Death Beckons (Mortis Vampire Series, #1)

by J. C. Diem

  Luc rolled his eyes impatiently. “You have to stop feeling sorry for them, Natalie. You don’t mean the man any harm. All you require is a little sustenance and then he can go free.”

  Perking up at that last part, the man started nodding frantically. He fumbled for his wallet in his back pocket and handed it over. Taking it doubtfully, I met his eyes and he was caught. Pale green and bloodshot from fear, they went blank and his entire body relaxed. Luc took his hands away and the man swayed toward me.

  “I’ll give you anything you want. Anything at all.” He tried to reach for me but Luc held his arms straight against his body.

  Even taller than my companion, my snack’s neck was too high for me to take a bite from. I went up to my tippy toes and he bent down for me, smacking his head into the cubicle door. In his hypnotized state he didn’t even seem to feel the blow. My teeth sheared into his vein and he made a sound of pleasure as I fed.

  Luc pulled me away too soon but I let him. The pit in my stomach was half full again and I was in a comfortable state of contentment. With our interaction complete, Luc sat the snack down on the toilet and eased the door open. Taking a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped a corner of my mouth. A tiny smear of red bloomed on the fabric. “You are going to persist in your annoying habit of butchering my name, aren’t you?”

  I nodded then shrugged. “It’s the Australian way,” I explained. “We all do it. I think it’s in our blood.” Mmm, blood, I thought dreamily.

  With a huffy sigh, Luc checked that all was clear. I dropped my meal’s wallet on his lap before leaving the bathroom. His Aussie cash wouldn’t be of much use to me in Romania.

  Luc sent me worried glances as we hurried towards our gate. Our flight must have been called minutes ago because we were at the tail end of the line. Only a few stragglers were left ahead of us. I managed to regain some focus by the time we took our seats. It was a pleasant surprise to be seated in first class.

  After the twentieth cautious glance from Luc, I turned to face him. “What?”

  “Now that you have fed your blood hunger,” he said quietly, “I am waiting for your flesh hunger to rise.”

  “Going to take another one for the team, huh?” It was uncharacteristically cynical of me but I figured I’d earned a bit of cynicism over the past few days after what I’d been through. “Don’t worry about it. I took care of it in the...,” I trailed off when I realized what I was about to divulge. “Never mind.” I’d suffered enough embarrassment without spilling the beans about my solo shower gratification.

  “I have to mind,” he argued. “You are new and cannot control yourself yet. It is my job to make sure you don’t expose us.”

  Grumpily turning away, I looked out the dark window as the plane prepared to take off. Luc’s pale reflection stared at me over my shoulder. “I don’t feel hungry in that way,” I mumbled and ignored the twinge of heat inside that made me a liar.

  “When your hunger does rise, let me know.” Settling back against his seat, Luc folded his hands neatly across his stomach and proceeded to ignore me.

  “Sure, we’ll just cram inside the toilet and have a quickie,” I muttered to myself sarcastically then turned as far away from him as I could. The idea of a quickie in the bathroom actually didn’t sound that bad. Don’t even think about it, I scolded internally. I might be a vampire and subject to hideous hungers but I still had my dignity, or so I told myself.

  This wasn’t my first time on a plane but I’d never been out of Australia before and now I was about to travel to Europe, via Singapore. Soon, we’d be thirty-odd thousand feet in the air. If something horrible happened and the plane went down, what would happen to us? Since we were already undead, would we die again when our bodies were smashed to pieces? What exactly did it take to kill us anyway? Apart from a cross speared through your heart, that was. I’d stumbled across that particular killing method all on my own.

  Disturbed by the direction my thoughts had taken, I turned to find my companion waiting with an eyebrow raised. He could either read my mind or I telegraphed what I was thinking harder than I thought I was. “What sort of things can kill us?” I asked very quietly, practically mouthing the words.

  “Fire. Holy objects. Holy water. Being pierced through the heart. Beheading. Sunlight. Consuming the blood of our kin.” The list was short and about what I’d expected. Except for that last one. I’d never heard of that before.

