Last Vamp Standing

by Kristin Miller

  Damn it.

  Dante had been thrown off guard seeing Ariana in the chamber and had forgotten to tell her about their situation. About how they needed the help of an elder to show them the way to the haven—her haven. And he hadn’t asked a thing about Black Moon or what the fabled haven could do for the vamps roaming Crimson Bay.

  He told Ruan from the get-go that he wasn’t going to be much help.

  His uselessness was epic.

  “Come on, let’s get you up.” Cradling an arm beneath Ariana, Dante lifted her to her feet.

  “I don’t need your help,” she said, removing his arm. “I told you I’d be fine.”

  Putting up his hands, Dante drew back. But in a heartbeat, her entire body trembled, wobbling as if she’d fall against the wall. On instinct, Dante wrapped an arm around her, supporting her weight. He could’ve sworn Ariana wavered . . . but not physically. It was the strangest feeling. One he couldn’t describe. Almost like she weakened, melted, flowing into him.

  Dante was still shaking off the eerie feeling when sirens wailed upstairs, followed by the sound of therians barking orders at one another. Someone got wind that the security of the market had been compromised.

  “Roxy,” Dante said.

  Ruan nodded. “She was gonna break through those chains sooner or later.”

  “Looks like sooner.”

  “Work your magic, Dante. Jump us out of here.”

  Dante balled the energy swirling through his gut into a tight fist. “You two ready?”

  “No, wait.” Confusion pitched Ariana’s voice so high that it hit the crusty ceiling and shattered around them. If Dante didn’t know better, he would’ve said Ariana’s pupils were vibrating. “You’re not taking me anywhere.”

  “Let’s go, D,” Ruan said, keeping his gaze on the spiral staircase over Dante’s shoulder. “Jump us out and we’ll fill her in on what’s happening later.”

  “No, you can’t.” Ariana spoke fast, the color in her cheeks changing from blush to porcelain white. “I’m going my own way from here.”

  The floor rattled beneath their feet, and dust shook from the walls. More orders boomed over their heads.

  “Are you crazy? They’ll find you here in two seconds.” Dante was more confused than ever. Why wouldn’t she take his ticket out? “You can’t stay here. They’ll kill first and ask questions later.”

  Ruan pulled two pistols from his belt. “Therians are about to raid us like gangbusters. We don’t have time for convincing. Let’s go.”

  He popped off a racket of shots as the first wave of therians flooded down the stairs. Instead of returning fire, they roared, shifting into a herd of beasts.

  “It’s not your job to protect me,” Ariana said, planting a hand on the wall to steady herself. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t understand. Dante had returned to the black market because he wanted to see her again, if only for a minute. He’d planned on following Black Moon’s breadcrumbs to her doorstep and had gotten so much more. If she thought he was leaving her behind now, while he and Ruan teleported somewhere safe, she was crazy.

  “I can’t leave you here,” he said as Ruan unloaded a round of bullets into the furry targets down the hall. “But if you take my hand, I can take you somewhere safe, just like I did last night. You can trust me.”

  “Trust you?” she scoffed, forehead crinkling. “I don’t even know you.”

  “What’re you waiting for, Dante!” Ruan backed against them. “I’m on my last round of silver!”

  “Then I’ll stay with you,” Dante said, knowing how crazy the words sounded coming out of his mouth. But there had to be a reason Ariana wanted to be left behind. A reason she’d come back after he’d teleported her last night. “I’ll help you with whatever it is you’ve got to do, and we’ll find a way out together.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t need your help.”

  But she did. He could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She didn’t know what the future held and it spooked her, no matter how she tried to play the independent part.

  “Come with me.” Dante took her hand. It was cold and jittery, clamming on contact. “And I’ll take us as far away from here as possible.”

  For the second time tonight, Dante spoke words he couldn’t stand behind. He couldn’t control where he teleported. That’s not how it worked. And now that he’d seen the forest firsthand, there was no saying he couldn’t teleport back on this jump. Still, he had to believe wherever they teleported would be better than the situation they were in.

