“Darker areas,” Jerusa heard herself say. “I caused a blackout.” It was a statement, not a question. “The town is without power.”
“And Kole went straight for it like a dog to a steak bone,” Suhail said. Jerusa couldn’t be sure, but she though she saw a smile tickle the corner of his mouth.
Jerusa’s skin felt hot all over and a deep chasm seemed to have opened in her stomach. She took a step closer to Suhail. “You tripped me.” His face seemed neither shocked at her accusation nor apologetic.
“What do you mean?” Shufah asked. She placed herself between Jerusa and her brother, perhaps sensing the combustible energy brewing between them.
“He tripped me,” Jerusa repeated. “I was going after Kole, when he first grabbed Thad, before he climbed the tower. But Suhail snagged my foot with his axe.”
“Is this true, brother?”
Suhail shrugged. “Maybe I did.”
“Why did you do that?” Foster asked. There was a ripple of amazed fury bubbling within his tone. “Jerusa might have disabled Kole, at least long enough for the rest of us to take him. We could have ended this all right here.”
“Perhaps,” Suhail said, his bronze eyes suddenly wide and terrifying in the light of the sparking power line. “Or perhaps he would have ripped through her like a bear through a child. She may have been bitten. I saved her life.”
“You’re lying,” Jerusa said. “You don’t care for me any more than you do for Thad.”
Suhail’s face twisted in anger. He did not like being questioned, especially by Jerusa. “It could be that I was setting my own trap. Savages tend to leave human victims if they have a chance to feed upon a vampire. Know this, though: my motives are my own. I will not take counsel with fledglings and mortals.”
Shufah turned fully to her brother. “That may be so, brother, but you will take counsel with me. You are not yourself. Tell me, what has brought such rash anger to your judgments?”
“I grow ever weary of your mouth, Shufah. You wield your tongue as though it is a royal scepter. Your shadow is a stifling and sticky tar. It is you that has brought this upon us. You and your incontestable love for your imperfect mortal.” Suhail clutched his axe near the head and held it to his chest. “Had you taken my counsel for once, had you not defied the Stewards as you are ever so keen to do, then none of this would have befallen us.”
Shufah leaned upon her makeshift spear with one hand pressed to her chest. “You would blame me?” The hurt that filled her eyes was like a dagger in Jerusa’s heart. “How could any of us have known what was to come? Was I to discern the future and see that Foster’s mortal friend would bring us face to face with a Divine Vampire?”
“Do not speak to me of myths,” Suhail spat at her. “This Silvanus, or whoever he truly is, is a unique vampire, I will give you that, but there is nothing divine about him. You’ve allowed this impudent and flawed fledgling to fill your mind with dreams and lies, Shufah. Instead of following after her like a mindless dog, we should be using her to bring Silvanus to us.”
Shufah stood frozen for a moment, a look of disbelief perched upon her face. Some of the fire left Suhail’s eyes and he seemed to realize he said more than he meant to.
“That’s why you tripped her, isn’t it?” Shufah asked. “You were hoping that Kole would drop Thad and go for Jerusa. And if she was in mortal danger then perhaps — ”
“Silvanus would come to my rescue again,” Jerusa finished.
“What do you hope to gain from this?” Shufah asked. “I admit that I greatly desire to meet Silvanus again. There is so much he could tell us. But you would do this at the risk of another?”
“Cast off the cloak of hypocrisy, dear sister, for you are no better than I. How many mortals have you slaughtered in your five thousand plus years? Do not presume to chasten me when you have filled your veins with legions just as I have.” Suhail turned his eyes upon Jerusa. “Do not believe for a moment, either, that it was all in the name of the thirst. Oh no, not at all. My dear sister and I have bathed in the blood of whole villages, gorging ourselves to the point of popping like bloated ticks, all in pursuit of power.”
Shufah’s face tightened with the pain of distant memories. All eyes were upon her, but none spoke. Even Taos bridled his tongue in expectation of what would be said next.
