The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set

by R. A. Steffan

  “That one is her sire,” he said, jerking his chin toward the rocking chair. “Where else would I deliver her? You and your men are here now, are you not? So take her off my hands and be done with it.”

  The guard wavered. “Very well,” he said eventually. “But I will give a full accounting of all this to the Recorder.”

  Albigard cocked a slanted brow. “As you like, Sergeant. Though, as the Recorder was the one who directed me here, it seems rather a waste of time and effort.”

  With that, he handed me over to the wiry Sergeant, who regarded me with distaste. When the Fae guard’s hand closed around my arm, I felt my future narrow to a single point of darkness.

  “I love you, Dad,” I croaked... but my father had already returned to whatever distant place he now inhabited. A place I could no longer reach. He didn’t even look at me as I was pulled from the room.

  “Come, part-breed,” the sergeant grumbled, tugging me away from my only tie to Earth... to my home.

  ELEVEN

  I THREW A FINAL glance over my shoulder at Albigard, trying to convey the threat of dire consequences if he failed to do all he could for whatever was left of my father. He gazed back with every indication of complete disinterest, his green eyes without expression.

  I had played the only card available to me, bet everything on this gamble. And there was every possibility that doing so had gained me precisely nothing. Nothing except a faster death than I might’ve had before, assuming the Fae decided to take the easy way out and have done with me.

  At least Rans is safe, I tried to tell myself. With me gone, they would have no reason to go after him.

  Yeah, sure, said the little internal voice that whispered bad things to me in the dark. Just like no one had a reason to blast a hole through his chest with a shotgun. He hadn’t even met you yet when that happened.

  My throat tightened, denial burning like acid at the backs of my eyes. Jesus, I was such an idiot.

  That’s the real reason he’s better off without you, the voice whispered. Your own dad doesn’t even want you. Nobody wants you. Hell, you can probably count the number of people who’ll even notice that you’re gone on the fingers of one hand.

  I wrenched my attention outward, consigning that little voice to the darkness where it belonged.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked my captors, the words emerging unsteady.

  The guards—half a dozen or so—formed a loose ring around us as the sergeant frog-marched me out of the little cottage. No one answered or even acknowledged that I’d spoken. The one at the front paused and muttered, throwing a new portal into existence. It seemed less stable than the ones I’d seen Albigard make—the outline hazy and wavering—but the others didn’t hesitate to step through.

  A moment of sickening disorientation, and I was once more in the overgrown, downtowny looking area that Albigard and I had departed from earlier. Indeed, we were outside the very same building, I was fairly sure, though this time the sergeant hauled me around to a back entrance rather than walking in the front door.

  The same white-haired Recorder guy met us, satisfaction visible on his wrinkled features. “So, you found the malcontent waiting there as I thought you would. Very good.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “Shall I take this creature to the incarceration area now?”

  “Do so,” said the Recorder. “I will make the necessary entry into the records. And I believe there is at least one operative on Earth who will appreciate being notified of its capture.”

  That would probably sound ominous, if anything that happened to me now could be said to be more ominous than anything else. I was dragged back outside—making me wonder if it was considered impolite to open a portal inside a building or something. Maybe there were official portal zones that you had to use?

  Whatever the case, Shaky Portal-Making Guy threw a new one up in the courtyard behind the Recorder’s building. A moment later, he and my captor took me through it. When we stepped out, I staggered a bit, looking around in surprise. Silly me, I’d assumed the incarceration area would be some variant on Albigard’s creepy basement cells.

  Wow, had I been wrong.

  We were in... something that looked an awful lot like the inside of a giant redwood tree that had been hollowed out, as crazy as that sounded. The area was more or less circular, maybe seven or eight feet in diameter, and surrounded by rough walls. Only they weren’t really walls, as such. It was simply a hollow tree trunk made of unfinished, unaltered, living wood with no doors, windows, or other openings. The floor was packed dirt with twisted tree roots poking up through the surface here and there. There was a small hole dug near the edge, and the hole stank so badly of stale urine and feces that I nearly gagged.

  I whirled around, taking it all in, and claustrophobia prickled at the edges of my mind. Then I craned my head up, trying to see where the light was coming from, and immediately grew dizzy. The walls... the tree... rose far above my head. Like, dozens of feet above my head, at a minimum. It looked completely unclimbable, with no hand or footholds that I could see. The illumination filtering in from the top appeared to be natural daylight.

  “No,” I said a bit desperately as the reality of what was happening set in. “Please... don’t leave me in here.”

  The guard who had been holding onto me gave me a shove, sending me crashing against the unforgiving wood of what was to become my living prison. He and Shaky Portal-Making Guy stepped back through the hazy ring hovering in the air. I pushed away from the wall and tried to lunge after them, but the portal snapped shut before I could reach it. All I succeeded in doing was staggering to a halt against the other side of the tree.

  “Shit!” I yelled. The sound echoed hollowly around me.

  I tried to quiet my uneven breathing. I was okay. No one had hurt me, unless you counted the bruise where my shoulder had hit the inside of the tree. I needed to slow down and assess things without panicking.

