The 3-Book King’s Blood Vampire Saga

by P. J. Day

  Logan placed his hand on Keelen’s cheek and said, “The reason I came back down to Earth was to find you. I met you back during the great shift, when our reign was crushed under Constantine’s rule. Your soul was renewed, but I was greatly saddened when we met again and you didn’t remember me. We had a child, Keelen, and our progeny still lives on to today. You just don’t know it and it breaks my heart that you don’t know what’s happening.”

  Keelen’s face tightened. Her eyes watered with confusion, sadness and dread. She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to remember how much you used to love me.”

  “But I love you now.”

  “Not like you used to.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember our past,” Keelen said. “I’m just trying to survive. I don’t know if what you’re saying is true.”

  “There is a block in your mind. Everyone has it. It’s what stops everyone from remembering their pasts.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Logan glanced up and hurried the words that came out of his mouth. “You humans are born with double the connections...neurons...then as you get older, they dry up. There is a way to regenerate them and also make sure all of you are born with these neurons intact for the rest of your lives.”

  “So, you’re saying there is a way I can remember my past life?”

  Logan’s eyes widened. He put his hand on Keelen’s shoulder and pushed her to the ground.

  Keelen landed softly on her behind and yelled at Logan, “Why are you shoving me away?”

  “I love you, Buttons.”

  The heavy wind that kicked up dirt and dust into the eyes of the protestors and whose gusts were a fertile genesis for tornadoes, ceased abruptly. A sense of calm washed over the chatter, as an eerie silence permeated the city. Everyone stared at each other in a moment of quietude, and were confused at the sudden bout of serenity. A cracking sound tore through the silence, like a compressed, echoing thunderclap that startled everyone within earshot. Logan’s head snapped backward, violently. Blood and small chunks of flesh burst in the opposite direction of his uncontrolled momentum. His rigid stance gave way to languid, rag-doll physics as his body collapsed gracefully onto the torn and stomped grassy floor.

  Keelen screamed and threw herself down to the ground, blanketing his inert body from what she thought, was the next shot. Among the gasps, observers within the crowd pointed toward the Quest Lending Building, where a silhouette of a thin man, with abnormally large shoulders, stood staring down at them. In shock, Keelen breathed rapidly and checked Logan’s body for a bullet hole. She worked her way up from his leg, to his torso, then finally, his head. She shrieked and began to wail when she realized that a piece of Logan’s head, where his forehead met his scalp, was completely blown off. Blood and brain matter mixed into his hair, but his face was intact and tranquil. “Logan,” she screamed, tapping him on his cheek. “Logan...goddammit...sweetie, please say something.”

  Realizing Logan had been struck, Cindy immediately crouched beside Keelen and assisted her in whatever way she could. Paolo stood over them with the pale goddess in his arms, his eyes protruding from their sockets, adrenaline filling his veins. “We need to move...they’re firing on us,” he yelled.

  Like a panicked megafauna stampede on the savannah, the large crowd raced away from the downed demigod, once it was determined where the bullet came from. Chaos spilled onto the streets. Women cried and men yelled and the shrill screams from children tore through the once-pleasant gathering like the three-inch bullet that had shredded Logan’s skull. Keelen scanned her surroundings in quick bursts. She tugged at strangers’ pants as they zoomed right past her. None stopped. “Keelen, we need to leave now,” said Paolo. “I can’t carry both of them...we have to leave Logan behind. His wound...his wound looks...he’s not going to make it...I’m sorry.”

  “We can’t do that,” Mirabel said angrily.

  “What did Logan tell you?” Cindy asked Keelen. “There has to be something to all of this. He took the bullet, Keelen. He stood there...pushed you out of the way and took the fuckin’ bullet.”

  “We need a car,” Keelen said. She then turned around, glowered at Paolo, and angrily pointed her finger. “Don’t you ever suggest we leave him behind.”

  The earth shook as if an enormous satanic beast which lay dormant beneath the city was exhuming itself from a mantled sarcophagus. The sensation wasn’t like the light, rolling tremors from the previous swarm of mini-quakes. This one was what many Angelinos referred to as “the big one.” The shaking began how most quakes did. The first three seconds felt as if the ground was sitting on top of a gentle wave. Everyone stood still. A paralysis meant to gauge the seriousness of the event. But this one was different as the trembling didn’t stop, and then the realization of seeking a doorframe or ducking underneath a table became a reality. The longer it shook, the stronger the wave got, and the wave transformed into jolts. First they were compact and brief, and then they began to feel as if they were being thrown around by their ankles.

