The Savage Vampire (The Perpetual Creatures Saga Book 5) Page 6

  Though the three of them were in no mortal danger from Jerusa, a charge of peril pulsed in the air like static electricity. They whispered for the same reason a person whispers when in the presence of a sleeping bear. Sometimes, it’s best not to be noticed.

  “So she’s killing blood drinkers,” Danielle whispered, her spell of awed silence finally broken. “I don’t see how that affects us.”

  A collection of guttural groans rose in answer from the thirteen dead vampires. They staggered to their feet on wobbly legs, looking about the room with blood-filled eyes. They snarled and growled at one another through withered lips and snapping teeth.

  “Oh,” Danielle said.

  The issue was obvious to them all. Jerusa had become a Divine savage of sorts. If left unchecked, she would turn the entire population of blood drinkers, friend or foe, into savages. It was only a matter of time before that spilled over into the human world.

  The small horde of savages turned their festering eyes upon the three intruders hiding in the shadows. They rushed in with preternatural speed, hands outstretched, overexposed teeth cracking like hammers. But before they could envelope their prey, the three Divines vanished, leaping from one side of the room to the next.

  The savages crashed into the thick metal wall, screaming in mindless frustration. Jerusa, however, stood watching the spot where they reappeared, her divine intuition sensing their position, just as they could sense hers.

  “What do we do?” Augustus asked.

  Silvanus kept his eyes glued to Jerusa. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean ‘you don’t know’? You brought us to her.”

  “I didn’t plan that far ahead,” Silvanus said with an apologetic shrug. “I didn’t think you’d come with me.”

  “I don’t suppose she’d just come with us if we asked her to?” Danielle asked.

  “Tried that. Didn’t work.”

  “Well then,” she said, her voice drifting off as she considered their options. “What if we restrain her? You know, like the ten of us did with you.”

  Silvanus made a small impressed noise. “That’s a good idea. But I don’t know how.”

  “We join hands,” Danielle said. Her attention drifted over to the savages who were now turning to face them once more. “Surround her. We focus our powers together. Meld them into a field that she can’t cross.”

  The savages charged, and the three teleported to the adjacent corner just before they made contact.

  “It won’t work,” Augustus snapped at Danielle. “There were ten of us last time. Three isn’t enough.”

  “What other choice do we have?” she shot back at him. She threw up her right arm, her open hand extended, stopping the rushing savages with her telekinesis. She shifted her weight forward and the thirteen savages shot backward. They hit the wall, and remained fastened, their feet dangling a foot off the ground. “Burn them.”

  Silvanus shook his head. “I’m not sure I should do that just yet. Jerusa’s tolerating us right now because we haven’t dealt the savages any real damage. If I burn them, she’ll leap away… or attack us.”

  Danielle let out an over-exaggerated sigh. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard way. Try not to get distracted by them gnawing on you.” She dropped her arm, and the thirteen dropped to the floor.

  Silvanus, Augustus, and Danielle moved with slow, deliberate steps, positioning themselves in a triangle around Jerusa. They clasped hands and immediately, the buzzing flow of life-force tingled up his arms.

  “It’s a chain,” Augustus said. “A circle. Pull the energy from your left, allow it to wash through you, exiting from your right.”

  Silvanus did as he was told, feeding from Augustus’s life-force on his left, while passing his own life-force on to Danielle who was on his right. The pulsing circuit of energy quickened with every rotation. It was painful and pleasurable all at once.

  Silvanus almost didn’t notice when the thirteen savages descended upon them, gnashing at them from all sides. Pity they were too stupid to realize they weren’t causing any damage and move on.

  Jerusa watched all of this play out, her head tilted like a confused puppy. She didn’t try to escape, nor to attack. Silvanus closed his eyes. Her beauty distracted him far more than the idiot savages, and it broke his heart to see her this way.

  A light sprang to life in the room, turning the inky blackness behind his eyelids to a murky red. Silvanus knew what it was, even with his eyes closed. The ten Divines had used this trick to restrain him in what seemed another life. An orb of energy, like a dome of crackling lightning, enveloped them.

