Lovers Awakening

by R. A. Steffan

  Groaning, Eris fought the sudden urge to give up completely as he saw Bastian Kovac stride into the room, hatred etched in every feature.

  “Oh, yes, I am aware that your little ragtag band of rescuers is close, but make no mistake, nightcrawler. You will not leave this place alive. I will not allow them to take my prize from me.”

  Hopelessness washed over Eris, and he had no strength to fight it. He could sense a huge, billowing darkness building within Kovac. Bael was coming to aid his servant, and Eris’ poor judgment had drawn his friends into a trap.

  Even if the others got to him, it seemed unlikely they would ever be able to fight their way back out.

  There was only one small glimmer of hope. None of them had ever seen Snag’s power fully unleashed. Eris knew him to be one of the strongest creatures in existence. Idly, he wondered if that power would stand against this bastion of the Dark.

  Heh. Bastion… Bastian. The ridiculous thought suddenly seemed inappropriately amusing…

  Eris jerked, realizing that his consciousness had started to slip away at the worst possible time. He could sense that Snag and the others were right outside the door. They were held up by another battalion of the undead, and struggling to repel the Dark force emanating from Kovac.

  Finally, with a massive effort, the four vampires burst through the door at the far side of the cavernous room in which Eris was being held. Oksana slammed it behind her and turned the lock with a loud click.

  The four vampires stood in the shadows facing Kovac, who stood in front of the metal table, blocking their access to Eris.

  “You have made a grave mistake, coming here tonight,” Kovac said darkly.

  None of the vampires answered, but Snag took one step forward. As his foot touched the ground, the concrete under it buckled and cracked.

  A shudder ran through the building. Dust fell onto Eris’ face and he knew that the ceiling had been compromised somewhere above them.

  Kovac had not moved a muscle as the concrete around them cracked and shifted. Completely impassive, he regarded the vampires who were slowly spreading out to surround him with a sneer. His attention caught and held on Snag.

  Oksana took the opportunity to slip behind a pile of boxes, making her way closer to Eris on the table.

  Tension filled the air as Snag and Kovac stared each other down. They were completely silent, but he could tell that Snag was straining against Eris’ captor, grappling with him mentally, seeking to wound or to control.

  While Kovac’s attention was fully occupied, Oksana continued to skirt around the room in the darkness, making her way towards Eris’ head.

  Kovac whirled in place with no warning, a black cloud swirling out from around him and spreading in all directions. Everything that the cloud touched exploded or was hurled aside. Xander and Duchess flung themselves on the ground as the disk of darkness passed over their heads.

  Oksana crouched behind the table on which Eris was being held and the dark force passed inches over their heads.

  Snag had not moved, but as the darkness rushed towards him, he threw a hand up, palm out, and exhaled in a rush.

  Light exploded from every part of his body, even brighter than the spotlight above Eris’ head—blinding him with its intensity. The mushroom of light expanded toward Kovac, and the swirling darkness still pouring from him blasted apart as the two forces met.

  Extreme heat filled the room and Eris felt Oksana’s cool hands on his face.

  “Let’s get you out of here, ti frere,” she whispered.

  Eris blinked. Both Xander and Duchess had appeared at his side as well.

  He twisted his head to better see the battle raging between Snag and Kovac.

  Just when he thought that Kovac must surely fall under the intensity of the Light, Bael’s servant raised his arms and a great wind picked up in the underground chamber.

  Papers flew everywhere. Old crates skidded across the floor and crashed into one another. The wind became so intense that the vampires struggling to free Eris were forced to cling to the table to stop themselves from being hurled against the wall.

  Eris could see Xander’s mouth moving, but his words were lost in the deafening howl of sound that had filled the entire room. Snag’s aura was receding, being pressed back into his body.

  The ancient vampire was sliding backwards, his feet dragging across the crumbling floor as he struggled to remain upright. Finally, he swung his arm around, almost as if he were going to throw a right hook at Kovac. Fire exploded in a ring around Eris’ tormenter. It raged higher and higher, consuming everything around him.

