Sun Cursed (Shades of Blood Book 1)

by Megan Blackwood

  Five vans met us at the rendezvous point, a narrow lane just outside of London proper. Five measly little vans. I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face, but it was hard to keep everything contained. Five vans, carrying three sunstriders each. That meant that there were only fifteen members of my family left in all of England. Maybe even all of Europe. Talia had said she had not been able to reach any of the mainland compounds.

  "We're all here," Talia said. She rode in the front seat of Basil Heywood's car, her glasses halfway down her nose, and chewed-on a pencil she usually kept in her pocket now shoved through the hasty bun of her hair. She guzzled coffee as if it were an antidote to a deadly poison and talked a mile a minute, tapping her thumb against the edge of her seatbelt clasp.

  "Are you ready to proceed?" Adelia's voice echoed through the Bluetooth earpiece.

  "Do you have DeShawn's snipers holding up the rear? Are they in position?" I asked.

  "I can speak for myself, little lady," DeShawn said over the frequency. "It's just me and Roland back here, but we're both crack shots, and we got those gold bullets I told you about. Once we get out to Adelia's place, I'll teach you how to use them."

  "Then we're ready to proceed," I said.

  The order filtered through our small convoy, and the engines of all the vehicles kicked up into a quiet growl all at once. My car, the black sedan Basil Heywood drove, took point as we cleaved the way through the low moors of England.

  We had come down wide, busy streets to get here, going at speeds that made DeShawn's joyride with me through London look tame by comparison, but out here on these country roads, we crept along at a snail's pace, mindful of the narrow lane and the possibility of wildlife or farm equipment getting in the way. I had given instructions that we should not be out of eyesight of each other at any point in time, which meant the cars had to stay close together.

  A necessary safety precaution, but it slowed us down. Being slow was better than losing any of the vehicles in the mist. If something went wrong, I wanted to see it. I rode in the back of Basil's car, Talia in the front and Seamus beside me. Adelia and Emeline rode in their own car, behind us, a center point keeping watch on all the vans.

  I wanted to climb onto the top of the car and hang on, my blade already in my hand as we made our way down the road, but Adelia had nixed that idea, and DeShawn was not quick to encourage me. He claimed that we were unlikely to run into any trouble out here, and that I'd do more harm than good riding around on the top of the car with my sword out for all to see.

  I couldn't help a sense of nervousness building in my chest. We were exposed out here. As long as we were on the road to the house we were without walls, without a base to guard. There were no bottlenecks here, no doors to throw shut. Nothing but endless, gray clouds and moorland.

  "They tried to build out here not too long ago," Seamus said, drawing my attention to the window. "Houses, condos, townhouses, that kind of thing. More residential sprawl to support London's housing problem."

  I looked around, and saw nothing but grayish green in all directions, shrouded by the intense mist of the late evening. "What stopped them?"

  He shrugged and looked away, out through his window at the moorland as if regretting bringing up the topic at all. "Some rumors about the land being haunted and things like that. Honestly, I think the richies in the area—no offense to Adelia—didn't want crowding, so they whipped up a bunch of nonsense about things going bump in the night."

  I slipped the sunglasses Talia had given me down low on my nose and opened my golden eyes wide at Seamus. "You really think there's nothing to things that go bump in the night now?"

  He laughed, a nervous sound, and scraped his hands through his hair, then straightened the wrinkles that had bunched up over the thighs of his jeans. "I guess you're right, but you're all vampires. These people were talking about ghosts, banshees screaming in the night. That kind of thing."

  I snorted and looked away. These humans would never learn. "Banshees are real, ghosts are real, all of it, everything humanity has ever dreamed, is real in some form or another. They are rare, and often not exactly like what you'd think, but even though your brains are exceptionally good at drawing patterns out of random bits of information, you can't get something from completely nothing."

  "That is… Not necessarily comforting."

  I grinned at him, flashing my fangs intentionally. "The truth rarely is."

