Cursed Relic: (Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  ‘Maybe I thought through this too fast. It would have been nice seeing Liza enslaved and forced to do my bidding.’

  I slowly backed away and raised my hand in the air, ready to carve an opening to a vixra tunnel for what very well might be the last time.

  More men dressed in black with kevlar vests burst into the hall where I broke in on the other end. Their guns were ready and their necks were covered in a special material. It looked strong enough to stop a knife. Or in their case, vampire fangs should one try attacking them.

  ‘In all their devious experimenting they never realized how strong vampires are? They’ll tear right through those neck pieces.’

  I tore a hole through the air and created an opening for a vixra tunnel. Unleashing one inside isn’t the best idea in the world. I saw what it did when Edmund pulled me out of the facility through my vision. And I had seen the chaos that ensues when a building falls apart as a result. The floor startle to rattle and crack. The wall behind me ruptured into several pieces revealing a room behind the hall full of what I assumed were scientists for Gandira Corp, running their experiments only a room away from their captives.

  “Have fun,” I whispered to the vampires as one of the scientists in a white lab coat stood up and saw the vampire behind me breaking free of their cell. I sensed a flash of panic rising from the scientist’s body closest to me. He knew what they would do to him. And the others. Then I stepped inside the vixra tunnel with a single place in mind. And with the knowledge that once I made this leap, there was no going back.

  14

  When I came out the other side of the whirlwind in the tunnel, I landed right in the heart of 16th Street Mall along an alley behind a restaurant in Denver. Only it wasn’t bustling as it normally was. The evening had already turned to night. And yet, the bars weren’t open. The rails weren’t running down the street. Teenage girls weren’t funneling out of the shops with large plastic bags of the latest fashions. The streets were completely dead. The silence was downright eerie.

  It didn’t take much of a guess to realize what was happening. The city was on total lock down by the local authorities. There might even be a curfew in place.

  As I walked down the street, I cast a shadow charm to conceal me. There was white noise coming from a television within earshot. It was flickering inside a bar where a TV had been left on before they closed the building. The news was on. Just as it was in my vision. And between the flickering shots, I saw the headline on the bottom of the screen. It read:

  PRESIDENT McALLASTER ASSASSINATED IN DENVER

  Good lord. Not even Tobias would be stupid enough to do something like this. Victor…maybe.’

  No. That couldn’t be the case. I thought so before but now I wasn’t sure. Victor might have been a murderous nut case but he cared about his own. His plan to use me as bait for Gandira proved it. He wanted to find out where they were keeping the other vampires to rescue them. He had to have some sense of self-preservation. He wouldn’t have survived over a thousand years without it. He clearly didn’t care much about exposing himself to the world. But he cared about other vampires being locked up and experimented on.

  “Where were you?” an angry voice shouted at me.

  I looked up to see a familiar form flying down to greet me. Kitty landed right on my arm as I perched it up for her.

  “I’ve been worried sick! Men appeared from an armored truck and took you away!”

  I remembered at that moment that the last time she saw me she was helping attack the Secret Service and the vampires in the park. I had been missing for longer than she was used to me being gone. It may have even been the longest time we were apart.

  Kitty was the only being I knew who was familiar enough with my magic to sense where I was even through a shadow charm. She, after all, was the creation of spell work.

  She disappeared into the shadow with me and leaned into my hand as I gently stroked her wing.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I tried to follow you but they gathered you up along with a few vampires and concealed you in trucks. Then they took separate planes. I had no idea which one you were in.”

  I raised my brow. “Separate planes?”

  “Yes. I chose one to follow but you try chasing down a plane.”

  I stifled a small laugh. “I don’t expect you to. You’re only a bird.” I stiffened as her words struck me. “Wait, there was more than one plane? With vampires in each one?”

  “Yes, there were three.”

  I couldn’t help but groan. My problems just got bigger and more complicated than I ever expected.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That means there are more facilities.”

  “Facilities? What kind of facilities?”

  “The kind where witchlings and vampires go in and don’t come back out.”

  I raised my arm up in the air so she could fly once more after her claws got to be a bit too much. Then I found a nearby car parked on the corner and took out my gun from the back of my jeans.

  Kitty lurched backward as I thrust my fist with the barrel of the gun in my hand to break the window of the driver’s side and unlock the door. I pulled my hand back out to see blood pouring down my arm and pieces of glass lodged into my skin. I picked out the pieces one by one and didn’t wait around to watch the skin heal over the gashes.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked.

  “I’ve only got a little vixra magic left and I’m going to need it.”

  “Just get Arthur to give you more.”

  I got inside the car and shook my head. She flew in and sat in the passenger seat beside me as I searched for keys. I found them in the visor above the passenger side and started the car.

  “Not an option.”

  “But auto-theft is?”

  I rolled my eyes at her as I lifted my left hand out of the broken window and cast a larger shadow spell with the last shred of vixra magic I had left in my body. If I was right and the city was on lockdown until the so-called terrorists were found, I needed to get around undetected.

