Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  Like bees to the hive. I got that distinct impression. Like the swallows flight to San Juan Capistrano, the vampires had one set beacon: Celestine.

  “If we let them in, we die. We don't let them through that door? They'll find a way. And it won’t take long. Insatiable, determined, loyal, they will seep in like water. Their need drives them always to seek the sea, to flow down hill to their mistress, to their maker.

  “As soon as they see a human being, they’ll kill us.” Peggy looked at me, hesitated, and bolted for the far side of the cavernous room.

  “Then we better not be seen,” I swore at the door, at the dying woman, at the hundreds of monsters she’d made that clawed their way inside.

  Grabbing my blood-soaked clothes, I ran, following after Peggy.

  She didn't hesitate.

  Which was good because the monsters on the other side of the wall weren't going to stop until they broke their way in, ripping it apart stone by stone. No lock, no matter how sophisticated, was going to hold back one hundred hungry vampires.

  Peggy was uncannily calm for all that pressure.

  Placing her hand on the cool marble of an intricately carved bat, the wispy girl pulled on its wings.

  Unlocked, the bat carving detached from the wall. Released into her hand, the lock slid out, revealing a long tube. Peggy twisted the carving, breaking the tube open. Reaching inside, Peggy withdrew a skeleton key.

  An actual skeleton key.

  With one quick glance at me to make sure I wasn't completely freaked out, Peggy grabbed the odd skeleton key and placed it around her neck. Then she took the tube of stone and shaped its form yet again. The pipe itself turned on its side ninety degrees and then ninety degrees until it formed an S-shape. She took that strange serpentine shape and stepped to the adjoining wall.

  Placing the tube and key in the wall, she pushed.

  With a creak, the wall opened, exposing a passageway about the size of a teenage human. At her touch, the trapdoor slid back leaving just enough room for Peggy and then me to squeeze through. Beyond the axis of the false wall, Peggy flipped the switch that lit the whole floor.

  Footlights led off into the distance. About twenty feet down the hallway, the open doors of a modern elevator waited. Without hesitation, we ran inside. We needed its protection. I stood there, shivering in the fluorescent light, searching for the button that promised EXIT.

  I blinked at the strangeness of it all. A secret crypt under a tourist attraction, with a modern elevator that led… Oh.

  Explained a lot of missing tourists...

  The elevator was practical, bare bones, and completely out of place in a world of elaborate carved marble and the crypts of ancient vampires. It smelled of bleach.

  Peggy tapped the wall and the secret door closed behind us. But not before she took the serpentine key out of the lock. They would have no way to follow us.

  “Safety first,” I muttered under my breath. Peggy cracked a smile in the middle of all the chaos.

  Besides, the vampires would only know about the secret passage if they managed to see through the heavy concrete and marble dust that filled the air of the crypt.

  On the other side of the door, from the room that we had just left, an impressively loud explosion rocketed across the room. The newborn vampires had arrived.

  By craft and cunning, we got out of the crypt alive.

  That’s how we left Celestine: covered in dust, blood, and the monsters of her own making.

  Peggy and I sprinted to the back of the hallway, following the trail of footlights. Thankfully, there was nothing in our way. When we got to the elevator, I was surprised to see that it was more of a meat locker than a comfortable kind of transportation.

  “What’s the elevator used for?” I asked and immediately regretted the question.

  I realized then that the entire hallway we had just sprinted had been built on a slight incline. And that meat lockers... Well, I knew what the vampires planned to use this elevator for: feasts.

  How many mortals had Celestine killed? Did I really want to know?

  Nope.

  Glumly, I stared at the buttons on the elevator wall: K for Kitchen, M for main room, L for library.

  Peggy picked L.

  “Not sure I have the stomach to see the kitchen,” I remarked as the metal box lurched upwards. Even the controlled movement of the machine was alarming. I kept waiting for the sound of footfalls on the ceiling of the elevator. I kept waiting like a tourist for the glamorous monsters of the silver screen to come for us, falling down onto the elevator lid, ready to rip off the air vents and the metal box just to drink our blood.

