by Laura Legend
The Heretic raised an eyebrow.
Zach could feel her channeling the relic’s power, unleashing it, using it to both soothe the remaining vampires who were with her and to call them to her.
The trouble, though, was that the power channeled this way also affected him.
Zach stumbled backward.
She noticed and took a step a closer.
He watched her face as she realized that, with the relic in hand, she didn’t need to fear him.
Through the snow, over her shoulder, Zach watched as Amare squirmed his way through the rubble blocking the entrance to the cave. He picked his way through the debris, wiping blood from his forehead.
“Master!” he called. “Rose!”
The other vampires were gathering as well, their dark fate locked away for the time being.
Rose embraced Amare, kissing his cheeks.
“Miranda?” Amare asked.
“Gone,” Rose answered solemnly, nodding toward Zach.
Amare’s eyes flashed to Cass, concern etched into his expression.
“And Cass?”
Rose sighed. “She’s alive. And she knows. But she’s still not ready.”
Amare moved to check on Cass.
Zach grunted, his nostrils flaring, and cut him off.
Amare stepped back with arms raised, surrendering the point.
The wind let up for a moment and, in the lull, they all heard the sound simultaneously. Zach looked over his shoulder, his face craning skyward. Helicopters—at least two, maybe three—were cutting through the storm, headed in their direction.
Rose gathered her followers and they melted back into the forest, disappearing before the copters crested the hill. Soon, there was nothing left but wind and snow, their tracks erased almost as soon as they’d made them.
Watching them go, Zach felt his hatred for them grow and solidify, a wedge of anger hammered deep into his heart.
The ring Cass had given him—split and bent—had fallen from his tattered pocket and lay in the snow next to her.
He would never forgive them for this. He would never forget.
They had taken everything from him.
The Lost were every inch the plague Kumiko had always claimed they were.
Zach willed the monster to kneel next to Cass in the snow.
The monster reluctantly complied.
But when Zach willed his hand to gently sweep the snow from her face, the monster’s rough hand resisted and trembled violently. In this condition, he was more likely to hurt Cass than help her. Perhaps, with time, he could learn to control this body—or, perhaps with time, the monster would, instead, simply digest him like a piece of bad meat—but that time wasn’t now.
The helicopters were close now.
Richard was almost here.
Both Zach and the monster wanted to run.
And for the moment, they were in agreement.
So they ran.
40
CASS WOKE TO find herself in a chalet in the Alps.
Apart from a crackling fire, the room was dark. The ceiling was vaulted. The rafters were visible. The far wall was nothing but glass and offered a view from the mountain onto the valley below. The chalet was poised right at the edge of a cliff and the view consisted mostly of empty night sky. The field of stars was staggering.
The bed was warm but she was alone.
Images from the past and present floated through her mind.
Miranda. Kumiko. Her father. Her brother. Her mother.
Cass focused her attention on the feel of the sheets against her skin and used the physical sensations as a way sorting time and anchoring her mind in the present moment.
Her head hurt. Her blankets were heavy.
The bed was warm, but she was alone.
Zach.
Cass felt for the grass ring on her ring finger, but it wasn’t there. She tried to sit up but was overcome by a wave of dizziness.
How long had she been here?
Where was here?
The dizziness passed and she swung her feet out of bed, sitting up on the edge of the mattress.
She switched on a light and found on the nightstand what she was looking for: the bent and broken remnant of her grandfather’s ring, together with her own wilted ring—its spell wholly broken.
She reached out to touch them, but didn’t dare.
She felt an emptiness yawn wide inside of her and she searched in her heart for something, anything, to hang on to.
“Cassandra,” a voice said from the doorway, “I’m so sorry.”
At the same moment, as if on cue, her cat, Atlantis, padded into the room and jumped onto her lap, purring like an engine.
Cass squeezed him tight, rubbing behind his ears, trying to draw strength from him.
Richard sat at the foot of the bed.
Cass planted her bare feet on the cool, wooden floor and gingerly attempting to stand She kept her eyes fixed on the field of stars.
“Where are they, Richard?” Atlantis licked her face with his rough tongue. “Where?”
Richard hesitated, looking for a way to simultaneously comfort her and get the hell out of the conversation.
“And don’t,” Cass said, “even for a moment, think about lying to me.”
THE END
Thank you for reading Fearless, book 4 of A Vision of Vampires! If you enjoyed this book, would you please leave a review on Amazon? I would be so grateful!
Would you like to know when Fearless, book 4 of A Vision of Vampires comes out? Sign up here:
smarturl.it/legendaries
Other books by Laura Legend
Faithless: A Vision of Vampires 1
Hopeless: A Vision of Vampires 2
Blameless: A Vision of Vampires 3
Here’s an excerpt from Timeless, book 5 of A Vision of Vampires. Enjoy!
Timeless
Book 5 of A Vision of Vampires
By
Laura Legend
Chapter 1
Long after midnight, Gary Jones was still awake. He felt dead tired—worn out like a ragged sock with holes in both ends—but his mind wouldn’t let him rest.