  “If you think that makes me a criminal, just you wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “What I’m about to do will make me the most wanted woman by the vixra. And not because of some damn prophecy. I’m about to break free of my cage.”

  I placed my gun in the cup holder and tore away from the street, heading down the road until I reached I-25 then headed west on I-70.

  Driving toward the mountains is a whole lot easier when you’re not fighting commuters. The streets were completely abandoned. Not a single person was on the road except for cops. And I had the shadow charm to evade them. There was no one to hold me back or get in my way. And there was no one to distract me from the thoughts entering my mind, asking me relentlessly if this was what I wanted. Because let’s face it, I seldom got the opportunity to use my free will for anything other than deciding what I wanted to eat for dinner.

  The magical cord around my throat tightened. So harshly that I hit the brakes just as the Rocky Mountains appeared over the horizon under the brightly lit full moon. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. There was only pain. The vixra were calling for me. Telling me to meet them immediately. And from the way the cord felt more like a noose, I knew they were particularly angry. It had to be the council. Edmund certainly wouldn’t have told them about his little plan given they didn’t know he was the one supplying Tobias with vixra blood for nearly a century.

  The cord didn’t loosen like it normally did. It kept getting tighter.

  ‘Yep, they’re definitely mad.’

  Kitty cawed beside me and flapped her wings, wanting desperately to help me and knowing that it was pointless to even try.

  When the cord finally let up, I gasped for air like I hadn’t taken a breath in over a minute. They could easily strangle me from a distance over and over until I obeyed them. Which would mean stopping everything to meet them and explaining myself.

&
nbsp; “Don’t you have to go to them?” Kitty asked.

  I grunted as I parked the car, grabbed my gun, and stood out on the highway in the middle of all the lanes.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” she asked, getting frantic once she saw the determined look in my eyes.

  “I don’t have time for the vixra. Not now. Not ever again.”

  Then I pointed the gun to my gut and fired off a round right through my stomach. The blood on my clothes was dry. I needed a fresh scent.

  “Did you lose your mind in that facility?” she screeched down at me.

  “No,” I growled through the pain. “I found a reason to live. It’s just different from what I pictured for myself.”

  “If there are vampires around they’re going to smell your kruxa blood.”

  “Exactly.”

  I fell down to the concrete highway, barely managing to stay on all fours as the excruciating pain erupted inside of me. I could feel the bullet enter and leave, taking parts of my insides with it. A sea of blood spilled on the concrete as I moaned. My back was the first part to start healing. Then my insides quickly started stitching back together. Followed by my veins and the skin. By the time the pain was gone, I felt entirely spent. I was shot only thirty minutes prior and then I shot myself. Even with immortality, it wasn’t exactly pleasant. It would be a few more minutes before my magic was back in full force. Which wasn’t saying much. I had used way too much of it in the last hour since I woke up, even with the help of the vixra blood. I was tired. I was weak. And I was a target. Just as I needed to be.

  “I can hear them,” Kitty panicked as she flew circles around me.

  I finally had the energy to stand again and listened for the familiar sound vampires make. As if they’re creating their own wind even though their feet barely touch the ground.

  It was a sound that once frightened me. For the first time ever I was eager to hear it.

  “Please tell me you set a trap,” Kitty hollered.

  “More or less. All the humans within a fifty-mile radius are locked up in their homes where vampires can’t enter. They’re hungry.”

  “And what? You’re dinner?”

  “No. I’m going to be their new leader. They just don’t know it yet.”

  ‘Tobias wants a partner, he’ll get one. For now.’

  The sound came rumbling up the steep hill of the highway. I saw dozens of vampires running toward me. They knew my blood would let them walk in the daylight. And I was well aware there was a chance this gamble might not work out. Even so, I stood strong, drenched in my own blood, and waited for them to get closer.

  Kitty shrieked and flew higher into the night sky.

  “This is madness! They’ll kill you. You’ll leave me all alone in the world. You can’t quit like this.”

  “I’m not quitting,” I said to her, slightly annoyed that this vessel my daughter’s consciousness occupied was actually making me feel bad about my choice. “I’m trying to make sure we survive. It’s just not going to be in the way that I thought.”

  I didn’t have a chance to get another word out before the first vampire reached me, leaping in the air and tackling me to the ground with ungodly strength.

  He pinned me down and snarled in my face, pushing my head to the side so my neck was entirely exposed. I could see his fangs shining in the pale moonlight through the corner of my eye.

  “Ryker, stop!” Another vampire shouted, reaching for the one on top of me and shoved him back and into the air at least ten feet with a single hand.

  I knew that voice. It had been in my head for nearly a week.

  ‘Victor.’

  A dozen vampires circled me, ready to pounce the second Victor gave them a green light to do so and tear me limb from limb. I didn’t feel the same apathy toward their thirst anymore. My vision showed me just how consuming it was. There was hardly any room for other thoughts in their minds until their thirst was satiated.

  Victor walked slowly up to me as I got to my feet, staring up at him and doing my best to hide any trepidation I felt. He couldn’t sense my emotions but I could sense his. He was curious. Perhaps even a bit eager.