“We were young then, you and I,” she said. Her deep voice was somehow diminished, weakened by the ghosts of her past. “We were angry and confused. Abandoned and betrayed. In those times, fledglings didn’t survive long on their own.” She seemed to be speaking to herself now. “We did what we had to do to survive, to endure. Yes, we sought power and revenge, but we didn’t understand the scope of our folly.” She came to herself. “But Thad is no mere mortal. He’s been marked and if he so chooses, will become a vampire in his own right. And Jerusa, no matter her origins, is one of us, fierce, beautiful, and strong in the vampire spirit. What right do you have to place her in danger?”
Jerusa had never had anyone speak of her in such a way. She was filled, once again, with a love and loyalty for Shufah that she had never felt toward anyone before. Jerusa would follow her anywhere, do anything she asked.
Suhail laughed. “What right do I have? I have the right to save myself, and you, as well, my misguided sister. This scarred abomination is dead, regardless of what we do. The Stewards will never accept her. And destroying Kole will not eschew the wrath of the Hunters. They will sweep in and put us to the fire whether we erase our mistake or not. There is no currency with which to barter with the Hunters. Our age, our beauty, our power will mean nothing to them. My influence with the Stewards will not save us this time.”
“What do you mean ‘this time’?” Shufah asked. “What have you done?”
“It is no secret to you that the Stewards have desired for us to join them.”
“They seek to enslave us. They fear us.” A thought occurred to Shufah. “Foster. It was you that convinced them to let me have Foster.”
Suhail shot his sister a humorless smirk. “And that was no easy task, mind you. They required a great price.”
“My life for hers,” Foster said. “Shufah gets to turn me and in exchange, you convince her to join the Stewards.”
“Never,” Shufah shouted. “I will never join them. How can you seek their hand, brother? Do you not remember what they took from us?”
Jerusa wanted to ask what the Stewards had taken. The need to know was almost a physical pain to her. But now wasn’t the time for stories, so she forced herself to remain silent.
“I remember,” he said with a face of one smelling the most foul of stenches. “And my lust for vengeance is even greater than your own. But you cannot defeat the Stewards head to head. I mean to poison them from within. But I knew what your answer would be, so I called upon Kole and this wretched oaf here.”
Taos smiled, bowed low then shot Suhail a rude hand gesture. “Your lovely brother hired us to deny Foster. We were supposed to kill him.” He looked to Foster then added, “No offense. I’m not sure why, but Kole changed his mind at the last minute.”
“And when my life was on the line,” Foster said, ignoring Taos and addressing Suhail, “you would extend the Stewards’ offer of protection for me if Shufah joined with them.”
“Yes,” Suhail said. “But Kole betrayed me. I think he found your transformation too interesting to pass up. Perhaps he has a mortal stashed away somewhere that he seeks to modify. If the Stewards accepted you, why not his mortal? I don’t know — it doesn’t matter. The point is, my plan was laid to waste, but a new opportunity arose from the ashes.”
“Silvanus,” Jerusa said.
Suhail nodded his head. “Call him divine if you like, sweet sister, it matters not to me. But he is unique. No other vampire has ever drawn the savage venom from another, let alone lived to tell the tale.”
“We don’t know that Silvanus survived,” Shufah said. “He may be well on his way to becoming a savage.” The very tho
ught shredded Jerusa’s insides and she wanted to weep.
“Nevertheless, he is the one we should be seeking, not Kole. Silvanus is the key to our salvation. And if the scarred fledgling and her ghost guide will not lead us to him willingly, then I say we let her screams draw him to us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jerusa stepped back several paces, suddenly missing the bent and dull machete that she had lost in the explosion. The faces all turned toward her, and to be honest, she couldn’t separate her friends from her enemies. Perhaps she had no friends after all. They watched her with horror-stricken eyes, but whether this was due to Suhail’s proposal or the collective guilt of what they were planning to do with her, Jerusa didn’t know.
Alicia stepped before her, as if to shield Jerusa from attack. But what good could a ghost do against a coven of vampires? She might as well try to defend herself with the wind. Jerusa would have laughed at the situation were it not so dire.
