Promises to Keep dos-9

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Promises to Keep

  ( Den of Shadows - 9 )

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  The compendium of creations (SingleEarth, the Bruja guilds, the Midnight empire) intertwine in an exciting, unsettling plot featuring happenings both accidental and deliberate that will forever change the alternate landscape inhabited by vampires, Tristes, shapeshifters et al. It all begins with a wrong turn and a crashed party, and from there it's an epic clash of elements and the promise of more chaos still to come. At the center of the storm is Jay, a young vampire hunter that no one would ever have predicted might be earth's best bet to thwart the rise of a vampire-controlled slave empire called Midnight. Teens will find themselves drawn to Jay, who struggles to prove his worth even while he has his own fears that those who have written him off may be right to do so.

  Promises to Keep

  Den of Shadows 9

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Promises to Keep is dedicated to the eleventh hour and all the people who help us through it. This novel owes its eleventh-hour salvation to Bri, Mason, and Devon, who had faith and patience when mine was long gone. Bri encouraged me to dive for a story idea that has scared me for the last decade; Mason and Devon helped me polish that concept, tirelessly diving into the characters, mythology, and storyline again and again until it became the book you now hold.

  Two other groups deserve a shout-out: Veterans of the long-abandoned NRPG may find something familiar in these pages … and will probably laugh a lot when they recognize it. The idea formed in those crazy days never could have survived without the near madness that is National Novel Writing Month, so I must also tip my hat to the Office of Letters and Light once again.

  Next, I also owe huge thanks to the awesome people at Eastern Mountain Sports, who were willing to answer my increasingly bizarre questions about winter backpacking (as soon as I assured them that I did not intend to embark on this poorly planned adventure myself). Any inaccuracies or blatant mistakes should be blamed on magic, not on them.

  Finally, it has been too long since I have thanked you, my readers. You ask me all the time where I get my inspiration. The answer is always “You.” Thank you.

  Whose woods these are I think I know.

  His house is in the village though;

  He will not see me stopping here

  To watch his woods fill up with snow.

  My little horse must think it queer

  To stop without a farmhouse near

  Between the woods and frozen lake

  The darkest evening of the year.

  He gives his harness bells a shake

  To ask if there is some mistake.

  The only other sound’s the sweep

  Of easy wind and downy flake.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

  PROLOGUE

  MIDNIGHT

  SEPTEMBER 22, 1804

  WHEN SHE FIRST woke, Brina thought the stench and noise that greeted her were an extension of her nightmares. The stink of smoke and scalded flesh accompanied wails of pain and fear that echoed through Midnight’s stone halls.

  She had spent the last three days with little rest and less sustenance as she had struggled to put the final touches on a series of paintings illustrating the afterlife. Though her cohorts had always insisted that vampires couldn’t have nightmares, couldn’t have dreams at all, for a century and a half she had dreamt almost every time she had closed her eyes. The diurnal terrors inspired by the Mayan Xibalba had been particularly gruesome.

  Another reason she didn’t sleep often.

  Awake now, she stumbled out of bed. Her body was heavy and her skin raw, a result of too many hours under midday sunlight. Her kind was normally compelled to sleep when the sun was high, but Brina needed the light for her art.

  Reality further intruded as she tripped over Caleb, a young boy she had recently taken in, who was huddled against the side of her bed. He must have smelled the smoke, heard the screams.

  Despite his youth, Caleb didn’t cry or call out; he had been raised not to. But Brina could see him tremble and could smell his sweat in the rising heat. His heart pounded and his lungs strained against the smoke seeping under the room’s only door.

  In this building, the heart of an empire built by vampires, there were no windows. Brina could have willed herself away in an instant using vampiric magic, but she was not strong enough to bring Caleb with her.

  She pulled the door open. Fire, flickering with the pulse of vicious magic, gnawed at the stone walls. The reek of burned flesh gave testimony to how many humans and shapeshifters, some slaves and some willing employees, had been caught trying to flee the pyre.

  No escape, not for anyone mortal.

  “Come here, boy,” she commanded, retreating to the farthest corner of the room.

  The boy came to her without hesitation, his wide eyes watering from the smoke but otherwise revealing a placid soul. She snapped his neck before the sweet, trusting look could leave his face.

  There. That’s done.

  She willed herself to her home, where windows let in the sun and—

  The stench of death greeted her as she appeared in her own parlor, making her gag. The blood was fresh, but marked by the smell of decay. The instant a body stopped functioning, it began to rot; it took only minutes for this to be detectable to vampiric senses.

  The corpses of slaves littered her floors, their eyes wide and their throats slit. They had not died slowly, but neither had their deaths been especially swift. Whoever had done the deed had been efficient, not merciful. Who? Why?

  “Brina!”

  She turned to find her brother reaching for her. His hands and face were slicked with blood and ash. “I couldn’t get to you,” Daryl choked out as he pulled her into a tight embrace. “I tried to get inside, but every entrance was blocked. Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head. “My greenhouse—”

  “Gone.”

  “My paintings?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My boy is dead.”

