Crown of Doom and Light

by Jayde Brooks

  Humans were easily frightened, easily unhinged. They had their uses, but barely.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Van Dureel asked impatiently. “Who looked at who and killed what?”

  “A black chick,” the human continued. “The two of them came out of nowhere and—” He swallowed. “We were rounding up the catch from the motel,” he said, trying to compose himself. “They came out of nowhere. We fought. I mean, the vamps fought, and the rest of us worked to gather the catch and put them in the truck.” He paused to take a deep breath. “Next thing I know, she’s standing there staring at at least a hundred vamps, and . . .”

  “And—what?” Van Dureel pushed.

  “Their heads started to—” the human looked like he was about to vomit. “She just looked at them and their heads started cracking open, splitting like wood.” He struggled to catch his breath. “It was the strangest thing . . . it was—she didn’t even touch them. Just looked at them and made it happen. I swear. She just looked at them.”

  Van Dureel lost patience with the human and looked to his general for clarification. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  The general shook his head, but then elbowed the man again. “Tell him the rest.”

  The human’s eyes lit up. “I saw the Guardian,” he hastily added. “The one she’s looking for? Sonofabitch had wings. You said he’d have wings. Right? He did. Tall dude. Gray eyes. He’s uh . . . strong, big. He fucking flew. I saw him. I told him that she’s looking for him. I told him.”

  If this idiot was telling the truth, then he’d found Mkombozi’s lover and the impostor she so desperately wanted to find. And was finding those two necessarily a good idea?

  “Tell me what he’s saying.”

  Van Dureel had been so fixated on this human that he hadn’t even noticed Mkombozi come into the cottage. She had tied a shirt of his into a knot just under her breasts, exposing the curve of her perfect waist. The Ancient couldn’t understand the humans’ language, but the intuitive warrior in her sensed that something important was happening.

  “We lost some fighters,” Van Dureel reluctantly admitted. “A large number of fighters.”

  She eyed the alpha vamp suspiciously. “Tell me all that he said,” she said with warning.

  “He said that he saw your Guardian,” Van Astin volunteered in Theian, then turned to Van Dureel. “She’s fuckin’ Mkombozi, dude. Look at her. You do not want to piss her off. Don’t let her catch you in a lie.”

  Mkombozi stepped toward the human, then looked at Van Dureel and finally to Van Astin. “When did he see him?” she asked, her voice intense. “How long ago?”

  Van Dureel offered his two cents. “Last night. And your Redeemer was with him.”

  The beautiful Ancient squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Tell him to take me to them. We need to go now.”

  “He doesn’t know where they are,” Van Dureel offered. “They killed my drones. She killed them just by looking at them.” He looked at the human. “Isn’t that right?”

  The man shrugged. “He picked her up and they flew away. Disappeared,” he added nervously. “I don’t know where they went.”

  “He does not know,” Van Dureel told her.

  Mkombozi stood in front of Van Dureel. “If I discover that you are lying to me, I will crush your skull, vamp.”

  Skull crushing. So, that was obviously becoming a thing now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Van Dureel stared at her when he did not think she would notice, but Mkombozi noticed everything. He cut his eyes in a sly way when he spoke his Earth language in her presence, an indication that he was keeping secrets and was not being as forthcoming as he had pretended. The ptkah was a liar and she would be a fool to trust him.

  Mkombozi had been listening to these humans, watching and learning from them without them even realizing it. She followed the fat one from the cottage to another dwelling not far from the one where Van Dureel lived. He was taller than Mkombozi, but too thick around the middle with short, stout legs, golden brown hair exploding from his cheeks and chin, and colorless eyes.

  “You,” she called, just as he opened the door to his home.

  He stopped reluctantly and turned to face her.

  The humans’ language was difficult, but not so difficult that she could not learn some of its simpler words.

  He lowered his gaze the instant it met with hers.

  “Guardian. Where.”