  Despite his weakness and complete exhaustion, despite the fact that almost every ounce of his lifeblood had been drained from his body in the hours he had been held in this desolate bunker and tortured, Eris was overcome by a sense of awe at the sight.

  Snag’s power, his absolute fury, the waves of destruction that were pouring off of him should have annihilated anyone foolish enough to cross his path. Yet the battle between the two beings seemed even. Neither was able to deal a fatal blow; they were merely holding their own against each other.

  The spectacle was so incredible that Eris momentarily forgot he should be trying to help free himself from the table.

  Oksana’s impatient voice brought him back to reality. “Eris, come on—help us out here. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “Wait,” Xander said, going abruptly still. “Do you hear something?”

  Over the crackling of power from Snag and Kovac, not to mention the sound of parts of the building collapsing under the force of the battle, the four vampires could make out the sounds of a dull, growing rumble.

  “Earthquake?” Duchess suggested through gritted teeth. “Because, you know, that would be the perfect denouement to this day.” She was tugging on the restraints at Eris’ left wrist, finally freeing his fractured arm.

  “No, I don’t think so. I think…” Xander’s voice trailed away. With a gasp of understanding, he began working more frantically, finding weak points in the leather and metal to pull against, exerting all of his considerable strength.

  “We seriously need to get out of here,” he said urgently.

  “Why? What’s happening?” Eris asked, his words slurring as his injured body protested the manhandling.

  “It’s about to get very crowded,” Xander said unhelpfully.

  Finally, with a snap of parting rope, Eris was free. Oksana and Xander tried to pull him to his feet, but he was too weak to stand. He crumpled backwards onto the table with a harsh cry.

  This seemed to attract Snag’s attention. He looked at the ceiling, taking in the growing rumble of approaching vehicles. Understanding flashed across his face.

  Go! The mental command echoed across their mental connection with such force that Oksana, Duchess, and Xander knew better than to question him or argue.

  They stepped backwards quickly and transformed into mist. Before Eris could draw breath, all three had vanished into the darkness.

  “Your friends have abandoned you,” Kovac taunted Snag. “Soon, my master will descend and crush you. But, before you die, Ancient One, I will make you watch as I consume this one’s flesh, one slow strip at a time.”

  With a roar of fury, Snag threw himself forward. Eris watched in horror as he and Kovac were entangled in an ever-shifting web of Light and Dark. The power locking the two great beings together made the hair on Eris’ head stand on end. The electricity in the air was so strong that sparks zapped Eris’ skin where it made contact with the metal of the table. A buzzing whine grew louder and louder until it completely drowned out the roar of engines outside and the shouts of men coming their way.

  For Eris, time slowed to a standstill. Everything was frozen except his eyes, which rolled weakly as he tried to focus on the battle. The web locking the two beings together pulsed with power, an angry, actinic glow. Eris’ heart beat sluggishly, loud in his ears as he waited for something, anything, to happen.


  A colossal noise ripped through the static-filled air, a combination of an explosion and the crack of a lightning strike. Indeed, a bolt of electricity flashed down between Snag and Kovac, throwing both of them in opposite directions as the web shattered. Kovac’s body smashed backwards through the door, which was blown off its hinges under the impact. He crumpled in the hallway, insensible, glass and concrete raining down around him.

  Snag staggered backwards toward the table, but he remained on his feet, victorious at last.

  Men in black combat gear poured into the passage outside, shouting to each other in Russian. One pointed a Kalashnikov at Kovac’s crumpled form and fired at least two-dozen rounds into him. Eris blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sweat and blood from his eyes. When he opened them again, he was staring down the barrels of several automatic weapons pointed at him.

  In an instant, Snag was there, throwing his wiry body over Eris’ as gunfire erupted around them in a deafening rat-a-tat-tat. The retorts and the echoes from the concrete walls mixed together, a tangled din that made Eris’ head pound in agony.

