Empire of Blood (Book 2): Fading In Darkness

by Wilson, Robert S.

  “I don’t know why you’re bothering to keep so quiet, I can hear every move you make as loudly as I’m sure you can hear my heart beating.”

  A moment later, small, almost-delicate yet iron-strong hands gripped Hank around his forehead. No, it won’t be that easy. Hank grabbed the back of her head over his shoulder and sent her thin body flying forward. She landed with a muddy splash in the murky brown water ahead, her long hair spreading out in the water like thin black moss. And before Hank could even take a breath she was rushing up from the water lunging for his throat. She couldn’t have been any older than Toby when her mortal life had ended. Hank didn’t have time to react, so he swung quick and with precision. His fist met her temple just before she could reach his throat and knocked her unconscious in mid air. He caught her before she could fall back into the muck below. He pulled her over his shoulder the way he remembered seeing Ishan do with Simon the first time he met the ancient vampire, grinned at the memory, and then continued sloshing toward the cave entrance. The moonlight reflected from the swamp in strange refracted shapes like eerie headlights in a carnival house of mirrors.

  “Bloodlust, eh? Well, sorry. I’m not your average meal.” Still unconscious, the girl did not respond as she dangled from his shoulder. As he came closer to the cave entrance, he had to duck under branches and climb over bushes and weeds and all the while make sure he didn’t hurt this girl any more than he already had. In another time he would have felt sorry for her, would have been angered to the bone by her youth taken away from her and turned into something so terrible. But at this time in this place there were too many reasons why he couldn’t bring himself to feel a thing other than a detached sense of protectiveness. Almost like a sense of obligation that he didn’t really care about personally. A numbness. He made note of this and locked it away for later examination. Everything he was going through was still too surreal and new to him to try and make any sense of just yet.

  At the cave’s entrance, something stopped him from stepping forward. It was that inner vision again. He could sense the gap before him though he couldn’t visually see anything but pure blackness. The cave was positioned in such a way that a deep pocket of thin mud welcomed those who might attempt to enter. It was likely a great way to protect the place. Only a vampire could make the jump unaided. Well—a vampire or someone like Hank. He knelt down and positioned the girl so her upper body dangled over his left shoulder and her legs dangled over his right and then launched himself upward and forward. He landed on slick salty rock and started to slip. Moving his feet quickly, he managed to run up before gravity could pull him and his passenger down into the dark sludge below.

  Eventually the ground seemed to solidify and dry beneath his feet and he found traction easier to maintain. The cave ahead curved somewhat upward, but not so steep as to keep him from being able to move forward. A dim familiar yellow glow emanated from beyond the dark gray shadows of the cave walls surrounding him and leading most of the way ahead. The taste of salt permeated the air so much it was almost nauseating. He kept on. Small silver stalactites poked their way down from the ceiling of the cave as the ground beneath Hank started to level out. He was no longer headed uphill; the way ahead seemed to veer very slightly downward instead now.

  The glow up ahead grew as Hank continued on. He was so focused on it, the sheer radiance of it, the presence it represented, he nearly tripped over a stalagmite. Looking down, he took notice that the cave floor was filled with them now. And they only grew taller the further he went. Shadows stretched along the walls after a while of walking and reverberated voices echoed gibberish to him from some place deep within the cave. The acoustics of the place made it sound as though the lips were speaking just behind Hank’s ear. He found himself constantly looking back the way he came to make sure no one was there. But as the glow spread and grew in brightness, Hank came to a large clearing.

  His first glimpse of her standing in the center of so many vampires all at their knees before her took his breath away.

  Their eyes met and all the world fell away.

  Her blood red irises burned through every pore of his body. Her inhuman figure had a more feminine shape than any man could ever dream of. Flawless coconut flesh, the visual texture of a well-crafted satin, gleamed from her body in the firelight. A passion Hank had never known himself capable of took hold. And in that moment somehow he knew that his eyes had changed color to match hers. They were now linked in a way that no other creatures could ever be. Something new was happening now and she had been waiting many centuries for its arrival.

