by Rye Brewer
Table of Contents
Retribution
Anissa
Philippa
Jonah
Sara
Stark
Cari
Gage
Allonic
Excerpt
1
2
3
4
Afterword
Retribution
League of Vampires
Rye Brewer
Contents
Retribution
1. Anissa
2. Anissa
3. Anissa
4. Anissa
5. Philippa
6. Philippa
7. Anissa
8. Anissa
9. Anissa
10. Anissa
11. Anissa
12. Philippa
13. Jonah
14. Anissa
15. Philippa
16. Sara
17. Stark
18. Sara
19. Anissa
20. Philippa
21. Cari
22. Anissa
23. Anissa
24. Anissa
25. Philippa
26. Gage
27. Jonah
28. Philippa
29. Sara
30. Anissa
31. Philippa
32. Allonic
33. Anissa
34. Jonah
35. Jonah
36. Anissa
37. Jonah
38. Philippa
39. Anissa
Excerpt
1
2
3
4
Afterword
Retribution
Half-fae Anissa, a former vampire assassin finds herself embroiled in a new dilemma to save her sister Sara from a set of suddenly appearing elemental skills—a death sentence to a vampire.
Sara finds herself in a witch stronghold, surrounded by a hot sorcerer who’s making her forget her boyfriend, while sparks fly between them. Real sparks. She needs help with her elementals skills. Now.
Interim clan leader Philippa is torn between spending her time guarding the body of the Ancient who possessed her former lover Vance, and following Vance so she can save him from the Ancient.
Gage can’t get the blond human who saved his life out of his mind. The problem is, she can’t get him out of hers either. And it’s putting her in danger.
Sacred trusts, broken.
A legendary vampire wants more than absolution. He wants retribution.
Forbidden passions, foretold.
Forbidden trysts follow a forsaken twin vampire as he seeks out the human he shouldn’t have feelings for.
Slighted ones, return.
Old enemies rise to new challenges, threatening treaties and alliances.
Cover Art by
www.mirellasantana.deviantart.com
with Model Mirish – Deviant Art
1
Anissa
As I had promised my sister Sara, our trip through the shade portal lasted almost no time. It was much less frightening than my first trip. There was no way Sara could know how lucky she was, of course, but she handled it well. She only crackled once before the air around us changed, became warmer and softer.
I could hear the twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves.
Where had he brought us?
“We’re here. You can take off the cloak.” I opened it and looked around, squinting a little at first. It was night there—of course, or else we would’ve burned up—but even the moonlight was brighter than the almost complete darkness I’d gotten used to in the tunnels.
Sara’s reaction was even stronger, since she had been in the tunnels much longer than I had.
“Where are we?” she whispered. Her voice trembled dangerously.
“Calm down. Take a deep breath,” I whispered soothingly, stroking her hair.
Tiny little sparks jumped from her head to my palm, but I didn’t jerk my hand away.
She nodded and did her best. After a moment, the sparks stopped jumping from her to me.
Only then could I get a good look around me.
It was beautiful. That was what I noticed first.
We were in a forest—no, the countryside. There weren’t as many trees as in a forest. Much more open space. Rolling hills covered in lush, green grass, dotted here and there with trees and stone walls. What a charming place. Soothing. This was perfect for her. She needed a place like this, where she could look at beauty and feel safe.
There was a mountain range in the distance, and snow capped the peaks. They glowed in the silver moonlight. I could’ve stood there and stared at them all night. A few clouds floated past, and the moon painted them, too.
Sara’s eyes were wide as her mouth fell open. “It’s so gorgeous,” she whispered, awestruck. “So peaceful.”
Peaceful. Good description. “Are we the only ones here?” I asked Allonic.
He nodded, then corrected himself. “You’re the only ones out here,” he explained. “Don’t you recognize this place?”
I looked around again, more critically than before. Far off, toward the foot of one of the mountains, there was a small forest. I remembered a forest in the woods. “Are we where Sanctuary is?”
He nodded. “This is ShadesRealm. This is what you stepped into when you first came to us.”
“How? We didn’t take a portal,” I said.
“There’s another portal which leads to the entrance of the cave that leads to Sanctuary from the outside world. That’s the portal you took with Jonah. You didn’t realize at the time what you were stepping through.” That made sense. There was so much I didn’t know back then.
“But that portal was different. I didn’t need a cloak or to have a spiritwalker in me to enter it.”
“True. That one serves a different purpose. It will allow for other types to enter.”
