Discovery

by Thianna Durston

  “Cool,” Will said, practically hopping in his chair. “So what does it all mean?”

  “Sun sickness, blood drinker, and once the gene activates, we have to keep to the night,” Aaron replied.

  “Wicked. So…why won’t the flame thrower thing work? Or are vampyr not scared of fire like they say in the books?”

  Amazed at how easily the others were taking the information, Jaret replied this time. “Vampyr are only afraid of one thing: the sun. But they hate drakyl. I’ve seen the way they torture our kind and it’s not pretty. Two of their kind I ran into in my last city want me dead. And they want me to watch Aaron die first. One thing you have to keep in mind is that vampyr are stronger than drakyl. By a large amount. Even if it is only the two of them, Aaron and I are…well, our odds are bad.”

  Adam and Stephan paled while Jeffrey and Conner whispered back and forth. Will, however, looked thoughtful. “The sun itself? Or the sun’s rays?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Okay, don’t laugh. But would one of those sun lamps do damage?”

  Stephan snickered.

  “Shut up.”

  “I don’t think they would do the kind of damage we need to impart. Especially given the fact we’ll be out on your land with no electrical outlets available. But I like the way you think. Got any other ideas?”

  Even as the rest of the room groaned, Will launched into a litany of notions he had. Jaret wondered if he’d been drinking caffeine with how much information spilled out of his mouth. “Wait,” he finally said as Will paused to take a breath. “What was the last one?”

  “If we could get them to come to the house, it has all sorts of secret rooms built into it.”

  “Really?” Aaron asked, sounding shocked.

  “Oh, yeah. I spent most of the first few years here finding them all. Rooms with no doors, areas that look like they are more likely to hold someone in than to keep someone out…weird stuff.”

  “Interesting,” Jaret said. “And if we make it through the weekend, I’d love to hear more. For now, we need to focus on bringing down two or more powerful vampyr.”

  “Is there any way to trap them until the sun comes up?” Adam asked hesitantly.

  “I wish. If we could, then that would be an easy end,” Jaret admitted.

  In the end, even with all the fantastically crazy things Will came up with, Jaret saw nothing that would help. He agreed to take the flame thrower to ease Aaron’s cousins’ minds, but intended to dump it before they reached Vessy Ridge. All fire would do would be to make their enemy even angrier. Plus, a burning vampyr, while not killing it, intensified its stench a hundred-fold.

  Before they went to bed, all five came to give Aaron a hug. Four of them, all except for Adam, hugged Jaret as well. But to top off the craziness was the large yellow plastic bottle Will handed each of them before they left.

  “What is it?” Aaron asked.

  “Blood.”

  “Where did you get blood?” Aaron sounded shocked and livid.

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Go. Beat these bastards.” With another quick hug, Will darted back to his room.

  The blood was somewhat coagulated, but it still went down. Its taste was appalling and Jaret chuckled as Aaron wrinkled his nose as he drank. “That, my dear, is the taste of domesticated animal.”

  “Really? It’s dreadful.”

  “Yep. But, still filling.”

  “I never want to know what animal he killed to do this.”

  “Don’t shame him for this. Will has to be the most amazing young man I’ve ever met. He should be running for the hills. Instead? He’s in awe of the two of us.”

  Tossing down the empty bottle, Aaron nodded. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  Without another word, they picked up the flame thrower and headed north.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Even though it was summer now, Aaron could feel the chill against his skin. It didn’t affect him like it used to, but he could still feel it. And it made him wonder if everything would feel different from now on—sharper, more intense, almost overwhelming. Of course, Jaret took it all in stride. Maybe it would take a few years to get used to it all.

  There was no doubt of where they were headed. They would meet the vampyr head-on near Vessy Ridge. From everything his lover had told him, Aaron understood he needed to attack first. There would be no questions, no discussions, and no trying to make things better. These were killers who wouldn’t care. And he had no intention of letting the bastards kill him or Jaret.

