I was surprised at how forthcoming Nigellus appeared to be tonight. Maybe nearly getting his ass handed to him earlier had affected him more than he let on, I thought. Or maybe he was starting to realize how serious things were getting.
“Myrial and Caspian both want another war,” I offered. “Maybe they think a back-channel alliance is the quickest way to achieve that.”
“I find it more likely that they both want power, and hope to gain it by destabilizing the current ruling hierarchies in Hell and Dhuinne,” he retorted.
It was as good a hypothesis as any, I supposed. I’d just drawn breath to ask him another question when Guthrie stirred on the bed. Nigellus was on his feet in a flash.
“Get out immediately, Zorah,” he said. “It’s early for him to be waking fully, but you should go wait outside the apartment, just in case.”
I wavered for an instant. “Are you going to be all right in here with him if he goes all Night of the Living Dead on us? You were pretty badly drained earlier.”
Nigellus shot me a jaded look. “I’m a demon of fate, and I’m present at a nexus point that has just created the second vampire in existence. A vampire, I might add, who just happens to be the biological grandparent of the first known demon-Fae-human hybrid. Believe me when I say, there is power aplenty to be had in this place tonight.”
I remembered Rans explaining that demons of Nigellus’ ilk could draw power from the very fabric of time and space itself. If that was true, Nigellus had a point. A lot of weird shit had just gone down. For him, that weird shit was like an all-you-can-eat banquet.
I nodded and slipped out of the room, grabbing a fuzzy bathrobe from the guest bathroom to help keep the evening chill away while I waited outside. I just hoped Rans would be back soon.
Once again alone on the rooftop patio, I leaned against the waist-high wall and looked out across the city that had raised me. It was beautiful like this, seen from a distance so that all of the flaws and grime disappeared beneath the distant tapestry of twinkling lights. For a while, everything was peaceful, and I hoped that meant Guthrie was still asleep after all.
That hope lasted for another twenty minutes or so.
Then, the screaming started.
TWENTY-ONE
THE NOISE COMING from inside was inhuman. Agonized. The sound someone might make while being tortured to the point of death. It also went on and on. I’d returned to my earlier hunched position against the wall, hugging my knees... but I was strongly considering unwrapping my arms so I could use my hands to cover my ears instead.
When mist swirled across the open space and coalesced into a familiar form, some of the tension left my shoulders. Rans had an insulated messenger bag slung over one shoulder, and I distantly wondered if some poor restaurant delivery guy was going to get his pay docked for losing the thing under the influence of vampiric mesmerism.
“Damn,” he said. “I was worried that he wouldn’t wake up at all. I certainly never expected him to come around this quickly. How long has it been?”
“About fifteen minutes since he started screaming,” I said hoarsely. “Maybe thirty or thirty-five since we noticed the first twitch of movement.”
He nodded. “I’m surprised the police haven’t shown up yet, in that case. Stay here until the noise stops, love. Best if you’re kept well away from him for this part of it.”
I stayed behind, feeling useless as Rans strode to the door and let himself in. The screams grew louder when he opened it, then muffled again as the door closed behind him. Intellectually, I knew that there were several ways in which this day could have gone worse. Rans and I could be dead. Guthrie could be dead. Myrial could have beaten Nigellus and gained more power in Hell. Caspian could have decided to haul me back to Dhuinne for another round of torture.
All that being said—holy shit, I felt awful. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, but my succubus nature had gorged on sexual energy only a couple of hours ago. True, I’d lost some of that magical energy in my tug of war with Myrial afterward, but not all of it. Worst of all, some of that animus had been Fae. If I thought about that fact too closely, it made me feel like I had an army of tiny ants scuttling through my veins.
Hell, I didn’t want Caspian to be on the same planet I was. The idea of having any part of him inside of me was...
I shuddered.
