Beckoned: Born of Darkness (Book 1)

by R. B. Fields

  The fish scatter, the big one flipping its tail in its haste to get away.

  I sigh. Animals have never liked me. I peer into the dark water, devoid of fish on this side — devoid of life. Utterly silent. Like the bedroom after my mother died … after the monsters left.

  The knife burns against my flesh, a damp heat on my thigh. It can’t be a coincidence that she gave me this blade to protect myself the night she was killed. She knew.

  She knew.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I turn. The house looks different in the shadow of night, the jagged stones painted in lines of black and gray, the horizon beyond a watercolor of brilliant purples. A shadowy figure stands in the dark window on the second story, eyes flaming like fire.

  12

  Kain

  I live on the outside, but I’ve always felt that way — belonging is a state of mind. It’s not so much that I’m the youngest, born to this life later than they were; I don’t have the social skills they have. Even as a human, I had my music and not much else, and it’s crazy to think that would change just because I turned.

  Three hundred years isn’t a long time in the life of a vampire, but I know things humans never will. I can play thirty musical instruments. I speak twelve languages that are familiar to humans and countless others that they’ve never heard of — my ease with languages is why I was valuable … why the vampires turned me. Why they kept me. I have read thousands of human books, but in the vampire world, I’ve read texts that none of them will ever read; that even other vampires cannot translate.

  And none of that matters now — we are under attack.

  I sit on the couch in the grand living room, the walls of stone softened by the plush furniture and the softer area rug that looks like the hide of a great polar bear. It isn’t polar bear, of course — vampires would never kill an endangered species for sport. We have respect for creatures outside of our own even if we do sometimes have to … adjust their populations.

  The others stand, Markula at once end of the long granite breakfast bar, Silas and Draynor at the other. It is their way, dominant even in conversation. I would love to pick up my guitar, pluck along while they figure out what our next move should be, but I’d rather avoid the looks Markula will level at me if I do. He’s already tossed his helmet onto the granite countertop, and the overheads hit the gaunt lines of his face, carving deeper shadows across his craggy flesh — a horror movie monster. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll all look like that one day. If I might. He didn’t look like that in life, wasn’t nearly so old when he was taken by the darkness.

  “What am I thinking now?” Markula snarls at Silas.

  This is about the woman. I do not have anything to lose by her presence — I have no power to temper — but the air feels different when she’s nearby. Even now, with wood and stone separating me from her, the tips of my fingers tingle. I need to do something — move, fidget. She makes me … tense.

  Silas squares his shoulders. They could tear one another apart if they wanted to, but there are few like us, few with so strong a moral compass, and we all know it. Mikael and vampires like him are most common — they bite at random, making copy after vicious copy, but they care little about how their progeny behave after they’ve turned.

  We can’t afford to lose even one. We are family. We are blood.

  And vampire blood is stronger than the blood of any human. And that is why Markula is so afraid, though he would never admit that. Markula lost his human family to a violence so horrific he has never spoken of it, not to any of us. He blocks it even from himself. Even Silas dares not peek. But Draynor can feel it — a deeply wicked sorrow, like a stabbing in the ribs that does not abate. We’ve all seen the rosary he carries, and I do not believe it was ever his — those pink beads are not his style. And his rage … Well, you don’t need to be psychic to feel that. Even the human surely can.

  “I can’t hear what you’re thinking, Markula, but I can guess,” Silas says, crossing his arms. “And we can’t just give her to them.”

  “So you have to be near her?” Markula snarls. “Is that it? You’re reliant on this woman for your powers now — powers you’ve taken for granted since you turned?” Markula shakes his head. “This is a dangerous precedent, one far more dangerous than killing her. Perhaps if she’s gone, you’ll go back to normal.”

  “We can’t kill her. She’s my … ” Silas freezes, perhaps confused — uh oh. This is what I was concerned about. I’ve read the lore, and I can finish his sentence in my head, but I dare not say it aloud.

  “Whatever she is, we can’t take a human along on a hunt,” Markula snaps. “She can’t tag along wherever we go, and if the other vamps find out we’re allowing a human to live with us, not as a slave, but as an equal … ” His nostrils flare. “It makes us look weak. What you’re suggesting is nonsense.”

  Draynor steps closer to Markula and pauses in the middle of the kitchen. “I know how this sounds, but Silas is right. She doesn’t only dampen our powers. When I was … ” Draynor clears his throat as if embarrassed, but that can’t be it — he’s never embarrassed about anything. “When I was with her, I could feel the other hives as I’ve never been able to before. Their fury won’t be sated just with her blood. They’ve hated us for years, and they will take this as an opportunity to kill us off.”

  Their hatred is a fact, though we have never been certain as to why. Silas has heard their disdain — for rejecting traditional vampire culture, for being “too good” to hunt the way they do. But the hatred is overkill, which makes me believe the real reasons are still somewhat of a mystery.

  Silas is nodding. “I heard them, too, in the woods, though they were very far away — farther than I should be able to hear. Something about her is increasing my range and the intensity of my powers, and — ”

  Markula throws his hands in the air, sending one of the lights crashing to the kitchen tile. “Enough! When you’re not with her, you can’t function. You can’t fuck her every minute of every day.”

