The Unhallowed (Book Five in the Witch Hunter Saga)

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “There’s a situation,” Tristan replied.

  “What kind of situation?”

  “Reed called,” he said. “They found a desiccated vampire strung up with a strange symbol carved into his chest.”

  That’s when he saw it. The witch’s rune scrawled on the side of the theater in what looked like red paint or blood. A perfect circle cut in three diagonal parts with heavy brushstrokes, the center line finishing off at the bottom with something akin to an asterisk. He knew that image. He’d seen it before…

  “Nye?”

  Tristan’s voice broke through his foggy mind, and he blinked, the image dissolving. The side of the building was blank like nothing was ever there to begin with, and he was left confused as to whether it was witchy mind tricks or his own insecurities playing with him.

  “Where?” he asked, turning away from the theater.

  “The construction site on Queen Victoria Street…”

  “Cheapside,” he mused.

  He’d grown up there, in the slums not far from the bustling marketplace of the Middle Ages. Cheapside stood in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral and had been full of merchants, rich and poor. Since his mother had been one of them, selling her meager wares seven days a week so they had enough coin to eat and keep a roof over their heads, Nye had come to know the district like the back of his own hand. He’d been known to pickpocket unsuspecting gentlemen on many occasions. That was the only way they knew to survive in those days.

  Now Cheapside was home to a modern shopping center, One New Change, and various high-end retail stores. Progress didn’t slow for any one man.

  “I’m not far from there,” Nye went on. “I’ll meet you at the site.”

  Hanging up the call, he took one more glance back at the theater. The wall was still blank, but his blood thrummed in his veins, making him uneasy. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  When he arrived at the construction site, he recognized Reed standing with Tristan at the street entrance.

  The vampire stood a head taller than both of them, his muscled frame giving the vampire an air of added strength. Being born in the nineteenth century meant that he had been afforded the medical knowledge his elders hadn’t. Simply put, humanity had evolved itself into a race of giants compared to the people of the Dark and Middle Ages.

  Nye saw a lot of himself in the young vampire, and he’d pegged him to become the official leader of the Six before long. He was ruthless and bloodthirsty but had a calm and collected manner about him. He thought about his decisions, making the most of any given situation. And he was a handsome bastard.

  “The security guards have been compelled, sir,” Reed said as Nye came to a halt. “The area has been contained. The others have gone to make sure the perimeter is watertight.”

  “Good. Where is the body?”

  “We took him down,” Reed said, guiding him forward through the construction site. “He was just hanging there for anyone to see.”

  “Hanging how?”

  “Steel rods were impaled through his wrists and ankles. The ends were in the ground hoisting him up about twenty feet. There was another rod in his spine to keep him from sagging,” the vampire explained. “I don’t know how they got him up there, but it was sight.” They came to a stop beside a tarp that had been laid over the body. “Here he is.”

  Kneeling beside the corpse, Nye lifted the covering off him and revealed what he came to verify. The vampire was desiccated, his veins bulging from gray flesh and very much dead. His gaze fixed on his bare torso and the symbol he already knew he was going to find.

  There was nothing crude about the way the flesh had been sliced. Every stroke was deliberate and well-practiced. The blade used had been sharper than a diamond. The circle was perfect in execution, and each diagonal stroke never wavered.

  Staring down at the gashes, he frowned. It was the same symbol he’d seen painted on the side of the theater, and in that moment, he knew he hadn’t been imagining it. If a witch had put this here, then only one coven could be responsible for it. The thought chilled his already dead body to pure ice.

  The Unhallowed.

  The ancient coven of witches had died out three hundred years before, so why was one of their symbols carved into the chest of one of his vampires? Was it a copycat, or was the coven still around?

  “They found the same image painted on walls throughout the city,” Tristan said. “It never changes shape or form.”

  That confirmed what he already knew about the image he’d seen earlier, which hadn’t been a hallucination. It was meant for his eyes only.

  “It’s a warning,” Nye said, rising to his feet.

  “From who?” the knight mused out loud. “And for what?”

  Nye snorted and cast his gaze back to the dead vampire. If it was the Unhallowed, then he had a big problem on his hands. They all did. Keeping the knowledge to himself would cause more problems than not when more bodies began to show. This was the first of many—he didn’t have any doubt about that.

  “The Unhallowed,” he said, turning back to Tristan and Reed.

  “The who?” the young vampire asked.

  “The Unhallowed were a coven of witches I was led to believe had died out three hundred years ago. By the looks of him, this is no longer the case. It may be a follower of their cult…or it may be a resurgence. Either way, I am not taking any chances.”

  “A cult?” Tristan asked. “I’ve never heard of this coven before.”

  “They deal in dark magic. Blood sacrifices and rituals that call on the deepest parts of the spirit world… They channel living creatures for more power.”

  “Like vampires,” Reed said, glancing uneasily at the corpse.

  “No matter who it is, they have to be stopped before they kill again,” Nye said, turning away.

  “So what do we do now?” the young vampire asked.