  Hank began stepping toward her, mesmerized and somehow magnetized to her very skin. He reached behind himself and lifted the fledgling vampire girl from his shoulders and laid her down on the cave floor beside him then returned his gaze to the Queen. She reached her hands out to him and the vampires circled around her hissed in unison. In some place in the back of his mind, Hank saw them in his peripheral vision, their eyes glaring at this undeserving human being welcomed into the Queen’s arms where they had all been denied before. But that part of Hank was only a passing glimpse and it was over now, fading into the sweet oblivion of her touch. Yes. Her hands were on him now. Spreading all over him and caressing and gently but lustfully pulling him to follow her.

  She turned and took his hand as if to lead him somewhere and for one second while her eyes were turned away Hank was able to look back. Ishan stood tall yet crouched and ready to attack at the center of hundreds of vampires still bowing. His face was contorted into the most hateful thing Hank had ever seen. It was barely recognizable as the face of a man that Hank had befriended not so long ago. Saliva slid down the ancient vampire’s mouth as he glared at the two of them. Hank wanted to stop, wanted to understand why his friend looked so bitterly angry, but as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the Queen turned back to him and gazed into his eyes and any sense of control he’d had melted away. And as he followed her through narrow corridors, a deep mournful howl from far away echoed along the cave walls and a chill of terror rippled through Hank.

  Don’t worry, my love. He can’t hurt you. No one can defy the Queen of the Dead.

  Chapter 28

  The Arrival

  The sky cast a dreary gray shadow over the dilapidated neighborhood as Jonathan’s truck crept along the road. Weed-covered houses with boarded up doors and windows covered in graffiti lined both sides, except for the occasional empty lot or partially torn down structure. Jonathan pulled the truck over to the left alongside a tan brick building that looked like an abandoned old bar.

  “Here we are. The official place of welcome in the state of Louisiana to all folks hiding from the Empire,“ Jonathan said, opening the driver side door and sliding halfway from the leather seat.

  “Really? Are you sure we didn‘t take a wrong turn?” Dustin asked.

  Jonathan laughed. “I’m guessing that’s exactly why our southern brothers and sisters chose this particular establishment as its place of hiding.” He winked at Dustin. Toby sat staring at the dim sunlight that was somehow managing to make its way through all those desolate clouds and reflect off of the brick wall of the building.

  When they came around to the back of the building a weathered sign stretched across the width of the building above a single poorly painted white door in patchy faded red lettering. It read THE BLUE MERMAID. Underneath that alongside the door was a NO LOITERING sign. Jonathan reached forward and knocked a strange rhythm against the solid wood with his knuckles. The knock was repeated from inside and Jonathan followed the performance with an even more intricate pattern of knocks. This went on several more times, each set of knocks getting more and more complex, until finally the door unlatched. A dark-complected man with sharp blue eyes, black hair and wrinkled skin that didn’t match the youth of the rest of his features appeared from the darkness within.

  “Identify your friends, Jonathan.”

  “Toby Evans and Dustin Cayne.”

  The man’s eyes
seemed to light up at Toby’s name and then he slammed the door firmly. A moment later the door reopened and the man was waving them to come in. “Please, hurry,” he said, closing the door behind them. “We believe it’s only a matter of time before the Imperial Guardians come knocking on our door and if the neighbors around here get a clue what’s going on, they’ll make sure those fuckers find out even faster. Probably the only chance they would have to keep themselves from getting caught doing whatever ungodly shit they’re doing.”

  Dim beams of light came in from small windows along the side of the wall looking like yellow slides made of soft floating particles descending down to the concrete floor. Another man stepped out of the shadows and in front of the yellow beams simultaneously destroying and absorbing them with his dark tailored pants. “Billy, I’ll take over from here. Just keep your ear to that door in the meantime.” The man nodded in their general direction and they came closer as he turned for them to follow him.

