Vampire Girl 7: Fallen Star

by Karpov Kinrade

  My throat tightens, because I know what dark powers this star will possess once it's complete. I know it's a very bad idea. I'm just not sure if I can trust the man next to me enough to give him such dangerous knowledge.

  I hand back his shard. "So there are other worlds, then. Besides this one and earth."

  He nods.

  "Have you been to them all?"

  "No. Some aren't inhabitable. But I've been to most."

  The things he must have seen. For a moment I have a twinge of jealousy at his life, at the artifacts he's collected and places he's seen. The history he's lived through. But none of that is worth sacrificing your soul for, I have to remind myself.

  He places the shard back into the velvet bag. "I have one. You had one, which is now probably in the hands of Global Tech. I'm guessing by its shape, that leaves two more."

  I nod. "Yes. There are four pieces," I confirm, shifting my eyes so he doesn't see the other truth I withhold from him. I stand, walking around the room again, avoiding eye contact with the prince. "We can't let Global Tech get their hands on any more of the pieces, and we have to get back from them what they have."

  "We?" Dean says, a flirtation in his voice.

  I sigh. "You know what I mean. This artifact has power, even in its current form. Too much power." I can feel it under my skin, even now, even without touching it, pulsing, vibrating with energy begging to be used. And I know what it can do. The temptation to wield this power would be too great for anyone. Even me. Maybe especially me.

  To distract myself from dark thoughts, I let my hand glance over the shelves of history, closing my eyes as I soak in the stories each piece tells. I'm learning more about his world, and my own, in these few minutes of discovery, than I have in years of excavations, and it humbles me and pulls at an ache in my chest. Towards the end of one shelf, tucked in the back behind a grimoire, I notice a shallow bowl, simple in design, filled with water. I wander towards it as if pulled by a magnetic force. As I stare into the water, forms appear in the reflection, and then, I am swept away by the visions that consume my mind.

  I'm home, in our expansive dining room, sitting at the table, smiling. I'm an adult, much the same as I am now, only both of my parents are present. My dad is flipping pancakes and making a joke about penguins, and my mom is cutting fresh fruit. He leans over to kiss her head as they work together in tandem, their orbits connected, their bodies in sync. They're older than I remember. My father has graying temples and they both hold deeper laugh lines and a few new worry lines. I watch as they move as one, my heart full. I've never been this happy, not since I was a child. The sun is covering the world in a spray of orange and red hues and the smell of the ocean wafts in from the open windows that overlook a view to die for. But my eyes are stuck on my parents. Alive. Happy. In love. And with me. My dad serves the pancakes and my mom places a bowl of fruit on the table. They join me and we eat together, sharing stories about our day, our work, our plans. My mom and I have a dig together, one my dad will be joining in between movie shoots. My heart is near bursting with joy, and I know I can happily stay in this reality forever. This is what my life was meant to be like. This is where I must stay.

  I help clean up after breakfast and my father sits at our grand piano to play a tune while my mother sings and laughs. I join in, catching the melody, though I didn't inherit my mother's melodious voice.

  Then I hear my name being called from a great distance, as if through water.

  "Alex! Alex!"

  The voice becomes more urgent, and I look around, wondering where I am. The scene with my parents fades, the room disappearing, their smiles turning to smoke as a new face materializes before me. Dean Vane, with worried blue eyes, stands inches from me, his mouth turned down, his brow furrowed. "Alex, come back to me."

  I stumble and he catches me, as the reality crashes into my heart. "What was that?"

  He holds me steady and peers at the bowl of water. "That's the Mirror of Idis. It shows us what might be, if things were different. It can be very hard to resist losing yourself in its visions."

  "No shit," I say with a painful laugh.

  "What did you see?" he asks, tilting his head.

  "My parents. I saw my parents." My hands grip his arms tightly, and I feel a certainty surge within me. "We have to destroy the shards of the Fallen Star of Nirandel," I say. "They are too dangerous for anyone to ever collect for themselves."

