Magic struck me, threw me back—I hit the fireplace. Brick cracked, dust puffed up. I crumbled against the hearth as I fell. Grime itched my eyes; I brushed it back to see the brothers once again facing off.
Nate stood in the center of the room, cold blue eyes on his older brother. He stood frozen, tense. Ready.
Sean circled Nate. “Really Nathan, I’m surprised you lasted this long on your own. You put up more of a fight in high school. Have the vampire and her friends actually carried you this far?”
This wasn’t gonna be good. I scanned the area around me, spotted the fire poker three feet away. If I could just reach it without anyone noticing...
“I’m assuming you ran out of resources, or you wouldn’t be here yourself.” Nate’s deep voice stopped Sean’s pacing.
Sean sized his brother up, critical blue eyes moving over him. “You know the saying: if you want something done, do it—”
I grasped the poker, took careful aim, and hurled it across the room.
It whizzed past Sean’s upper arm. The warlock looked at me, brow cocked with skepticism. “That was a little disappointing.”
I gave him a cool smile and nodded to a spot behind him. “I’m not so sure about that.”
Sean glanced behind him to see the poker had hit Jamie directly in the heart, pinning him to the far wall.
I rose on creaky bones and sore muscles. A twist of my neck gave a loud crack. “Two to one. As a betting girl, I like those odds.”
Magic thickened in the air, that telltale feeling of electricity, and it centered around Nate. If he was going to throw a spell, I could just keep snarking and distract—
Sean must’ve anticipated it; a gesture from him sent Nate flying into the far wall.
Shit.
“I think you’ve effectively killed or helped to escape just about all of my vampires,” Sean said his attention returned to me.
I yawned. “Told you it was a lame idea. Shittiest army ever. Guess things won’t look pretty for you during your apocalypse.”
“If you think they were the only resource at my disposal, you’re sadly mistaken. And I have a few years to build my ranks up again.”
“Honey, if you were gonna walk out of this cabin alive—which you won’t—you’d live to be a shriveled old man still waiting, with your pathetic vampire army in cages, ready for a party that’s never gonna start. There’s no Armageddon.”
Sean smiled coolly. “‘And the sisters will rise, jaws will open, and hell will come to Earth.’”
“Is that from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
Magic gripped me, twisted around my body in oily tendrils; I shot upward. My head scraped the ceiling then I thudded hard against the fireplace, suspended midair. He looked to the floor and one of the stakes floated off the ground until it was level with my chest.
“Goodbye, Miss Lain.”
The stake flew toward my heart.
An instant later, Nate appeared behind his brother—flat out fucking appeared out of nowhere—and aimed a handgun at Sean’s head.
Nate fired.
Blood and brain matter flew. Sean crumpled. The magical grip on my body faded and I dropped to the hardwood just as the stake drove into the brick.
Motherfucker. I climbed to my feet again, brushed the dust off my jeans. Nate stared down at his brother’s corpse and fired a few more bullets into him for good measure.
Late afternoon sun returned to the sky outside the cabin, and though it significantly cut down on the number of places I could stand in the room without being burned, I was grateful to see it.
Nate faltered, weakening fast from his little time dimension trick on top of the magical beating he’d taken. I rushed over as quickly as I could with everything in me aching top to bottom, and caught his arm.
“Have I ever told you how much I love that time-freezing thing?”
“I’m just glad I never told him I could do that.” He tossed the gun to the floor. Stared at Sean for another twenty seconds, this his gaze drifted to Peter.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder.
He returned the embrace and ran a hand back through my hair, sagging against me heavily as I did him. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been through worse. At least I didn’t get shot this time.”
“Yeah, I could get used to not having bullets hit my body all the time too.”
Except all over the supernatural underworld, people know Nate’s worth forty million dead. It wasn’t over—it would never be over. Plenty more wanted the final O’Connor heir dead.
Forty million...
I squeezed him tighter, forcing away my guilty thoughts.
“You should probably take care of Jamie,” Nate reminded me.
Right. And that was something I’d enjoy. I turned to the devil himself. Jamie was exactly where I left him: impaled to the wall. Releasing Nate, I walked over to Jamie. The ax waited on the floor; I scooped it up on my way by. When I wrenched the poker free from his chest, Jamie collapsed on his knees.
Still severely weakened, he looked up at me. A smile started...
’Til he saw the ax.
“Baby, c’mon,” he pleaded.
“I told you I don’t like pet names.” I raised the ax and slammed it down on his arm, just below the shoulder. The limb fell to the ground and Jamie screamed—the sound was glorious, almost musical. I sighed, contented, the raging fire in me quelled for a moment at the sight of his pain. He tumbled forward.
Nate came to stand beside me, peering down at Jamie as well. “And next comes the disemboweling?”
“No, I just felt like hacking off something. I’m too tired to get creative in a vengeful way today—he’s not worth the time and effort. I’ll settle for a bit of pain, then certain death.”
Jamie rolled onto his back and, despite the circumstances, he started to laugh. “I can’t believe you picked Junior over me, you stupid cunt.”
I swung the ax down on the wrist still attached to his body.
