Death Betrays

by J. C. Diem

  When my friends had gathered their gear, we headed for a hotel halfway down the block. Most of the million or so inhabitants of the town had been evacuated and the streets were eerily quiet. I cast glances back over my shoulder to see Aventius and his followers emerging from the sewer. They were quickly followed by Anna-Eve and her diminished band of courtiers and guards. The two groups of European vampires sent mistrustful glances at each other as they grabbed their belongings and hurried after us. The contingent of Japanese warriors came last.

  Beautiful, blonde and generally unpleasant, Anna-Eve and her band had been sent to bolster our numbers by the Comtesse. Despised by almost everybody, the Comtesse was one of the nine Councillors who ruled the French Court. We had only contacted her and asked for help out of sheer desperation. The newly-made fledglings had been too fast for the humans to fight so the responsibility had fallen to us. Our numbers had been too few and we’d needed to increase them any way we could.

  Ancient and evil, the Comtesse had a habit of collecting attractive men and women and turning them into her sexual slaves. The love of my unlife had been part of her collection until I’d pried him free from her cold, dead hands. Chopping one of them off had helped me to accomplish that feat.

  Luc had been made by the praying mantis seven centuries ago and had been in her thrall ever since. Short and voluptuous, the Comtesse had white blonde hair and wide set, soulless eyes, hence the reason I’d named her after that particular insect.

  Luc, or Lord Lucentio as he was known in Court circles, had partially won his freedom from her three centuries ago when his pretend maker, Monique had been executed for being a traitor. Monique had tried to arrange for the Comtesse to be assassinated but her plan had backfired. After his pretend master’s death, Luc had been elevated into the role of a Lord. That had given him the freedom to decide who he would share his bed with. His decision had been to share it with no one. That had all changed when he had stumbled across me while hunting my maker down in Australia. By the time he had found me, Silvius had no longer been with us. My first instinct when I discovered that Silvius was a vampire had been to spear a cross through his heart. The fact that I had survived murdering my master had been Luc’s first clue that I wasn’t a normal fledgling vampire. When he saw me holding the cross without bursting into flames, it had solidified his hunch.

  My hand must have tightened on Luc’s waist because he shot me a concerned look. Six feet tall, black haired with a body that was long, lean and well-muscled and with a face as handsome as an underwear model’s, Luc was the hottest man I’d ever met, dead or alive. He had broken his three hundred year long abstinence the night my flesh hunger had woken. For reasons I still couldn’t define, he had been attracted to me even when I’d still been fairly ordinary of face and figure. I wasn’t sure exactly when he had come to love me but I’d been inside his memories and knew how he felt about me. I’d become a bit more secure about his feelings for me since I’d gained an unholy beauty in the early stages of my undeath.

  I’d met many vampires since being turned but Luc was still the only one who turned me on. Somewhere along our strange journey, I’d fallen for him as well. How could I not when he was so superior to any other man I’d ever met? Sure, he’d beheaded me once but that hadn’t been his fault. He’d just been helplessly obeying the praying mantis’ order. Taking one of her hands wasn’t enough payback for having my head hacked off but it was a start.

  Casting another look back over my shoulder, I met Aventius’ worried gaze. He appeared to be somewhere in his sixties, which was far older in mortal years than most vamps I’d met so far. Dark bags crouched beneath his eyes and his cheeks were hollow and sunken. If he’d been human, I would have strongly suggested that he see a doctor. I believed his decrepit appearance was due to lack of food rather than from ill health. As far as I knew, and my knowledge of our species was woefully inadequate at times, vampires didn’t get sick. We couldn’t catch diseases, age or procreate. We were forever frozen at whatever age we had been when undeath wrapped its chilly hands around our throats and strangled the life out of us.

