing panel to the room beyond, though he hadn’t taken a single step.

  He now stood in a long hallway, void of doors, with a floor that sloped gradually upward. Every so often an insignia of a hand holding a candle was painted on the walls. He caught the name Light Bearers — the name of the group holding him prisoner — on the mind of someone close by. Footsteps echoed, some fleeing, but many more approaching.

  Ten men, adorned in black body armor and riot helmets, slid to a stop twenty yards from him. Each held a weapon that he had never seen before. He probed their minds, found the word rifle, and gained a quick understanding of their capabilities. The first five men dropped to a single knee and raised their rifles, allowing the remaining five a clear shot over their heads.