In Her Shadows

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “The tribal council is asking questions again. They sent us to confirm your location,” the dark angel said to Olivia’s other guardians.

  The guardians stood apart from her, talking as if she were still that eleven-year-old girl covered in her parents’ blood after a vicious vampire attack. The lone survivor of the London bonfire had come calling and tore through her household like a rabid dog.

  These midnight meetings used to frighten her but her heart no longer quickened with fear. Then again, the idea of death used to frighten her. Somehow, spending fourteen formidable years under the care of supernatural guardians had a way of altering perspective. When other kids were memorizing historical facts and figures, she had to name the leaders of the eight vampire tribes, and how to identify what tribe a vampire belonged to by their teeth formation.

  In total, she had four guardians—dark angel, light angel, Servaes the French daywalking vampire, and the badass warrior Tyr who’d been around since the Vikings conquered Europe.

  “Theophania is pushing for answers,” the dark angel continued. “I think she’s bored ruling from beneath her little island.”

  Olivia redirected her attention from the water back to her sketchpad. She turned the page from the zombie field trip and put pencil to a clean sheet of paper. The stone column made the perfect table as she leaned against it. The vague image of the midnight gathering began to take shape under her hand.

  “What of Vladamir? Has he reclaimed his place at the council table?” Servaes asked, his French accent still thick, even after centuries living away from his homeland. He referred to the ancient leader of the Moroi tribe of vampires to which he belonged. “He helped Hathor and me once. Perhaps he would help us again.”

  The comment caused Olivia to stiffen and stop drawing. She’d been adding imaginary wings to the dark angel, even though the woman did not need wings to glide through the night.

  “Even death becomes tired, little one. Things cannot stay as they are.”

  As she learned more about the vampire world, she’d been able to piece together who that bringer of death was. Vladamir of the Moroi. Not just any vampire, but one of the eight oldest vampires. Olivia remembered every word he’d spoken and had kept her promise never to tell. Somehow, the other vampires never pried the secret from her mind—something she attributed to Vladamir’s power and not her strength.

  Vladamir had been buried in a deep sleep for a long time until he’d awoken one night to kill a club full of young vampires and emotionally wound a terrified human child. Olivia touched the scar on her arm. She hoped never to see that being again. The power he had held over her mind, the pain in that instance of fire, was one of the most terrifying things she’d ever witnessed. And yet, part of her wanted to. When Vladamir tasted her blood, he’d read her, and that moment connected them. Sometimes, late at night, she could still feel him squirming around in her head like some psychic leech.

  “You will mean something to me.”

  “I will watch you and then I will mourn you.”

  The words were burned into her mind, but the meaning could be interpreted in so many ways. She flipped the page of her sketchpad.

  “No, we just came from the Island of Delos. Jiri still holds his honorary place at the table. Vladamir has disappeared,” Tyr said.

  “Tyr is a Dark Knight—nearly as old as the tribal elders,” Olivia narrated her pencil under her breath as she sketched the familiar figure into an almost comic book hero pose. “He was reborn as a vampire in 888 A.D. during some whacked out council vampire-making ceremony that involved much blood and much arrogance and a serving wench with big milk tankards—or whatever they called boobs back then. Whereas the elders have seats of power, they generally stuck to their throne rooms. The Dark Knights do their dirty work. Tyr roams the world, the creature all vampires fear. He is their nightmare, their judge and, sometimes, their executioner.”

  She glanced up and caught Tyr’s eye. The faintest trace of a smirk lifted the corner of his lips briefly.

  “No one has reported seeing Vladamir since he made his limited time appearance,” the dark angel continued.

  “Dark angel,” Olivia whispered, flipping to the next blank page to begin anew. “Like her lover, Tyr, she is a Dark Knight as well, but an anomaly because she was turned only a decade ago. She is the offspring of a vampire and human, a dhampir. As a human, she was trained to kick vampire ass, slayer-ninja style. Now, as a vampire, she is…”

  Her pencil tip broke, and she frowned, pausing to dig out a backup from her messenger bag. When she turned back to the page, she’d forgotten where she was in her narrative, and the artistic flow was gone. She left the sketch unfinished and turned to the next page. Perhaps her life could be a graphic novel. She wondered how pissed the council would be if she drew them in all their bloated ignorance.