Suffice to say, I didn’t think I’d be getting any sleep tonight, and I really, really needed it. Idly, I wondered what it would be like to be a single, fully functional creature, rather than this Heinz-57 mixture of parts that didn’t always play well together. I’d failed hard at being human, I was hopelessly lame as demonkin, and I didn’t want to have a damned thing to do with the Fae—even if their magic was what had brought me into existence in the first place.
With a sigh, I scrubbed my hands over my face. I should’ve grabbed something to eat or drink on my way out. Of course, I’d been about two seconds away from losing my stomach contents when I came out the first time, and the second time, Nigellus had made it sound like Guthrie might fly off the bed at any moment and try to rip my throat out.
Guthrie.
My grandfather.
I poked at the idea, and decided that after only a few weeks, Guthrie already had more of a claim to the title than fucking Myrial did. Which did not in any way mean that Guthrie would want the title. I couldn’t imagine the news that he’d apparently slept with the same demon who’d bound him was going to go over all that well.
The screams had faded until I could no longer hear anything coming from inside, but as soon as I slid the door open to check on things, shrieks of rage and the sharp sound of a curse echoed through the apartment once more. I quickly closed the door again.
Whoops.
Apparently dangling a warm-blooded snack with a beating pulse in front of Guthrie was a bad plan, even with the blood bags handy. Rather than returning to my position sitting against the wall, I paced. The movement calmed me a little, even though it wasn’t going to help with my exhaustion. I was still chilly even with the bathrobe, but the idea of using the hot tub to warm up somehow seemed disrespectful to what was happening inside.
The screaming came and went in cycles throughout the course of the night. I wondered if it had been like this for Rans when he was turned. His vampire sire had abandoned him immediately after raising him as an undead creature. Had he awoken maddened with bloodlust, screaming in agony but with no handy sterile blood bags around to sate his hunger? The thought made me shiver.
I ended up curling my body onto one of the upholstered benches scattered around the outdoor space—not sleeping, exactly, but rather passing the hours in a sort of dazed fugue state. Eventually, the sky in the east lightened, proclaiming the approach of a cloudy morning.
The door slid open and I sat up groggily, craning to see who it was. Rans walked over and I stood to meet him, wrapping my arms around him tightly when he stepped into my embrace and rested his forehead against my shoulder. We stood that way for long minutes, one of my hands running up and down his back in a slow rhythm.
EPILOGUE
“HOW IS HE?” I asked in a groggy, early morning rasp.
“Unconscious,” he said into the crook of my neck. “It’s nearly dawn. He’ll be insensible for hours. It’s safe for you to come inside—sorry you were stuck out here all night.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Come on. I need breakfast. Then we both need sleep.”
He nodded, but stayed where he was. I let him rest in the circle of my arms a bit longer before nudging him to move.
Guthrie wasn’t big on dry cereal, but there were commercial waffles in a box in the freezer. After popping a couple in the toaster and downing them with a much-needed glass of orange juice, I felt better prepared to face things. The other two had stripped the bed and replaced the sheets, presumably also cleaning Guthrie up again and dressing him in fresh pajama bottoms.
The Turkish rug in his bedroom was going to be a total loss,
I suspected—and if you looked around, there were telltale blood traces elsewhere, as well. Nigellus was back in the same chair he’d occupied the previous evening, but someone had dragged a couple of other chairs into the room so we could all sit down.
I wanted a shower. I wanted proper sleep. I wanted someone to tell me that there wouldn’t be another random crisis ten minutes from now. But first, I wanted to see for myself how Guthrie was doing.
He looked... peaceful, I supposed. Though it was hard to credit such a thing after hearing his agonized shrieks throughout the night.
I sat on one of the empty chairs. Rans, meanwhile, hovered near the bed, pacing restlessly for a few steps, and then pausing to watch Guthrie for a bit before repeating the process in the other direction.
“How did you find me yesterday, Nigellus?” I asked eventually, not looking away from the bed.