Should she consent to Suhail’s wishes? Should she ask Alicia to search for Silvanus instead of Kole? Jerusa could call out to him. Silvanus might even hear her, come to her.
Jerusa looked into Suhail’s eyes. The brilliant beauty of those glowing bronze orbs couldn’t mask the cancerous malevolence of the mind within. Suhail was quite crazy, she saw that now. His intentions for Silvanus would have no good end. And though Silvanus had been strong enough to kill Kole, he had taken him off guard. The rules had changed. Even if Silvanus wasn’t dead or turned savage, Kole’s blood had been a poison to him. And Suhail, though physically smaller than Kole, was at least five thousand years old and imperceptibly strong. If Jerusa led Suhail to Silvanus, he would overtake him with or without the help of the others.
Jerusa squared her shoulders and fixed her stance. She would not sacrifice Silvanus, no matter the pain, even at the risk of her own life.
Foster stepped forward and Jerusa flinched. He raised his hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. “If you want Jerusa, you’ll have to come through me.”
Thad stepped up to her other side. “Me too.” His voice shook, but he held Suhail’s derisive glare.
“Am I supposed to be afraid of a fledgling and a mortal?
“No,” Shufah said. “But you should be afraid of me. I’m sorry, dear brother, that your desire to be a Steward has driven you to this, but I will not allow you to move against my friends.”
Suhail’s face twisted in rage, making him no longer the twin of Shufah. “You would stand against your own brother? After all that I have given you? If not for me, the Hunters would have put you to the flames when you were new in the blood. You’re a heretic. Unworthy of the vampire spirit. You would wage a war of blood — your own blood? So be it. Know that when I kill you, dear sister, that I will take no pleasure in it.”
He glanced at Taos.
“When I move on Shufah, kill Foster and the mortal, but just crippled the scarred one. We need her alive and screaming.”
Taos stood to the side of the group, still holding his axe in one hand and the container of gasoline in the other. As he stood there, weapons in hand, dressed in his expensive shoes, dark pants, and silk shirt open to mid-chest, his blond hair long and pulled back, he seemed a modern-day Viking fresh ashore and ready for plunder and pillaging. His eyes were unreadable chips of ice. His face, fixed with a slight grin, stood like a marble bust.
“I’m sorry,” Taos said, stepping closer to the group. “But I was never one to take orders.” He turned and walked over to Jerusa. Foster and Thad tensed, but he shook his head at them. He stood toe to toe with Jerusa, looking down on her, and before she could react, he clutched her around the waist, axe still in hand, and kissed her firmly on the mouth. He sighed, took a moment to smell Jerusa’s hair, opened his eyes, and winked at her.
Thad and Foster both bristled at this, quickly stepping between Jerusa and Taos.
“What can I say,” Taos said. “I’m a sucker for a pretty face. And I dig a chick with scars.”
Suhail bore his fangs, his eyes boiling with hatred. “So be it.”
He darted for Jerusa with terrific speed, bellowing a scream of rage fierce enough to outdo any war cry. Foster and Taos rushed to meet him, but Suhail blasted through them as though they were made of straw. Jerusa threw up her hands out of instinct, for Suhail was moving too fast for her mind to conceive a plan of defense, but before he made contact, Shufah hit him from the side, knocking him off course.
The twins fell to the ground in a tangled knot, turning again and again in a tornado of kicks and bites. Dirt and grass rose in a heavy plume in their wake, the smaller trees in their path were reduced to splinters. Jerusa had never witnessed such a raw collision of power, and it seemed that if the twins continued, the very atoms between them would split and the whole town would be reduced to ash beneath a towering mushroom cloud.
It was Taos that brought her out of her trance. He cupped her tiny face in his massive hands and forced her eyes to meet his own. “We must go. Let the siblings work this out for themselves.”
When Shufah had attacked, she’d dropped the spear she had fashioned from a shovel. Jerusa picked it up and held it in both hands. “Can we kill Kole without Shufah’s help?” she asked Taos.
