Cruxim (Paranormal Fallen Angel/Vampire Series)

by Karin Cox

  The second day, he took an object from a leather satchel he carried. The flip of the pages drew my attention. It had been four decades since I had read a book, and the thought came sorely to me. I remembered the embossed incunabulum I had given Joslyn and wondered what had become of it. Walking to the bars, I asked, “You are a reader?”

  Finally, the man spoke. “A reader. A researcher. A collector, if you like.”

  “What do you collect?”

  He raised his head, revealing his eyes for the first time. They were a deep onyx, endless as an abyss, and the only spark of life in his gray face.

  “Curiosities.” He closed the book with a snap, and I saw a gleam of gold on the ancient cover.

  A chill rippled through me.

  “Aren’t you curious?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “Indeed.” Opening the book again, he turned to a page and held it up to me. “Tell me, what do you make of this?”

  I looked at the page and then immediately whirled away in surprise. Then, checking myself, turned back to face him. “An age-old myth,” I said. “The Sphinx.”

  “A myth? Just a story in an old book?” He traced the gilt image with his finger and blew away dust. “I wonder,” he lingered over the words, “given they’re so prominent in mythological literature, from Greece to Egypt to Asia, whether there might not be some truth in them. But then, I’m just a man.” He studied me, his expression not of curiosity but of knowing.

  I said nothing.

  “Tell me”—he approached the bars—“as a Seraph, do you think they exist.”

  I was taken aback. Who was this man? Or rather, what? I maintained my silence.

  The man flipped forward several pages and held the book up again. Depicted was a Cherub. One gray, overgrown eyebrow shot up toward the old man’s balding pate.

  I remained silent.

  “I know what you are,” he whispered through the bars.

  “Apparently not.” I turned my back on him to face the window, thankful my coat hid my wings.

  “Perhaps you are a type of Vampire? Nosferatu?” He changed tack.

  “Keep guessing, old man.” He was beginning to annoy me.

  “I suppose I could always ask Sabine.”

  Despite myself, I spun around and tore over to the bars.

  “So.” He chuckled. “You have made her acquaintance after all.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “I told you: I collect curiosities.”

  “And Sabine?”

  “I’m sure you will agree she is a curious beast.”

  “Gandler!” The name came to me in a flash of memory. “What have you done with her?”

  “Done? Nothing. I can take you to her if you like, if you will let me bind you. If you will come willingly.”

  I considered it for a moment. At the very least, it would mean a temporary freedom from this prison, but from Sabine’s tale, Dr. Claus Gandler could not be trusted. Perhaps he did not even have Sabine, although how he had discovered I knew her, I did not know. Was it a lucky bluff?

  I stared at him again. His black eyes were fixed on me. One finger casually smoothed the page of the book.

  “If Sabine knows I am here, why didn’t she come herself?”

  Gandler laughed. “In the daytime? I’m sure you know as well as I that by day she is ensconced in stone.”

  “Yes,” I said. “In Alexandria.” I made a wild guess, hoping beyond hope I was wrong. I was sure Sabine would never return to Egypt, not while Gandler remained alive.

  Dr. Gandler’s eyes lit up, and his nostrils flared. It was enough to tell me he did not have Sabine. He was fishing.

  “Alexandria,” he repeated thoughtfully.

  I laughed, all the while calculating in my head. Fifty years had I known Sabine. Gandler must be in his late eighties at least. I hoped his mortal life would be snuffed out before he laid eyes on Sabine again. If it had not been for the bars, I might have considered snuffing it out myself, even though to do so would mean death for me.

  “You will not come with me, then?”

  “Old man, if you open that door, it will take more than bindings to keep me from your throat.”

  The laugh that came from him rasped with age. “You supernaturals, always so melodramatic. Suit yourself. Enjoy your prison.” He creaked to his feet, clapped the book shut, and shook it at me. “I found this,” he told me, “in the ruins of a castle near Barcelona when I was but a boy. It is very old they tell me. Hundreds of years. Such a shame what the weather did to it, but I have had it restored as best I could. It would have been very beautiful once. But it has been a most helpful guide to your preternatural kin. I wonder if the original owner found it as useful. It was inscribed to a woman named Joslyn. With a bit of digging through the convent archives, I was able to discover it belonged to a novice, it turns out. An orphan—poor thing. The convent records said she vanished one night, something to do with a strange benefactor. Curious, isn’t it?”

