Seeking Serena (The Complete Series Books 1-5): Paranormal Vampire Reverse Harem

by Lily Levi

  “Hello, little lamb.”

  I closed my eyes and took a long breath. I moved the cigarette back up to my mouth and shook my head against the back of the leather seat. I’d known I would see him again, I just wasn’t sure when that would be.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said, not sure what it was I thought he might do. Kill me? He would’ve done it on the dark Chicago street when no one else was around. Or maybe he wanted a show. “Orlando is here,” I added.

  “Orlando?” said Ambrose. He sounded surprised by the name. “Oh, yes, Orlando. Frightening creature, that one. Terrifying, really. I shouldn’t want to cross him, never.”

  I turned against the back of the seat to face him.

  He leaned against the side of the car and smiled at me. His whitened eyes shone with a kind of enthralled gentleness that I had only seen once before, the night he’d led me through the closed hallways of the mansion and then partook in the feast of my body with the rest of them.

  He lifted his face to the stars and took in a deep lungful of the summer night. “Can you taste it?” he asked.

  I took a long drag from the end of the cigarette and said nothing. My heart had taken a steady pace early in life and hardly ever veered from it. Now was no different.

  “It tastes like…” He opened his eyes and shot a heated glare at me. “Like treason. Do you know what treason tastes like, Serena Moon?”

  I flicked the butt of the cigarette to the ground. “No,” I said. “But I imagine your mouth is full of it.”

  He nodded as though it were something he believed might have some truth in it. “I am more honest than you would appreciate,” he said “I say things, they mean things. Every word. Every pause.” He moved his eyes lazily back up to the stars. “It all means something real.”

  I pushed open the door and stepped out into the glowing heat of the empty lot. I leaned against the side of the sedan next to him and lit a second cigarette.

  Peering through the smudged glass on the other side of the parking lot, I could just make out Orlando’s hunched frame.

  “He’s eating and he doesn’t want you to see,” Ambrose mused. “A kind of social phobia. I understand, of course. He’s not the most attractive when he does it.”

  “He’ll come out eventually,” I said.

  “You’re irritated.”

  “He’s useless,” I heard myself say. My stomach dropped with my own words because they were the truth. Orlando wasn’t going to protect me from anyone, let alone himself. He was stronger than me, but there was something about him that made him weaker than me, too.

  Ambrose moved his head from side to side in an internal debate. “He’s not useless, I wouldn’t say that. Cigarette, darling? Thank you.” He took the cigarette into the fine line of his mouth, lit it, and then moved it away. “Shall we be nice to him? Yes, let’s. Orlando is short-sighted by no fault of his own, though there are no spectacles for the sort of vision he’s lacking, none but experience and I fear the only experience he’s interested in is fucking.”

  “Fucking,” I said. “Who isn’t interested in fucking.”

  He pointed to my stomach with his cigarette. “And pretending that anything could come of that interest.”

  I looked down. I had let myself sit on the line between believing Orlando and preparing myself for the lie that it might be. He had no proof other than his ‘sense’ for pregnancies, but that was little enough. I had only hoped that he believed what he said because it didn’t matter what I thought about it, not really.

  I looked back up and found Orlando, still hunched over the poor soul inside of the motel office. “And how do you know?” I asked.

  Ambrose twirled the cigarette between his fingers. “Call it a ‘sense’ if you want.” He shrugged. “In any case, if one of ours is in there, it’ll certainly kill you. I’d hate to see that happen.”

  I bit my lip and crushed the cigarette into the ground beside its brother. “Because you’d like to do it yourself.”

  “Not particularly, no,” he said. “But Orlando would adore the opportunity. He is taking you eastward, isn’t he? Now, I wonder, what lies east of Rhode Island?”

  I looked at him and then back to the office. “Many things,” I whispered.

  Orlando straightened from behind the desk. Even from across the lot and behind the dirty glass, I could make out the wicked scowl across his face.

  “He sees you,” I said.

