Nightshade's Bite (Blood Wars)

by Zoe Forward

Bryan held up his free hand in a clear why not? But he left it at that. No one questioned Michael’s commands, not during a mission. He brushed by Bryan with Kiera in his arms.

  Now he felt compelled to explain himself, which he never did. But the words spewed out as they made their way outside. “She risked her life for Grace. I won’t jeopardize her exposure as a part of the Nightshade League. They’d kill her over this.” He needed to hide her blood. He ordered a few members of his team. “Torch the shed.”

  “What the hell’s gotten into you?” Bryan had to yell over the noise of flamethrowers behind them. He jostled Grace, who’d been bawling since the moment they took her away from Kiera. He commanded the baby, “Shh. Be quiet.”

  The little one kicked up a notch. She reached out for Kiera as they passed by Michael.

  Michael cradled Kiera against him, running as fast as possible behind Bryan to the helicopter. Bryan ordered the ten other wolves prowling and cleaning up the dead evacuate. The daylight, which would be upon them in moments, would ash all the dead vamps and hide their existence. Even in war, there was still a mutual understanding to hide the existence of both species from humans.

  Once they were in the helicopter, Michael pulled up Kiera’s shirt. She was covered in bullet holes and oozing blood. So much blood. Too much. “I don’t know if she can heal this.”

  Bryan sat with the bawling baby. “She needs a miracle. Let her die with honor.”

  “No. What can you do for her?”

  Bryan scowled. He swept her with a once-over but didn’t touch. “I do wolf field medicine. I don’t know jack about vamps other than the best ways to kill them. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know what to do other than remove the bullets. Maybe give her a transfusion if we can find untainted blood.”

  He dialed Blay, whose daughter, Vee, the half-vamp, did medicine on both species. He couldn’t directly call her husband, the king, because Lexan rarely carried a phone. And Michael didn’t have Vee’s number.

  Blay grumbled into the phone, “It’s three fucking a.m. This better be an emergency.”

  “Kiera’s in trouble.”

  A huge sigh came through the phone. “What kind of trouble?”

  “She’s been shot scores of times. She’s not conscious. Fuck, she’s bleeding everywhere.”

  “Oh. Let me call Vee and see what she says. Call you back shortly.”

  His phone rang a minute later. A woman with a strong American accent said, “This is Vee. Kiera’s hurt?”

  “She’s in bad shape. Bullets and a few lacerations. We aren’t equipped to take care of a vampire with this much damage. None of us are sure what to do.”

  “Can you get her to Blay’s place in Poland?”

  “It might be two or three hours. I don’t know if she can make it that long.” He bit back the angry snarl to choke out semi-politely, “What do we do for her until then?”

  “Clean her up. Put pressure on any bleeders. As long as she’s got a heartbeat, she’ll make it a few hours. What was she doing to end up this way?”

  “Rescuing a baby.” Michael glanced at Bryan, who awkwardly rocked Grace in an attempt to soothe the crying child. Its shrill scream, which could be heard over the noise of the helicopter rotors firing up, rang inside his ears.

  Vee said something, but he could barely hear over the helicopter’s noise.

  “I missed that. What?”

  Vee’s voice came through as a yell. “Keep the baby near her, maybe even next to her. It might give her a reason to live.”

  He put the baby next to her. Like magic, the baby calmed and nuzzled against Kiera. He brushed hair away from Kiera’s face and whispered, “I don’t know what the hell you did to me, but you better not die before we figure it out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I can’t stabilize her. Well, I have as much as should’ve been necessary, but what’s going on with her is weird. Like mad-science weird.” Blood spatters painted Vee’s scrub top. Her latex surgical gloves were covered in bloody, crusted debris.

  “Weird? What do you mean?” She’s going to die? Michael swallowed hard as an inner panic churned in his gut. “You got the bullets out, transfused her, and…she should be healing at this point, right?”

