Death Embraces

by J. C. Diem

  “Yep.”

  “And when the Japanese assassin forced his blood into your mouth, you became faster and stronger than before.”

  “Right.” I saw where he was going and squirmed uncomfortably.

  “What happened when you bit me last night, Natalie?” Now he did look at me and I read concern in his dark eyes.

  “I, uh, got a flash of memory,” I mumbled uncomfortably.

  “Whose memory?”

  “Yours,” I said after a lengthy internal debate about whether I should tell him the truth or not.

  Nodding thoughtfully, Luc automatically turned into a long, dirt driveway shortly after Igor did. “What did you see?” he asked.

  Mentally taking a deep breath, I quickly summed up the memories I’d seen, leaving only a few minor details out.

  “You could see what I’d seen and knew what I was thinking?” He didn’t seem to be appalled but it was hard to tell. Luc had a hell of a poker face.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude,” I told him almost desperately. “It was an accident.”

  Pulling up behind the black car, he made no move to open the door. Igor glanced at us then pulled a curious Geordie up towards the tall house that crouched in darkness. Gregor followed without a backwards glance at us.

  “They’re probably going to do it in the back of the car,” I heard Geordie mutter petulantly. It was followed by the meaty sound of Igor’s hand hitting the back of his head.

  “If you were in my mind then you know how I felt when I cut off your head.” Taking my hand, Luc captured me just like I was an ordinary human by meeting my eyes. “You know that it nearly tore me to pieces knowing you would be buried alive.”

  Nodding, I wanted to drop my gaze but couldn’t. “I know how you feel about me.” I’m the only woman he’s ever truly loved. The thought made me feel almost warm inside.

  “Then know this,” he paused to kiss my knuckles. “I would rather die myself than to lose you again.” A loud sob came from the house as Geordie eavesdropped on our conversation.

  “You’re not going to die, Luc,” I promised because I felt exactly the same way. If I lost him, there would be no point going on living my unlife. “We’re going to find the First and hack him up into cat food.”

  Luc’s smile was brief and not at all believable. It occurred to me that he didn’t think our plan was going to work. He was just going through the motions, believing we would all end up dead. Up to this point, I’d been quietly confident that we might have a chance to come out as the victors in this battle. That hope withered and died as Luc’s smile disappeared.

  We’re going to lose, I thought in dismay as Luc exited the car. The army I’d been promised consisted of five people, including myself. I’d been kidding myself that I’d be able to get close enough to the First to kill him and save both mankind and vampirekind. The truth came crashing down on me; I was doomed to fail. I might be the fabled Mortis but I wasn’t good enough to stop the coming apocalypse. My merry band of misfits and I would sacrifice ourselves and it would all be for nothing.

  Climbing out of the car, I followed Luc across the yard. Igor switched the outside light on, throwing Luc’s shadow into sharp relief on the ground behind him. Movement in the corner of my eye had me whipping my head around. I surveyed the dark yard but I sensed nothing living or unliving nearby. My four shadows were splayed on the ground, standing as stock still as I was.

  Turning back to the house, I saw the flicker again but ignored it this time. My friends and I had plans to make that would most likely end in our annihilation. Now wasn’t the time to be jumping at shadows.

  The End

  Also by J.C Diem:

  Death Beckons

  Death Deceives

  Sample of Death Deceives:

  Chapter One

  Standing in the doorway of our new safe-house, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. A glance up and down the unfamiliar hallway confirmed that I was alone. You’re just jumpy because you’ll probably all be dead soon, my subconscious told me sourly.

  Being hunted by seven foot tall grey imps was definitely making me edgy. My friends and I would face the leader of the imps one day soon and I had a feeling the meeting wouldn’t go well for us. My subconscious had already made the assumption that none of us would make it out unalive. Somewhere deep inside, I kind of agreed with it.

  Taking one last look at the deserted yard, I shut the door. I’d only taken a cursory look at the farmhouse as Luc and I had arrived, enough to know that it was two stories high and was made of a combination of brick and wood.