  The hole in the floor was meant as a primitive latrine, judging by the stench. A pile of objects lay on the floor, directly across from the shit pit. I’d barely noticed them sitting there during my brief flirtation with hysteria. I approached the pile and crouched, examining the items in the uncertain light filtering down from above.

  There was a blanket, along with clean clothes that looked to be roughly the right size to fit me. On top of the pile of folded cloth was a loaf of crusty bread wrapped in thin paper and what looked like a hollow gourd with a cork stopper in the top. There was liquid sloshing inside. I uncorked it and took a sniff. It was odorless, so I stuck my finger inside. Plain water, I was pretty sure.

  And that made sense, I supposed. Weren’t bread and water supposed to be the standard prisoner rations? I was both hungry and thirsty at this point, too. My last drink had been after the self-defense training with Rans yesterday afternoon, and my last food had been an apple and a banana not much later. I winced at the reminder of the vampire I’d left behind, making an effort to put him out of my mind.

  My fingers itched to lift the water to my lips, but memory stopped me. Doesn’t your generation read fairy tales anymore? I mean, is it seriously not common knowledge that you don’t eat Fae food or drink Fae wine?

  Albigard had said I was connected to him now because I’d accepted his gift. Suddenly the pile of items looked less like a bounty and more like a trap. I set the water down and stared at it, sitting back on my heels and crossing my arms over my knees.

  No one had said anything specifically about accepting Fae clothing or blankets, but I wasn’t inclined to take the chance. Nothing I had seen so far indicated that any of them gave a shit about my wellbeing. Why would they do things for my comfort if there wasn’t a catch involved somewhere?

  I stood up and went to sit against the wall midway between the pile of temptations and the stinking hole. How long would they let me stew in here alone, before they came back and did something worse to me?

  I tried to tell myself that bein
g in this cell was a good thing. I tried to tell myself that Albigard was out there somewhere trying to get my dad free right now. Maybe it was like the legal system back home, where you could be held in jail for a long time waiting for a trial. Especially when something as important as an execution was on the line.

  That would also be consistent with what Albigard had said about the Court barely being able to come to an agreement on simple issues. It should have been comforting. Instead I felt panic threatening again.

  Fucking Christ. What was I doing? What the hell had I done? Would I be trapped in here with food I couldn’t eat and water I couldn’t drink until I died of thirst? If I did give in and eat or drink the Fae gifts, what would happen?

  My breathing grew ragged, my heart pounding as a panic attack rose up and took over. I huddled in a ball on the dirt floor at the base of the hollow tree trunk, lightheadedness and nausea fighting for dominance inside me.

  Damn it. Goddamn it.

  Why couldn’t I be strong, like my mother had always been? Strong like Rans? I bet he’d never had a full-on, proper panic attack in his centuries-long life. I tried to breathe through the physical reaction, hearing the raspy gasps echoing louder than they should in the enclosed space. Fuck, I was trapped in here with no doors or windows... fuck fuck fuck...

  The attack continued for long minutes, measured by the tripping beats of my heart. When it finally subsided, I was trembling, soaked with clammy sweat that beaded chilly and unpleasant on my skin in the cool air of the tree-cell. I covered my face with my hands and shook.

  Eventually, I recovered enough to try and think rationally again. The area around me was growing darker and more shadowed as the sun crept across the afternoon sky. I should do a detailed examination of the walls while I could still see my surroundings. Rising on rubbery legs, I placed a hand on the wood next to me and started to feel around, gaining little more than a collection of splinters for my troubles.

  Despite the hollowed-out center, the massive tree wasn’t rotten. The wood was hard and dense. I picked at a rough area with my thumbnail, and was only able to peel away a tiny sliver before the nail tore. I yelped and sucked on it until the sting subsided.

  With the right tools, I could have chipped away at the wall, I was sure... though of course there was no way of knowing whether two inches or two feet of wood lay between me and freedom. And there was also the small matter of my captors not having conveniently left me a hammer and chisel to use—much less a pickaxe.

  You should already own these tools, Zorah.

  The memory of my father’s voice brought an ugly noise to my throat that might have been a bitter laugh, along with a telltale burn at the back of my eyes.

  Yeah, thanks Dad. Big help there.

  Did I have anything useful with me? Nothing in the pile of supplies was hard or sharp enough to help me with the task. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. My belt had a metal buckle on it, but I couldn’t think of any way it would be useful.

  I caught my breath, my hand flying to my pocket.

  I still had my little cell phone. Obviously, relying on cellular service in Dhuinne was a non-starter, but I could at least keep track of the time and have some light once the sun slipped too low in the sky to illuminate my surroundings. I pulled it out and flipped the cover up, powering it on.

  Maybe I should have sprung for smartphones when I bought the two burners back in St. Louis, but money had been a real concern at the time. Still, a proper flashlight app would have come in really handy in my current position.

  The flip-phone seemed to take longer than it should have to power up. Rather than the usual service provider logo and tinny musical flourish, the screen flickered erratically. Random numbers flashed for a bare instant before the LCD display darkened into blue-black swirls, like someone dropping ink into a glass of water. The screen’s illumination flared a final couple of times and died, after which no amount of shaking it or mashing the power button made any difference.

