The Savage Vampire (The Perpetual Creatures Saga Book 5) Page 2

  The fire spewing from the pyros extinguished almost immediately as they writhed on the floor in pain.

  The naked fiend strolled toward the wounded Hunters. Conrad’s mind boggled at the sight of the creature’s exposed body. A strange thought invaded his mind. This beast wasn’t a single creature, but two beings smashed into one form.

  Conrad couldn’t take any more. He turned and darted for the grand staircase with all the speed his vampiric body could muster. A spout of fire burst before him, cutting off his escape. He jumped back with a scream. The fire had come from the creature, not the pyros. How he knew that, he couldn’t say; but still, it was true.

  As Conrad reached the bottom of the stairs, a horde of savages rushed into the grand hall, herding several of the vampires into the large room. Conrad had nowhere to go but back up the stairs.

  As he crested the top step, what he witnessed drew a scream from the core of his soul. The fiend had mounted the augur (who was on the way to becoming a savage) like a tarantula upon a mouse. The beast opened his mouth impossibly wide and began taking great mangled bites out of the augur. Skin, muscle and bone came away with each bite, and within mere seconds, all that remained of the augur was a bloody stain upon the floor.

  The fiend then moved to one of the Hunters with the broken legs and repeated the process, then to the next, and the next, until he devoured all five.

  Despite the sheer volume of flesh the fiend feasted upon, he seemed neither bloated nor otherwise changed. He had absorbed the five Hunters, flesh, blood, and—Conrad suspected—their vampiric powers. How he knew that, he wasn’t sure.

  The beast turned his shifting eyes once more upon Conrad, and the vampire closed his own eyes in fright. The creature came within inches of him. “Who are you?” Conrad asked.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” the fiend asked with a derisive chuckle. “I am Suhail.”

  Conrad’s eyes sprang open in shock, his gaze pouring over the hideous thing circling him. It was true! It was Suhail. Conrad could see that now. But how? Suhail was savage, infected by his own twin sister, Shufah. Part of Suhail was still savage. What the other part was, Conrad couldn’t say.

  “Take me to the Watchtower,” Suhail said in that sickening duel voice.

  “They’re not here,” Conrad stammered. “The High Council carried them away, along with most of the other Stewards. I don’t know where.”

  Suhail held out his fist, and it was only now that Conrad realized he had been holding something this whole time. He opened his hand and dropped a pile of rings upon the floor. Conrad’s heart sank at the sight. The rings all matched the one he wore.

  Stewards’ rings. Each one marred black by fire.

  Chapter Two

  She was hunting again, and he was exhausted.

  It hadn’t taken Silvanus long to find Jerusa after she had vanished from off the sandbar. Divine Vampires couldn’t read each other’s minds, or sense each other’s emotions, but they were bound together by a flow of energy. When there had still been the ten (not counting himself) all Silvanus had to do was concentrate his thoughts on the others and either he could leap to them, or they would leap to him.

  That bond was much weaker now. Of the ten, only Augustus and Danielle remained. But now that Jerusa had awakened Divine, and was growing in strength, that ineffable connection seemed somehow amplified. He could almost sense when she was about to leap.

  Ever since that first leap, they had been on the move for over a week. Nonstop. No rest. Even for a Divine Vampire, that was pushing it.

  Silvanus fed when he could, sipping little bits of life from the mortals around him, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for the vast amount of energy it took to leap—or teleport, as Jerusa had called it—all around the world.

  If he didn’t stop soon to properly refill his reservoir, he might not be able to leap at all. So far, he’d been able to clean up her path of calamity, but if he didn’t keep close to her, the damage would grow beyond his control.

  Jerusa was Divine now, free of the stone cloak, but in true Jerusa form, she hadn’t awakened a typical Divine Vampire. The arcane magic of the human known as the Necromancer had stolen Alicia away from Jerusa, and in the absence of Jerusa’s powerful ghost companion, the foul savage wraiths had rushed in to fill the void.