  While it was fairly nondescript from the exterior, the interior was a different story. Inside, it was just plain ugly. A long corridor stretched ahead of me with a pair of doors on each side. Prints of sunflowers hung at regular intervals on the walls. I’d never liked sunflowers, either the real thing or pictures of them. No flower should be that big, it was unnatural.

  As if the hideous sunflower prints weren’t already enough to condemn the house to ugliness, the colour scheme was awful. The walls were lime green and the carpet was a now faded orange that might have been bright enough to sear the eyeballs when it had been new. I thought the French had better taste than this. Evidently, the décor hadn’t been updated in several decades.

  It was automatic for me to lock the door before moving deeper into the house. I didn’t know why I bothered since any imp or vampire could knock it down with one hand. It was a habit that was left over from when I’d still been human. Since I’d only been undead for about six months or so, I did actually manage to still feel human sometimes. The rest of the time I felt exactly like what I was, an unholy monster that drank human blood to survive.

  Catching sight of my four shadows trailing behind me, I held in a shudder that would have wracked me from head to toe if I’d let it escape. No wonder I feel like I’m being watched. I had three shadows too many and I was beginning to feel crowded inside my own skin.

  Simply being turned into a vampire hadn’t been enough for me. I, Natalie Pierce had been fated for much worse than that. I was Mortis, which was Latin for death. It was poetic somehow to be named ‘death’ by a language that itself was also dead.

  It had been prophesized long ago that I would be both the bane and saviour of vampirekind. Having a prophecy written about me was proving to be far less exciting than I’d thought. Everyone had expectations of me and most of the time I wasn’t sure I even qualified for the job. Having that kind of pressure hanging over my head made me nervous.

  I’d read the prophecy and it hadn’t mentioned my entourage of shadows. Being a creature of legend, it seemed the normal rules didn’t apply to me. Ingesting the blood of our kin was supposed to kill us but I hadn’t been so lucky. With each infusion of the diseased black ooze that passed for our blood, I’d changed in different ways. The first taste had turned me into the undead. The second time I hadn’t actually ingested the gunk. It had been delivered directly to my heart via a knife wound in my chest and had given me the ability to heal much faster than normal. The third taste had made me ultra-quick and even stronger than I’d already been.

  Consequently, I was a faster, more powerful, un-killable killing machine who could heal most wounds almost instantly. You’d think the benefits would be worth the pain I’d gone through but I was still doubtful on that topic. One thing was certain, it wasn’t much fun being the strangest of all the monsters in the world.

  Speaking of being strange, the fourth time I’d tasted vampire blood, it hadn’t given me new powers or changed me physically. The transfer of fluids had happened when I’d accidentally bitten Luc during one of our naked romps together. I’d been sucked into his memories and had witnessed the most painful moments of his lengthy unlife. Luc wasn’t aware of my intrusion into his mind yet. I hoped to keep it a secret for as long as possible. I didn’t kid myself that I could keep it under wraps forever. I was bound to slip up sooner or later.

  “Natalie,�
� Geordie yelled, rousing me from my gloomy thoughts. “Get your butt in here!”

  A staircase at the far end of the hallway led upwards to the lightless and gloomy second floor but I ignored it for now. Arrowing towards the quiet sounds of conversation, I pushed open a door to the left and found myself in a living room. The colour scheme wasn’t quite as bad in here with pale peach carpet and urine yellow wallpaper.

  Two couches sat facing each other across a battered pine coffee table. Most of the furniture in the room had seen better days. The muddy brown fabric on the couch appeared to be velvet. It was worn and threadbare so it was difficult to tell for sure.

  Luc, the love of my unlife, patted the empty seat beside him in invitation. Geordie pouted when I accepted. Sitting on the couch directly opposite from me, his lower lip pooched out slightly with his disappointment.

  Luc, or Lord Lucentio as he was known by most European vampires, was around thirty in mortal years. He was Italian, six feet tall, had black hair, was broodingly handsome and had a body most women would drool over. Like all vampires over three hundred, his pupils had grown large enough to take over the irises completely. I had no idea what colour his eyes had been before he’d been turned. As hard as it was to believe, seven hundred years had passed since the night his life had ended and his unlife had begun.

