Contents
Title Page
Episode 1: Shadow and Light
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode 2: Beautiful Memory
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode 3: The Games We Play
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode 4: What Once Was Lost
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Episode 5: Unfurled Shadows
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Bonus Short Story
About the Author
The New Vampire
The Vampyr, Book 3
V.R. Cumming
Published by Bone Diggers Press, Clayton, GA.
© 2015 C.D. Watson. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9907730-6-1
Description:
Gianna Logan had it all, a new family, a baby on the way, and a future as bright as a shooting star. She lost that life one spring night to the ruthless greed of a half-mad vampire. After months in a cage, she awakens to the searing light, her memory threadbare, the shadows roiling through her mind, and the bond with her husbands broken.
As she slowly rediscovers herself, she must navigate the often treacherous world of the Vampyr, where nothing is ever as it seems. Under the glittering surface, war brews and the past Gianna thought long gone slithers into her life, claiming a part of her she thought never to have again.
Contains the bonus short story “We All Fall Down.”
The Vampyr Series
Book 1: The Vampire’s Pet
Book 3: The New Vampire
Stay tuned for more stories set in the world of the Vampyr!
Book 2: The Vampire’s Favorite
Book 4: The Master Vampire
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License Notes:
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Disclaimer:
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to persons living or dead is purely a coincidence. Actual localities and entities are mentioned solely for the purpose of adding realism to the story.
Episode 1
Shadow and Light
Shadow and light, dark and bright
Consuming mind, and flesh and bone
Newly born to blood, I rise
Cold hollow I, undead,
Alone
--From “Ergasta Halloweye,” author unknown
Chapter One
Light pierced the shadows, stabbing viciously at me. I shrank from it, forced by an instinct I neither recognized nor craved. There was something wrong with the light, the angle of it as it sought out my hiding place in the dark, the very fact that it existed at all. I was a creature of darkness. So Grandmother had said, and so it must be.
A man stepped out of the shadows into the light. He was slender, graceful in the eerie way of Grandmother, his dark hair shaggy and somehow radiant. Gold and platinum flashed on his fingers as he knelt in front of me, separated by the cold bars of the cage that had become my home. I snarled at him, snapping my teeth when he extended his hand. Grandmother said I must be kind to the man, him and the big one trailing silently behind.
I had no intentions of doing so.
The little man was an enemy. The weight of his otherness pressed heavily against mine, a presence as cold and solid as the thin bars that kept me from destroying him, and with him, the threat I sensed.
“Gianna, baby, please. Try to remember.”
I didn’t want to. Why didn’t anyone understand? It hurt to go back to the Before. There was something there, something confusing, a tenderness that was as wrong as the light, coated with a wrenching agony, a terrible thirst, and the fetid stench of fate’s twisted hand.
The Now was the only thing that mattered, that and the blood I could sense flowing through the men’s veins. A rabid hunger urged me forward, closer to the light. “Feed me.”
The slender man flinched from the rough gravel of my voice. “We’re not food, Gianna.”
I laughed, harsh, scratchy. All men were food. Did the little man not know?
Grandmother must instruct them better, though I would not tell her so. I dared not. Though smaller, Grandmother was older, powerful, and firm. I must not cross her, she said, else she would not allow me to feed. It was the only time I was allowed out of the cage, and even then, she chained me to the bed so that a large brute of a man could fuck me while I fed. I didn’t mind. He never…did something inside me, never…
I searched for the word, the memory, and came across something else, someone else doing that to me, making me feel things, wrong things, like the light. Tender, sweet, concern, soft, a useless tangle of wrong, wrong, wrong. A strange pressure in my chest bubbled over and I screamed, arching toward the men, and scrambled to find purchase along the smooth bottom of the cage so that I could reach them, punish them for making me feel the bad things, things from the Before. I screamed and screamed, until my voice left me and an odd wetness coated my cheeks.
“Come on, Eric,” the big man said. “She’s not ready yet.”
“I know. God. I can’t stand seeing her like this.”
“Me, neither. It’ll be over soon, though.”
“Pray to God it is.” The slender man stood and looked down at me with the wrong things, the tender things. “I love you, Gianna. So much. I wish you could feel it.”
I screamed at him again, an empty, breathy rush of air, and slumped back into the corner of the cage as they turned and walked away.
* * *
I have no way of knowing how long the shadows consumed me.