  Since she hadn’t actually met the other elders, she had to rely on what little descriptions she’d heard of them over the years. “Which one wants me dead the most this week? Chara of the Vrykolakas, or her sister Theophania of the Vrykolatios, Andrei of the Myertovjec, Pietro only one left of the Llugut tribe, Amon of the Impudula ruling Egypt like it’s 1999 B.C., Vishnu of the Rakshasa, Ragnhild a man with a girl’s name and the only vampire with a beard of the Drauger?” Olivia whispered to herself, listing them as she had when she was a child. There was one name she didn’t say.

  “You forgot one,” Tyr instructed, indicating he’d been listening to her the whole time. Damn vampire hearing.

  “Jiri of the Moroi who is standing in for sleeping beauty,” Olivia answered, not looking up. She didn’t like saying Vladamir’s name out loud, a part of her always worried that doing so would invoke his attention.

  “Do we need to move again?” the light angel asked, giving Olivia a concerned look. “She’s doing so well here, but it has been four years. Maybe we have overstayed?”

  “Not yet,” the dark angel answered. “But we give you a warning that they might send other knights.”

  Olivia flipped to a new page.

  Dark and light angels. They were her mothers now. Light could walk during the day. Dark could not. Dark understood the deep pit inside Olivia’s broken soul. Light could not. Light had hugged her during her nightmares and sang her lullabies. Dark had jerked her out of bed and handed her a sword to battle the imaginary demons head on. Both loved her, and that love caused them to be overprotective…and perhaps a bit delusional.

  Ok. So dark angel and light angel both had names. Olivia had called them that when she was young and confused. Hey, who wouldn’t be fucked up after seeing their human parents killed by a hungry, crazed monster? Dark angel was Jaden MacNaughton—dhampir turned full vampire, one of the elite knights, cursed by darkness, partnered with her manfriend Tyr, bound into servitude to the powerful vampire council, all that fun dark, and evil stuff. Light angel was Hathor Vinceti—a reincarnated goddess or so was claimed by her daywalker-slash-reformed vampire-slash-husband, Servaes.

  Lord Servaes, the Marquis de Normant used to run a vampire feeding club near Olivia’s childhood home. It was merely a coincidence that it was those same club vampires that had been dragged into the street to die. Thanks to Hathor—in a story Olivia never really learned the full scope of—he was now a daywalker with a slight addiction to cheeseburgers. He was the only one of his kind. That scared the elders.

  “Olivia has work being displayed at the local bookstore,” Hathor offered like a proud mother bragging to another parent. She pulled out her smartphone and brought up the photos to show Tyr and Jaden. “Her paintings are coming along beautifully.”

  “Are those…?” Tyr frowned and recoiled a little. “Kittens in a basket?”

  “I like kittens,” Hathor defended. “I told her to make me something pretty.”

  Vampires talking about kittens, Olivia thought. Yep, my life is a fucking freak show.

  All eyes turned to her like adults scolding a naughty child. Well, all but the dark angel who grinned in
what could only be construed as approval. Olivia ignored them and turned back to her sketchpad. They shouldn’t have been reading her thoughts anyway. They knew she hated when they did that.

  “I prefer the landscapes you were doing,” Tyr stated. “The bonfires and ruins. The one with the little men carrying iron pikes. Fine detail in those. Reminds me of the old days.”

  “Those were demons marching out of hell,” Jaden said.

  “They were vampires,” Olivia corrected. And they had been in her nightmares. Putting them on canvas was the only way they seemed to get out of her head. Seriously, though, considering her life, could anyone really be surprised she was a little fucked up?

  “Yes, that one. I hung it in my cave home with my other possessions,” Tyr said in approval. “You should do more like that.”