  One thing he hadn’t told the man running at his side was that after his uncle’s death when Jaret was busy resting one afternoon, he had snuck back into Davis’s bedroom and had taken a small look at the safe. A folder labeled IMPORTANT had caught his eye and he had read through the first five pages before his cousins started arriving home. At the time the sheets were written, no more than two or three generations went between any drakyl occurring. They surmised that if they could somehow create a line where the gene didn’t activate for five or six generations, that the individual whose gene did trigger had the possibility of being stronger than their enemy. It had given him hope. Where Jaret seemed to have none. He would fight—of that there was no doubt—but Aaron knew his man fully expected to die.

  Not on Aaron’s watch. For the paperwork also gave out a little piece of information Jaret had never mentioned. That there was one other way, besides sun, to kill a vampyr. The individual just had to be as strong as or stronger than them to make it work. He sent up a prayer to whatever god watched over his kind that he had that strength. Because he planned to rip their bloody heads off and use Will’s flame thrower to sever any connection between head and body.

  He just hoped mercury—or whatever chemical leftovers they were made from—wasn’t explosive.

  The closer they got, the more powerful he felt. Aaron assumed this was the drakyl version of adrenaline. But instead of an increased heartbeat and heavy breathing, he just felt power, as if he had just drank down several mountain lions. In that moment, Aaron crossed the fingers on the hand Jaret couldn’t possibly see. There was no way he had found Jaret, become drakyl, and finally be fully alive only to die tonight. None. He would get them out of this if he could. If he couldn’t, he planned to use the flame thrower to at least keep them at a distance. The paperwork said they hated bright light. And a flame would be very bright on this dark night.

  The land changed, sloped upward and he knew they were within a mile of the ridge. Jaret paused and he stopped next to him even as the man next to him inhaled and let out a long, low growl. “They’re here,” he said in a deep rumble. “Twenty feet ahead to our right.”

  Later on, Aaron would think back on this moment and assume if he had done things differently—maybe if he had waited for Jaret—that things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. But in that moment, with hindsight not upon him, he stopped thinking and reacted purely on instinct—the instinct of a man who would protect his mate and his family. Leaping forward, he roared, somewhat surprised he could make such a sound. His name was shouted from behind him, but he didn’t pay attention as he could finally make out the figures of the vampyr ahead.

  They were hideous. Pasty white skin that was sunk in, barely covering the bones of their skulls. Their clothes, torn and spattered with stains, hung on them. There was no meat on them at all. The one on the left brought his lips back, bearing an open, blackened hole where there were no teeth, but two large fangs hung down over the opening. Grotesque was almost too nice of a description of the two creatures and as he inhaled, taking in the stark scent of mold-encrusted iron and something so putrid he couldn’t put a description to it, he leapt at the larger of the two creatures.

  Movement from his side let him know Jaret had attacked the second creature, which was good as he didn’t have the time to worry about it. Slamming into the vampyr was a bit like hitting a brick wall going seventy miles an hour. If he’d been
human, he would have been knocked out. As it was, it stole some of his breath, but not enough to stop him from his charge. Sharp fingers, nothing more than skin covered bone, gouged into his sides, digging through his shirt and skin to get inside. He couldn’t let that happen.

  Wrapping one hand around the vampyr’s neck and another at the top of its head, he held his breath and yanked. The head tore clean off, falling off its shoulders. Aaron would have gaped at the open hole of the neck where the head used to be, but the stench of rotting corpse filled his nostrils. The fingers that had been trying to dig into his skin had stopped, but not moved. Pulling the bony arms away, he jumped back even as the body flumped to the ground.

  Before he could even realize that he’d done it—he’d killed a vampyr—a holler of excruciating pain ricocheted through his head and he whipped around, taking in the site in front of him with horror. Jaret lay on his back, writhing back and forth even as the other vampyr stood over him, its mouth wide open as a horrible sound escaped its maw. Was that…laughter?

