Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  A sound answered the movement.

  In their voices, a low growl that they all made at the same time, creepy and scary and I could barely breathe. My voice quivered, as I spoke their names, “Ashe. Laura, it's me, Tristan. Listen to me now—this is not the way.”

  The chain in my hand glowed with something like the light that I had seen only once. Three nights ago, on Peggy's body when we found her in the jail cell at the Hunter's underground fortress.

  But this was something different. Now, the chain glowed with some kind of magic. I didn’t know its purpose. What could the chain do? How could it help?

  I didn’t know. None of this was my idea. Celestine told me to find the damned thing. I trusted her enough to look for seemingly impossible things and retrieve them at her command.

  That I had done. How it all worked wasn’t up to me.

  I just had to show up.

  That’s most of every battle anyway.

  With each step I took into the room, the chain glowed a little bit more. But the students, my students, my friends Jericho, Caitlin, Tasha, Davan, Ashe, Karen—all of them, without a moment of hesitation locked step and surrounded her final resting place. They guarded the crypt, immovable.

  Defending her forever.

  I couldn't reach them, that was obvious. Vampire venom went deep, certainly deeper than my voice but there is something... muscle memory. The repetition of actions to the point that conscious thought became instinct, muscle memory is tied to every primitive instinct that we possess as human beings.

  At the end of everything, even after brain death, muscle memory remained.

  Just then, Peggy cursed loudly, her voice uneven from effort as she tried to block the doorway. There wasn't much time. No time for logic.

  Instead, I did what came naturally. I bowed my head. I bowed to them, to the twelve monsters who surrounded her grave, to the remaining twelve students Celestine stole from my dojo, to the children who should have already been set free.

  And then I began the series of simple morning exercises. Without pausing, I started the same ones that we completed as a dojo every time we met. Class begins.

  Stone-faced, they watched me.

  At first, it was like I was behind a cage at the zoo and they were onlookers. But I had their attention. The farther I moved through each stance, each meditation gliding into the next, the more I saw the triggers.

  Here and there, a hand twitched, a finger moved, mirroring my own.

  Then Sasha bent the knee as I bent my own. Two others followed her lead.

  I lifted my arms towards the ceiling and arched my back into a movement that helped concentrate mind, body, and spirit into one unified whole. I reached for the next dance and the next.

  One by one, they responded.

  Vampires following me in a dance that they all knew, down to their bones. Habit and training brought them back to me.

  By the time I finished the series of exercises, the twelve students floated with me in a complex dance, between youth and elder, dead and living.

  I took another step forward.

  Together, they began to copy each movement. Even the slower ones…

  I started the dance again. One specific movement at a time, I started towards them and her resting place.

  We moved together. I stepped towards their teeth. And every time they noticed, their defenses rose. I ignored that reaction.

  Then as a group, we went back to the dance.

  Soon I was within arm's length of twelve murderous monsters. Regardless of our past, I did not meet their gazes. More importantly, I did not threaten them in any way. Over and over, I repeated the exercises that were is familiar as breathing to the students of my dojo. It must have been the only familiar thing left in their broken world.

  They followed me.

  Taking a deep breath—not waiting for the responding warning growl, I launched into the next series of exercises. While the group moved, I stepped right into the middle of their guard. They did not react. We continued and moved again from one exercise to the other. Each action flowed between our thirteen bodies. The vampires danced with me.

  Not one growled. They didn't even snarl.

  Devastating. The children, my poor students—they had been human one day and then dead the next. They awoke to this strange, frightening world with no leader, no home.

  These simple exercises were the last bits of their human lives. The deepest memories that they could cling to.

  I stood mortal in the middle of monsters who once knew me.

  We danced, matching move for move, stride for stride, reach to reach. Like a mongoose, I matched moves in a ballet with cobras. I didn't stop. These kids, they trusted me, even in their changed state.

