Heartbeat (Morta Fox Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  They looked at me, tore me apart with their eyes, yet they didn’t move. It was like they couldn’t.

  My mouth opened, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say, other than to ask what the hell was wrong. And I couldn’t ask that. I clamped my mouth shut again, and I watched them, readier than I’d ever be. But they never moved…

  They simply turned their backs on me, and they left. First walking, then running, before the darkness of the night took them. I watched after them long after they disappeared.

  Could it be that they were that scared of me? Could it be that they were tired of chasing me, and that they just gave up? Why didn’t they kill me?

  I couldn’t find an answer.

  I didn’t understand, but relief brought me to my knees once enough time passed, and they didn’t come back.

  I killed their Lord. I killed my Lord. They weren’t going to let me get away with it, just like that. No. Something else stopped them. It had to be…

  Only after a long while and too many deep breaths did I hear something move behind me.

  That’s when I knew that we were surrounded.

  XXV

  I’d never seen so many vampires in one place. Hundreds of them. All armed. All dressed nicely. All without a single expression on their faces.

  Four of them moved with slow, steady steps to us. I sat next to Hammer, and I put his head on my lap. His eyes opened, and it looked like, for a second, he smiled at me. I kept my eyes on him as I waited and caressed his muddy hair.

  “Morta Fox?” someone said. Go figure. The day had come for people to know my name.

  A vampire, so beautiful my eyes hurt at the sight of him, was in front of me. His blue eyes looked surreal.

  “He needs blood,” I whispered. My voice was spent from all the yelling. “Please, he needs blood.”

  The vampire looked down at Hammer, who was still looking at me. Maybe it was just me, but he took a damn long time to wave at one of the vampires by his side, the one with pitch black hair and very thick brows. He didn’t have to be told twice.

  He leaned down to his knees, took off his leather glove, bit into his wrist and gave Hammer a taste.

  At the sight and smell of cold, old blood, my stomach growled. I squeezed my eyes shut and looked away while Hammer drank.

  “We need you to come with us,” the blue-eyed vampire said.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” I mumbled, shaking my head. I just escaped from a kidnapping! Couldn’t I just get a freaking break?

  “My name is Gael. We come with orders of Doyen Mohg. He has asked to meet with you.”

  It was that kind of sentence that lets you know straight away that he wouldn't take no for an answer. That just fucking pissed me off. I mean, I did want to see Mohg, and I was grateful that they’d just saved my ass, but fuck!

  The feeding session ended. The vampire pulled away and stood up, looking paler than he did a second ago. Hammer licked his lips. Red touched the tips of his cheeks, and my heart fluttered.

  He kept his eyes shut, but I knew he was already feeling better. The smell of burnt meat around his wrists and ankles was already fading away.

  “We need to go,” Gael said. Another nod to the two others behind him, and they reached for Hammer. I slapped their hands away.

  “I’ll carry him.”

  “No need. We will make sure—” Gael started, but I stopped him.

  “No. I will carry him.”

  “It will only delay—” Again, he said, and again, I stopped him.

  “I don’t care! I’m going to—” But I was stopped, too.

  “No one needs to carry me. I can stand on my own,” Hammer said.

  He sat up for only a second before he stood up. I was left staring up at him in awe.

  He looked fine. Too skinny, but okay. So much better than he did five minutes ago.

  “Hammer,” Gael said, nodding his head.

  “Gael. Silas, thank you,” Hammer said to the vamp who gave him blood.

  “We really need to get going. The sun will rise soon,” Gael said.

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” Hammer said, and waved at them before they reluctantly turned their backs and walked slowly to where they came from.

  When they did, Hammer dropped to his knees in front of me. He took my face in his cold hands and looked at me.

  “You’re covered in mud,” I mumbled. That made him smile. He still looked pale, but he could stand and he could speak and I couldn’t have asked for more.

  “You, too,” he said and removed some from the tip of my nose. “You were brilliant.”