  He would emerge. They would fight - wouldn’t they? But for what? For the right to kill me or protect me and I had no say in who would win or what it would mean when either one did.

  I clenched my jaw against the new frustration that had perhaps always been there. Even now, well beyond the end of my days, my fate was not my own.

  Something small smacked against the pavement to our left and then another something fell after it, a black ball from the sky.

  My heart rose as it had rarely done before and I swallowed back the new uncertainty.

  Something was wrong.

  I stepped away from the car.

  “I’ll give you an idea of what you should do next,” said Ambrose. He dropped his own cigarette to the ground. “It begins with run and ends with, well, you know the rest.”

  Deadmourn

  Theron watched the first blackbird fall and then the next. He moved forward between the trees and stepped into the open lot. “Ambrose,” he said, but his brother was fixated on things far more important, or less important, wholly dependant on the mood of the night.

  He turned his attention to the bird at his feet and crouched to enjoy a better view of its folded wings and empty sockets, already filled with the white wiggling of maggots. He pinched the black beak open.

  “Master,” he said. He lifted his eyes to find Ambrose and the dear Serena where he had left them, but both were gone.

  The moon rises, said the bird. What rises must fall.

  Zane leaned his head against the yellow tiled wall of the Aldgate East tube station, tired and drunk off of the sweet mixture of blood and whiskey. He had thought it would be fun to canvas London one last time before leaving to America and it had been somewhat fun to watch him do it.

  A train whistled through the tube, screeching against the tracks.

  People got off. People got on. People got off again - wrong train.

  There were no right trains. Not anymore.

  “Hello,” said a boy in a white raincoat. It wasn’t raining.

  “Hello,” said Zane.

  The boy stared down at him. “Have you seen the moon tonight?”

  Nikolai pulled open the crisp pages of yesterday’s Gowdry Gazette. He scanned the first page and then the second.

  There was nothing of interest and there never was.

  He folded the pages back together and set them in his lap.

  “Thirty minutes to landing,” said a disconnected voice over the airplane’s intercom.

  Nikolai looked through the small box window, but there was nothing to see beyond the long white arm of the plane.

  “Isn’t it wonderful,” said the disconnected voice. “It eats the light, fat and full. Can you do that?”

  “Can you love the moon?” asked Cain in a voice too serene to be his own. He turned to Pollux and smiled gently at him, as if he could feel as deeply as anyone else. “Can the moon love you?”

  Desmond raised his arm for the waiter. Mathias pushed the plate back from in front of him and Ivan stood from the table.

  “It wasn’t worth paying for,” he said. “Nothing ever is.”

  The waiter approached and took out the ream of checks from his black apron.

  “Exchanges give worth,” said Mathias. “Let him do it.”

  The waiter smiled amicably as though he could understand the depths of what had been said. “Shoot for the moon,” he said, passing the check onto the table. “Kill it.”

  Ivan grabbed the man’s arm in a flash of fury. “What was that you said?”

  The w
aiter’s eyes widened. “I said, ‘I hope to see you gentlemen again soon.’”

  Ambrose held onto the door handle of the sedan to help steady himself against the force that was coming - but which one?

  Was it Cain that he could sense, his hatred always growing?

  Was it Orlando who bolted through the glass door of the office with blood still on his chin?

  Or was it the words that pulsed through the fine creases of his mind, throbbing and cutting as they went? Was it a song? Did someone else speak? A wicked child’s verse?

  The moon rises.

  What rises must fall.

  Have you seen the moon tonight?

  Isn’t it wonderful?

  It eats the light, fat and full.

  Can you do that?

  Can you love the moon?

  Can the moon love you?

  Shoot for the moon.

  Kill it.

  Protect it.

  The old game is dead.

  A new game is born.

  It screams into the world.

  Hell cries.

  I will be sad to lose you.

  The moon rises and the sweet herd is culled.

  Do you see your brother now?

  Pollux dropped his hand from Cain’s shoulder.

