The Chronicles of the Immortal Council: The complete 10-book collection
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THE CHRONICLES OF THE IMMORTAL COUNCIL
A “Vampire for Hire World” Series
1. Vampire Abduction
2. Vampire Exodus
3. Vampire Sovereign
4. Vampire Magic
5. Vampire Vacation
6. Vampire Reflections
7. Vampire Enigma
8. Vampire Spirit
9. Vampire Regent
10. Vampire Intuition
by
D.C. YOUNG
The Chronicles of the Immortal Council
Published by Rain Press
Copyright © 2021 by Rain Press
All rights reserved
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
(The Chronicles of the Immortal Council are based on the characters created by J.R. Rain; the use of story situations and supporting characters from the “Vampire for Hire” universe is authorized by J.R Rain.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Chronicles of the Immortal Council
1. Vampire Abduction
2. Vampire Exodus
3. Vampire Sovereign
4. Vampire Magic
5. Vampire Vacation
6. Vampire Reflections
7. Vampire Enigma
8. Vampire Spirit
9. Vampire Regent
10. Vampire Intuition
Reading Sample
About the Author
VAMPIRE ABDUCTION
The Chronicles of the Immortal Council #1
A Vampire for Hire story
by
D.C. Young
Foreward
by J.R. Rain
Hi there and welcome!
J.R. Rain here, and I’m so excited to introduce you to my “Vampire for Hire World”! As you might have guessed, these are written by writers other than me. Fair warning, these stories are non-canon (as in, unofficial) but they’re still a ton of fun. I’m excited to see the Samantha Moon world grow, and I’m equally excited to see all these wonderful writers exploring her world with me.
So, sit back and enjoy Vampire Abduction!
—J.R.
Vampire Abduction
Chapter One
His name was Archibald Maximus and she proudly called him an ally.
She smiled to herself as she thought of the first time she’d come across him, and how she’d thought he sounded more like a gladiator or a god rather than a supposed philosopher. She’d suspected the two former options were a lot closer to the truth than the latter was. The concept of immortality was not at all foreign to Samantha Moon.
She’d discovered that Archibald Maximus was a talented and knowledgeable alchemist who watched over the many secrets of the Occult Reading Room at Cal State Fullerton and he’d helped her greatly in the past. So, in Sam’s estimation, if Archibald needed her help or wanted to advise her, she would turn up when and where he asked her to.
As she sat in the reading corner at the library, Samantha Moon couldn’t help but wonder why Archibald, the librarian, had asked her to come see him. His phone call had been brief and very much to the point. She’d opened her mouth to ask him what it was all about, but he had cut off the call before Samantha could get a word out.
She looked around the room. As usual, it was empty. Behind her, the malevolent volumes that filled the shelves called out to her as they always did. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a shiver ran down her preternatural vampiric spine.
No way, I’ll ever get used to THAT level of weirdness, she thought to herself.
Sam suspected that, unbeknownst to the students and faculty, the University was probably home to what could be one of the world’s most dangerous collections of arcane and rare books; tomes that were full of dark power and could easily cause a great deal of harm if they ended up in the wrong hands.
Her gaze left the book shelves and scanned the library entry way. Through the door, she could see students and other people walking past the room. They went about their business like they didn’t see it and that was the case. You couldn’t see the doorway unless Maximus wanted you too or if you had a great need. In fact, Sam suspected young Archibald Maximus, or Max, as he preferred to be called, was a gatekeeper of sorts. Perhaps he was a mystic watcher and protector, placed there to guard the knowledge collected in that place. She’d heard of the existence of such beings; immortals who kept the balance between good and evil and essentially governed over the doings of immortals both the young and the old.
With a half sneer on her lips, Samantha shook the thought from her head. It was preposterous. Considering the things she had seen the last few years, it was absurd to think that there was anyone governing anything. A good watcher would never have let what happened to her in the park that night go down the way it had. Not to mention allowing jackasses, like that bounty hunter, Rand, try to kill her with silver tipped arrows. Even some of the crazy stunts she had pulled herself, flying low over the city and almost inciting chaos in her bat form, should have drawn the attention of such beings; if they existed at all.
She scoffed. Of course, they didn’t.
But then her mind went back to Max. His extremely bright aura suggested there might be something to the idea. Max’s aura was damn bright, although not as bright as the angel she’d met previously. So much so, that it suggested he wasn’t entirely of this world.
Or I could be going crazy... Now, that is probably the most plausible theory of them all!
As she continued to wait for her friend, the ‘librarian’, she recalled one of the first conversations they had ever had. It had been months ago, right in that very room, when Sam had asked Archibald Maximus, “Who are you?”
He’d held her gaze for a moment, and his bright green eyes had somehow looked deeply into her soul. And after a moment, he’d simply said, “I’m a librarian.”