  “You have no clue where you’re going to take me, now let me go,” Ariana said as Ruan tossed an empty weapon to the ground and unholstered another. She recoiled from Dante’s touch, jerking her hand from his. “You’re not going to do this to me again.”

  Did she really expect him to teleport without her, leaving her to the mercy of the therians and Juan Carlos?

  He didn’t have time to think things through.

  Ariana flickered. Right before his eyes. One second she was tangible and talking and as real as Ruan. The next she was fading into the wall like a ghost. Something was happening. There wasn’t time to figure out what the hell it was.

  A beast of a lion charged Ruan, its massive paws striking the floor heavy and fast. Ruan popped off two shots that dropped the fur bag, reloaded, then fired two more.

  “That’s it, Dante! I’m out!” Ruan pushed against Dante’s back.

  Surging behind the fallen lion, a wall of snarling creatures chomped at the bit for some vamp action.

  Dante met Ariana’s amber eyes and glimpsed a shadow in their depths. Fear. His stomach pinched. He had no other choice.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he breathed, gathering all the energy he could muster into the pit of his stomach. “I can’t.”

  He brushed his hand over the long, white shadow extending from her body and sank his fingers into what used to be her hand.

  “No!” she yelled, fading out.

  The ground trembled.

  As a cold, crippling sensation slithered up Dante’s arm, he seized Ruan by the elbow, dragging him with them into the unknown.

  Chapter Seven

  “Blood will spill and Savage will bring an end to vamps in Crimson Bay. But, having no part in their battle, we will be spared.”

  WATCHER ARCHIVE, UPDATE

  “WAKEY, WAKEY,” A scratchy voice taunted from somewhere above. “ ’Bout time you come ’round.”

  Dante registered his surroundings with the speed and clarity of a snapshot. They were in a hole. Ten by ten with walls as high as a two-story building. Chunky groves circled the sides as if dull shovels had been used to hollow it out. The walls and floor were clay, hard but cold. And the shadow of their captor loomed over them, tall and broad, as thick and solid as the fir trees towering behind him.

  He’d been here before. . . .

  Arian crouched at Dante’s side, hissing through clenched teeth. Ruan checked his belt for weapons and came up disappointed. He must’ve lost them in the jump.

  “Who are you?” Dante scanned the ring of the pit, searching for other movement. He caught nothing. “What do you want?”

  “I’m Pike, head of the Watchers.” He spread thick, shadowed arms to the area around him, as if hundreds of his people—Watchers—were standing by. “And I welcome you to our forest.”

  Did he really teleport to the same damned forest from last night? Something had really jacked with his trajectory . . .

  “Quite a welcome,” Dante said, clenching and unclenching his fists, readying himself for hand-to-hand. “My name’s Dante. And this is my buddy, Ruan. How ’bout you drop us a rope so we can climb out and introduce ourselves properly.”

  “Easy,” Ariana whispered. “There’ll be twenty more Watchers protecting his back.”

  “She�
��s a smart one.” Pike knelt out of the shadows and leaned over the edge of the pit. His spiked white hair was nearly translucent against his baby powder white skin and flaming crimson eyes. He looked albino, but it could’ve been the contrast between his black leather garb and the paleness of the moonlight reflecting off his skin. He nudged his chin at Ariana. Dante wanted to nudge it clean off. “We’ve been waiting for you, Ariana.”

  “She’s none of your concern.” Dante stepped in front of Ariana, blocking her from the daggers shooting through Pike’s eyes.

  She stepped around him. “What do you want?”

  “From all of you? Nothing.” He snarled into a smile. “From you? Everything.”

  To hell with this.

  Dante hissed so loud that the birds in the canopies over their heads scattered into the night sky. “As soon as I recharge my batteries, you’ll wish you hadn’t said that.”

  He’d need longer than a few minutes to teleport again, but the twisted ringleader didn’t need to know that. At least his voices were quiet, gurgling in the back of his mind. He’d cherish a clear head when he cut Pike’s clean off.