  Years of loyalty paid off. They recognized their teacher. Silently, I led the vampire children and I tried not to shed a tear.

  Kids.

  Most of them were almost done with high school, still their youth was visible in the chubbiness of their cheeks and the acne that sprouted along their forehead. I didn't see any of the feral red eyes. I didn’t fear their fangs.

  One step at a time, I moved to the center of the twelve. Movement by guided movement, dance by dance, exercise by exercise—we were united.

  I counted each second.

  Still, it felt like an eternity until I stood over her crypt, looking down at the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Celestine.

  Made of stone, gray as the marble and white as the ash lines around her, Celestine lay there, just as we had left her. God, she was beautiful. Perfection even with those terrible wounds in her side and shoulder. My heart almost broke looking at her still form. We had to fix this. There had to be a way.

  Not for one second did I stop the exercises. I couldn’t afford confused vampires. My undead students whirled around me.

  I heard Peggy grunt from the door.

  “Damn it, Tristan. They’re in,” she shouted a warning but my students did not hear her alarm. As long as I did not break the routine that my students knew, I would live. As long as I held true to that, they followed me.

  Peggy was on her own.

  Slowly, she made her way to my side, adapting her movements to the dance. Shifting her balance, blending in. Surviving—that she knew how to do. She gained a level of invisibility just by following the dance.

  Camouflaged in the crowd.

  With the ancient halberd still in her hand, Peggy did not stop, guarding us with the fearsome blade.

  A hundred crazed and angry vampires poured into the vast room. Like spilled coffee across a white cloth, monsters covered every surface: ceiling, wall, and floor in five directions. Only the ground we stood on held any measure of safety.

  Peggy stood slightly outside the circle of vampires, blending with the dojo.

  There was safety in the exercise.

  From every corner, the vampire horde closed in—until they were a ring of things and demonic red eyes, an undead audience to the twirling, precise movements of my undead students. I caught Peggy’s attention at a break in the rhythm.

  She stepped inside of the spinning vortex of vampires.

  Fearless. Determined. Crazy. Best person I could have asked for at this moment.

  Without pausing, Peggy glided into the protective ring until she stood next to me, halberd raised to the ceiling. She had my back.

  It was time.

  Unwrapping the length of cool metal, I pulled on the ancient chains of Icarus that formed a belt across my body. Odd symbols covered each charm, What they did, I had no idea. Holding onto unknown power, my spirit filled with a kind of awe. The links spilled down my arm and around my hands.

  I didn’t know magic. No idea how to use this thing. Inside, I shook my head at the fool who danced with death.

  That’s when I lunged towards Celestine’s dying body. Dead body? Her not-dead-yet body? As long as her spirit was tied to this bit of earth, I had hope. If there is any magic knocking around in the world, there had to b
e ways to restore a vampire.

  I only needed one.

  Closing my eyes, I blurted out some vague prayer to the empty air around me. This was always going to be bigger than me. I just had to stumble into a miracle.

  Uncertain what to do, determined to act even with so little information, I moved using pure gut instinct. I stretched my arms out to the mirage and miracle of Celestine DeBrenton.

  Reaching for the beautiful statue of a woman who lay undying at my feet, I touched her cold, alabaster skin with my own living hand. If I could have lain down next to her, I would have. Not an option, unfortunately. I didn’t come any closer. My breath stank of garlic. I only hoped the chain of Icarus didn’t require me to touch her skin in some kind of a lover's kiss. Dead vampires and a horde of feral This was no fairytale.

  Fumbling in the dark, I had to find my own way.

  Instinctively, I took a portion of the chain and bound her hands and neck to my own. Looping the chain over her shoulders and wrapping her tight, I saw movement on her face—some awareness of me. Celestine was far too injured to rise. If she wasn’t healed first, bringing her back to the waking world would take the last of her formidable power. Still, I clearly heard her whisper in the deadly silence.

  I leaned in closer.