  “First of all, she’s an old vampire, which means her body should have pushed out all the bullets about an hour after you rescued her. Her skin should’ve been pristine by the time I saw her. It wasn’t. Most were still inside her. I got them out old school—dug them out, which is disgusting, by the way. She should now be on the road to recovery after giving her IV blood. The bullets and lacerations are healing, although slower than expected. But…” Vee addressed her father, Blay. “Do you have any idea what’s going on with her? Have you seen anything like this?” Vee pulled the sheet covering Kiera’s body to the side just enough to expose the scar around her midsection.

  The bullet wounds had small sutures to close the skin. All blood had been cleaned away. The scar wrapping her body seemed wider than he remembered it from before, if that was possible.

  Vee said, “She’s separating. There’s a literal line of separation forming between the top and bottom half of her body. I tried suturing it, but it won’t pull her back together. The suture dissolves on its own within minutes, which is freaky.” She waved over the scar. “By all I know of medicine and science, this injury isn’t compatible with life. Yet she breathes. Her heart beats.”

  Blay clucked while shaking his head. “Magic.”

  “My aunt doesn’t practice magic.” Vee stared in horror at the area where Kiera’s skin pulled apart.

  “Didn’t say she did,” Blay said.

  “How do we fix this?” Michael gritted out. His need to pulverize something grew.

  Blay glanced heavenward. “I don’t know if it can be fixed. If we do nothing more right now, how long do you think she can hold on, Vee?”

  “A few hours? Half a day? I’ve got no clue. She should already be dead.” Vee kissed Kiera on the forehead. “I love you, Aunt Ki. Please, hang on.”

  Blay covered his face and scrubbed. “I know someone who might be able to contact a being who can deal with this. The first person might kill me for even asking for the information, but I’ll go. Actually, Michael and I will go.”

  Of course, he was going. If it involved a cure for Kiera, he was there.

  Vee said, “Please, don’t let her die. If there’s something…anything…”

  “Come on, Michael.” Blay pivoted and stalked out.

  “Where are we going?” He jogged to catch up.

  “Get your shit. Meet me outside in ten minutes. You alone. Where we’re headed, no one but us may go.”

  “Where?”

  “To see someone who can tell us why this is happening. The question is if we can be convincing enough to get her to help us before she kills us.” Blay stalked to the door. When Michael didn’t follow, Blay’s head swiveled. “We’re going to Vienna.”

  …

  Vienna. The city of coffee shops and too many contemporary art museums. Michael would never be able to see a shovel stuck to a wall as art. He’d visited the museums years ago when he’d been trying to understand the time, not that it had helped. He had come away from the trip entertained by the phrase “contemporary art.” Each new “modern” type of art pushed boundaries and became more bizarre than the last. The pieces he enjoyed from centuries ago depicted realistic renditions of things he wanted to remember. Give him a farm landscape or a nautical scene, now that was art.

  He stalked behind Blay as they scurried through the bitter cold, spitting rain in the darkness of almost midnight. At the end of an alley between two twelve-story stone buildings, Blay pulled an ancient-looking skeleton key out of his coat pocket. He fit it into an iron gate that walled off a stairway between the buildings. He didn’t rotate the key.

  Blay knew whoever the
y were seeing well enough to have the secret key to their building?

  “It’s electronic,” Blay said moments before the gate clicked open. He proceeded up. “Come on.”

  Michael noted not one, but three cameras on the side of the building as they ascended and pulled his hood over his head, not that it provided much camouflage, nor did it protect against rain. Besides, he was already soaked after their long, circuitous route.

  “Why am I along for this if these friends of yours are distrustful enough to kill you? I want to help, don’t get me wrong. I’d do whatever it took to get help for Kiera, but if me here makes this worse…”

  Blay paused on the next step. “None of these creatures are my friends. You’re here because you’re emotionally invested in her.”

  “That’s a good thing to these guys?”

  Blay paused his ascent and glanced down at him. “Maybe yes. Maybe no. Can’t ever tell with them. You need to pull out every bit of respect training you learned from your parents. Smart mouth these bastards, and they’ll kill you for fun. Give them the hairy eyeball, and you’re toast. Even you, who heals from almost any injury, can die.”