  “Among a lifetime of curiosities, perhaps not so much.” I yawned. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

  He squinted through the bars. “I don’t know what you are.” His voice was menacingly quiet. “Not yet. But I know who you are. I have seen one like you once, just a fleeting glimpse of her face in the crowd, but it was enough to make me want her. And I will find Sabine too, and you … well … you’re not going anywhere just yet, are you?” He turned and made his way down the stairs.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Gandler,” I yelled after him. “But you are. You’re going to hell, you whoreson. Say hello to Fritz.”

  For an old man, he was back up the steps faster than I anticipated. He grasped the bars in his withered hands and shook them fiercely. Pinpoints of light in his black pupils were like dagger points as he spat, “You’ll regret that. You and that on-heat she-bitch you call a lover.” He rattled the bars again.

  It was only then that I realized he never had the key.

  As soon as he left, I retrieved the flint, more determined than ever not to be there when he returned. With some luck, he’s already on his way to Alexandria, I thought, although something told me he was smarter than that. I couldn’t tell what bothered me more: that he knew about Sabine or that he had Joslyn’s book. I had inscribed the gift in the front, simple words that told her nothing of my love for her. I wondered that she hadn’t taken it with her. Then my mind flew back to that night and the state she had been in. I remembered Beltran, clinging naked to the wall, mocking me, and her deflowered and trembling, weeping. And then it did not seem so unlikely that she had forgotten. Perhaps her interest in the book’s content had waned. What good is it to read about ghouls and wraiths once you have become one?

  My black thoughts suited the task at hand, and I chipped away until the sun began to inch its way through the cracks in the mortar and set the sparrows stirring. A thin wedge of stone prevented me from breaking through entirely. Tomorrow would be the day. Soon, the hole I had created would be big enough for me to put both feet in, and then I would kick my way to freedom. Content in that knowledge, I curled up in the corner of my cell and slept. I dreamed of Sabine.

  When I awoke, the squeal of bats heralded the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The stone squeaked beneath my exertion but did not budge. I put all of my strength into it, all of my will, and I felt the grinding and shifting beneath my feet and smelled the mustiness of the moss shearing away on the wall outside. Close to sunset as it was, bright sunlight still pierced my chamber—the first in decades—and my senses sang.

  I was free.

  I did not stop to consider the strength of my wings or body, simply slithered on my belly to the hole I had created and ran my hands lovingly over the gap where the stonework had plummeted. It was man-sized; I was sure of it.

  Don’t be a fool, Ame, my thoughts whispered. You should wait for daylight. Go out when your prey is asleep and at its most vulnerable. It had been so lon
g since I had hunted that I knew my own advice was sound, yet I thought of Sabine, confined to her anchorstone by day, and propelled myself out anyway. My hands grasped for the vines that covered the tower, hoping they might support my weight. As soon as I was outside, I understood my folly. The walls were slippery, the vine weak, and the masonry so eroded it could barely withstand even my scarce weight. I had thrown off my coat in the process of working, leaving my wings free, but they were unpracticed. Decades of strength had seeped out of me. An experimental flap revealed that my wings were barely functional.

  As the sunlight began to fade, I clung to the tower wall several hundred furlongs up, wishing I had taken my own counsel. When the vines gave out, I plummeted like the stones I had kicked out earlier, my wings doing little but break my fall.

  Freedom is a peculiar thing. For decades, I had craved it, but now that I had it, it meant little to me without Sabine. And where to find her, I knew not. I guessed she would not have returned to Egypt, but whether she was in London, Prague, Greece, or elsewhere, I did not know. Had she remained here in France? Perhaps she had made her way to the New World, where old creatures might find some respite from their past.

