by Tim O'Rourke
Vampires of Maze
(Beautiful Immortals Series Two)
Part Two
BY
Tim O’Rourke
First Edition Published by Ravenwoodgreys
Copyright 2016 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Tom O’Rourke
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
www.cjpinard.com
For Richard
More books by Tim O’Rourke
Kiera Hudson Series One
Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 1
Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 2
Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 3
Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4
Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 5
Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 6
Kiera Hudson Series Two
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 2
Dead Angels (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 3
Dead Statues (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 4
Dead Seth (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 5
Dead Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 6
Dead Water (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 7
Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 8
Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 9
Dead End (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 10
Kiera Hudson Series Three
The Creeping Men (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 1
The Lethal Infected (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 2
The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 3
The Secret Identity (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 4
The White Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 5
The Kiera Hudson Prequels
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book One)
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book Two)
Kiera Hudson & Sammy Carter
Vampire Twin (Pushed Trilogy) Book 1
Vampire Chronicle (Pushed Trilogy) Book 2
The Alternate World of Kiera Hudson
Wolf Shift
Werewolves of Shade
Werewolves of Shade (Part One)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Two)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Three)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Four)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Five)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Six)
Vampires of Maze
Vampires of Maze (Part One)
Vampires of Maze (Part Two)
Moon Trilogy
Moonlight (Moon Trilogy) Book 1
Moonbeam (Moon Trilogy) Book 2
Moonshine (Moon Trilogy) Book 3
The Jack Seth Novellas
Hollow Pit (Book One)
Black Hill Farm (Books 1 & 2)
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
Sydney Hart Novels
Witch (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 1
Yellow (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 2
The Doorways Saga
Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 1)
The League of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 2)
The Queen of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 3)
The Tessa Dark Trilogy
Stilts (Book 1)
Zip (Book 2)
The Mechanic
The Mechanic
The Dark Side of Nightfall Trilogy
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book One)
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book Two)
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book Three)
Samantha Carter Series
Vampire Seeker (Book One)
Vampire Flappers (Book Two)
Vampire Watchmen (Book Three)
Unscathed
Written by Tim O’Rourke & C.J. Pinard
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.kierahudson.com or by email at [email protected]
Vampires of Maze
(Part Two)
This story is set in a where and when not too dissimilar to our own…
Chapter One
I screamed. The hands that had grabbed my ankles yanked down hard and I disappeared beneath the snow and earth. Rough stone and the roots of old plants clawed at my hair and clothes, scratching what little flesh I had on show. I felt like I was falling forever into a pit of darkness. I landed with a heart-jarring thump. The air in my lungs was forced up my throat and out of my mouth, sounding like an ungainly belch. My landing was so hard that every bone in my body rattled. I found myself in utter darkness. A sound, not too far away, came from my right. I glanced in that direction, raising my fists which were now tingling with energy. I fired off three bolts of lightning from each of them. My surroundings lit up in hues of blue and purple. In the snapshot bursts of light, I could see I was in some kind of underground crypt or cavern. But there was something else, too. In the brief flashes of light that radiated like sparks from my fists, I could see a tall figure standing some feet away from me in the darkness. And although this stranger appeared unnaturally tall, his shoulders were rounded and his head looked narrow but had a bulbous top. What kind of creature could this be? I could only begin to imagine.
With my heart racing and fearing an attack from whoever had dragged me beneath ground – and I suspected it was the person now standing just a few feet away from me – I sprang to my feet. The rucksack I carried hung heavy against my back and snow dripped from my long, black hair and onto the shoulders of my coat. I raised my hands before me, a blue hue of light shimmering around them. And in the light I saw the person turn and run off into the darkness. Why run away? Was this person going to find help? Were there others beneath the ground?
“Come back!” I shouted into the dark.
But the only response I got was the hollow snap of the person’s feet slapping against cold stone as they ran away from me.
“Who are you?” I called once more into the darkness. But the sound of the footfalls grew fainter as the person ran further and further away from me. Should I follow this person? What if their plan was to entice me into some kind of trap? I looked up, hoping I might see the hole in which I been pulled through. All I could make out was the twisted roots of trees and plants as they dangled from the earth above my head, each of them looking like broken fingers. The ground was too far above me and there was no way I could possibly reach it and escape from the crypt I now found myself in.
“Rea!” I called out. “Rea, are you there?”