  At the midpoint of the stairs, Blay used the key again in a door with peeling dark paint. Inside the doorway, he removed his coat and hung it on a metal coatrack. Michael followed his lead.

  “Unload,” Blay directed as he placed a long, serrated dagger on an austere wooden table. He removed his two handguns and unloaded them, placing the magazines next to the guns. “No weapons inside. It’s disrespectful to go in armed.”

  Michael tossed his single knife next to the other weapons.

  Blay’s eyebrows rose.

  “I have confidence in my abilities.” He smirked.

  “Or you’re stupid.”

  “Now what?” He evaluated the Spartan anteroom, which gave no details of the occupants beyond the door.

  “We wait.” Blay stood in front of a red wooden door missing a doorknob. A small wood sign on the wall to the left of the door, the only ornamentation in the entire room, had words burned into it.

  He squinted until he made out the words: Ich bin nicht gestorben. Trotzdem habe ich den Atem des Lebens verloren.

  “I did not die. Yet I lost life’s breath,” Michael translated. “Dante?”

  Blay nodded.

  The knobless door opened inward. No one awaited them on the other side. A familiar scent snapped Michael into survival mode. He hissed, “Vampires.”

  Old ones. The kind that seeped entitlement from the pores, wealthy and savage.

  “Quiet.” Blay strode down a narrow hall. An unbroken sheet of metal blocked out every window, creating a darkness lit by a few electric candelabras. The odor of sage and cinnamon assaulted Michael’s nose and clung. The scent reminded him of the old times when he’d been enslaved. It was an herbal burn vampires used to purify the soul or some sort of spiritual mumbo jumbo carryover from bygone days. The custom got lost over the years as science became the more worshipped belief.

  With a warning glare from Blay, they entered a sitting room lit by an ornate crystal chandelier that held candles instead of electric bulbs. The room looked like an interior designer obsessed with the Victorian era had vomited then crammed in more period knick-knacks beyond the point where all available space had been used. Rachmaninov piano music played softly in the background. No piano in sight. Must be a sound system.

  “This Victorian decor is something she considers modern. Don’t let it fool you into thinking her young,” Blay whispered in Michael’s ear.

  “Blaylock,” said the solitary vampiress with razor sharp facial features who sat on a blue velvet sofa. A human might guess her to be mid-twenties, but her pale eyes held the cunning and intelligence of many centuries. Her tailored red pantsuit matched her cherry red lipstick and nail polish. The color contrasted with her black hair, which she’d ponytailed back.

  Blay bowed at the waist. “Ehlena.”

  “You show up unannounced with him.” Ehlena’s examined Michael for a long few seconds before readdressing Blay. Her accented English came out precise and clipped but not of a distinctive ethnic origin, maybe Italian or maybe Spanish. “Why shouldn’t I execute you both for the audacity?”

  Blay kept his head bowed. “Because I brought you a gift.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “A gift?”

  He held out a brown wrapped package.

  She unwrapped a red hardback book. “Crimson Blooms and Golden Sheaves. A first edition? I haven’t seen this since my library burned.”

  “Signed by Lewis Gaylord Clark himself.”

  After placing the book on the table beside her, she held up her hand in a gesture of silence. Her spine went ramrod straight.

  A burly vampire male dressed in tactical gear dragged another vampire into the room by his blond hair and pushed him to his knees. The blond’s face was covered in blood. “Found our mole, my lady. He was on the run.”

  With a graceful stroll, she moved to the kneeling vampire and lifted his chin. Softly she asked, “What did you tell them about me?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She put a solitary finger to the vampire’s temple. “You should not have told them that.” In a blur of speed, she sliced him across the neck with a dagger that came from…who the hell knew where. There wasn’t much space to hide something that sharp in the tight pants suit. The disarticulated head bounced along the floor.

  A dismissive flick of her wrist and the burly vampire retrieved the head. He dragged the body out of the room, leaving a messy blood trail in his wake.