  He glanced nervously at her, then dropped his gaze again and shook his head. “I-I don’t know.”

  Was he lying? Had Van Dureel instructed him to do so? Mkombozi took a step closer to him. He cowered like a frightened beast.

  “You take me.”

  He looked confused. Mkombozi searched her mind for other words she’d learned, words that could better convey her message.

  “Find.”

  He was hesitant, leading her to believe that either he was an imbecile or that she had not properly conveyed her message to him.

  “Find,” she said again, more emphatically. “Take me. Find. Guardian.”

  “He does not know where to find the Guardian.”

  Mkombozi turned to see Van Dureel and the other, older Vampyre standing behind her.

  “Tell him to take me to the place where he saw him and the impostor,” she demanded. “Tell him now.”

  Van Dureel’s strong features softened. “It is late, Mkombozi,” he said, sounding almost tender. “And it is far away. By the time we get there, it will be dark again.”

  What was he implying? She took a defiant step toward him. “Dark? I am not afraid of the dark, Vampyre. You tell him to take me there or I will tear open his chest.”

  Van Dureel’s next words were in English. “Fuckin’ Ancients.”

  She glared at the older Vampyre. Van Dureel had insulted her. She could see it in his eyes and hear it in his tone. But if she had known for certain what “Fuckin’ Ancients” meant, she’d have broken his neck.

  “Tell him,” she demanded, turning her attention back to Van Dureel.

  “I will take you,” Van Dureel said.

  Mkombozi nearly smiled. “You toy with me, ptkah. You lie.” She stood close enough to him to feel his breath on her face. “I will find my Guardian without you.”

  She pointed at the human. “I want him.”

  “A useless human?” Van Dureel retorted, shaking his head dismissively. “He is terrified, Mkombozi. Look at him.”

  No. She would not look at him. Mkombozi would not take her eyes off the Vampyre, who had just dared to speak her name, as if they were equals, for the first time since she had been here.

  He looked as if he understood. “I have to call you something,” he told her. “He cannot help you. I can.”

  “You are cunning, ptkah,” she said, staring suspiciously at him.

  “I am,” he boasted. “And I can help you to find your Guardian.”

  “I have been here for several of your days and nights,” she reminded him. “Why are you just now willing to help me in my search?”

  “Because we did not know where to look before now,” raising his voice.

  He was becoming bolder. “Careful, ptkah,” she warned.

  The Vampyre lowered his head slightly. “This world is not as large as Theia, but it is vast,” he explained. “The fact that this human has seen the Guardian a day’s journey from here narrows our search tremendously. He is likely here, on the eastern coast of America. We can begin our search knowing that and spend less time and fewer resources searching blindly for him. Do you agree?”

  He was cunning with words and in his demeanor. The Vampyre could appear too proud and then immediately humble himself when it suited him, or when it suited her.

  “You will take me to the place where this human saw my Guardian?”

  “I will take you before dawn. We will arrive before the sun sets tomorrow and can possibly find clues that could help to track him.”

 
; “Just you and I?” she probed, looking at the other Vampyre, the old one.

  “If that is what you would like,” Van Dureel said.

  “That will do,” she said dismissively, then turned and walked away.

  Alone in her room, Mkombozi sat in front of the window staring out at the moon hanging in the sky above the ocean. Theia had five moons and two suns. She felt as if she were walking through a nightmare that she could never awaken from. Mkombozi had fought in many battles and a world war. She had fought against, defeated, and ultimately bonded with the supernatural in other dimensions. She had fought and defeated the Demon Sakarabru, just as the prophecy had said that she would, and yet she could not remember where she had spent any of the time from the moment she had killed him until the day she crawled out of this world’s ocean. She only remembered Khale, blurred images of her, and the distant sounds of her words.

  “Where are you, Tukufu,” she murmured, on the verge of tears.