* * *
Light pierced the shadows, stabbing through my eyelids, lifting the veil of darkness. Grandmother stood outside my cage, the impenetrable fortress that had been my home for as long as I could remember. Beside her stood two men, a small one with a haggard expression etched into his fine features and a large one with hair nearly as pale as the thin light disrupting the peaceful shadows of my existence.
“Gianna, dearling. We have guests. Isn’t it lovely?”
I cowered away from her, remembering the bite of her fingers in my flesh when I’d broken her rule, the snap of the whip, the sting of it against my back. The marks no longer ached, healed quickly by the blood of the dark man, Grandmother’s man, who’d held me down while my mouth
was at his throat.
“Come, dearling. Eric and Jason miss you so. Do you not wish to greet them?”
I curled into myself, turning my back on them, and ignored the hiss of the small one’s breath whistling out of his lungs.
“What the hell did you do to her, Elizabet?”
“Only what I had to. She attacked Alice a few days ago.”
Fabric rustled, a scuffle broke out. I peered over my shoulder. The big one was holding the smaller one with a firm hand. Grandmother had that look on her face, the angry look that made her eyes black and cold and hard. A whimper rose from deep in my chest, escaping before I could contain it, and the small one’s eyes fixed on me, radiating a hopeless futility
It echoed through me and I cringed, hiding from it the way I hid from the light, as if they would scorch my skin through to the bone.
Grandmother’s voice echoed softly when she spoke. “She will heal, Eric, and only remember the rule, not the punishment.”
“Swear it,” the small man said, his voice thick.
“I so swear. Come, now. Your bride has a way to go before she is once again ready for you.”
They ambled out, their footsteps scuffing along the rough, cold floor. Something brushed along my mind, something soft and light. The big man, I think, and then they were gone, leaving me to the darkness in which I was most comfortable.
* * *
I have no way of knowing how long the shadows consumed me.
* * *
Light pierced the shadows, bringing with it a haze of fury and need. I hungered and thirsted and raged in the confines of my cage, throwing myself against the bars until my limbs were bloody and bruised.
“Gianna!” Grandmother’s voice lashed across me, feeding the frenzy of hatred roiling through my blood. “Stop it this instance.”
I ignored her, reveling in the wildness of the fury that held me in its grasp. Something was gone, something that was mine, only mine, and I wanted it back. I didn’t know what that something was, only that I was empty without it, empty and lost and broken.
“Give it back,” I ground out in a low, harsh bark of sound. “Give it back to me.”
A shadow moved, separating itself from the darkness, and then another joined it, one large, one small, their ebon hues broken only by the glint of metal on their fingers.
“Jesus Christ,” the shorter one said. “How long has she been like this?”
“All day.” Grandmother’s voice held a weariness I understood. I was tired, too, tired of being empty and alone, and wanted something in me besides the raw hatred boiling like acid in my gut. “It’s been a year today. Her body remembers, even as her mind refuses the truth.”
“Will she ever be whole again?”
“We can only hope.”
The tall shadow wrapped himself around the shorter one and I screamed at them, screamed until my throat hurt and the sound died and there was nothing left in me, nothing at all. I collapsed onto the cold, slick floor of my cage, panting through the agony of rage and sorrow that slowly filled me up again.
The shorter shadow pressed a hand to his eyes as liquid seeped out and his body trembled with great sobs. Grandmother took him from the tall one, holding him to her as a mother does a child. The tall one knelt beside my cage, his features suddenly distinct in the dim light, the blue of his eyes lit from within by the same wildness that bound me to this hell. Cornflower blue. The color whispered through my mind from an unknown place. I shied away from it, instinctively recognizing it as a threat to…something, something important.
“Come back to us, Gigi. We need you, all of you.”
I focused on the rings on his hand, the metal so unlike the bars of my cage, and gasped as a memory stabbed at me, three hands on white, their fingertips touching. Three sets of rings and an emotion that slapped at me over and over again, slapping, hitting, biting, clawing until I was raw and wounded and bleeding.
“No,” I whispered with what voice I had left. That was gone now, the rings on those hands, those beautiful hands, the wrong things, the good things. That was the empty that swept over me, the something I needed, and it hurt, hurt so bad, hurt so bad. “No no no no no no no no.”
My voice diminished into a soft groan as the tall one stood and stared down at me from a great height. Grandmother laid a hand on his arm and he turned and gathered the small shadow to him, merging with him into one, and then they were gone, swallowed by the darkness as much as I had ever been.
* * *
I have no way of knowing how long the shadows consumed me. A long time, very long. Days and weeks and months. Hours and minutes and seconds.
