She had seen these before, on a handful of savages in a handful of quarantine communities, and always on a savage that had regenerated some, if not most, of its mind. It was a stainless steel plate, four inches square. It looked as though it were just sitting atop his chest, near his heart, but as with the other savages she had witnessed, she sensed that the device (though why that word should come to mind, she didn’t know) was actually implanted into the savage and the flesh had been regenerated around it.
“What is that thing?” she asked. The savage answered with a derisive laugh. “Who did that to you? Why?”
“I thought we were here to hunt savages,” a voice said from the darkness. “Not make pleasantries with them.”
Jerusa flinched but was careful to keep her hold on the savage. Ming stepped out of an alley across the street from the burning building with Ralgar close on her heels.
“Come here,” Jerusa said to Ming. “Look. Here’s another one of those weird metal things. Maybe we should cut him open and take it out.”
Ralgar wrinkled his nose, making his sharp features all the more ugly. “Why would we do that?”
“Someone took the time to put it there,” Jerusa said. “Shouldn’t we at least find out why? It could be important.”
“You leap at shadows, you moronic fledgling,” Ralgar said just short of a hiss.
Celeste stepped into the firelight. “I think Jerusa is right. It looks important to me.” She was the only member of the Crimson Storm that passed the Stewards strict standard of beauty, but by mistake, she had revealed herself to be an augur (a vampire psychic of sorts) and had been condemned to servitude as a Hunter.
Ming brushed her silver-streaked hair from her face with her fingers. “You think or you know? Is this your opinion or have you had a vision?” Her flat, spade-shaped nose flared like an angry bull’s. Had she only her looks to bring before the Stewards, she would’ve burned long ago. But Jerusa had seen Ming’s power at work, and when she was angry, it was terrifying to behold.
Celeste’s shoulders dropped and she seemed to wither a bit. “No. No vision. I just thought—”
“Don’t!” Ming shouted. “You don’t think. You obey.”
The other team of Hunters appeared in the middle of the street. They called themselves Midnight Fire. It seemed imperative that each group of Hunters give themselves some ridiculous name as though they were a high school rugby team instead of a highly skilled group of vampire assassins.
“Perhaps you should listen to your fledgling, Ming,” a vampire named Trevor called out. He was an unassuming looking creature, flabby with a receding hairline. Jerusa imagined that he had been a middle-aged tax accountant when he had been turned. “It looks as though she has taken out twelve savages single-handed. I don’t remember any one member of the Crimson Storm being so…ambitious.”
Jerusa sighed. That comment wouldn’t help her cause, and Trevor knew it.
Taos returned from the desert, stopping in a cloud of dust. “Hey, I resent that. I helped, too. Or did you not notice?” He pointed at the burning building.
“Well done,” Trevor said in a way that seemed to mock both Taos and Ming. “Do I foresee a change in leadership?”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Ming thrust her hand forward, hitting Jerusa with a telekinetic fist that sent her tumbling twenty yards back. Ming extended her other hand and the savage was jerked violently into the air. She moved her hands as though she were wringing out an invisible rag and the savage, floating several feet in the air, twisted into a tight coil, as black blood gushed from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears.
“Ralgar,” Ming said.
Without a word, the short, vile creature stepped forward. He pointed with one finger at the puddle of blood forming beneath the savage and, all at once, it burst into flames. He motioned with his hand and the fire followed the blood as though it were gasoline. He burned the savage slowly, from the feet up, and a large smile cracked on his face when the stainless steel plate on the savage’s chest exploded in a storm of sparks.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jerusa asked. “Why did you do that?”
A hard blow hit her across the face, knocking her off of her feet. Her vision blurred and her ears rang once again. It took her a moment to stand up and another moment to realize Ming had hit her with another telekinetic attack. Jerusa wiped the blood dripping from her nose and watched it reabsorb into her skin.
“Question me again,” Ming said, “and I’ll turn you inside out.”
Something shifted off in the distance and every vampire seemed to detect it at once. Except for Jerusa, who was still a bit woozy.