  “I’m always brilliant,” I murmured. I just couldn't function all that well when he looked at me like that.

  “True. You saved my ass again.” I wanted to wrap my hands around his mouth to make him stop saying that.

  “Don’t mention it.” He started to laugh. “No, seriously. Don’t mention it,” I repeated. I didn’t want him to think I was kidding. He nodded his head and gave me a quick kiss that reached my bones in a rush like an echo.

  “Come on. Let’s go see Mohg,” he said and stood up with my hands still in his and pulled me to my feet. Dizziness took over my head at a thought. At the thought.

  “Hammer, what’s going to happen to you?” I whispered.

  “Let’s talk about this later,” he said smiling.

  “Can Mohg help us?”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Hammer said and put his arm around me to pull me forward.

  We didn’t get very far before the sun rose. We took shelter in a building that looked brand new. It obviously was built from scratch, because the walls were white, steady, not a crack on them. And the furniture, too. It was probably some kind of an on-the-way home for Mohg’s vampires.

  They put me and Hammer in a small room. A bed frame with nothing but a blanket on it. We chose the ground.

  I finally rested in his arms.

  ***

  My eyes snapped open, only to find that I was alone in the room, wrapped up thoroughly with a light, blue blanket. No sign of Hammer anywhere. I unwrapped myself quickly and stood up. The mud had dried completely on my clothes and brown dust fell on the floor when I shook them off. That second I would have killed for a shower.

  The door opened before I could reach it. Hammer’s smiling face greeted me. I couldn’t hold myself. For once in my life, I allowed myself to be the little girl I never was. I ran and jumped in his arms and squeezed him tightly.

  Hammer laughed a perfect sound, right next to my ear, and I realized I’d never been more relieved about anything in my life than to see him there—after thinking that I’d lost him—all well and cleaned up.

  Wait. Cleaned?

  “You showered?” I asked and leaned back to look at his face. He still looked pale, but ten times better than the night before.

  “I did. And that’s where I’m taking you, too,” he said, grinning.

  “And blood? Did you drink blood?”

  “Straight out of a plastic glass. It wasn’t the best, but I’m feeling almost myself now,” he said, and before I could say anything else, he kissed me.

  Everything else forgotten, I let my body go, and his strong arms held me as close as I wanted him to. It was actually kind of sad to find myself in such position, as much as it was too amazing to comprehend. Before, I didn’t know what a real kiss felt like, and I thought I lived just fine without it. Now, only a week after the last time Hammer kissed me, I felt as if I hadn't lived, or breathed, at all before.

  It didn’t last nearly as long as we wanted it to because someone knocked on the door. We had to go.

  Hammer took me to the bathroom, and it blew my mind. I hadn't seen one so perfectly constructed since I lived at home with my mother and sisters. I took my time to strip out of my clothes, thankful for the dark brown pants with an extra leather belt and the faded violet shirt they gave me. They were hideous, but they were clean.

  The shower was a miracle. The hot water
never stopped. It never turned abruptly cold, like it did back home. Best bathroom I had ever been in, and ten minutes into my shower, someone knocked on the door.

  “Go away!” I called. They weren't going to take me out for at least another ten.

  “You need to hurry, Morta. We’re leaving,” Hammer called back.

  “Okay. I’ll hurry.”

  He’d know by the tone of my voice that I wasn’t about to. But I heard nothing else. When I finally got out twenty minutes later, I felt like a different person. A thousand pounds lighter.

  Hammer waited for me right by the door. His huge smile mirrored my own when he saw me. He sniffed my wet hair without shame, until I punched him in the stomach, because the others were looking. Gael’s raised brow made me frown. What the hell was he looking at? He studied me inch by inch until Hammer grabbed my hand in his and pulled me outside.

  We rode in a big car that was hitched together with eight others to form a caravan. There was enough space for everyone to sit comfortably.

  The wind blew, and my hair was dry within the first few minutes. The dark night enveloped everything, swallowing every ugly and broken thing beautifully. You could see nothing if you didn’t want to.