He hadn’t heard from Cass in weeks, and he feared the worst.
Was she trapped? Was she hurt? Was she dead?
As strained as their relationship had been at times, she’d never gone this long without checking in. Even when they were fighting, she would ping him every week or so to say she was okay.
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Gary was alone in Cass’s childhood home, sitting in his armchair in the living room. The chair was fraying but, over the decades, it had molded itself to his body and now he couldn’t imagine sitting anywhere else. Gary loved the comfort of routine and this chair was like an old friend, welcoming him, inviting him to sit down and rest his bones.
The house was dark except for the lamp beside him. Good for reading, it cast a small yellow circle that didn’t extend much beyond his chair.
He was still dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, topped off with the cardigan sweater that Cass loved to tease him about. Whenever he had come home from work, slipped out of his sport coat, and put it on, she would say that he looked like some kind of short, Japanese Mr. Rogers. She meant it as a jab, but he’d always taken it as a compliment. Who wouldn’t want to be like Mr. Rogers?
The storm was getting closer. Rain was falling now. Its patter on the roof filled the silent house.
Gary sighed and swirled his drink in its tumbler. He was getting old. What had happened to him? Where had his life gone? Had he wasted it searching through dusty books no one cared about, hiding in a library?
The book in his lap was also dusty: a family album that he hadn’t looked at in years. He’d had it in his lap for a good twenty minutes now, afraid to open it and afraid to open old wounds with it. He closed his eyes and squeezed the spine of the book.
Have some guts, Old Man, he thought to himself. Find some courage.
After all these years, it still hurt to look at pictures like this. His stomach still ached, his toes still curled in his shoes, his breath still caught in his throat. Loving Rose was the truest thing he’d ever done and losing her had been like losing an arm—except that, most of the time, he’d felt more like the lost arm than the maimed body.
Lord, he still missed her.
He looked more closely at the picture, focusing on the wedding ring he’d given Rose: a blood red sapphire in a pale, platinum setting. She’d squealed with delight when he’d slipped it on her finger. She had loved the thought of anything unconventional. The last thing she’d wanted was a diamond like everyone else.
The ring, though, also reminded him of the last time he’d seen Cass, when she and Zach sought shelter with him after the Heretic had destroyed the Shield monastery. When he’d seen them, Zach had been wearing Cass’s grandfather’s—his own father’s—wedding band. And Cass had been wearing a ring made of woven blades of grass. That part had worried him—a ring made of grass?—but, even clouded by the loss of the monastery, their love had shone through.
Still, he couldn’t help but worry. Just when he’d dared to hope that Cass had found the kind of happiness he’d always hoped she would, he feared she was already on the brink of losing it.
Impermanence, he reminded himself, is the first mark of existence.
Gary fanned the album pages, flipping back to a point earlier in the book. It opened to a set of pictures of him around the time that he and Rose had first met. He looked young and strong and naïve, full of hope and confidence. He looked like a boy bent on seeing and taming the world. He barely recognized himself. He rubbed his chin, feeling the white stubble growing there, feeling the way his skin had grown loose and begun to sag. How had he become so different? When had he grown old? In his fifties now, was his life already over? Would he spend the rest of it sitting in this chair, looking through dusty albums when, occasionally, he managed to screw up that minimal amount of courage? After Roses’s death, he’d sworn off any connection to the world of magic. He’d parted ways with the business of vampires and hidden worlds. That world had cost him too much.
He’d hidden it all from himself. And perhaps more importantly, he’d tried his best to hide it from Cass.
On that latter score, he had failed completely.
Disgusted with himself, he snapped the book shut. At the same moment, a crack of lightning split the sky in two. For a heartbeat, he thought he’d caused the thunder himself. But when the whole house shook, he knew that the lightning strike must have been right on top of the house. And when he looked out the window, he saw the old pear tree in the front yard broken in two and burning. The flames quickly flickered out in the now heavy rain but the tree was a total loss. He groaned at the sight of it. He and Cass had planted that tree together when she was just five years old. He could still picture the day clearly. Cass had been covered in mud and Rose had brought them lemonade.
Gary choked back a sob.
Impermanence, he reminded himself again, this time with a note of bitterness, is the first mark of existence.
A second crack of lightning shook the house, causing him to reach out for the wall to steady himself. This new crack, though, was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. He’d never heard of lightning breaking a window. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. A strong wind whistled through the house. He could feel, on his cheek, the mist of water that went with it.
The wind was blowing from the back of the house.
He was scared.
He was an old man, standing in his living room, wrapped in a cardigan, shaking like a leaf.
He shuffled toward the hall closet and rooted around inside, looking for something—anything—he might brandish as a weapon. He pushed through the coats and brushed past his old brown leather jacket. He hadn’t worn it in years. As far he knew, he hadn’t worn it since Rose had died. The smell of the rich leather reminded him of her.