  Aventius was a fairly recent acquaintance who I had met under stranger than usual circumstances. After portents had appeared to signify that Mortis had finally risen, he had gathered a small band of followers and had started sacrificing humans in my name. Instead of feeding from their victims, they had simply cut their hearts out and had tossed their bodies aside like trash. I’d quickly put a stop to that after discovering their lair in Russia on my way to kill the First. I had made it very clear that slaughtering innocents wouldn’t endear them to me.

  Aventius and his followers had sworn to serve me and, whether I liked it or not, they were my responsibility now. Joshua, one of Aventius’ followers, glared at me with his still mostly green eyes. Hot-headed and loud-mouthed, he was young in both mortal and vampire years. I didn’t know what Aventius had been thinking when he’d turned the young man into one of us. Whatever his reasons had been, we were all stuck with Joshua now.

  The alliance between the three vampire factions was even more precarious than the one we had with the humans. Anything could shatter the truce at any time. Almost directly after I had that thought, Anna-Eve spoke.

  “One night soon, Councillor Aventius, I will personally relieve you of your head,” she said in a low voice that she probably didn’t realize carried to me. The satisfaction in her tone made Aventius hunch his shoulders.

  Predictably, Joshua turned to confront the courtier. “You’ll have to go through me to get to my master!”

  Snatching a long knife from the hands of one of her entourage, Anna-Eve smiled widely. “That can be arranged.”

  Before any black ooze that passed for our blood could be shed, I was standing between the pair. I held my hands up in front of their faces and they both cringed away from the holy marks on my palms. The marks were perfect impressions of the cross that should have killed me as soon as I’d touched it but had merely marked me as being Mortis instead. “The only one who will be doing any beheading around here is me,” I snarled at the pair.

  Aventius hauled his servant away, shielding him from my wrath with his body. The rest of his followers gathered close, proving they actually cared for the ex-councillor. Anna-Eve’s people had stepped back a few paces. They were sensibly staying out of the splash zone just in case I reduced her to a puddle of sludge. Clearly, they didn’t hold much affection for her.

  Handing the dagger back to her lackey, Anna-Eve smiled again but her black eyes remained cold. “If Aventius can keep his servant on a leash, I will behave myself until this is over.” Her appearance had been immaculate when we’d first met but she was decidedly bedraggled now. Clingy and once fire engine red, her dress was stained and torn. Her long blonde hair was splattered with clumps of ooze. As a pampered courtier, she was dealing quite well with the filth and ruination of her clothing. While she sounded French, for all I knew she might have been made way back when Vikings still went on the rampage and this was all quite normal for her.

  Joshua quailed when I turned on him. He flinched back from my finger when I pointed it in his direction. “Keep your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself from now on. If you cause any more trouble, I’ll kill you myself.”

  “She started it,” the young vamp whined and subsided when his master clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Forgive him, Mortis,” Aventius said. “He is still very young. Surely you remember what it was like to be newly-made?”

  “I’m not like other vampires,” I reminded him. “I didn’t get the overwhelming thirst for blood and sex when I first rose. I didn’t need to learn how to control myself.”

  Luc surreptitiously coughed, which was something none of us needed to do once we became the undead. Geordie sniggered at the subtle reminder that I did in fact have one insatiable hunger that Luc had sacrificed himself to feed the night we had met. “Ok, I didn’t get the overwhelming need for blood,” I amended. “So I don’t
fully know what it’s like to be a normal newly-made vampire. I do know that a master is supposed to be responsible for their servants and that they should stop them from doing anything stupid. Joshua’s death will be on your conscience so I suggest you try to control him from now on.”

  I raked my gaze across all of the Europeans and to the group that was gathered beyond them. The Japanese warriors had automatically moved to surround their leader. Ishida was short enough that he was hidden from my view. Kokoro’s blind white eyes met mine as one of the warriors shifted slightly. Compassion flickered briefly over her face. Kokoro wasn’t just a prophetess, she could also read minds. She knew I hated being in charge and disliked handing out threats. She also knew I would follow through on them if I was forced to.