  Warriors did not cry, and yet she had cried so much since she had been here. Tears born of uncertainty, confusion, and fear. Tears of frustration, loss, and loneliness. Long ago he had promised her that he would always be there for her. She remembered his promise as if he’d made it yesterday.

  “I will come to you, Beloved,” he said. “I will find you no matter where you are or how far away you may be.”

  “How, Tukufu?” she asked, resting her head against his broad chest. “How will you find me? How should I call you?”

  He stroked her hair and softly kissed the top of her head. “With your heart, Beloved. Call me with your thoughts and with your love for me and with your faith in the love we have for each other.”

  She could not remember a moment when she had not yearned for him, needed him, desired his touch. He was in this world with her, she knew, and she had begged for him with her heart. And yet he did not come. She had put aside sleep to try to make sense of why he had not answered her calls to him the way he once had, the way he had promised that he always would.

  As she lay naked on top of him, the length of him still pulsing inside her, she stroked his face, and lost herself in his eyes.

  “Never leave me, Guardian. Never let me leave you.”

  He laughed. “You speak of impossible things, Beloved. You have my oath, and because of that you can never be lost to me.”

  “Even if I were to run away from you?” she smiled.

  “I would let you run until you grew weary and fainted from exhaustion,” he teased. “But I would never let you run so far away that I could not find you and bring you back.”

  She did not hear the knock on the door. Van Dureel pushed it open, letting the light from the hallway flood the room. “Are you ready to go?” he asked, humbly.

  “I am,” she said, standing to leave. She was ready to go and find her Guardian and the impostor who had tricked him into believing that she was Mkombozi. There was no other explanation for him failing to keep his promise. He was under her spell, and Mkombozi would have to kill her to break it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I haven’t seen a vamp up close since—hell, since ever,” Prophet told the dozen or so Ancients filling the New York City apartment living room. Molly was there too, perched on Runyon’s lap. “And the few I have seen looked pathetic, pale, and malnourished. But these were nearly as tall as me, as big as me, fast and strong. Not easy to kill either.”

  He looked at Eden, and so did everyone else. It was one thing to fight alongside the other Ancients, but another altogether to sit down with them and have a conversation. Eden avoided most of them. They were terrified of her, and she, quite frankly, didn’t trust them. Most of them still hung out in the city just outside of the Manhattan City Sanctuary. Khale’s apartment building was a sort of headquarters or whatever. It was where they would gather for meetings, and some of them had taken up residence there. The humans living in the area who were like Molly, advanced fighters and familiar with the Ancients, lived in a building near Khale’s place, and that’s where they were now.

  Eden cleared her throat. “There were so many of them,” she said, picking up where Prophet had left off. “They have humans working for them, but they really don’t need them. We had a hell of a time fighting the vamps. There had to have been several hundred of them.”

  “How did you escape?” Isis asked, giving Eden the side-eye the way she always did. “Just the two of you, against so many? Sounds like you had a miracle on your side. Or Omen?”

  “Head,” Prophet interjected. “After we figured out that stabbing, breaking backs, and breaking necks wasn’t working, we discovered that, like most living things, they require a head.” He shrugged. “Split it open, crush it like a walnut—and they die.”

  “And the two of you crushed and tore off hundreds vamp heads?” Isis was persistent. “Alone?” Again, her gaze rested on Eden.

  “Yes,” Eden said flatly. “We did.”

  Isis’s little green monster was sitting pretty on her wide-ass shoulders. She wore her jealousy like jewelry, flaunting it to Eden every chance she got. Prophet wasn’t fucking her anymore, and she’d been spicy ever since she’d found out about Eden.

  “Don’t none of us know shit about vamps,” Runyon chimed in, cutting through the tension. “They’ve always made it a point to keep away from any of us.”

  “Until now,” Prophet reminded them.

  “I know someone who’s encountered them,” Molly offered. “Human. His name is Drake. He lives in the city.”