  “So, if we fell from thirty thousand feet, we’d survive?”

  Thinking about it, he shrugged. “You might. I would probably not. The impact would most likely shatter my body beyond repair.” I pictured Luc as a runny, splattered, bloody pancake and held in a shudder.

  “What would happen to me?”

  Taking my left hand, he gingerly examined the cross mark without touching it. He met my eyes briefly. “I do not know.”

  On impulse, I took his hand in mine. He went rigid then relaxed when he didn’t burst into flames. “I should have known it wouldn’t hurt me. After all, it is not the first time you have put your hands on my naked skin.” His tone was suggestive and he slid his gaze across to my face slyly. I yanked my hand free.

  “We’re not talking about that. It never happened.”

  “My spine took half an hour to heal,” he said conversationally. “You’re very strong.”

  I remembered snapping the metal crosses off the sarcophagi easily and vaulting over fences in search of a dog blanket. I’d never been particularly athletic before and it was still a novelty to me. For a moment I almost felt special. Then the reality set in again. I was Mortis, doom of the vampire race. It was unfair that I would be the total destruction of beings I’d never truly believed existed. Why couldn’t I have been an ordinary vampire? Because if you were, you’d currently be bowing and scraping for Silvius. Would you prefer that? It was a toss-up; being a slave to a creepy old man for eternity or being the curse of the undead.

  It was a long flight and I eventually grew bored enough to engage my vampire companion in conversation. “Ok,” I turned to him to ask, “so, if we’re real then other myths and legends must be, too.”

  Slanting a look at me, Luc crossed his arms and shook his head as the flight attendant appeared to ask if we wanted anything. I waited for her to walk away before continuing. “What myths and legends do you have in mind?”

  “How about werewolves?”

  “No.” His response was immediate and final.

  “Oh.” I thought for sure they had to be real if we were. If werewolves didn’t exist then who were our natural enemies? Duh, that would be me. “What about zombies?” I was almost disappointed when he shook his head. “Witches? Wizards? Unicorns? Fairies? Giants? Leprechauns? Hobbits? Ghosts?” Each one was followed by a shake of his head. I was exasperated by now. “What about aliens?”

  This time, Luc hesitated. Most of the other passengers were sleeping. Snores and a few quiet murmurs surrounded us. We’d turned our lights off so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves more than we already did due to our weird vampire charisma. We were easily able to see each other in the dim cabin light.

  “There is a legend,” he began, leaning in toward me, “that says we are descended from a being that was not originally from our planet.”

  “Are you talking about little green men with creepily big heads and gigantic black eyes?” Despite myself, I leaned in closer to hear his answer, fighting down an urge to giggle at the idea of a spaceman being the creator of vampires.

  “Whatever it was, it was here long before mankind crawled out of their caves. It is said that the creature, our Father,” he made a slight face at the title, “made a bargain with a human who then became the first of our kind. Our Father sealed their bargain by feeding the First his blood.”

  “What was the bargain?”

  Luc’s reply was his usual shrug. “He offered the First immortality.”

  I mulled this over with a frown. “I wonder what our dear old Dad got ou
t of their deal,” I mused.

  “That is something no one knows,” Luc said broodingly.

  My new friend didn’t seem inclined towards further conversation so I spent the rest of the trip watching movies. My hearing was so sensitive that I could hear what others in my general vicinity were watching through their headsets.

  Bright lights caught my attention as we neared Singapore. I stared at the dazzling sight until we were too low to see them anymore. Upon touchdown, Luc hurried us to the head of the line and we were the first off the plane.

  Minutes after we finally bamboozled our way through customs, we were in a taxi and heading for a hotel. Our driver sent frequent glances at us in his rear view mirror. Ok, he sent frequent looks at me in his mirror. I’d been careful not to catch his eye and accidentally hypnotize him. The last thing we needed was a zombie for a driver.