  Logan, Keelen, Paolo and Mirabel were slammed to the ground. It was impossible to walk or even wobble as they helplessly witnessed windows shatter and the ground in front of them rupture, like the tearing of freshly baked bread. It didn’t matter if it was the hardened concrete from the sidewalk or street, or the grassy turf from the park; it all split open, revealing chasms that appeared bottomless to the naked eye. The older buildings surrounding the park crumbled to the ground, creating a cloud of dust, asbestos and concrete.

  After much violent chaos, the shaking ended. Sirens were the first sounds to break through the initial seconds of post-destruction deafness. Then came the haunting wails of people trapped underneath the rubble. Car alarms, birds lathered into an alarmed chatter. The city was officially under the thumb of a new reality; one overwhelmed with death, destruction, and the specter of the Rapture.

  Parts of the ground jutted upward like flatiron peaks. Keelen continued to weep over Logan’s corpse, everyone else stood up with no clue as to how to traverse the suddenly created, interconnected valleys that had spread out before them.

  “Should we climb down into the spaces between the cracked ground?” asked Cindy.

  “I don’t know,” Paolo said, examining the fissure right in front of him. “This one doesn’t seem to have a bottom.”

  The earth shook again. Paolo, Cindy and Keelen huddled over the fallen demigod and goddess. Mirabel fell on her knees. The quake wasn’t as big as the previous one, but the aftershock was still a formidable one. As the shaking ceased, Mirabel, who was on an island of sidewalk and grass, immediately stood up and began yelling and flailing her arms wildly, trying to get Paolo and Cindy’s attention. “Mira!” she said, pointing toward a large hole that had been created by the earthquake in the middle of the lake. A bubbling bristle of red-hot, glowing magma pooled in its center. Then like a submerged, broken fountainhead in the middle of some golf course pond, the endless slag spilled into the surrounding area speedily and heavily.

  “Are you kidding me?” yelled Paolo. “Mirabel, hang tight. I’m coming to get you.”

  Fisker observed the group below. He stretched his wings and tested the wind. Feathers fluttered with a unified rhythm, the skin between the plumage cooled against the breeze. He stared at Logan’s lifeless body sprawled on the grass and the volcanic activity that had encircled the survivors. Fisker couldn’t leave Logan’s body behind. He had to take his body. The thoughts of martyrdom crossed his mind. Theolodus was much too popular now, much too loved.

  With his plumed ailerons positioned for a headlong dive, Fisker took a step off the ledge. Instead of feeling the first few seconds of weightlessness whenever he’d commit to descent, something tugged at his wing—an annoying tug that quickly gave way to crippling pain. Wincing, Fisker turned around and saw a large, bloated man, whose face was covered with loose and dangling skin, holding on to his wing. “Lelantos?” Fisker howled i
n agony.

  Adam tightened his grip on the arching bone of Fisker’s wing, breaking it, as if it were a diseased clavicle with tremendous amounts of applied pressure. Uriel fell to his knees. Adam remained silent as it appeared that his mouth had been burnt shut. Fisker glanced at Adam’s arm and noticed pieces of fabric had merged into his skin. In desperation, Fisker flashed his radiant gold sword and swiped at Adam’s torso, slicing his bulbous midsection, disemboweling him in the process. Adam remained unflinching and conjured the same flamed leash he used against the Seraph at the arena. He wrapped it around Fisker’s neck and tightened the noose with all the strength left in his smoldered hand.

  Fisker grasped the fiery leash, hoping to loosen its hold, but instead, burned both his hands to a crisp. His face flushed red with blood. Spittle flew from his mouth. Remnants of a sentence escaped his lips, filtered with obvious pain and torment. “Y...Declare...war...”