  My heart sank, the phone slipping from my numb fingers to drop onto the dirt at my feet. Fae magic is hard on tech, Rans had said. Once again, I was reminded of the dashboard clock in Albigard’s car, flashing in random, nonsensical segments. It made sense, I supposed—you couldn’t get much more exposure to Fae magic than actually being in Dhuinne.

  I shivered again, partly because the cool air against my sweaty skin was making me cold, and partly because I would now be stuck in the pitch black if they left me here overnight. The dead phone, my clothing, and the pile of Fae stuff I couldn’t use without risking more Bad Things happening constituted the sum total of what I had access to in this place.

  I was hungry, thirsty, cold, and I’d barely slept last night. It seemed pretty clear that the most productive thing I could do right now was to try to get some rest in preparation for whatever was going to happen next. I returned to my spot next to the wall, my foot knocking against the abandoned phone in the deepening gloom.

  Letting my head tip back, I gazed up at the sky far above me with unfocused eyes. Outside, it was still daylight, though very little of that light now reached the depths of the hollow tree where I was huddled. Even with my arms wrapped around my knees, I was still badly chilled. The woolen blanket tormented me with its presence mere feet away.

  How could the Fae possibly know if I was folded up over here, or wrapped around you? it whispered in its stupid imaginary blanket-voice. Why be cold and miserable if you don’t have to be?

  I closed my eyes, cutting off my view of the distant light above. After a few minutes, I scuffled around, pulling my arms inside the armholes of the thin cotton shirt and wrapping them around my middle. It didn’t help much.

  Rest, I reminded myself. Try to get some sleep. Maybe something will happen in the morning.

  I kept my eyes stubbornly closed, but rather than shut down, my brain decided that this would be a fantastic time for a rousing game of that old classic, second-guess every decision you’ve ever made in your entire life.

  So I did that for a while.

  Then I played what will Rans do when he wakes up to find you gone, which was no better. Since the two obvious answers were ‘shrug and go on like nothing happened,’ or ‘antagonize every Fae on Earth until he gets himself killed,’ it was hard to feel all that great about either possibility.

  I’d never been all that good at keeping myself entertained in the absence of any outside help like books, television, or a working phone, so I was definitely struggling under my current circumstances. Chronic anxiety issues tended to do that for you, even when you weren’t trapped in a living tree-cell with no light and the prospect of execution hanging over your head.

  Ha. ‘Hanging over your head.’ Decapitation. Sometimes I really slayed myself.

  ‘Slayed.’ Right. Double ha.

  When I finally gave up and opened my eyes what felt like years later, the sky was dark above me. I quickly closed them again, not liking the fact that I could tell no difference in my surroundings whether my eyelids were open or shut.

  It was night. Definitely time to sleep now. Are you listening, brain?

  More time passed, and I was finally starting to drift when something skittered across the tops of my shoes. I shrieked and scrambled upright in the pitch blackness, leaning a shoulder against the wall to combat my disorientation as I dragged my arms back through my sleeves. Over the sound of my startled breathing, I thought I could hear tiny things rustling in the darkness around me.

  But I wasn’t going to panic, just because there were mice or... or bugs or something in here with me. I wasn’t.

  Albigard would have mentioned if the Fae executed people by decapitation or death by hundreds of fucking poisonous nocturnal spiders. Right? There was food in here with me. Whatever the tiny things were, they probably just wanted the bread.

  Something else ran over the toe of my sneaker and I kicked out, unable to stop myself. The unseen activity continued until I was tired of standing, but no way was I goin
g to sit down again while they were in here. I tried to distract myself by figuring out how the things could have gotten in. All I could come up with was the theory that there were tiny tunnels leading from the bottom of the shit-pit, weaving through the tree’s roots and leading to the outside world.

  That theory made me even less thrilled about the idea of the creepy things touching me than I had been before, which was saying something. The hours crept by, and with unexpected suddenness, the small noises lessened before disappearing completely. When they didn’t return after a couple of minutes, I relaxed, and eventually sank back down to sit curled on the floor.

  It occurred to me to wonder what had made them decide to leave all at once like that. I had just come to the conclusion that I didn’t really care about their motivation as long as they were gone, when the first raindrops splattered down from the opening at the top of the tree.

  Oh. Brilliant.

  The rain was chilly, and it continued to drip down inside the cell until it had grown into a steady shower. I made my way around the edges of the space—carefully avoiding the shit pit—in hopes of finding a drier area. There was no drier area, however. Rain was falling straight down the hollow trunk and no place was protected. In minutes, I was wet all the way through.

  Huddling on the increasingly muddy floor, I shivered my way through the night until the shower eventually stopped. Sometime before morning, exhaustion overcame discomfort and I slid into a sort of fugue state—not quite dozing, but not really awake either.

  That lasted until a portal opened without warning in the center of the cell and a glowing ball of light came through it, blinding me. The ball floated up to hover several feet above my head, throwing the damp cell into harsh relief.

  When I blinked my eyes back into working order, Caspian was standing over me—staring down at my huddled form with an ugly sneer on his handsome face.

  TWELVE