“Ransley had been blowing up my phone with calls and texts,” the demon said absently. “I left Hell shortly after I realized you’d gone back to Earth alone, and I got the messages as soon as I emerged from the cavern. You should have informed me that you intended to leave without me.”
I ignored that last bit and turned to meet his eyes. “Yeah... that might explain how you found Rans, since I imagine he gave you GPS coordinates for the power substation. But I asked how you found me. It couldn’t have been by tracking Edward’s wards on me—his wards broke the moment Myrial killed him.”
“I’d be interested in the answer to the question as well,” Rans said quietly.
Nigellus regarded us with a furrowed brow. “There’s no great mystery. You borrowed Edward’s phone, Zorah. It has tracking software installed for use in emergencies. I’d say yesterday’s situation certainly qualified as such.”
I frowned. “He said the battery was dead, though.”
The demon raised an eyebrow. “Clearly not.”
It was still in my pocket, so I pulled it out and thumbed the power button.
“Nothing,” I pointed out, lifting it so the others could see the darkened screen.
“Considering the amount of rain it was subjected to shortly afterward, I suspect that the battery charge is the least of its problems at this point,” Nigellus said dryly.
And that was plausible, I supposed.
“Okay... well... I’ll see if Guthrie has a bag of rice in the kitchen that I can stick it in to try and dry it out,” I said. “Otherwise, I owe Edward a new phone. Not to mention, my thanks... again.”
Nigellus gave me a pleasant half-smile, though the tension in the room still felt elevated. “Think nothing of it. A phone is easily replaced. Your life, less so.”
That sentiment... should have been touching? Instead, I could only think that there was a certain air of cold calculation beneath the words. It was a stark reminder that while Nigellus might be both charming and useful, his actions stemmed from a distinctly self-serving motive.
Rans steered the conversation to a different topic—one that was, if possible, even more fraught with subtext than the previous one.
“If Myrial allows Guthrie to live long enough for anyone else to hear of his turning, it will shift the balance between Hell and Dhuinne.”
He was pacing again, clearly on edge. Even after holding him in my arms outside, I knew that I still had no true understanding of what his actions with Guthrie had cost him on a personal level.
“Yes,” Nigellus agreed thoughtfully.
I knew the demon must be salivating at the thought of a second source of vampire blood—assuming he could somehow keep Myrial at bay long enough to make use of it.
Rans halted. “And...?”
Nigellus shifted in his chair. “Perhaps once Mr. Leonides has recovered from the turning, it would be best if I took him directly under my protection. I am in a better position than either of you to counter whatever moves Myrial might make next. And if I took him to Hell, he would additionally be out from under the threat of the Fae weapon.”
Red alert klaxons immediately went off in my head, and I was on my feet before I registered the intent to move. My reaction was nothing compared to Rans’, though, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d been expecting just such a gambit.
Instantly, Rans transformed from tense but quiet to a full-on papa grizzly bear... vampire edition. He rounded on Nigellus, eyes blazing and fangs extended, and I was quite certain I’d never seen him look less human and more monster than at that moment. A shiver traveled up my spine, but it wasn’t one of fear. I was at his side in two strides, standing shoulder to shoulder with him between Nigellus and the unconscious vampire on the bed.
Power crackled off of Rans as he squared up to the demon he’d called mentor for centuries. When he spoke, his voice held the resonance that could bend human minds, striking terror in anything with a pulse and warm blood in its veins.
“Enough. I think we all know what lies behind your touching expression of concern,” Rans said, driving each word home like a coffin nail. “And you’ll take this man to Hell over my staked and decapitated body.”
Nigellus’ dark eyebrows drew together in apparent consternation. “Ransley—” he began, but Rans cut him off sharply.
“No. The time for games is over.” Rans’ aura filled the room like storm clouds, anger rolling off him in waves as the moment of confrontation finally arrived. “I have only two words for you, Nigellus. Blood. Wine.”
End of Book Four
The Last Vampire: Book Five
By R. A. Steffan & Jaelynn Woolf
ONE
“I HAVE ONLY two words for you, Nigellus. Blood. Wine.”