  When my wings had recovered some of their former strength, I flew to Paris and prowled the streets in search of her. Examining rooftops. Staring at gargoyles. Looking always for a Sphinx-shaped sculpture that might reveal her to me. But nothing did.

  In one such street, in the enveloping darkness, something slim and black fled from me in terror. I recognized the scent and the sylvan movement—one of them. Exhausted and weak as I was, I followed. The creature’s blood smelled rich, warm, and compelling, and my old urges overtook me. He turned, his face a mask of terror as he fled before me. Suddenly, I saw that, strangely, he was little more than a child. It was rare for covens to entertain the thought of one so young. The knowledge threw me, but not enough. Part of me felt a surge of pleasure in it: he would be an easy meal. But it was not to be. He sprinted down an alley that appeared a dead end. I followed, expecting to corner him there, but instead he knocked sharply on a heavy oaken door set into the wall. It was flung open and just as quickly slammed upon his entry.

  A coven house. Beltran! I thought, wondering if this were indeed the address of my nightly tormentor. If so, he would discover tonight that I had flown. Soon, the entire coven would be on guard for me. If I attacked tonight, it would afford me surprise, but I was in no state to take on a nest of Vampires.

  Defeated, I slunk away and fluttered to a rooftop. After I had dined on a nest of owls, I made a bed for the night in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. There would be time enough for vengeance.

  Vengeance found me on the morrow, long before I sought it out. Shortly after dusk, I noticed a blur of motion in the shadows. I was groggy, still half asleep, and I realized by then how vulnerable I was. Saying nothing, I crept forward. The mewling of a kitten stalled me for a moment, but what I had seen was bigger than that, and stealthier. A dull moan issued from a shadow to my right.

  “Who goes there?” I pressed myself against the sandstone wall at my back.

  “Someone you well know.”

  I knew the voice. With a hiss, I rushed from the shadow, my fangs exposed, wrists grasping for his neck.

  “Cruxim, Cruxim, Cruxim.” Beltran tsked. “Did you think to escape and then menace my boy with no retribution?” His pale, handsome face emerged from the shadows like a wraith. “Really,” he said, “it is little wonder your kind is all but extinct.”

  I leaped forward with a snarl, but he stepped aside and to the left. “Temper. Temper. Calm yourself. I bring you a gift.”

  “Your blood be my gift.” I hurled myself toward him again.

  He sighed, and the sudden whites of his eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Not that. This...” In the half-light he thrust forward a woman, her head down. Long dark hair covered her face. “You said you wanted to kill her, said you wanted to kill all of us. So do it. It is what she wants. Isn’t that so, Joslyn?”

  The woman gave a thin, high-pitched sob, and nodded.

  “Tell him, then.” Beltran shook her.

  I took in her height, her hair, the bearing of her body. She looked up at me, and even in the semi-darkness I could tell her eyes were azure. My heart quickened.

  “Ame,” she said, and her voice sounded strained.

  Any sense of the stirring I had felt when she said my name all those centuries ago had withered in me. I wondered at that; I had thought about her every day. You promised her death, I reminded myself, if you ever saw her again. An angry beast deep within me seemed to growl at the memory.

  “I cannot live like this,” she whispered. “The killing...”

  A twinge of pity piqued me. Then I remembered what she was asking me to do. “And yet you come to me and ask me to kill.”

  “It would be a mercy.”

  I flew to her, astonished by the strength of my anger after all these decades. Grasping her arms, I gazed into her face. Dark shadows hung beneath her eyes, and I noted with sorrow that much of her beauty had fled. She looked a different girl, so changed was she. She is a corpse already, I told myself, and a renewed rage coursed through me. “Monsieur LeRay is a mercy.” I shoved her away. “I assure you, I would be no such thing.”

  She groaned then, a pitiful noise. “But this life, Ame. This life is hell.”

  My laugh, equally pitiful, echoed down the cobbled street, but inside my heart ached for her. “Hell!” I said. “Where do you think you will go, if I do this?”

  She cried then and hung her head.