  Nye didn’t know how to stop them short of cutting off their heads. A vivid memory appeared in his mind’s eye, and he began to grind his teeth. Eleanor. She was an Unhallowed witch who he’d deigned loving until the coven found out. That day in the woods surrounding York…for all he knew the symbol she’d carved into his forehead was the same one that adorned that poor bastard behind him.

  “Sir?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he turned to face Reed. “Take the body away, and burn it. No evidence is to be left behind, do you understand?”

  He glanced at Tristan before asking, “Is that all?”

  Allowing his anger to trickle to the surface, Nye felt his skin crawl as his eyes began to change into darkness. “That is all.”

  Turning, he walked away and disappeared into the darkness, his senses stretching out around him, but nothing supernatural moved apart from the vampires he’d left behind him.

  The fact that the symbols had started appearing now was not a coincidence. He was in a position of power, well-known and well-situated in the city. He’d emerged from the shadows, and so had the witches.

  Nye’d had a target on his back for a very long time, one he thought he’d been rid of for three hundred years. He’d killed the daughter of the Unhallowed matriarch, and it had sparked the beginning of their demise. If they had returned, then it wouldn’t be long before they came for him. Vampires had long memories, but those of a witch ran deep into a place of eternal vengeance.

  Long story short, he was screwed.

  As he walked, he thought of sweet, innocent Isobel and began to regret the circumstances she now found herself among. It may not be safe enough to let her leave once Alex and Gabby returned. It had only been two days since she’d arrived, and now he had a serial killer on his hands. A serial killer who knew who he was and what he’d done all that time ago… If they thought they could use Isobel to get to him, they would.

  Nye was fast learning what it meant to be a ruler in this city.

  Nye walked all the way to his old haunt, The Good Mixer.

  Pulling up a stool in a dark corner, he gestur
ed for the entire bottle of scotch and added a bottle of whisky for variation. Beer wasn’t strong enough to dampen the pooled anger and dread that had settled in his stomach.

  He thought over everything he knew about the Unhallowed, but it wasn’t a great deal. Even when he’d been gallivanting around York with Eleanor, he hadn’t learned much. He’d been a new vampire then and very much at the mercy of his emotions, which had been tangled up in his heart and the love they’d shared in his bed.

  When the coven had realized where she’d been spending most of her time, they’d gotten inside her head and turned her against him. The day he’d met her outside of York Minster, she’d lured him to the woods to kill him. No, that wasn’t quite right. She’d rendered him immobile and had carved a symbol into his forehead. Why? He never knew, but perhaps she had been going to channel his energy, picking his corpse clean of all the power she could before discarding him to the predators that roamed the wilderness.

  “He said it was carved into his chest.”

  Nye’s ears pricked as yet another drunken conversation between vampires became heated behind him. What was it about this place that attracted such imbeciles? It was a vampire haunt, but it wasn’t impenetrable to other supernatural creatures…or humans. Unwanted ears still lingered here as much as they did anywhere else in the city, and right now, he couldn’t take any chances the Unhallowed were lurking.

  “Witches,” someone else said. “They’re always trying to siphon power. That’s what I think the symbol is for. There’s no other explanation. I saw one inside the Tube station. It was smeared on the wall in blood, and everyone around me didn’t seem to care…”

  “Then the humans can’t see them,” a gruff-sounding man said. “Only us.”

  “I’ve seen them, too,” another man said. “There was one on the side of the bank just down on the High Street.”

  “Is it the same one that was on the body?”

  “That’s what Bronny said,” a new voice chimed in. “He saw it and told Reed.”

  “Reed?” the gruff vampire asked. “He’s been made one of the Six, did you know that? He’s nothing but a bootlicker.”

  Nye glanced at the time on his phone and saw that only three hours had passed since he’d left the construction site. Word spread quickly, but he shouldn’t be surprised about that considering there were many waiting for him to screw up his duties.

  Downing the last of the whisky, he turned around on the stool and rose to his feet. Straightening his shirt and smoothing his jacket into place, he emerged from his dark corner to put a stop to the excessive and loud gossiping.

  “I don’t know why you people keep bad-mouthing me when you know I like to drink here,” he said, placing a firm hand on the nearest vampire’s shoulder. “You’re acting like a group of gossiping high school mean girls, and nobody likes a bitch.”

  The group fell silent, their eyes widening as they realized their king stood among them. It reminded him of the last time he was here…which was only last week. Apparently, winning a fight by tearing apart his opponent with his bare hands was not enough for some people.

  “You’ve got nothing much to say now, do you?” he went on as they stared at him, each and every one of them squirming in their seats.

  No one replied, the silence stretching to the rest of the pub.

  Fisting his hands into the vampire’s shirt, Nye dragged him from his seat and wrenched him close. “Let it be known that any vampire who brings me the head of the witch responsible will be rewarded beyond compare. No one threatens my people and lives to boast about it, do you understand?” The vampire stared at him, fear rendering him speechless. “Do you understand?”

  Finally, the man nodded, and Nye let him go. Smoothing down his shirt and buttoning his suit jacket, he looked over the group of vampires and those around them who had stopped their drinking to stare.

