Into the Storm (Vampires of Velum Mortis Book 2)

by Stephanie Summers

  I wished for death, begging him to take me away. I could almost feel the reaper’s cool lips lingering near as I longed for just one icy kiss. One quick moment that would plunge me into a dark void where no one and nothing could ever hurt me again.

  Bile rose in my throat, the dire possibilities of the life I was headed to flashing before my eyes. A dog barked in the next yard over as they carried me from my mother’s trailer. The only hope I had that someone might notice what was happening, but no one came to my aid.

  With a hard shove from one of my captors, my head smacked against the edge of the older-model extended-cab truck as he pushed me into the backseat. The stocky man squeezed in beside me, cramming me against the other door. If only I could get to the handle at some point without him noticing, I could jump free—possibly to my death, but free, nonetheless. I wished now I had kept the knife and went after them with it. Maybe then I’d already be dead, which was a thousand times better than where I was headed.

  The thin, lanky man opened the passenger side door and got into the front seat. It was then that I realized there was a third man climbing into the driver’s seat. He must have been waiting outside the trailer, likely a lookout man. I inhaled deeply to try and catch my breath, but what I was met with was entirely unexpected. His scent giving him away instantly.

  Redwood.

  He must’ve been stalking me for weeks, in on the plan from the beginning. I guessed Tonya and Sabrina were right. He really was there at Club Dead because of me. Probably working out a deal with Lucien to take me so he wouldn’t have problems from him. And I’d been attracted to the bastard… I vowed then and there that if I somehow made it out alive, I would write off men altogether for the rest of my life. I’d promised myself this before, but I’d stick to it this time.

  Stellan put the truck into gear, and we moved forward quickly. Though my body kept still, my eyes darted around trying to take in every detail I could in the waning light as I shifted back into survival mode. Maybe escape mode was a more appropriate term because at that point, I didn’t really care if I survived, just so long as I didn’t end up wherever the hell it was they were taking me.

  My courage slipped by the second, though I reached as deep down in myself as I could to hang onto the last shred. The stocky man placed his hand on my thigh, his fingers digging in hard enough that I’d likely end up bruised. Slamming my eyes shut, I swallowed hard, trying to keep the scant content of my stomach from showing itself.

  “What you think Wade wants this’in here for? Ain’t he got enough bitches to breed? Seems like that’s all he ever wants ’em fer,” he said in a thick backwoods drawl. Neither of the men in the front bothered to answer. My eyelids eased open as I tried to calm my breathing. “All I know is I better get the rest of my cut tonight, because if I don’t, I’m gonna be one pissed off sumbitch. I’d hate to have to take my pay from this ol’ gal here,” he said, his hand snaking its way further up my thigh. “I ain’t handin’ her over till I get that cash.”

  Stellan glanced in the rearview mirror, and said, “Get your hand off of her, Billy Boy. You’re going to make her vomit.”

  “The name’s Tommy, not Billy Boy.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what your name is. Keep your hands off her. She’s not yours,” Stellan said.

  “Where are you taking me,” I asked, my voice wavering. She’s not yours. That sentence lingered in my mind. It implied that I did belong to someone. Not this yokel with his hand on me, but someone.

  “You’re goin’ down south, sweetheart. The Mathis pack wants you,” the man beside me said, an evil grin spreading across his lips. “Wade Mathis paid your mama a pretty penny for ya, too. You’re some prime grade piece of ass.”

  His words made no sense to me. I’d never heard of Wade Mathis of the Mathis pack before and certainly had no clue as to why they’d have a bounty on me. Wolves rarely came into Club Dead, but I was aware of their existence.

  They had to have the wrong person, but even if they did, she’d taken them up on the offer, hadn’t she?

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” I said, my voice cracking as I tried to play dumb. “This is the first time I’ve seen my mother in years.”

