Death Beckons (Mortis Vampire Series, #1)

by J. C. Diem

  Flicking a quick look around the area, I saw we were in what had once been a dining room. I’d say the place had been abandoned for at least a couple of decades, judging from the dust and dirt coating the wooden tables and benches. Luc must have carried me deeper inside the mine after I’d collapsed for the day. He’d protected me at his own expense yet again. His face was blank but the knowledge of our almost certain doom lay in his dark eyes.

  Standing, I dusted off my hands then put them on my hips. I counted thirty vampires in the room. Thirty against two and one of those two was me. Yep, the odds suck. I might as well find something sharp, fall onto it and save Vincent the job of ending my miserable existence. Not that that could kill me, as I’d so recently discovered.

  “Take your cross out and toss it over there,” Vincent indicated an area that was clear of his minions. I did so and it landed with a dull thump and a small puff of dirt. Tucked beneath Vincent’s arm was the book we’d rescued from the mountain. On the ground behind him, his shadow had the shadow copy of the book open and was turning the pages. Tilting back its misshapen head, it roared silently in frustration, slapped the book shut then turned to glower at me.

  “So,” I said into the heavy silence, “what’s the plan?”

  “The plan,” Vincent said as he stalked closer to me, “is to kill you both slowly and painfully.”

  Personally, I didn’t like that plan very much. “I doubt the Prophet will be very happy with that,” I hazarded. Several minions shifted uneasily but none were brave enough to voice their agreement.

  “The Prophet is dead.” I could tell Vincent was lying by the way he cut his eyes to the left. It was a sure sign of untruthfulness. I’d seen that on TV and when was TV ever wrong?

  “He is not,” I argued.

  “He will be soon,” Vincent snarled.

  “You wish,” I muttered. If he was still alive I hoped he was seeing a vision right now and that he would rise from his coma and send help. The likelihood of that happening was slim to none. Besides, it would take hours for anyone to reach us. We were on our own.

  Vincent stalked closer and swished his cloak aside to reveal a long, shiny sword at his waist. “I am going to spit you like the bug you were named for and watch you die,” he said with relish. Smiling evilly, he pulled the sword free. So much for his plan to kill me slowly and painfully.

  “Someone already tried,” my words were cut off as the sword was jammed into my chest, “that,” I finished. Vincent took two steps back presumably to avoid the mess he thought I’d be making in a minute. His expectant look turned to puzzlement when I didn’t fall onto my face. His minions shifted uneasily when I covered a fake yawn with my hand.

  “Yeah, swords and stakes through the heart don’t have much effect on me,” I informed him.

  Turning, Vincent pointed at Luc. “Kill him!” he yelled, as if that would somehow magically be my undoing.

  “Wait,” I yelled and the minions froze in mid attack. “I have something to show you.”

  Peering down his nose at me suspiciously, Vincent held up a hand to stop his vamps from cutting my companion’s head off. “What is it?” Considering he looked after the prophet’s domain, Vincent didn’t seem to know much about Mortis. If he had, he would have been more worried about the fact that I could handle holy objects without bursting into flames and survive a sword through my heart.

  “It’s...private.” The excuse was lame but it was the best I could come up with on short notice. Truthfully, even if I’d had more notice I probably couldn’t have come up with anything better. “The Prophet said I could only show you,” I lied, hoping Luc was right about his earlier prediction about my whacky powers. If not, we were both screwed.

  As Vincent moved closer, his shadow leaned forward over his shoulder. Cocking its head to the side, it peered down at me. As he drew closer, the shadow started shaking its head in warning. It knew I was up to something, even if Vincent didn’t. “Well, what is it?” Vincent asked. Just as he reached me, his shadow panicked and turned to flee. Connected to its master by the heels, it tripped and fell onto its face. Scrambling in the dirt, it tried to claw its way free unsuccessfully. I was relieved to see it couldn’t detach itself entirely.

  “Just this,” I said and reached up to clap my hands on either side of his face. “Die, arsehole.” With these cheerful words, his head imploded with a pop. My hands worked just like the cross I’d laid against the vulpine female’s forehead. Brains rained to the dirt floor and Vincent’s headless body slumped to its knees.