  Roaring in fury, Aaron stepped forward, prepared to take it down as well, but the creature looked up, eyes blacker than the night staring straight at him. “Next time, Aaron of the drakyl,” it said before turning and running away. The power within him wanted to run, to kill, to destroy the demon that had hurt Jaret. But he couldn’t. His lover’s mouth was open in a soundless cry, blood trickling from the edge even as his eyes turned glossy.

  “Jaret!” he yelled, dropping to his love’s side.

  Breathing harshly, Jaret looked around as though trying to find him, but unable to.

  “I’m here,” he said, grabbing one of Jaret’s hands even as he drifted his other over the man’s body, looking for where he’d been hurt. There had to be something…His eyes latched onto a piece of metal sticking out of the other man’s leg. And he instantly knew it was bad. The question was, how bad?

  “Jaret?” he asked, his voice shaking somewhat as he didn’t know how to fix this. Kill the vampyr? Obviously he had that down and as he cast a glance over his shoulder, he sat the beast crumbling into nothing. At least he didn’t have to worry about that. “I’m taking you home.” It was the only thing he could think. Surely something in that safe would tell him how to fix this, how to make Jaret well again. It had to. Because he couldn’t imagine going on without him.

  Before lifting him up, he considered removing the metal fragment, but was afraid to. Aaron knew they had blood running through their veins. If he removed it, would Jaret bleed to death before he could figure out what to do? Shaking his head as if to erase that thought, he lifted Jaret up as gingerly as he could and ran for home. Will would know what kind of metal that was, or know how to find out. He would help.

  Aaron ran flat out, his feet traversing the path back as fast as he could. He passed the flame thrower but barely gave it a glance. Someone could get it later. As he got closer to the house, he began to yell, “Help! Help! Will! Jeffrey! Help!”

  The door to the mud room slammed open and every one of his cousins ran out, each of them holding a cross made from silverware in their hands. When they didn’t see anyone besides him, they dropped them down their shirts. “What happened?” Will asked as he ran inside, for the first time in his life not removing his boots.

  “I killed one,” he said as he laid Jaret on one of the sofas. “But the other stabbed Jaret. He’s not responding and I don’t know what to do!”

  Will leaned over the back of the sofa, looking at the fragment of metal even as Jeffrey ran down the hall, returning seconds later with two more bottles like the ones Will had handed him earlier. “Will these help?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Aaron said, grabbing one and pulling off the cap. Lifting Jaret’s head, he poured some inside his mouth. At first, Jaret just spat it back out, but little by little, he got some of the blood down him.

  “Does drakyl blood clot?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to get this out. I’ll need to melt some down to be sure, but if I was a vampyr and I wanted to harm—to poison—my enemy, I’d stab something like silver into his veins…if that isn’t a myth.”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron admitted. “Fuck! There’s so much I just don’t know.”

  “I do,” Conner said, walking up. “I’ve been reading some of the stuff from Davis’s safe. From what I gather, drakyl have almost impervious veins. Very few things can get inside, but silver and iron can. And they would poison his blood, leading to a long, slow death.”

  “No,” Aaron said, hope that he could save his man falling. “No.”

  “He’s not saying that’s gonna happen to Jaret,” Stephan said, removing the one bottle out of his hand and replacing it with the other. “He’s just giving you the facts because he’s Conner and that’s what he does.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the cures, yet,” Conner admitted, “but so far, everything I’ve read says that blood can cure a lot of things. So a constant influx of new blood is something he needs.”

  “Okay. I can hunt for him at night—”

  “Nah,” Will said, walking back into the room with a glass bowl and a knife as well as a couple dish towels. “We’ve got enough blood from the three steers we had slaughtered.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said with a little giggle. “You should have seen the guy when we told him we wanted all the blood and he wasn’t to let any drop.”