“Where are you going?” Ming asked something in the darkness. She thrust out her hands, made as though she had snatched something out of the air, and pulled them back. Thrashing a few feet off the ground, the two humans came floating into the firelight.
“Miss a few loose ends, did you?” Ralgar asked Jerusa.
“That’s okay,” Ming said. “She deserves a treat for a job well done.” The humans landed in front of Jerusa, but they were unable to flee. “Go ahead, blood witch, you can feed on both of them.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The humans’ terrified heartbeats rang in Jerusa’s ears. She could feel the heat of their flesh, smell the adrenaline swimming in their blood. The thirst rose in her like a summer storm. She would have doubled over in pain had Alicia not steadied her. She locked eyes with the ghost, begging her, without words, not to bring the spectral pain.
Ming pushed the humans closer to her. She didn’t know that Jerusa hadn’t ever drunk blood. Jerusa never hunted with the others. She pretended to hunt alone, but, in reality, she fed from Alicia, somehow plunging her fangs into flesh that didn’t really exist and drinking blood that wasn’t really there. It quenched the blood thirst for a time, but without real blood, it was only a matter of time before her body would begin to suffer permanent damage. She used doses of her own blood to mask the crimson rings in her eyes and ruby tint of her lips that were the telltale signs of fasting, though the time between doses were growing narrower. Ming suspected something, but she didn’t know the truth. If she did, Jerusa would be executed without question. For whatever reason, to refuse blood was the greatest violation of the Stewards’ insane laws.
Jerusa’s fangs ached. Her mouth was as dry as the desert. She had never wanted anything—not food, not air, not life—as much as she wanted to gorge upon these poor creatures’ blood. It was all consuming. A black hole, and eventually, she would succumb to its unquenchable gravity.
But not tonight.
The smug look of pleasure on Ming’s face sent an icy steel rod down Jerusa’s spine. With a deep breath, she backed away from the humans. “You don’t control me,” she said, though the words came out shaky and unsure. “I feed on my own terms.” She continued to walk backward, and with each step, she felt a little stronger.
Ming’s face pinched in anger. “Do you know the price of disobedience?”
“I do,” Jerusa said. “But remember, Ming. You need me much more than I need you.”
Ming stiffened, catching Jerusa’s subtle reference to Shufah. Marjek, one of the founding members of the High Council, had a perverse and devouring infatuation with Shufah. He only let her leave the Ice Sanctuary so that she could help hunt down her twin brother. But Shufah had been taken by the umbilicus, the abominations forged by the human group known as the Light Bearers Society. If Marjek knew that Shufah had been missing for almost a year, might possibly be dead, he would kill them all… Even the Hunters.
Jerusa expected another telekinetic slap from Ming, but none came. She couldn’t afford to let the other team of Hunters uncover the truth of Shufah. It was obvious that Marjek had sent them to spy on the situation.
The Crimson Storm had a very large target on their backs. They were the fiercest team of Hunters ever to slay savages. Vampires weren’t immune to envy, jealousy, and spite. The mysterious deaths of the ot
her two members of the Crimson Storm, Mikael and Quinn, and the addition of Jerusa and Taos, had been like chum to sharks. Ming hadn’t made many friends over the centuries, and the strain to hold her team’s position with the Stewards was visible on her face.
Ming held her hands out sideways and the two humans flew away from Jerusa in separate directions, the woman heading for Taos, the man for Celeste. “The blood witch is too good to feed with us,” Ming said. “So, you kill the humans.”
“Let them go,” Jerusa said. “They haven’t done anything wrong. They weren’t bitten.”
“They can’t go free. They’ve seen too much.”
Jerusa stepped forward. “Who are they going to tell? No one will believe them.” The man begged for their lives. The woman could only sob.
“You are so weak,” Ming said. “Look at you. Pathetic. Why do you care for them? You’re not a human anymore. You feed on humans. Innocent and guilty have no meaning. They are here. That is all that matters.”
Jerusa had nothing to say. Might as well try to talk the snake out of eating the mouse.
