by J. C. Diem
Death Devours
J.C. Diem
Copyright 2013 J.C. Diem
All rights reserved.
Amazon Kindle Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be copied, resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.
Cover art by: Dreamscape Covers
Photographer: Noctem Photography
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter One
It was after midnight, which meant that it was late enough for most of the humans in the seedy hotel to be asleep. Not being human myself, it was still pretty early for me. Only when dawn came knocking would it be bedtime for me and my kind.
Luc still looked slightly rattled by the call that we had received only a few minutes ago. I couldn’t help but share his unease. Kokoro, a prophetess for the Japanese vampire nation, had been on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, she hadn’t called to bring us good news but to advise us of imminent danger.
Just last night, I had put an end to the First, an ancient vampire that was master to a horde of grey skinned creatures that I liked to call imps. He and his offspring had been the greatest threat that vampirekind or humankind had ever come up against. I hadn’t fought the monsters alone. My recent and reluctant ally, Colonel Sanderson, had commanded an army of American and Russian soldiers during the battle. In a combined effort, we had slain every last imp that had been lurking in the First’s underground lair.
I hadn’t actually expected to be victorious. I’d kind of figured I’d be converted into an imp myself the instant I came face to face with the First. Unlike every other vampire who had set foot inside the vast cavern, my shadow hadn’t taken control of my body. In this case, being different from everyone else had worked in my favour. My holy marks had prevailed, my nemesis was now dust and his offspring had been reduced to chunks of meat.
You’d think my problems would now be over but apparently a new threat was already rising. It was very tempting to fall into bed, pull the covers up over my head and pretend that everything was fine. I was emotionally if not physically exhausted and just wanted to rest. Unfortunately, this was the kind of news that couldn’t be ignored. Like it or not, I had certain responsibilities that I couldn’t shirk no matter how much I wanted to.
“After you,” Luc said, gesturing towards the door and breaking me out of my reverie. The rest of our team needed to be alerted that further trouble was on its way.
Luc gallantly allowed me to precede him from the room. Our hotel was in the heart of Russia, a country I’d never expected to travel to in my lifetime. Technically, I’d been correct about that. I’d only travelled overseas after my life had ended and my unlife had begun.
We made our way downstairs quickly and Gregor answered the door at my soft knock. Dark blonde hair framed his ruggedly attractive and somewhat surprised face. As always, he was wearing a natty tweed suit. His attire seemed out-dated for a man who appeared to be somewhere in his early forties. Dapper and urbane, the aged vampire managed to pull off the professor look successfully.
Stepping aside, he gestured for us to enter. “Natalie, Lucentio, how nice of you to re-join us.” His surprise at seeing us again so soon was masked by a strained smile. I had the distinct impression that he was secretly relieved that we had returned.
Glancing past him, I saw why. I hadn’t returned from my fight with the First alone. Nicholas, a courtier from the French vampire Court, had defected after I’d killed the First. He’d sought me out and begged to come along with me. Knowing how sadistic the Comtesse, one of the nine Councillors who ruled the Court was, I couldn’t leave him behind to suffer her not-so-tender mercies.
My friends weren’t reacting well to the newest addition to our ranks. Standing in the tiny area that passed for a kitchen, Igor and Geordie mirrored each other with their arms crossed and with matching frowns. Nicholas sat innocently on the threadbare couch in the living room. He was either unaware of the impact he was having on the group or he was ignoring their discomfort.
The object of my scrutiny stood as I entered and smiled at me widely. White teeth flashed in his all too handsome face. Sculpted muscles peeked out from beneath his black suit jacket. His shirt had been too filthy to bother with after his captivity in the First’s cavern of doom. He’d chosen to just wear the grimy jacket without anything beneath it. No one had offered him a change of clothes yet. He would probably be too muscular to fit into them anyway. Luc was the only one who came close to Nicholas in shoulder width.
Our newest member had been one of the guards who hacked my body to pieces at the Comtesse’s order some months ago. Somehow, he’d been elevated from being a lowly guard to one of the glittering courtiers. The sudden transformation didn’t make much sense to me but I wasn’t exactly an expert in vampire law. I would get around to questioning him about all this but I had more pressing business to attend to first.
“My Queen,” Nicholas said with a bow before I could launch into the reason why Luc and I had returned.
“What did I tell you about calling me that?” My tone was slightly annoyed and very embarrassed. It was bad enough being called something so ridiculous in front of the humans but if was far worse when it was done in front of my friends.
A tiny frown marred the perfection of his face. “You asked me to call you Natalie,” he recalled in a small voice.
“Did he just call you ‘my Queen’?” Geordie said incredulously. He was torn between amusement and alarm.
“Was it not prophesized that she would one day rule us?” Nicholas responded.