  Geordie had been about fifteen when he’d been turned and would remain a teenager forever. His hair was dirty blonde and had a habit of falling into his eyes. His pupils hadn’t grown to their maximum size yet and a faint ring of blue still showed around the edges. The kid was only a couple of inches taller than my average five feet four inches and he wasn’t much bigger than me across the shoulders. He was only two hundred, practically still a baby. The two men, and I struggled to include Geordie in that category, were opposites in every way. It was both amusing and annoying having the teen lusting after me.

  Boy, you really have tickets on yourself, my subconscious stated sarcastically. I had a hate-hate relationship with my subconscious. It constantly made fun of me, deflated my ego and told me things that I didn’t want to hear. In this case it was right, as usual. As a human, I’d been fairly average; twenty-eight years old, a slender Australian size eight and had been mildly pretty at best. Only as a vampire had I gained any real beauty. Even so, I’d seen vamps that were far more attractive than I was. While my hair, just past shoulder length, dark brown with blonde highlights, remained the same, my face and body had undergone a few subtle alterations. I was now more than mildly pretty. Human men swooned at the sight of me to the point of embarrassment. Vampires still tended to be fairly underwhelmed by me most of the time. Luc seemed to find me attractive enough but he’d been willing to do the naked mambo with me even before I’d been transformed into my current state of unholy loveliness.

  Geordie’s persistent crush on me probably stemmed more from the fact that I was a commoner rather than one of the snobby courtiers he was used to seeing every day. If that wasn’t the reason he wanted to jump me then I was stumped as to why he found me attractive. Maybe because you could be intellectual twins, my subconscious offered. That was its way of telling me I could still be childish at times. It was difficult to argue with the truth.

  “We should be safe on this farm, for a while,” Gregor said, taking the remaining vacant seat on the couch beside Geordie.

  I wasn’t sure how old Gregor was in actual years but he’d have been in his forties when he’d been turned. He was the most urbane vampire I’d met and had a pretty decent library at his mansion in the UK. A mane of dark blonde hair framed his ruggedly handsome face.

  I bet he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a meal, I mused. All vampires had their tricks to lure humans in. Some had enhanced beauty, like me, and others had stealth and cunning. My maker, Silvius, could trick humans into thinking he was a harmless, excessively wrinkled old man. That was how the bald old freak had nabbed me. Gregor had a nicely balanced blend of charm, good looks and cunning.

  “But how long will we remain safe?” Igor asked. He straddled a creaky kitchen chair that had been turned around the wrong way and leaned his arms against the back. “The grey monsters will find us again soon enough.” His expression was dour to match his tone.

  Grizzled and not the least bit handsome, Igor was an enigma to me. He was Russian, of unknown age and was good friends with Luc. Coarse black hair that refused to be tamed fell over his forehead and stopped just above his eyes. If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to guess, I’d say he would have been about fifty when he’d been turned. Like Geordie, he wore rough woollen pants and jacket and an off white shirt most of the time. He’d be able to blend in with any farming community easily but would have trouble fitting into any other setting. He served as a chauffeur to the Court but was comfortable lounging around with a pair of lords. Not that Luc or Gregor looked much like lords at the moment. Their fine clothing was tattered and stained from our recent battle with the ‘grey monsters’.

  “Can you sense them, Natalie?” Luc asked as I settled beside him. The couch springs had sprung and poked into my butt uncomfortably. Since no one else was complaining about the crappy furniture, I kept my wisecracks to myself. I placed the backpack that I rarely let out of my sight on the floor by my feet. It contained everything I owned in the world, which was pretty pathetic when I thought about it. Once upon a time I’d had a job, an apartment and an actual wardrobe full of clothes from my store. Yep, I’d been a clothing store manager in my previous life. That was all gone now and my life would never be the same again.

  Luc raised an eyebrow impatiently, reminding me that he’d just asked me a question. I’d been following their conversation remotely, hearing the words without really listening to them.