Ransley Thorpe’s vampiric aura filled the room like a storm cloud; anger rolling off him in waves as the moment of confrontation with his long-time mentor finally arrived. I tensed as I stood at his right shoulder, the pair of us forming a flimsy blockade between the powerful demon of fate before us, and the unconscious form of Rans’ closest friend on the bed behind us.
Guthrie lay insensible, recovering from his transformation into a vampire—only the second one currently in existence, and the first to be turned since a Fae weapon nearly destroyed the species during the last great war between the realms. Rans had only agreed to turn Guthrie because the alternative would have been certain death for a man we both cared about. Now, we’d ensured that while he might have a chance at survival in the near-term, he would become a pawn in a millennia-old struggle for the rest of his days.
Rans had known and trusted Nigellus for centuries. Only recently had I discovered that for much of that time, Nigellus had been manipulating him—draining his blood for use as part of a self-serving plot to raise a new army of demon-bound vampires in Hell. The vampires would, he hoped, be impervious to the magical Fae weapon that had ended the war and ushered in an uneasy peace. Even worse, Nigellus had been controlling Rans’ mind, excising the memory of each violation after it happened.
The last few days had been an exercise in frustration, for me at least. Despite this ground-shaking revelation of his betrayal, Nigellus had been all that stood between us and capture or death at the hands of our many enemies. Whatever else could be said about him, his need for Rans’ blood meant that the demon was highly motivated to ensure our physical safety.
Rans had insisted, quite correctly, that it was in our interests to keep our knowledge of Nigellus’ actions to ourselves. That had changed, however, the moment the demon gained a potential new source of vampire blood in the form of Guthrie. It hadn’t taken Nigellus long to suggest that Guthrie would be safer with him in Hell. The worst part was, he was probably right about that—from a certain perspective, at least.
Being in Hell would protect Guthrie from the Fae weapon, should the demons’ old enemies realize that a new vampire had just come into existence. Rans’ continued survival had been included as a clause in the peace agreement that formally ended the war. Guthrie’s continued survival decidedly hadn’t been part of that treaty.
I knew, though, that Guthrie would rather
die than be taken to Hell. His soul was already bound to a different demon—one who wanted all of us dead. That particular demon had very nearly succeeded in killing Guthrie and reaping his soul, before Rans had intervened to save him by turning him. If Guthrie went to Hell, he’d be trapped there forever, unless the demon to whom he was bound deigned to transport him back through the gate between realms.
To say that Guthrie wasn’t a huge fan of demons was putting it mildly.
I also got the distinct impression that there was some quasi-paternal protectiveness going on right now with Rans. If my mental library of trashy vampire novels and movies was to be believed, siring a new vampire involved the creation of a bond that was basically familial in nature. Which was ironic, really, since I’d recently learned that Guthrie’s DNA had been used without his knowledge decades ago. That theft of genetic material had allowed the succubus who’d bound his soul to get a human woman pregnant with a half-human, half-demon child—something no demon could do on its own.
That child... had been my mother.
I’d only met Guthrie a few weeks ago. But as far as I was concerned, he already had a better claim to being my grandfather than the demon asshole who’d screwed over my family. Not that I had any idea whether Guthrie would even want the title of grandparent. I supposed we’d have to figure that part out once we’d successfully survived the next few minutes.
Or not.
Nigellus rose from his chair, drawing himself up to his full—and rather impressive—height. His features smoothed into a cool mask.
“Ah,” said the demon. “I had rather wondered how long it would take you to realize. I assume I have Ms. Bright to blame for this... wrinkle?”
“Damn right you do,” I gritted out. “Maybe next time, you should try calling the blood wine something a bit less obvious. Like ‘elixir of health’ or ‘potion of eternal youth.’ Oh, and by the way. While I’m thinking about it—fuck you, Nigellus.”
The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set Page 69
