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

by Lily Levi

The Master smiled sadly at me. “Watch your head, Serena Moon. The nightmares of hell will come for you once more.” He closed his eyes. “Ah, can you smell them? I’m afraid they’re already here.”

  Amun

  Gnarled ripping echoed against the walls and movement swirled back into the cavern. Their own dim shadows rose up and they turned against each other.

  Great beasts with black fur and scales rose up from the sea and gnashed their way through the cave. The dead died a second death and then another.

  I stood still against the rocks. They would not want me though I wanted them to take me. Serena wouldn’t die and so the monsters had come. They would always come now because the lamb has seen that she was not a lamb.

  I see that I am not a child. I see that I can see.

  A long era broken. A pact with hell thrown away for the final enjoyment of a selfish creature, of the Master, who has tired not only of himself, but of his species.

  They surround her and protect her though she doesn’t need their protection anymore. She knows. She has tested her strength at the very last. She is stronger than all of them. Who will go against her? Who will fight to restore the throne to the vampires? Who will kill Serena Moon?

  A Time Remembered

  London, England - 3 years past

  The fireplace crackled between us and filled the dark silence of his parlor. I crossed my legs and let the toe of my leather boot clip downwards to the heavy ticking of the tall clock behind us.

  Master Deadmourn rested the back of his head against the high-backed chair and watched me with the same eyes that had watched the rise and fall of King Menes. He had watched the building of the walls at Memphis. He had heard the bellowed call of the last mammoth, dropping to its knees; listened to the war cries of the Babylonians at Solomon’s Temple. His black boots had walked the Silk Road. His olive skin had felt the heat of the fires at Teotihuacan. He had stood by as ‘Amir ibn al-‘As sacked Alexandria and stood beside Charlemagne at his coronation. He charted the way for Ericson and crafted the first astrolabe. He laid the first brick of Notre Dame, and with his own white hand, conjured the dark cloud of plague over all of Europe.

  “It is good of you to have come, little lamb,” he said at last, breaking the spell between us.

  In truth, I had not expected that he would lower himself to speak to me. I was nothing to him and soon enough, I would be nothing at all.

  I raised my chin. “You would’ve come for me if I hadn’t,” I said in a voice that I hoped would not betray me. I would not end my long days in a fit of sniveled begging before the man – no, the thing – that had plotted my fate since the day I came into this cursed, dark world.

  His thin lips curled upwards in what might have been taken for a smile. “Serena Moon.” He said my name slowly, as if he were tasting the soft curves of the letters against his split tongue.

  I tightened my grip on the armrests and bit back the question: Why me?

  He wanted to hear it. He wanted me to drop to my knees and beg for my life. It would’ve given him a modicum of pleasure amongst whatever pleasures he could still extract from his immortal life – or death, as it was.

  “How many?” I asked instead, letting the full clip of my irritation spark out from the words. I wanted him to believe I was more annoyed than afraid, or perhaps even a little bored. I would steal the pleasure of dictating my life and my death away from him in the only way I knew how. Running from him was never an option, but leaving a bitter taste in his dark mouth certainly was.

  At the very least, I would force him to remember me amongst the countless others he had fed to his spawn, his favorites among us all, those who would fight amongst themselves at the end of the Deadmourn’s long night for the right to call themselves the new Master.

  Master Deadmourn smiled at me again in the way that he had and moved his gaze into the fire. “Thirteen,” he said. “As always.”

  My heart dropped at the number I would be fed to. Maybe I’d lied to myself. Maybe some part of me had believed that running really was possible, that there was some chance so slim that I hadn’t yet seen it.

  He folded his long hands in his lap and nodded almost sadly, as if he were listening in on my thoughts. “You shall choose two from the thirteen,” he said. “I have watched you for a long while and I do trust your judgement, little lamb.”

  I clenched my jaw at the words that were meant to sound somehow merciful. “You always let the lamb choose,” I said, willfully defying his aura of faux generosity.

  “So I do,” he said, nodding his chin almost imperceptibly.

  A soft knock touched at the door beside the fireplace, interrupting whatever it was he was about to say to me, but his words didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

  A man in an embroidered silver vest stepped out from behind the door, nodded at the Master, and, without waiting for instruction, reached out his hand for mine.

  My heart tightened in my chest and my throat closed in on itself, but I forced myself to stand and let the man take my cold hand in his.

  He squeezed it gently and, walking backwards, pulled me slowly into the dark corridor behind him.

  “Farewell, Miss Moon,” said Master Deadmourn from behind me, but I refused to look back into the warm parlor, flickering with firelight.

  I forced myself to lock eyes with the man who guided me, still moved backwards with his hand gripping mine. His eyes were a pale, milky green, much like the Master’s, but they held some amount of kindness where the Master’s had not. His face was handsome in its relaxed state, as if there were no troubles and all the world was kind.

  It was, of course. For him.

  The door shut behind us, though I couldn’t have said who shut it, and the shadows enveloped us both.

  “Are you one of them?” I asked, pulling back from his grip to test the magnitude of his strength, but he held fast.

  “You’re afraid,” he said, almost gently.

