Ascension (Demon's Grail Book 1)

by Amy Cross

  Copyright 2015 Amy Cross

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition

  Dark Season Books

  First published: September 2015

  This edition: January 2016

  “Before us, there was another empire. A vast, powerful species that ruled the world. You can find traces of them still, if you know where to look, but they're long gone. At least, that's what we used to believe.”

  For Abby Hart, life is already difficult. Torn between her vampire and human sides, she tells herself she can live a normal life, but deep down she knows her family's dark history will never leave her alone. Her long-dead father was the most powerful vampire of all, and his part in an ancient prophecy might just have been passed down to his only child.

  And then one night, Abby's life is torn apart by two shocking revelations. First, she encounters a woman whose entire species was supposed to have been wiped out hundreds of years ago. Second, she learns that she isn't her father's only child after all. She has a twin brother, and now he too is being drawn into a clash between civilizations that threatens the entire world. A secret was hidden in Abby's mind long ago, and there are creatures that will stop at nothing to tear that secret out.

  Ascension if the first book in the Demon's Grail series, in which an ancient war spills open into the modern day and one vampire is forced to finish the work her father started. Ends on a cliffhanger. The story continues in the second book, Evolution.

  Ascension

  (Demon's Grail book 1)

  Prologue

  “Where is Abby Hart?”

  “One moment,Sir.”

  The woman at the desk swiveled her chair around for a moment as she listened to someone over her headset. She frowned, then she bit her lip, then finally she began to type the details into her computer.

  “Where -”

  The woman held up a finger, making it very clear that she wanted him to remain quiet while she finished her call. Swiveling away again, she muttered something over the headset and then began making notes on a pad of paper.

  On the other side of the reception desk, the well-dressed, painfully-thin man resolved to wait patiently. All around him, swarms of employees and visitors hurried across the foyer, making their way in and out of the police headquarters building. Some were going through metal detectors, tossing their jackets and wallets into pallets for X-ray inspection; others were talking as they made their way up the nearby steps; over by the doorway, a teenaged girl was being led handcuffed by two officers, while shouting various names and obscenities at them.

  So much noise, the thin man noticed, feeling as if a cacophony of humanity was ringing in the air all around him. Hundreds of voices babbling away on a Tuesday night in downtown Manhattan. Humans, he had come to realize some time ago, were the noisiest of all species. He couldn't help feeling that they must be making up for some deep-seated sense of inferiority.

  “Okay, Sir,” the woman behind the desk said suddenly, swiveling back to face him, “I'm free now. How may I help you?”

  “Assholes!” a female voice shouted suddenly.

  The thin man turned just in time to see the handcuffed teenager making a break for the door; she was quickly caught by the two officers and dragged down to the floor, still kicking and screaming and shouting assorted inventive curse-words. Determined to resist her fate, she wriggled and struggled, eventually biting one of the officer on the hand before being pulled back.

  “Sir?” the woman behind the desk continued, sounding bored and a little irritated. “Can I help you with something? If not, there's a line of people right behind you.”

  The thin man turned back to her. “I'm so sorry,” he said calmly. “I was wondering if you could tell me where I can find Abby Hart.”

  “Abby Hart?”

  “I believe she has an office in this building. She's a pathologist.”

  “One moment.” The woman looked down at her computer and typed the name into the system. “I'm sorry,” she said after a few seconds, “but Ms. Hart isn't available right now.”

  “She isn't?”

  “She isn't.”

  The thin man paused. “Is she... But is she physically here, or is she elsewhere?”

  “I'm not at liberty to divulge the movements of employees.”

  “I see.” Another pause. “But perhaps you could at least let me know whether -”

  “You can leave a message for her, if you like,” the woman continued. “Did you have an appointment? Was she expecting you?”

  “I...” He frowned. “No. No, it's fine. She wasn't expecting me at all.”

  The woman waited for him to leave. After a moment she cleared her throat, and when that didn't work she sighed. “I'm sorry, Sir,” she said, “but there is a line behind you, so...”

  “Oh, of course. I'm dreadfully sorry.” Stepping aside, the thin man let the next person go to the desk. After looking past the metal detectors toward the depths of the building, the man reached into his pocket and took out a pair of black gloves. He took great care slipping them onto his hands; so much care, in fact, that the woman behind the reception desk glanced at him several times, feeling a little unnerved by his calm, slow demeanor.

  Once he was ready, however, the thin man simply turned and began to limp away, leaning on a black cane as he threaded his way through the bustling crowd of people. He walked slowly, evidently in no hurry at all, and finally he stepped through the open doorway and out onto the sidewalk, where nearby streetlamps cast pools of light through the night air. Taking a moment to calm his thoughts, he looked up toward the starless sky and then closed his eyes, breathing in the dirty air and listening to the sound of millions of people in the city all around him. Finally, still staring upward, he opened his eyes, which were now tinted yellow with tiny, churning flecks of red.