  Adam tightened the noose around Fisker’s neck further in response. He had waited for this moment much too long. The smarmy, condescending, winged fucker who flaunted his superiority as if it were a shield against criticism, against compromise, struggled, and for the first time in his multi-millennial life, experienced true submission. Adam grunted and yanked. The snapping sounds of vertebrae cracking like twigs filled his ears. Fisker dangled lifelessly from the leash, his ascendancy extinguished. Eyes white like spider eggs.

  The glowing cord recoiled into the void of Adam’s wrists and Fisker’s broken body collapsed onto the rough, crushed-granite roofing felt. His shoes slipped off, revealing a set of hooves at the end of his pants cuffs and horns burst through the skin of his forehead. They were alabaster in color and as solid as ivory tusks. Adam stumbled backward, surprised at Uriel’s sudden transformation in death. He exhaled and a glimmer caught the corner of his eye.

  Adam turned his head toward the western sky and saw Jrue’s wall of flame grow taller than everything that peaked on the horizon, consuming all that stood in its wake. Urgently, he used his arm to cover his gash and used his hands to cup the innards that had slipped out from his wound. He then picked up the Remington .700 with his other hand and boarded the police chopper. He sat in the pilot’s seat and stared at the console. In-flight controls were as alien to Adam as menopause was to a nomadic Bronze Age shepherd. He flipped every switch that looked switchable, pulled every lever that looked pullable, and stared at the barometers with confusion and growing disdain. Adam closed his eyes and willed the chopper off the platform, while the blades and rotors remained still.

  Paolo, Mirabel, Cindy and Keelen saw the chopper drop like a three-ton stone off the roof of the bank building. “Everyone down,” Paolo yelled, anticipating the chopper splashing molten lava once it connected with the fiery floor.

  The police chopper stopped abruptly in midair and floated toward them. Adam maneuvered the aircraft with the mysterious forces granted to him by Pit. The heat from the magma began to melt the leather seats inside the cockpit. With brute strength from his mandibles, he was able to stretch his jaw, tearing away the skin that had melted and coagulated and healed over his mouth. With a disabled tongue, he yelled awkwardly, “Fire...my father approaches...get in.”

  Paolo picked up Keelen by her hips and put her in the chopper. Once inside the cabin, Keelen reached down and helped Cindy on board. Paolo loaded Logan’s body, then Thalia’s. Due to the loss of his lower eyelids that had been burned clean off, a heavy gush of tears cascaded down Adam’s malformed face when his eyes fixated on his mother and Logan’s lifeless bodies being lifted onto the helicopter. Adam willed the chopper toward Mirabel, who kicked her knees up into the air like an Olympic-class hurdler. “Hurry,” she cried. “The bottoms of my feet are burning.”

  Paolo leaned out of the cabin, as Cindy and Keelen held onto his legs. “Mirabel, grab both my arms. Not my hands, okay?”

  Mirabel nodded and gripped Paolo’s bare forearms as he gripped her corpulent arms by her elbows. “Pull me in,” Paolo yelled at the girls. Mirabel lunged onto the floor of the chopper and began kicking her legs into the air, wildly and in pain. The blistered and reddened bottoms of her feet were visible through the burnt soles of her sneakers. Mirabel wailed on Paolo’s shoulders as Adam ascended the chopper into the rage-filled sky, sparking with endless and fearsome webs of lightning.

  Paolo and Cindy stared through the chopper’s side opening, seeing all of West L.A. being consumed by Jrue’s relentless fury. Keelen rushed toward Adam, who sat snug in the pilot’s seat and gave him the coordinates from Logan. “Your brother gave me these numbers. This is where he instructed me to go.”

  Adam glanced at the chopper’s instruments and then at the coordinates on the piece of paper. “Put the...num...numbers...in the...’puter,” he said; his burnt tongue made him hard to understand.

  “I’m sorry, what? Can you say it slower?” Keelen pleaded.

  “Input...input...input,” Adam said, with an annoyed mumble, maniacally pointing at the console with his burnt and chubby finger.

  Luckily, the onboard navigation wasn’t that drastically different than the one in a late model vehicle. Once Keelen plugged in the numbers, a red arrow appeared on the chopper’s center console. She then exhaled a sigh of relief, sat back and crossed her legs. As she kicked up her leg, she accidentally kicked a switch with her toe, which promptly activated the chopper’s blades.

