Contents
Title
Dedication
Other books by Laura Legend
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 Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Thank You!
Copyright
BLAMELESS
Book 3
of
A Vision of Vampires
By Laura Legend
For Buffy and Faith, my favorite badass vampire slayers
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When you sign up for the monthly Legendaries newsletter, you’ll receive Lost on Fire, an exclusive novella set in the Vision of Vampires universe. This novella will not be published anywhere else, and is only available to the Legendaries.
Other books by Laura Legend
Faithless: A Vision of Vampires 1
Hopeless: A Vision of Vampires 2
Chapter One
The casino’s neon lights contrasted sharply with the darkness of the cloudy and moonless night. The floor of the casino was packed with senior citizens. It was late enough that the energy in the room was high, but early enough that the excitement hadn’t soured. Everyone was having a good time.
Everyone except Miranda Byrne.
Miranda was lost.
“Dammit,” she swore, turning in a tight circle, trying to get her bearings. Her heels clicked on the cement floor. She ran her fingers through her dark hair. Even after months of practice, she couldn’t navigate the casino’s service hallways. They always made her feel like a rat in a maze. When a waitress walked by with a tray of drinks, Miranda gladly gave up trying to sort it out herself and just trailed her back onto the casino floor.
Now she knew where she was. Mostly.
The slot machines were ringing and the card tables were busy. Miranda wove her way through the tables, looking for Amare, but she lost the thread of what she was doing when she neared the casino’s expensive buffet and her stomach rumbled angrily.
She was hungry.
In the abstract, the idea of food excited her, but once she got close enough to the restaurant to smell it, her stomach rebelled. She just couldn’t eat this stuff anymore. Despite what her head remembered, buffet food wasn’t what her body wanted. She lingered at an uncleared table and took a sniff from a half-full glass of red wine. She loved red wine—she knew she did. But, once again, she couldn’t bear the smell of it anymore. The scent soured her already tender stomach.
She crinkled her nose, put the cup down, and took a deep breath, trying to calm her stomach and clear her head. But her head didn’t clear. Instead, her keen nose caught the musky scent of an attractive man in his early fifties at the next table. He was fit with a thick head of gray hair and waiting for his date to return from powdering her nose. Miranda cocked an eyebrow. Her appetite roared back to life. Surprised by the strength of her own response, she immediately felt that, though she couldn’t eat food anymore, she might happily sample this fellow.
She straightened her jacket with its gold “Manager” lapel pin and narrowed her eyes seductively. As she leaned in to ask if he needed another drink, she could feel the sharp tips of her eye teeth pressing against her bottom lip. She caught the man off guard. He jumped a little in his seat and then apologized. In response to her question, he leaned over the wine list, exposing his neck. Miranda’s mouth filled with saliva and, despite herself, she licked her lips.
But before it could develop any further, their “moment” was interrupted.
“We’ve already ordered our drinks,” a woman said curtly as she slid back into her seat at the table. She wore a tight dress and was half the man’s age. Her eyes shot daggers at Miranda.
Miranda bit her tongue. She didn’t care for the woman’s attitude, but Miranda was relieved at the interruption. She would surely have taken a small bite out of the man—just to see how he tasted—if his date hadn’t returned.
Embarrassed, Miranda nodded and withdrew. Walking quickly in the other direction, she swallowed hard. That was a close one. She was still adapting to the changes in her body, to her new height and additional strength, to her new appetites and sharpened senses. Her body felt younger and stronger than it had in years. All the little aches and pains that used to plague her were gone. She felt profoundly alive. But not all of the changes were good. Although her body felt stronger, her mind felt weaker. She felt less rational and less in control.
She was no longer who she’d been. She wasn’t quite herself anymore.
At the thought of all she’d lost—of the fragile grip she barely retained on her own humanity—her fists balled and anger flared inside of her. Her mind flashed to Kumiko and to the time she’d spent imprisoned and interrogated at the Shield Monastery. The anger swelled. Miranda would never forgive Kumiko for forcing her down this path. At any number of points in the past thirty years, Kumiko could have helped them carve out a third way. They could have chosen a different path. They could have made a new world. And, more, they could have done it together. Instead, at each turn, Kumiko had wilted at the uncertainty and potential cost of the better future Miranda imagined. Hiding behind layers of tradition, Kumiko had insisted on redrawing all the old battle lines between the Shield and the Lost.
A single hot tear had sprung from the corner of her eye, and Miranda wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her mascara smeared. Her emotions were just so raw and so close to the surface these days. She didn’t regret her choice to abandon the Shield—she would make the same decision again—but she did resent that Kumiko had forced her to make it.