  Holding out my stained hands, I turned to the rest of the crowd. “Ok, which of you buttholes wants a taste of the holy marks? There’s plenty to go around.” With a mad scramble, the minions fled, shrieking in terror. In seconds, only Luc and I remained in the mine.

  I bent to wipe my hands clean on Vincent’s now empty cloak. Straightening up, I turned to find Luc standing right in front of me. His face was unreadable. Now that there could be no doubt I was the fabled Mortis, was he finally going to kill me?

  “Do you want me to do something about that?” He pointed at the sword still sticking out of my chest.

  “Oh. I forgot about that. Yes,” he yanked it out and I staggered at the momentary pain, “please,” I finished weakly. I doubted I’d ever get used to the feeling of naked steel running through my body. I held onto the small hope that it wouldn’t happen so often that I’d have to get used to it.

  Luc bent to use Vincent’s cloak to clean the sword then scooped up the journal that had been dropped to the dirt floor. He then loped off toward the entrance. As I scrambled after him, my wound started closing. In minutes, it was gone. The miraculous healing ability was definitely on the plus side of being a monster. I tried to think up other plusses but the negatives kept popping up instead. Coffee was no longer on my menu. Neither was ice cream. If I’d been able to, I would have shed a tear at the loss of my ability to eat chocolate. Instead, I had a steady diet of blood to look forward to.

  It wasn’t just food that I’d be missing out on. It might be lame but I’d secretly dreamed that one day I’d find someone to spend my life with. We’d get married, have a couple of kids and grow old together. Instead, an eternally lonely life loomed ahead of me. Childless and alone, I wouldn’t be living, I’d merely be existing. What do you think you were doing before Silvius jumped you in that alley? As always, my subconscious had to put its two cents worth in. As usual, I ignored it.

  We hiked through a dense forest in silence for hours before stumbling across a road. Following it, we moved far more swiftly until we came across a tiny village. With only a small cluster of buildings and one petrol station that doubled as a general store, it could hardly be called a town.

  Luc snuck silently up to a beat up old pickup truck that had once been dark green and was now mostly brown with rust. I simply walked up to it. Sneaking wasn’t in my repertoire yet. It was after midnight and most of the houses in the town were dark. Unlike us, the townsfolk would be rising with the dawn or shortly thereafter. Our plan was to be bedded down somewhere safe before we could burst into pretty yet deadly flames.

  Already unlocked, the truck gave itself up without a fight. Luc popped the hood and took a quick inspection of the engine. He determined that it was operational and closed the hood gently. Releasing the handbrake, he pushed the old truck out onto the road, steering with one hand on the wheel through the open window. Between the pair of us, it was easy to trot along pushing the truck.

  We had a choice of making either a quick getaway or a quiet one. We opted for quiet and pushed the vehicle a couple of kilometres away from town before jumping in. Springs poked into my butt through the cracked cream vinyl bench seat. A scratchy substance I believe was a mixture of horsehair as well as other unidentifiable materials had leaked out. It lay on the seat and floor like coughed up fur balls from a sick cat.

  Now far enough away that the engine coming to life wouldn’t be overheard, Luc reached beneath the dashboard and st
arted fiddling with the wires. He might have been born centuries before cars had even been thought of but he still knew how to hotwire one. I was impressed but kept my admiration at his grand theft auto abilities to myself.

  Picking up the prophet’s journal from where Luc had sat it on the seat, I idly flicked through the pages. Some were illustrated and I could see why the cinnamon stick didn’t want his carers to see it. A few glimpses were all I needed to tell me it foretold the coming of the end. I was the vampire equivalent of the apocalypse and I still had no idea why the prophet hadn’t turned me in. Did he want our kind to die? Weren’t all prophets mad anyway? Getting divine messages seemed to make them loony.

  Although I was anxious to take a closer look at the book, being jostled around in the old truck wasn’t the best time to do it. The pages were fragile with age and I’d have to be very careful not to tear them. Closing the journal, I sat it on my lap as the engine caught and Luc set us into motion.