  “This brazen attack by these witches on one of our own is a personal attack on me,” he declared. “Blood will be repaid in blood, but I will not tolerate insubordination. We are on the brink of war with these witches…” He turned around, looking at every man and woman in the rear of the pub. “A war I do not want to have and a war that I want to end swiftly. Bring me their heads, and you’ll see how generous your new king really is.”

  Picking up the half-finished bottle of scotch, he moved through the room. As he stepped outside into the night, sound erupted from within the pub, voices chattering earnestly, all of them talking about Nye and his offer.

  He had a kingdom at his disposal and a witch problem that would never go away until he struck with everything he had. Why not use the hundreds of London vampires to his advantage? A swift end to a brewing war. With any luck, there’d be a severed head or two on his desk by the end of the week, and the Unhallowed would be dead once more.

  It was a fine plan.

  Chapter 6

  When Nye returned to the mansion, Tristan was waiting for him in the study.

  “Did Reed dispose of the corpse?” he asked, sitting by the fireplace.

  “He sent confirmation through an hour ago,” the knight replied, sitting across from him.

  The night had worn into the small hours of the morning, and as Nye listened to the sounds inside the mansion, he heard the soft patter of Isobel’s heartbeat three rooms down. Of all the opportune times for her to show up, she had to come at the worst one.

  “Do you want to tell me about the Unhallowed and how you know so much about them?” Tristan asked, pulling his attention back to the matter at hand.

  “Does it matter how?” he asked, the two bottles of alcohol he’d consumed still not quite enough to calm the inner beast.

  “Yes, it does. The symbols are spreadin’ at an alarmin’ rate,” Tristan said, handing Nye his phone, which had a whole reel of photographs. “Vampires all over the city have been sendin’ them to the Six, who have sent them to me.”

  Nye swiped through the images, the symbol burning into his long-term memory. It had only been nine hours since he stood outside that theater and saw the symbol for the first time. It was like a disease, multiplying and spreading like a cancer, attacking from every side…even from within.

  Vampires were already talking about the defiled corpse. They were seeing witches runes painted in blood that only supernatural eyes could behold and were still questioning their king’s ability to deal with such a problem. Nine hours. For creatures who weren’t shackled to a little thing called time, they sure worked fast.

  “Have there been any more bodies?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m suspectin’ it’ll only be a matter of time. Somethin’ about this smells like a long time in the makin’.”

  About four hundred years, Nye thought. Witches loved to hold a grudge when someone cuts off the head of one of their own.

  “Tell me about the Unhallowed,” the knight commanded.

  Nye snorted, tossing the phone onto the table beside him.

  “Nye. You’ve encountered them before. If we’re goin’ to put an end to this before it gets any worse, we need to know everythin’.”

  “We? You and me?” Nye pointed between them and rolled his eyes.

  “Of course. We hated one another for a long time, but after everythin’ that happened with Aed… I made you a promise by stayin’ behind to help. This is me helpin’.”

  Miracles never ceased…

  “Yes, I’ve encountered them before. Intimately,” Nye said after a moment of silent staring at the knight. “It was a long time ago, about ten years or so after I was turned—1603…”

  “You said you had intimate knowledge…”

  “Her name was Eleanor,” Nye said, staring into the fireplace.

  “You fell in love with one of them?” the knight asked, his eyebrows rising.

  “What a conclusion to jump to.”

  “It’s obviously the right one.”

  “I was lost for a long time, and she provided meaning.”

  “But she was one of the
Unhallowed?”

  Nye nodded. “Eleanor was the daughter of the Unhallowed’s matriarch, their leader as chosen by the darkest spirits of the ether. They were unaware of what her daughter was doing in her spare time, and when they inevitably found out, they poisoned Eleanor’s mind against me.” As he spoke, he could almost feel the snow against his skin as he lay immobile, her knife slicing through his flesh, the tip grinding against his skull. “She lured me out into the woods…I would’ve gone anywhere with her back then, so I followed. It was there that she turned on me, using her magic to… I didn’t understand at the time, but she was going to siphon my energy in the same way as that corpse…”

  “She obviously failed,” Tristan said, his voice devoid of emotion. He was keeping himself impassive—as an advisor should. “How?”

  “Not in any way that’s useful for our current situation,” Nye went on. “The day I was attacked by Eleanor was also the day I first became aware of Regulus. He was the one who stopped her. He saved me from her magic, and I was able to kill her on the spot.”

  “And that’s how you came to be part of the Six. Through obligation.” It was a statement and a truer one if ever he heard it.

  “In return, Regulus helped put an end to the Unhallowed’s relentless hunting of me. They wanted revenge, but it was denied. Two generations of those witches pursued me until they became no more.”

  “If this isn’t a copycat and they’re back, then you’re in danger,” Tristan said.

  “Yes, it would appear so, but this time, it’s different. I have an entire city out looking for them. They will be found before long, and they will be ended once more.”

  Tristan’s brow creased, and he began to look displeased. Nye knew the vampire had a great deal he was holding back on, and usually, his opinion was righteous at best. Tristan had the highest horse of them all, but it was the way he was brought up and the way he’d defined his life as a vampire in the wake of the horrors he’d witnessed as a Knights Templar of the Crusades. His whole chivalry act still pissed Nye off, no matter the reason for it.