  Tyr’s cave home was an isolated stronghold in the middle of the Jotunheimen mountain range of Norway. Olivia had been holed away there after Jaden and Tyr whisked her out of London. Had Jaden not insisted she be integrated with other human children somehow, she might still be in that rock fortress.

  “Kittens are much nicer,” Hathor maintained. “I think a human girl her age needs nicer influences.”

  “She paid me for the kittens,” Olivia revealed, not looking up from her pad.

  “Nicer?” Tyr was frowning when she glanced up at him. “What part of her existence makes you think kittens? She is a warrior, like us. A survivor. Her eyes are open.”

  “Hathor is the closest thing to a normal human, no offense Jaden, that we have,” Servaes defended his wife. “I say we defer to her on the topic of human girls.”

  “No offense taken.” Jaden shrugged. “I was raised by a sociopath who trained me to be a vampire hunter. I know nothing of,” she struggled to find an example, “of pink fluffy…bunnies and ballet shoes and—what do human girls do again?”

  “Very well,” Tyr said. He knew little of human children, especially girls, and had reminded Olivia of that fact often when he had clumsy interactions with her—like the time he let her watch horror movies well beyond what was age appropriate, or when he’d told her she could roam an inner city graveyard in the middle of the night at fifteen to attend a rave. Hathor had been furious. Jaden had saved her from that last one. Tyr still didn’t see what the harm in it was.

  “You pay me, too, I’ll paint demons for you,” Olivia said. “The angels won’t let me get a real job.”

  Tyr gave her a ghost of a smile and nodded in agreement.

  Something along the water’s edge drew Olivia’s notice, and she glanced down. Her breath caught in what could only be hope as she thought of Jaxon. It was foolish for her to want another vampire to visit her, especially one that was paid to protect her. She was up to her eyeballs in the undead and didn’t need any more, but there was a sadness to Jaxon that spoke to her. Not to mention, like most of his kind, he emitted a kind of sexual appeal that could easily fuel a late night fantasy. Not that anything would come of it. Well, not that anything would come of it again. She could just imagine what Tyr and Servaes would do if they learned she’d slept with…well, anyone. Around sixteen they had both tried their version of the maidenhead flower and the attacking sword talk. Hathor did birds and bees. Jaden handed her birth control and said to have fun.

  Even that first time they’d come together, Jaxon knew how to touch her. It was an instinct, a talent, a freaking vampire advantage—she didn’t know. It was a thousand times better than her first time with a boy, which had been groping and horrible. He’d been human, and she’d been desperate to escape reality. Needless to say, Robert Fumble-fingers What’s-his-name wasn’t love, and her guardians’ sex talk had come a little too late.

  The looks she imagined Jaxon directed at her were merely the illusion of feeling, a natural vampire trick to lure in prey. He never indicated that he cared beyond duty. Sometimes, she doubted vampires could care, at least not as deeply as humans, but then she saw the way Tyr and Jaden looked at each other when they thought no one noticed.

  No, it wasn’t Jaxon. Just some other night creature bent on ill intent. A shiver worked over Olivia, and she narrowed her gaze as fear tried to creep in.

  Olivia saw a flash out of the corner of her eye. Automatically her heartbeat quickened with an adrenaline-fueled response. Her arm lifted to block the attack to her neck. She dropped her sketchpad on the ground and heard her pencil rolling away. Jaden stood against her, fangs bared and face contorted. After a few seconds locked in the unmoving position, Olivia drawled, “Hungry?”

  “Your timing was a few seconds slower than last time,” Jaden said. “We were away too long. The instructors I left have been remiss in your training.”

  “Maybe because I was expecting you to attack me,” Olivia quipped. If a vampire wanted to eat her, she’d be eaten. And, if the council elders wanted her dead, she’d be dead.

