Her voice echoed in the vast, gloomy space.
A sudden sound above her almost made her shriek with terror. It had come from the landing that encircled the living room. Her eyes bored into the surrounding blackness.
“Hello, is anyone there? Todd, what the hell is going on?”
A lilting animal cry pierced the darkness. Followed by a creak, as though someone had stepped down on a loose board.
Whatever it was, the sounds had come from up above. The second floor.
Someone else was in the house.
A second shriek tore through the silence, joining the first.
There are two of them, Natalie realized with growing horror.
Two of what? Now that was the question. The cries didn’t sound human, but nor did they fit any animal she was familiar with.
It didn’t matter what lurked in the darkness. The bottom line was, something was wrong, and she better get out of here.
Natalie bolted to her feet and started moving toward the nearest exit.
She didn’t get far.
Someone was blocking the door. In the moonlight, Natalie vaguely made out a tall man. The figure turned on a flashlight, revealing himself to be none other than Todd. He had some kind of contraption on his head. Night-vision goggles? No, that would be crazy. That would mean he had somehow planned for this blackout.
“Todd?”
“Natalie.” Something about his tone, a terrible flatness with no sense of his earlier warmth, made fear crawl up her back.
“What the hell is going on?” she hissed. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
His answer was to point the flashlight at the landing. She followed the beam of the light, and her blood turned to ice.
The flashlight had revealed a living nightmare.
A skinny figure with impossibly long and gaunt features stood hunched and contorted on the landing.
With another bloodcurdling cry, the creature reared up to its full elongation. It was nearly seven feet tall with oddly stretched limbs and spindly fingers made longer by hooked claws. The hairless creature’s skin was the color of alabaster, and it wore an old-fashioned suit that looked absurd on its nightmarish form.
Natalie took a step back, blood pulsing in her temples.
“Oooops, I guess I forgot to tell you. I live with a couple of roommates. Meet Damien and Athan.”
The flashlight swiveled and then fastened on a second abnormally tall figure lurking on the other side of the landing even more terrifying than the first.
“They’re both dying to meet you. Oh no, wait. You’re the one dying tonight. I can never get that right.”
As if to lend credibility to his words, both ghouls opened their mouths, revealing rows of jagged teeth. A serpentine forked tongue slithered between black lips, and eyes glowed red in the dark. Fingers extended to twice their already distended length.
Moving as one, the two ghouls leaped from the second floor and landed soundlessly in the darkness below.
Natalie’s breath came in ragged bursts. Terror paralyzed her. Nothing in her twenty-nine years on this planet could have prepared her for this moment.
For this horror.
And the worst part of it was standing right beside her. The man she’d started caring about—fine, the man she’d been falling in love with—appeared to be the engineer behind the nightmare.
“Bon appétit, my friends.”
With these chilling words, Todd slammed down his goggles and switched off the flashlight, drenching the room into blackness. A sudden thought slashed through Natalie’s mind. She understood now why Todd was wearing night-vision gear. The bastard didn’t want to miss what happened next.
The lilting cries repeated in rapid succession as the two monsters zeroed in on her. In the moonlight trickling through the drawn curtains, their shadows stretched as their emaciated savagery drew closer. They were moving in hunting formation—fast-approaching death.
Perhaps Natalie would have stayed frozen in terror if it hadn’t been for Sean. The face of her ten-year-old boy, the joy of her life, lit up her mind. Maternal instinct galvanized her into action.
Natalie couldn’t die here like this. Her son needed her. She would not let him grow up as a virtual orphan.
The monsters were almost upon her when she exploded into motion. She tore toward the nearest doorway, no idea where it might lead. At least she wouldn’t give Todd the satisfaction of watching her die. Just thinking about his betrayal further spurred her on.
She burst into a narrow, curving hallway and ran for her life. Her inhuman pursuers shrieked and snarled; their cries filled with disappointment as they realized they would have to work for their dinner.
Buoyed by their frustration, Natalie barreled down the hallway.
She was running for her life, running for her son.
She burst into another large chamber, this one dominated by a long antique table fronted by high-backed wooden chairs. It appeared to be the dining room. The irony did not make her situation any better.
A sound erupted to her right. For a surreal beat, she spotted one of the freakishly tall ghouls galloping past her, using his thin arms like a second pair of legs the way an ape might. The creature drew ahead of Natalie and cut her off, blocking the next doorway with its spindly form.
A lilting cry behind her made her whirl. The second ghoul had arrived.
Both the front and the rear doorways were blocked now.
A strange calm fell over Natalie as the fight drained from her. The inevitability of her fate was sinking in.
She’d reached the end of the road.
I’m sorry, Sean, she thought as tears welled up in her eyes. I tried.
The ghouls advanced, their horrible mouths dripped with saliva at the thought of their next meal. Their keening shrieks were suffused with a mad joy that made her shake with fear.
Please let it be quick, she prayed silently.