Miranda was shocked out of her reverie by the sound of pans crashing and people yelling in the restaurant kitchen. It sounded like trouble. She ducked into the service hallway and followed the noise through swinging double doors. Inside, she was greeted by the sight of Amare with an enormous butcher’s knife in his hand—that’s right, she’d been looking for Amare—trying to corner something big and ugly. The kitchen staff were ducking for cover as dishes smashed to the floor and unattended pans on the range caught fire, flaring.
“Another one?” Miranda diagnosed.“Shit.”
“I’m afraid so,” Amare replied in his thick Moroccan accent. He kept his eyes glued to the creature and didn’t turn to greet her.
This was the third time this week that a Lost vampire had gone feral and tweaked out. The whole Lost community was teetering on the brink of the same fate. Even Miranda could feel the viral call
in her own blood—the call to give in to her body and its hungers, to set aside consciousness, to lose her mind and finally be free of all her human fears and scheming.
Amare tossed the knife from one hand to the other, looking for an angle of attack. The creature bore all the telltale signs of ferality. Its arched spine had grown ridged and pronounced, it favored loping on all fours, its fingers and toes had lengthened and curled into claws, and a second row of shark-like teeth were visible behind its bloody tongue.
Was this going to be Miranda’s own future? Would she be overrun by her passions and hungers? Would her own appetites break her and eat her alive?
No, she wouldn’t let it happen. She had to trust that—as the Heretic had promised—something else, something entirely new, was possible. They were so close to unlocking the secret. They had to succeed. In a very real way, Miranda had already bet her life that they would.
For the moment, Miranda couldn’t do anything about that all-consuming problem, but she could solve this one.
She skirted a stainless steel countertop, grabbed a butcher’s knife of her own, and flanked Amare. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to finish this quickly.
The creature reared up on its legs, roared, beat its chest, and flexed. Its veins bulged and its eyes bugged. Miranda could have sworn the thing was actually growing larger before her eyes.
Amare went high. Miranda went low.
Amare’s knife flashed, aiming for the heart, but the creature was fast and shouldered him into the wall, knocking the breath out of him. Miranda took a simultaneous swing at its leg and drew a deep, bloody line across its thigh. The cut, though, barely slowed the creature down as it pushed past her, crashed through the kitchen, and ran for the door to the service hallway.
Everyone else in the kitchen—Lost vampires all—dove for cover.
“Cowards,” Miranda spat at them as she gave chase. Amare was right behind her. Two vampires in hairnets, white aprons, and leather pants smirked from their hiding place and shrugged in response. Miranda gave them the bird and burst into the hallway.
The creature was already halfway down the hall. It ran past the door to the buffet and was headed for the exit at the far end—the exit that led directly onto the packed floor of the casino.
“Mother . . .” Miranda said, redoubling her speed. They wouldn’t be able to sweep this under the rug if their backroom brawl burst onto the casino floor. All hell would break loose as scores of fainting grandmas and doddering grandpas were eaten and dismembered.
The creature barreled through a cart loaded with dirty dishes, hurtling them to the floor. Miranda angled for the wall and bypassed the wreck. Amare leaped over the debris in a single bound and caught up with her. They were making up ground but not fast enough.
“Merde, merde, merde . . .” Amare was chanting to himself. He dove for the creature’s ankles just before it reached the door. He locked on but, instead of bringing the thing down, he just got dragged through the door with it.
Miranda caught up. Amare had the creature by the knees and it tumbled to the ground. A couple of gray heads turned their direction to see what was going on. In a moment, every head in the casino would be swiveling toward them.
Miranda couldn’t let that happen. As her mind had been weakening, her grip on the magic she’d practiced for decades had also become increasingly tenuous. But she didn’t have time, now, to wonder if she could still use it. Her eyes glinted with a hint of green as she spotted a blue haired woman in a scooter at a slot machine near the center of the room.
“Congratulations,” Miranda whispered as she cast a spell, her hands dancing. The woman pulled the lever and won the jackpot. Lights flashed and bells rang and every head in the casino, instead of turning toward them, pivoted to see who had won. A landslide of coins cascaded out of the machine.
With the distraction in full swing, Miranda looked back at Amare. He was barely hanging on. The creature had almost broken free. Miranda didn’t waste any more time. Knife in hand, she dropped an elbow into the creature’s face, smashing its teeth, and then plunged the knife into its heart. Its body dissolved in a cloud of ash.
One older gentleman with a walker was still looking their way. He’d seen the whole thing.
“What . . . what was that?” he croaked, pointing a shaking finger at the ash settling to the ground—marking the spot where the feral vampire had been.
“That, sir,” Miranda said as she stood, dusting off her hands and straightening her jacket, “is why smoking is prohibited in the casino. We take that policy very seriously.”