  The savages shrieked in pain, retreating to the furthest corners, but there was nowhere the light didn’t touch. Silvanus just hoped it would be enough to get the job done.

  Jerusa grew agitated, looking at the three of them as if trying to understand what was happening. She tried to leap outside of the dome. Though Jerusa never moved, Silvanus felt her hit the energy field, causing it to ring like a bell. She tried to leap several more times, but she couldn’t break through the orb of energy.

  Silvanus glanced at Augustus, who winked, as if to say we’ve got her, but he didn’t dare speak lest his concentration fumble.

  Containment was only half of the orb’s purpose. It couldn’t be maintained forever. The other Divines had also used the dome of light to drain Silvanus’s life-force so that he’d have neither the will nor the ability to fight back.

  Silvanus had never fed from anyone he wasn’t in physical contact with, so he wasn’t exactly sure how this was going to work. Even though he was drawing as much life-force from the others as he was giving, the act of holding the dome grew daunting. Feeding from Jerusa was becoming more of a necessity as the moments passed.

  It was Danielle that first drank from Jerusa. Silvanus felt Jerusa’s life-force enter Danielle and join the flowing circuit of energy. It was like a blast of cool mint in a parched mouth, and Silvanus yearned for more.

  Augustus drank from Jerusa, and a great sigh fell from his lips. The dome of light brightened, causing a renewed scream of protest from the savages. Jerusa turned in a tight circle, her face pursed in frustration bordering on fury.

  The sensation of the whole affair felt natural yet wrong. He didn’t know if that was because a Divine shouldn’t steal life from another Divine or if he just felt guilty for putting Jerusa’s scattered mind in a greater state of turbulence.

  But this had to be done. This wasn’t just for her own good, but the good of everyone.

  Silvanus could feel her within the orb as though he were touching her skin to skin. He imagined his hands gently caressing the sides of her face. Jerusa stopped spinning and faced him. He called to remembrance the taste of her lips, her breath mingling with his own. Her face softened, her eyes grew dreamy. Silvanus reached out with his mind over the tiny distance, kissing Jerusa just as he had in the flesh. She gasped.

  Silvanus breathed deep and a great wave of Jerusa’s life-force broke free, rushing into him. It was an exquisite, intimate, and passionate moment. Almost as if he had tasted a bit of her soul.

  Jerusa, unfortunately, didn’t feel the same way about the experience.

  The scar on Jerusa’s chest burned brighter than the orb of energy. Her eyes flooded crimson, blotting out sclera, iris and pupil.

  Silvanus knew what came next. A lead ball of panic dropped into his stomach, shattering his concentration. Though he kept a firm grip on Augustus’s and Danielle’s hands, the dome of energy flickered. Their eyes snapped to him, questions perched just behind their gritted teeth, but before they could ask, the swarm of savage wraiths burst forth from Jerusa’s chest, covering them in black pain.

  There was no way to know just how long the savage wraiths fed from the Divines, siphoning life from them to Jerusa, but it wasn’t a quick process. Divine Vampires were far more resilient than blood drinkers and humans, but the result was nearly the same.

  Jerusa drained the three of them to the point tha
t they could barely stand, yet she still lacked the power to kill them. Whether she was full or bored, Jerusa eventually stopped feeding from them. The savage wraiths returned to her. She looked them over once more, then leapt from the vault to some far unknown location.

  Silvanus, Danielle, and Augustus lay sprawled out on the cool concrete floor, panting, their bodies wracked with total agony. No one could talk. No one could move. Thankfully, the idiot savages, no longer hiding their sensitive eyes from the orb of light, took this opportunity to pounce on their incapacitated visitors once more.

  The Divine Vampires fed from their attackers, one by one, as the flesh eaters attempted (in vain) to devour them. Poetic justice, Silvanus supposed.