  Toby wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been expecting but this certainly wasn’t it. In some dark recess of his mind he imagined vampires hanging upside down from the inside of some dark cave, their yellow eyes lit up and shining in the darkness. He had very little idea how close he actually was to what was turning out to be the wrong place. Before long he realized that this place they were in was for the Foederati alone. There were no vampires here. And eventually he realized it was likely just as void of his father as well. Last he’d known his dad was traveling with the vampires of Necropolis, and two and two told him no vampires, no Hank.

  The man in the dark tailored suit led them to a strange elevator. Inside, the air was stiff and musky. He pushed a lit up button that said 37 and to Toby’s surprise, he felt his body lift some with the inertia of the elevator headed downward. He chided himself for not figuring it out sooner. The building had obviously only been one floor. Toby became dizzy from the speed of the elevator. He watched as its yellow digits increased like the seconds on a digital clock. There was a violent shift and the elevator came to a stop for a long moment, its digital display showing they weren’t quite on floor number 27 yet. Toby held his breath. And then with no notice at all the elevator burst back into movement, its base shaking like a recovering alcoholic as it rocketed down nearly twice as fast as it had before.

  A comforting hand squeezed Toby’s shoulder. He looked back to see Dustin smile with a plastic holy-shit-I-hope-we’re-gonna-be-okay smile. A second later the elevator practically collided with its destination. The doors opened and a bell chimed innocently letting them know they had somehow lived to arrive at their destination. The party stumbled their way from the elevator as the man in the suit gracefully stepped out and brushed off his jacket. “Where are my manners? I almost forgot. My name is William Rustle.” He shook Dustin’s hand first, then nodded at Jonathan who seemed to already know who the man was and then he leaned down in front of Toby as if the boy was much younger than he actually was.

  “Your father is a great man. You know that, right?”

  Toby nodded, unsure what to say. The man smiled and shook Toby’s hand with a tight confident grip. Several corridors later, they came to a small office room, where William let them in and asked them to sit down on several plastic bright-colored chairs. Only after the man was gone and the three of them sat waiting for several minutes in that tiny room, did Toby realize he should have asked the man where his father was.

  Almost as if he were reading Toby’s mind, Dustin spoke up then.

  “So, where the hell is Hank?”

  Jonathan shrugged and then slapped his hands against his legs. “Hell, I don’t know for sure. No one told me jack. But if I had to take a good guess, if he’s not here he’s at the hive.”

  “The hive?” Dustin’s forehead scrunched into a wrinkly mess.

  “Yeah, the queen vampire’s hive.”

  * * *

  An exquisite fire spread through Hank’s every vein as he entered the Queen over and over, their arms locked around each other and their skin sweaty and suctioning their bodies together. Blood spread from both of their necks and intermingled in a small pool on the cave floor underneath her. Her body felt equally and conflictingly both petite and solid as stone all at once. Their red irises locked together as their pelvises thrusted into each other.

  A wave of power unlike anything Hank had ever felt rushed through his body enhancing the pleasure of the sex unexpectedly. His palms went from cradling the back of her slender head, slid through her soft black hair and found their way to her firm silky breasts, squeezed them gently and rubbed slowly and pressingly against the hard nipples at each center.

  Her legs wrapped around Hank then and she rolled him over so that she was on top. With an all too inhuman agility, she flipped up her legs so that her feet slapped against the cave floor and she began to ride against him, her legs working like pulleys, lifting her torso and bringing it down faster and faster. Her claws gripped into Hank’s chest and she licked the blood from her lips as she rocked against him even harder. What little stamina Hank had deflated from him at once as his body stiffened in ecstasy. The Queen’s mouth opened and a soft moan left her full lips and echoed off of the cave walls and back into Hank’s ear as the whole world turned upside down all around him. A moment later and it was all over. She lay there in his arms, a mischievous grin stretched across her face baring her still bloody fangs.

