The Savage Vampire (The Perpetual Creatures Saga Book 5) Read online

  THE SAVAGE VAMPIRE

  The Perpetual Creatures Saga: Book V

  Gabriel Beyers

  Gemini Gremlin Ink

  Chapter One

  The scent of blood hung heavy in the air. Vampire blood, willingly given. Human blood, forcefully taken. It was an unbridled feast.

  Conrad moved in and out of the writhing bodies. Some were dancing to the raucous music. Others were in the throes of death spasms. Both were equally arousing to him. He brushed his fingertips along the flesh of his fellow vampires, relishing their perfection. They turned their gazes upon him, giving a slight bow of respect as he passed.

  And why shouldn’t they? They were mere vampires, and he was a Steward of Life.

  Conrad approached a slender vampire woman with dark hair and fierce blue eyes, who fed voraciously upon one of the Ice Sanctuary’s infected human slaves. Conrad pulled the gasping mortal from her claw-like hands (much to her displeasure) and buried his fangs in the man’s throat.

  The mortal’s heart went silent, and Conrad dropped his lifeless body to the floor. The fierce-eyed woman seemed furious to have her kill taken from her, but she held her spiteful tongue. That was a wise move.

  To kill the mortal servants without permission of the High Council—especially those of the Ice Sanctuary—meant certain death, but Othella herself had given the order. Conrad couldn’t imagine why, but he never got the opportunity to find out.

  The three surviving members of the High Council had vanished without explanation, stealing away with the Watchtower, the other Stewards, and most of the Hunters.

  Conrad hated being left out, but he figured it had something to do with what they now called the Battle of the Cemetery.

  Conrad hadn’t been there the night the Stewards went to battle with that insufferable vampire, Shufah, and her pathetic little coven. Supposedly, a Divine Vampire had tried to burn them all, and that the High Council had captured a strange mortal man.

  He was being punished for not being there that night, this he was sure of. His face burned at the thought, but at least Othella hadn’t handed him over to the Hunters.

  Conrad had always believed the Divine Vampires were a myth. Perhaps the High Council had discovered the Divines’ secret and merely left to perfect it. Conrad wanted to believe that, yet he couldn’t dislodge the irritating sensation that something was amiss.

  He climbed the grand staircase and collapsed on a lush couch upon the balcony. The lesser vampires, sensing his morose mood, scattered to continue their clamoring debaucheries elsewhere.

  The night waned, and the sun drifted high, pressing down upon them, but none of the blood drinkers were fledglings; they were all well fed, so there was little need of slumber.

  Thankfully, the Great House’s protective shutters functioned automatically, sliding into place an hour before dawn, for all the human servants were now dead. If the shutters had failed to engage, the vampires would’ve taken refuge in the catacombs, but it was cold and damp down there, and it stank of savages.

  Conrad pulled himself up from the couch’s embrace. The raucous music continued to rage throughout the Great House, top to bottom, end to end. A subtle but foul odor wafted up from below. He snatched a pair of passing vampires by their arms.

  “The dead stink. Take them down to the incinerators.” Being ordered to such a task seemed to offend the pair. That was a human’s job. In hind sight, they probably should’ve left a few of the infected servants alive to clean up the mess, but it was too late now. “That’s not a request,” Conrad added, and the two darted away, not even attempting to hide the scowls etched on their faces.

  The blood party had been raging for two nights and was now on the third day. Conrad should’ve been at the peak of bliss. Yet, the initial joy had curdled in his mouth. He despised the loud music. Hated the amorphous crowd milling about the Great House. Loathed the unbridled and undisciplined fervor of the unfettered feeding. But why should this be?

  He was sure something was amiss now, yet he still couldn’t place his finger on it. Perhaps he just missed the staunch and unbending rules of the High Council. He quickly dismissed that idea. It was the Council’s abrupt departure from the Ice Sanctuary without him. Why had they left him here with the lesser vampires?