  When it was all said and done, the thirteen savages writhed upon the floor, several of them swelling beyond recognition, preparing to explode in clouds of spores. Danielle swept them all into the far corner with a telekinetic hand, and Silvanus turned them to ash with a blast of hellfire.

  Augustus approached the pile of glowing cinders, his head cocked in curiosity. Among the remains were seven rings glowing red hot. He knelt down and snatched one up. He rolled the ring over in his hand, the scorching metal leaving no injury upon his skin.

  “They’re Stewards’ rings,” he said with a huff of recognition. He dropped the ring, and it made a dull clang.

  Danielle waved a cloud of smoke from before her face. “The question is, is Jerusa hunting just her former enemies, or all blood drinkers?”

  A stitch of concern pricked Silvanus’s heart. “I must go.”

  “Wait. We need a new plan,” Augustus protested.

  “Find Jerusa. Stay close to her. Keep her safe if you can. Kill the savages she makes. There’s something I need to take care of.”

  “Wait,” Augustus said. “What do you mean, ‘keep her safe?’”

  There was no time to answer. Silvanus took a step, leaping from the vault. He hoped he wasn’t too late.

  Chapter Six

  Shufah argued that it was a bad idea for the group to travel together, but she conceded to their desire to stay together, nevertheless.

  It was Celeste’s vision that had spooked them. It had spooked Shufah, too, truth be told. Augurs were a creepy breed, though she had grown to love Celeste as a dear friend.

  There was no doubt that Celeste had seen Jerusa’s former ghost companion, Alicia, in her vision, but had Alicia sent the vision, or someone else?

  Celeste insisted on the latter. “Alicia is trapped inside that mortal woman. Besides, I can’t see ghosts. The vision had to have come from an augur.”

  “Sebastian,” Thad suggested with a glint of hope in his eye.

  “I can’t think of anyone else,” she agreed. “But why such a cryptic message? Why not just tell me what he wanted me to know? I don’t understand.”

  None of them did.

  Shufah hated this entire business of visions, premonitions, telepathy and empathic musings. They were all too easily misinterpreted, leading you down a path to disaster. Who knew? Maybe it was actually the Watchtower that had sent the vision to Celeste as a trap.

  In the end, it was the Furies that convinced Shufah to give in to the wishes of the group. They were almost as old as she was, and their strange, melded instincts had kept them out of the hands of the Hunters for far longer than any vampire could hope for.

  So when the Furies announced that they wished to travel in a group, Shufah knew that something about the vision had rattled them.

  Shufah didn’t press the issue any more after that. She made arrangements for the entire coven to travel together, which, unfortunately, limited their options. Flying was dangerous, and though they had done it before, there wasn’t enough time to locate a jet equipped to provide sufficient protection during daylight hours. Trains didn’t go over the Pacific Ocean.

  That left traveling by ship.

  But it wasn’t like they could just rent a charter boat. They would need humans to captain it, and humans asked too many questions when their passengers only rose after dusk. A cruise might’ve worked. They could easily blend into a crowd that large, but no cruise ships were going anywhere near where they needed to be. The only option they had was to ship themselves across the sea as Taos and Celeste had originally planned.

  They stowed away on a large cargo ship departing from San Diego a little over a week ago. They stopped briefly in Hawaii to swap out several shipping containers and were now only a few days from docking in northern Japan.

  The ship had a relatively small human crew for its massive size. The vampires all hid from the sun in a container falsely labeled as hazardous waste, so their privacy was pretty much assured.

  At night, they slipped out of the container, scaling the skyscraper-like stacks to places the humans wouldn’t notice them. There was even a healthy supply of rats aboard to feed upon. The blood was foul, but it assuaged the temptation to snatch up an unsuspecting crew member, which tempted young Thad more than the older vampires.

  Shufah slipped out of the container a bit after midnight. The others had all ventured out just after sunset, but she remained behind, lounging in the dark, thinking of Foster… and Jerusa.

  The absence of both of them was an excruciating wound with no hope of healing. It felt as though she were rotting from within.

