Table of Contents
Elementals: Chapter One
Elementals: Chapter Two
Elementals: Chapter Three
Elementals: Chapter Four
The Vampire Fate
Book four in The Vampire Wish series
Michelle Madow
Dreamscape Publishing
Annika
“Take me to the Haven,” I commanded Geneva.
Going to the Haven was my only option.
When the vampire queen Laila of the Vale had handed me her stake and dared me to try to kill her, she clearly hadn’t expected that I’d be able to do it.
I hadn’t thought I’d been able to do it.
But that was why I’d disguised myself as a vampire princess and come to the Vale—to kill the vampire queen. And I’d done it. I’d driven a stake—her own stake—straight through her heart.
All that remained of the centuries old queen was a pile ashes by my feet.
But I wasn’t looking at Laila’s remains after reaching for Geneva’s sapphire ring and commanding her to take me to the Haven.
I was looking at Prince Jacen’s silver eyes. The eyes currently staring at me with a mix of shock and anguish.
I couldn’t blame him for looking at me like that. For weeks, he’d thought I was dead.
I’d thought he didn’t care that I was dead. I’d thought he’d eventually planned on killing me himself. And I had a valid reason for thinking that, since it was what he’d told Queen Laila and the witch who acted as her second-in-command, Camelia. I’d seen the entire thing myself.
Jacen had no idea that I’d been masquerading around the palace in disguise, passing myself off as a mysterious vampire princess named Ana who had come to the Vale to seek his hand in marriage.
It had only been last night, during a private dinner with the prince, when I’d found out the truth. Jacen had never wanted me dead. Far from it.
He apparently hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me since the last time we’d seen each other. Not only that, but he had his own plans of vengeance against the Vale—just like I did.
We were on the same side.
I was so close to coming clean with him last night about who I truly was. But I’d been scared. I thought that if I told him the truth, he would be furious and unable to forgive me.
But I couldn’t keep lying to him. So that morning, I’d decided to tell him the truth.
I’d been about to do so when vampire guards had surrounded me and dragged me to the throne room where Queen Laila, Prince Jacen, Princess Karina, and the witch Camelia were waiting.
Somehow, Camelia had found out everything. She’d injected me with the antidote to the transformation potion I’d taken and revealed who I truly was—not Princess Ana from the Seventh Kingdom, but Annika, a human blood slave of the Vale. Not only that, but she knew I had Geneva’s sapphire ring.
Luckily, she’d assumed I was hiding the ring in my quarters. She didn’t know I was keeping it in a hidden pocket in my underwear.
She’d sent guards to my quarters to find the ring, but it wouldn’t be long until they realized it wasn’t there, and that they should check me more thoroughly.
Everyone was so shocked by Laila’s death that I’d taken the moment for what it was—an opportunity to reach for the ring and command Geneva to transport me to the only place that might keep me safe—the kingdom of the Haven.
From what I knew about the Haven, it got its name because it was a safe haven for supernaturals. The vampires who lived there survived on animal blood, not human blood. But mostly, the Haven was neutral territory that believed in peace amongst all the kingdoms.
I just had to pray that once they heard my side of the story, they would help me.
Geneva was bound to do as I said, since I was the current owner of the sapphire ring that held her captive. So right after giving her the command, we both flashed out of the Vale.
I’d done what I’d come to the Vale to do—I’d killed Queen Laila.
My only regret was that I might never be able be able to come clean to Jacen with the truth.
Annika
My stomach dropped, and I was surrounded by darkness.
Seconds later, my feet hit the ground, warmth surrounded me, and my vision came into focus.
I was standing in a courtyard. Full trees arched overhead, and while it was still dark, it had the feeling of right before sunrise. The entire place was alive—with greenery, chirping birds, and with vampires dressed in all white. They looked like they were at a yoga retreat—not like they lived in one of the most powerful kingdoms in the entire world.
The vampires were doing all sorts of things—sweeping, cleaning, and carrying baskets through the open halls.
Suddenly, they stopped what they were doing and turned to me, their fangs out as they barreled in my direction.
“Protect me!” I called to Geneva.
The witch looked as shell-shocked as I felt as she held out her hands and spoke a spell.
I held my stake in front of me and bent my knees, ready to defend myself against the oncoming vampires.
Well, it wasn’t really my stake. It was Laila’s stake—the stake she’d handed me before challenging me to kill her.
When I’d killed her, the stake had done something to me. I’d felt a burst of warmth, and suddenly, my senses were as strong as they’d been while I was masquerading as a vampire.
But there was more to it than that. Because my reflexes had improved, too.
Out of nowhere, I’d known how to fight. I’d taken down the three vampire guards surrounding me as if it were nothing. And those vampires were strong. I shouldn’t have been able to do that—not even after consuming vampire blood to temporarily give me the abilities of a vampire.