  “Jeff, I’m gonna need your help,” Will said. “Hold his leg still.” Conner held Jaret’s thigh while Jeffrey grabbed his ankle. “Okay, one…two…three…Fuck!” He wrapped one of the towels around the metal and tugged, but it didn’t come out. Instead, a wail left the man below them. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Let me,” Aaron said. “If we need to get the thing out, I’m the most likely to do it. I ripped the head off that bastard tonight.”

  “Wicked,” Will said with a look of awe. “Okay. Adam, Stephan, hold down Jaret’s shoulders. Should we put something in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue?”

  “He’d just bite through it,” Aaron said, standing up and taking a look at the horrid black metal flecked with spots of silver. Grabbing the towel, he wrapped it around the shard and gripped it. His eyes slid to his lover’s face, squinched up in agony, and he pressed down on the leg with the other hand as he yanked. The shard jerked loose and Will instantly shoved the other towel up against Jaret’s leg, trying to stem the flow of blood that poured out.

  A shudder travelled up Jaret’s body and while he still shook, the agony had been replaced by something else, something Aaron couldn’t understand. Hopelessness?

  “Let me have that.” Jeffrey took the cloth-covered metal from his hands even as Will pulled the towel away.

  “Sheesh this is like being in one of Davis’s novels,” Will muttered, looking at the towel which was soaked with blood, but the leg barely bled. “His body is knitting together.”

  “Davis’s novels?” Aaron asked in a hollow voice as he once again took a seat on the sofa, moving Jaret’s head to his lap.

  “Yeah, the ones he called dime store novels. Real out-of-this-world stuff.”

  Chapter Twenty

  While Will, Conner, and Jeffrey took the metal out to what they all referred to as Will’s crazy space where he did strange experiments, Aaron took to reading the information from the safe. He learned lots of currently useless facts like:

  Drakyl are all male.

  Duh. He already knew that.

  Drakyl are more likely to be to be attracted to men.

  Well, if they were only male and it would make sense that they would look for one of their own kind…Again, duh.

  “Give me some information I can use, damn it!” he hissed on day four to nobody in particular.

  His cousins had basically given him and Jaret a wide birth. Besides passing by between the kitchen and their bedrooms, to go outside, or to hand over another bottle of blood, they kept their distance. Which was probably a good thing. After days of n
o useful information on how to cure his beloved, his temper was short.

  “I was right,” Will said on day six, walking into the living room looking like some mad scientist wearing a leather coat and goggles. “The metal is a mixture of iron and silver. The silver probably got it through into the veins and the iron was meant to poison him.”

  “So what do we do?” Conner asked from behind him.

  “We find the cure,” Will said in his usual upbeat manner, sitting on the floor cross-legged. “We need to look for any cures for blood, silver, or iron poisoning.” After a pause, he looked up. “What hasn’t been gone through yet?”

  Aaron pointed to the pile that was far larger than the small one by his feet. “That.”

  Conner joined Will on the floor and over the next hour Jeffrey and Adam came in from checking out the herds. “Three calves are probably due within a few days,” Jeffrey said as they sat nearby and took folders from Will. After being told what they were to look for, they both started scanning the pages. It wasn’t until the energy dip that always came with the rise of the sun was gone, which meant nighttime was upon them, that Aaron realized something.

  “Where’s Stephan?”

  His cousins looked at one another warily. “He’ll be back soon,” Conner said in an evasive tone.

  “It’s after dark. You all know what kind of creatures come out after dark. Where the hell is he?” Aaron asked, hearing the growl in his words.

  “Don’t get angry at him,” Jeffrey said in a worried tone. “He wanted to help.”

  Fear made his chest clench. “Meaning?”

  “Stephan didn’t come here until he was five,” Adam said quietly, still scanning his sheets. “He remembers.”

  “Remembers what?” And yet, even as he asked, Aaron knew. Stephan must have been from a family that knew about drakyl.

  “His dad used to talk about blood drinkers,” Will said. “The night you went to fight them, Stephan told us what he remembered. There was very little, but when Jaret was stabbed, his only thought was to find help.”