  “Probably for the best.” He pulled her into the next room, where the only evidence of the slaughter was a single crimson handprint on the doorframe.

  Meanwhile …

  Sara Vida had a clear shot.

  The Mistress of Midnight, a vampire known as Jeshickah, was undeniably the most evil creature to ever walk the face of the earth. Her empire ruthlessly claimed dominion over vampires, shapeshifters, humans, and witches—though the witches, Sara’s kin, were almost an afterthought.

  Sara was standing only a few yards from the fiend. The witch gripped a silver knife, imbued with the power of generations of magic-wielding hunters. And Jeshickah was distracted, dazed, staring at the building as it burned to ash, the building that had been the heart of her empire. It would be so easy to sneak up on her and end her unlife.

  Sara crept closer, closer, and then paused as the mercenary’s words came to mind.

  Jeshickah is protected by powers too great for us to fight, the mercenary had warned when Sara had objected to the plan. Why were they destroying property and not killing the fiends who ran this monstrosity? If you kill her, her allies will come for you. You will not be able to beat them. They will slaughter you, and your children, and your entire line. They will wipe the witches from the face of this earth.

  Could it be true? Midnight had never systematically hunted witches, but it had terrorized Sara’s kind nevertheless. By killing Jeshickah, would Sara save her people or ensure their extinctio
n?

  Jeshickah tensed, at last sensing the danger.

  Too late.

  The sakkri had given Sara a prophecy just before the attack had begun: Not all hesitation is sin. Not all sacrifice is in vain.

  As the Mistress of Midnight turned toward her, Sara dropped the knife and closed her eyes. She didn’t know whether, generations from now, her kin would thank her or curse her.…

  If they were alive to do either, that would be enough.

  CHAPTER 1

  PRESENT DAY

  JAY’S ARMS PINWHEELED like those of a cartoon character as he tried to avoid tumbling backward down the cellar stairs. It looked silly, but it gave him enough momentum to throw himself forward instead. When he fell, his shoulder connected with the knee of the vampire, snapping the joint. An extra twist, and she was the one who fell down the stairs.

  He heard the impact of bones and flesh on rough concrete—then no more. Damn. That meant the vamp had disappeared, and would reappear momentarily to—

  You arrogant witch.

  The hostile thought from behind Jay gave him warning. He spun around, bringing his knife up as he did so.

  The vampire’s black eyes widened in surprise as the slender silver blade slipped between her ribs and into her heart. A fall down the stairs hadn’t hurt her, but even if the knife hadn’t had three centuries of witches’ power in the metal, this vamp wasn’t strong enough to survive a heart blow.

  Jay pulled the knife away, and the late shopkeeper fell back, into a display of faux-Native American souvenirs—plastic dream catchers, miniature tepee tents, and other kitsch that had little connection to the Mohawk people this area was named after. A Santa Claus key chain, one of the few nods to the Christmas season, plunked directly into the pool of blood that welled up around the wound.

  Jay started to turn away, then hesitated. It was stupid—his kind didn’t even celebrate Christmas—but he felt bad leaving the poor Santa sitting in the quickly drying blood.

  He rescued Saint Nick, brushed off the powdery remnants left by vampiric blood turned to dust, and returned him to his fellows on the shelf. Then Jay stretched out his senses.

  The storekeeper had been the last of three vampires Jay needed to deal with. One of the others was sprawled at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and the third was draped across the cash register. All of them were now permanently dead. From downstairs, though, Jay could sense the rising panic and hope of the victims he had come to rescue.

  What’s happening? Is it more of them? Who are they fighting with? What’s going on? The questions came, rapid and panicked, from two of the three shapeshifters. The third one’s mind was sluggish and incoherent. Drugged? Or blood loss?

  Jay wiped his knife on his jeans, returned it to its sheath at the back of his neck, and then hurried downstairs, where he found the captives blindfolded, gagged, and bound.

  “I’m here to help,” he announced as the two conscious shapeshifters flinched from the noise. “SingleEarth sent me.”

  The SingleEarth organization was a multinational coalition of witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and humans. These three shapeshifters were students at one of SingleEarth’s schools. When they had failed to return from a hiking-and-swimming day trip, SingleEarth had dispatched Jay to find them. After all, these woods were Jay’s home, even more than the farm his family owned or the room he occasionally used at the local SingleEarth haven.

  He had expected to find the shapeshifters lost in the forests of western Massachusetts. He had not expected to find them imprisoned by three entrepreneurial vampires who had decided a supply of shapeshifter blood would be a good thing to keep on hand.

  Jay pulled blindfolds off and gags down but ignored words of thanks as he turned to the bonds that held the shapeshifters’ wrists behind their backs. The vampires had tied each shifter in a way that held a length of rebar against his back, preventing them from shifting and escaping. No shapeshifter could change form with a line of steel next to his spine.

  The unconscious shapeshifter’s pulse was slow and erratic, and his skin was clammy. He was close to gone. Jay pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and then shook his head as he realized the battery had died … probably days ago, while he had been traipsing through the snowy woods. What time was it, anyway? He had a party to get to.