Geordie looked at me, looked at the former guard then back at me again. “You think Natalie,” he pointed at me, “should rule us? You think the “gnat”, our Ladybug has what it takes to tell us all what to do?” His lips trembled then he doubled over with laughter as amusement won out. I couldn’t blame him for his hilarity, not when I found the idea of me being a ruler to be almost as funny as he did. Still, he didn’t have to laugh quite so hard.
Gregor, well versed in vampire law, decided to clear up the issue once and for all. “It was prophesized that Mortis would destroy the damned and that only a remnant of our kind would survive.” He gave Geordie a stern look and his giggles tapered off. “It has never been prophesized that she would rule the remaining vampires.”
“Thank…goodness for that,” I said, coming close to stuttering on a word I could no longer say out loud. “I don’t want to rule anyone.” Based on Geordie’s reaction, no
one would take me seriously anyway.
Luc’s next statement effectively dampened all amusement. “Natalie has had some disturbing news from our Japanese kin.”
Reminded of the reason we’d hurried downstairs, I gave them a quick explanation. “Kokoro, their seer, called to warn us of her latest vision.” It had come to her while Luc and I had been getting reacquainted in the bedroom. I decided it would be best to skip over that part of the story. Geordie was already jealous enough of my relationship with Luc and I didn’t want to send him into a sulking fit.
“What did she see?” Gregor asked. Sensing the news wouldn’t be favourable, he was already beginning to frown.
“More doom and gloom, of course,” I replied. “It seems that killing the First has unleashed a new problem.”
“What problem?” Despite being two hundred years old, Geordie looked like a fifteen year old kid. His dirty blonde hair always appeared like it needed a wash even after he’d just scrubbed it. He was still young enough in vampire years to have a faint ring of blue around his pupils. From what I understood about our kind, his pupils would grow to consume his irises in another hundred years or so.
“I’d better fill you in on some back history,” I told them. Kokoro has passed this story on to me when I’d visited her in her temple. Now it was time to pass it on to my friends. “When the First was created, he made ten followers. I think they were like his disciples. He had complete control over them and they hated it. They plotted against him, planning on killing him somehow and making an army of vampire slaves.”
Killing your maker wasn’t only frowned upon, it also guaranteed your own death. Unless you were me, that was. I’d survived my maker’s death just fine. I had no idea how the disciples had planned to kill their leader and it didn’t really matter since they had clearly failed.
Igor shook his shaggy head at the disciple’s desperate plan. “It is a very tricky undertaking to plot the murder of your maker.” Roughly fifty in mortal years, his unkempt black hair rarely had contact with a brush. Craggy and unhandsome, Igor was Russian and spoke with an almost unintelligibly thick accent. I’d known him for months now and still had trouble interpreting his speech.
I grimaced in agreement. “The First was either super paranoid or he somehow found out about their plot. He banished his disciples and ordered them to bury themselves. They’ve been stashed somewhere beneath the ground for over forty thousand years.” We all shared a moment of silent horror at the thought of facing such a fate. I’d been buried once myself and had been on the verge of going crazy after only a few short days. Admittedly, I had a short attention span and became bored fairly easily.
“Now that their maker is dead, his order will no longer apply,” Igor deduced. “These ‘disciples’ are presumably free to rise again.” Unlike Gregor and Luc’s penchant for wearing expensive clothing, Igor habitually wore rough woollen clothing and a plain off-white shirt.
“There’s no way they could still be alive now,” Geordie scoffed. “Even if they are, why would it be a problem for us?” As Igor’s apprentice, he mimicked his mentor in his clothing choices. I hoped we would have the chance to go shopping sometime. It would be fun to introduce the teen to a more modern wardrobe. He had the potential to be cute beneath his perpetual grime and unkempt hair.
“It’s going to be our problem because they haven’t fed their blood or flesh hungers in a ridiculously long time,” I responded to his bewildered question. “They’ll go on a feeding and humping frenzy.” Geordie pressed his lips together, presumably to keep in a giggle at my terminology.
“I understand your concern yet I am also unsure why this would affect us,” Gregor said.
None of them seemed particularly worried so far but that was about to change. It was time to hit them with the rest of the bad news. “Kokoro’s visions told her that the disciple’s blood is purer than ours because they were made directly by the First. She says that their blood will be a lot stronger than a modern vampire’s. Any new vamps they make will be stronger, faster and generally nastier than any of us. I’m pretty sure they only need to feed humans their blood once to turn them into vampires.”
According to the cave paintings the First had made in his cavern of doom, he’d only tasted the alien’s blood once to become the first of our kind. Nowadays it took three nights of feeding our diseased blood to a human to turn them.
It was finally dawning on everyone just how bad this could be. “Each new vampire will create dozens of our kind in a few short days,” Luc mused. “The humans will soon be faced with an invasion.” Not only was he tall, dark haired, hot bodied and handsome, he was also intelligent. I wouldn’t pretend that his brains were the sexiest thing about Luc but they were a definite bonus.