  Hank’s thoughts immediately turned to Ishan. Why had the ancient vampire looked at him so hatefully? Without even changing her expression, the Queen’s voice filled Hank’s mind then.

  You share Ishan’s place at my side. It is only natural that he should be displeased. But he will grow to accept that I am no one’s bride for the taking. I will take whatever lover I will and no vampire nor human can cast their petty shackling morals upon me. I am the mother of many and the lover of only a few. Ishan should be proud and grateful to even be able to share me. So much greed within the heart of the likes of your people.

  Isn’t Ishan more your people than mine?

  In flesh he is, child. But in spirit he is the most human of all of my children. That is why I chose him. And maybe part of why I chose you.

  But I’m not a vampire.

  No, you are not. But you are not human either. You never truly were. Not fully. But that is neither here nor there. Sleep, child. There is much yet to come and you will need your strength.

  Before Hank could argue he found his eyes closing on their own with a drowsy heaviness he couldn’t fight. Within seconds, he was cascading into a deep dark sleep. The last thing he heard as he fell away into that black pit of unconsciousness was a hoarse whispering spoken in more of a hiss than a voice. “The seed has been planted. Before long I will be heavy with our children. A new breed will rise.”

  Chapter 29

  Betrayal’s Sting

  It happened so fast. One moment he was so glad to be home, looking in his lover’s eyes, and the next moment she was looking in his with a passion Ishan had never seen bestowed upon himself before, even in all their long centuries together. It was a sparkle in her eyes that ripped through his heart like a rock through rice paper. She’d known all along. She’d been waiting for him. And had never once intended to tell Ishan of what would take place.

  Watching her lead him into those narrow caverns was like watching his own past long gone. Would he ever be able to feel her touch again? Would she ever moisten his lips with her luscious life’s blood again? He stood surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of their children both her kind and his and felt a loneliness he’d been dreading all along. A despair more powerful than any empire. Like a deep chasm more empty than any cave within the confines of the earth’s crust. An unending well of darkness.

  Ishan tried hard to focus through what felt like poison piercing his heart. A dizziness took over his core and everything he thought he knew seemed to be ambiguous now. If his love for her could do such a thing to him then what else had he grown to believe that would rip out from
under him like this? Even surrounded by his own kin, Ishan felt completely alien to the world around him, to everything he’d ever known. He stumbled away from the crowd of vampires, human and ancestor, and escaped out into the fresh night air. He needed to be the hunter now. He needed to feel that primal instinct that grips hold of the killer, he needed to drink the blood that he knew would never compare and could only diffuse his suffering so much. But he had to do something.

  As he effortlessly yet somehow a little clumsily jumped from tree top to tree top toward the city he hadn’t truly visited for nearly a quarter century, Ishan thought of Peter. He could understand now. The pain he had caused the young vampire. He could understand what it must have been like for Rachel to lie to him. Why he would turn to rebellion after what Ishan had done. But Peter was dead now. And Rachel too. Though he still mourned her loss, he could barely feel the sting of it beside the dark hole growing in his heart now. I should’ve known. Even as ancient as Ishan was, his youngest days upon the earth, his queen had walked its surface many thousands of years past. She was so old that even her name could not be spoken, its language long dead and buried under many layers of weathered earth beneath this very forest. In a time when this land wasn’t even in its current place geographically. In a time when all the continents were one.

  As Ishan came nearer and nearer to the dull glow of the city, he let his instincts take over and the smell of human blood fill his lungs. There were so many humans out there, he hadn’t yet taken the time to really sense the difference now that he was free of the city of sin. The other one anyway. Many could argue that in its prime, New Orleans was hardly a saint of cities. Even now, while a religious empire ruled over its businesses and streets, a hint of that old sinful voodoo permeated the sights, sounds, and smells of the place. It almost felt like home again to Ishan.