  “All this time I thought you wanted to help cause the war between witchlings and humans,” I said to him. “Now I come to find that you’re trying to protect your own by preventing it.”

  He gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “I’m not trying to prevent anything.”

  His skin was so unbearably creepy. He wasn’t like Tobias. He had to be well over a thousand years old. Maybe even more. I could see his veins through his skin. Like it was nothing more than a thin sheet of white paper. He could still pass for a human in the right lighting. And yet, anyone who got too close or bothered to look for too long would see the difference. And if they didn’t see it, they would feel it. He was downright frightening. Even to me.

  “Then what are you doing?” I demanded to know.

  “What I’ve always done. Helped Tobias reach his full potential.”

  ‘Okay, that wasn’t the answer I was expecting.’

  “Potential for what?” I demanded with my arms outstretched.

  “To lead vampires into a new age.”

  “A new age of what?”

  He smiled. I don’t like it when men like him smile. He thought he had outsmarted me. And maybe he had. Maybe he was one step ahead of me. But it wasn’t a pattern I was going to allow to last.

  “I was there the day the prophecy surrounding your first birth was handed down by one of the most powerful vixra ever to live in this realm. It was the only way to ensure that Tobias would stay the course. I was willing to let him be marked at one point when I thought he had failed only to realize that you being a part of the picture could present an entirely new opportunity.”

  “What opportunity?” If he spoke in code one more time and left me standing there looking like the perfect vampire feast I was fully ready to put a bullet through his skull. Or at least I was starting to have such thoughts. In reality, he was too old and moved far to fast for me to even get the gun drawn out before he stopped me.

  “Do you honestly think I’m going to reveal such things before members of the coven, you foolish girl?” His words ran through my mind, never leaving his lips. Whatever connection I had with him was still there.

  He moved faster than I could see, spinning around to my backside and plunging a knife into my back, paralyzing me almost instantly. The knife was enchanted with magic.

  “Feel familiar?” he asked me just as the magic inside the knife seeped through my muscles, stiffening them where I couldn’t move anything other than my eyes. He caught me as I fell to the pavement and gathered me up in his arms.

  ‘Yeah, all too familiar.’

  This wasn’t my first encounter with Victor. And it wasn’t the first time he got the better of me. If there was, in fact, a way out of this as Lenora had suggested in my vision, I was going to find that damn dagger and shove it right into his eye socket.

  “I was that vixra, little kruxa,” he whispered in my mind. “I foresaw the future in my visions. I handed down the prophecy. And I turned Tobias into a vampire centuries before you were reincarnated. Nothing happens to the Catach-Brayin that I don’t intend to happen. Including Tobias’s rise and fall from grace. He rules it again because I am willing it. And you will rule alongside him for the same reason. Because I will it.”

  If I could move I imagined this would be the moment when I might have gasped. Or at least when my jaw would have dropped. I didn’t need to have the connection with his mind to know that he was telling me the truth. I could sense it in his emotions.

  Victor was guiding Tobias all along. For reasons I couldn’t possibly fathom. And if this was going to be worth it at all, I had to know why. Even if it required dying and coming back as a vampire.

  15

  Being paralyzed by a magical dagger and then swept away by the likes of vampire speed didn’t exactly help me to get my bearings. I couldn’t move. I coul
dn’t see. And I was willing to bet that was the entire point. Victor paralyzed my body with the dagger’s magic to make sure I didn’t know where we were going. And yet, I had already discovered one place where they were nesting. They weren’t going to allow me to know where the nest was this time around unless I had completely transitioned to a vampire.

  Victor held me in his arms as he ran through the trees and into the unknown of the Rocky Mountains. Even without being able to see I knew we were climbing high. Higher than the previous nest was. He leaped over rocks and ran through the trees until the altitude was so high that there were no more trees. Only snow and rocks. The air was thin and crisp. Each breath stung my senses as the air got colder and colder by the second. Goosebumps covered my arms and refused to go away. When we finally stopped, I heard the others come to a halt behind him.

  The sun was starting to rise in the distance. It was time for those behind him to get inside before it rose too high.

  “I can’t believe you’re letting him do this!” Kitty shrieked high above me in the air as Victor walked me through some sort of tunnel. Was it another mine? “He’s going to kill you!”

  ‘I know. But I’ll be back. In some form.’

  “Don’t leave me here alone!” Kitty screeched. My great grandaughter kept me company in ways I never expected to want or even need when she placed a copy of her consciousness in that damn bird. She became more of a companion than I was willing to admit. But she wouldn’t determine the steps I took to free myself. For all I really knew I might have been trading in one cage for another. It might still be a cage at the end of the day. But I had seen too much. I knew too much. The vixra couldn’t handle what was coming alone. And trying to micromanage the vampires clearly wasn’t going to work if they held such deep ties to one another as Tobias claimed.

  I started coming around once Victor weaved through dark tunnels inside what I assumed was a cavern inside a mountain. When I finally opened my eyes, I saw that it was just like the other nest. Only now we were higher up. It was more secluded. And the cavern inside looked as though it had been there for centuries. Maybe even before human hands showed up to start mining.