  "Excuse me," Basil Heywood said. I couldn't see the expression on his face, but his voice held a touch of uncertainty. "You're sure about this route, aren't you? I've been out to Lady Adelia's place before and, forgive me, but I just don't remember there being so many trees. Or for it to be this dark during the day."

  "This is absolutely the right direction," Talia said in a rush. "I have been very precise in all of our travel planning. All the vans reached the rendezvous point without any problems at all, and all we have to do now is get to the estate. If we were going the wrong way, Lady Adelia would've said something." She huffed and blew a strand of hair off her cheek, crossing her arms over her chest.

  "I don't mean to insult your planning," Basil said carefully.

  "It's all right." I patted Basil on the shoulder. "I appreciate you expressing your concern. When was the last time you were out this way?"

  His leather gloves squeaked on the steering wheel as he tightened them. "Just last week."

  "And these trees were not this large?" I asked, my heart pumping faster. Even though I already knew the answer, I waited in tense silence.

  "Not that I can recall, miss."

  I shared a look with Seamus and reached up to touch the button on the device in my ear. "Adelia?" I asked and waited for her soft grunt of confirmation that she was on the line. "Were these trees always so large?"

  "Miss Shelley, these trees weren't even here three days ago."

  My eyes widened, and I drew upon a little of my strength to see through the thick plume of mist shrouding the cars. There was nothing out there but trees—trees and underbrush. Seamus tried to say something, but I waved him to silence and reached up to touch the button attached to my ear again.

  "DeShawn? You and Roland better get ready. Something… Isn't right here."

  "What the hell you mean, isn't right?"

  "I don't know. You just have to trust me."

  He grunted confirmation, and I braced one hand against the back of Talia's seat as I rolled down the window on my side of the car.

  I undid my seatbelt and half stood, pushing my head and shoulders out of the window. I braced one hand against the roof and pushed my sunglasses to the top of my head with my free hand, then looked around. Those trees still looked like nothing more than trees, the mist a normal mist, native to most landscapes of England. And yet, something about the air made my skin crawl, made the small hairs on my body bristle to attention.

  I reached back, instinctively, not even thinking about it, and gripped the handle of my sword. As my fingers closed around it, a heart-shattering howl pierced the faint light of day. Gray darkness fell, shadowing us all even though the sun stood high in the sky.

  Twenty-One: Fell Shadows

  The acrid scent of ancient magic stung the air. A bitter, caustic brew that singed the hairs in my nose and reminded me of old sweat, poison, and smoke. The presence of so much sorcerous magic made my head swim, my stomach revolt. I braced myself against the car and tried to keep my eyes from watering blood.

  "What is that?" Seamus asked through a few hacking coughs. Magic so strong even the mortals could sense it was a bad sign.

  "Ancient sorcerous power, the likes of which I haven't seen in centuries," I called back to him, the wind whipping my voice away.

  "Oh," he said. "So nothing to worry about then."

  I laughed, immediately refocusing. As the sorcerous illusion faded, the scent of nightwalker finally reached me. Though I couldn't yet see them, I was certain that ghouls lurked in the shadows of those false trees. I caught n
o hint of Lucien, but I was beginning to recognize this scent. It was the same that had clung to Brian Garnet, the same that had tainted the ghouls at the Chatham House compound.

  The shadows around the trees shimmered, melting, turning into swirling mists like black ink dropped into water. They coalesced into human figures, the scent of magic intensifying as the illusion dropped away.

  Gray-faced ghouls thronged together in place of the trees. My heart stuttered. These creatures had gone beyond ghoul. They'd been drained to the edge of death, teetering on a precipice that would drive any mortal mind mad, and given the tiniest drops of nightwalker blood to sustain them.

  Blood-mad eyes, feral beasts that knew nothing beyond their thirst, watched the convoy pass. The nearest, a woman who wore one heeled shoe and whose red evening dress wrapped in tatters about her narrow frame, tilted her head back and howled. The others answered her, their eerie cries filling the night.

  "What—" Talia gasped and pressed on. "What are those?"

  "Fucking zombies," Seamus whispered.

