Dream Walker: Blood Legacy Series Book 1

by Elise Hennessy

  He inhaled the scent of blood and terror, shuddering all the way to the tip of his tail. This was his fault—a message sent directly to him. Anyone who dared to help him would suffer a similar fate by the hands of that sadistic witch.

  His paws took him closer, sniffing one of the scratches on her arms. Something’s wrong, his inner beast repeated urgently.

  Her blood had a new quality, something old and bitterly metallic. Tilting an ear back, his friends were still discussing the mechanics of shifting. He unsheathed his claws, pressing the sharp edge to one of her wounds to draw a bead of blood.

  It surfaced silver.

  Shimmering in the low light, it left a gray trail down her skin as he jumped backward. He meant to turn and call to Melanie, but his every muscle locked.

  Hellscape, his beast reminded him.

  That’s what we’re focusing on? he grumbled internally, resisting as it pushed their paws into motion. Even his slight weight caused Violet to groan as they stood on her chest, beholding her anguished face.

  Sleep, it told him insistently. It prompted with that one word as they watched her wide-awake gaze shift as if in a fever dream.

  Alex opened his mouth, taking a deep breath. The inner beast allowed him to speak the command as they looked her in the eye. “Sleep, Violet.” And she listened, the tension leaving her body like a dropped doll.

  The beast took back its control. It flooded him with a sense of gratitude and curled up quietly against her flank. A soft purr lifted in his throat as his eyes closed. Alex roared with impotent fury to be sleeping again, and the beast responded with a sense of peace. Patience. The unwelcome warmth of sleep enveloped him.

  Chapter 9

  Alex

  THROUGH DARKNESS, IMAGES started flashing by him, fragmented and broken, made of screams and blood and gore. Gunshots. Burning flesh. He watched this all with the warm detachment of a dream, walking around the shards of thought as if they were polaroid pictures planted in a depthless sea. He padded on four paws, still a cat but at least half in control of himself. The beast was the other half, steering him away from each image, leaping and rolling when they moved to intercept them. What is this? he thought.

  Dreams. Nightmares, the beast answered.

  They stopped before the image of a burning village. Alex hesitated, but his beast did not, plunging in headfirst. The smell of ripening corn mingled with distant smoke. It was straight from one of the worst days of his life, a memory he recoiled from. The beast steered their paws through stalks of corn, weaving around them with the grace of familiarity. They stopped before someone who didn’t belong to this memory of ancient times. Violet, whole and hale-looking, was curled up beneath a scarecrow, knees drawn up to her chin, weeping. She wore a zoo uniform, the pristine version of what she’d started this ordeal in. He ventured forward, placing a paw on her shin.

  Her watery eyes lifted, and she gasped quietly when she saw him. The beast purred deeply, meowing to her like a common cat wanting attention. She reached forward and tucked him into her chest. “How did you get here?” she murmured.

  I have no idea, love, he wanted to reply. Instead, he purred fiercely, nuzzling under her chin. She was smiling, wide and genuine. He reached out and pawed at her cheek, acting just like the cat she thought him to be.

  “Aren’t you sweet?” she cooed. He meowed. No, the beast did, wiggling free of her hold, trotting into the thicket of corn, and turning back with tail held high as if asking if she were coming. She got to her feet and let him lead her out of the scene. His beast only let her pick him up again when they re-entered the blank space that was filled with jagged shards of nightmares.

  The beast held out a paw, drawing on Alex’s mental power. The burning village popped into shards of color and light, fading like a handful of confetti. Alex watched in astonishment. He knew what mental order the beast had given, but to see a memory erased right before his eyes was something new. Violet blinked at it, drifting with him idly. He and his beast came to an understanding in that moment, paw extending every time she approached one of those bladed nightmares. Before she could touch one, it burst, erased. “That’s not right,” Violet murmured in confusion, not seeming to otherwise question this odd dream of hers as she kept walking. Alex could not see anything outside these jagged scenes ahead of them, black mist swirling around Violet’s legs.