  Draynor shakes his head. “Of course not, but none of us know what this is, Markula. Not even you. We can’t afford to get rid of her. What if she’s a weapon? What if another hive takes her in, and instead of killing her, they — ”

  “Use her the way you are?”

  Silas shakes his head. “It’s not like that.” He turns to me. “Kain, what do you think? Have you read about this? Anything like this?” His eyes are pleading — desperate. This is worse than I thought.

  “Yeah, maybe you learned about it in one of those books you stole from the goblins.” Markula’s snark is sharp in my chest. The vampires who turned me go by many names, but they are most often called Librarians. Markula is right, though — they’re more like trolls, toiling away in the underbelly of the earth, examining things that others have written. They’ve learned all they can about human history, but vampire history is longer and far more complex — a million pieces from a million smaller hives. Their goal, if they have one, is to find a way to coexist, but I couldn’t exist there with them, translating day in day out in the bowels of the earth. I perhaps only stayed for so long because I was already accustomed to taking orders. I always was a good soldier.

  “I only took a few books; ones they wouldn’t miss.” Ones that were beginning to edge toward the fanatical — the ones with prophecies. The ones that suggest annihilating an entire species might be the only way for yours to survive. I still have not translated them all, but you never know what books like that might do in the wrong hands.

  “Are you going to answer the question or not?” Markula growls.

  “No, I don’t know what’s happening.” It’s partially true, but I’m relieved that Silas can’t hear inside my head — that he’s foggy with her in the yard. Because I do have suspicions. And it appears this woman has become more critical to him than I can ever be.

  Markula stares at me a moment longer as if he knows I’m lying, then turns to Draynor. “Mikael’s
goons aren’t disciplined enough not to kill her,” Markula says. “They’ll kill her, and then they’ll try to kill us, and they have the numbers to potentially succeed. We should give her up as a peace offering.”

  But a peace offering won’t help me, which is the other — albeit selfish — complication. If they’re right about her, will being with her awaken a power I have yet to discover? I am not concerned about jealousy — we all know that the confines of monogamy serve no one but a patriarchal underbelly. Men fare better when paired with women in both health and happiness, but women do not always fare better with a single man. Yet, they are told this is the normal way of things, forced to agree or be shunned.

  Humans.

  Vampires have no use for any pro-monogamy argument. Male and female vampires alike are wealthy enough on their own. We do not need anything to extend our life or to enhance our wealth or to make us stronger or healthier.

  Until now. Until her.

  But Silas is shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s only Mikael’s group that’s following us. Yes, they’re still after us, hungry for our blood because of Mikael’s death, but the ones I heard today … they’re after something else as well.”

  “They want her,” Draynor says. Silas’s eyes darken. But he nods.

  “Then the decision is made. It’s pointless to risk even one of our lives for her.” Markula’s eyes blaze with a fire that no human shell should be able to contain. “I will not let her be the death of us all. You’re like addicts.”

  “I’d hardly call it that,” Silas scoffs. “An addict needs more all the time, and — ”

  “You’ve had her twice in less than two days!” Markula growls, and the others fall silent. “The ones who are after her are probably hoping we keep her. If she makes you weaker — ”

  “We can’t get into her head either,” Silas says. “Not unless we’re together — when she allows herself to be open to us. But it’s clear that she’s special. She can strengthen us or weaken us, but she’s impervious to our powers. And you should have seen her on that bridge — she went right at Mikael, was still standing after he landed a blow that should have crushed her skull.”

  Markula shrugs. “Maybe he missed.”

  “He never misses, Markula. He never would. He was an expert with the bolt — it’s like a heat-seeking missile.”

  The bolt. That was Mikael’s special power, a way to throw energy in solid form. He didn’t need a weapon, not against a human. And she’d fended off both that and the strangulation wire? This is news to me … and concerning.

  “We shall address this in the morning; we don’t have the time tonight.” Markula levels his brilliant ruby gaze at each of them, leaving me for last — the straggler. His fangs shine in the lamplight. “Tonight, we have an agenda that will not wait.”

  13

  Dawn

  I see Kain before I hear him. The inky blackness of night is thick by the time he emerges from the house, but his silhouette against the dull glow of the open door is more prominent than any sound thrown from his feet on the path — it’s as if he’s not walking at all, merely floating over the cobbles, though I see his hips moving and the steady shift of his shoulders. Perhaps it’s his eyes; they’re like those of a big cat — amber in the moon. Not like the red eyes in the house, though. Just the thought of that crimson gaze fixed on me makes my hackles rise.

  I step toward him over the mossy path. “They sent you to get the human from the pond, huh?”

  Kain nods — far taller than I am, six-two at least, with a finer musculature and a sharper bone structure than the others, but there’s a ruggedness about him that keeps him from being … pretty. He’s like a tall George Michael, but without the earring or the 80s hair. The lights from the house glint off the tips of his close-cropped locks. “I am sorry for the delay,” he says. “I know the bugs must be bad.”