  Silence.

  Still, my hands shook. Vampires seemed much less cool and incredibly more dangerous. I looked at the floor of the elevator, searching for blood stains. My stomach flipped. As we ascended, I couldn't help but wonder when the ornate theatre above us intersected with the nightmares below.

  Then, the elevator came to an abrupt halt.

  “This way,” called Peggy, leading me into the darkness. She always seemed to know where to place her hands to turn on the lights. We wandered through room after room of movie costumes and elaborately decorated sets. Nothing moved in the shadows. With every step, my heart pounded in my ears. By the time we had managed to go through three massive rooms, my nerves were shot. There had to be a large part of a wax museum in these rooms.

  “So much clothing,” I whispered, “Why is all this here?”

  “Storage for central casting for Brightlight Studios.” Over her shoulder, Peggy replied as we hurried on, “Even vampires have to blend in.”

  I suppose Halloween wasn't the only day that vampires wanted to go out. With these costumes, the monsters would fit right into the wild nightlife of West Hollywood.

  Under my breath, I remarked, “If my students saw this…” and then my voice trailed off. Where were they? Avery, Beckett, Opha? Who made it through the silver and the holy water traps? How many of my students would be alive to see the sun rise? How many would be human?

  And what the hell could I do about it?

  Up ahead Peggy paused, peeking inside a heavy, solid cedar door. When she was sure the coast was clear, she beckoned me to follow. Together, we crept in to the oddest room I'd ever seen: a grand library. Only in movies were there ever this many books in one room. Rows and rows and rows of books, stacked floor-to-ceiling in great wobbly towers of dead knowledge. The interior of the library was a hoarder’s paradise, stuffed with books of every kind. And the ceilings had to be over fifty feet high. None of these writings were new books, either.

  Most of the covers had a strange, tanned look to the leather, marked on the spines with elaborate gold writing. The books were written in so many ancient languages I couldn't even begin to understand what I was looking at.

  The congestion of the place overwhelmed me.

  Peggy headed straight for the middle of the room.

  I followed, with my mouth open. Awed, knowing that this place was a treasure I would never understand, I was careful to touch nothing.

  I stood in the middle of a priceless collection of knowledge, of ancient words long since considered destroyed, lost to time by scholars. Over to the side I saw scrolls done in kanji, in Mandarin, and so many ancient languages of the Far East.

  No doubt, this library was small by vampire standards. Still, I was completely overwhelmed. Stunned.

  Peggy, though, knew exactly what we were looking for. She walked straight up to one specific bookshelf. Confidently, she pulled out a book covered in that curiously tan leather. That was when I saw the ear. The human ear. Which was when I realized that the tan leather that covered these books was taken from dead humans.

  Peggy didn't notice anything unusual.

  Shocked, I said nothing. But disgust and fear fought for dominance in my head. “Let's just get what we need and get out of here,” I said. “I can't take seeing humans used as a product.”

  Peggy look at me conf
used, “I don’t know what you mean. These are just old books,” she shooed away my concern. “Valuable, amazing, and wonderful works of art. They wouldn't harm you.”

  “Peggy, don't you know what these are made of?” I challenged her explanation, wanting to see her reaction. “Do you really not know?”

  Peggy look at the outside edge. She looked at the ear, seeing it for the first time. Closely, she looked at the skin that have been tanned, cured, and fashioned into a book cover. Then she looked up at me.

  There were tears in her eyes.

  “This has to end,” she said quietly. “Somehow, this has to stop. What Celestine does... What vampires are, it’s…. appalling. Brutal. Wrong…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  I finished for her “This room’s an abomination. Against all life. The hands that could make books of skin? That’s the end of all of us. Hunger like this couldn’t be slaked. It can’t be allowed. How do we begin to measure the loss of life, just in this room? Not in gold or sorrow or lost innocence—because it is all three things.”