  The path seemed endless. And there were so, so many memories. Alex recognized about a third of them, most badly distorted and false. Kim Cox’s work, he realized. His paws swept away scene after scene. Many more lay ahead, beckoning. A soft growl left his throat. He would destroy her for this.

  No, the beast replied.

  No? he echoed.

  Violet’s dreaming mind continued on, but he started to feel distant, fading. He passed through her fingers as he woke, shaking out his fur in shock at the sudden change of scenery. His eyes adjusted to the warm colors of peeling wallpaper and the light of dusk filtering through tightly shut blinds.

  No. We will, the beast said, fading out. Alex flexed his paws as it retreated to the back of his mind, strength and awareness flooding him. His vampire’s senses returned in a rush. He shifted with a pained crack and grunt, falling off the bed in a graceless pile as his body unfolded to that of a man once more.

  Naked as a jaybird, he looked up from the claws retracting to fingers as Sam rushed into the room. He knew he was a mess, his hair having grown out of control from an extended time in shapeshift form. “Guess who’s back,” he said from human vocal cords. Feeling the natural thrum of his voice in his chest was all he needed, jackknifing to his feet and giving Sam a backslapping hug.

  “Put some clothes on, you lunatic,” Sam laughed, though he hugged Alex with the same bone-crunching fervor.

  “Tell me you have clothes. And a razor.”

  “Clothes, yes. Razor, no.”

  Alex muttered something uncharitable.

  “Of course, I brought a razor,” Sam laughed, pushing him into the bathroom and giving him a full set of toiletries. He took his time, waiting for the kiss of nightfall with a predator’s patience. If she knew what was good for her, Kim Cox would already have fled far and fast.

  He knew his eyes were still slits, his inner beast active and ready to hunt. But he was going to do so clean and trimmed up. He strode out in his Blackguard uniform, lions stitched in a flat yellow on either shoulder. He could barely look at them, much less stomach the idea of ever becoming a lion again.

  Melanie wept in the other room between relieved laughs. “Do I hear that someone missed me?” he teased, pausing at the doorway and leaning indolently on the jam. She came over to hug him nearly as hard as her husband had.

  “You’re back, man.” The extra in the room was Armando shifting awkwardly in his boots.

  Alex beckoned to him. “Where is Julian?” he asked, good humor fading rapidly. The two Italians were rarely parted for long.

  Armando’s shifting became more uncomfortable. “I don’t know, boss,” he admitted. “He’s the tracker. I just hit things.” But Julian’s absence meant something was bothering him, and he had a feeling it had to do with the mortal girl still sleeping a few yards away.

  “I bloody well know your specialties. I must have words with him.” Alex sighed. “Give me your phone.” He rang up Julian’s phone and when he got to voicemail, sang a poor, off-the-cuff number asking where his loyal Bloodhound was. “There, that’ll piss him off enough to call,” he nodded, offering Armando his phone back.

  “Yeah, boss. Great,” he said uneasily. He must’ve seen the battle lust Alex left unconcealed. “He texted, says he’s on the roof. Why didn’t I check the roof?”

  “Because you don’t brood, Armando,” he said, crossing to Violet’s bedside in a few strides. He knew he was brooding too, watching the mortal shift restlessly, still dreaming. “Mel…”

  She seemed to read his mind, making shooing motions. “I’ll take care of her. Go do what you have to.”

  He sig
hed and left the motel room, scaling to the roof once he found the fire escape. Julian sat in the shadows, watching the stars wink into sight. Crickets sang as humidity caressed their skin. The other man didn’t turn as Alex sat beside him. “You’re back,” he said, speaking Italian. A chill breeze blew around the two of them, preternaturally swirling.

  “I’m back,” Alex agreed, waiting.

  Julian seemed to weigh his words carefully. A man of few of them, he preferred action over talk. Alex had always found it a shame since his friend was so skilled with weapons, having even honed his body into the sharpest one of all. A little diplomatic skill, and he would be even more deadly. “Why did you let the girl slow you down?”

