The Dead Wolves: An Ashwood Novel (Cursed and Damned Book 1)

by Lee Dignam

  Your maker’s great betrayal, Cyanide thought, that’s… me.

  Daniel was incensed, but the Count’s smug, satisfied smirk remained plastered to his face. He was enjoying this, even if no one else in the room shared in his enjoyment. Looking around, the audience was stone cold. Cyanide took a step forward and tried to speak, to intervene, but a hand clasped around her mouth, another around her shoulder, and someone pulled her to the side. At first, she thought it was Asimov, now healed and ready for another round. But when she turned her head, she saw it was Pixi who had grabbed her.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.

  “I have to,” Cyanide said, in an equally low, yet urgent tone. “We have to do something!”

  “If you go up there, you’re dead.”

  “If we don’t go up there, someone else will die!”

  “No one’s going to die. Just keep the fuck still.”

  Daniel, tired of talking to the Count, turned his attention toward Kaitlyn and spoke to her directly. “Kaitlyn, listen to me. A long time ago, I made a promise to make sure you had everything you needed in life, a promise to keep you safe.”

  “But that’s… why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because your father was my grandson, which makes us family.”

  “I don’t understand… my father died a long time ago, and I don’t even know who you are.”

  “I have watched you your whole life, and the night you went missing—the night someone abducted you from the streets and made you disappear—I did everything I could to try and find you.”

  “And yet,” the Count said, interrupting, “You failed to find her, didn’t you?”

  Daniel turned his furious eyes on the Count and scowled. “You took her,” he said, “You took a part of my family from me, you hid her from me, and then you brought her into your clan. Why?”

  Cyanide struggled, or thought she was struggling, but got nowhere. Jessica was there, in the crowd, and for the first time tonight, she was alone—alone and bleeding in a tank full of sharks. She had to get over there, had to get to Daniel and get him out, but Pixi was right—she’d be killed if she interfered. Daniel’s name and reputation offered him a kind of protection Cyanide just wouldn’t get.

  The Count stepped closer to the edge of the stage and stared down his nose at Daniel. “Because when the sheep go astray, the shepherd doesn’t blame the sheep—he blames the wolf that scared it out of the flock. You are that wolf. Seize him.”

  The room erupted into a series of murmurs and glances followed by a sudden separation from Daniel, as if he was expected to explode at any second. The Count’s Guard dropped from the stage and surrounded him in an instant. Daniel resisted, but only as much as he could before being overpowered and restrained. The anger evaporated from his face, replaced now with what almost looked like fear.

  “What are you doing!” Daniel asked, raising his voice.

  “Allow me to tell you a story,” the Count said.

  Something inside of Cyanide, an alarm, began to sound, and she became possessed by a frantic need to get out. Get out now while there was still time. But Jessica was out in the open, now, as much as Daniel was, and way too many eyes had fallen on her. Cyanide struggled out of Pixi’s grip and took a step forward, but Pixi grabbed her arm again.

  “Cy, don’t!” she said, but Cyanide didn’t listen. She marched into the crowd and was just about to start pushing her way through when Angel grabbed her arm. She didn’t have to say a word, didn’t have to shake her head; her eyes repeated the words Pixi had said a moment ago, and it was enough to keep her from going any further.

  “Twenty years ago,” the Count began, “Your maker, Grace Knight, was proved to be in league with Crimson, the traitor, the liar—the terrorist. When her affiliation was discovered she was sentenced to die and summarily executed in front of the court, but not before she could break apart and hide the Sanguine Scrolls, one our kind’s most sacred of relics. You, at the time, claimed to have no knowledge of her ties to Crimson, no knowledge of where she could have gotten the scrolls, and no idea where she may have hidden them, and I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I, in my infinite mercy, decided not to punish you for the sins of your maker, and allowed you to live on as a free man within our city.”

  “What does that have to do with this?” Daniel asked, trying—and failing—to shrug out of the larger man’s grip.