In the back of the closet, he found what he was looking for: a baseball bat. He gripped the taped handle of the wooden bat with both shaking hands. His arms felt rubbery. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t just old, he was also a bit drunk. He squeezed the grip tightly, willing some strength into his arms.
Have some guts, Old Man, he urged himself again. Find some courage.
He tiptoed down the hall toward the back of the house, past the bathroom and the door to his own bedroom. The wind rattled the door to Cass’s bedroom, sucking it open and then, as he approached, slamming it shut.
The sound of it put some starch into him. Slamming doors was one of the few house rules he’d never permitted Cass to break. By golly, he wasn’t going to start allowing such nonsense to be acceptable at this late date. He stepped decisively to the door and threw it open. But before he could even get a look inside, the whistling wind slammed it shut again.
This was too much.
“Enough!” Gary shouted.
All of his pent-up fear and grief and frustration came to the fore, focused for the moment on a clear, bite-sized problem. He felt the alcohol burn off in the flame of his anger. His grip on the bat tightened. Blood rushed to fill the muscles in his arms.
“There will be no door slamming around here! And no one—absolutely no one—is going to mess with my daughter’s room!”
With that, Gary kicked open the door and let loose a primal “YAWP!”—a raw, guttural heart-cry that welled up from deep inside him. Despite himself, his eyes burned with a hint of green.
Rain was sheeting through the broken window. Broken glass lay shattered on the floor. Curtains billowed.
But the room was empty.
Cass wasn’t here.
And neither was anyone else.
He was—as usual—alone.
Gary’s grip loosened and he dropped the bat near the door. It was no use. Who was he kidding?
He would need a staple gun and some plastic sheeting to cover the window. He would need a broom to clean up the glass.
He turned to go, actually disappointed now that some enemy hadn’t materialized, when he heard a small meow from the blankets on Cass’s bed.
He spun around.
Another meow.
Gary flipped on the light. Atlantis, Cass’s cat, was nestled into a mound of blankets on Cass’s bed, purring. The cat looked right at him with eyes that cut him to the quick.
Atlantis’s presence felt like a message. It felt like a little piece of Cass had been broken off and left here for him to find.
He couldn’t look away. He felt his heart fill with a renewed sense of purpose and direction.
Cass needed him.
She needed him now.
He couldn’t stay in this house one more minute. He couldn’t just sit here feeling sorry for himself. He couldn’t just bury himself in books and alcohol and hope that someone else would bring news that Cass was okay, that someone else had been there for her, that someone else had saved her.
He was going to find Cass, and he was going to bring her home.
Gary scooped up Atlantis and walked quickly back to the living room. He pulled off his cardigan, so impatient to be free of it that he popped the buttons. He tossed the ruined sweater onto his old chair. He went back to the closet and grabbed his dusty leather jacket from its heavy metal hanger. The hanger clanged dully against the back of the closet. He slipped his arms into the sleeves and zipped it up.
It still fit.
Mostly. Maybe it bulged a bit around his waist. He unzipped it.
It looked better unzipped anyway.
From a hook in the back of the closet, he lifted a satchel
filled with some of his old travel gear. He looked at himself in the hall mirror.
Screw Mr. Rogers, he thought to himself, you’re goddam Indiana Jones.
He immediately felt bad about swearing, even in his own head. But he meant it and he wasn’t going to take it back.
Atlantis was sitting on his cardigan in the old chair. The cat cocked his head, fixing Gary with a quizzical look, as if he were trying to process the effect of Gary’s dramatic transformation.
“You’re right,” Gary said to the cat. “I’m forgetting something.”
He went back to the closet and pulled his hat from a box on the top shelf. It, too, still fit.
He clenched his fists, squeezing the knuckles white.
“If I’m going to find Cass, I’m going to need some help. The first order of business is to find Dogen.”
Atlantis, purring, rubbed against his leg approvingly.
A gust of wind blew the front door open. It crashed into the wall, leaving a dent in the drywall. Lightning cracked and thunder rumbled.
Atlantis bolted out the door and into the darkness.
Without turning off any of the lights or even locking the door, Gary followed the cat into the night, his head bowed against the storm.
Chapter 2
Cass woke with a stabbing pain in her weak eye. After hours of tossing and turning, she’d just barely drifted into something resembling sleep. Now she was bolt upright in bed, her palm pressed against the orbit of her eye, trying not to scream. It felt like someone had slipped a red-hot knife through her pupil. It burned. And the more pressure she applied, the more Cass felt like she was pushing the blade in deeper, back through her eye and into her brain.
She forced herself to take deep breaths. She let up on the pressure. She tried to stop fighting the pain and give it room to dissolve into something less intense.
The room was dark. She was still in the loft bedroom in Richard’s chalet in the Alps. Though time had grown fuzzy and unreliable, she knew that she’d been here for at least a few weeks. She was barely holding herself together.