  I blinked back the fear that had begun to grow the moment I touched the man’s cold hand. Master Deadmourn had not treated me as though I were afraid and perhaps that was a great reason for why I hadn’t been.

  I knew as well as any of them that blood tainted by fear is nowhere near as satisfying as untouched blood; blood of sleepers, blood of the stupidly brave. He had wanted me to taste good.

  “Are you one of them?” I asked a second time, ignoring his observation. It didn’t matter if I was afraid or not. There was nothing to be done about it, at least nothing that I could see.

  He hummed deeply and we stopped at what I imagined was the end of the hall. His cold hand moved up against my face and down to my neck. “Will you choose me if I am?”

  But he didn’t wait for my answer. He dropped his hand and a heavy door pulled open beside me. Its bottom scraped painfully against the dark stones.

  Candlelight filled the mouth of the hall and he led me inside by the hand once more.

  Silver candelabras glittered in the far corners. Tall iron chairs lined the sides of the room, six on one side and seven on the other. A black bear rug had been positioned in the center of the stone floor. A single wooden door sat shut at the opposite wall, fitted with iron bars and bolts.

  I didn’t need to ask what the room on the other side was for. I would go in with the two of my choice and only they would come back out. The world would forget me, if it had ever known me, and they would live on and on through their immortal days.

  He moved me to the center of the room and positioned me in the middle of the thick bear rug. He touched my shoulders with his fingers and examined my face in the firelight. “You’re very pretty,” he said. He dropped his pale eyes from mine and let them roam down the front of my body. “It’s a shame, truly it is. I would’ve liked to have you in another place, another time.”

  “A shame,” I repeated flatly, holding back the urge to flatter him with the truth. The sharp cut of his jaw and the contrast of the dark hair against his skin would have once set my hear
t pulsing with desire. “I would’ve had you,” I heard myself say, slipping back into the naturalness of who I had been before stepping foot into the Deadmourn Mansion that dark, hateful evening.

  His pale eyes sparked with that familiar flash of sudden lust I had seen so often in the eyes of mortal men. The candlelight played against the angles of his strong cheekbones and down the lines of his jaw. “Oh?” he whispered, letting his fingers trail down the sides of my arms. “Is that so?”

  He looked down once more and I glanced at the closed door behind him.

  “It really is a shame,” I said and gestured with one hand towards the iron-bolted door. “I suppose the next best thing to filling me with yourself is filling yourself with me.”

  “It is necessary, you know,” he said, squeezing my wrists. “A vampire having their feast of another vampire, well, there’s nothing quite like it. We wouldn’t be who we are without you and the other little lambs.”

  “I know,” I said and strained again to find that flash of hot lust that I had seen not a moment before, but it was gone. Mortal men could be driven by the pulsing desires between their thighs, but immortal men married themselves to a far greater desire to help them steer their way through time.

  “It isn’t personal,” he said, dropping his tight grip on my wrists. He moved his eyes behind me and watched the open door. “The others are coming, can you hear them?”

  I strained my ears to hear the footfalls of the other twelve, but there was nothing to hear beyond my own shallow breath.

  “Choose me,” he said, touching his hand below my chin and bringing my face up to his once more. “Choose me and I will slit your throat in the dark before we feed. You will feel nothing but my cut. It will be the least of your pains and the end of your days. You will never feel our teeth in your skin. You will not suffer.”

  I took a deep breath and found myself considering his offer. If I could not avoid my bloody fate – and I could not – then his small offer of generosity was likely the best I could hope for.

  The distant sound of male voices carried down through the stones. Their words were mumbled by the rock, but they were coming.

  The hot terror of the end wrapped itself around me. “Name?” I asked, surrendering to my last hope. I could not run and there was nowhere to hide. I couldn’t fight, at least not all of them. Even if I did, where could I go that the Master wouldn’t find me?

  The world was closed for me and my end had been drawn, whether I liked it or not.

  “Ambrose,” he said. His long canines showed themselves at the end of his name.

  Ambrose. I committed his name to memory, though it wouldn’t be long before I’d need to use it.

  The voices grew in strength from further down the hallway. They were coming and there was no stopping them.

  Ambrose pulled a length of black lace from the front of his vest and moved it up towards my face.

  Heart thundering, I closed my eyes without needing to be asked.

  “It is always lucky to be the host,” he said, pressing the lace against my closed lids and tying a hard knot into the hair behind my head. It didn’t matter that he tied my hair in with the lace. It wouldn’t be coming off.

  The thought that Ambrose’s face had been the last I would ever see set my body into a small tremor.

  His strong hands steadied me and held me still as a wave of fear racked up through my insides. That I had ever sat so composed in front of the Master suddenly bewildered me. I might’ve at least tried to run, even if it wasn’t possible to get away. I could’ve tried.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered as the voices neared. There was something in his voice like genuine care that couldn’t be missed. “Remember, choose me and I’ll make sure you feel the smallest amount of pain. Choose me.”

  He moved away from me as the first boot hit the stones. Their voices quieted until there was nothing but the stepping of shoes and the grating of iron on stone as they took their seats around the room.