Amare gripped Miranda by the elbow. “Well done,” he said quietly. “Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome,” Miranda returned. “But we both know this is just a finger in the dike. If we don’t secure an additional relic soon, this kind of ferality will spread like wildfire. And then it won’t just be a handful of senior citizens in danger. The whole world will be overrun.”
Before Amare could respond, a voice spoke directly behind them.
“Fortunately,” the Heretic said, “I know just where to find that relic.”
Chapter Two
Cassandra Jones was running.
The sun was barely up, its light slanting through the dark trees as she flew down the trail. It was theoretically spring in Japan, but this high in the mountains the thin, sharp air was still cold in her lungs. She wasn’t worried, though, about the temperature. She’d known that once she got moving, it wouldn’t be hard to keep warm. A pair of running shorts and a sports bra were plenty. Her dark ponytail bobbed as she kept her eyes fixed on the trail in front of her, dancing through the maze of roots and rocks that broke up the path. She worked her way higher and higher into the mountains. She was only two miles into the run, but her skin was already beaded with sweat.
She felt good. She felt strong. She felt like she could run all day.
Her head felt better, too. Her trip via the Underside into Zach’s mind had seemed to unlock a part of her that had been barred for a long time. Now, finally, she could feel some aspects of her own emotions with sharpness and immediacy. Some parts still felt distant and secondhand—frozen and locked away just as they had been for as long as she could remember—but the parts of her experience that had thawed felt vibrant and raw. It was weird after all these years to feel again what had been numb for so long. It was like she’d lost a psychic tooth and couldn’t stop pressing her tongue into that supersensitive gap in her teeth just to see what she could feel.
The trail broke free of the tree line and Cass picked her way across a field of boulders. The view of the valley below was striking. She stopped for a moment to feel the sun on her skin and admire the view. In the open, the breeze was stronger but still pleasantly cool. While her view of the Shield Monastery was obscured by the mountains from here, she could see the narrow, winding road that led up the valley to its front gates. That road, though, was rarely used. Instead, almost everyone came and went through the tunnels that connected the monastery with other Underside hubs around the world.
Cass was glad that the monastery was out of sight. Even though she’d settled pretty well into living there the past few months so that Kumiko could take charge of her training, Cass still had mixed feelings about the place. She couldn’t quite shake its associations with Miranda’s transformation into one of the Lost. Cass felt a pang of guilt at the thought—she had failed Miranda, she was too late to save her—and that pang was more raw and painful than she would have liked. Maybe there were advantages to having your emotions kept at a safe distance.
Cass glanced back toward the tree line from which she’d just emerged and saw a flicker of shadows immediately inside the dark mouth of the trail. It sent a chill down her spine.
It’s just the damn wind in the trees, Jones, she told herself. But that didn’t stop her from breaking into a run again, headed in the opposite direction. She finished crossing the boulder field and reentered the forest. It took her eyes
a few moments to adjust to the contrast in light and she slowed a bit, watching for roots. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she really was being followed now. Once her eyes adjusted, she picked up her speed again, her feet barely touching the ground.
She had the nagging sense that the shadows weren’t impersonal, that they somehow had something to do with Miranda. Cued by her ever-present guilt—always just under the surface, ready to emerge—Cass’s mind automatically replayed that traumatic moment in the monastery library when the Heretic had sunk her teeth into Miranda’s neck and Miranda’s body had gone stiff and pale. The moment played on a loop in Cass’s head and the more it played, the more it felt like the shadow of Cass’s own guilt was following her, blaming her, loping along behind her and making up ground.
A mild panic rose in her chest.
This is bullshit, she thought. There’s no way I’m going to live like this. She took the next bend in the trail and stepped off the path, fists up. She took a deep breath and held it, listening. Someone was coming. She could make out the sound of footsteps.
When the figure turned the corner, Cass drew further back into the shadows and watched them run past.
It was Zach. He was dressed for winter in a hoodie and athletic pants.
That doofus, Cass thought, relieved, as she took off after him. I’ll teach him to scare me.
Running quickly but silently, Cass covered the ground between them in only a few seconds and then, when she was right on his heels, she almost shouted into his ear: “Zach!”
Zach jumped just like she’d hoped, startled. But then he tripped over a rock and went tumbling to the ground. Cass was so close that she couldn’t avoid him, stumbled herself, and landed squarely on top of him in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Aiyee!” Zach started to squeal before he realized what had happened. Then he pulled Cass closer and tried to smoothly transition into something that sounded less like a five year-old. “I mean, Hi-ee, Cass,” he repeated, dropping his voice an octave.
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