  Our hotel for the day was far less luxurious than the one we’d stayed at briefly in Brisbane. The two women manning the reception desk were valiantly trying to pretend they weren’t half asleep. Since it was nearing sunrise, I couldn’t blame them for their tiredness. I was also feeling the tell-tale signs that meant I would go down for the day shortly.

  Noticing me suddenly beginning to blink owlishly, Luc quickly paid for our room and took the key card. He guided me to the elevator with a steadying hand on my elbow. “Just another couple of minutes, Natalie,” he soothed but that was two minutes too long for me and my circuits shut down.

  Snapping awake far quicker than usual, I found myself sitting in a cramped, uncomfortable chair with my head resting against the wall. Slightly confused and wondering why I wasn’t lying in a bed, the seat suddenly shook from side to side and my eyes sprang open. A quick examination of my surroundings told me that I wasn’t in a normal chair at all. I was buckled into a seat on a plane and had no recollection of how I’d gotten there.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some heavy turbulence at the moment so we ask that you remain in your seats until the seatbelt sign is switched off,” a woman announced over the speaker system. She gave the message in both French and English to cover both bases.

  Luc, calmly sitting beside me with his headphones on, raised an eyebrow inquiringly when I glared at him. “Is there a problem?” he asked quietly.

  “How the hell did you get me to the airport, through security and onto the plane?”

  “I told anyone who enquired about your health that you were narcoleptic,” he replied with a shrug.

  “Narcoleptic?” It came out higher pitched than I’d intended and a few heads turned in my direction. “That’s the best story you could come up with?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Clearly annoyed that I wasn’t impressed by his cleverness, Luc turned his attention back to whatever program he’d been watching while I’d been unconscious.

  We spent the next twelve hours ignoring each other. From time to time I left my window seat in the pretence that I needed to visit the facilities. In reality, I did it to annoy Luc. The elderly man in the aisle seat didn’t mind getting up to let me out, he needed to visit the bathroom even more often than I pretended I needed to.

  Part way into the sixth or possibly seventh inflight movie in a row, I turned to the window and squinted at the slight hint of greyness. Hadn’t it been pitch black just a moment ago? What would happen to us after we landed and it was full daylight? Incineration was my first and only guess. I had enough time to turn my head with the intention of asking Luc what his next clever plan was when darkness struck.

  ·~·

  Chapter Eleven

  When I woke next, it was to find myself lying face-down in someone’s lap. Sitting up, I tried to scramble away but didn’t get very far before my back hit a firm object. After a few seconds of confusion, I realized I was in a car. Black curtains had been drawn on all the windows, preventing any moonlight from illuminating the back seat.

  Three other vampires were in the car with me. I recognized one of them and sagged in relief.

  “If you’re in the mood,” the strange vampire beside me smirked with a heavy accent, “you can lie back down again and finish the job.” He gestured at his crotch where an unimpressive bulge had appeared.

  Luc sent a withering glare over his shoulder. “Behave yourself, Geordie.”

  Geordie sent a sarcastic salute at the vampire cop and sat back to sulk. He was young, maybe fifteen in mortal years. God only knew how old he was in actual years. He sulked exactly like a normal teenager would have with his bottom lip stuck out and his arms crossed. His hair was a messy dirty blonde and his eyes a dark, stormy blue. His pupils were gigantic, the blue was just a faint touch of colour around the edges. How old did a vamp have to be before their irises completely disappeared?

  Behind the wheel was an older man. He might have been fifty or so when he’d been turned. His black hair was coarse and what I could see of his face was grizzled. He barked something foreign at Luc and peered at me briefly in the rear view mirror. I translated the words in my head to be along the lines of ‘We’ll be there soon’.

  Turning, Luc sent me a reassuring smile that wasn’t quite genuine. I could sense his worry and immediately tensed. If he was worried then I should be in a state of panic. “Igor says we’ll be there soon.” I marvelled at how eerily his words echoed my translation of what the driver had said. It had to be a coincidence.