  “T-tristan.”

  My name on her lips.

  She knew me, whether I stunk of garlic or not, Celestine knew me.

  And with that, I irrevocably linked my life to hers, living to Undead.

  Oddly, the gold on my hand begin to melt. That was the first thing I noticed. There was a sharp, sparking surge of power that I couldn’t explain.

  Then the wedding ring that Marian had given me twenty years before spun on my finger and dissolved. Drop by drop, the gold began bleeding along the chain of Icarus. The artifact hummed like a live wire between the two of us, Celestine was lightning and I was the key that flew on a kite string.

  With a crack, the gold necklace that my father gave me with the Italian tiger tooth melted. The metal dripped across my throat and a ripple flowed down the chain.

  My eyes flew open wide. Surprise. Shock. Wonder.

  Something was happening far beyond anything I understood.

  I could only pray that it was something good. Desperate, hopeful, I held on to Celestine and hoped that she heard me when I whispered in her cold dead ear, “If you need my life, take it. If you need my heart, you have it. Celestine, my loyalty and friendship is already yours.”

  The chain between us glowed.

  At first, a dark cherry color lit up the metal, then a lighter red and then orange. That was followed by a bright white as the gold that had been the last markers of my past life of my human family dissolved along the chain’s length. The metal dripped into and around Celestine's poisoned body.

  The gold moved like it had a mind of its own.

  As it passed, the metal thawed out things inside of the injured vampire. Shining gold sped down her throat, pouring inside her nose, seeking out the wounds in her chest. Everywhere, molten gold spilled.

  And then everything was silent.

  As the grave, as the stillness of land before sunrise, as the moments after the church bell tolls midnight in the graveyard of the damned, we stood there facing off the horde of vampires. All I could think about was her.

  “Celestine, come back to me,” I begged her. No matter the magic, Celestine had to choose to continue, to pick another day to fight her unending battles. I didn’t know much about that. I spoke only to the woman, “Fight this. You can do that. You're more than just these wounds, than this body. It’s high noon. Make a decision. I’m here. I’m Tristan, remember? I'm waiting for you to choose.”

  The words fell into the deadly silence of the crypt full of monsters. There was nothing left to say.

  My last pleas fell from my mouth like I was a magician who had the power to wake the Dead. Leaning down, I held my breath and I kissed her. Lightly on the lips—that was all the garlic would allow.

  Sitting back, I rested my chain-wrapped hand over her dead heart.

  Abruptly, there was a shaking in her body. She bent in a forceful contortion as ancient magicks fought vampire venom, torn by the final death only lead and silver offered.

  The first thing I noticed was a gleam of gold in the depths of the horrible wounds across her side. A glimmer of gold that grew larger as I watched, amazed.

  Like a teardrop forming from the wreckage left by the hunters’ silver, the metal emerged in one growing mass.

  Reaching down, I gently pinched it between my fingers. Hard as a bullet. Intuition guided my hand. I pulled on the blob. With a visible pop, the festering poison burst out of her chest, wrapped in gold.

  And then there was another one and another.

  Magic far beyond my understanding.

  One by one, golden seeds of destruction were forced out of the vampire’s body. The gold acted like as a barrier between the deadly silver and her marred, undead flesh.

  The broken body of the vampire shuddered violently as pearl after pearl after pearl of golden death rose out of her body—rejected. Each one I carefully plucked until my hand held the gold of my own old life and the enchanted silver of the hunters’ weapons.

  In my hands, the strange metal glimmered and rolled. A shining necklace surging with savage beauty and power. I had never seen the like.

  Even so, the chain of Icarus was not done pulling the metals into its own making. Each Golden Peggy affixed itself along the length of the chain, growing links. New charms appeared.

  Clearly, this wasn't the first time the chain of Icarus had saved an immortal creature. Nor was I the first mortal to fall in love with a vampire.

  I didn't look around.