If Rea was still standing above me in the graveyard, she didn’t reply. But then again why should she? It wasn’t as if she liked me very much, if at all. Since stepping off that train at that remote railway station set high in the Swiss mountains and finding Trent and the others, I knew that Rea, for whatever
reason, had taken an instant dislike to me. At first, I wondered whether she was so hell-bent on war with the vampires if that was the true reason she failed to like me. I hadn’t come in search of war but a truce – some kind of peace between the werewolves and vampires. I had not come to take sides. But I also wondered, too, if there wasn’t another reason Rea disliked me. It was plainly obvious that Rea had a thing for Trent. She liked him. I knew that from the conversation I’d overheard in the barn while pretending to be asleep. I knew that Trent and Rea had once been more than friends. I got the distinct impression that they had once been lovers. But that was long since over or at least that was the impression Trent gave. I sensed that he had only feelings of friendship for her now. Would those feelings ever change? I had no idea. Was it any of my business to know? Rush had told me Trent had come back from the war with the vampires different. He had changed somehow.
Cocking my head to the right, I listened once more to the sound of the fading footsteps. Taking a deep breath, I ran off in pursuit of whoever had pulled me beneath the ground. As I headed into the darkness, I knew not where I was going or who or what I might find there. But there was little point in me staying in the crypt which I had been so unceremoniously dragged into. It wasn’t as if I could stay there forever, cowering in the darkness. I didn’t cower, that wasn’t me.
Heading out from the darkness of the chamber, I found myself in a narrow tunnel. There was strip lighting overhead and it flickered on and off. One moment there was light, the next only darkness. The tunnel walls were made of thick, grey slabs of stone. In the flashes of light, the walls almost looked black but I could see that this was dampness caused by the constant drip of water that came from above. As I inched my way further down the tunnel, I could see strips of rusty copper piping stretching away into the distance. I continued along the tunnel, my heart in my throat, fingers twitching at my sides. The sound of my captor’s footsteps were growing evermore distant ahead of me, so I quickened my pace.
Perhaps he knew another way out of this warren of tunnels I now found myself in? I continued to make my way forward in pursuit of the fleeing footsteps. My hands no longer felt cold from the wind and the snow above ground. They tingled with electricity and heat. I felt my hair shift and move about my shoulders even though there was no draft or breeze below ground. I knew I had to steady my racing heart as a knot of energy unravelled in the pit of my stomach. It flowed through my veins, congealing in my fingertips.
The sound of footsteps stopped ahead of me. I came to a halt and listened intently. Raising my hands before me, I made my way slowly forwards in the flickering light. I stepped into another vast chamber. This room was bigger than the last and was lit with candles that had been fixed into ornate looking candleholders attached to the stone walls. The flames twisted to and fro, showering the walls with eerie shadows.
I drew in a shallow breath that rattled in the back of my throat. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
I heard a shuffling sound from the back of the room. I glanced in that direction. With my hands raised before me, I extended my fingers. Each of them felt as if they had a heartbeat that was strumming with a nervous energy.
“Who’s there?” I whispered. There was a long, drawn-out silence to my question. Then the shuffling sound came again but this time from the other side of the room. It seemed to be coming from a pile of coffins in the far corner, which had been stacked high on top of each other. I spun around and faced the direction the sound had come from. My hair continued to blow back from my shoulders even though there was no breeze and the air was eerily still in the chamber below ground.
“Come out!” I hissed in the direction of the coffins. I suddenly realised what a fright I would have if indeed those coffins suddenly flew open and the dead or undead began to climb out. Spooking myself with such thoughts, I slowly stepped backwards and toward the entrance and the tunnel.
A voice suddenly seeped up from behind the coffins. “I mean you no harm.” Whoever had spoken sounded out of breath, their breathing laboured. I guessed that it was whoever had run from me who had spoken.
“Let me see you in the candlelight,” I said.
The shuffling sound came again as whoever was hiding behind the coffins slowly revealed themselves to me. And just as this person had appeared in the flashes of light from my fingertips in the crypt, I could see that he was so very tall and painfully thin.
“Come forward so I can see you more clearly,” I said, my fingers still extended before me.