I waited it out, sometimes patiently, sometimes not. Grandmother sang to me, her voice lilting through the dank air, and her man fed me, fucking me hard while my mouth was at his throat and his life force dribbled into me.
When we were done, it was simply another shadow I wove into the cloak of darkness surrounding me, the endless, eternal night that was now my home.
I came to hate the darkness and all it represented, the loss and the agony, the futility of my lonely existence, and the blood, always the blood.
The shadows consumed me, and then one day, I learned how to consume them.
* * *
Light pierced the shadows.
I blinked, turned my face toward it, welcoming the rays of sunlight I could never again enter.
“Gianna?”
I blinked again and turned toward the low, male voice. A slender man with shaggy brown hair stood near me, on the other side of a row of dull metal bars. His features were familiar, the intelligence shining from his eyes along with a glow of other, the high brow and sharp cheekbones, and the careful way he held himself, as if he’d stumble over air if it got in his way.
“Do I…” I coughed to clear the gravel from my throat and tried again. “Do I know you?”
“Yes, baby, sweet God.” He laughed and dropped to his knees. “I’m Eric, your husband. Do you remember me?”
I prodded the cotton fog in my brain, searching for some sign beyond the vague sense of the familiar. “No. I’m sorry. You’re my husband?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
He crawled forward cautiously and grasped the bars with slim-fingered hands. A glint of gold and platinum shone from his fingers and I edged closer, curious.
“Be careful, Eric,” a deep voice said from the shadows. “She may not be herself yet.”
I searched the dark, looking for the source of that voice, familiar, sweet. He had hidden himself too well for even my eyes, so I turned back to the slender man. I stretched a hand out, a polite, questing hand. “May I…?”
He breathed out a laugh. “Of course.”
I scooted carefully forward along the slick metal bottom under my bare legs. The floor was cold, ungiving, and I shivered with it. When I was within an arm’s length, I touched a finger to the gold ring. A memory surfaced, sharp and beautiful, of three hands pressed against a white tablecloth, their fingertips touching, a gold band around each ring finger and a platinum one on the thumbs. I flinched and gasped as the memory expanded to include a song, the muted voices of a crowd, a giddy happiness that pushed through the darkness I’d always known, lifting me into the light.
I cried out and fell to the floor, away from the slender man, curling around myself as the happiness turned into something else, something warm and exquisite and tender, a foreign sense that overwhelmed me with its newness.
The slender man sighed and stood, and fear clasped my heart in its greedy fingers.
“No, please.” I shook the alien emotions off and crawled toward the bars on limbs that quivered and quaked. “Don’t leave me. I’ve been alone for so long.”
He stared down at me for a long time, so long I thought he’d leave me anyway, and then he dropped to the ground and leaned against the bars. Footsteps rang on the hard, concrete floor beyond the cage. A moment later, a large, flaxen-haired man with cornflower blue eyes and a steady gaze knelt be
side the slender man. “Looks like she’s mostly back.”
“Thank God,” the slender man said. “Can you get Elizabet for me, and a blanket?”
“Blanket first,” the tall one said. He pressed his lips to the slender man’s cheek and rose, and a few moments later, returned with a soft, brightly colored quilt. “I’ll be back in a little while. If she gets violent, move away.”
“She won’t.” The slender man pushed the blanket between the bars and I took it, shook it out, wrapped it around my shoulders, warding off the damp chill. “Will you, Gianna?”
Gianna. That was me, I just knew it. I nodded slowly and clutched the fabric tightly to my naked breasts. “I’ll be good. Eric.”
He smiled, a gentle tilt of his lips, and reached through the bars to trail warm fingertips down my cheek. “You always were, my love.”
I leaned against the cold metal and sighed when his hand stroked my back through the quilt. I didn’t remember him, this tender man and his large companion, but they’d broken my loneliness, brought a good light into the shadows. For that, I would do anything they asked of me, anything at all.
Chapter Two
The tall one returned a few minutes later with Grandmother and her man. I curled into Eric’s embrace, gathering his comfort around me while I still could. She had come to chase him away, I just knew it. I couldn’t bear the loss, not so soon after he’d brought a piece of the light back to me.
His arm tightened around my shoulders. “Don’t be afraid. She’s not going to hurt you.”
Pain flashed through me, stripes falling upon my back in continuous, agonizing lashes, and then the endless, gnawing emptiness, eating away at the light I craved. Of all those, I feared only the latter. “She’ll take you from me,” I whispered.
The New Vampire Page 1