  Adam flashed Keelen a crooked smile and reclined in his seat while holding onto the helicopter’s joystick. “Thank you,” he said.

  Keelen closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the seat and began to cry. It was a rare opportunity for release while the city below was in the process of consumption by every type of conceivable disaster. Loneliness set in. Despair. The realization hit her that nothing was ever going to be the same.

  Chapter Forty:

  San Gabriel

  Cindy sat next to Adam in the cockpit. Sadness and confusion delineated the emerging wrinkles on her smooth face. “I can’t believe all of this is happening,” she said, her eyes focused on the cordillera ahead. “How did I not see all of this coming?”

  Keelen sat in the farthest seat in the back, caressing Logan’s pale skin, as she tried to keep her whimpering subdued. Although solemn, there was plenty of determination wrinkling her forehead. She leaned in on Logan’s expressionless face and whispered, “You’re with me right now. If you can hear me, we’re almost there.”

  Back in the cockpit, Cindy couldn’t keep her eyes off the badly burnt God. She glared with morbid curiosity. “You’re Lelantos, aren’t you?” she asked. His grotesque visage and the few innards that had splashed onto his lip made her pity him. “What happened to you?”

  “My father,” he said, with a stone-cold demeanor. “I’ve betrayed him.”

  “Is he the one who started the fire?”

  “He is the fire,” Adam said.

  While Adam carried Jrue’s flame into the elevator of his apartment, before coming to the rescue in the police chopper, he suffered a change of heart. Adam was a stubborn and proud god. He knew he was stronger and more powerful than the beings chosen by Adonai to do his bidding on Earth. He felt when push came to shove, and if war were declared once again, he’d challenge those who ruled Caeli until the bitter end. It’s not that he believed victory would be guaranteed, but he felt it wouldn’t be guaranteed for them, either.

  As he descended from the floor of his penthouse, Adam seared open a hole at the bottom of the elevator and released the vessel containing his father, thinking the steel that lined the shaft’s walls would neutralize Jrue’s flame. Unfortunately for him and the city of Los Angeles, Adam’s apartment building sat on top of unexplored oil reserves. The vessel carrying Jrue’s flame melted through the concrete foundation and connected with the tar sands below. This was fuel for an already enraged Alpha deity.

  An explosion followed. Jrue’s fiery tentacles climbed up through the elevator shaft and consumed everything it touched, including Adam
, who lumbered in the lobby at the time. “You’re dead to me,” the fire whispered, as Adam felt the fat underneath his skin bubble to a boil. Charred and roasted, Adam managed to crawl out of the lobby and into the street, fleeing from Jrue as the inflamed God reveled in absorbing the vast reserves of petrol underneath the building.

  Cindy continued analyzing him, dissecting his features and injuries with her keen observational skills. How does a god acquire flesh?

  Adam’s lidless eyes bulged outward, focused on the terrain ahead.

  “My father wanted me to plant him in the forest. He wanted to use timber for fuel,” he said. “His goal was to gain enough power so he could go down to the city and raze it to the ground, knowing you and my brother were down there. He wants to burn it all down until he feels that spark or rush. See, when you kill a god, euphoria sets in. Jrue doesn’t know my brother is dead. He’s going to scorch everything to ash. There will be no end to his rage.”

  “The city...is the entire city on fire? Is there a way we can stop it?” Cindy asked, crying.

  Adam shook his head. “He wants the forest, too...he’ll be here soon,” he said. “I’m helping you. I don’t know what my brother has planned or had planned, but I’ll help him and you, all right?”

  The omnipresent mountaintop ahead quivered. Large rings of dust rose into the air, like enlarged smoke signals. It was both beautiful and eerie.

  “I never thought the city was next to a volcano,” Cindy said.

  Adam shook his head. “It isn’t a volcano,” he said. “But there is something dormant inside that mountain waiting to come out.”

  Behind the mount there was a small basin surrounded by a pine forest.

  Paolo, who sat next to the window alongside Mirabel in the cabin, yelled as he spotted something in the dried vegetation below. There was a smattering of creatures perched on some of the larger branches and the granite peaks that stuck out of the ground like spires. Keelen and Cindy joined him. “Why are they up here?” Keelen asked.