  "They're remnants," I said, barely loud enough for the humans in the car to hear me. I pressed the earpiece and spoke as calmly as I could. "Listen carefully. Keep the convoy tightly together, but do not stop. Do not stop for anything. You must reach the gates of the Durfort-Civrac estate to achieve safety. These are remnants, shells of flesh that know only thirst. They will not stop for anything but death, and neither should you. Destroy the brain, or remove the head. These are your only options."

  "Understood," DeShawn and Roland echoed.

  Across the field, the head of a remnant burst into ghoulish fragments, spattering the bodies of its fellows in blood and brain matter. They definitely understood.

  "Basil," I said, "push this convoy as fast as it can go without breaking down or losing sightlines. Talia, keep the drivers in your ear. Don't lose a single one of them."

  "Yes, Miss," Basil said, then switched on his earpiece and said a few short orders to the other drivers. The engine of the car rumbled, tires crunching grit as it sped up down the lane. Talia gave me a thumbs up, head bent over a map as she rattled things off into her headset.

  "Oh, and Basil?"

  "Yes, Miss?"

  "Sorry about your car."

  I extended my fingertips into narrow claws and pierced the roof of the black sedan, hauling myself out of the window. I braced myself on the roof, leaning into the whistling wind, grateful for the sunglasses Talia had given me. The cars edged closer together as they sped up, contracting into a tight knot that would be easier to defend. Gunfire cracked the air behind me, and another remnant dissolved into bloody mist. But there were dozens, and they were speeding up.

  The cars could move quickly, but the thick mist made it impossible to see any obstacle more than a few yards in their path, and I had ordered them to stay within sight of each other. Maybe I'd regret that, maybe there wasn't any trap waiting in the road ahead for us, but that was a risk I couldn't take. In the meantime, the hunger of the remnants drove them faster than normal human legs could bear. They'd be in agony, if they could feel anything but thirst.

  They saw me, and though their ghoulish betters had been unaware of what I was, these creatures were beyond rational thought. Some primitive trigger in their brains reacted to the threat I held, the innate contrast between our two species. The first wave of remnants moaned and shifted their course, avoiding me, as they went for the cars toward the end of the convoy.

  Roland and DeShawn answered them with the crack of gunfire. Their screams shattered the false night, born more of rage than agony, as their bodies crumpled to the damp and twisted brambles. Simple creatures, the remnants. The gunfire herded them toward me, overriding their innate fear.

  A man with matted hair reached the side of my car. I freed my blade from its sheath and slashed down and watched his head roll away into the mist. As soon as his body collapsed it was replaced by another, and another, and another. I mowed them down as if I were scything wheat, trying to ignore the haunted pain in their eyes with every swipe I took.

  These beings had been human once, not too long ago. And there was no way to tell if what had been done to them was done with or without their consent. It didn't matter, there was no coming back after having been turned into a remnant. With each body I sent back to the dirt, I mourned them. And as I mourned them, I let their sacrifice harden my anger, honing it into an even finer blade than the sword in my hand.

  The remnants thinned out around Basil's car, and I stood up, balancing myself as I squinted into the mist that obscured the van behind us. The van behind and to my left was being swarmed. It dropped back, breaking formation as the remnants climbed up its side. The creatures' fingers were smashed and bloodied as they climbed, and their mouths torn as they tried desperately to fight their way through the metal that separated them from their food.

  The van swerved, the passenger-side wheels going off the road and into the looser soil. Though they had dropped very far back, I could still see the driver, his fists gripped tightly around the wheel, his jaw clenched. A remnant climbed onto the hood of the van, and its bloodied fingers left smears upon the windshield as it tried to claw its way through the glass. He turned the windshield wipers on, but they weren't doing much to stop the remnant.

  I couldn't lose anyone. Crouching down, I gathered strength into my body and sprung, angling for the roof of the besieged van. Another crack of gunfire broke through the mist, and the fog was growing so dense that I could see the fire from the gun some distance behind us.

  A remnant ripped away from the van, spraying a fan of tainted blood as it fell. But it was just one of the swarming mass, and there was no way Roland and DeShawn could shoot every remnant without hitting the passengers inside.