“Bullshit. That’s like saying I’m just an everyday soccer mom,” she’d retorted.
“But isn’t that a true description in itself, Samantha? At the same time though, do not many things define you?”
“So, you really are a librarian?”
“In part.”
He’d reached over and patted her hand, then returned his attention back to the book they’d been studying.
That meeting took place when Sam had brought the second of the vampire medallions to Max for an explanation of what it did, as well as why she kept finding them. She’d been led to the second medallion after recovering a safe for a client who’d been a tremendous hoarder. Her psychic abilities had revealed two very valuable items in her client’s house the night she’d recovered his safe. One had been the contents of the safe, which she’d recognized as a rare lost document from America’s history; the second had been the medallion, resting inside a wooden box deep under a pile of newspapers.
“There are four known medallions in the world, Sam. Two have now come into your possession,” Max said.
“Who made them?”
“I’m not sure, but suspect it has something to do with your race.” “You mean, vampires?”
“Yes.”
Archibald Maximus had smiled at her. Their faces a mere eight inches apart as they both hovered over the old book.
A familiar voice suddenly broke her reverie and she looked up from the reading corner to see its subject approaching.
“Hello, Samantha,” he said, smiling, as he crossed the room and sat across from her. His eyes twink
led as he said her name. He always greeted Sam using her full first name; somehow, it even seemed appropriate coming from him.
As usual, he reached across the surface to take both of her hands in his. There was, as always, a moment of silent exchange in which it seemed he was imbuing her with his calm and peace. Briefly, she reveled in the balminess of his pale, but quite warm, hands. It was one of the rare times that she didn’t feel self conscious about her ice cold flesh. Archibald, after all, was very aware of who, and what, she really was.
As she sat there beaming like a schoolgirl, Max placed a black leather bound book on the table in front of him and pushed it across the surface towards her. Samantha opened the book and read the title page. It was blank. No title, and no author was stated there. Her mouth opened as if to ask a question or utter a protest, but he silently held up his hand and pointed back to the book. She turned a few more pages and found that one of the introductory pages featured a photograph. She studied the old half-tone picture carefully, trying to identify the strangely dressed people posing in it.
As she studied it, she heard something call to her from deeper within the reading room. It was coming from the areas she knew to be housing some of the darker books of the collection.
“Ssssister,” the voices whispered, melding into one slithering, slippery sound.
“Ignore them,” Maximus said, as she looked up from the book for his reassurance.
“Ssssamantha Moon...come to us. Come open us. Come read us.”
The hair on her arms stood on end.
“They’re just trying to be disruptive, Samantha,” he continued.
“I just can’t get used to being harassed by your book-bound spirits, Max.”
He nodded without looking at her.
Sam shivered again. “They sound...even more evil than usual.”
“Vampire! Come heeeere!” one more seemed to shout out in a desperate, screech.
Samantha jumped. Max looked at her sharply and his sapphire blue eyes faded for a moment.
“Just remember that’s why I’m here, Samantha,” he said, “Especially since it seems that your little penchant for attracting rare artifacts is developing into a modern day psychic phenomenon.”
He pointed to the book before her and grinned again. “Focus.”
“But I didn’t find this one, Max. You did!”
“Or did I?”
He stood up from the reading desk suddenly and walked briskly past her, headed into a section of the reading room which Sam had never been to before. As usual, as soon as Max entered the walkway between the shelves, the whispering from the books there stopped. While she turned her attention back to the picture in front of her, he fetched several thick, black books from among the various shelves.
He came back a moment later, and set the volumes down in front of her.
“More reading material? Don’t you think this one’s going to be challenging enough? I mean, come on Max, if these people are who I think they are, there’s no way they could all be in a photograph together. Much less one that was taken in 1895 as this notation says it was. I mean, that’s William Wallace and I could bet my son’s skid-marked boxer briefs that that’s Empress Tzu-Hsi of China.”
“Samantha, slow down. Take a breath. You’re babbling,” Max said calmly, as he sat down across from her again.
“Come on, Max. This isn’t what I think it is, is it? I mean that would be im...”
“What Samantha?” he interrupted. “Impossible? I thought that word would have been completely eradicated from your vocabulary by now. What, with all the things you have seen in your short vampiric life so far.”
He looked disappointed in her for a split second, then covered one of her hands with his and shook his head slightly as a renewed smile crept across his lips.
“Everything that you were ever told was a fairy tale or didn’t exist outside of horror films, is real, Samantha. They’re all as real as you and I, and believe me when I tell you that there are even worse creatures out there as well. Creatures that mankind has chosen to ignore and forget over the centuries with the banal assumption that ignoring them will make them go away.”