  I stood with my hands at my side and my face lifted. Their entrance filled me with a sudden resolve that I hadn’t expected to feel. Ambrose had seen me cower, but the others would not.

  I imagined them, thirteen in all, assessing me from around the room. They would be staring at my clothes, the curve of my hips, my breasts, and my exposed neck. I wondered faintly at their collected restraint. Was it honor that kept them from feasting on my all together in that cloistered room? Was it fear of the Master who would know what they were doing without needing to see? Or was it the primitive need to be the dark king of all men, to gain the upper hand wherever they could?

  Two would feast and eleven would not. If all thirteen of them took me into their veins, the field would remain level and the game would lose all value, because that’s all it was to them. A game.

  The sounds of leather and cloth against metal and stone ceased away. I could feel their eyes on me, watching me, waiting for me to try something horribly foolish. They’d seen hundreds of young female vampires, standing right where I stood, blindfolded in the middle of the black bear fur.

  How many had screamed for help or had plead for mercy? How many had tried to run from the room or to overpower the most powerful?

  I set my jaw. I would do none of that. I would die with what dignity was left to me.

  “Serena Moon,” said a voice that was decidedly darker than Ambrose’s.

  “Little lamb,” said another from the other side of the room. I felt sure it was meant as a correction and not a chorus to my name. It was forbidden to feed on another and always had been. Tonight was the single exception and in that exception, I was no longer who I’d always been.

  I was their little lamb, but I didn’t have to act like it. Not yet.

  “Shall we begin?” said Ambrose silkily.

  “Yes,” I said for them, crossing my arms. “Let us begin.”

  Boots stepped toward me. Strong arms gripped the back of my shoulders, but I didn’t shake as I had beneath Ambrose’s grip.

  Hot breath touched my ear. “When I have finished, point in two directions.” He pressed the tips of his fingers into my flesh and spun me slowly three, four, five times, perhaps more.

  When his hands left my shoulders, I steadied my breath. I wished the blindfold had not been there. I wanted to look them in their pale eyes, each and every one of them. I wanted them to remember me, not as their blindfolded sacrifice, but as Serena Moon, the proud and steel-hearted temptress of our mortal counterparts.

  Remembering the instructions I’d been given, I raised my arms and pointed in the two directions I thought Ambrose might be. There was no sense in wasting time if the only time I had left was to stand blindly in front of things more monstrous than even myself.

  If there was a way out, it would’ve come to me. The only thing I had left was appeal and a cowardly woman is in no way desirable, at least not to them, I knew that much.

  The sound of footfalls from either way I had pointed stepped nearer to me.

  I lowered my arms as the two males stood so close to me on either side that I could feel the chill that rang out from the core of their dark hearts.

  Males, yes, but they were in no way men. They were better than men. They were faster, stronger, older. They were everything men were and a hundred times more.

  “Hello, little lamb,” said the one to my left. It was a voice I had not yet heard.

  “Serena Moon,” said the other on my right, and I thought it was the one who had first said my name. “She prefers that, brother. Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said tautly, heart sinking. I had not chosen Ambrose, but the game wasn’t over.

  I closed my eyes and shut out the blackening pain in my chest. The Master lay dead at my feet. Had I killed him? At once it was too much and not enough. The world had turned on me again and again, first spiting and then blessing, over and over, until I’d grown bitter and hope was a fragile thing not meant for me.

  I had been meant for death, but not
like this.

  In that dark moment, it came back to me, quietly, softly, less disturbing than a dormouse, even comforting in a strange way.

  What I could remember was no less real than the massacre beyond my closed lids. If anything, it was more real. It was supposed to have been the end of me.

  Eyes still closed, I touched the point of the spike between my breasts, hidden beneath the leather of my jacket, and let myself fall to my knees.

  It was the pain of death, but death would not come. I clenched my teeth against the screams that begged to escape into the frozen air, but I could not stop them.

  Amun wailed violently with me, but his small voice was no match for the brutal pain of a life that never should’ve been and of a death that would never come.

  Ambrose rose from where he had fallen, his face more pale than ever before. He stepped forward as the others only watched, silent among their dead brothers and sisters. I could only pretend to know what furious hatred twisted in their hearts for me and for the others who had killed them. Only fear kept them on their knees.

  I stood before he could help lift me to my feet. “Is it over?” I asked bitterly. I touched the hole in my heart that Pollux had made, already knowing that it would never be over.

  “Theron will help you,” he said.

  Theron rose from between the masses of the living and the dead.

  “Serena,” he said.

  I lifted my hand to stop him. “What were they?” I asked Ambrose of the slinking beasts covered in fur and dark scales. I had a very small memory of them from a century past, like a glimmer of a ghost from the corner of my eye, no more real than my imagination.

  “They are the bannermen in a black parade,” said Cain. He stood, towering above the rest.”The first of many things to come.”

  “No one is safe here,” said Ambrose.

  I stepped away from him and Amun followed close behind.

  The others who lived rose to their feet as I passed them, a dark wave rising.

  I stepped gingerly over the fallen and Amun did the same, our eyes set straight ahead. The pain in my chest throbbed with every beat of my heart. My own blood, cold, ran down my skin beneath my clothes, front and back.