  Like all Divines, Jerusa had no memory of her former life. No idea who, or even what, she was. But, for her, it was worse than mere amnesia. The savage wraiths were driving her, compelling her, enslaving her.

  Driven mad with hunger after shedding the stone cloak, Jerusa and her wraiths had fed from Silvanus. Thankfully, though powerful and unique, Jerusa still lacked the power to kill another Divine. Once she realized this fact, she had leapt from the sandbar. Silvanus had assumed she’d make for a populous area and gorge herself. But she didn’t. She never attacked a single human. Vampires, on the other hand…

  Silvanus had closed his eyes, focusing on her face. The chain of energy binding the Divines together washed over him like a wave of warm light, filling every part of him from his toes up into the ends of his hair. The binding light split into three paths. One led to Augustus, another to Danielle, but Silvanus poured all of his will into the path leading to Jerusa.

  Then he leapt.

  The screaming is what first caught his attention.

  It came from deep underground, a cacophony of chaos and terror. It was a noise no mortal could conjure, nor any human perceive. It was the sound of vampires violently dying.

  It was mid-day here. It had been early evening on the sandbar. The sun ruled a cloudless sky, baking the city beneath its gaze. The smell of exhaust fumes and hot asphalt filled the air. Life bustled all around him. Millions of mortal minds called out to him, but he shut them all out.

  A modest-looking building, only three stories high and shaped like an L, stood at the corner of a busy intersection. Silvanus had appeared in the thin, almost nonexistent, shadow of the building, and though the area had been crowded, no one seemed to notice his sudden arrival.

  There were humans moving about inside the building. Not many. Twenty or so. It was some sort of clerical office, but buried far below the building’s lowest floor lay a fortified vampire sanctuary.

  The vampiric screams permeated up through the ground, vibrating the bones in his feet like tuning forks. Silvanus pictured the room hidden away below ground. He thought of Jerusa’s face, her hair, her scar. He closed his eyes and the scorching sunlight changed to the cold air of a crypt.

  A dozen vampires rushed around the large open room in a fit of frenzy as an army of black, living shadows swarmed all around them. The savage wraiths, somehow rendered visible, seemed no less than a cloud of colossal bats, feasting upon the frightened vampires.

  And in the center of the room, stood Jerusa Phoenix.

  Her hair flowed over her shoulders like a glimmering auburn waterfall. Her alabaster skin seemed all the more radiant next to the black wraiths. Her emerald eyes, though blood-filled like a savage’s, seemed to glow with a sullen sadness as she watched the calamity unfolding.

  The wraiths darted to and fro, passing through the vampires without restraint, each time stripping a bit of life-force from them, only to pass through Jerusa, depositing it into her. Each time they entered her, the spectral light emanating from her scar burned a little brighter.

  The ghastly deed took little more than a minute to be accomplished, and ended so abruptly that, for a moment, Silvanus thought he had unconsciously leapt to another location. One moment, the room was clouded in savage wraiths; the next, they were gone.

  The absence of the wraiths allowed the glowing fluorescents to, once again, penetrate the room, and it seemed a vastly different place. Exotic-smelling incense burned on a nearby table. Soft music tickled the air. One could almost imagine that nothing sinister had ever taken place … except for the twelve newborn savages turning their vile, blood-filled eyes upon him.

  Jerusa stood swaying upon her feet as if dizzy. The bl
ood receded from her eyes, returning them to clean, vibrant orbs. She pawed at her chest, but now that she had finished feeding, and the wraiths had gone back to whatever realm they called home, the resplendent light emanating from her chest vanished, and along with it, her scar.

  The savages paid no attention to Jerusa, even though she was in their direct line of sight. They seemed disinterested in her, as if she were a savage herself. Silvanus, however, looked like a ripe piece of meat.

  The savages screeched at the painful light before smashing the glowing bulbs to shards, and the room fell into darkness. All twelve savages rushed him at once, their poisoned minds unable to differentiate between humans, vampires, and Divine Vampires.

  They came in like a storm, gnashing and clawing from all angles, but for all their efforts, their nails couldn’t scratch him, and their teeth couldn’t puncture his skin. What they could do, however, was throw him off balance.