Except that the antidote Camelia had injected me with had removed the vampire blood from my system. When I’d staked Laila, it had been as a human.
I had no idea what had happened, but I knew one thing—I wasn’t letting go of this stake.
Geneva was fast in casting her spell, and the oncoming vampires crashed into the barrier she’d erected around us. Their fangs were out and ready, their eyes savage as they tried to claw their way through.
“Why are they attacking?” I asked, glancing over at the witch. “I thought the vampires here didn’t feed on humans?”
Geneva just crossed her arms, glaring at me and saying nothing.
This certainly wasn’t the first time she’d looked at me with disdain or irritation—the witch clearly thought she was better than humans—but something about the way she was looking at me now was different.
She was staring at me with pure, undisguised hate.
“Answer me!” I yelled, somehow keeping my focus on both her and the mob of surrounding vampires, which was getting larger by the second. “I command you to answer my question.”
“I can’t say with certainty.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, refusing to look at me.
Great.
I studied the crowd, relieved when a statuesque vampire who appeared in control of herself made her way through. She wore the same thing as the others—a flowing, comfortable looking garment of all white—and her hair was in a braided crown that made her look like an ancient goddess.
She pushed past the rabid vampires, and it wasn’t long until she reached us.
“The vampires here are not accustomed to being around humans,” the mystery woman said, her cool gaze on me as she spoke. “You’d best tell Geneva to add a scent barrier to the boundary as well.”
“Do as she said,” I told Geneva. “Add a sc
ent barrier to the boundary.”
She must have obeyed, because a second later, the vampires stopped hissing and pounding against the boundary.
“Go,” the woman told the vampires, her strong voice carrying through the courtyard. “Don’t you all have chores to attend to before the sun rises?”
They lowered their eyes and shuffled away, picking up the various cleaning objects and baskets they’d discarded in the frenzy. Some of the objects had been destroyed—trampled on—and their owners hurried away with them, ducking their heads in shame.
It was only once they’d returned to their work that I felt it was okay to speak.
“The two of you know each other?” My gaze went back and forth between Geneva and the mystery woman. I eventually settled on focusing on the mystery woman, since Geneva seemed intent to look anywhere but at me.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to the witch, but whatever it was had clearly pissed her off.
“Geneva was a great asset to the vampires during the Great War,” the woman said, clasping her hands together as she spoke. “The Haven, of course, stayed out of the fighting, but we fostered trust between the vampire kingdoms so they could work together to defeat our common enemy. However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, since I don’t believe we’ve been officially introduced. I’m Mary—the leader of the Haven.”
“You’re an original vampire?” I asked, instantly wary. I hadn’t thought of it while deciding to come here—I’d only had a few seconds to decide where to go at all—but an original vampire might not take too kindly to the fact that I’d just killed Laila.
“I am.” She nodded. “And you are…?”
“Sorry.” I pulled my stake back, realizing that not only had I not yet introduced myself, but that I was pointing a stake at her chest. “I’m Annika.”
“You’re a Nephilim,” Mary said simply.
“What?” I’d heard Camelia say that word—Nephilim—after I’d killed Laila, but I’d been so consumed with trying to escape that I hadn’t given it much thought.
“Your eyes have rings of gold around their pupils,” she said. “The mark of the Nephilim.”
“They don’t,” I said. “My eyes are brown.”
I’d always wanted prettier eyes—green or blue—but I knew more than anyone that my eyes were a dull shade of chocolate brown.
“You must have come to your powers recently, then.” Mary glanced at the stake in my hand, wariness crossing her features.
“She did.” Geneva focused intently on Mary as she spoke. “She came into her powers when she killed Queen Laila.”
Annika
Crap. There went any hope of keeping it secret from Mary that I’d killed one of her fellow original vampires.
“Stop.” I glared at Geneva, wanting nothing more than to jam this stake through her heart. But of course, I held back. Geneva and I might not be the best of friends, but she’d helped me get this far—and I had no interest in committing cold-blooded murder. At least, not again. “I can speak for myself.”
Geneva narrowed her eyes at me, full of absolute loathing.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to her between last time we’d spoken and now, but something between us had clearly changed. I’d have to work it out with her later. For now, she had to obey my command, since I controlled her ring.
“It’s true, then.” Mary said it to me as a statement, not a question. “You killed Queen Laila.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, begging her to believe me. “Well, I did mean to, but she didn’t give me much of a choice. It was her or me. I had to do it. Otherwise, I was as good as dead.”
Geneva clenched her fists by her side, her lips pressed together. She looked like she was dying to contradict me.
I couldn’t blame her. Because while what I’d said hadn’t been a lie, I had gone to the Vale with the goal of killing the vampire queen.