  When it came to dealing directly with humans, Molly usually took the lead. The redhead had become somewhat of a legend in their ranks, a role that she relished and wore like an evening gown to an awards show.

  “We’re here to see Drake,” she said to the armed sentry posted outside the building, five blocks from where they’d just left.

  Without hesitation he nodded, unlocked the door, and let them in.

  Drake was a black dude with an eye patch and a vicious scar crossing his face where that eye had been. He was as big as Runyon was when Runyon wasn’t in Were form.

  “Hey, Mol,” he said, as Molly, Runyon, Eden, and Prophet entered.

  He and his boys might have been familiar with Ancients but they were still unnerved by them. He stared hard at Runyon and Prophet but none of them exchanged names or greetings.

  When he looked at Eden, he smiled and raked a hungry gaze up and down her body. “And you are?”

  “Eden.”

  Those big white teeth of his could probably take a nice size chunk out of her if he set his mind to it. “Pretty name.”

  “Thank you,” Prophet said, taking a menacing step toward him. “I think so too. I really think so.”

  It was hard for Eden not to feel a tad bit embarrassed. Me Guardian. Me boyfriend. Me rip out your spine. But message sent, message received, and all of a sudden Eden was a nobody to this guy again.

  He led them down the corridor to his office, closed the door, and sat down behind an old metal desk.

  “So, we hear one of your groups came across some vamps,” Molly said, taking a seat across from him.

  Runyon leaned against the wall behind Molly, and Eden and Prophet stood near the door.

  “We had no idea what they were at the time,” Drake explained. “One of the docs here figured out that’s what they were when we bought some wounded back for medical care.”

  “How many were there?”

  “A dozen, maybe more. We were leading a convoy to a village in Connecticut, taking some supplies to troops in a township there, and they came out of nowhere and jumped us. I think they were after the women. They didn’t know that our women were soldiers who could kick ass,” he said proudly. “They did get away with Gwen, though.”

  “Vamps set up in colonies, big ones,” Runyon explained. “Noticed any pattern of attacks that would give you an idea of where they might be?”

  “If I had to narrow it down and guess, I’d have to say upstate New York or Jersey, maybe.
But it’s only a guess. We couldn’t kill those bastards, though. At least, not easily. Short of chopping off heads, they seemed pretty invincible.”

  “Short of chopping off heads, they are,” Runyon added.

  “Is the myth true?” Drake asked, looking at Runyon. “I mean, a couple of my folks got some meat torn out of them by those things. We’ve got them confined just in case . . . You know?”

  “They turn?” Runyon said with a smirk, finishing Drake’s thought. “Not that I would know but then, I don’t run in vamp circles so I have no idea what effect a vamp bite would have on a human. I’d keep them locked up if I were you.”

  “What about sunlight?” Molly chimed in. “Aren’t vampires like, allergic to sunlight?”

  Runyon sighed.

  She turned to him. “What? It’s a legend, but it could be true.”

  “We were attacked in broad daylight,” Drake told her. “So no, I don’t think that’s true.”

  “They prefer the darkness, because they’re sneaky bastards,” Runyon explained. “So maybe that’s the root of the legend.”

  “You and Prophet said you could probably track them,” Eden finally spoke up. “Since we’ve got the area narrowed down, won’t that make it easier?”

  “You must be Prophet,” Drake said turning his attention to the Guardian.

  “I must be.”

  “Yeah, we could probably track them,” Runyon said, steering everyone back on track. “Having a starting point will help.”

  It’s time.

  So soon?

  The internal warning heated to boiling in a matter of seconds. Eden slowly backed away from everyone.

  “We got a name from one of them before we chopped off his head,” Drake calmly continued. “I think it might be their leader.”

  “What name?” Runyon asked.

  “Van Dureel?” he shrugged. “Weird for a name.”

  “Eden?” Prophet said, turning to her, concern and confusion shone on his face. “Is it happening again?

  Silly girl.

  We grow stronger, young one.

  She will release us.