  It was then that I noticed the way Stellan kept checking me out in the rearview mirror to the point that I thought he might wreck if he continued. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the way he was nearly obsessive about it would indicate that he was concerned about me, but if he was, he had an odd way of showing it. He certainly wouldn’t be working with the other two to take me away if he was.

  The truck drifted to the right slightly before he jerked the wheel to correct his error. Never in my life had I ever wished for a car accident, but if we did crash, maybe I could get away.

  “Please, let me go,” I pleaded, nearly calling Stellan by his name, but I hesitated. Was it possible these men didn’t know that I knew him? Would that make things worse for me if they did? Instead, I played it safe and kept his name off my tongue. “I’ll do anything, just let me go.”

  “That sounds mighty tempting,” the man said, leaning into me. “You wanna come home with me? I bet I can get ol’ boy here to stop. Sure could use the cash, but a sweet piece of ass like yours? It’d be worth goin’ broke for. You got curves in all the right places, girl…” he said and licked his lips as his gaze traveled over my body. “Maybe I’ll even let ya go after I’m through.”

  I whimpered and tried to scoot away from him, but there was nowhere to go. In one quick movement before I could give it any thought, I grabbed the latch and flung open the door, thankful that the door hadn’t been locked. His eyes went wide as he gasped and reflexively took his hands off me. Before he could process what had happened and reach out to try and stop me, I pushed myself out the door.

  Praying for death as the wind hit my face, I crashed to the ground, not caring about what would come next.

  4

  Stellan

  How do I let myself get into these situations?

  Slamming on the brake pedal, I threw the truck into park and jumped out. I expected to see her splattered on the pavement, ripped to shreds, or mangled beyond recognition. Fear ripped through me as I contemplated the thought of her death. I barely knew her, so why did I care? A question I couldn’t answer. I tried to convince myself it was because her death would mean I’d failed my mission, but it was something more than that.

  Just as fast as I had the truck in park, Billy Boy scrambled through the door she’d flung herself from. The other guy in the front seat sat there unmoving, as if this sort of thing happened all the time and he’d just wait it out. But then maybe it did. I wasn’t exactly accustomed to the ways of human traffickers.

  Billy Boy lumbered toward her, tugging at his pants to keep them from falling off his ass. I took off in a sprint, careful not to give away what I was by going too fast, and quickly passed him by. Even with my abilities being suppressed, I could easily move faster than humans. And as far as they knew, I was just a human who had been hired to help them transport Sydney Bryant to the alpha of the Mathis pack. If these two men had been wolves themselves, they would’ve known immediately and my plan wouldn’t have worked out so well, but thankfully, they weren’t, so it had.

  I approached her a moment later. She lay their unconscious, barely breathing with a heartbeat that faded by the second.

  “She’s probably going die,” I said. “Hades fucking hell.”

  At least she was in one piece. There was hope for that reason alone, but I’d have to act soon or there would be nothing left of her to bring back.

  “Good. The bitch deserves it for doing something so goddamn dumb. Sucks that we won’t get paid the rest of our money though.”

  “Can you really blame her for jumping, Billy Boy? You couldn’t keep your greasy fucking hands to yourself, could you? And now she’s going to die because of your lecherous ways.”

  “What do you care? She ain’t nothin’ to you. And why the hell did the
y hire you anyway? We’ve done this kind of shit hundreds of times without no outsiders. I ain’t never seen you outside of these past couple weeks. How did ya get involved in any of this anyway?”

  Questions were no good, and his atrocious grasp of the English language grated my nerves. Pulling out the gun the humans had given me for the mission, I hesitated for a second. I wouldn’t allow her to suffer. She couldn’t have been more than early-twenties or so. She had beautiful features and a body I’d thought about worshiping more times than I’d like to admit, though life had clearly beaten her down if she had resorted to working for Lucien. Still, there was something mystifying about her, something that had called to me every time I’d seen her and echoed when she wasn’t near, though I couldn’t say for sure what it was. I just knew it wasn’t something I’d felt before, and it had brought me face-to-face with her more often than I had intended.