  Sticking to the smaller dirt roads, we raced against the dawn. Farms became fewer and fewer and I was worried we wouldn’t find anywhere to hide from the sun. Topping a small rise, I spotted the vague outline of a building off to the left and pointed to it.

  Luc kept the truck at a slow and steady speed while we searched for the driveway. The entrance to the property was almost hidden by scrub but we nosed our way through. From the overgrown foliage and general disrepair, I wasn’t surprised to see the property had been forsaken long ago.

  Two stories high, most of the windows in the house were broken and part of the roof was missing. I wasn’t sure how much shelter it would offer us from the sun. Anything less than one-hundred per cent just wouldn’t do. When we rounded the house and saw the barn, my alarm rose. Only two walls remained. The rest of the creaky old structure had fallen in, taking the roof with it.

  Before I could ask if we should search for another place, Luc parked. He climbed out swiftly and strode toward the house. Stopping just short of the crumbling structure, he knelt. A second later, I heard the metallic snap of a padlock breaking. Swinging open a heavy wooden door, he swept his hand toward the dark cellar in invitation. How could I have doubted him? He was like a dark hero from a comic book, always coming to the rescue.

  Stairs had once led down to the dirt floor but they were a rotted, broken pile on the ground a few feet below. Leaping down into the dimness, I landed on my feet instead of sprawling on my face as I’d half expected to. Maybe I was finally getting the hang of being the living dead. Luc landed lightly beside me, pulling the trapdoor shut on the way down.

  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the gloom but there wasn’t much to see. Shelves lined two walls. A few jars of what I presumed were preserved fruit had been left behind. Some had shattered but the contents had dissipated long ago. About twenty feet long by ten wide, the cellar felt like a gigantic grave to me. Beetles scuttled through the dirt but I was fairly certain they wouldn’t try to eat me, even though I was a corpse. I doubted I’d be very tasty.

  Moving to the back of the room, I found a few old hessian sacks and spread them out as a makeshift bed. The boards at my back creaked when I leaned against them and dirt shifted into my hair. I desperately wanted a shower but that wasn’t about to happen.

  Luc sat beside me and we both leaned down to look at the book I had opened on my lap. “What does it say?” he asked. The clammy skin of his face was only millimetres away from mine. If we’d been human, I would have been able to feel his warmth.

  I read the first page all the way through before attempting to translate it. “It’s an account of how the first vampire was made.” Excitement wormed inside me. This must be how tomb raiders felt when discovering treasures no man or woman had laid eyes on in thousands of years.

  Luc’s hair brushed against my face as he studied the picture on the right. “Is that what I think it is?” He pointed at a tall, thin and misshapen creature towering over what appeared to be a normal human male. The detail was exquisite. If the prophet hadn’t been a vampire, not to mention out of his mind, he could have made it as an artist.

  “Yep. It’s the thing that created us and it’s definitely some kind of alien. It says here that dear old Dad used to be powerful, maybe even a kind of demi-deity.” The term I wanted to use was demi-god but I knew it would come out as an embarrassing stutter. “After landing here millions of years ago, it’s power started to fade and it began to die,” I said with a quick glance sideways.

  “Indeed,” my dark companion inclined his head in agreement. I tore my eyes from his face and forced them back to the book. Sometimes I forgot how hot Luc was. His lashes were longer than mine, damn it, and framed his dark eyes. His pale skin was flawless, without even a shadow of a beard. I’d always preferred my men to be smoothly shaved. Not that I’d had much choice over the past few years. They hadn’t exactly been beating down my door. I really hadn’t had much opportunity to meet men between work and spending quality time on my couch with my aching feet up.

  “It says the human made a deal with our Father for everlasting life but not what it would get out of the deal. Shows what a dumb arse he was,” I murmured. “It’s more like everlasting unlife.” Everyone knew it was a bad idea to make a deal with the devil. Or a creature very close to being a devil.