  Conrad slipped back down onto his plush couch, unconsciously fiddling with the jeweled ring on the index finger of his right hand.

  The ring had been a gift from the High Council on the day they had initiated Conrad as a Steward of Life. It was spectacular: gold to represent a Steward’s beauty, inlaid with diamonds to represent their strength, and embossed upon the wide oval zenith was the image of a throne, representing their dominion.

  Conrad loved the Steward’s ring. It was his most prized possession. He would rather plunge his hand into the sunlight than remove it from his finger. It wasn’t the ring itself. Gold and jewels were temporal, and he was perpetual. It was what the ring stood for.

  There were fewer than one hundred surviving Stewards scattered about the globe, including the three Council members, thanks much in part to the Battle of the Cemetery, each with a similar ring.

  Conrad spun the ring on his finger a few more times before tracing his thumb along the engraving of the throne. His mind was adrift in foul waters.

  Why would it take so many of the Stewards, Hunters, and the entire Watchtower to perfect the ritual of becoming Divine Vampires? If that was even what they were doing. Conrad had his doubts. Why were the Stewards, who knew the Divines’ secret, forbidden to reveal it to those who didn’t?

  Conrad glared at the shimmering ring upon his finger until it morphed into an indistinct blob. The noise of the party bled into a droning hum. The bustling crowd went unnoticed, swallowed in a black cloud of thoughts. Even the stench of the dead no longer assaulted his powerful nose.

  A set of questions festered in his mind: Am I still a Steward of Life? Or have they abandoned me?

  A series of deafening booms, like cannon fire, echoed through the main entrance, thundering over the loud music, and rattling the heavy steel shutters covering the main door.

  Conrad sat up with a start, unsure if he had drifted off to sleep and dreamt the cannons. The weight of the sun still rode high in the sky, so some time had passed, but not much. Still, it must’ve been a dream.

  BOOM… BOOM… BOOM!

  Conrad jumped to his feet and darted with preternatural speed to the balcony railing overlooking the main entrance. The music still blared, but the jovial party had come to a frightened standstill with every eye fixed upon the colossal doors in dreadful expectation.

  The slow trio of booms sounded once again, and every vampire winced in unison. Every vampiric instinct told Conrad that someone was standing just outside the door, knocking to come in. But that was impossible.

  The sun still ruled the sky and no vampire, regardless of age and power, could endure the pain of being dissolved at a cellular level long enough to stand outside and patiently knock on the door.

  Besides, what would be the point? Any vampire that knew the location of the Ice Sanctuary also knew that the steel shutters wouldn’t open until an hour after sunset.

  Were they under attack from the humans? Only a rare few mortals knew that blood-drinking fiends took shelter from the daylight within the walls of the Ice Sanctuary. No, if mortals were bombarding the Great House with explosives, it was only because some brazen band of outlaws believed there was a fortune to steal within these walls.

  There were many treasures within the Ice Sanctuary, but only death awaited the foolish trespassers.

  Conrad wanted to sm
ile, but a sudden fear gripped him. What if the Divine Vampires were here to reclaim their lost secret? Could that be why the High Council had vanished with the other Stewards, the Watchtower, and a large assembly of the Hunters? Had they expected this attack?

  Conrad could understand why the Council had left the lesser vampires behind to be slaughtered, but why had they left him here to die?

  The booms came again, quicker this time, as though a giant was knocking and grew impatient waiting for them to open the door. The music died, leaving the Great House full with thick, putrid silence.

  Conrad was the eldest vampire here, and the most powerful. The ring of the Stewards rested upon his hand. He was in charge, for better or worse.

  Fearful eyes drifted up to him, each pair stinging him like a whip. His first inclination was to turn and dart away. Find a secure room to hide away the rest of the day, then make a break for it once the sun had set.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he had cravenly avoided a battle. In fact, that was the very reason he had missed the Battle of the Cemetery. When they sent the order to assemble, he merely faked a dire cause that prevented immediate travel.