  Satisfied that the three groups would behave themselves for now, I continued following the uneasy American soldier. A gap opened up between my small group of friends and our increasingly reluctant allies. “I thought Nicholas was an ass,” Geordie murmured when I reached his side. “Joshua is nearly as bad as the muscle bound freak.”

  My upper lip automatically curled at hearing the ex-courtier’s name. Nicholas had defected from the Court and had begged to join me after I’d killed the First. He’d been a constant annoyance from the moment he’d become part of our group. I still wasn’t entirely sure what his motives had been but he’d tried to awaken my flesh hunger on more than one occasion. Not particularly tall but very heavily muscled, Nicholas had the face of a fallen angel. If I hadn’t already been in love with Luc, I might have succumbed to temptation and sated my flesh hunger on him. He’d offered himself to me several times but I’d declined the invitation each time, much to his disappointment.

  Nicholas had finally shown his true colours when he’d tried to force himself on me after we had chased one of the rogue disciples down together. If I hadn’t been gifted with unusual strength, I had no doubt he would have succeeded. It might not have felt like rape when my flesh hunger rose to match his but that was what it would have been.

  I should have killed the ex-courtier when we had been alone in the cavern with no one around to witness the act but I stupidly hadn’t. Because of that poor decision, Luc had almost lost his life. Nicholas had come very close to ending my beloved by lobbing an explosive device at his back. Thinking fast had never been one of my strong suits but I’d managed it for once. I’d detached my left hand and had launched it at the explosive, catching it and deflecting it from its trajectory. My hand had disintegrated but it had grown back and was as good as new again. As for Nicholas, he’d fled before I could exact my revenge on him.

  “Where do you think Nicholas is now?” Gregor asked. He’d increased his pace to match mine and asked the question over Geordie’s shorter head.

  I shook my head bleakly. “I don’t know. I’m starting to doubt everything we knew about him.” Not that we knew much about him at all. He was two thousand years old and had been made by a rogue servant, or so he’d told us. He’d been employed as a guard by the newly formed Court after his master had been killed. When the First had started calling in the possessed vampires, the Court had slowly started to dwindle. The Comtesse had elevated certain guards to be courtiers in an attempt to make up for their decline in numbers.

  It had sounded fishy then and his story was even more suspect now. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nicholas had had a secret agenda all along. He’d tried to seduce me and, when that had failed, he had tried to kill Luc. “All I know is that if I ever see him again, he’s a dead man,” I said with finality.

  Luc slid his uninjured arm over my shoulder and hugged me to his side. “I think we can all agree that if any of us encounter Nicholas, we will stake him through the heart first and ask questions later.”

  “I hope I’m there to see him bite the dust,” Geordie said fervently. He’d been tormented by the hulking ex-courtier when he’d been freshly made. Both had been made by rogue servants but Geordie’s origins had made him an object of pity. His maker had been a teenage girl. She had wanted him to kill her master so she could be freed from his cruelty. Nicholas saw this as a reason to make fun of Geordie. The teen had kept the teasing a secret because he hadn’t wanted anyone to know of his torment. Only Luc and I knew about it. Luc wasn’t one to tell tales and I would keep the knowledge to myself. The abuse was just one more reason for me to end Nicholas’ life.

  Igor clapped his apprentice on the back, making Geordie stagger forward a couple of steps. “We all want to witness Nicholas’ death but that is going to have to wait until we have dealt with the final disciple.” The Russian had a knack for getting us back on track.

  Gregor’s hand rose to his chin, a gesture he made when he was deep in thought. “After we have all freshened up, we should gather together to discuss our options.”

  “Shouldn’t Colonel Sanderson and General Merwe be present when we have this discussion?” Geordie asked tentatively. Being the youngest, except for me, he tended not to speak up much when grown-up topics were being discussed. He was mischievous in nature and even I had a hard time taking the teen seriously at times.