  She had wasted her whole extended existence on fleeing from, or battling, one enemy or another. She was exhausted. In her heart. In her soul. Weary of the pain. Of the loneliness. She just didn’t want to do this anymore.

  A sad smile crept onto her face. She had come to a decision just tonight, shortly after awaking from slumber. It was something she had been pondering for quite some time. Ever since Kole took Foster from her, actually.

  There were only a couple of battles left in her. If she fell to either Suhail or the High Council, then so be it. But if she survived, if Shufah somehow won the day, she would celebrate by watching the sun rise for the first time in over five thousand years.

  So many had gone on before her. Foster, Jerusa, her father, to name just a few. Part of her even hoped that Suhail, once separated from the savage spirit, might find some measure of peace in the afterlife.

  A terrible fear arose in Shufah, turning her blood to ice. What if she wasn’t able to find them, any of them, in whatever realm awaited just outside of death? What if the countless bloody deeds of this life cursed her to an unending, bitter darkness, where her only companions would be madness and pain?

  Shufah shook herself hard enough to spill her silky black hair across her face. After fixing her hair and getting her fears in check, Shufah exited the crate to join the others.

  She clung to the side of the container with one hand (which resided about two-thirds of the way up the stack) while pulling the heavy door closed with the other. She scurried up the rest of the way, mounting the top with little effort. The others were scattered about on various other towers, nearly invisible in the moonless night.

  Shufah rolled upon her back where she was, relishing the swaying of the giant vessel upon the waters. The wind blew cool and gentle, barely stirring the few tendrils of hair that had escaped her bun. The briny scent of the ocean surrounded her, willing her into a forgetful daze. The Milky Way burned unimpeded by even a single cloud.

  She thought this would bring her a measure of peace, but it only deepened her sadness.

  Thad landed on the grouping of containers Shufah occupied and approached her with caution. She glanced at him and smiled despite her melancholy. He truly was an impressive fledgling. She hoped his light would burn for many millennia.

  “Hello, Thad.”

  Thad smiled back, and his face seemed almost mortal again. “I don’t want to bother you if you want to be alone.”

  “I never want to be alone.” Shufah patted the cold steel next to her, and Thad sat down with his legs crossed. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing, really.” He gave a little shrug. “It’s just that Taos and Celeste are over there.
” He pointed toward a section of containers positioned at the bow. “And the Furies are over there.” He pointed to an even taller stack further to the rear of the ship. “I want to give them their privacy, but, well, I don’t enjoy being alone, either.”

  Shufah looked out over the rolling sea. “What have you been up to this evening?”

  “Nothing much. Just hunting.”

  Shufah raised an eyebrow. “This ship isn’t missing any crew members, is it?”

  “No,” Thad said with a boyish laugh. “Just a few less rats than before. Not that this ship couldn’t stand to lose a couple of workers. There’s some shady people on board.”

  “Been eavesdropping, I see. We can’t afford to be noticed, but maybe when we’re close enough to shore, you can have something other than a rat.”

  “I’d like that.” He laughed again.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Thad scratched the tight beard covering his baby face. “When I was human, I really didn’t want to be a vampire. It was the thought of killing that bothered me most. But now…”

  “But now, it seems as natural as breathing,” Shufah finished for him.

  “Exactly,” he blurted out, excited that she understood. “I try to only feed on evil people, and maybe that helps. But it’s like I was meant to be a vampire. It gets harder and harder to remember my human life. Is that bad?”

  “Not bad at all. You’re right. You were born to be a vampire.”

  Thad watched the waves roll over the darkened horizon, a satisfied little smile perched upon his face. She envied him. To see the beauty of the world through fresh, fledgling eyes. To awake every night with the hope of a new adventure. The beginning was truly the best time to be a vampire. All the other lessons he would learn for himself, whether he wanted to or not.

  They sat for a long time in a peaceful silence. That was a rarity for Shufah. Her excessive age caused others to seek her council, as though she were some sort of oracle, able to see all ends and decipher all mysteries. Even Foster had pestered her relentlessly, drinking in her knowledge like a man too long in the desert.