  There was a phone and a clock upstairs. Jay was halfway there before the shapeshifters’ anxious thoughts caught up to him: Where is he going?

  “Need to make a call!” he shouted back from the stairs. “Lay your friend down, elevate his feet, try to keep him warm.” Jay knew the basics of how to treat blood loss, because a vampire hunter needed to, but he wasn’t a healer.

  Jerky?

  The query came from a Canadian lynx who had been waiting lazily outside the front door. He had helped Jay track the shapeshifters here, but he hadn’t had much interest in joining the fight itself.

  Lynx had been a cub when Jay had met him two years ago. They had bonded swiftly, and now Lynx’s presence meant Jay’s senses were sharper—the traditional five, as well as his sense of the fluid shifts in the power around him. In exchange, Lynx’s life span would be longer, and his body stronger and more resistant to disease and injury. Hopefully that included resistance to the salt and chemicals that packed beef jerky, for which Lynx had developed a ferocious fondness.

  Jay grabbed a strip of moose jerky from a box beside the register and tore it open while he held the store’s phone to his ear with his shoulder. It didn’t count as stealing when you took things from people who’d tried to kill you, right?

  Lynx had eaten two strips before Jay had finished calling SingleEarth for medical support and a cleanup crew. By the time the EMTs had arrived and Jay had sponged blood off his skin in the restroom, he was ridiculously late to hook up with his carpool.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t wait any longer,” the bloodbond said when Jay called to ask if he could still get a ride. “I’m almost there now.”

  “Damn.” A bloodbond was a human tied to his or her vampiric master through a blood exchange, as well as what Jay considered an unhealthy level of emotional dependency. He couldn’t expect this one to willingly run late to an event her master considered important.

  “Is there anyone else I can get a ride with?” he asked. “I was really looking forward to this bash.”

  If helping SingleEarth made him miss the best vamp-fest of the year, he was going to … whine and do nothing about it, most likely. SingleEarth paid pretty much all his expenses. He was obligated to help them out occasionally.

  “Well …” The bloodbond hesitated. She probably wasn’t supposed to let him know precisely where the house was.

  “I would really hate to disappoint Nikolas,” Jay added. “He asked me to come.” Invoking her master’s name was dirty, underhanded manipulation. Jay was cool with that.

  “I guess I could give you directions?”

  “Great! I have a pen right here.” Jay knew to accept the offer quickly, and swiped a souvenir pen and a handful of receipts to write on.

  Kendra’s annual Heathen Holiday was infamous—and extremely exclusive. The celebration lasted from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day and was as much an art exhibition as a social gathering. Kendra’s line was primarily made of artists—emotionally unstable, frequently violent artist vampires, specifically. No witch and certainly no hunter had ever been invited. All the most powerful and influential bloodsuckers would be gathered in one place.

  Jay changed into a tux featuring a black silk jacket and a green and gold vest. The cashier at the rental shop had assured him that the color complimented his hazel-green eyes and auburn hair, which he brushed and pulled back into a ponytail.

  Want to come to a party? he asked Lynx.

  The cat merely yawned.

  Lynx would be able to make his way home when he wanted to. Jay double-checked to ensure that his knife was accessible but not visible, then got into his car and eased it onto the snowy road.

  He hoped h
e would get there in time. It would be so disappointing if all the good vamps were gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  JAY HAD BARELY stepped through the front door of Kendra’s mansion, when he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the larger-than-life sculpture that dominated the front hall.

  The artist had captured in blown glass the very instant when a proud huntress launched a falcon from her wrist. Her expression held despair, and hope, and pain, and power, all at once. The falcon seemed like her soul, freed of its earthly bonds. Could she fly with it, or was she forever earthbound, cursed to only dream of the skies?

  He saw that his hand had risen, and grabbed his own wrist to stop himself from touching the sculpture. Instead, he reached up as if to casually rub the back of his neck, and let the back of his hand brush the silver hilt of his knife.

  A hand like iron closed over his wrist, and another twined in his hair as a melodious voice observed, “You smell of dead blood and adrenaline, witch.”

  The voice startled him—a sensation he didn’t often have, since his power gave him an awareness of others that tended to make it impossible for anyone to sneak up on him. Staring, transfixed, at the statue had been stupid, but how could he have avoided it? Likewise, the mind that flowed over his at that moment made his knees weak. It had to belong to Kendra.

  “It’s remarkable,” he said, struggling to focus on the danger and not the power of her. “As are you.”

  He didn’t mean to say the last bit aloud, but he couldn’t help himself. Her mind was like a supernova, full of brilliant colors, swirling fire, and enough gravity to pull entire planets in her wake. What made her thoughts burn with such intensity? Was it always like this, standing in the presence of a mind more than two thousand years old? Or had she always been this way, even before the change?

  Kendra mentally responded to both compliments while maintaining a razor-sharp focus on his movements. If Jay struggled, she would snap his neck before he could try for a knife or focus his magic to fight.