  Silvanus focused on the savage directly in front of him, willing the hellfire to come forth. The savage lunged forward in yet another futile attempt to gnaw off Silvanus’s nose, but before his festering teeth made contact, the savage exploded backward, enveloped in a column of blue fire.

  The remaining savages sprawled upon the floor, shrieking in pain, and shielding their eyes. The burning savage made a tight circle—a dance of confusion—before tumbling to the ground in a pile of glowing embers.

  With the bright light of the fire now diminishing, the remaining savages made another rush on Silvanus.

  Man, he hated dealing with newborn savages. They were too stupid to know how much danger he posed them. At least the savages that had regained consciousness would give him some space, even if they didn’t try to escape.

  Silvanus thrust his hands out, one at a time, palms forward, as if he were trying to strike the savages. One by one, the savages erupted in blue fire.

  Even though Silvanus had controlled the hellfire, the eleven burning pillars careening around the room combined to create an intense heat that threatened to ignite the entire hidden bunker. Silvanus wasn’t concerned for himself, nor for Jerusa (the fire would only be a mild irritation to them), but he did fear the fire would find its way into the upper building. The last thing he needed right now was the death of a bunch of mortals weighing on his conscience.

  He could will the fire to vanish if he so chose, but an injured savage was even more dangerous than a well fed one, so he decided to let it play out.

  The stampeding savages managed to catch every piece of furniture, area rug, and wall hanging on fire before finally succumbing to the hellfire. But in the end, the thick concrete walls held the hungry fire below.

  Even though Jerusa could’ve leapt away at any moment, she remained in place, watching Silvanus with a confused look etched on her perfect face.

  The stench of burning upholstery irritated his nose. The thick smoke made the shadows spun by the dwindling fires all the more fierce. Silvanus stepped in front of Jerusa, slow as to not startle her, and she tilted her head as though she found him distantly familiar.

  “I’m Silvanus.” He reached his hand out to her. “You gave me this name. Do you remember? I need you to remember.”

  He took another step toward Jerusa. Her eyes grew stern and her mouth puckered into a frown. Of course, she didn’t remember him, any more than he could remember who he had been before awakening in a hidden base buried within the Rocky Mountains.

  His heart ached. He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, but it was implacable. He didn’t care if her true self was forgotten. He would remind her. It didn’t matter that he had been erased from her mind. They were destined to be together. They had all of eternity to fall in love again.

  But not if he couldn’t snap her out of this bewitching spell the savage wraiths held over her.

  When he had awakened, his memory had been wiped away, but he had a general understanding of the world around him. And what he couldn’t at first grasp, he learned by reading the minds of the humans.

  Jerusa watched him with blank, dreamy eyes. She understood nothing of the world around her. Whatever the Necromancer had done to her, his abominable witchcraft had taken more than Alicia from her.

  “Jerusa,” Silvanus said, creeping ever closer to her. “Your name is Jerusa Phoenix. I’m here to help you.”

  She stood impossibly still, not blinking, not breathing. Silvanus inched his way to within arm’s reach. He had the strangest notion that if he could just touch her, she would awake from this walking nightmare. He extended his arm toward her, his movements preternaturally slow.

  Jerusa made no move to stop him. Perhaps she too felt that something would happen if she allowed him to touch her.

  Silvanus brought his hand up to her face. His pulse raced, sounding like war drums in his own ears. Surely, she could hear it too. The stone cloak had devastated her, devouring her from the inside out. He had been so terrified that that horrible disease would, in its greedy lust, decide to keep Jerusa for itself. But the stone couldn’t hold her, and fate had brought her back to him. His life belonged to her. He would freely offer it up to restore her. Everything within him, every fiber, every cell, desired to touch her, to kiss her.

  The tips of Silvanus’s fingers brushed the side of Jerusa’s jawline, just below her ear, and a thunderbolt of agony ripped through every nerve ending.

  The world vanished from around him and Silvanus tumbled through a black void full of screaming voices, but whether he was falling down or up or even sideways, he couldn’t tell.