Very slowly, the figure stepped out from behind the coffins and into the glow of the candlelight. I looked at the man who now stood before me. He was dressed in a threadbare suit that was black and spattered with dried mud and dirt. His face was so painfully thin that he truly did look like a corpse who had just climbed from one of the coffins. And I could see why I had first thought that the top of his head was bulbous in shape. The man standing before me wore a tatty-looking bowler hat on his head.
He looked at me with a set of pale eyes. They looked cloudy white and blighted by cataracts. “I’m true to my word,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”
“So why, then, did you grab my ankle and pull me beneath ground?” I asked.
“I thought you were one of them,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. I couldn’t help but notice how his clouded eyes darted furtively left and right as if he feared one of them might be hiding in the darkness.
“Are we alone?” I asked, my own eyes now darting left and right.
The tall and frail-looking man nodded his head. “Yes there is only me down here.”
“Then who are these others that you speak of?” I asked him. “You said that you thought I was one of them.”
“I thought you were a vampire,” he said, his bloodless lips twitching up into a grimace. His chin was so long and narrow it almost seemed to tail off into a point. “But I knew that once I had taken hold of you that you didn’t smell like a vampire.”
“No? Then how do I smell?”
“Once I had you beneath ground I thought at first you were human,” the man started to explain. “But then when I saw… when I saw…”
“Saw what?” I asked.
“Magic,” he whispered again as if in awe. “I knew that you were a Wicce – I knew you were a witch. The light from your fingers was like blue flames. Only a witch can do such things.”
Sensing little to fear from this man, I slowly lowered my hands, resting them at my sides. “Yes, you are right. I am one of the Wicce – I am a witch.”
“And what is your name?” he asked me.
“Julia Miller,” I told him. “And you are?”
Then, as if standing to attention and running one bony hand down the length of his crumpled suit as if to straighten it, the man said with some sort of pride, “My name is Augustus Morten and I am a werewolf.”
Before I’d a chance to ask any further questions of the strange looking man, I heard the sound of approaching footfalls in the tunnels that led away from the chamber I was now in. Augustus Morten heard them, too. His white eyes widened as we both looked in the direction of the tunnel.
Chapter Two
Over the sound of approaching feet, I heard a scraping sound. I glanced sideways at Morten to see he had produced a spade from behind one of the nearby coffins. He swung it above his head. At first I feared that he was going to strike me with it and that his easy-going and almost cowardly demeanour had been nothing more than a ruse to get me to trust him. But instead of striking out at me, Morten stepped forward toward the door leading back into the tunnel where the footsteps could be heard. Once more I raised my hands before me. Morten had believed that I was a vampire so perhaps some nested close by? Maybe they had heard my cries as I was dragged beneath the ground and now they had come in search of whoever had made those sounds? Side-by-side, Morten and I approached the entrance to the tunnel. The sound of running footsteps grew louder and closer. Shadows fell across the opening and Morten raised the spad
e above his head, ready to strike.
“No!” I cried out seeing Calix and Rush appear in the opening. Close behind them was Rea and Trent. On hearing me cry out, Calix was the first to release a shot from the gun he held in his fist. The bullet zinged off the flat of the spade that Morten was now swinging down in a wide arc. Before Morten could bash Calix’s skull open, the spade was flying from Morten’s gnarled hands and into the darkness.
“Put that gun away before you end up killing one of us!” I shouted at Calix.
“The old guy was gonna cave my head in, if you hadn’t noticed,” Calix said, the gun smoking in his fist.
“He was just scared,” I said as Rush and the others came pouring into the room. Each of them had guns raised and they eyed Morten with suspicion.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, trying to reassure them. “He’s like you, he’s a werewolf.”
“Some werewolf,” Rea huffed. “I’ve never met a scared werewolf before.”
“He’s shaking like a shitting dog,” Calix piped up.
“Let’s all just take it nice and easy,” Trent said, the first of the group to slide his gun back into the holster strapped to his thigh.
Rush followed Trent’s example by holstering his gun. He looked at Morten and said, “So where are the others?”
Morten looked at him, eyes narrowing. “What others?”
“The other werewolves?” Rush said.
“There are no others – there is only me,” Morten sighed before turning and heading back into the room. The bones beneath his paper-thin skin and the shabby black suit made an audible cracking sound as he stooped and sat on the lid of one of the nearby coffins. He rested his long, pale fingers on his bony knees. “I am the only werewolf left.”