  Because I know what I would do with them if I could wield that power, and it would take everything in me to stop myself from committing a great evil with that artifact.

  As we turn to exit the room, we pass the man who has been quietly acting as a sentinel. I didn't look closely at him before, but now I see that his eyes are wide and he looks pained.

  With a groan, he throws himself at me, sword in hand, teeth elongated, a primal growl rising from his throat.

  His teeth sink into my neck before I know what's happened, and I kick and punch but he is armored and has a weapon pinned into my gut as he feeds on my blood. Pain permeates everything in me and my vision swims. Another roar fills my ears, and the guard is pulled away. My body falls like a limp rag doll to the floor as Dean tears into the man, his normally handsome face distorted by rage as he ends the vampire's life with a quick twist of his neck.

  He rushes back to me, the bloodlust in him fading as he sees my state. "I'm so sorry. That should have never happened."

  But of course it should have. I am, after all, surrounded by monsters. I was stupid to let my guard down because of a pretty face and nice words. These creatures are deadly, and I am only food to them.

  Alex Stone

  I'm shaking, more in rage than pain, though there's plenty of both to go around, as Dean escorts me out of the room and through the halls. We head back to the dining room, where he sits me down and proceeds to give commands to everyone near him. He's pissed, clearly, but also worried.

  "I can offer you my blood," he says, the normal bluster and confidence in his eyes gone. "It will heal you quickly."

  I glare at him. "Nope. I'm good."

  He nods and grabs a napkin from the table, pressing it to my neck to stem the bleeding. "It is rare for a vampire to lose control like that, but it does happen. Normally they are sent to a special island, to keep others safe and give them a chance to gain control of themselves. We don't get a lot of humans here. But even so, this isn't what most of us are like."

  "Really?" I ask, my skepticism clear. "Because it seems to me this is par for the course. I never should have stayed. I want to go home now." My voice is firm, only belied by the vague dizziness I'm still feeling from the attack, and the experience of seeing my parents, of living a reality that will never be. Of knowing once and for all what's actually at stake.

  "Let's get you fixed up and then I'll take you home, if that's what you want."

  "It is," I say, a little less firmly than before. The man is arrogant and cocky and infuriating, but right now he's being compassionate and kind and it's a lot harder to stay mad at him like this. Still, he's no different from the monster that killed my parents and the one that just attacked me.

  I steel myself against any softening of my nerves as Helda joins us, a small jar of ointment in her hands.

  She passes it to Dean, giving him a chastising look, before turning her attention to me. "This isn't the best introduction to Inferna you could have gotten, but it's not all bad, my dear."

  I don't know what to say to the kindly Fae, so I hold my tongue as Dean removes the napkin and applies the ointment to the wound. His fingers are cool and gentle and the touch sends an unwanted shiver up my spine. Damn this man.

  "This will heal you," he says. "It will just take a bit longer than my blood would have. And might leave a small scar."

  "What's in it?" I ask. I sniff and detect hints of lavender, but the other scents are foreign to me, though it's vaguely similar to my friend's concoctions that have saved my skin—literally—more than once.

/>   He shrugs. "It's an ancient Fae mixture. They don't share their secrets with vampires."

  "Smart."

  Helda snorts in laughter and turns to walk away, but not before giving Dean another look of disappointment. He shifts his eyes away from her piercing glance and focuses back on my neck. Once the ointment is applied, he covers it with a bandage and leans back. "You're all set. But… are you sure? There's so much at stake, and everything I've learned has me convinced we have to work together. There are pieces to the puzzle neither of us are seeing yet."

  I sigh, exhausted and frustrated. "There is no 'us.' I… I appreciate you saving my life back in Israel. But being with you, being here… it puts me at greater risk. Vampires aren't safe. They never have been. Nothing I've seen so far has changed my mind about that." I place a hand over the bandage, a low ache forming as the ointment presumably gets to work healing the skin. "I'll find the other pieces on my own and stop Global Tech. You should destroy the one you have."