  “Oh, there’s fire in you.” Pike laughed. “I like that. But you see there’s a magic in this forest, in our little compound. I know you feel it. Mawares can be used and abused inside Black Moon, but not in here.”

  Dante bit back a smug smile. His teleporting gig had zip-zero to do with mawares. Once his energy kick started, Ruan and Ariana would be out of the pit. And Dante would be out for blood.

  “Let us out,” Dante growled. “You’ll die by my hand anyway, but you can at least save the lives of your precious Watchers.”

  Whatever they were.

  Pike cocked his head to the side, measuring Dante’s words. “If only it were that easy.”

  Without another word, he stood and spun on his heel, disappearing into the dark.

  Questions cycloned through Dante’s mind, mixing a bunch of shit he wanted to say with a bunch of shit he should say instead. He turned on Ariana—the elder with the answers.

  What the hell was going on? “You know that guy,” he said, watching for a shift of her eyes or an irregular flutter on her neck.

  “I know of him.” She rubbed her leg, then tugged her robe down to cover the scratches that were healing there. “I told you not to get involved in all of this. I told you to leave me be.”

  Yeah, like that would happen. “This is the same forest from last night. How’d I end up here again?”

  “My maware is astral-projecting.” Her voice had an air of superiority that grated against Dante’s ears. “You met with my projection in the black market, just like you did last time. When you teleported me out, you somehow got snapped back to my physical self . . . and right now, that’s in the middle of the Watchers’ compound.”

  Questions flared through Dante’s mind.

  “You know the Watchers? Pike?”

  She nodded, pulled her braid out of the back of her robe, and let it fall over her shoulder. Absentmindedly Dante thought about the blue ribbon tied on his wrist. The ribbon that once held those chestnut strands of silk together. He resisted the urge to stroke its frayed edges.

  “Well, I guess you could say I know one Watcher in particular.”

  Dante didn’t like the change in her tone when she mentioned this other Watcher. Her voice went soft. She was familiar with him. How familiar was the question of the hour.

  He’d lose an arm if he touched her again.

  Dante clamped down the impulses surging through him by chomping on the side of his tongue.

  “When I astral-project,” she continued, beginning to pace around their dirt prison, her shredded, burgundy robe flaring around her, “Echo watches over me, over my physical self. He’s supposed to protect me. This time, when I left, he—he dragged me away.”

  Echo. The Watcher had betrayed her. And he’d signed his death warrant. But he wouldn’t die quickly, oh no. He’d die a slow, painful death for putting Ariana in this position. And Dante would enjoy sucking every last ounce of life from his soul as he grated Echo’s skull against the rough face of one of those fir trees.

  Thorns ripped into Dante’s side as his gaze shot to her leg. Her robe was shredded from the knee down, but the wound had gone from mangled to sunset pink between the black market and this place.

  Even though the wound was gone and Echo’s betrayal was said and done, both marks remained. As Dante thought about his plans for the Watcher, he realized that he and Echo were one and the same.

  He was no better . . .

  “What do they want with you?” Ruan asked. He charged from one edge of the pit to the other and leaped as high as he could up the wall. He barely made it halfway before skidding back to the bottom. “That Pike fellow seemed oddly excited to have you here.”

  “Too excited,” Dante bit out, watching Ruan flail like a damned fish.

  Ariana eyed the ring of the pit as if trying to figure her own way out. “I think they want to hold me for ransom.”

  Ruan shot Dante a what-the-fuck glare that burned to the core, then took a second stab at the wall.

  “Are Watchers elder hunters?” Dante kept his voice low. The more he knew about his new enemy, the better.

  “No, they’re not.” She shook her head as Ruan slid down to the ground again. “That’s just it. They’re peaceful creatures. They stay in the forest outside my haven and monitor our activity. They don’t intervene. I’ve never seen them angry or violent. They’ve never done anything like this.”

  “That you know about.”

  “Give me some credit, would you?” She planted her hands on her hips. “They live in the forest outside my haven. I would’ve heard.”