  “She was dying,” he said, remembering her waterlogged and lacerated body lying on the shore, how he could’ve let the greedy river sweep her away and continued on his own. But there was something else, a kernel of emotion that went past duty. He couldn’t personally allow Violet to drown. He liked her too much.

  “She could’ve gotten you killed.” There was a thread of betrayal there, even in his expression. You would have left me, that expression said.

  Alex shook his head. “My friend, you are too cold. How do you expect to find your lifemate when you encase your heart in ice?”

  “Why bring that up now?”

  “Let’s face it. You’ve searched the whole world for her. If she were a vampire, you would have already found her. She is probably mortal. What would you do then? Would you hate her for her imperfections? For the untainted blood in her veins?” A tic throbbed in Julian’s temple, and his jaw clenched tightly as he stared down his coven master with those cold eyes. “If she lay dying from your actions, would you give your own life to save her?”

  “You speak unfairly,” Julian murmured. “This girl is not your lifemate. Nor did your actions deliver her to Cox’s hands.”

  “Didn’t they?” He shook his head. “I want you to meet her. There is something different about her.” The beast rumbled uneasily in the back of his mind, where it belonged. It ruled the uncomfortable prickling at the back of his neck as he thought of that silver drop of blood welling in her wound.

  “So, she lives.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Alex had been waiting for the question, though he had little idea of how to answer it. “It would seem I learned a new trick,” he said, explaining his dream as best he could.

  “Huh,” Julian said once he was done.

  “All that just for a ‘huh.’ I feel so accomplished to earn your sage advice,” Alex said dryly.

  Julian started to smile. Alex knew forgiveness when he saw it and breathed a soft sigh of relief. “Well, if you’re going to be an ass, I won’t share what I know,” Julian said. Alex mimed zipping up his lips and throwing away the key. “You don’t know this one? It’s dream walking.”

  “Bloody difficult to put a name to it when you don’t know what’s going on. Dream walking. That’s…” he drifted off, troubled. “Underwhelming.”

  “Perhaps the first time I’ve seen someone underwhelmed to ascend,” Julian snorted. “Congratulations… Elder Rehnquist.”

  “You well know it’s not the blood power I wanted,” he grumbled. Blood powers followed age hand-in-hand. At two hundred years of age, most vampires developed a single ability. They were considered Master vampires at that point. Five hundred years brought on the second ability, an age Alex was close enough to kiss. The third, and final, came at eight hundred. He had a while to survive to become an Ancient.

  Julian considered. “I will likely gain my father’s ability to speak mentally across great distances as an Elder. How underwhelming it will seem in two hundred years. Power ebbs and flows. Our first ones are strong, so the second must be weak. And if we live to be Ancient, the third will be devastating.”

  Alex nodded, watching the moon rise. The cold aura around his friend was lifting. Alex had always found it curious that the force of his mind manifested as cold, giving chills and freezing gales. Every other vampire he’d met gave off auras that manifested hot, a pins and needles sensation that grew more unpleasant as they aged. One could judge a vampire’s age simply off the power of their mind. While Alex kept his on a tight rein, some vampires like Julian always had a little leaking like a natural barometer. “So, about the girl. How do you plan to return her to a mortal life?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he admitted.

  “Did you want to have her as a new fledgling then?”

  He worried his lip. “That would be the wisest path for her. To wait out what Haven will do to her good name. To disappear.” He didn’t mention the silver blood, figuring that was a topic for their resident doctor, Melanie.

  “You know, I came up here to ask you a question,” he continued to distract himself from that thought. Julian tipped his hand, waiting. “Where is she?”

  “Downstairs,” he said, deadpan.

  “No. Cox.”

  He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Northeast. Approximately eighty miles. On the move away from us.”

  “Let’s catch up before she can burrow underground again,” he said, getting to his feet. “Oh, and Bloodhound, as useless as my Elder skill is…” he drifted off, and Julian nodded in understanding. He wouldn’t say a word to anyone. Alex had won his loyalty long ago, in an abandoned French barn. Now, they shared the same enemies. And one was about to see the full brunt of Coven Rehnquist’s wrath brought down upon her.