  He made it to the cemetery, but not until the next night when the Divine Vampire’s fire was long quenched, leaving only burnt grass and scorched gravestones.

  That wasn’t an option here and now. Too many panicked eyes watched him, begging for guidance. Besides, if the “knocker” could breach the thick walls of the Ice Sanctuary, the only place to hide would be the caverns deep below, and that was a little too close to the savages for his taste.

  Conrad stood straight, puffed out his chest, and straightened his shirt. He snapped his fingers, which, in the deafening silence, sounded like the crack of a bone.

  “Call for the Hunters,” he shouted down to no one in particular. When nobody moved he added, “Now!” Half a dozen vampires scattered in as many directions.

  A terrified-looking vampire—a well-muscled man with the darkest skin Conrad had ever seen—ran up to him moments later. He stood towering over Conrad, panting, his bulging eyes fixed upon him as if awaiting permission to speak.

  “Well?” Conrad asked with impatient frustration.

  “We’ve checked the security monitors,” the man replied with a start. “The grounds are clear, except for a single man outside the front door. It’s unclear how he made it past all the perimeter defenses.”

  So, a single Divine has come to pay us a visit, Conrad thought.

  It was clear from the fear-stricken look on the other vampire’s face that he had come to the same conclusion. He watched Conrad, as if expecting some words of comfort, but he had none to give.

  He had witnessed the aftermath of the firestorm that single Divine Vampire had produced in the cemetery the night the Hunters had killed that fledgling with the scar on her chest. He remembered the legends of the Savage Wars and went weak in the knees.

  Ten divines had killed thousands, possibly millions of savages in that war. There were only two, maybe three teams of Hunters still abiding within the Ice Sanctuary. What chance did they stand against even a single Divine Vampire?

  Conrad nodded to the tall vampire, indicating that he required no further information, and the man darted off, probably to hide somewhere in the bowels of the Great House.

  Many of the lesser vampires had fled to their rooms, but a good portion remained in the grand hall. They were foolish vampires, bloated on either curiosity or bravado. Conrad had neither, yet he still couldn’t flee. If he somehow survived what was to come, and the High Council learned of his cowardice, they would put an end to him, Steward or not. His only chance of survival was to talk his way out. He was good at talking.

  Conrad’s heart raced. Time seemed to stop. They all stood in agonizing expectation of the next round of booming knocks, but only silence taunted them.

  A single team of Hunters burst into the grand hall, eliciting a panicked scream from the spellbound crowd—truth be told, Conrad screamed as well—then positioned themselves across from the massive doors.

  “I called for all the Hunters,” Conrad shouted. His voice was sharp, irritated. Half because of embarrassment over screaming, half out of fear that he had misjudged how many teams of Hunters were at his disposal.

  “We’re all you get,” the leader of the Hunters shouted back. He was a pale-skinned, bloated, bald man. An augur, so he probably sensed Conrad’s crippling fear. “We have two other teams busy in the caverns. The savages have escaped from the pits.”

  Conrad’s mind reeled. How was that even possible? The Dwarf and a fledgling had recently escaped through one of the caves, somehow causing it to collapse in the process. But no savage had escaped the pits in nearly a thousand years. There must be treachery within.

  The tall, dark-skinned vampire came running up once again. Conrad turned his back on him, waving him away. “I know. I know. The savages have escaped.”

  “No, sir,” the man exclaimed. Conrad spun on him and the man slid to a stop. “I mean, yes, sir, the savages are out. Nearly eighty of them, sir. But there’s something else.”

  Conrad couldn’t take any more bad news, but what choice did he have? “What is it now?”

  “The man outside the house just vanished. I saw it with my own eyes. One moment, he was there; the next, he wasn’t.”

  For a fraction of a second, this seemed like good news. But then Conrad remembered the legends of the Divine Vampires—the ones the High Council had forbidden to be told. Legends such as Divine Vampires could vanish and reappear anywhere at will. If that was true, no place was beyond their reach.