  Gregor smiled at Geordie with only the slightest hint of indulgence showing. “The Second has been moving northward at a steady pace. I believe he intends to leave Africa soon. We can advise Colonel Sanderson of any information that we think he should be made aware of. However, General Merwe will no longer be able to assist us in our hunt once we leave the continent.”

  Luc eyed his crafty friend shrewdly. “What makes you think the disciple plans to leave Africa?” The pair had been friends for centuries, ever since Luc had become his own master. Gregor had shown Luc that there could be more to our unlife than blood and sex. He had my respect for that as well as for being suave, intelligent and generally likeable.

  “That is what I would do if I were him,” the clever vamp replied.

  I can’t wait to hear the theory he’s come up with. Whatever it was, it would probably turn out to be accurate. Gregor was a master planner and had an enviable ability to think up the most likely scenario when it came to the most ancient of our kind. If anyone could figure out what the Second’s next move would be, it would be Gregor. The rest of us would flounder around remaining utterly clueless without him on our side.

  Chapter Three

  Disappearing into the foyer of a moderately successful looking five story hotel, the soldier waited for us inside. Luc was the first of our group through the doors. His borrowed gun, a prototype that had been designed by American weapons experts specifically to blow our kind apart, was slung over his uninjured shoulder. I could see the gaping knife wound already healing through the tears in his cashmere sweater. Soon the injury would be gone without a trace.

  While vampires could heal almost anything, I was the only one who could actually reattach limbs that had been sliced or blown off. I had attained several strange talents that no one else seemed to share. Until recently, I’d thought I was the only one who could sense others of our kind. That theory had been disabused after touring through the mind and memories of the Second during a dream. After thousands of years of entombment, he’d honed his senses enough to also be able to sense animals and humans as well as vampires. It might be petty but I was irked that his talent was greater than mine. I was the fabled Mortis, he was just my lowly nemesis. My, aren’t we getting a bit big for our boots? I made a face at the snarky jab from my inner voice.

  The foyer was soon crowded with vampires and the soldier began handing out key cards. Wisely, he made sure each group was housed on a different floor. Waiting until everyone had headed upstairs, I drew the soldier aside. Luc stopped at the base of the stairs to wait for me.

  “How can I help you, ma’am?” A trifle apprehensive, the American fiddled with the pistol on his hip. He wasn’t jumpy enough to use it but I wasn’t about to make any sudden moves. Unlike me, Luc couldn’t reattach his body parts and I liked his body just the way it was.

  “I think it would be a good idea to
station some soldiers on each floor.”

  One of his eyebrows went up in query. “Why would we want to do that, ma’am?”

  Heaving an internal sigh, I wished Sanderson was here. I doubted I’d have to explain myself to him. “Let’s just say that there is a lot of tension between some of our people. I’d like to discourage the tension from turning into assassination attempts.”

  His dark brown eyes widened in belated understanding. “I’ll run the idea past the Colonel, ma’am.”

  As he reached for his radio, I turned to find Luc standing right in front of me. I was startled but not quite badly enough to reach for the swords that crisscrossed my back. They had also been a gift from Ishida. Fresh grief that our friendship had been ruined hit me. I’d had no friends when I’d been alive and had only really learned their true value after I had died.

  Putting his good hand around my waist, Luc hugged me to him and rested his chin on the top of my head. My average height of five feet four inches made this possible. We weren’t usually this touchy feely in public but after coming so close to losing him, I wasn’t about to complain.

  “Colonel Sanderson is sending over some more men, ma’am,” our guide said. He averted his eyes from witnessing the affection of creatures he could only see as being unnatural.

  I nodded then headed for the stairs. Our room was on the first floor and I was glad I didn’t have to climb any higher. I wasn’t tired in the physical sense but I was drained mentally. I’d lost count of how many fledglings I’d shot or sliced apart. When I’d waded into the mob and began unleashing my holy marks, it had become impossible to keep track of the damage I’d parcelled out. Every vampire in a fifty foot radius had exploded each time I’d used the dark power that resided within me. I had that tactic to thank for being utterly coated in ooze.