  Hammer never let go of my hand, and he planted kiss after kiss on my head. Everybody looked at us. Everybody stared. As much as I was pissed and wanted to tell them to go to hell, I didn’t. I did the next best thing. I stared back without even blinking.

  Three hours, and we could feel others. So many others. These vamps were like roaches. Too many of them. Much more than I could have ever imagined.

  Ten waited for us, guarding a large fence made entirely of wood. They checked each of the thirteen cars separately. I wondered, who goes on a patrol with thirteen cars? And where the hell do they get the equipment to get these things working?

  I found out the second I walked inside the wooden fence.

  The place was like a small neighborhood. Three different roads led to the inside, in between one-story houses, made entirely out of wood. You’d think they would want to reinforce their quarters, but no. Everything in there was made of wood.

  They took us through the middle street. Gael, along with Silas on one side, and another, bigger vampire I didn’t know the name of on the other, walked ahead, guns in hand, and we followed. Another half a dozen of them followed us.

  They had everything. Water faucets, a car at each house, each door closed with three chains to the side. It was like another world in there, better than behind the RO walls.

  We walked for about two minutes before we reached our destination. It was the only two-story house in the place—a house with a rooftop made out of raw, grey stones.

  Gael looked at Hammer, and he knew to stop himself and stop me, too.

  We watched Gael walk ahead to the door that opened as soon as he was only a step away from it. Complete darkness was inside, and he walked in so quickly that I had no chance of catching anything before the door closed behind him.

  Silas waited by the door, hands folded in front of him, analyzing me like he had nothing else to fucking do but stare. All of them. They all stared at me, no matter where I was looking. I felt their eyes on my back, head, legs, ass, and face, but mostly, on my chest. And they weren't even checking out my boobs. It was my beating heart that fascinated them, and frankly, it was getting old fast.

  “Is Mohg in there?” I asked Hammer. He only nodded.

  I was entitled to get a little pissed off since I had no idea what the hell was happening, but I held it in. I didn’t yell or even speak in the ten minutes it took Gael to come out again. I kept my attention on Hammer instead.

  Like he didn’t own words, Gael only nodded at Hammer again. Hammer returned the favor, and we started walking to the house.

  Inside, there was nothing to see. A fireplace, and that’s it. The floor was wooden, clean and shiny. I could see it from the small rays of moonlight that came through the three miniature windows on the head wall. Gael led us to the staircase. Our steps made the only sound in the empty place.

  Talk about extremes. While everything else was made of wood, the second floor of Mohg’s house was made of stone, same as the roof.

  A door was on our right, while on the left, there was a huge stone figure. It looked something like a fork. A deformed fork. It had four tines made of pointy rocks, all around each other, standing above a thicker base made of four huge, yellow-grey rocks. In between the tines, black fog revolved around itself. It looked like if it wanted, it could consume the whole room, and us with it. Creepy.

  There were two armchairs aside from that, and some sort of a bookcase right behind the fork, that held books of all sizes on the top three shelves, and stones of all kinds on the bottom one.

  I didn’t have time to analyze anything else because the only door in the room opened, and someone who I thought would be Mohg came out.

  But it wasn’t. It was a kid.

  No older than fifteen, he wore a black robe. I was tempted to make a joke about Mohg being a pedophile, but then the kid looked at me.

  His eyes were grey. Foggy. So sharp that they shook me to my core in a second. Through the corner of my eye, I saw that Hammer and Gael had their heads down.

  No freaking way.

  “Hold up, just a second. Are you serious?” I said and took a step closer to the kid. “This is Mohg?”

  Honestly, it made no sense at all. The way they talked about him, I imagined someone who looked like Merlin, with a beard and everything. Not a kid.

  Hammer coughed and tried to nudge me, but I was too far away. But the kid, he only smiled. It wasn’t even a smile. Just half a crook of one corner of his thin, almost blue lips. His hair, a dark brown, was long enough to be combed to the back and glisten, like he had waxed it.