  “I'm sorry,” Peggy mumbled, apologizing to me even though she had done nothing wrong. Then she looked me square in the eye and spoke from her heart. “I'm sorry that you're caught up in this, Tristan. I'll do my best to help you. We’ll make it right. And then Celestine and I…” She didn't finish that sentence. But I knew. Their undead world would continue on, with or without me.

  Exactly like Celestine dying—it was inevitable.

  “Here! This room is where we change the world,” Peggy exclaimed. “This is what we need!” Eagerly, she flipped through the pages and read down the page: “The necklace of Ascension, the belt of mirrors, the chain of Icarus. I found it.”

  I couldn't read any words in the book that Peggy read with ease. “What is that?” I said, curious. “What language is that written in?”

  Peggy looked at me, confused by the question. “These are all the same language,” she replied. “All of these books. I can read every book in this room. Can’t you?”

  She said it with such modesty that I knew she wasn't bragging. That’s when I realized Peggy wasn’t entirely human. She was something as far out of my understanding as the existence of vampires. Not human. Something else.

  I didn't know what she was. Except one thing: Peggy was my ally. Celestine made sure of that. Right now, it was up to us to save a dying vampire.

  Then, we could try to save the world.

  “Here,” Peggy said, her fingers gliding across the old manuscript page, lightly with the touch of a scholar. “The chain of Icarus heals with its touch. Here's an image of the chain. Wait.” Peggy’s eyes opened wide in surprise, “I've this seen before. This is the belt in the painting. I know this chain.” From the flush of color on her cheeks, Peggy bloomed with excitement.

  Me? I only hoped that there was a way through.

  Yeah. All we had to do was retrieve the chain without running into lethal and ignorant vampire hunters or going back through the newborn army that wanted our blood.

  Choices.

  3

  Chained

  Tristan St. Denis

  Peggy knew where she was going. All I could do was follow.

  We ran around the corner, down a flight of stairs that I would have never seen or even suspected. I would have never known those passageways were there. Peggy knew every trick and every trap down every hallway. I trusted her because Celestine did, unwaveringly. So, like a faithful dog, I followed.

  In moments, we arrived.

  I was completely lost. Luckily, Peggy wasn’t.

  In front of us was a five foot tall image of a partially clothed woman with a crescent moon adorning her forehead. No mistaking the arrogance that radiated from every inch of the portrait. She stood like she was an ancient goddess with an elegant bow in one hand and arrows in the other.

  And then I realized the painting was a portrait of Diana, ancient Roman goddess of the hunt. Clothed in the finest leather boots, skin-tight pants and fur-lined jacket, the Immortal huntress used pure beauty to stun her prey. Around her mostly bare hips was an elaborate chain. The same one that had been in the books.

  “The chain of Icarus,” Peggy confirmed my guess.

  “Right,” I said, “So, how does a painting help us now?”

  “Bastet,” Peggy replied, “We have to ask Bastet. She's the one who has the answers to locate lost things,” she exclaimed like we were regular Nancy Drews, this one.

  It was all I could do to just nod. Makes total sense.

  “Yeah...” I acted like this conversation hadn’t veered into the wildest of realms of illogical connection. “Okay,” I said, “We just need to find a cat.”

  A cat? One cat in a city full of three million feral animals? It was almost laughably simple and completely ridiculous at the same time. Then again, this girl could read hundreds of dead languages. Who was I to say what she knew and didn't know?

  “Come on!” Eyes sparkling, Peggy practically buzzed with excitement, her cheeks flushed red. “I know where to go!”

  With the eagerness of a child at the zoo, Peggy grabbed my hand and we were off again. Two hidden ladders and a hallway later, she abruptly stopped.

  Palm out, she held out her hand to me: Caution. Sliding back from the corner, Peggy put her finger to her lips.

  Peeking around the edge of her shoulder, I realized why. It was midday. We should have been the only creatures awake in the old movie theater.