  Luc shifted a fraction closer and my hunger flared. Sensing it, he went still then carefully tilted his face towards mine. “Dawn is coming. When you wake, you will need to feed.”

  Since there wasn’t a living human within the nearest hundred miles or so, we both knew what type of feeding he was talking about and it didn’t involve blood.

  My eyelids were suddenly too heavy to keep open. I fought against it, determined to get my message across. “That’s not going to-”

  ·~·

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Happen,” I said and sat up with a start. I’d been in the middle of trying to get some kind of point across to Luc but couldn’t quite remember what it had been. At least I didn’t wake up thinking I’d had a weird dream this time. Reality was turning out to be far stranger than any dream I’d ever had.

  Feeling even colder than usual, I looked down to see that I was totally naked. On closer inspection, I amended that to almost totally naked. A sack had been wrapped around each of my hands. “What the hell?” I don’t remember putting these on last night.

  Luc, even more naked than me without sacks on his hands, was kneeling beside me. “You must feed and then you can finish reading the journal.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I repeated very succinctly. “What’s with the sacks?”

  A trifle shamefacedly, he shrugged. “I do not want to burn to death from holy fire.”

  “Since there is no way we are going to have sex, you can take these things off me.” I shook the sacks but they stayed annoyingly in place. He’d used my shoelaces to tie them on. Very inventive. He’s been busy while I was dead. Accurately reading Luc’s expression, I stood up before he could dive on me.

  Standing as well, pretending he hadn’t been about to pounce, Luc backed me up against the wall. “I handled our first time together badly.” He ran a finger lightly down my cheek and I suppressed a shiver. “I wish to make up for that.” He smiled suggestively and dropped his gaze to my breasts. My traitorous nipples instantly hardened. They didn’t care that I’d made myself a promise. They remembered what it felt like to have Luc’s cold mouth on them.

  “No.” I put my sack enclosed hands out and stopped him from coming any closer. “I’m not going to let you demean yourself again.” I was almost in dry tears at the thought of it.

  “Let me take care of your hunger, Natalie.” He pressed his chest against my hands, bringing our bodies closer together. “As you shall take care of mine.”

  “I thought you didn’t crave flesh anymore,” I said in desperation.

  “Only yours,” he said then closed the distance. His lips touched mine and any thought of further resistance fled. His hands clutched
my hips and pulled me closer. My hand slipped off his head instead of tangling in his hair as I’d intended.

  “This is ridiculous,” I managed then he was lifting me and pressing me back against the cold wall. Suddenly, it wasn’t ridiculous at all. I wrapped my legs around him and put my strangely gloved hands on his shoulders. Luc thrust his tongue in my mouth at the same time as he pierced me below.

  “Oh, G-G-G. Shit,” I moaned as he kissed my neck and took my breasts in his hands. Then he started thrusting and coherent thought left me. For the first time since I’d died, I was warm. Heat flashed through me from the inside out as he increased his speed and tempo. My whole body tensed and I heard the distinct sound of bones snapping then I was tipping over the edge into ecstasy.

  After a few more thrusts, Luc sagged against me. I was still pinned to the wall as he rested his forehead against mine. My sack covered hands hung limply at my sides. “Did I break something?” I murmured.

  “My pelvis. It’s already healing.” If I hadn’t heard the smile in his voice, I would have burst into dry sobs.

  “Can you please take the sacks off me now?” I asked dully. The sex had been incredible but I was left feeling heartsick. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t use him like that again then at one sight of his naked body, I had thrown my promise away. I’d turned into an undead nymphomaniac.

  Removing the sacks from my hands, Luc thoughtfully relaced my sneakers while I pulled my clothes back on. I’d left my backpack in Vincent’s lair so I was wearing everything I owned in the world. Finding my cross beneath my jumper, I tucked it into the back of my pants again. This time when we sat, Luc kept a careful distance between us. He must have been under the assumption that my despair was anger.

  Instead of reading every word of the journal out loud, I’d read a few pages silently then gave Luc the gist of it. It was a brief history of vampirekind beginning with how we came to be. I skipped that part since we’d covered it yesterday.