  I’d have preferred to take a shower to wash the ooze off before launching into a detailed discussion about our circumstances. Black ichor-like blood was in my hair and coated both my skin and black leather suit. Two more skin tight suits just like it were stashed in my backpack. Emperor Ishida, leader of the Japanese vampire nation, had given them to me when I’d joined their ranks for four months to learn how to fight like their best warriors.

  A fourth suit, in blood red, was still waiting to be worn. Ishida had given it to me as a reward for cleansing the Japanese vamps of their damned. I’d only don that particular suit when it was time to face my ultimate foe. That reminded me of what I was supposed to be sensing. “I’ll just check.” Closing my eyes, I leaned against Luc. His arm slid across my shoulder and pulled me to his side. Sending out my senses, I detected no other living or unliving creatures nearby. “I don’t sense any imps at the moment.”

  The only creatures I could sense in this fashion were imps and vampires. Humans, animals and insects were immune to my mental probe. I had the vague idea that I could sense our kin and the imps because we shared the same diseased blood. While I’d diligently read the prophecy about myself, it hadn’t been very forthcoming with the powers I’d end up with. Only some of what I could do had been written down. Maybe the Romanian prophet thought it would be wise to keep the knowledge to himself so the vampire population wouldn’t freak out. Maybe he just hadn’t known just how weird I’d turn out. It occurred to me that the powers that be might be screwing with us all by not telling us everything.

  Geordie pulled in his bottom lip long enough to make a snide comment at my remark. “That doesn’t mean anything. The First can mask his offspring from you somehow. We’ll probably be surrounded when the sun comes up and killed in our sleep.” He shrivelled against the withering looks we all sent him. “I’m just saying what we’re all thinking,” the kid whined defensively.

  The First was just that, the first human to be turned into a vampire. He’d made a deal with a dying alien demi-god, our father, fifty thousand years ago for eternal life. What he hadn’t bargained on was the alien’s diseased blood changing us so that our shadows eventually became sentient.

  Over tens of thousands of years, our father’s blood gai
ned ascendency and eventually took control of the First’s vampire body. Then the First had somehow evolved into a replica of the one who had created us. With this change, he’d become alive again and had also gained the power to convert all vampires into clones of himself.

  I had no idea why he’d waited until now to start transforming his offspring into their new forms. Maybe he was ruled by fate and had to wait for me to rise as Mortis before embarking on his mad plan for world domination. According to Kokoro, the Japanese vampire prophetess, no one could escape from our fate. Maybe the First was also inhibited by the same rules that we were. If so, then it gave us at least a fighting chance against him.

  I’d had several visions of the First but had yet to meet the creature in person. In my dreams he was about eight feet tall, had ashy skin and the face of a bat. In the same dreams, I’d witnessed him calling forth a band of possessed vampires and turning them into clones of himself. The imp clones were smaller, only seven feet tall and their skin was a slightly darker grey than his. Their heads were the same as his; bald and batlike with a rudimentary up-turned nose, large fangs, forked tongues and long ears that curled at the tips. To me they looked like something that had crawled straight out of hell, hence the reason why I called them imps.

  Most disturbing of all, the clones were also alive again and were able to reproduce at an alarming rate. The First had a regular baby factory in the underground hideout I’d dreamed myself in on several occasions. I’d come to realize my dreams were more like visions after a couple of them had come true.

  The First’s harem were able to produce offspring every ten days or so. I’d seen one of the little monsters claw its way out of its dead mother’s womb with my own incredulous eyes. As soon as the infant had spotted me, it had immediately tried to kill me. God only knew how many imps existed now. God only knew why it was my destiny to kill them all. Come to think of it, maybe God didn’t have anything to do with this whole sordid mess. It was difficult to believe a divine being would hijack an alien spaceship, force it to crash land on our planet, make it turn a human into a vampire and eventually force Mortis, aka me, to be reborn as the living dead. If that isn’t the case then who sends the Romanian prophet and Kokoro their visions? For that matter, who sends you to the cavern of doom in your dreams? My subconscious had me stumped and I didn’t bother trying to search for an answer. I knew my limitations and I simply wasn’t smart enough to solve this mystery.