  Back at the reception desk, meanwhile, the woman felt a little relieved that the man was gone now; something about him had unsettled her, and even as she got on with the task of talking to other visitors and answering phone calls, she couldn't help but feel a shiver pass through her chest. She'd always been a good judge of character, and as she used the bottom of her coffee mug to squash a spider at the edge of her desk, she couldn't shake the feeling that something about that man had just seemed a little -

  Suddenly an explosion rocked the building, blasting huge chunks of brickwork across the foyer as the sidewalk-facing wall was blown apart. Screams filled the air, some of them cut short as people were crushed by falling masonry; in the confusion, everyone tried to run further into the building to escape the carnage, but a second explosion followed just a couple of seconds later, bringing down part of the ceiling, which collapsed onto the swarm of people and sent vast clouds of dust into the air. As bloodied survivors tried to struggle to safety, sirens rang and voices cried out. In the space of just a few seconds, the foyer had come to resemble a war-zone.

  And then people started to notice the spiders.

  Scurrying through the wreckage, picking their way over crushed corpses and around the bodies of the badly-wounded, hundreds of tiny spiders were flooding into the building. Within seconds, those hundreds became thousands, then tens of thousands, as more and more spiders rushed through, ignoring the dead and dying humans all around and instead heading past the wrecked metal detectors, past all the 'No Entry Without Clearance' signs, and into the guts of the building. Reaching the stairwells, some of the spiders began to make their
way up, while others headed down toward the basement. It was as if they all knew exactly where they were going, as if they were looking for something.

  Stepping through the wrecked doorway, the thin man leaned on his cane as he began to pick a path through the wreckage. More spiders swarmed around his feet, keeping a safe distance so as to avoid getting trampled. A few hundred spiders quickly covered one particular bloody corpse, and they moved it out of the way just in time to ensure that the thin man could pass without difficulty. As he made his way between dead bodies and wounded, groaning survivors, the thin man seemed preternaturally calm, although after a moment he took a white handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his mouth, to keep from breathing in too much of the dust that filled the air. Finally he reached the spot where the wrecked reception desk had once stood, and he looked down as one group of spiders swarmed onto the bloodied, sobbing body of the woman to whom he'd spoken just a minute or two earlier.

  The woman was unconscious at first, but as the spiders scratched her flesh with their razor-sharp legs, she began to stir.

  “Help,” she gasped, trying to get to her feet as spiders crawled up her arms, their legs scurrying across patches of bloodied flesh. Covered in dust, the woman looked around, shocked, before finally seeing the thin man standing over her. “What...” she stammered, before spitting out a couple of spiders that had tried to enter her mouth. She began to panic, but when she tried again to get up she felt a searing pain in her side. “What...”

  “I'm frightfully sorry to have to ask again,” the thin man said, lowering his handkerchief for a moment as he kept his eyes fixed on the woman, “but I'm afraid this is important. Where is Abby Hart?”

  Part One

  NEW BLOOD

  Abby Hart

  Twenty-four hours earlier

  “Sorry I took a while,” I mutter as I climb into Mark's car and pull the door shut. “There was a line at the counter. One of the nightclubs round the corner had just started throwing everyone out. Sometimes this city just gets so loud for a moment, I can barely even think.”

  “No problem.” He grabs the takeout bag and starts rummaging through. “Nothing beats takeout on a stakeout, huh? Everything tastes twice as good when you're eating it on duty at -” He checks his watch. “Half two in the morning. Don't you just love the stakeout vibe?”

  “I wouldn't know,” I reply, feeling a brief flurry of cramping pain in my belly. The sensation quickly passes, although I know it'll be back again soon. “Being a pathologist, I don't tend to go on many stakeouts.”

  “Maybe I shouldn't have used that word,” he continues as he unwraps a burger. “This isn't technically a stakeout, not if you look at the paperwork, it's more...” He pauses, as if he's not quite sure how to describe what we're doing. “Think of this as a fact-finding mission. Like I said earlier, I just want your opinion on this woman.”

  “No problem,” I mutter, trying not to show that I'm exhausted, “but I still don't understand what's so special about her. I mean, if she was dead and I could poke about in her guts, I could tell you plenty. Cause of death, what she's eaten in the past twelve hours, whether she had indigestion... But if she's alive and well and walking around the city, I'm probably the last person who can help.” Glancing out the window, I watch the brightly-lit entrance to the apartment block on the other side of the road. “You should have brought someone else.”

  “I needed someone with an open mind.”

  “Well, that -” I pause for a moment, before turning to him as I realize what he meant. “An open mind?”

  “You know... Because you know about... things.”

  “Things?”

  “Things that other people don't know about.”

  I understand exactly what he means, but I can't resist the urge to make him squirm. “Such as?”

  “Well... you know. Things.”

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Don't make me say it,” he continues.

  “It's not like radar,” I reply. “I can't just look at anyone and tell you everything there is to know about them.”

  “What if they're... different?”

  Sighing, I realize there's no way he's ever going to say the word. “You mean, if they're a vampire? Is that what's going on here? You think this woman is a vampire?”