“Kill them,” Ming said, a tiny grin breaking at the corners of her mouth. She might need Jerusa to find Shufah, but she didn’t need Taos. And poor Celeste had been under Ming’s control for so long, that’s all she knew. “Do as I say, or forfeit your own lives.”
Taos’s jaw jutted forward. Jerusa had seen that look many times. He didn’t like to be ordered around, and was just stubborn enough to choose death over servitude. He started to push the woman away, but Jerusa stopped him.
“It’s okay. Do it…for me.”
Celeste looked visibly relieved. Her angelic face and pixie hairdo glimmered in the firelight, and a skittish flicker of hope lit in her eyes. She had spent the last year playing peacemaker, forcing treaties and ceasefires between Jerusa and Ming, always reminding them of their common goals: finding Shufah before Marjek found out, and finding Suhail before he destroyed the world.
Jerusa knew what really troubled Celeste. She was worried that Jerusa and Ming would come to an impasse, a strait place in the road where neither was willing to yield. Battle lines would be drawn, and on that day, she would have to choose on which side she would stand.
Jerusa turned and walked into the desert before they started to feed. She wanted to get far away before the scent of blood hit the air. Though she was fast, Jerusa couldn’t outrun the thundering heartbeats of the humans, raging with fear, then dwindling into death.
A scream rose in her throat, she opened her mouth and set it free. Her voice echoed from one rock structure to the next, until it seemed to shake the very ground. The others would hear her, but she didn’t care. She was tired of death. It had always been a part of her life, ever since she had realized, as a little girl, that not everyone she could see was a flesh-and-blood being. Now she was an agent of death. The hardest part, however, was watching her fellow vampires feed on weak and defenseless humans, and knowing that, if given the chance, she would, too.
Jerusa climbed up one of the rock formations—a large boulder balancing precariously on a much skinnier stem, giving it the appearance of a giant petrified mushroom. She scaled the slick surface and impossible angles with the ease of a spider. Once on top, she moved about the large rounded area, staring up at the stars. She felt both humbled and saddened when faced with the scope of the universe. The truth of the matter was, she was lost, in every way a person could be.
She sat cross-legged, looking toward the east. The sun would be up in just a couple of hours. Maybe she should just sit right here and wait for dawn. It had been almost two years since she had watched the sun rise. Back then, she had been a stupid human girl, upset with her overbearing mother, pining away for boys that had no interest in her, wasting every early morning miracle, the way most humans do.
Her thoughts, once again, ran to her mother, trapped somewhere halfway across the world. Was she still alive? The news Celeste received from the other augurs in the Watchtower said that yes, Debra Phoenix still lived. But Jerusa had learned the hard way that the Stewards were not to be trusted. The idea of her mother dying alone in that snow-buried house—or worse yet, waking to find her daughter absent and replaced by monsters—put a knot in her chest so big that she could no longer breathe.
At least her mother wasn’t alone. Thad was there, too.
Poor Thad, infected by Taos’s bite, and denied eternal life by the Stewards. His worst fear had been that they would enslave him at one of the quarantine communities. That’s just what they did, and Jerusa was pretty sure it was for nothing more than spite. He hadn’t died during her trials. She had saved him, and beat them at their own game. But still, had they sent Thad to one of the other American communities, he’d be dead now, or a savage.
This was all Jerusa’s fault. Had she not called Thad to come pick her up that night, he would have never been bitten. He didn’t blame her, though. After all that she had put him through, all he really wanted was for her to love him. She wanted to. Just like she wanted to return Taos’s affection. But she just didn’t feel that way toward either of them. Her heart belonged to another.
She wanted love. She wanted companionship, but how could she think of things like that when every day for her was a competition between the thirst and not dying. All else seemed trivial by comparison.
“Are you all right?” Celeste called from below.
Jerusa moved to the edge. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“May I come up?”
“Be my guest.”
Celeste scaled the stone mushroom with ease, and in the starlight, she looked ephemeral and weightless, like one of Jerusa’s ghosts. The night seemed suddenly cold. Celeste stood there for a moment, her full lips pressed into a tight line.
