by Shuler, Tara
Blood Rage
Blood War Chronicles Book One
By Tara Shuler
http://www.TaraShuler.com
This novella is a short introduction to the
Blood War Chronicles series.
Copyright 2011, Tara Shuler, All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
It was a woman who started it all. Her love was the one thing he never expected would ignite the war and bring about the destruction of all humanity. Love – weak, disgusting human love, would be the one thing that would bring about the war that would leave vampires into glory.
The time of The Prophecy was nigh. All the signs were there. The Prophecy foretold the end times of humanity, the destruction of major cities, the catastrophic loss of life due to man’s own penchant for ruthless destruction.
The final piece of The Prophecy had also come at last. Illyan, the Supreme Chancellor of the Twelve Clans of vampires had seen his own wife having visions in increasing frequency and clarity, and the Twelve Clans were certain this was the final sign that The Prophecy was coming true. They knew that Illyan would be the Chancellor who would lead them to victory, wiping the humans off the planet forever, and opening the gates to Heaven and Hell, bringing about the Apocalypse and leading them to rule over the Three Worlds for all of eternity.
But her humanity was the one thing they needed most, and it could lead to their undoing.
*****
Chapter One
It was a dark time, and Esla was in a very dark place. Illyan, her husband, had traveled far away to have discussions with the Elders of the Twelve Clans. He was their Supreme Chancellor, but there was dissent among the ranks. Some wanted to have him killed, claiming he was trying to destroy their way of life. Most heralded him as their savior, believing he would lead them to a life of ruling over the Three Worlds – Heaven, Hell, and Earth – forever.
Even her gift could not help her see him now. She’d had the gift ever since she was “turned” – the term used to describe the changing of a human into a vampire. She could see the future. Not every moment, mind you. But, she could see bits and pieces here and there, which she could weave together into a tapestry that could foretell important events. Now, when she needed it most, her gift had forsaken her.
Every moment of every day and night, Esla either thought of him or dreamed of him. His face consumed her at every moment. All she wanted in life was to see him again, and to lie next to him at night.
Ayis, his first wife, was cold and cruel. She would constantly spit vitriol at him behind his back, though his life was in grave danger. She droned incessantly about how long he was taking to start the war, and how his weakness could cost her the chance to be Queen of the Three Worlds.
Esla said nothing. She cared little for what Ayis thought. She was a bitter, contemptible creature. She knew her beloved could never love such a vile and detestable woman. She almost pitied her. If not for the atrocious way Ayis treated Illyan, she might do so. However, Ayis and her attitude were beyond pity.
One night, Esla sat alone in The Great Hall of The Manor. The cold hardness of the stone bench was uncomfortable, but she barely noticed. She shifted slightly, resting her elbow against the windowsill and staring out into the darkness below. In the moonlight, she could see the river sparkling, but everything else was pitch black. She sighed, wondering where Illyan was, and whether he was thinking about her as she was thinking of him.
She shivered. Sometimes her vampire blood still felt human. It was understandable. She had only been turned for a decade. Many others in her clan had been turned for hundreds of years – some thousands. Her human blood was a curse, but sometimes it was also a gift. She was told it might take several decades before the last of her “vile human blood” was expunged so she could finally be rid of its curse. Somehow, though, Esla didn’t see it as a curse.
Suddenly, she heard the front gate swing open with a crash. This happened every night as Followers returned from their night of feeding. But tonight was different. She could feel him.
She sprang to her feet and rushed across the stone floor of The Great Hall, her bare feet barely making a sound. She threw open the huge wooden doors, and there in The Grand Foyer he stood, his Followers flanking him by the dozens on either side. It was the most glorious sight she had ever seen.
“Illyan!” she cried.
She practically flew across the room, throwing her arms around him and breathing in his scent. It had been so long she’d almost forgotten his intoxicating fragrance.
He placed his arms around her obligingly, attempting to calm her humanity. Inside, he sighed in contempt that his second wife was still so human. Still, he needed her. Without a word, he stroked her hair in a vain attempt to show some feeling toward her. This type of emotion was a human weakness. It disgusted him.
If Esla knew of his contempt, she didn’t show it. She smiled up at him with pure joy. Her face spoke a thousand words that she could not. Their relationship had never been particularly warm, but she always felt he loved her, anyway. It was that love, real or imagined, that gave her hope. It kept her warm when her human blood shivered. It was everything.
At that moment, Ayis stormed into the room. Her dark eyes flashed fire as she glared at him stormily.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “You said two weeks. It’s been two months!”
“Ayis, you’ll hold your tongue,” he snarled at her.
For a moment, Ayis showed a bit of contrition. Soon, however, it was displaced by a wave of furious indignation.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped. “You owe me an explanation! What took so long? This was supposed to be a two-week trip to speak with the Elders! What could have taken two months? You didn’t even send word! I was sitting here all this time wondering…”
“Silence!” he shouted, his voice bellowing through the room and echoing down the corridors.