“This is where shades live?” Sara asked, sounding just as naïve as I felt when I first arrived with Jonah.
Allonic gave her a nod. “Yes. You’ll find that most non-human creatures live in realms of their own. Not like vampires and were-types, who try to live alongside humans. It’s safer this way.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, then released it. “Now that we’re here, I have so many things to tell you.” Including telling Sara about Allonic’s relation to us. It would be best to tell her in a wide, open place like where we stood. Less chance of me getting fried with her newly acquired electrical skills.
“Not here,” Allonic warned, holding a hand up to silence me. His golden eyes swept over the surrounding area. “There might be shades around here.”
“You think that’s a problem?” I asked, suddenly wary.
“You remember what happened to you, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes boring into me.
“What happened to you? Why don’t I know about any of this?” Sara asked.
The spiritwalker. Like I could ever forget. “I’ll catch you up.” I turned back to him. “And yes, I do remember.”
I would never forget the way they tried to torture me in that little chamber, making me crawl around like a worm on the floor.
“It’s better for us to be someplace further away, where prying ears can’t overhear.” He lifted one long arm, the sleeve of his cloak hanging down, and pointed a long finger in the direction of what appeared to be a tower climbing up to the sky. We were so far away, that from where we stood, however, it was roughly the size of the span between my thumb and forefinger.
“Wow. Do you think we could get any further away?” I asked.
He only shook his head and scowled, before stepping betwe
en Sara and me, then wrapping his arms around us.
“We have to course there,” he announced.
I didn’t have the chance to draw a breath before we were on our way.
He practically lifted us off our feet and did all the work for us.
That was a relief.
I was exhausted, and I knew Sara was, too.
We slowed, then stopped, at the base of the tower. It was much, much bigger up close than it appeared from far away—almost the side of the Bourke high-rise, if not taller. Instead of glass, the tower was made of big, irregular stones of all colors and shapes, held together with what looked like mortar but which, on closer inspection, sparkled like glitter.
“What is this?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Legend has it, the stones are held together with diamond and gold dust. I’ve never actually found out for sure whether that’s true, but it makes a certain sort of sense. Diamonds and gold mean little to us. They’re as good for holding stones together as they are for anything else.”
I shook my head in amazement. The stones were cool to the touch and seemed to vibrate with magic. I could feel the magic moving up my fingers, then across my palm.
I looked up again at the vines which wrapped their way around the height of the tower, vines covered in flowers of every color in the rainbow. I could imagine how beautiful they’d be in daylight—and imagining was all I did, of course. What with the whole thing of vampires and daylight.
“How old is it?” I asked, still marveling at its beauty.
There were windows here and there, dotting the otherwise smooth appearance. They were narrow and tall, and all I saw through them was inky darkness. What was inside?
“Not sure, but some of the records I’ve found mention this tower as early as seven-hundred years ago.”
“And it’s still standing,” I murmured.
Of course, it would be. It was probably enchanted. No way something so beautiful could exist for so long without an enchantment or some other kind of spell.
Sara craned her neck and looked straight up. “Don’t tell me we’re going to the top,” she muttered.
“What if we are?” Allonic asked in a tone that was as close as he got to teasing.
“I would say you’re crazy. The roof touches the clouds!”
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” he asked in that same half-teasing tone.
“No. I’m afraid of falling from heights.”
They looked at each other and exchanged a shy smile.
My heart warmed.
“Come on. We can course up the stairs the way we coursed here. It will take much less time than taking them one step at a time, trust me.”
Allonic led us inside, and I realized I was holding my breath as I stepped across the threshold and onto the stone floor.
It was just like the exterior. The interior walls, however, were framed in wood, and the stairs circling the inside in a spiral going all the way to the top were wood as well. It made me dizzy to stand in the center and look straight up.
Allonic took us both under his arms again and coursed up to the top, which took longer than I had expected.
It really did touch the clouds.
By the time we reached the end of the stairs, which led to a wide landing and a closed door, the air felt much cooler and damper than it had on the ground. I took hold of the railing to keep myself steady as I adjusted to being up so high. I couldn’t even look out a window to get an accurate idea of how high up we were, but just knowing how tall the tower was seemed to be enough.
I felt a little woozy at first.
Sara started to crane her neck to look down. “Don’t do that,” Allonic warned. “Trust me. You’ll get dizzy.”
“I believe you,” she murmured with a shaky laugh.
“Why are we so high up?” I asked. “I mean, did we really have to go so far out of our way to be alone?”
Hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air, up thousands of steps? It seemed a little much.
We aren’t here to be alone,” he said. “This is how our mother stays safe.”
I let out a strangled gasp. “Our mother?”
I had no idea he was taking us to her. I only thought he wanted to keep us safe.
Our mother.
My heart beat double-time and rang in my ears.
Our mother.
He nodded. “Shades can’t portal to the top of the tower and can’t course, either, so she would be able to hear anyone who walked along the creaky stairs well in advance of their reaching the top.”
“Except for you, of course,” I added.
“Of course, since I’m not a full shade, and I can course.”
In the middle of all this, I hardly noticed when Sara started to spark and sizzle. I should have been paying better attention to her.
It was so easy to forget sometimes that she didn’t know nearly as much as I did—and besides, I was too caught up in the thought that I was about to see Mom for the first time in so many years.
“Our mother?” Sara’s voice seemed to crackle like the rest of her. “What does he mean by our mother?”
I gasped. “Sara. Let me explain.”
She ignored me. “First of all, our mother,” she pointed to me, then to herself, back and forth a few times, “is dead, and she has been for a long time.” Then she turned to Allonic. “And she’s not your mother.”
Allonic didn’t say a word.
“Sara, please. You have to calm down.” I wondered if the wood all around and under us was flammable.
She was working herself up into a massive emotional state. I would have warned her if I had known we were going there. To the place where our mother had been living.
I threw Allonic a dirty look as I tried to quiet my sister before she lost control again.
Suddenly, the door opened. Our heads turned in that direction—and the figure standing in the entrance.
“Anissa. Sara.” That voice.
That same voice.
I couldn’t believe it—I had seen Allonic’s memories, and I knew they were true, but it wasn’t the same as hearing her sweet, familiar voice. A voice that had soothed me when I was sick, a voice that praised me, a voice that rang out in laughter so many times, I’d lost count.
It was her.
“Mom?” I forgot about Sara for a second and threw myself into my mother’s arms.
She held me tight, and she even felt like Mom. I would know her hug anywhere.
“Sara!” Allonic’s voice rang through the tower, echoing, bouncing off the walls.
I turned to see my sister shaking, twitching, with bolts of lightning running up and down her body until she collapsed onto the floor with her eyes closed.
She went perfectly still.
2
Anissa
“Oh, Sara!” I threw myself over her. “Sara, wake up!”
Mom sank to her knees on the other side and turned her head from side to side, patting her cheeks.
I touched her forehead.
Sara’s skin was scorching hot, but she was breathing.
“Quick, get her inside.” Mom rose to her feet and rushed inside.
I heard water sloshing around.
Allonic lifted Sara in his arms like she weighed nothing at all, and I followed him into the chamber.
There was a chaise lounge by one open window, which Allonic stretched her out on.
The air coming in was cool and fresh.
Mom hurried back and sat on the edge of the lounge, wiping Sara’s forehead with a cool washcloth.
I still couldn’t get over it. Mom. Our mother. She was real.
“Please, get me a bowl with more water from the tub,” Mom said without looking up.
Allonic did as she asked while I stood there, rooted to the spot. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
With the moonlight streaming through the window and the glowing, dancing light from a few lanterns placed here and there, I got a clear look at her.
>
She was her, but not her. I couldn’t get over it.
The Mom I remembered used to have very pale, almost translucent skin.
The woman sitting in front of me, however, had a deep tan. Not quite as dark as Allonic’s skin, but much darker than what I was used to.
She bathed Sara’s forehead with so much tenderness, my chest ached.
Dipping the cloth into the cold water, wringing it out, touching it to her cheeks, her neck, her chest. She ran it down the inside of her arms, her inner wrists.
“She’s burning up,” Mom murmured, and there was no question as to who she was when I heard her voice again.
“I guess it’s from all the electricity,” I uttered. “It created too much heat for her to bear.”
“When did this happen?” Mom waved her hands around wildly. “How did it happen?” She looked up at me and did a quick double-take when she noticed the intensity of my stare.
What was a frown turned into a soft, tentative smile on her face. The lines on her forehead smoothed out. “I know I look different now,” she said, her voice low. “I’m sorry if that’s a shock to you.”
“It’s all right,” I whispered back, and I couldn’t get my chin to stop trembling.
She blurred and doubled as tears filled my eyes, then spilled over onto my cheeks.
Mom opened her arms, and I fell into them, weeping helplessly.