  I shake my head. “It’s fine.” Insects don’t like me any more than animals — I don’t think I’ve ever had a mosquito bite.

  “Do you have anyone you need to contact,” he asks. “Family?”

  I shake my head again. “No. My mother died — she was all I had.” All I wanted is more accurate, but Kain isn’t going to judge me. Even among the vampires he’s an outcast. I don’t know how I know this for sure — maybe that shared pain thing — but I’m positive I’m right. As for me, it’s not that I hate people, not that I’m scared of losing another person after my mother, though that might be partially true. The fact is, I’ve always been happier alone.

  “How did she die?”

  It takes me a moment to register that he’s talking to me; between my ears, panic has risen like a blinking warning light: Danger, danger, danger. I square my shoulders, hoping that it will ease the needling sensation at the base of my spine. “She was murdered.”

  Rage often shouts, screaming through your marrow, but danger, real danger, whispers. And murder’s almost always silent. “What about your mom?” I snap, forcing my voice to remain steady. “You don’t get to ask all the questions.” I’m here for protection, maybe I can even get some answers about this damn knife, but I’m not here to be interrogated beside a pond full of asshole coy.

  Kain nods — his blurry silhouette shifts. “I was brought up in an orphanage.”

  “How’d you wind up here?” I realize I’m stalling him, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I don’t want to hear the results of their little meeting — my skin is vibrating with tension. If he’s here to toss me out on my ass, I’m going to be pissed.

  Kain shrugs one sinewy shoulder. “Not much to tell. I was in the war, which one is irrelevant — they are all the same. I do not remember dying. I do not remember turning. I do know it took me nearly eighty years to find Markula … and those like him.” A swishing noise cuts the night — the fish. I peek over my shoulder, and the big one flips its tail from the opposite side of the pond. Maybe he’ll fling himself onto the opposite shore and crawl away past the maples to die in the fields beyond.

  Are they sensing what I do? Kain makes my insides feel much the same as I do before a storm, staring at the electric green sky, just waiting for the wind to rip off the roof. My mother used to tell me I was like that too — a ball of tension just waiting to erupt.

  That’s why he bothers me, I realize: He reminds me of me too much. And he has an agenda for being out here — I would.

  But he’s not looking at me. “Today was hard for you,” he says to the dark water.

  Something in the way he says it makes my insides shudder. “I’ve been through worse.” Like when my mother was murdered by your kind. But they’re different. They are. I have to believe that.

  He narrows his eyes at me — slitted irises. Like a serpent. I can feel the wire around my throat, the swollen line of bruised flesh. I raise my fingertips to palpate the injury.

  “Does your neck hurt?”

  “Not really, not anymore.” My arm feels better too — beneath the bandage there is no itchiness of scab, none that I can feel. I’ve always healed quicker than the norm, but a wound like that should take weeks. But I say none of that. “Hey, a bruise is better than having my trachea crushed by a vampire serial killer, right?”

  He leans closer to me, and though I did not see him move his arm, I feel his fingers on my throat. My flesh explodes into goosebumps, tingling from my chin to my collarbone. I can’t tell if I hate it, can’t tell if I’m excited or terrified. His touch is not like that of the others. The energy inside him runs tighter, a repressed kind of tension — a pressure like boiling water in a clogged kettle. I reach for my blade, but only rest my fingertips on the hilt.

  “We’re all serial killers by your definition,” he says.

  His face is close to mine, so close that I can smell the heady stink of leather and a softer greener scent like fresh-cut grass. The world grows quiet. “You should go in now, retire to your quarters. We’ll be back soon.”

  His hand vanishes. His eyes remain trained on the pond, both
his gaze and the water dark enough to drown in.

  “Wait, where the fuck are you going?”

  “There are no vampires nearby — any close enough won’t make it here before we get home. And we have someone we need to help.”

  “The way you helped me? Some other lady in distress who needs your special skills?”

  He finally turns to me and smiles — I can see the glint of his teeth in the moonlight. “No. We have to visit a pediatrician.”

  “I … what? Why would you have to — ”

  “I already told you.” He turns on his heel, facing the house abruptly as if he’s heard something I cannot, and at the same time, far off in the trees, a flock of birds or perhaps bats take flight with a fluttering sound that reminds me of the slapping of flesh on flesh. “Go inside if it suits you,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I blink. Kain … he’s gone as if he literally vanished. The world around me is utterly and completely still for one breath, then it erupts into a cacophony of squalling birds — first the ones around the driveway, then another group farther up the road. Retreating.

  Never since my mother died have I hated being alone.

  But I do now.

  I don’t want to be here by myself. And more than that, they’re off to help someone — to fix something. As many times as the world around me has changed, saving others has been my one constant, whether stitching up a wound or helping the police catch a killer.

  I can help people here. I can still be me. I had not registered that I felt trapped, but now, suddenly, the thought makes me feel … free.

  The anxiety in my chest lightens. I don’t register my intent to go after Kain, but then I’m running, my feet throbbing against the stones, then the grass, then the porch. The shrieks of the birds are already fading, their screams receding into the night.