He pushed past Ayis, nearly knocking her over in the process. He headed through The Great Hall and disappeared up the stairway on the east side of the room, his Followers close at his heels.
“Well, of all the nerve!” hissed Ayis when he was out of earshot.
Esla said nothing. The last thing she wanted right now was a fight with Ayis. She’d had enough of those over the past two months to last her a lifetime. Tonight, she just wanted to be near her beloved. Ayis and her childish rants meant nothing to her now that he was home.
Esla breezed past Ayis, sweeping across The Great Hall and heading through the large door at the other side to enter the courtyard. She could sense he wanted to be alone tonight, but her heart ached. After so long away from him, she desperately wanted to be close to him.
She realized she needed to soak in some moonlight and breathe the fresh night air. She lied down on one of the cold stone benches and burst into tears. It had been two months since she’d last seen him, and it felt like an eternity. And now, her beloved was home and she could not go to him. It was almost unbearable.
She longed to hold him – to taste his kiss upon her lips and feel his rugged strength wrapped around her. She wanted to smell his intoxicating fragrance and become lost in him. Yet, she knew this was impossible.
Illyan had never been a particularly affection man. He was, at times, cold and aloof. At other times, he was gentle and kind. Esla rarely saw the latter Illyan, but those moments kept her going. They gave her strength when she felt her world would crumble.
It was at times like these that she almost wished her human blood would finally be gone. However, she was also terrified that the love she felt for him would disappear once the last traces of her humanity were purged. She
never wanted to lose that.
It was a bit of a quandary for Esla. She knew Illyan would always look at her with disdain as long as she displayed signs of human emotion, yet it was her humanity which kept her so deeply in love with him. Of that, she felt certain.
The crisp night air made her shiver, and she wept freely. Knowing her love was just upstairs made her both joyous and devastated. With tears still spilling from her shining green eyes, she drifted to sleep.
Esla was awakened the next morning by the warmth of the sun on her skin. It was uncomfortable, but it did not burn her. She still had too much human blood for the sun to be much of a threat.
She stretched and yawned, her eyes narrowing to slits in the bright light. She left her bench and headed for the comfort of the dark Manor.
As she pushed the huge wooden door shut, she caught a familiar scent. The wooden door creaked closed, and she turned to see him standing there in the dark, silhouetted by the tiny streams of sunlight that peeked from behind the thick, red velvet curtains of The Great Hall. She gasped – not from being startled, but in breathless excitement.
“Come, Esla. I need to talk to you,” he said gently, beckoning her to follow him.
“Yes, of course,” she agreed.
She followed him obligingly, enjoying the bliss of being near him as they walked. He led her to his bedroom and motioned for her to have a seat in one of the two high-backed chairs that sat near the window. She happily obeyed.
“Esla, have you had any visions lately?” he asked, lowering himself slowly into the other chair.
The tone of his voice was grim, and Esla fidgeted nervously before she responded.
“No. I have not had a vision since you left,” she answered.
He looked troubled. He sat for a moment in thoughtfulness.
“Esla, I am about to tell you something that must be repeated to no one. Do you understand?” he said with a serious frankness.
“Of course,” she quickly whispered.
“No one. That includes Ayis.”
“Ayis and I do not share polite conversations. It’s a wonder we can tolerate one another at all,” she told him truthfully.
“Yes, of course,” he said, understanding. “Esla, this is of extreme importance. I need your visions. Without them…”
His voice trailed off, and Esla could see worry in his eyes. Her heart ached for him. She could not stand to see him like this. He was always so strong and so confident. She knew feeling this type of weakness would hurt him more than anything else ever could.
“You know I would do anything for you. I will try.”
“I know you will.”
Esla longed to throw herself into his arms. Her entire body ached to be close to him. It was all she could do to fight the urge to embrace him, but she knew he did not like such human displays of affection.
Esla had not had a vision since he left. Illyan wondered if it might be his presence that triggered them. Perhaps it was the emotional connection she had to him – vile and detestable as it might be – that aided her gift.
Could being close to him ignite something in her? He knew he had a powerful effect on her. He wondered if he could somehow trigger her gift by giving her that which he knew she desired most.
Though it made him physically ill to do so, he reached out and took her hand, pulling her toward him. Breathless, she let herself be tugged into his lap. His arms closed around her, and his scent mesmerized her.
He caressed her cheek with one hand, the other firmly squeezed around her waist. She felt his cold breath on her face as he pulled her closer, and their lips locked in a kiss that seized her entire body. Waves of warmth rushed through her like a stormy sea, and she threw her arms around his neck in utter abandon.
So rare were these moments of tenderness from him that she savored every one as though there would never be another. His kiss was the only thing that could do this to her, and she surrendered to it willingly.