  Both Geordie and Igor wore the kind of clothing I associated with farm work. Dark brown pants had been teamed up with matching jackets and plain white t-shirts. In my jeans and dark green jumper, I didn’t really fit in. Neither did Luc in his stylish black clothes. Both of us were overdressed.

  Pushing aside the dense curtain, I saw farmland, scrub and not much else. I wasn’t sure if vampires could become jetlagged but I felt like I’d been out of it for longer than usual.

  “Where are we heading?” I asked the car in general. I thought we were supposed to be heading for Romania. Shouldn’t we be on another plane? Maybe we were already in Romania and I’d spent the bulk of the journey in an unconscious state. It was a slight comfort to know I couldn’t drool anymore and humiliate myself in that way at least.

  “To the Court,” Geordie replied in his now obviously French accent.

  I caught Luc’s warning glance not to blurt out anything stupid. I’d always wanted to travel and France was definitely on my list of places I wanted to see. Now of course I’d only be seeing it at night. That was if I survived my encounter with the rulers of vampirekind. It looked like I’d have to pretend to have a vestige of class after all. You have about as much class as a dog with mange. I couldn’t argue with my subconscious when it was unquestionably right.

  Igor turned down a driveway that extended far into what seemed to be a large estate. Several men and women moved around the grounds, mowing the grass, clipping hedges and tidying up in general. From their unnaturally pale skin, it wasn’t hard to figure out that they were like us. Besides, I was pretty sure humans didn’t tend gardens in the dark.

  Discovering I’d been killed only to rise as a vampire’s servant had been a short lived shock that I’d quickly gotten over. Not the vampire bit, that would take a few centuries to get used to. The idea of being anyone’s servant for all time had been the source of the shock. After killing my maker, I’d become my own person again. These poor bastards would be servants for all eternity. I mulled over the idea that they might be happy for me to destroy them all. Who the hell wanted to mow grass for several thousand years?

  My musings were interrupted as we pulled up in front of a magnificent manor house. It was four stories high, with the main building made of sandstone. Two wings of some kind of darker stone spread out to either side I gaped up at the building while Luc retrieved our bags from the back. Two men, dressed in old fashioned livery of red jackets and pants, white wigs, white gloves and knee high black boots, bowed to Luc and ignored the rest of us. The servant was British and spoke with an upper-crust English accent. “The Counci
llors await you in the ballroom, Lord Lucentio. A servant will escort you to them after you have freshened up.”

  ‘Lord’ Lucentio handed me the bags then crooked his finger, clearly expecting me to tag along behind him like an obedient dog. Geordie smirked at me then pouted when Igor smacked him in the back of the head. The grizzled chauffer then clicked his fingers for the boy to follow him. They slouched off down a gravelled path that led toward the back of the mansion with Geordie rubbing his head. Left with little choice, I tagged along after Luc, carrying our bags like a lowly porter.

  Inside the mansion, soft lighting from crystal chandeliers in the high ceilings spilled down to illuminate what I could only describe as sheer opulence. Dusky pink wallpaper with rose patterns covered the walls. Thick maroon carpet graced the floors. Antique, highly polished furniture in some kind of dark wood adorned the place. Priceless paintings, or so I assumed since I wasn’t an art critic, hung on the walls. Luc caught me by my elbow when I tripped over my own feet from gawking at the splendour. His warning glare was enough for me to rein in my curiosity.

  We were led up a sweeping staircase to the fourth floor and down a hallway to a bedroom suite. Thanking the servant, Luc closed the door and hustled me through the bedroom and into the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of a magnificent king sized bed and large fireplace before the door closed.

  Luc paced the maroon tiled floor while I slumped against the door and dropped our luggage to the floor. He seemed to be agitated, which didn’t fill me with confidence for our situation. “So,” I ventured, “care to update me on how we ended up here?”

  Ceasing his pacing, Luc leaned against the maroon sink and ran a hand through his hair. The whole room was done in tones of red, including the towels hanging neatly on racks. I believe the colour was as close to fresh blood as the decorators could manage. Privately, I thought it was tacky but I wasn’t about to voice my opinion out loud.