  He raises an eyebrow. "How do you propose I do that?" he asks.

  "I—" my voice stalls as I realize I honestly have no clue. "The fires of Mordor?" The joke slips from my mouth before I can hold it in, and his eyes sparkle in amusement as he chuckles. I can't help but laugh too, whether at my joke or the absurdity of it all I don't rightly know.

  I'm not usually so angry and mistrusting, though given recent events maybe I should be a tad more cautious about the men in my life. I know, understatement of the year, right?

  "I don't know how to destroy the artifact," I admit. "That's not a secret it's anxious to give up to me."

  Dean leans back, thinking. "I've tried to destroy it," he says, surprising me.

  "Why?" For a man who collects precious things, that would be the ultimate sacrilege. Even for me, knowing what I know, it's hard to fathom destroying something with so much history.

  "From the things I've learned about the Stars of Nirandel, it seemed the safest course. Their powers become corrupted on other worlds, particularly on earth. Even on their world, the stars are misused, despite how religiously they are guarded. It has caused abnormalities in their powers, deviations in their genetics, and war amongst their people. And this is a power inherent to their world. I assumed that on earth, the power would be even more damaging, and I've seen what unbridled power can do. I don't know all the secrets of this artifact, but I know enough to make me very cautious."

  "What have you tried?" I ask, tucking all this information away in my mind.

  "The usual," he says. "Fire, magic, spells. Nothing worked. If anything, it seemed to grow stronger, absorbing the power."

  "Interesting," I say, considering what that could mean. "Is it possible that it can't be destroyed at all?"

  He shrugs. "Everything can be destroyed. You just need to find its weakness."

  A scream interrupts our conversation as a guard explodes into the dining room. "Prince Dean, the artifact room has been breached."

  We both stand at the same time, likely with the same thought. "The star fragment," I say under my breath.

  "Wait here," he commands, running out of the room with his guard.

  "Yeah, I'm not a 'wait here' kind of woman," I say, looking for anything that can be used as a weapon and choosing a steak knife from the table before retracing my steps towards the secret room.

  My mind spins with the possibilities as I approach. Did Global Tech track us down? How did they get to another world, though? There are too many unanswered questions as I move to catch up to Dean and his guards.

  I hear shouting, then the sound of a body hitting the wall with a wet thud. I run faster, my knife at the ready. I'm no warrior, but I've been in a fair amount of scuffles with supernatural horrors. I can hold my own, though I usually prefer my ice axe to a dinner knife. It's more effective in cleaving monster skulls.

  The lights are out in the halls, and I'm forced to navigate in near pitch darkness. My night vision hasn't kicked in when I stumble over a body and nearly impale myself on my own weapon. That would have been a way to go. Nice job, Alex. Scrambling up, my head still a bit wobbly from the blood loss and adrenaline rush, I'm not at my best.

  Still, nothing could have prepared me for what I see when I pull back the tapestry and enter the room.

  Bodies litter the floor.

  Dean is leaning against a wall holding his gut as blood pours over his hands. His face is more ghastly pale than ever, his eyes pained and shocked in equal measure.

  In the center of the bodies stands a woman holding Dean's piece of the Star. At her hip is a belt with the other piece dangling from it. The piece I excavated in Israel.

  She's got long brown hair the color of chestnuts, soft hazel eyes, and hasn't aged a day in fifteen years.

  My knife falls to the ground, my jaw slack, my mind not believing what I'm seeing.

  The blood splattered creature stealing from us is…

  My mother.

  I step forward, dumbstruck, unsure of what to say or do. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.

  "You died," I say, my eyes filling with tears.

  Her attention flicks to me, and as the bloodlust in her wanes, I see a glimpse of the woman she used to be. The woman who raised me, who read me stories and gave me baths and always made time to have tea with me and my stuffed animals.

  I don't know how to reconcile what I'm seeing with my memories, and so I stand, stunned, unable to move.