Suddenly, her bliss was interrupted. Through her closed eyes, she saw him, but instead of kissing her as he was now, he was standing on the edge of a cliff. A fat man with dark eyes and horrible, bushy eyebrows thrust a wooden stake into the heart of her beloved, and she watched him plunge down onto the jagged rocks below.
“Illyan!” she screamed, springing backward and away from his arms and looking frantically around the room, trying to shake the disorientation she felt.
He immediately jumped to his feet, wrapping his strong arms around her to calm her. She was trembling terribly, and tears streamed from her eyes like rivers of anguish.
“Esla! Esla! It’s me, Illyan!” he shouted, clutching her shoulders and trying to shake her from her panic-stricken daze. “Esla, what did you see?”
She’d never had a vision so startlingly real. They’d always come in bits and pieces through some sort of hazy fog – never in such startling clarity. This one shook her to the very core, and she couldn’t get it out of her head.
“Esla!” he shouted, shaking her once more.
She was jerked from her trance with a start, and she realized where she was. She threw her arms around him and held him tighter than she’d ever done before. It startled even him.
“Esla, what did you see?” he repeated.
“I… I…” she stammered, trying to find the words, tears still stinging her eyes and flowing down her cheeks.
“Esla, it’s okay. I’m here,” he said, attempting to comfort her.
She gulped and took a deep breath, trying in vain to calm herself so she could tell him what she so desperately didn’t want to say aloud.
“There was a fat man… a human I think,” she began. “He had dark, thick eyebrows, and he wore a purple sash across his clothes with some sort of gold emblem embroidered on it.”
She sighed, trying to find the words to express a scene she wanted more than anything to forget.
“You were standing by a cliff. And… he… he…,” she began to dissolve, sinking to the floor.
Esla’s legs grew weak, and she could no longer stand. She sank to her knees, covering her face with her hands, and erupting into trembling, shrieking mass. He knelt beside her and took her into his arms. He tried to have some feeling for the miserable wretch who was breaking down before him, but he felt nothing.
“Tell me,” he said.
She looked into his eyes, her lower lip shaking as she spoke.
“He thrust a stake into your heart, and you fell off a cliff!” she cried.
For a moment, fear gripped him. He sat in stunned silence as Esla buried her face into his chest and sobbed. His arms slowly dropped, and he heaved himself to his feet, backing slowly away from her.
“Illyan…” she whispered.
He turned and stormed from the room, leaving her sobbing and alone on the floor. With her face buried in her hands, she wept – unable to control the waves of confusion and emotion that dashed her against the rocks of her soul, pounding her mercilessly like the savage sea.
Perhaps the vision had frightened him, but that seemed unlikely. Illyan was a strong soul. Very little fazed him, and his calm demeanor was rarely interrupted by anything more than the faintest glimmer of emotion of any kind other than rage or annoyance.
She knew she needed to find him. She had to find out why this vision shook him so terribly, and why he’d left so suddenly. Drying her eyes on the sleeves of her dress, she stood up and went to find him.
Chapter Two
Her search took her to every corner of The Manor. Room after room, she searched for him in vain. Her heart was filled with worry for her beloved. She had never seen such fear in the eyes of the man who was always so utterly devoid of emotion, and she needed to know why he was now so shaken by her vision.
In truth, she also wanted to be close to him. She was terrified that her vision would come true, and she didn’t want to waste a moment of the time they might have left by being away from him. She simply couldn’t bear it.
She slowly crept down the
dark stairs into the cellar. It was the last place she could think of to look. Her eyes did not yet work as well in the dark as the others, but she could barely make out a shadowy figure in the corner. As she crept closer, she could tell it was him. He sat on a crate, his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand, staring pensively at the wall.
Gently, she placed her hand upon his shoulder. For a moment, she was worried he would be angry with her for following him. Then, in a move that appeared to stun even Illyan, he reached his left hand up and placed it on hers. He squeezed it tightly. Esla could not speak. He had never shown this kind of emotion. She knew he would see it as weakness, but she dared not move or make a sound, lest she shatter the fleeting and precious moment.
“You love me, do you not?” he asked of her after a few silent moments.
“You know I do,” she whispered.
“Why?” he wanted to know.
She thought for a moment, unsure what to say.
“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “It’s just the way I feel in my heart.”
“Heart…,” he scoffed. “How is it that you still have this foolish connection to a mortal heart when your brothers and sisters do not?”
“I have often wondered that myself,” she answered truthfully. “All I can imagine is that my love for you is too strong to be cast aside.”
“You understand that I cannot feel the same way.”
Her heart sank. Deep down she had always known this, but it pained her to hear it spoken. As much as it hurt her to hear it, even that could not change the way she felt about him.
“I know, but it does not matter.”
She knelt beside him and embraced him. She sighed wistfully. There was nothing more she wanted out of life than to be near her beloved.
“It seemed to affect you profoundly when I told you of my vision. Why?” Elsa asked suddenly.