  “I think you were lying, Lord Knight. It’s taken twenty years, but now we have proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “Proof that Crimson’s poisonous legacy still exists within our city. Proof that there are still some of us who believed his lies, and work nightly to unravel the very fabric of this court and the office of the Count itself.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  The Count’s red lips spread into a bemused smirk. “I’m deadly serious. I accuse you, Lord Knight, of not only endangering our kind by revealing the existence of vampires to a human, but also of being the leader of the organization known as the Dead Wolves, a group of terrorists who want nothing more than to sabotage this court’s operations—operations that ensure our way of life is maintained.”

  Cyanide’s eyes widened as her fear bubbled up to the surface in one final push. This was never about Neo. The decoy trailer, the leak in Daniel’s security, Neo’s blood hunt—tonight’s gathering; this whole thing was about Daniel; it was about getting him. She shrugged and pulled her arm free from Angel’s hand, then started to push through the crowd.

  He turned his eyes on Jessica, begging her to move, to run, without saying anything that could attract attention to her. But Jessica couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She simply stood there, wide eyed and terrified.

  “Seize her, too,” the Count said, and when one of his Guard came to grab her by the arm, it was done with no effort at all.

  Cyanide pushed harder and reached the front of the crowd, but a dark shadow swooped in front of her, blocking her path to Daniel. It was the Count. He had his back turned to her, but she heard it clearly when he said: “For this, Lord Knight, I sentence you to die.”

  The Count stretched out his hand, and one of the men present produced a wooden stake and tossed it through the air. When the Count caught it, realization filled Daniel’s eyes like dark, stormy clouds. They went wide with terror. His mouth opened. Then the Count pulled Daniel close, as if to embrace him, and shoved the stake up, under his rib cage and into his heart with a sickening crunch.

  Pain like she had never felt before pushed through Cyanide like a wave, and sent her helplessly to her knees.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed all of the joy in the world. For the first time since she could remember, Cyanide had to breathe, and she couldn’t. Her chest heaved in vain, her stomach felt like it was being wrung over a kitchen sink, squeezed of every bit of her vital self. The pinch of fear she had been married to since she walked into the room was now a blazing-hot hand around her throat, so hot she thought she would catch fire.

  She put her hands out to stop herself from hitting the ground, and succeeded only in holding herself a few inches above it. When Daniel fell, she didn’t so much as hear the sound itself, but felt the vibrations beneath the palms of her hands, sending an electric aftershock surging through her arms and into her chest, rattling her bones.

  The worst part was the excruciating pain emanating from within the pit of her stomach. It was no longer being wrung over a sink so much as it had been skewered with a hot poker, and now someone was turning that poker over and over, wrapping her insides around its red-hot tip and making sure she could feel every single rotation. When she won the battle with her eyes and forced them up, it wasn’t Daniel’s graying corpse she focused on, but Jessica—because she looked just like Cyanide felt.

  Her ears were ringing now, blocking all external sound so all she could hear were sounds generated by her own mind. The fleshy crunch,
the thump as Daniel’s body hit the ground, the Count’s words. Vaguely she became aware of how the crowd around her had thinned, all save for the Count’s Guard, some of who were now holding onto Jessica, and the Count himself who loomed above.

  When the monster who had just murdered Daniel turned his gaze on Jessica, the ringing in Cyanide’s ears ceased, and the part of her brain capable of processing thoughts triggered again.

  “A long time ago,” the Count said, directing his eyes at Jessica but his voice to the crowd, which had now all but backed away to the corners of the room, “I made a choice to spare the offspring of a traitor, but I will not make that mistake twice. The Knight clan is a corrupt weed and must be rooted out if our society is to be safe.”

  Jessica’s screams filled the room, but movement in Cyanide’s periphery drew her eyes. Someone had reached for the Knight banner hanging on the wall and torn it down with one quick, decisive movement. She watched it fall like a cascade of white water, and something inside of her snapped.