  But we weren’t.

  Standing guard at the outer door were two very large vampires, a man and a woman. Both of them were incredibly muscled, fierce and scary as hell. Any sane man would have turned around and never looked back. But not me. Today is not a day for sanity, I thought. Today is the day of heroes. “I’ve got this,” I announced to Peggy and she watched in horror as I strolled past her, towards the guarded door.

  Immediately, the two vampire guards caught my scent. Their smiles were not welcoming. Except, maybe in the way a wolf welcomes a defenseless lamb to the flock.

  “Good day, gentleman, lady,” I corrected myself, the grin on the closest one was undiluted hunger. I didn’t meet the monster’s gaze. Not sure I could have and kept my composure. The creature’s face was far more terrifying than any movie monster. Its fangs extended, bloodthirsty, ready.

  “Did you order take-out, Dimitri?” the female asked snidely. “Snacks on delivery? Classy. Bit scrawny though.”

  “You've arrived just in time for our next meal,” the second vampire smiled, advancing towards me. “Do we still have to tip them?” one asked the other. Vampire humor was about as funny as gallows talk.

  Act confused, I told myself, calming my frayed nerves. Keeping them off guard as long as I could meant life or death now. “W-we, uh my niece and I,” I stuttered, my voice betraying every bit of fear these monsters wanted to hear. Backing up slightly, I played the part of the coward—which wasn’t difficult at all. These creatures were every nightmare I’d ever had as a teenager. Every horror story come true. Keeping their attention on me, I stammered, “We were looking for the k-kitchen. Excuse m-me… We’ll be on our way.”

  My voice trailed off. I didn’t even need to fake the stutter as two feral, hungry vampires advanced, one on each side of the hallway.

  “Where's this niece you're talking about?” one growled while the other one sniffed me for silver. In that moment, I regretted not grabbing something—anything at all—as a weapon. Right now, my hands would have to do.

  Peggy walked around the corner, immediately attracting the vampires’ attention.

  In that split second, I acted.

  I was no immortal monster but I had twenty years of dojo training and seven black belts to my name. I fought with the skill of my masters and the masters before them, going back into the mists of time.

  Without hesitation, I followed my training.

  I fought a creature of poisoned fangs, of claw and vicious hunger. I countered his attacks, one after the other,
defending myself against a beast that would sooner eat me than let me reach the door.

  The second vampire looked around, confused. She shook her head at Peggy’s arrival, as if to jar a memory loose. But the moment passed.

  She spluttered, “Hey, aren't you... the food?”

  With a kick to the head and a savage right hook, I refused to drop my guard.

  “Nope,” I whispered as the second vampire whirled around in surprise.

  “We're allies that you’ve forgotten,” Peggy replied, looking down at the stunned vampire. “Friends. I'm the girl you rescued two nights ago. Celestine—your maker will not be pleased if you hurt him or me. Think! We are friends to the Reborn.” She spoke calmly, harnessing logic in the middle of fighting off monsters.

  I felt the truth of her words. We were as much of a friend as a mortal could be to a vampire, like the sheep befriending a wolf.

  The woman vampire stopped in her tracks. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath, inhaling our scent. There was a spark of intelligence in her eyes.

  “Celestine...” I whispered the one name that might stop an attack. I didn’t know what a newborn vampire could understand.

  Peggy did.

  Baring her neck, Peggy showed the vampire the only mark by which Celestine was known: the desecration of the cross. In a raised scar, the perfect lines fell from the joining of her neck and shoulder down to her collarbone.

  “Look at me! See this? Now will you listen?” Peggy asked.

  Considering the mark, the monster paused its attack. That was lucky for us because the second vampire was rising from my blow—angry, looking for a meal, and revenge.

  “Easy, big fellow,” I said with more suggestion than hope. “E-easy now. We just got done telling this lady here, we're friends of your maker. Slow it down. Think. We're trying to save her. We all have the same goal.”