  What a shame that her life had turned out this way. Working for Lucien and being sold out to the wolves by her own mother was not the type of life anyone deserved.

  What fate still had in store for her had to be better than this cretin having his way with her. Though it had thrown a spanner in the works, I couldn’t blame her for jumping.

  “Go on and shoot her. She ain’t got no worth to ’em now,” he said. “I figure Wade wanted her ready to take his seed. No way she can carry a pup in that condition. It ain’t worth it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. Aiming my gun at his head, I squeezed the trigger before he ever knew his life was in danger. In an instant, his body fell backwards, landing with a heavy thud, blood oozing out and decorating the pavement around his head. “It’s not worth it, dumb fuck.”

  Spinning around faster than the blink of an eye, I pointed my gun at the other man who had been traveling with us and blew him away before he had the chance to fully exit the truck.

  It’s surprisingly easy to infiltrate groups of scum-bags, and when I’d gotten the go-ahead to join up with this group of fiends and intercept the woman who lay unconscious on the ground in front of me, I nearly laughed at how easy it would be. I hadn’t killed a human in decades, but I’d expected to kill these two men the moment they were told to accompany me while I retrieved her, though I figured it’d happen at a little more convenient time and location. Taking out people like them wouldn’t burden my conscience the way it would if they’d been decent.

  I’d now saved her from at the very least a life of forced breeding and subservience, and I could only imagine what else they may have had in store for her. Unfortunately, I wasn’t privy to what my king needed her for. It was none of my business, and I’d learned long ago to not question him about things that didn’t concern me. If he wanted my counsel, he’d come to me.

  The smell of blood hit my nose, and my jaw ached as my fangs tried to lengthen. Just the thought of tasting blood had me wanting to abandon my mission and go on a bender that would last for months, but I couldn’t. Thankfully, no matter how strong the desire, I couldn’t drop fang, and that would make it exceptionally harder to feed. Tearing myself away from the pool of blood taunting me, I gathered my senses and assessed the damage she’d endured when she landed.

  There was very little visible blood on her other than that of a nasty case of road rash on her leg and hip that was visible through her torn jeans, but there was likely internal bleeding. It was possible she’d only knocked herself out, though that wouldn’t explain her waning heartbeat. I scooped her into my arms, ignoring that her blood didn’t smell quite as I expected it to, and took off toward the woods at the edge of the city before anyone noticed us. This was why it was good to do these sorts of things after dark, though I would’ve preferred a secluded building somewhere instead of the middle of a city street. Well, all that and the fact that the sun didn’t agree with my skin very well. Not that I couldn’t tolerate it, I just didn’t like to.

  Once I reached the cover of the trees, I whistled and continued running as I anticipated my faithful companion, Cyrus, finding me. Within seconds, he ran along at my side, waiting for my command. I tossed her limp body across his wide back and leapt onto him, grabbing a fistful of thick, black fur.

  “Home,” I said with a firm tone. Hellhounds could be loyal beasts after a time, but one still had to show their dominance over them. Otherwise, you’d have a rogue hellhound on your hands, and that wouldn’t end well for anyone. Most of them had retreated to the mountains and forests surrounding Velum Mortis ages ago, but I’d found Cyrus as a pup, abandoned by his mother. He hadn’t been eager to leave me behind after I’d ensured his survival, and I’d grown to enjoy his company.

  I should’ve taken her straight to the king, but I had to assess the damage and see if I could help her somehow first. She’d already suffered enough, and even though Liam was one of my best friends, I didn’t want to have to explain to him that she had been hurt under my supervision. It was in my best interest to produce her unharmed.

  It was forbidden to bring humans through the veil to the underworld without first being granted permission, but what else could I do? My home was the only place I knew I could keep her hidden until I figured out what to do. Besides, Liam had ordered that she be brought to him alive and she was at least part-wolf, so I wasn’t breaking the law anyway, not really. I was only making a pit stop, and he wouldn’t be expecting her just yet anyway.