  “The moon can’t love us all,” he said.

  Cain stared calmly down at him.

  Pollux pointed to the figure of Orlando, moving swiftly as ever he had moved across the lot and towards Ambrose, frozen against the side of the yellow sedan. “Do you see your brother now?” he asked.

  Cain nodded.

  “Good,” said Pollux. “Kill him.”

  Serena

  The water swirled beneath the long legs of the dock. The larger platforms carried the weight of nets, cargo, and men, but we stood alone.

  I flicked the ash from my cigarette into the wind and moved a stray piece of black hair from across my face.

  “We should keep moving,” said Theron. “We either leave America or we stay, but we have to choose. Orlando was taking her this way for a reason and if Cain doesn’t know what that reason was, Pollux certainly will.”

  Ambrose knelt to adjust the leather tongue of his black dress shoe. “Let the lady enjoy her cigarette, Theron. She enjoys so few things already. As for Orlando, we all know what his purposes were. Not exactly the cleverest of them all, was he, Serena?”

  I frowned at his words, though I couldn’t have denied their truth.

  “I truly am sorry for your loss,” he continued. “Orlando was… Well, he wasn’t a good man, that’s not right to say. He wasn’t particularly anything of societal value. He wasn’t funny or kind. He hardly had enough of a temper or any other foible to render him interesting by any measure.” He stood and twisted his shoe into the wooden planks. “He was… What was he, Theron?”

  Theron shook his head. “He was the first to go, I assume.”

  “Very good,” said Ambrose. “He was the first to go.”

  I worked my jaw against the words. “He was trying to help me,” I said, but my voice took on a kind of vitriolic bile that I hadn’t fully intended. “And neither of you helped him.”

  “You miss him,” said Ambrose. “I had marked you for something more, more…”

  “No,” I said, cutting him off.

  Theron pushed his hair back against the mess of it that the wind had created. “It’s done,” he said, dropping his arm. “Cain will be coming for the rest of us after the bloat of Orlando has worn away.”

  “Fat with blood,” Ambrose mused, softly, almost happily. “We have some time yet. In any case, there’s no telling who ‘the rest of us’ entails.”

  “The riddle,” said Theron.

  Ambrose shrugged. “It means what we want it to mean. A riddle without parameters.” He adjusted his coat. “At any rate, it appears the new game is to either protect Serena or kill her, though killing her would be a much easier and more defined way to win, don’t you agree?”

  I looked from Ambrose to Theron and then back again. “Then why don’t you do it?” The old feeling of numb defiance rose again through my veins, only the threat of death now stung with a vengeance that I’d never once felt before.

  Real or false, I’d tasted hope.

  And it had ruined me.

  I wasn’t meant for hope. I was a creature of death and always had been. I was meant to kill others and then to be killed. ‘Hope’ was never supposed to be more than a word as hollow as the world had always felt. It was a dead tree where nothing could hope to live. Even the termites would find themselves unwelcome.

  Hope was supposed to mean nothing to me.

  Ambrose lit his own cigarette against the wind and blew the smoke into the crisp, swirling air. “Frankly, you’re more interesting alive, or whatever version of ‘alive’ that it is you are anymore.” He shoved his free hand into his coat pocket. “In any case, killing you would be too simple and the Master isn’t particularly fond of simplicities, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

  I showed him my teeth. “Your compliments need work,” I said.

  He smiled back at me and I noted the razored ridges of his own teeth, far sharper than my own. “My dear,” he said. “That was hardly a compliment.”

  Theron stepped towards the edge of the dock and peered down into the angry water. “A bored king does what?” he asked, looking back up at us.

  “A fine riddle,” said Ambrose and lifted a single, long finger into the air. “And the most sensible thing you’ve said in a hundred years.”

  “What?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  Ambrose turned to me and took in the hot smoke of his cigarette for longer than what a comfortable moment might be worth. “A bored king does the only thing worth doing when there’s nothing else to do.”