  She turned her eyes on Daniel’s corpse now, and saw him as he had fallen—slack-jawed and wide-eyed—with a piece of wood sticking out of his suit, just beneath the ribcage. His skin was starting to turn gray and veiny, black lines were stretching out in all directions—toward his collar, his cheeks, his mouth. Soon, she thought, he would start turning to ash.

  Daniel…

  “My fellows,” the Count said, “This is what happens when someone interferes with the affairs of this court and my inner circle. Daniel Knight and his offspring were upstanding members of our society, but even they are not exempt from the law. Let it be known that I am reinstating the blood hunt on the vampire known as Neo, and pledging before you now to find the Sanguine Scrolls and bring back the old rituals—rituals from a time where vampires did not hide in the shadow of humanity, but created the shadows within which humanity itself quaked.”

  He turned to Jessica now, who was being held in the same way Daniel had been held a moment ago—by her shoulders. No one in the crowd of gathered vampires spoke. No one moved to try and stop the Count from what he was about to do—no one but Cyanide. She pushed herself up and off the ground, then rushed at the Count, closing the gap between him and her in a split second, but he was too fast for her. His torso spun around and, without turning his eyes on her, he connected the back of his hand with the side of her face, sending her hurtling across the conference room and into the podium on the stage, shattering it into a hundred pieces.

  Cyanide worked to pull herself up again, but before the Count’s hair had finished spinning he was on her, his hand wrapped around her throat, eyes burning into her. With one hand, he pulled her up until her feet were no longer touching the ground. Cyanide struggled against him, but he was too strong for her, his grip vice-like.

  “That was brave,” he said, in that same soft, almost apathetic voice. “Brave, but stupid.”

  He extended his free hand and flexed his fingers, and she saw how the tips of those long fingernails were as white as bone, the color of a vampire’s teeth, the color of death. She shut her eyes and called the bats, willed her body to transform, but nothing happened, Or if the process had started, it wasn’t starting fast enough.

  There was turmoil in the crowd, and when she heard it, her eyes snapped open just in time for her to see Pixi leaping toward the Count, claws extended, her face twisted with rage. He turned to try and catch her, but she landed just out of his reach and before he could move again, she had raked her wicked claws across the side of his face, drawing four red lines across his perfect skin.

  The Count dropped Cyanide to cradle the wound with one hand, and then swiped at Pixi with the other, the enormous strength behind his blow sending her across the stage and into the side wall. But before he could turn his attention onto Cyanide again, someone else had come rushing. Neo. He moved like a blur, faster than the Count could react. When he brandished a pistol, the Count put his hands up to protect his face, but Neo pulled the trigger and sent a round into his skull at point blank range—a hit that wouldn’t in a million years be fatal to a vampire, but that carried enough force to knock Rufus back a few paces.

  And that was all the chance Cyanide needed. Instead of ganging up on Rufus, she pushed herself to her feet, dashed across the stage, and bounded toward Jessica with a crazed look in her eyes. The Count’s Guard moved to block her, but she landed on one of them feet-first and used him as a springboard to get past the line of guards. When she got back on her feet, she grabbed Jessica’s arm and pulled her through the conference room.

  The Guard gave chase, each one of them moving fast across the room, closing the gap Cyanide had made. Neo overtook her, and she followed him as quickly as she could, pushing her legs as hard as they would allow.

  “This way!” he said, barging through the conference room door, speeding into the lobby, and then out of the main doors. There on the street was a parked van, waiting with the side door open. Cyanide pushed Jessica into it, then turned around to face the Count’s Guard, fangs extended, eyes wild, hands flexing and ready to fight—ready to die, if she had to.

  When the first attack came, she was quick to dodge it, leaning back to move away from the incoming fist. Using her momentum, she lunged at the second Guard, ramming the palm of her hand into his nose and wedging it into his skull with a nauseating crack. The third Guard, a larger man, bore down on her like a wild animal, but Pixi, despite being half his size, came rushing out of the main doors and tackled him with her shoulder, bringing him hard to the ground.