  The impenetrable darkness pressed upon him like the deep pressure of the great sea. The voices gnashed upon him, gnawing at his brain. Silvanus struggled against the voices, refusing them admittance to his mind. But a single familiar voice spoke in the darkness, soothing and calm, brushing away the other voices like maggots from living flesh.

  I know your true name, the familiar voice called out.

  Silvanus gasped. It was the same voice that had invaded his mind the night he had killed one of the umbilicus. The same voice that told him Jerusa was in trouble.

  Find her, the voice said.

  “I have found her,” Silvanus shouted. “Jerusa is here.” But here was a relative term. She had been in the room with him when the pain struck. But whether they were still in that room, he couldn’t say.

  No, the voice said, but it was weaker. More distant. Find the host.

  A thin, wispy image appeared before Silvanus. It was the human woman that had been in the cemetery the night the Necromancer had cast his spell upon Jerusa.

  Last chance. The voice quivered with pain. Separating us. Won’t be able to—

  The endless void vanished with a loud crack, and a blinding fire of anguish exploded behind his eyes. Silvanus found himself once more in the darkened bunker, except that he was now at the far end of the room, against the concrete wall, his body a puddle of broken bones.

  His shattered bones quickly shifted beneath his contused flesh, crawling back into place and healing as if nothing had happened. It was a terrible sensation, one he hoped he’d never have to endure again.

  Jerusa stood at the opposite end of the room, her eyes wild and full of blood, the scar upon her chest glowing like a star. The room was choked with savage wraiths, swarming like mad hornets, yet not attacking him. The wraiths funneled around her, wrapping her in a cloak of living shadows. Jerusa leapt from the bunker, taking the wraiths with her.

  Silvanus climbed to his feet and a swoon threatened to return him to the floor. He remained standing, though with great effort, bracing himself against the wall until his body completed its repairs.

  He scanned the room, his powerful eyes penetrating even the darkest corner. The thick concrete wall beside him was buckled and crumbling, with a spider’s web of cracks sprawling out in all directions. The crack he had heard was his body colliding with the wall when the savage wraiths had thrust him away.

  Whoever the voice belonged to and whatever the vision had been abou
t, he suspected that Jerusa had seen and heard and felt it too. And she hadn’t liked it one bit. Or at least her swarm of savage wraiths hadn’t. They had been protecting her, but from what?

  Silvanus wandered around the bunker, lost in his thoughts. The voice was real, not just a figment of his imagination. Someone, somehow, had forced their way into his mind to send him a message. But how was that possible? He could hear the humans’ minds, and certain vampires could penetrate each other’s minds, but who was powerful enough to invade the thoughts of a Divine Vampire?

  His true age was a mystery, as was most of his life, but Silvanus had been awake long enough to know that the voice was telling him the truth. He needed to find the human woman. The one the voice called the host.

  But what to do about Jerusa? He couldn’t just allow her to roam around unguarded. She hadn’t randomly wandered into this bunker to feed. She could have fed from any of the millions of humans bustling through this city, or any number of cities.

  She was hunting blood drinkers.

  Silvanus had recognized the twelve vampires that Jerusa had slain. They were a coven that had once housed Jerusa, Shufah, and the others as they were on the run from Hunters. They had betrayed Jerusa and as a result, she had nearly been killed not only by a blood drinker looking to get in good with the Stewards but also by the umbilicus.

  Whether that was revenge on Jerusa’s part, or the wraiths, Silvanus couldn’t say. He hoped it was the latter. Taos, in his fury, had begged to slay that treacherous coven (and Silvanus had agreed), but it had been Jerusa that had convince them to grant the coven mercy.

  But vengeance had found them, nevertheless, it seemed, and by the very hand that wished for them mercy.

  Silvanus checked the bunker one last time, just to make sure that all of the savages were truly gone. Satisfied that none remained, he leapt back up into the buzzing city. He passed through the busy streets, taking sips from all those he passed. Within a half hour, he had restored himself to full power.