He shrugged. “I don’t like our chances, but we’re kind of out of options. Hopefully she’ll shred Suhail fast and catch up to us.”
“She won’t kill her brother.” Foster’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed.
Taos held up his hands. “Calm down. I’m not insulting your lady fair. I’m just saying we’d all be better off if she did put him down.”
“I thought he was your friend,” Thad said.
The familiar cold glare returned to Taos’s eyes. “I have no friends. They’re a dead weight that will only lead to getting you killed.” He glanced at Jerusa. “You might want to consider that if you want to make it through your first century.”
Jerusa shook her head. “Just when I was starting to like you. But I guess if you’d turn your back on Suhail, we can expect you’ll do the same to us.”
“Only a fool puts his trust in others. I’ll help your little coven here as long as it’s in my interest. After that, I’m gone. I don’t plan on being a slave to Suhail or you either, no matter how much you enjoyed that kiss.” Taos shot her a smile. “Now enough talk. Tell your ghost friend to take us to our destinies. Death or glory, whichever it may be.”
Jerusa turned toward town. Alicia stood in the midst of the path near the downed power line. “Will you take us to Kole?” she asked the ghost. Alicia nodded that she would, but her eyes seemed hesitant and sad. “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. No matter what happens, we’ll always be together.”
Alicia vanished and reappeared before Jerusa. She reached out as if to lay her hand on Jerusa’s chest, but stopped just short of touching her. She started down the path at a run. “Come on,” Jerusa said, following after her. “Try to keep up.”
They stayed to the wide rolling path almost all the way to town. Foster carried Thad on his back once more, and he and Taos flanked Jerusa on either side. Though Alicia never slowed up, Jerusa couldn’t help but scan every one of the hulking steel towers they passed, sure each time that Kole would be nesting up high, waiting to drop down on top of his pursuers. But Kole wasn’t there and soon, they abandoned the power line path and took to the narrow blacktop streets.
Alicia led them toward a large farmhouse sitting in the midst of a few acres filled with sprouts of corn that, in the summer, would tower well over Jerusa’s head. With the power outage, the house sat with the darkness pooled around it like a blanket. The crescent moon and dusting of stars seemed even more amplified and it was easy for Jerusa to forget that she inhabited an age of 3-D printers, electronic books, missions to Mars, and reality TV. A world where the microwave generation demanded life be served to them in fifteen seconds and one hundred and forty characters. It almost felt as if she had stepped through a portal to a time when life flowed like a la
zy river instead of rushing rapids.
The sound of breaking glass and screaming children filled the night, ripping the nostalgic vision from her eyes and returning her to reality. Jerusa ran for the house, pushing her new body to the uttermost limits. The others shouted for her to wait, but how could she? The sound of tiny, terrified voices spurred her on like a whip. A window on the ground floor was shattered. She could see movement within. Fifteen feet from the house, Jerusa jumped, dived through the open window, spear in hand, and rolled to her feet in the bedroom of two small girls — one huddled in the corner, the other in the arms of Kole.
The poor child, no older than seven years, was dressed in pajamas covered in fairies, her hair falling in long dark curls that reminded Jerusa a bit of Silvanus’s hair. Kole held her by the waist, her back to him, as though he had caught her on the run. She writhed and kicked, mad with fear and blinded by tears.
Jerusa rushed forward. She stabbed the head of the makeshift spear into the flesh under Kole’s right armpit, shoving him hard into the wall. The drywall crumbled, spewing dust throughout the room. Kole dropped the little girl, who darted off to join her older sister in the corner. He cried out, a high-pitched rattling scream and rolled away from her, dislodging the spear.
Kole regarded Jerusa with a tooth-filled sneer. His pupils were dilated to the fullest capacity, and what should have been the whites of his eyes were filled with dark crimson blood. He swatted at the head of the spear a few times while snapping his teeth with the ferocity of a bear trap.
He made a series of tight paces, like a wild animal cornered and infuriated, before charging at Jerusa. She thrust the spear forward, aiming for Kole’s chest, but he was so fast that she caught him in the stomach.
Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) Page 22