Fighting back tears of fright that his words drew out of her, she redirected her focus to the stack he had brought from the shelves. She picked up the first one and scoffed. It was a fiction novel by a woman called Chanel Smith. Chanel Smith, seriously?
“Why the dry response, Samantha?” Max asked, a little surprised.
“I know her work. She’s written a few books about the misadventures of a so-called huntress vampire from San Francisco called Veronica Melbourne. The first book came out after she’d been active in the Los Angeles area for a few weeks. A detective friend of mine, Spinoza, had given me a sort of heads up when that had happened but she’d left town soon after and even though, according to the rest of the books, she apparently returned to California, I haven’t encountered her once. Seems she’s mostly active overseas.”
“I see,” Max interjected. “Go on. I sense you know more.”
“Not much, really. Just that it’s funny you brought out this book because it’s where I first read about the existence of some sort of Immortal Council. Of course, I just chalked all that up to the author’s extremely active imagination. I mean, she’s a good writer. But…”
“But what? And what’s funny about me bringing out the book?”
“Well, it’s just that even though I know Chanel’s character and her rogue hunting activities is all true to life stuff, I’d assumed the rest of it was just made up malarkey. However, it’s the second time, since I’ve been sitting here today, that the topic of the Watchers has come up.” She looked Maximus in the eye and watched as his smile faded. “It’s not a coincidence is it?”
“You know better than that, Samantha. It never is.”
“Hey, I thought your eyes were green.”
“Were they?” Max asked with a mischievous grin.
Chapter Two
Navarre, Spain.
1516 A.D.
For more than three hundred years, the Watchers had taken refuge from the world in the secure and secluded catacombs beneath Xavier Castle in Navarre, Spain.
Its newest owner, Adán de Sada, had made a bargain with Julia Agrippina for their refuge there, and being who he was, she had not found it difficult to agree to his terms. They had agreed that when Sada was at death’s door, Julia would give him the gift of immortality and make him a fledgling vampire. But, as it turned out, through his lifetime, Adán had managed to accrue too many enemies among Spain’s religious leaders, frequently speaking out for the independence of the Spanish Iberians and the separation of church and state.
Ten years after Agrippina made her promise to him; Adán was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night and thrown from a parapet onto the rocks below the castle. When the Watchers had found him, his body was in tatters and Adán was long dead.
“What happens now?” Petronilla asked, looking from Julia’s grief-stricken face to Sada’s broken body dashed on the rocks.
After a few moments, Julia replied, “I truly do not know what to tell you all. Our protector and patron is dead. It would be anyone’s guess what will happen to this place now.”
“If the castle is disputed over, we will be in jeopardy,” Adelin chimed in.
“Fool!” Wallace cried, “We are already in jeopardy. We have slumbered for so many years trying our best to ignore the perils that Ferdinand and Isabella’s Inquisition posed to our kind. I know that your vampire hearing is as good as mine and that you have heard the whispers coming from the world even in your sleep. They are tormenting innocent people and burning others at the stake for heresy. A witch hunt is all that is left to be incited and in Logroño, the witches of Zugarramurdi are on their guard.”
“Calm yourself, Wallace,” Julia ordered. “We have heard the same things you have, but this is my decision to make.”
“That it is, Julia,” William Adelin agreed.
“We wait and we watch. Just like we always have. And, if need be, we will leave this place and find somewhere else to go.”
After Adán’s death, the castle changed hands several times and the Watchers remained hidden in the safety of the catacombs. It was many years before any of its subsequent owners fulfilled Adán’s final instructions about the castle construction, which was to re-purpose the dungeons into wine cellars and seal the catacombs shut. He’d always been paranoid that the Inquisition would commandeer the space to conduct questioning of local people, which they were known to do throughout Spain.
Sealed inside and safe, below Xavier Castle, the Watchers lay undisturbed for another century and a half. Their bodies were almost to the point of becoming petrified before they needed to concern themselves with the affairs of the world again.
It was at the height of the Spanish Inquisition that it became evident that the world could no longer be ignored. When that moment arrived, the castle belonged to Maria Azpilikueta, a native of Baztan Valley; whose family defended the independence of the kingdom. For that reason, the Spanish regent ordered the complete demolition of the castle despite the fact that it was the birthplace of Saint Francis Xavier.
During one of the many searches the Inquisition made of the castle buildings and its grounds, a novice priest found the sealed entryway to the catacombs and ordered them opened. When the novice and the two workers disappeared without a trace at the beginning of the project, the bishops ordered the wine cellars emptied and the tower that stood over the catacombs demolished. Catching wind of what the clergymen suspected to be dwelling beneath the castle and that there had been a plan formed to flush them out, Julia and the others began to plan an escape to the safety of the nearby hills in the dead of night.