“It seems we have much to discuss,” Mary said after a few seconds of silence. “Come. Let’s go to my cabin, where we can speak privately.”
She turned around and led the way.
Geneva kept the boundary up around us as we followed Mary, which stopped the vampires from trying to attack again. In fact, they barely glanced at us as they went about their chores.
The way they calmly performed their tasks in their all white outfits was similar to how I imagined a commune.
Or a cult.
But as I followed Mary down the open hall, I was barely able to take in the exotic scenery of the Indian mountainside retreat. Because everything that had happened this morning at the Vale was finally starting to set in.
I’d killed not just Laila, but three of her guards.
I’d seen death before, yes. And I’d certainly fantasized about killing the vampires who had killed my family.
But seeing death and doing the killing were two completely different things.
I’d taken lives this morning. Four of them.
That was something I was going to have to live with forever.
It wasn’t Laila I felt guilty about. After all, the vampire queen had founded the kingdom that had killed so many innocent humans and turned so many unwilling humans into vampires.
Killing her had saved so many future lives.
No—it wasn’t Laila’s death that plagued my mind. It was the guards.
I was glad that my guard Tess hadn’t been one of the guards who had dragged me to the throne room—I never would have been able to hurt her—but I knew nothing about the guards who did. Many of the vampires in the Vale had been turned against their will, like Jacen had been. They didn’t want to be what they were. Yes, they’d likely killed before, but all vampires of the Vale had control of their bloodlust. They were killed otherwise—vampires who couldn’t control their bloodlust were considered too much of a liability to live in the Vale.
The guards I’d killed probably had wives who loved them—perhaps they even had families. By dragging me to the throne room to face the royal vampires, they were only doing their job. They didn’t deserve to die for that.
But if I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me first.
No matter what, I couldn’t let myself forget that.
“We’re here,” Mary said as we approached a modern cabin. It was small and simple, surrounded by many other identical cabins.
“This is yours?” I asked. She’d said she was taking me to her cabin, but I’d expected the leader of the Haven to have a mansion—not a cabin the same size as all the others in the kingdom.
“It is.” She nodded. “Here in the Haven, we believe in peace and equality. I’m not entitled to any more personal living space than anyone else.”
“Does everyone here live alone?” I asked.
“No.” She smiled. “There are other, larger cabins on the other side of the community for citizens who choose to share their housing. The space is, of course, divided equally in accordance to the number of individuals inside the residence.”
She was leading the way up the steps when something turned the corner of the cabin—a tiger.
Its eyes locked on mine, and I froze. It was huge—larger than I’d ever imagined a tiger could be—and it watched me with fierce intelligence. I couldn’t move, afraid that one single motion would send it pouncing.
I’d heard about the Haven’s legendary tiger shifters, but it was completely different seeing one in person.
“There’s no need to fear the tigers,” Mary said, as calm as ever. “They protect us. As long as you adhere to the Haven’s law against violence while on our land, the tigers will protect you as well.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to ignore the way my hands itched for my stake. “Good to know.”
The tiger yawned, and while the motion was harmless, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was an excuse for it to show off its massive teeth.
Mary stepped up to the front door, pressed her finger against a panel, and it clicked open. “Come inside,” she said, holding the door op
en for Geneva and me. “As I said before, we have much to discuss.”
I scurried past the tiger, keeping my eyes on it the entire time, and followed her inside.
Jacen
The throne room had erupted into chaos.
Karina had gracefully stepped out of a side entrance soon after Annika and Geneva had disappeared. Camelia knelt down next to the pile of ashes, as if praying for Laila to rise. The three fallen guards lay dead beside her.
A few more guards had entered the room soon after Annika and Geneva had flashed out—the same guards who had been sent to Annika’s quarters to find the sapphire ring. They’d informed me of what I already knew—the ring wasn’t there.
Now the guards stared at Camelia hovering over the pile of ash, while others talked amongst themselves.
My mind whirred with everything that had just happened, but I still caught snippets of their conversations.
“She can’t truly be dead.”
“The human killed the queen and three of the strongest guards.”
“The queen will rise from the ashes.”
“Death is coming to the Vale—we need to get out while we still can.”
I couldn’t say what was right and what was wrong. But I knew one thing—what had just happened couldn’t get out to the public. If it did, everything would be a bigger mess than it already was.
“No one is to go anywhere.” My voice boomed throughout the room, and I threw some compulsion into my tone, wanting to make sure they obeyed me. “You’re all to stay in this room until I issue a further command.”
The guards all straightened to attention, their eyes on me.
There wasn’t much I liked about being a vampire—I hated pretty much every part of it. But compulsion definitely had its benefits.
Now, everyone was looking to me for instructions on what to do next. But my thoughts were consumed with only one thing.
Annika was alive.
The Vampire Fate (Dark World: The Vampire Wish Book 4) Page 1