  Within seconds she was on her back on a worn dirt path several hundred yards from the bridge. Tyr’s ice-blue eyes flashed as he pinned her down by her neck. His long blond hair was pulled back, so the moonlight easily illuminated his face. It only took the effort of one hand to subdue her. She glared up at him, even as his hand tightened.

  “Do you think death is all they can do?” Tyr growled angrily. She rarely saw the ancient one express any kind of emotion that was not tinged with boredom. “They can lock you in a moment of hell for an eternity, little girl.”

  Olivia hit his arm, knowing she would be helpless against his strength. “Then kill me and be done with it already, old man. Unless the elders can suddenly reanimate the dead? Necromancy anyone? No? I didn’t think so.”

  “You were more agreeable when you were twelve,” he grumbled. Tyr pulled her up by her arms and set her on her feet.

  “You were scarier when I was twelve,” she said.

  “I know Servaes and Hathor disagree with me on this, but if it is your wish, I will arrange for you to be changed,” Tyr said so that the others would not hear him. “Jaden and I have spoken on it. Your beauty will never fade, and your youth—”

  Olivia arched a brow.

  Tyr chuckled. “Fine. A poor argument. Think of how many museums you can visit and paintings you can create. The council would not see you as much of a threat if you were reborn. They will still want the name you refuse to give, but—”

  “Someone comes. We should go,” Jaden interrupted, jogging up the path to join them.

  Tyr narrowed his gaze on her. Olivia shook her head in denial of his question. No, she did not want to live forever.

  Chapter Three

  “What are you doing here? She needs protection.”

  At the cryptic tone, Jaxon looked up from his place on his leather couch. Vladamir did not need an introduction and often appeared and disappeared at will. Jaxon couldn’t complain. The man was an elder, one of the oldest and most powerful vampires he had ever come across. He led the Moroi tribe, which made him Jaxon’s great-great-something-vampire-grandfather. Funnily, Vladamir was the closest connection he had to his own maker—some bloody feral being that had fed on him, bled into him, and then left him to die in the sunlight before disappearing forever.

  The Spokane suburb apartment wasn’t anything special, besides the fact it was secluded and had very little daytime traffic to disturb Jaxon while he slept in his coffin bed. It was rare that he would get a visitor, let alone one who could show up without his hearing them coming.

  “I have been protecting her each night as you’ve asked. She is meeting with her guardians now. They sensed me when I came too close and whisked her away. You have no reason to worry. They will keep her safe,” Jaxon answered, “and when they are done Tyr and Servaes will call me back.”

  Jaxon’s eyes moved across the paintings on his wall. He’d bought every single one of Olivia’s pieces that had been for sale at the local bookstore’s art gallery. He even had the simple napkin sketch she’d made for him after they’d first met. She’d just moved to Spokane, and he’d known the loca
l area. Most of them were disturbing images of death and chaos, and yet that was his reality since the night he’d been turned in October of 1868. Her artwork somehow managed to capture all the pain in his soul but none of the longing.

  The paintings faded from his vision as he remembered the look of her by the suspension bridge’s stone column. She’d had her head turned down to her sketchpad, pencil moving languidly over the paper. Blonde hair held the silver of the moonlight, delicate threads that lifted in the breeze. When he watched her, he heard piano music and violins filtering through his thoughts. It was an old song, one he’d heard long ago in his youth. It caused his soul to ache.

  Her cheeks flushed with life as only a human’s complexion could. Whenever she was nervous and trying to hide it, she’d bite the inside of her bottom lip. That humanity mesmerized him. She mesmerized him.

  “I chose you to protect her because you love her,” Vladamir stated, “and because you have managed to stay off the council’s radar since your initial turning. All you are to them is a name in a ledger, one of the thousands. You have no family, not even a vampire one, poor little orphan. All you have is your tribe and the memories of your disastrous rebirth.”

  Jaxon glanced at the tribal elder. The truth no longer stung. It was true that most vampires had some kind of guidance after being made. Once the bloodlust had subsided, Jaxon had figured out what he was on his own.

  “You are not an evil man, but you do evil things,” he’d used to tell himself.