And then the curtains of one of the wall-sized windows parted. Brilliant moonlight spilled into the room and showed off the two creatures in their full, ghastly glory. The monsters wanted her to see them, wanted her to be terrified. They enjoyed her misery.
A creak of floorboards behind her made her whirl. The second ghoul was upon her. She looked up at the nightmarish creature, tears streaking her cheeks.
Claws reached out for her, spindly fingers moving oddly. The ghoul slid one of his long fingers against her quivering, tear-stained cheek and then brought it to his mouth. As the thing licked the tears off its finger, it smiled grotesquely at her.
“Delicious.”
Almost to prove his point, a pair of four-inch fangs grew from between his lips.
The beast was readying itself for the kill.
And that’s when a third figure peeled from the shadows.
But this new arrival wasn’t, as Natalie first expected, Todd with his night-vision goggles.
No, this man wore a long leather trench coat. Stunned, Natalie realized this was the same man who’d shadowed her on her first date with Todd. The man who’d appeared outside her apartment building. The one who’d been watching her all along.
But was he a friend or another enemy?
Chapter Twelve
The Hexecutioner had arrived.
Weylock watched as the two vampires zeroed in on Natalie. All those centuries—maybe millennia—of life had changed their anatomy. It had stretched and elongated bone and destroyed skin pigmentation. Vampirism promised life everlasting, but it came at the cost of one’s humanity in more ways than one. Over the centuries, the demonic life-force burning bright within these ghouls had chipped away at them until only these monstrous distortions remained.
Todd was either oblivious or uncaring that this was the fate which awaited him once his vampire masters honored the bargain they’d struck with him.
As the first vampire reared to his impressive height, ready to attack, Weylock knew it was time to reveal himself.
Natalie’s eyes went wid
e as she spotted him in the dark.
A heartbeat later, so did the vampires.
And that’s when the real fun started.
Chapter Thirteen
Todd navigated the mansion, his night-vision goggles transforming his shadow-soaked surroundings into a ghostly green landscape. The goggles were new, something just for Natalie. There was no way he would miss this show after all the hard work he’d put into wooing the bitch, so he had to be creative. He wanted to watch as the vampires had their way with her, wanted to see the light go out of those vivacious eyes.
Natalie was showing more spunk than he’d expected. To his surprise, she’d made a run for it. Her escape attempt was doomed to failure, a pure exercise in futility. He hoped it would be a bit of good sport for the masters. The waitress was up against two apex predators whose senses turned night into day and who’d slaughtered enough people over the millennia to fill multiple mass graves. If Natale lasted for five minutes, it would be a goddamn miracle.
Still, most of the others hadn’t even tried to get away. As soon as Todd’s vampire masters showed themselves, they stood frozen, their little brains unable to process what their senses were telling them—that man wasn’t at the top of the food chain. Never had been. There are creatures out there that haunted the shadows, things far more ancient and deadly than mortals. Gods who ruled the night.
Todd wanted to join their ranks at all costs.
Walking around the sprawling mansion with his night-vision gear made him flash back to that night when he first encountered the two vampires.
His alliance with the creatures had begun less than a year earlier. Back then, he’d been a con man, a thief, and a home burglar. His specialty was robbing empty mansions over the Christmas holidays. While their well-heeled owners were away on vacation, the fruits of their labor stood empty and abandoned, ripe for the picking. The only thing standing between their most prized possessions and the thieves eager to fill their coffers was a good alarm system. And Todd was an expert when it came to cracking alarms.
So, when the holidays came around, Todd started rolling up his sleeves and went to work. Bah Humbug. A little toil around the holidays payed off handsomely for the rest of the year—who said that crime didn’t pay?
But his life changed on that fateful Christmas Eve when he broke into the vampires’ mansion. He’d expected to find antiques and valuables he could pawn. Instead he discovered his true calling.
That night Todd, the burglar died and Todd, the Familiar was born.
At first, he did not understand why the creatures spared him. Had the vampires showed mercy because it was Christmas Eve? Talk about a ridiculous notion. Were they impressed by how he kept his terror in check? Had his eloquent pleas for mercy won over their inhuman hearts? Also doubtful. Maybe they’d simply recognized the potential in his comely features and silver tongue. Not true either.
Later, he learned that the previous Familiar had hanged himself the same night he broke into their mansion. Holiday cheer must have gotten the last fella down and made him realize he wasn’t cut out for the job. Being a Familiar wasn’t an easy gig. It required an iron stomach, a heart of ice, and steely determination.
In the end, the vampires spared Todd because he picked the right night to ransack their lair. They needed a new Familiar, simple as that.
Todd had gladly accepted his new duties and never looked back.
And here he was now. One victim closer to receiving the reward which the vampires had promised him.
Todd had almost reached the end of a hallway when he heard a scream. Not an unexpected development on nights like this one.
The surprising part was that Natalie wasn’t the one doing the screaming.
Chapter Fourteen
The keening shrieks cutting through the mansion weren’t human. But these weren’t the vampires’ hunting calls or the animalistic roars of joy when they fed on their victims.