“What is it?” Jerusa asked, more to end the silence than anything else.
“I think the others suspect.”
Jerusa didn’t need to ask what they suspected. “But they don’t know.”
“No, they don’t have proof, but it’s not hard to connect the dots.” The wind caused the tuft of Celeste’s hair to dance. “Ralgar is sure you’re not feeding, but Ming is waiting for proof.”
Jerusa turned back toward the east. “So what? What does it matter anymore?”
“Ming has been waiting for you to lead her to Shufah, or Suhail, but her patience is wearing thin. She won’t wait forever. I think she’s planning on cutting her loses.”
“You mean by killing me.” Jerusa wasn’t asking. She’d suspected this was coming.
“Yes,” Celeste said. Her voice quivered. “Ming will just lie to Marjek and say that Shufah escaped. She is very powerful and quite wise. The Stewards will believe her.”
“I don’t care anymore.” Jerusa chanced a glance over her shoulder at Celeste. “I think I want to die.” She turned away again, not able to bear the pain in Celeste’s eyes. Jerusa forgot that being an augur meant more that psychic premonitions or telepathic communications with other augurs over endless distances. Celeste had an acute empathic connection to those around her. Jerusa’s pain was Celeste’s pain. “I’m sorry. Maybe you should go. I’m just going to sit here and wait for the sun.”
Celeste stepped forward, started to put her hand on Jerusa’s shoulder, but stopped. Whether that was because she didn’t want to intrude on Jerusa’s space, or she was afraid of seeing the legion of ghosts that were always close to her, Jerusa couldn’t say.
“I know how you feel,” Celeste said. “I really do. When I first realized that I could’ve been free, that the Stewards had tricked me into revealing my gift, I was in a low place. I wanted to die, too.”
“Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you kill yourself?”
“I tried. Just like you, I went out and waited for the sun. But when the pain hit, instinct kicked in and I buried myself without knowing it. I woke up a couple of nights later and Ming taught me what real pain was.” Celeste’s eyes glassed over for a moment as the memory passed. “It took me a long time
, but eventually, I realized that I was being selfish. Yeah, I was depressed. Yeah, I was in pain. But despite all of the evil that the Stewards have created, being a Hunter meant that I was working for the greater good. Every savage we destroy equals hundreds of humans we save.”
“I understand,” Jerusa said. “But that’s not good enough for me. There’ll always be other Hunters doing the Stewards’ dirty work. Ever since I was changed, everyone I love has suffered: Foster, my mom, Thad, Shufah. Silvanus is missing, and Taos has made himself a slave for me. I corrupt everything I touch.”
“And you think your death will make any of this better?” Celeste asked. “So, when you’re dead, do you believe that the Stewards will keep your mother or Thad alive? No. Once you’re no longer needed, they will slaughter them. Do you think Ming and Ralgar will allow Taos to remain a Hunter? He’s too wild. When you die, he dies, too. And if you are gone, who will find Shufah?”
“What if she’s already dead?”
“She’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I dream of her sometimes.” Celeste moved around in front of Jerusa. “I don’t dream about dead people.” Her eyes glittered in the starlight, and Jerusa thought she saw doubt hiding deep down. “If she were dead, wouldn’t her spirit come to be with you? Wouldn’t she seek out her lost love?”
Jerusa looked over at Foster. His face was pinched with heartache. She thought about countering Celeste’s logic with another pessimistic thought. What if Shufah wasn’t dead, but was now a savage. Or maybe the Light Bearers had done some terrible experiments on her. But she didn’t want to hurt Foster anymore.
Her ghosts aren’t bound to her (except for maybe Alicia), but they don’t seem free to move about on their own. Foster had once left and went to Silvanus, but that had been a one-shot deal. He had returned to tell Jerusa that Silvanus was in trouble, but after that, he couldn’t find him. Nor could any of her ghosts lead her to Silvanus, or Shufah, or even Suhail.
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