  Chapter 10

  Violet

  REALITY AND DREAMS met, mixing together in a slurry of screaming and silence punctuated by the gentle touch of a stranger upon her face. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” A woman’s voice.

  “What do you think it means?” Another voice, a man’s, seemed so familiar as it ebbed in and out of Violet’s awareness.

  “It’s too early for me to say. It could be a rare disease or…” firm fingertips pried her eye open. Violet screamed, instantly awake from her drifting. The woman did too, dropping a tool as she jumped from surprise.

  Clutching an armful of covers—when did she get on a bed?—Violet pressed herself to a headboard, taking in her surroundings as she covered up the flimsy nightgown she’d been changed into. Her hands were tied together by a length of satin. So, she was still a captive, just in a different place. By the looks of it, it was a cheap hotel room, where no one would ask questions if someone disappeared.

  Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she took in the two people, no, vampires, that were also in the room. Their faces were like faded memories, shown to her in the nightmares she could barely remember. The woman was tall and thin, her dark hair up in a bun that did nothing to soften the sharp lines of her cheekbone and jaw. She stared at Violet as if she’d grown a horn, her mouth half-open.

  “Sleeping Beauty awakens,” the other person in the room said, the man. He stood at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets as he affected a casual air.

  “W-who are you? What do you want?” Violet rasped, her lips and mouth as dry as if she’d eaten pure salt.

  He offered a smile. “You don’t recognize me, love?”

  She really didn’t. Nothing about him was familiar, from his accent, to the vampire-handsome face, to his generous lips shadowed by a mustache and goatee the same black as the tousled waves of hair on his head that had been cut messily, as if in a hurry. Throw in some eyeliner, and he could be an eighties rocker, she thought, taking in his dark outfit.

  But if he were even asking…that made the answer obvious. “You’re Alex. You shifted back?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Pleasure to meet you,” he said. A faint smile touched her lips, glad that their struggle hadn’t been in vain. “And this is Melanie Rainey, a doctor and Gifted vampire healer. We bound your hands up for your protection.”

  “What? Why?” Despite herself, she’d looked into his eyes and was fixed on them. He had eyes like a spring forest, a clear and depthless green. Like the other vampires
she’d met, they were his best and most noticeable feature, doing their job to distract and transfix her.

  She wrenched her attention from him with effort when Melanie leaned in, untying her wrists and the bandages over her fingers. “You were hurting yourself,” she said, gently turning over her arm to display an array of scabbed cuts. They looked days old, ready to start flaking off.

  “How long have I been asleep?” she murmured, her head full of questions. These people saved her somehow, and yet her nightmares left her with a slimy feeling, a dread that something bad was yet to creep up on her. Alex, Melanie, and others starred in half-remembered scenes of blood and torture, yet that wasn’t the version of them she saw here.

  “About a day. You’re healing remarkably well.” Melanie offered a tentative smile. “The sun is setting soon. We were about to move you to a more secure location.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she blurted, shifting her legs. Though she felt like she was tethered to several iron weights, she could still move. If she could move, she could go home instead of trusting any strangers with her care.

  Melanie turned to Alex with a meaningful look. He puts his hands up as he drifted out of the room, leaving her to help Violet to her feet. “I don’t want you to think we’re holding you captive,” the vampiress said. “But it would be for the best if you came with us to New York until we figure a few things out.”

  Following her lead to the full-length mirror in the bathroom, Violet said, “They didn’t really broadcast me as a murderer, did they?” Her train of thought derailed as she checked herself in the mirror.

  She rubbed her eyes, doing a double-take at what she was seeing. The veins that spider webbed around her collarbone were the wrong color, staining gray lines right underneath the skin. It gave her a sickly, unnatural pallor. But the most noticeable change was her eyes, made more prominent and shading away from blue into the same sort of gray as her veins.