  I stared at him and waited. He liked his little riddles, his words, and his games. I would play them to the least extent possible.

  “War,” he said at last, drawing the word out longer than it really was. “War, the greatest game of them all.”

  I looked away from him and back out over the cold, angry waves.

  “She’ll make a terrible Helen of Troy,” said Ambrose, breaking my thoughts with his nonsense. “But we always make do with what we’re given, isn’t that so?”

  “We haven’t had a proper war since the lycanthropes,” said Theron. “Although I suppose this is more of the civil variety.”

  “Ah,” said Ambrose with an air of deep, unrepentant nostalgia. “There are so few good wars anymore. Do you miss the carnage, brother? Others do. Cain, for instance.”

  I tossed my half-lit cigarette into the ocean and crossed my arms. I watched it sink into the white foam.

  “I’m not interested in your war games,” I said, turning to face them again. But it didn’t matter and I already knew it. Whatever Master Deadmourn wanted would happen. The least I could do was string it out as I had already.

  Ambrose lifted his brow at me. “My dear,” he said, stepping forward. “I’m afraid your interest is of little consequence and even if it were, your sense of self-interest, nay, of self-preservation, is flawed.”

  I held my ground against his approach. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  He pointed behind him to the heavy freighters anchored halfway out to sea, sitting solid, even against the rising waves. “Orlando wasn’t intending to save you,” he said. “Were he still alive, you would find yourself huddled on that ship with him, struggling for the warmth you’ll never find – the home you’ll never find – because that ship, my dear, is loaded with steel beams and is going straight back to London from whence you ran to save yourself, only to find yourself back where you began.” He shook his head at me.

  A strange bitterness rose up into my throat and I swallowed it back. If Orlando had lied to me, there was no way to know, not anymore. Conversely, if Ambrose lied, I couldn’t know that either. There was nothing to trust and there never had been, but at least with Orlando I had been able
to let myself try.

  Ambrose lifted his chin. “You are still alive because of my interest and you will follow my interests, whether you care for them or not.”

  Theron touched his arm. “Ambrose,” he said, interrupting him. “Listen.”

  Ambrose raised his eyes to the gray sky that hung low all about us.

  I listened too, though I wasn’t sure what it was I was hearing. It was the piercing white noise of a mortal drawing its last breath, like a dark whistle meant for wolves. The cold fingers of that primal fear that had followed Orlando’s screams grasped at my heart once more.

  “He’s here,” I whispered.

  Ambrose’s eyes darted down the long row of docks, left and right. “He shouldn’t be,” he said. “Come.” He stepped away.

  Theron stepped forward to take my hand and pull me after him.

  I tried to wrench my hand away, but Theron only tightened his grip.

  “He should be in a bloated coma,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  Our boots clomped over the damp planks and iron rivets. Ambrose’s coat trailed out behind him, billowed by the wind. When he broke into a run, Theron wasted no time in yanking me forward after him.

  “Where are we going?” I asked him, but Ambrose turned to answer.

  His pale eyes glimmered excitedly back at us, so much like a little boy. “The ship,” he yelled over the wind.

  He wasn’t afraid. Hardly.

  He was enjoying himself.

  Pollux

  The wood floor drank the blood where Cain spilled it from his open mouth. He twisted the man’s bearded head in his hands and shone his teeth at me while he did it.

  I dropped my eyes and let out a long sigh that I hoped he would mistake for boredom on my part and not the creeping terror I had begun to feel. What a strange thing to feel it, terror. It seized the body in a way that had no real comparison to any other physical experience I had the pleasure of experiencing before. It stopped and started the heart at once. It froze thoughts, sparked them on fire, and then cast them out altogether.

  Terror, what a strange thing, though there was little enough reason for me to feel it. I’d commanded Cain in no uncertain terms and he had obeyed, killing our brother. It was a bond, perhaps, but bonds could break.

  “His boots are very fine,” I said. “Shall we take them?”