  A terrible realization washed over Conrad. “He’s in the house.” The words fell like blood droplets from his lips. “He released the savages.”

  The air made a sudden quiver. The heat of a body emanated behind him. Moist, foul breath tickled his neck.

  “I set my children free,” a strange voice whispered from behind, causing Conrad to wilt.

  The voice was unlike any he had ever heard before. It was almost as if two voices spoke. Two in perfect synchronicity. But Conrad knew in his heart that the voices had passed only one set of lips.

  Conrad couldn’t turn around to face the creature behind him, and the thing seemed to sense this. It moved in a slow stride, making a path around Conrad until the two were face to face. Conrad stifled a scream; it wasn’t a conscious act, but one of self-preservation. Had Conrad opened his mouth to scream, the creature before him would surely climb down his throat and devour him from the inside.

  The thing was a man or had been once. He was shorter than Conrad by at least a foot and had jet-black hair missing in patches. His skin was a molted catastrophe of brown and white blotches, much like the hide of some vile salamander, except that the blotches were swirling around each other like silt at the bottom of a pond.

  His withered lips were pulled back, like that of a savage, yet his blood-filled eyes held a deep, disconcerting intelligence within.

  As Conrad watched, the creature’s eyes rolled from red to glassy black orbs—something that seemed to belong to both a doll and a shark. It was too unsettling a sight to behold, forcing Conrad to look at the floor. His heightened vampiric senses told him he was in mortal danger, but he knew that if he ran, the creature would pounce.

  “I have a very important question for you,” the creature said. His duel voices drilled into Conrad’s skull, and he repressed the urge to vomit.

  Conrad chanced another glance at the beast’s face. There was something terribly familiar. Something about his face. Something about the way he stood. Conrad wasn’t sure. “What would you like to know?”

  The creature leaned in close. His breath stank like a savage’s, but a sickly sweet musk emanated from his skin. The musk—like the subtle stench of rotting flowers—made Conrad’s head swim. “Where is the Watchtower?”

  Just then, the team of Hunters (who Conrad had forgotten were below) burst up the grand staircase, and spilled out onto the balc
ony, saving Conrad from having to deliver the bad news of the Watchtower’s absence.

  The team of five battle-hardened vampires paused for less than a fraction of a second, surprised by the uncanny enemy that had somehow invaded the most secure of vampire havens, then attacked without a word.

  Conrad dove to the side, giving the Hunters a clear shot at the intruder. The two telekinetics thrust out their hands, binding the beast in invisible, yet powerful constraints.

  The creature looked neither frightened nor concerned, making no attempt to escape or negotiate. His piebald skin tones continued to swim around each other, and while one eye remained black, the other returned to the fetid red of a savage.

  The pair of pyro-kinetics stepped in between the telekinetics and brought their hands up. The air before them warbled and great spouts of fire exploded mere inches from their open palms. The burning tails washed over the beast, and his cloths immediately turned to ash.

  Conrad had witnessed many executions of unworthy vampires—and even a few savages—over the years, and never once had the condemned remained silent. There was always a scream of terror and torment before the fire consumed them. But not this time.

  The creature stood perfectly still within the flames, without so much as a wince of pain. His skin didn’t blacken, didn’t flake away like old parchment, didn’t turn to ash. He watched the Hunters with an air of boredom, which quickly turned to impatience.

  His ever-changing eyes flicked toward the leader of the Hunters, and the augur gasped. Conrad understood enough about augurs to recognize that the creature had sent a telepathic message to the psychic vampire.

  “Abort,” the augur tried to shout, but his voice quivered heavily. “Fall back,” he ordered his team. But it was too late.

  A loud, gut-wrenching crack erupted in the room as the legs of four of the Hunters (the two telekinetics and two pyros) snapped backward at the knees as though something powerful, yet invisible, slammed into them. At the same time a thick, disgusting cord, tipped with a dangerously sharp barb, exploded from the creature’s navel, striking the augur in the head.