  I hadn’t used my full abilities in the human realm in over twenty-five years, not since Liam had deemed me a menace to the living and ordered me into suppression when going through the veil. I was still stronger and faster than humans, my senses weren’t completely dulled, and I was less likely to die than they were, but I couldn’t drop fang, influence them to do my bidding, listen to their thoughts, or bend the power of the storm to my will like I was naturally prone to do. Healing a human in their realm was something I wasn’t sure I could do. It was possible I could since it wouldn’t harm them, but I hadn’t had a need—or a want—to do anything like that in as long as I could remember.

  In fact, it had been my lust for human blood that had gotten me punished in the first place. I’d risked exposure of our kind and drawn the attention of the slayers of Mallory Falls one too many times because of a raging blood addiction. I used humans as my playthings, never bothering to cover my tracks or hide the bodies as they piled up. There was no need to kill them, but I couldn’t help myself. The thirst for blood often tempted me into taking every last drop instead of stopping at the point where they could easily heal on their own.

  Many humans often think they’re suffering from some sort of flu virus, but they’ve really been drained of most of their blood by a vampire. It’s a neat trick, really, that our bite often affects them that way. So easy to go undetected, yet I came close to ruining it for all of us more times than I could count.

  Liam came up with a solution for my devious ways—a magical concoction I was ordered to inject before traveling that suppressed my abilities and luckily for me, a hellhound keeping a watchful eye over me. He was my ticket to navigating between the worlds as well. Without my full power, I could never break through the veil, thin as it was, or use one of the portals the other species had access to.

  The concoction was meant to be used only when traveling to the human realm, but being a glutton for punishment, I’d utilized it full-time in some sort of twisted desire to keep myself at bay at all times. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken the antidote and returned to my full strength.

  Cyrus gained speed, jostling Sydney’s body to the point that she started to slide from his massive body. The hoodie she wore began to ride up, exposing her soft, supple skin. Gripping the soft flesh of her side, a feeling of heat passed over my body. But then that was nothing special. It was always hot traveling between dimensions, except that we hadn’t yet passed through the veil, so there shouldn’t have been a noticeable temperature change yet.

  With little effort, Cyrus leapt, thrusting us between worlds before finally puncturing our way
through to the city of Velum Mortis.

  “Go the back way,” I said, low and in control.

  It wouldn’t mean we’d go completely unseen, but we’d be less likely to run into anyone who gave a shit about what I was doing with an unconscious woman draped across my giant hellhound’s back. We arrived at my home moments later, and Cyrus burst right through the door, not bothering to stop until we were in the middle of my sitting room. I’d deal with fixing the door later. Disembarking, I pulled the woman into my arms and carried her to the couch where I laid her down. Grabbing one of the syringes that contained the antidote to my suppression from the inside pocket of my jacket, I slipped out of the garment, pulled up my sleeve, and jammed the needle into my skin, plunging the dark liquid into my blood.

  Power coursed through my veins, my eyes rolling into my head as my abilities returned, though something seemed off. I still felt dull somehow, like the antidote had lost some of its potency and hadn’t completely reversed the suppressing agent like it should have. Still, the high I experienced when I lifted the suppression was almost as good as feeding. Thunder cracked overhead, a surge of electricity coursed through my veins, and for a split second, I contemplated abandoning my mission so I could revel in how great it all felt.

  Yanking myself back to the current situation, my teeth descended, and I tore open my wrist. Tilting her head, my thumb grazed her chin, gently opening her mouth. The blood flowed from my torn wrist past her delicate lips. The amount of internal damage she’d suffered would determine how long it would take for her to heal, but I was confident it would only be a few minutes at the most. My blood had strengthened with age and had become quite potent. In the meantime, I’d replenish myself with a glass of blood from my allotted reserves as the wound on my wrist healed.