  “Morta Fox. The girl with a beating heart,” the kid said. But when he spoke, his voice was that of an old man. Nothing was making any sense to me. I was second-guessing my sanity. He definitely spoke like a Merlin. But when I looked at him, it just didn’t add up.

  “I…uh, you’re Mohg. Sorry,” I mumbled, and stepped back.

  “I understand that my appearance comes as a shock to you. Your friend Hammer should have told you what to expect, but I’m glad he didn’t. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced such a reaction,” Mohg said.

  He walked ahead to the stony fork so slowly, that he looked like he might drop to the ground any second.

  “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I just really wasn’t expecting you to be, you know, a kid,” I said. Hammer coughed again, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  “You have still so much humanity left in you,” Mohg said in wonder. I wasn’t sure whether he meant that as a good thing or not, so I kept my mouth shut.

  He went to the shelves, took three really small stones, and put them in the black fog of the fork. I was dying to know what the hell he thought he was doing.

  “You’ve been looking for me.”

  There was only one explanation as to how he knew. Bugz. I wanted to speak when Hammer beat me.

  “Yes, Doyen. We were captured by Doyen Everard a week ago, and only yesterday Morta managed to free us,” he said slowly.

  “He is dead, I hear,” Mohg said, nodding. How he’d heard so fast, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Yes. I killed him. But you have to understand that I only did it…”

  One small hand of his rose up in front of me. The words got stuck in my throat. Not that he did something to me, no. Just that the way he gestured for me to shut the hell up, it was so powerful. It was unexplainable, like his aura forced you to do whatever he asked. Something like my mother. She had that kind of energy around her, but not nearly close to the kind Mohg had.

  “I do not need to hear reason. I need information. Everything he told you, and I need to know why you, dear boy, haven’t completed your oath.” As he said that, he waved his hand at the fork. Where the fog had been black, now it was the color of blood, and it looked
like it was trying to swallow the small, barely visible stones in the middle. “But all at its own time.”

  He walked back to one of the two armchairs and sat. I watched him and tried to figure how the hell he was possible. Such a young body, such strange eyes, such an old voice. A combination that, to me, had yet to make sense.

  “If you will, Morta,” Hammer said after clearing his throat.

  “Oh,” I breathed, realizing that they were waiting for me to speak and that I was making a complete fool of myself. Words Hammer said to me before came back to my mind. Mohg is the master, the Doyen of all Doyens. His word was the law.

  And I was behaving like an idiot in front of him. My eyes squeezed shut for a second, and when they opened again, I didn’t look at him again. His eyes distracted me in a way I didn’t like.

  “He showed me three boxes with a substance that flowed inside them. Chemicals mixed with silver. Something called CFPH. He planned to attack some island called Trinidad. He showed me the map, too. Said that you had treated the land when it should have been left alone. He also said that he’d believed that you could free them all once, until he woke up.”

  I didn’t have any more. Other than meaningless stories of Everard’s glory days, he had given me nothing else.

  “In that case, we should thank you, Morta Fox,” Mohg said. I resisted the temptation to look up at him by biting the inside of my cheek. It was all very clear now. The way people reacted to the kid. I started to feel the energy coming from his every movement and from his eyes. Nothing concrete—I just got the feeling that he could destroy anything he pleased with a wave of his hand. Maybe Bugz was right, after all. Maybe he could really do magic.

  “Dublin said that Doyen Everard was with you. That he was in Brazil,” Hammer said.

  “Yes, that is what I have led him to believe.” Mohg nodded.

  “Because you knew he’d tell me.” And because Mohg knew that he was after Everard. I remembered the letter he’d sent to Hammer.

  “Yes,” Mohg said. “I did not foresee the appearance of Morta. I could not risk having mine close to him.”

  Hammer nodded but said nothing else. Mohg didn’t seem like the guy who would care about sending “one of his” to die. He’d lied to Dublin, knowing Dublin would talk to Hammer. But what the hell did I know?