“Just ‘a bit’ of pain?” Nate asked.
I shrugged. “Okay, a bit more than that. More like ‘some’ pain.”
Jamie continued to laugh. “You’re both dead.”
“Tsk tsk.” I shook my head. “Says the vampire who’s losing limbs by the second.”
“You really plan to spend the next fifty years taking care of him? You’ll slip up and you’ll both be dead.” Jamie laughed harder and harder, tears spilling down his cheeks.
His mirth ceased as I brought the ax down on his neck, however.
I dropped the weapon and it thumped at my feet. Stared down at his head as it rolled to the side. His words still played in my head.
“The cars aren’t damaged, so we should be able to drive out of here at sunset.” Nate’s hand wrapped around my arm.
My eyes burned, itched with building tears. Fuck—I couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t. I loved him, right? Couldn’t do this to someone I loved, who actually loved me back. Someone who spent months searching for me, who didn’t leave me alone in the dark place. Someone who risked his life—gave his blood—to save me.
But Jamie was right. Ambitious assassins and bounty hunters everywhere would be looking for Nate. Forty million dollars was at stake and no matter if it took one year or ten, they wouldn’t stop looking. Forty million...
Nate was closer now. His arm closed over my shoulder, hand smoothed my hair from my face. “What’s wrong?”
I remained silent.
“It’s Jamie? You did feel—”
I shook my head vehemently, hot tears burning my cheeks as they fell.
Once again, when forced to choose between a hot guy and a hell of a lot of money, and you’ve got three centuries of perspective—not to mention bad relationship experience—the choice is surprisingly simple.
My fangs grew.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Epilogue
And the Moral of th
e Story Is...
I was a very wealthy woman after that. Very. Not only did an anonymous contractor give me forty million for Nate’s death, but I also decided to collect the modest bounty on Heaven. No one asked whether or not I actually killed her—they just wanted a digital photo of her corpse, which I provided. Add to that the reward from the surviving North American covens for taking out the person behind all their troubles, and at the end of the day—well, okay, it was more like the week—I had over fifty-five million dollars in the bank.
Like I said: very wealthy.
Sure, I didn’t need all that money. My payment for killing Sean was enough to keep me living comfortably for a while. So I gave generously to my favourite charities. VETA, or “Vampires for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” is a big one. There are more members out there then you’d think, and I’ve probably been the group’s greatest contributor in recent years. We vamps also have our own branch of Greenpeace. In thanks for my considerable donation, they have promised to send me a pretty calendar every year. And of course I attended the firefighter’s annual charity ball.
My other positive contribution to society? Well, a lot of vampires died in the fight at Sean’s complex. Of the ones that didn’t, still more were killed by Hunters later on. Many of them had new vampires they’d changed and left in their graves, intending to retrieve them when it was time. Now that their sires were gone, someone had to help before they went crazy and ate children like I did when I was changed, so I’ve done what I can to hunt down the orphans and help them. If I believed in karma, I think that would net me some major points.
Perhaps enough to offset the deficit from killing my lover.
Rescuing vampires isn’t much of a career, though, so I’m also one of the world’s top assassins. It’s not like I need the cash, but the prestige is nice and I need something to pass the time. Politicians, religious leaders, supernatural beings—you name them, pay a decent fee, and I’ll kill ’em.
Perhaps I didn’t need to kill Nate simply for some extra money. No, scratch that: I know I didn’t have to...
But Jamie, bless his little black heart, was right. I couldn’t spend the next fifty years running from people trying to kill my boyfriend. We were doomed—star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. If Juliet had to murder Romeo at the end.
Anyway. It was a hopeless situation. And though I had assured Peter I wouldn’t betray his friend, I realized I didn’t exactly have a choice. He was going to die either way, so I don’t think anyone can really blame me.
I did spend the hours until dusk at the cabin sobbing over Nate’s body, though. That’s something I’ve never admitted to anyone and I even deny it to myself sometimes. I missed him already, and the moment he breathed his last breath, something of both Ana and Zara died with him—a void opened up, one I knew I would never fill, no matter how much money I had or how many lovers I took over the years. A void that was infinitely worse than the dark place or anything I’d ever experienced in my unlife. Everyone he’d ever trusted fucked him over and I leapt in line to do the same. That kind of guilt is hard to get over.
I go by his grave now and then. It’s on the family plot and his headstone lies between the one shared by his parents and the one above the empty coffin that was supposed to hold his brother. I think a distant cousin or something took care of the funeral arrangements.
I’ll be heading back there in a few years to dig him up. I’m not going to wait the full ten it’s supposed to take a human to turn, as experience tells me that date isn’t exactly set in stone.
He may hate me when he awakens. I can’t say for sure. I just know that even if he decides to leave me, his cruel and evil maker, for subjecting him to immortality as a demon with the curse of requiring human blood, at least he’ll have some amazing strength and stuff to keep his ass safe.
With the world thinking he’s dead—whether he leaves me or not—he’ll be okay. I’ll be able to sleep easy as long as I know that.
Author’s Note
While I was out for a walk with my dog late at night, mid-2004, Zara Lain first came out to speak to me.