  Using her momentum, Pixi drew herself up beside Cyanide. The bigger man had gotten up much faster than either had expected, and the other two members of the Count’s Guard were closing in on them

  “C’mon!” Neo called from the van’s cab, but all she could think about was Daniel’s corpse. It was still there, still whole. It hadn’t turned to ash yet, though it would as soon as the sun came up. Her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t reach him, not without putting herself in the path of the Count’s Guard, or even the Count himself.

  Her eyes shut in attempt to hold back the stinging and she turned, lunging through the open side door of the van. Pixi followed, drawing the sliding door shut, and Neo hit the gas, sending the van screaming into the night.

  From the back window, she could see the Count’s Guard starting to pursue the van, chasing it half way down the block. But Neo never slowed down, not even when he pulled a tight corner, opting to scrape the side of the van against a row of parked cars instead of risking capture by the vampires who may have been able to catch the vehicle if it slowed even a little.

  When the Count’s Guard were out of sight, Cyanide leaned away from the window and rested her back against the wall. Jessica was there, crouched in the fetal position, whimpering and barely able to speak at all save to call Daniel’s name. She pulled Jessica towards her chest and held her tightly, both women bonding together by their grief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Daniel’s laundromat hideout seemed darker than it had been in recent memory, emptier despite there being more people in the little room than ever before. Cyanide’s tears had stopped coming a while ago, but her heart still ached, and her body echoed that pain in ways almost too difficult for her to bear. But she bore it.

  For Neo, for Pixi, and for Jessica, she bore it.

  “If no one’s gonna say it,” Pixi said, “I am.”

  Cyanide, who had been sitting on the cold, concrete ground with Jessica’s head on her lap, looked up at Pixi, head cocked. Neo also turned toward her, but said nothing in response.

  “That whole thing was a fucking setup,” Pixi said. “From the beginning, they had us right from the start. That rat-bastard Rufus knew what we were up to. Somehow, he knew. And he pulled all the right strings to get us exactly where he wanted us.”

  “Daniel,” Cyanide said, her voice low.

  “What?” Pixi asked.

  “This was all about Daniel. It was always about him.”


  “Daniel said there was a breach in his security,” Neo put in, “When we went to the first trailer location, there weren’t any girls in there. Daniel knew it must have been one of his sources who sold us out and told them we were coming. They must have disclosed Daniel’s identity to the Count, too. I don’t know how else Rufus could have known.”

  Cyanide let her chin drop, and she stroked Jessica’s blonde hair. “I should have gone to him,” she said, “When he was talking to the Count, I should have gone to him and pulled him out like I wanted to.”

  “I was the one who told you not to go,” Pixi said, pushing herself off the wall and kneeling in front of Cyanide. “It was my fault. I didn’t think… shit, I didn’t think Rufus would just kill Daniel like that. I thought we were safe.”

  “No one is safe as long as he’s around.”

  “That’s why we need the Dead Wolves now more than ever.” At first Cyanide thought it had been Neo who had spoken, but the voice wasn’t his. Neo circled the room, poised to attack, but Angel raised her hand and shook her head. “I don’t mean you any harm,” she said.

  “How did you get in here?” Neo asked.

  “I was invited.”

  “By who?”

  Angel descended the last of the stairs. “By Daniel,” she said, “Cyanide, Jessica… I am so deeply sorry for your loss.”

  Jessica sat up, and Cyanide took the opportunity to stand. She had so many questions she could ask, but only one came to mind in that moment. “Why did you do nothing?” she asked.

  “Child, I wish—”

  “If you really know who I am, then you know I’m no child. So, I ask you again. Why did you do nothing?”

  “For the same reason Daniel often did nothing, and because Daniel told me to do nothing.”

  Cyanide approached, confused. “Daniel… told you?”

  “When?” Neo asked.

  “When I saw him before court tonight. After our meeting at my club, I had no doubt in my mind that you were, in fact, Grace Knight, so I decided to pay Daniel a visit and find out if it was true. He knew I would be able to tell if he was lying, so he confessed the truth, and then he asked for my help.”