  “Come, Cruxim, you promised. I told her I would bring her to you. That I had found you. She has searched for so long. Always searching for you, despite everything.” Beltran shoved her forward, and she toppled over, crying into the cobblestone. “Despite how that made me feel,” Beltran continued. “Come, you always wanted her. She is yours.”

  “I am yours,” she pleaded. “Please, please kill me. This ... this is torture.”

  Some better part of me could not bear to see her like this, but the baser animal in me saw it as either a justice or a mercy. Or maybe even a duty. She was part of my mission now; she had chosen her path.

  I knelt beside her and stroked the dark hair from her neck. She was warmer than I thought she would be, or was I remembering it? The dead were usually cold, so bitterly cold, but it had been so long since I had fed, I might have imagined it. It had been so long since I had touched another person.

  Joslyn groaned and rolled toward me, clutching at my legs, curling her body around them. I had a fleeting memory of her as a child. “This will be forever,” I choked out.

  “Better that forever than this one,” she sobbed.

  I slid down onto the cobbles beside her, my arm over her, and pressed my lips to her neck. It was warm, wet with a sheen of perspiration. A finger of foreboding crept up my spine.

  “Wait!” A thunderbolt of fawn shot from the shadows. With a yowl, it threw itself at Beltran, a tangle of claws and tumbling curls.

  “Sabine!”

  Beltran, caught unawares, was thrown off his feet. With a scream, the girl leaped to her feet, too. Seeing Beltran knocked to the ground, she turned and fled.

  “Joslyn, wait.” I caught at her sleeve, tearing it. Only then did I notice what should have been obvious. Her wrist and arm were marred with bite marks, black and swollen like the pox.

  “You are human!” As I said it, the veil of sorcery slipped away and I realized this was not Joslyn at all. Turned women were beautiful, gleaming, ethereal. She was human, nothing but a plaything of the darkness. The terrified look on her face confirmed my thoughts.

  She is right. Better death than an existence of being fed upon daily by monsters.

  She turned and fled into the jumble of streets.

  Behind me, I heard Sabine’s guttural growl as she flew at Beltran, but he was quicker than she and leaped out of her claws’ reach.

  “Sabine!” I cried again.

&
nbsp; She paid me no mind, her eyes fixed on him and burning with contempt. I hardly had time to admire her—the supple, muscular agility that enabled her to leap onto a wall after her quarry—before I was assailed from behind and the bloodlust rose up in me, crested and urgent. I spun to find more of them advancing on me, their teeth drawn.

  “What was she?” I growled. “Your harlot? A living meal? Do any of you even know where Joslyn is? Who she is?”

  “Oh, I believe Beltran knows,” a thin, blond Vampire sneered. “I believe he knew her well … in the biblical sense.” He let out a braying laugh that ended abruptly as my hand crushed his pale throat. His death came with a gurgling laugh and the launch of another Vampire at my shoulders. I whirled and shrugged, shaking that one off too and throwing him to the ground before bringing my heel down hard on his jaw. Then I fell upon him and quickly drank, feeling the life rush back into me, the hatred, the anger, the purpose, all of the feelings that had been boxed up with me in my cell.

  I will kill you all. But could I really? If she were here, could I take her from them? Could I lose her all over again? I did not want to find out.

  In the background, I heard Sabine snarl, and I spun to find her advancing on Beltran once more. He was up against a wall, the thick wet moss at his back. Sabine’s top lip curled, and her eyes gleamed hatred as she stalked toward him.

  “Shhhh, pussycat,” he mocked her. “Come now, my pet, and lie down before me. My, my, won’t you make a lovely skin on a cold floor. Or perhaps a cloak.”

  I heard her hiss again as I drew closer. “Sabine,” I called. “This is not your quarrel. He is mine. I promised him that.”

  Beltran turned his attention to her, but I could tell by the stiffness of his pose that it was me he expected, not Sabine.

  She leaped towards him, but he was agile as a knife. His teeth gleamed in the moonlight as he taunted her from the top of the wall.

  “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  I barely even felt my wings move, such was the extent of my newfound strength. I hurled myself up the wall, my fangs directed at his neck. One arm shot out automatically to clasp his dark hair, and I drew him to me.