  She rearranged herself on the blue sofa and stared at them expectantly in silence as if nothing had interrupted them.

  That whole scene hadn’t felt spontaneous, more calculated. A secretive vampire no one thought existed wouldn’t share personal business with two barely friendly werewolves. Had it been done to prove she killed anyone who revealed information about her? Or simply to intimidate?

  Going to admit he was a tad intimidated.

  “We have a situation,” Blay said.

  “Dire enough to risk forfeiting his life? You bought yourself a pass with this gift.”

  “It’s Kiera. She was injured, and now she’s not healing. She’s…” Blay compressed his lips before continuing. “It’s weird. She’s separating.” He drew a line across his waist in illustration. “Do you know why this is happening?”

  She didn’t ask for more details. “Why come to me?” She reached for a goblet on the end table next to her and took a slow sip. The odor of human blood wafted through the room.

  That was a yes on she knew what was going on with Kiera.

  Blay took a seat across from her without waiting for an invitation. “We don’t have time for games. Kiera rescued a kidnapped werewolf baby and fought a contingent of Squad vamps on her own. I won’t go into the ethics of your people experimenting on a baby. I hope that even you feel a twinge of conscience about that being morally wrong. We’ve done what we can for the normal wounds on Kiera, but this isn’t medical.”

  Ehlena ignored Blay to rise.

  Michael tracked her movements while mentally readying for attack.

  Ehlena circled him. “Michael Durand. Why would the infamous vampire slayer care about one vampire enough to venture here on her behalf? I assume that’s why Blay brought you. Did she rescue you and this is some sort of twisted IOU?”

  Maybe Ehlena, like Blay, could play inside minds, perhaps even read thoughts.

  He jolted when he felt the sensation of her hand brushing along his shoulder. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Did I?” Ehlena cocked her head. In a split second, she had the dagger against his throat. “This is touching you.”

  Shaking began in his hands and spread up his arms as he resisted his impulse to fight. He’d thought himself willing to accept
death when it came, but not like this. Not by some ancient vampire’s mini-blade against his throat in a non-battle. He wanted to fight off the blade. He could kill her with his bare hands. Only, that’s what she wanted, which meant she had far more in her arsenal than this small knife that she could use to destroy him.

  “Move another inch toward me, Blay, and I’ll cut off his head.” She twisted the sharp point until Michael smelled his blood.

  “Go ahead, Michael,” she taunted, baring her fangs at him in a wide, slightly unhinged grin. “Fight me.”

  The seconds ticked by. The instinct to fight, rip her to bits, and get the hell out of this room clawed at his brain. His muscles tensed to the point they complained, but he forced himself to remain still.

  “A wolf with control. I like that.” And then she was a few feet away from him. “You have feelings for her.” A small smile pulled her mouth upward. “What’s it like to feel something other than hate for the species you’ve dedicated your life to hunting?”

  It’s a mind fuck and a half.

  “Pushes you out of the black and white lines, I suppose.” She sauntered back to her seat on the sofa. “Have you kissed her yet? Felt your souls beating together to the point you question all that’s declared right and wrong in your existence?” She touched her lips.

  Michael met her pale gaze, opting to keep his mouth shut.

  “You kissed.” She relaxed back on the sofa with a disapproving grunt. “Unexpected.”

  “Ehlena, please, tell me how to make Kiera heal,” Blay pleaded.

  Ehlena’s back stiffened. “You barge into my home and dare demand something of me after you let them murder my Ariella? My sweet, sweet little belle fleur. And now this…” She waved at Michael. “A werewolf wants to bond Kiera, which will end in her biting him. From my perspective, I think maybe I do nothing for Kiera. Kiera’s destiny may be to die now, since Michael in her life guarantees she’s going to die soon anyway.”

  Arie her sweet little flower?

  This was Kiera’s mother? There were rumors about her, but most revolved around how she died long ago. That meant Ehlena wasn’t just ancient but had to be damn near pre-Columbian, at least Egyptian times.