Almost literally.
She strolled up, tapped on my shoulder, and started talking. As I walked, I felt her there. Saw the world as she did. Heard her chatter about her awesomeness. I had an image in my mind of a young woman, being stalked through the streets at night, only to leap onto a shop and become predator instead of prey.
I had other books to work on so I ignored her. Or, rather, tried to. After reading the book, I’m sure you can guess how impossible that was: what Zara wants, Zara gets. And late one night when her name popped in my head—Zara Lain—I knew there’d be no shutting her up. I had to start her story.
She’ll always be one of my favourite characters to write. When she shows up, the whole book goes smoothly for me because she just never stops talking, always eager to show me what’s going to happen. Though the next two books (Hunter and Lineage) in the series deal with different narrators, Zara makes appearances in both and is very much part of the story, setting up for her return to narrate in the fourth book, Exhumed. She also narrates various short stories and novellas in the ’verse, a list of which can be found at www.zaralain.com.
As a special bonus, you’ll find the short story Thrall next. Written from Nate’s point of view, it’s set during the time Zara was hidden underground in Bloodlines while he was looking for her, and it gives some hints with where things were going. After that, get a glimpse at the next novel in the series, Hunter.
My sincerest thanks for reading and I hope you join us for future installments.
Thrall
A Nate O’Connor Short Story
She wasn’t dead.
I paced the length of the room, steps heavy and deliberate. The murmurs from the hall beyond the closed door to my left were loud enough for me to hear; no way would they miss my stomping around.
Just a friendly reminder I was still there. Waiting.
Impatiently.
And an impatient warlock was a dangerous warlock; I’d rather my hosts keep that fact in mind.
The “waiting” room, for lack of a better term, redefined the words “dank basement.” Decorated in the seventies and not updated since, it boasted wood paneled walls, mustard coloured carpet, and a brass floor lamp with decades’ worth of dust. Swirls of brown water stains ran along the off-white ceiling tiles and the air had a noticeable damp, musty smell to it.
They didn’t just have an impatient warlock on their hands; they had an irritated one.
The door creaked open at last. I ceased my pacing and turned, dark hair brushing my shoulders. My fingers twitched, magic rushing through my veins and twisting around my limbs. Hot with a prickly edge, it begged to be used. I clenched my fists. Took one long, steadying breath. Then another.
It didn’t help.
Felix Laurent stepped into the room. He stood tall enough that he ducked slightly in the doorway. White teeth gleamed in his dark face, fangs extended as he gave an unfriendly smile.
It was all show, of course. A lot of vamps dropped their fangs when greeting my kind, as if reminding us they had their own ways of kicking ass, should we feel the need to attack. Felix would, of course, be dead before his body settled on the seventies shag carpet, should I decide against the direction our conversation might take—underestimating a magic user was usually their biggest mistake. For now, though, the vamp could have his little show if it made him feel better.
“O’Connor.” He tipped his head in greeting, mumbling my surname around his teeth.
“It’s a little hard to talk with those out,” I said coolly.
Felix shrugged his broad, hulking shoulders. I wasn’t short by any means—I stood well over six feet—but this vampire made me a midget in comparison. Felix retracted his teeth but kept up the feral grin.
Magic hadn’t abated; instead it sped, licking my skin and dancing along my fingertips. I swallowed and kept my focus. “Do you have information for
me?”
The vamp walked with a quick grace he shouldn’t have been capable of with that linebacker build. “Sort of.”
Dread rolled as dryness down the back of my throat. Something was off. “Meaning?”
L'accent québécois thickened his words, but I made them out well enough. “Meaning the shortest way to find the people you’re looking for is for them to come to you.”
Motherfucking, double crossing vampires.
Felix sprang forward.
I anticipated. Extended my hand, muttered the last words of the spell I’d already prepared. Let it go.
Magic slammed hard, a tidal wave hitting. Even as it left me, it struck with a force that nearly knocked me from my feet—hard, violent, with the clarity of liquid crystal pouring through the room.
Felix froze.
Literally.
The atmosphere had gone milky and swirly, colour desaturated. I breathed deep, sucking in a breath of hazy air. A dull ache thrummed in my head, starting at the back of my neck and winding to my forehead. The weight of magic in the room pressed down on me, a steady pressure on my shoulders.
But I moved. Past the ugly brass lamp. Past Felix. I glanced at the vampire and thought of the stake holstered under my jacket. He’d double crossed me, sure, and the desire to drop him on the ground was tempting—
And then the crystalline world around me cracked.
Colour seeped back into the room, bleeding through fractures in the air. Panic seized me, heart rate going staccato, and then the headache intensified, like claws tearing behind my eyes. Foreign magic slithered into the room, destroying the last of mine and dropping me square into the world again.
Shit.
Felix blinked; I had precious seconds to move before he turned and found me, so I raced for the door. Too late, he swung around and caught my arm, mouth parted and fangs glistening in the poor light.
This close, with him moving and on top of his game, I probably wouldn’t get too far with the stake. Instead, I slipped out the gun holstered at my waist, lifted the barrel to his forehead, and fired.
Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) Page 28