  I pressed the earpiece and called out, "I've got this van, cover the other."

  They barked an affirmation and I spun, bringing my blade around in a great windmill arc to take the heads off three remnants that rose over the side.

  Blood fountained from the stumps, smearing onto the roof and making footing tricky. I dropped to one knee and dug my claws into the metal, holding myself in place as I slashed down, hacking at wailing remnants.

  The van jerked as it climbed over the body of a remnant. My claws bounced off, and I swore as I slipped onto my ass and slid towards the back of the van. I scrambled, reaching, even as my legs slung over the back of the van.

  I hung there for a moment, my body hanging off the back of the van as it sped along the road, my fingers piercing the thick metal of the roof, my other hand clinging to my blade. It wasn't exactly the most dignified place to be in.

  I gritted my teeth, trying to pull myself up, when a sharp pain jerked on my hips. A remnant had its arms wrapped around me. The woman had the wild look of all the others, her eyes wide and swirling with black smoke. Her legs dragged along the rough pavement, her skin flaying away to wear the muscles straight down to the bone, but she didn't seem to mind.

  She tilted her head back and let out a roar of triumph, then bit my side. I swore, hissing in pain as I felt her malformed fangs rip into my flesh. My blood would not restore her in the way that the nightwalkers' would, she was too far gone for that, but she must have tasted the ancient power in my blood all the same.

  Her throat muscles bulged, and she sucked down as much blood as she could, oblivious to the fact that her legs were being shredded by the asphalt behind us. It was a tight fit, but I brought my blade up and turned it around, and slammed the point straight through the top of her head, skewering her like a bird for the fire. She let out a gurgling groan as whatever air was left in her lungs escaped. I yanked my blade free and twisted, shaking her body off of me. The pain abated, and my supernaturally enhanced flesh began to heal, but the damage was already done. The remnants had scented my blood.

  It had never occurred to me what an ambrosia sunstrider blood might be to a nightwalker remnant. And I was about to learn the hard way.

  A chorused howl went
up from the remnants, a blood-chilling shriek of madness and desire loud enough to strike fear into my old, dead heart. All the heads of the remnants turned to me, snapping around so hard and fast their lank and bloodied hair flipped around and slapped the sides of their cheeks. They paused, the convoy peeling away from them while they tipped their heads back and sniffed the air. It was just a second, just a heartbeat, but it gave me enough time to get my blade back into its sheath. I was just about to pull myself up when they struck en masse, the bodies of six remnants wrapping around my torso, my legs, my waist, and ripping me to the ground.

  The bodies of the remnants cushioned me as I struck the road, the impact no deterrent to their grasping hands and teeth. We rolled, pulling away from the road as we slid down the ditch into a shallow trough of brackish water.

  Human fingers clawed at me, denied the supernatural strength of the nightwalker, but that didn't mean that they didn't hurt. Fingernails tore at my flesh, human mouths swarming over me as the remnants struggled to find a clear piece of skin to bite. My thick jeans and leather jacket slowed them down.

  I kicked out, catching one remnant square in the face. Her bones cracked and a soft groan escaped her. I twisted, struggling to roll away from the seeking hands flowing all over me. I closed my eyes the first time I felt a finger scrape the inside of my nostril and realized all the soft spots on my body would be just as inviting to them as my skin.

  I got my arms free and dug my hands into the bank of the irrigation ditch, hauling myself upward out of the mass of writhing bodies. Clinging hands weighted my legs as I pulled myself up, bracing my arms against the lip of the field, my head barely visible over the ditch.

  In the distance, the convoy roared on, not daring to stop. At least they had listened to orders. The steady buzz of voices in my ear had ceased. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost the earpiece that Seamus had given me. That was good. I wouldn't be tempted to call for help.

  One of the remnants got its fingers in my hair and yanked. I threw myself against the muddy bank of the ditch, ignoring the snapping pain in my neck as I twisted my legs, trying to gain some purchase, even if it was against the body of one of the remnants.