  At the same time, he felt his life force being pressed inward by a strength not his own, and both he and Snag dissolved into mist as the high-caliber bullets riddled the place where they had been.

  Eris did not have enough power left to move or even hold this form, but Snag enveloped him, supporting him and pulling his insubstantial cloud of vapor through the building—now swarming with mafia foot soldiers. The pair burst into the open air, and Eris huddled further into Snag’s protection as he became aware of the deadly sun slipping above the eastern horizon.

  His body, even as mist, screamed in agony, protesting both the movement, and the terrible heat and light. Snag gathered him close and raced through the fickle morning shadows, fleeing for safety with no thought given to anything but speed.

  Eris wanted, with every fiber of his being, to black out so he could finally escape the pain and slip into blissful nothingness, but it seemed that Snag’s power was strong enough to not only transport him, but to also keep him tethered to life and consciousness.

  The elder vampire seemed to be following some internal beacon as he wound expertly through bombed out, half-collapsed buildings.

  Deep in the heart of the war-torn neighborhood, Eris could see a large structure that appeared to be mostly intact. At one time, it must have been some sort of government building or courthouse. The stone was cracked and burned, but still held strong. Most of the windows on the front were blown out, but Snag whisked Eris inside one of them and raced down a dark hallway towards the interior of the building, blessedly sheltered from the early morning light outside.

  The smell of sweet wood smoke wafted through the air, coming from deeper inside the building. Eris felt Snag pressing his life force outward, materializing both of them into their human forms. Eris landed on his feet but immediately collapsed, unable to stand. With inhuman reflexes, Snag caught him before his body could hit the cold floor.

  Although Snag’s physique was frail and seemingly fragile, he lowered Eris carefully to lie propped against him, seemingly without effort.

  His mental call echoed through the bond, making Eris’ ears ring. He winced, but continued to lie still in Snag’s embrace, limp and spent. A door nearby was thrown open and Oksana appeared, looking chalky pale despite her dark complexion.

  “How is he?” she asked, fear evident in her melodic voice. “And you? Snag, you’re burned.”

  Snag did not answer, but rose with Eris still in his arms, carrying him as if he weighed nothing. Eris’ let his eyes slip closed, trying to resist the nausea clawing up his throat from the sudden change in elevation.

  He was lowered gently onto a pallet of dusty couch cushions that had clearly been scavenged from elsewhere in the building. It was covered with old blankets scrounged from the rubble and one small, faded pillow.

  Eris gasped in distress as his broken bones ground against each other. Once separated from Snag’s life force, he immediately started to drift away into the darkness beckoning at the edges of his mind.

  Hazy voices passed back and forth above him, discussing their next move. Eris could take no part in the conversation. He was beyond the point of caring. All he wanted was to slip into the quiet warmth of oblivion.

  “He’s far too weak to be moved,” Duchess said, laying a hand on Eris’ forehead. “I can barely feel his life force.”

  “He’ll need to heal for days before we can return to Cyprus,” Xander said from close by. “What do we think? Are we safe enough staying here?”

  “We’re a couple of kilometers away from the site of the battle,” Duchess observed. “They could still find us fairly easily if they came looking… but will they bother?”

  Snag shared the images from their last moments in the basement of the warehouse.

  “Sustained automatic weapons fire will probably have destroyed most of the undead, or at least made it hard for them to travel any sort of distance. And the Russians have no reason to come looking for us. Why would they?” Oksana said. “Come on. We should build a bigger fire in the grate. We need to keep him warm while his body recuperates.”

  The others moved away and Eris continued to float, confused, just below the surface of consciousness. On some level, he understood their words, but it seemed to take a long time for his mind to catch up with what was being said.

  Something brushed across his lips, leaving a salty, metallic smear behind.