  “What value are you to them?”

  “I’m not worth anything.” She held her chin high. “My Primus won’t pay for my return.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  She paused. For a second Dante thought she was going to clam up.

  “I belong to Black Moon. I know you’ve heard of it.”

  “Shit.” Ruan sprang off the wall. “You could’ve said something earlier.”

  She focused on Dante, squaring her petite shoulders to him. “I think Pike wants to be granted entrance.”

  “Of course he does,” Ruan said, coming around to face her. “Who wouldn’t want the type of protection your haven guarantees?”

  Thinking he’d rather be anywhere by himself than in a “family” with a bunch of crazy Watchers or intruding khissmates, Dante raised his hand. Ruan smacked it down. Then he took the opportunity to petition Ariana. Like a good guppy would.

  “I work at ReVamp, a vampire rehabilitation center in San Francisco,” Ruan said. “Since Savage has been tearing through havens in Crimson Bay, vamp refugees are coming to us looking for help. We can’t house them all. We need a larger haven . . . one with an enchanted barrier protecting it.”

  “Black Moon’s Primus won’t allow it. Only elders are allowed inside.”

  “Then you can talk to him.”

  “No.”

  “I’m a newly transitioned elder,” Ruan said, folding his arms over his chest. “He’ll grant me access. I’ll do it.”

  “He won’t listen.” The angles of Ariana’s face shadowed over as someone walked near the edge of the pit above them. “Not to the Watchers. Not to you.”

  “His stubbornness will ruin what he’s fought to build.” Dante scraped a dirt clod off the wall and crumbled it between his fingers. “If your Primus stands by and does nothing, waiting for Savage to exterminate all the vampires he can find, there won’t be any left to transition to elders anyway. Black Moon will eventually fall.”

  “It can’t. That’s not possible.” Something dark flickered across Ariana’s expression. Before Dante could read it, the demonic voice in his soul resurfaced, hungry fo
r blood.

  Dig the truth from her flesh.

  “Shut up,” Dante groaned, digging his fingers into his temples.

  “You’ve really got to work on your anger issues.” Ariana turned her back on him and studied the top ridge of the pit.

  “Not you.”

  She’s holding something back. Sift the answers from her blood!

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Dante said, eyeing the great height of the wall. He couldn’t ignore the voices forever. And he knew what would happen if he tried . . .

  He wasn’t about to expose the monster scratching beneath the surface of his skin. Not now. Not when Ruan and Ariana were the only potential casualties in range.

  “You think I haven’t already thought of a million ways out?” Ruan said. “Even if you manage to scale the walls, you’ll have to face Pike and whatever creatures these Watchers are.”

  “They’re people like you and me,” Ariana said. “Only much larger.”

  She’s lying! Make her pay for her sin!

  “They’re more than that.” Dante sniffed the air, trying to catch hints of therian, vamp, or mundane. They were definitely something he’d never sensed before. “Smarter, too.”

  The gravelly demonic voice mixed with Ruan’s, creating a scratchy cocktail of demon and vamp that Dante couldn’t penetrate. The nonstop pounding was giving him a migraine sent straight from the devil. The voices were deep. Gurgling. Not human. Certainly not his own.

  Beat the blood from—we have to do something—suck from their souls!—we can come up with—

  “Shit, this isn’t good.” Dante grit through chattering teeth. He couldn’t even hear what the voices were saying anymore. They were a constant spewing of demonic racket. Like Marilyn Manson on crack, full blast and permanent repeat. “Had to be now, didn’t it?”

  “Dude, you all right?” Ruan’s voice squeaked through the haze plugging Dante’s ears. “Your eyes—they’re glowing gold again.”

  The earth spun beneath Dante’s feet, pitching him into the wall. His entire body seized from blood to bone.

  Ariana paced around him and got close. Too close. Her naturally drugging fragrance hit Dante like a claw hammer. Right to the jaw. His back teeth ground to dust. And the voices only got louder.