  "I'm sorry, Alex," she says, her voice the same one from memories, with the lilting British accent. Before I know what's happening, she pulls a mirror from her pocket and then she's gone, as if she was never there.

  The small mirror falls to the ground, shattering into pieces.

  Alex Stone

  Dean's moans snap me from my temporary paralysis. I rush to him and offer support, but his body is dead weight as I practically drag him to the couch. He can't walk and can barely move. I'm fairly certain he's actually holding in his intestines, from the looks of that slash across his abdomen. It doesn't bode well.

  All the guards are dead. We are in a remote part of the castle. I'm at a loss.

  His breathing slows. I don't really know what kills vampires. Lore would say this isn't enough, but how accurate is that? I've got no clue. Can they really live with their guts spilling out of them?

  So I have a choice…

  Let him die.

  Or feed him my blood.

  I assume that part of lore is correct. My blood should help. And he did the same for me.

  It's the right thing to do. I think.

  Suddenly everything I thought I knew about the who's good and who's bad has been flipped on its head, and I feel as if I know nothing. As if my whole world has been a lie.

  But I don't have time to second guess myself. Or rather, Dean doesn't have time for me to be indecisive. Whether this wound will kill him or not, he must be in agony.

  I scramble across the room, knocking into bodies as I search for the knife I dropped earlier. I find it wedged between the dismembered head of a guard and a bookshelf. Lovely. Shaking like one of those chihuahuas who never seem to calm down, I make my way back to Dean and steady my hand as I slide the knife over the soft fleshy part of my forearm. The cut stings as blood begins to trickle out of the wound. I hold it over his mouth and will him better.

  Blood spills onto his lips, casting crimson splatters onto his deathly pale skin. It takes a moment for him to respond. I lower my arm to his mouth and in a violent burst of life his lips seek my blood, his teeth elongating as they find purchase in my flesh, and he begin to drink deeply.

  Heat burns through my arm and travels through my body. It's not unpleasant, but rather intoxicating. I begin to feel sleepy as he drinks more and more from me, until I cannot keep my eyes open any longer.

  When darkness takes me, I go to it willingly.

  I expected nightmares, but my sleep was a dreamless one. When I wake, I am dressed in a silk nightgown and laying under fur blankets with a fire warming the r
oom.

  And I'm surprised to discover I'm not alone in the bed. As I shift, I feel the body of a man, his skin cool, his muscles firm. He is naked from the waist up and when I open my eyes in the dimness of the room, he is propped on his side staring at me.

  "Did you sleep well?" Dean asks.

  I try to sit up, but my body feels made of led and so I stay where I'm at, enjoying the flames dancing on the walls and warmth of the bed. Even the prince's body next to mine offers a kind of comfort I didn't expect. "I'm still tired," I say, yawning.

  "You lost a lot of blood, but you saved my life." He looks at me quizzically. "You're an enigma, Dr. Stone. You hate my kind, yet you risked your life to save me. Why?"

  Our faces are inches apart, and as I awaken, so does my body. Need for him grows in me, as old prejudices are replaced by new truths. "You were right," I say. "I was judging an entire race based on one man's evil deeds. You've been kind when I wasn't. You saved my life and offered me your trust. If you weren't a vampire I wouldn't have held the same prejudice. I was nearly killed and left for dead by a human. I was saved by a vampire. My whole life feels like it's been turned upside down."

  He lifts a hand and traces my face with the pad of his finger, and I sigh at the contact as my nerve endings come alive. Whatever my mind has thought of the sexy prince, my body has clearly had its own ideas and is ready to act on them.

  "How did we end up in bed together?" I ask, my own nervous energy evident in my voice.

  "Helda wanted to keep an eye on both of us," he says, his eyes locked on mine, his finger moving down my chin to my throat. "She found us after you passed out. She stayed with us until I woke and relieved her. It took some convincing, but she finally left about an hour ago."

  "You've just been watching me sleep for an hour?" I ask, my voice catching in my throat.

  "You look at peace when you sleep," he says. "I find it mesmerizing."