  Eris knew that he needed the offering of healing blood desperately, yet he could not make his jaw move or his throat swallow. He was too tired—far too tired—to think of feeding at the moment. All he wanted was to see Trynn one more time, and then…

  You will feed.

  The words were a command, implacable and unassailable. Skeletal fingers pried his jaw open with surprising gentleness. A moment later, blood dripped into his mouth and slid down his throat, even as his consciousness finally slipped away.

  FIFTEEN

  TRYNN SAT CURLED UP on the couch in Eris’ hotel suite, her laptop perched on the arm of the sofa. After a brief discussion back in Trynn’s hotel room, Tré had decreed that the more defensible location on the seventh floor of the Merit Lefkosa hotel was worth the added risk of going back outside. Trynn agreed, and so did Della. It wouldn’t take much for rioters to burst into her ground floor room at the no-name hotel in the bad part of town.

  The trip back had been far more fraught than the trip out, but apparently the presence of two vampires was sufficient to intimidate the gangs of young men with bandanas pulled over their faces who were roaming the streets, breaking shop windows and setting fire to cars. She wasn’t sure whether it was the eerie, glowing eyes, or whether the mind-whammy was in play. Either way, she wasn’t complaining.

  Trynn was sporting a fresh bruise on her temple where one of them had clipped her with a thrown bottle, but she’d also gained a new appreciation of the benefits of being a vampire when, an instant later, her assailant was being pinned against the nearest wall by five-foot-nothing of curvy Hollywood starlet. Della hissed up at him with bared fangs and gold eyes. The kid staggered off a few moments later looking docile and confused.

  Back in Eris’ hotel room, Trynn was burning holes through her laptop screen, following the constantly updating Twitter feed, hoping for some news from the Russians regarding the raid they planned against Kovac. She felt a huge sense of accomplishment, knowing that she had instigated the attack, but also a mounting sense of trepidation.

  The worst part was, there was nothing online. Not one single word, since the initial flurry of Tweets when the news spread. Not a solitary mention of the events that had happened over the course of the past few hours.

  The higher-ups must have ordered radio silence, Trynn thought.

  With a huff, she set her chin in the palm of her hand, her eyes drifting out of focus. Dawn had risen and the morning passed without any word from the other vampires.

  Tré had told her tha
t his connection with Snag had been severed as the group approached Damascus.

  “Why? What happened?” Trynn had demanded.

  “It takes concentration to maintain that kind of connection over a great distance. My guess is Snag had other things to worry about besides keeping us in the loop on what’s going on.”

  She’d known he was right, of course, but the hours of hearing nothing were wearing at her.

  “I’m going to go mad at this rate!” Trynn exclaimed, straightening and shifting restlessly. “I have to know what’s going on!”

  “No news is good news,” Tré said with that same infuriating calm. “If there’d been a detonation, we’d have heard about it by now.”

  He was right about that, too, damn him. There was no mention on the news, nor any intelligence coming in from MASQUE, that indicated an attack had occurred. They were stuck waiting, relying on some kind of contact from the others to tell them what was happening.

  If they were still alive.

  Feeling an overwhelming surge of exhaustion, Trynn tipped her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. What she wouldn’t give for even one night of uninterrupted sleep. Looking back, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept undisturbed. At least, not without having first been hypnotized by a skeletal creep who she was totally going to strangle if he didn’t hurry up and let them know what was going on.

  Della sat on the other end of the sofa, scanning through news channels on the huge, flat screen TV, trying to find any information that might give them a clue about what was occurring in Damascus. She clicked the remote so quickly that Trynn wondered if there was any way she could even see what was flashing across the screen before the channel was changed.

  Tré, who sat at the desk staring unblinkingly at Eris’ computer, had not moved or spoken in over an hour. Occasionally his finger would scroll down on the mouse he was holding, but otherwise he might as well have been made of stone.

  Suddenly he inhaled sharply. Even though the sound was barely audible, Trynn jumped to her feet, nearly sending her computer crashing to the floor.