What was going on?
Todd picked up his pace, and his chest grew tight with unease.
One more inhuman wail reverberated through the mansion. Followed by an unnerving silence.
Had Natalie turned the tables on her undead pursuers? Impossible. She was unarmed, practically blind in the dark house which was a veritable maze even when the lights were on.
There had to be another explanation. Was there something physically wrong with her? Was her blood contaminated in some way?
Again, the notion felt far-fetched. His masters had preferences for their food but were more than capable of feasting on drug addicts or cancer patients if there was no other choice. Nothing about Natalie suggested that she was tainted. He’d handpicked her from a list of potential victims, determined to please his masters.
Something else was happening here.
Todd vowed to get to the bottom of the matter despite his mounting anxiety.
He reached the end of the hallway, stepped into the next room and… froze.
The curtains of the dining room were wide open, allowing moonlight to flood the space. Sprawled across the thick Persian carpet lay the blackened remains of two smoking bodies.
No!
Panic conquered fear as he surged toward the two vampires. Their albino skin burned to a crisp, the red light in their slitted eyes fading fast. One of them—the bodies were so blackened that he couldn’t tell if it was Damian or Athan—let out a pain-filled gasp before their flesh and bones crumbled into ash.
Todd’s heart slammed against his rib cage. What could have done this to his masters besides sunlight?
He stared at the beams of moonlight lancing the room where the vampires’ bodies had fallen. There were rules to this shit. Moonlight wasn’t sunlight. And loyal Familiars didn’t watch their master perish before they could share their dark gift with them.
“Told them not to look into the light.”
The male voice made Todd freeze.
His gaze flicked back and forth as he combed the dining hall for the speaker, his night-vision goggles transforming the room into a green streak.
“Who are you? Show yourself, goddamnit!”
“Don’t shed any tears for these beasts, Todd. They lived long lives, unlike most of their victims. Or their Familiars.”
A chill crept down Todd’s spine. The speaker had to be in the room, yet he remained invisible. For a crazed moment, he considered the possibility that this man might be one of Natalie’s ex-boyfriends who’d followed her to the mansion. He immediately dismissed it. Not even the most hardened biker or gang banger on the planet could take out two vampires.
“Tell me, Todd, what appeals to you most about being a vampire? Is it the idea of never growing old? Or perhaps you’re attracted to the power?”
Before he could answer, a figure peeled from the shadows.
Blood roared in Todd’s ears as the stranger stepped into the moonlight, revealing his grizzled, unshaven features. The man’s cold eyes promised death.
Todd bit his lips and wished he’d brought some sort of weapon with him. When he first began to serve the undead, he’d always carried a hunting knife with him. His justification was that he needed the blade in case a potential victim got wise to what he was up to and turned on him. But that had been a lie. The knife was meant to protect him from his masters.
He’d stopped carrying it when he realized that the vampires would kill him before he could draw the blade. Not that they’d ever harm him, their loyal Familiar.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” the stranger said.
Todd whirled; the words having come from right behind him. His next breath caught in his throat as his eyes fell on a tall man in a tattered leather coat, his features shrouded in darkness.
“I get you,” the stranger said. “Who doesn’t want to be on top of the food chain? Sure beats being at the bottom, right?”
The question hung in the air. Then the stranger continued.
“The ability to decide over who lives and dies is real power, isn’t it? Picking your mast
er’s victims gave you a taste, and you wanted more. Unfortunately for you, you’ll never get a chance to indulge your appetite ever again.”
The man appeared unarmed, yet Todd was shivering all over. There was something about his confident, calm tone that sent jolts of terror through him. If this stranger could take out two vampires with ease, what chance did he stand?
“Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“Doesn’t matter who I am. And I think you know what I want.”
Around the room wispy smoke formed into nearly a dozen ghostly figures. The figures were familiar. They were the poor souls that he’d lured to their death with the promise of happiness, only to betray them in the worst way possible. They surrounded Todd, eyes staring at him in accusation. He gasped in disbelief.
The stranger took a step closer, and Todd took one back.
“You like monsters. How about I introduce you to another one?”
The stranger stepped into the moonlight. No longer were his features human. A beast from the deepest pits of Hell stared back at him.
Words wouldn’t have been able to do the horned, red-skinned features justice. The demonic creature was an abomination and made his slain vampire masters look like a pair of pretty boys.
For a moment, both the demon in the shabby coat and the Familiar stood in tableau; Todd prostrated before this devil, almost like he’d found a new master to worship.
And then the demon’s clawed fingers dug deep into Todd’s flesh, and the mouth with the shark-like serrated teeth found the soft tissue of the man’s throat.
Todd had dreamt of being a monster.
He thought he knew what that meant.
But now he realized, far too late, that there were worse things in this world than vampires. As his life drained out of the gaping wound in his neck, he stared into the face of true, otherworldly evil.
It stared back, grinning with bloody teeth.
Chapter Fifteen
With the familiar’s death, the souls of his victims were free and had faded back into the darkness.
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