  He visibly winces a little, as if he can only really accept the truth about me so long as the v-word isn't used.

  “Well, you're half right,” I mutter, leaning back in the passenger seat. “If this woman you're investigating is a vampire, I should be able to sniff her out. What's her name again?”

  “Emilia Hargreaves,” he replies. “Ring any bells?”

  “Let me check my vampire Who's Who,” I say drily. I smile, but after a moment I realize that he's waiting for me to do something. “That was a joke,” I add. “I don't really have a vampire Who's Who.”

  “Oh.” He clears his throat. “I knew that. Still, have you really never heard of Emilia Hargreaves? Don't you follow the celebrity gossip scene in this city?”

  “Not really. Except when that reality TV star turned up on my slab last month. Everyone was making up excuses to come down to my lab so they could see him. I did some homework about his -”

  “There!” he says suddenly, leaning across me and pointing toward the other side of the dark street. “That's her car!”

  I watch as a limousine parks opposite. Whoever this Emilia Hargreaves person is, she clearly has money to burn, and as the chauffeur climbs out and makes his way around to open the passenger door, I spot a passing couple stopping suddenly as if they've noticed the car and are stunned by the person who's about to step out. I've never understood why humans spend so much time gawking at other members of their species who've achieved minor celebrity, but I guess that's just a part of their society that I'll never really 'get'.

  “Feeling anything yet?” Mark asks.

  “Like a tingle?” I reply, amused by his perception of me. “Sorry. Nothing so far.”

  “I'm certain she's like you,” he continues. “I mean... Well, you know what I mean, not like you but... one of you.” He pauses. “Did that come out right?”

  Before I can answer, I see a tall, elegant blonde-haired woman stepping out of the limousine. She's wearing an off-the-shoulder emerald green dress, and I can immediately see from her posture alone that she's someone who was raised with money. Either that, or she's a fast learner. No sloping shoulders, no slouch, no easy gait; she looks stiff and formal, even as she gets home from a night on the town. She has her back to me as she steps away from the limousine, and she doesn't even turn as a shorter, bald man steps out of the car behind her.

  “Senator Joseph Bulledon McAllister,” Mark says. “He's been dating Emilia Hargreaves for the past six months. If you ask me, she's been using him as her ticket into New York high society.”

  “She isn't established in the city?”

  “She isn't established anywhere,” he explains. “Until just under a year ago, she didn't exist.”

  I turn to him. “She changed her name?”

  “I guess so, but I'm having trouble working out who she used to be. That's one of the many reasons I'm curious about her. All the usual methods of identifying her have failed, the woman's a complete mystery. I guess that's why I started thinking outside the box and, well...” He pauses, again seeming a little uncomfortable. “She just has that vampire feel about her.”

  I frown. “She does?”

  “Don't you think so?”

  “What's the vampire feel?”

  “You know.”

  “No.” I turn to him. “Do I have it?”

  “Can you just look at her?” he hisses, putting a hand on the side of my face and turning my head back toward the window. “I need to know what I'm dealing with here. This woman might be linked to two murder cases I'm working, and if I have to pay her a visit, I can't go in cold.”

  Sighing, I watch as Senator McAllister tips the driver. I still don't kn
ow what 'that vampire feel' means, but I'm damn sure I don't have it. Or do I? Spotting my reflection in the window, I can't help wondering whether I look like a vampire. My father sure had a certain vibe going on, but I've always thought I blend in pretty well.

  “So do you still not feel anything?” Mark asks.

  I shake my head. I'm not picking up any vampire hints from the woman, but at the same time I'm starting to feel as if something is definitely not quite right. She still has her back to me as she makes her way toward the apartment building's entrance, and although I'm pretty sure that she isn't a vampire, I can also feel some other disturbance emanating from her soul. The problem is, if I'm going to work out exactly what's wrong...

  “I need to get closer,” I whisper.

  “Huh?”

  I open the door and step out of the car. “Back in a moment.”

  “Abby!” Mark hisses as I push the door shut, but it's too late. I check both ways before hurrying across the street, and I reach the rear of the limousine just as it's starting to pull away. Emilia Hargreaves and Senator McAllister are at the building's door now, exchanging pleasantries with the doorman, and I know I'm going to have to work fast if I want her to turn around.

  I take a few steps forward, and then I decide to go for it.

  “Ow!” I shout, not entirely convincingly, as I fake a tumble and drop down hard against the grimy sidewalk. Rubbing my left knee as if I'm hurt, I wince and then pretend that I'm having trouble getting to my feet. A moment later I hear footsteps hurrying toward me, which I guess means that my little ploy has worked.

  “Are you okay, M'am?” a voice asks.

  Looking up, I see that Senator McAllister himself has come over to help me.

  “I'm fine,” I reply, forcing a smile as I dust myself off and get to my feet. “Sorry, I guess I had more to drink than I realized. I must have tripped on a crack in the sidewalk.”

  “You gave us quite a fright,” he says, taking a step back.