“Perhaps, once the authorities become aware of the threat, they can help us to contain it,” Gregor suggested.
“We can only hope,” I replied. “But Kokoro believes the humans won’t be able to fight the new vamps very effectively. It looks like it’ll be mostly up to us to take them down.”
Nicholas ventured a question, drawing an instant scowl from Geordie. “Why do we have to kill our own kind at all? Do they not have just as much right as we do to live?”
Igor fielded this one before I could voice what would most likely be a sarcastic reply. “How will any of us survive if all humans on the planet are turned into vampires?”
Finally grasping how dangerous it would be to let the rogue vamps create billions of our kind, Nicholas was abashed. “Then we should formulate a plan on how we are going to best our newly awakened kin.”
Geordie’s emotions were easy to read. He didn’t like Nicholas and resented him being in our group. The new guy had been with us for less than an hour and he was already trying to call the shots.
“Emperor Ishida has a proposal for us,” Luc interjected into the tense silence before the surly teen could voice his displeasure. “He suggested that we should work together and has asked for us all to meet to discuss our options.”
Rubbing his hands together briskly, Gregor took a seat at the tiny two seater table. “Did Ishida mention where he wants us to hold this meeting?”
I took the vacant chair before anyone else could beat me to it. “He’s leaving it up to us to think of a location that will be safe for all of us.”
Luc moved to stand behind me, close enough that I could have felt his body heat if he’d had any. Geordie threw a mistrustful glance at Nicholas and took up a spot at my side. Nicholas was undecided as to where he should stand then gracefully walked over to stand at my other side. Igor leaned against the wall behind Gregor, unintentionally making himself look like a bodyguard.
Surrounded on three sides, I felt like I had a collection of shadows following me around again. I’d had eight of them for a short time but was back to only having one now. The shadows had been far less intrusive than the guys were being. Geordie brushed up against my side, Luc rested a hand on my shoulder and Nicholas leaned against my arm.
I was happy enough to have Luc touching me but I could do without the physical contact with the other two. Geordie probably just needed reassurance that I cared about him. He obviously felt threatened by Nicholas. If I had the chance to speak to the kid privately, I’d ask him why he disliked the muscle bound vamp so much.
The newest member of our group was still a mystery and I didn’t know what he wanted or what his motives were yet. He’d begged to join us because he had run away from the Court. If the Comtesse ever saw him again she’d brand him as being a traitor and have him killed. Deep in the depths of my subconscious, I wasn’t sure that that would be a bad thing. I had an uneasy feeling about the handsome vampire even though he’d given me no reason to mistrust him. Not yet anyway.
Chapter Two
“Do you have any idea where the First’s ten followers are?” Gregor asked me, drawing my attention back to our discussion.
“I’m pretty sure at least one of them is in Africa,” I replied reluctantl
y. I was always uncomfortable with revealing how weird I was. I preferred not to bring my strangeness to my friend’s attention. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of hiding my peculiarities from them this time.
Igor lifted a heavy eyebrow. “What makes you think they are in Africa?”
Shrugging uncomfortably, I kept my answer short. “I’ve had a couple of weird dreams and I think they were about one of these guys.”
Gregor leaned forward to rest his arms on the table and stared at me intently. “Can you describe these dreams to us?”
I really didn’t want to recite my dreams out loud and took comfort from Luc’s cold hand resting on my shoulder. Despite just how different I was to the rest of my kin, he never held it against me. “I was in a clearing in a jungle,” I began. “A deer that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen on African documentaries stepped into the clearing and sensed something that frightened it. I felt it, too. It was like a super strong hunger coming up from beneath the ground. The deer bolted away then fell down dead.” It didn’t sound so bad when I said it out loud but it had been far creepier in my dream.
“What did it die from?” Geordie asked, eyes wider than usual.
“Terror.” He hunched his shoulders at my succinct reply.
Gregor was nodding, as if he understood why it had freaked me out so badly. “Was the second dream similar to the first?”
“Yeah but this time it was birds. They flew over the clearing then went crazy. They ended up colliding and falling to the ground. One of them died on impact but the other one just had a couple of broken wings.” I remembered its frantic scrambling as it tried to escape from the overwhelming hunger that had again risen from beneath the ground. “I walked over to them and was caught up by the buried creature’s hunger. I snatched both birds up and drained them dry.” I wrinkled my nose at the memory of being taken over by another’s need to feed. I’d always managed to maintain command of my blood hunger and I hadn’t liked the momentary lack of control at all. For a few brief moments, I’d finally known what normal newborn vampires felt like when they rose for the first time. I pitied the humans that would fall prey to our ancient starved kin and any servants that they made.