  I didn't wonder what my students were doing. I didn't wonder why there were no fangs upon my neck. The garlic held them off.

  Peggy danced above me. I could feel the swish and swash of the halberd. But she needn’t have bothered.

  Every vampire in the room watched as Celestine awoke.

  6

  Somnambulance

  Celestine

  The first thing I felt was stunning pain—followed by a wave of fire and ice that was like sunlight after a thousand years of darkness. Love so deep it hurt. Pain so vivid the sensation felt like a kiss.

  There was no noise in the room that a human ear could detect. But I wasn't a frail, bumbling mortal. My senses were tuned a thousand times higher. In between the pounding of a human heartbeat, I heard everything.

  Hunger stirred.

  Opening my eyes, I saw him. A gasp escaped my lips.

  You? Vlad, my blood sire long since lost... Thoughts tumbled together in a snarled knot. I had to work to form the words. “How did you—you're alive? You survived the Arizona sun?” I asked, perplexed.

  At least, I began to speak that confusion. And then the cloak of my uncertainty shattered and I looked again at the familiar face that gazed into mine own.

  Not Vlad.

  Tristan.

  Tristan came back. He returned for me!

  My heart still dropped when I realized the solemn, brutal fact. Not Dracula, not the partner of my past, the maker of my dreams, the first desecrator of the cross, breaker of vows and convents.

  Instead, it was steady, honorable, hopeful Tristan who woke my darkest slumber. Mortal. The one simple human being whom I had irreparably harmed. One man who had lost everything because of my needs. How long had it been since I stole his best students?

  Wait. How long had I slept in this vault?

  I searched his face, my gaze looking at every wrinkle, examining with keen predator's eyes every pore of his skin. Breathing in the air between us, I filtered the smells of his body like the bouquet of a fine wine. On the roof of my mouth and the back of my tongue, I could taste everything about a human. This man, he hadn't aged, not much. He still had the stale scent of my spilt blood on him.

  I could smell all those traces. All of it hidden deep under the stench
of overwhelming garlic.

  Which meant that it hadn't been very long at all since I had fallen asleep in the protection of my crypt, damaged beyond almost any repair by the hunters’ treacherous silver. So fast.

  Too quickly...

  And here I lay, opening my eyes and seeing Tristan’s face. Which meant...

  “The chain of Icarus?” I asked, stunned. “Y-you found it? No one has been able… How?” My words trailed off. It was hard to breathe and harder to speak. Each word demanded real effort. Each thought felt muddled, like pulling a clean piece of fabric from a pile of dirt.

  “H-how did you…?” They shouldn’t have been able to find the mythic chain, not in fifty years of searching. The task was nigh impossible. In desperation I had mentioned it. A lot of things were unclear, foggy memories. Who knows what else I said as I lay in the crypt, wounded. Every bit of energy and will I possessed had been channeled to fight the silver that poisoned my reborn body.

  In vain, I tried to ask for more details. It was important. So much depended on how they found the artifact… But I couldn’t focus on why.

  Everything remained fuzzy. Focusing my thoughts was like walking through setting concrete.

  Whatever they had done to heal me this much, that power had drained me. Healing was like that, just to recover a bit of strength took almost every little bit of energy. Somehow they had done it.

  Wild, impossible things happened around Peggy. Nothing should have interfered with the deadly, merciless silver. Nothing a vampire had tried had ever really worked. When I laid down in this crypt, I hadn’t truly believed I would rise again.

  Yet I didn’t disintegrate. I had not fallen into a pile of ash and dust.

  Against all odds, I held on.

  Grateful, confused even, I clung to this ancient human form, to the body that had seen so much over a thousand years of war and rage.

  “Celestine,” Tristan whispered my name like it was the Holy Grail and he, the first crusader to discover its location.

  I returned his gaze through trembling eyelashes. Even that took effort, focusing on his face.

  But his voice, his nearness—something about him restored my broken body.