The Last Vampire: Book Two

by R. A. Steffan

  Tears tried to spring to my eyes and I blinked them back ruthlessly, unwilling to waste whatever small reserves of moisture remained in my body. I pictured Caspian leering down at me, waiting with glee for my resolve to break. Anger flared like a raging fire, and I struck out with my arm. The impact knocked the gourd across the cell. I heard water glugging—either the container had cracked or the cork had come out, and now the water was seeping away to join the raindrops in the dirt below me.

  Temptation removed.

  I knocked the bread away next, though it didn’t roll very far. It didn’t matter. Even if the drizzle had dampened it through its paper wrapper, I was pretty sure I couldn’t swallow it successfully without some liquid to moisten my mouth and throat first.

  My body shuddered from a combination of cold and exhaustion. The mud I was lying on leached the heat from my muscles, and I felt like I’d been awake for days despite the long hours I’d apparently spent unconscious. My chattering teeth aggravated the pounding headache throbbing behind my temples. I opened my mouth again to the rain to stop my teeth repeatedly crashing against each other.

  I tried to take stock. It was difficult for me to feel much about my succubus nature when I wasn’t actively drawing animus from someone. For an instant, my mind flashed back to Rans, his eyes closed in ecstasy as he came inside me; the feeling of complete safety and satisfaction I’d felt in his arms on the handful of occasions after we’d pleasured each other. Again, tears pricked behind my eyes, stinging like acid.

  Had Caspian and his lackey succeeded at whatever they’d been trying to do to me? I didn’t think so. If they’d really ripped out my magic somehow, that part of me wouldn’t feel so tender and abused. At least, that’s what I was going to continue telling myself.

  I kept my mouth wide open to the rain as I pondered, hoping that only water would fall into it and not, y’know, bird poop or something. But now the shower was easing off, and the steady drip-drip-drip had barely been enough to wet my mouth, much less for me to swallow any appreciable amount of it.

  Out of sheer desperation, I marshaled what strength I could and scooted around until my face was pressed against the wall. It was damp from the rivulets of rain dripping down, so I started licking. Not even the threat of splinters in my tongue was enough to discourage me from lapping up every resin-flavored drop of moisture I could reach.

  A brief flash of worry that Fae rain might still count as a gift flickered across my thoughts, but it was clear the rain had been meant as another torment rather than a blessing. Besides, it was too late. Once the first drop slid across my tongue, it was done, one way or another.

  Too late, it occurred to me that the cessation of the rain might herald something else. By necessity, I’d let my body fall back to the ground once I’d licked up all the moisture I could reach from the wall. My shivering was bad enough that I didn’t notice the return of my invisible, scurrying companions from the previous night until one skittered across the bare skin of my hand.

  I would’ve shrieked, but all that emerged from my dry throat was a choked wheeze. Suddenly, they were all over me, and I was too weak to lunge to my feet and shake them off—whatever they were. I tried to flail, but just ended up flopping around a bit like a broken marionette. Panic clawed at me, the instinctive human fear of small things with scurrying legs.

  The bread, I remembered. They were probably after the bread, not me.

  Focusing what little strength I had, I shuffled toward where I thought the bread had ended up and felt around until my forearm brushed it, trying to ignore the scuttling around me. I grabbed the loaf, gritting my teeth when several somethings wriggled out from beneath my grip. I’d been right—the paper wrapping was gone and I could feel holes eaten through the crust.

  I threw it across the cell, hearing a soft thump-plop noise. Though I hadn’t been trying to, I must’ve slam-dunked it right into the shit-pit. The idea was a bit stomach-turning, but I stopped caring about that when—a few moments later—all of the sounds of rustling headed for that side of the hollow tree and stayed there.

  Whatever the things were, I hoped they all came down with horrible E. coli infections and died before morning.

  With the excitement evidently over, I lay trembling on the ground in a fetal position, wishing desperately that I could fall asleep and knowing it was completely hopeless. As I had the previous night, I drifted in and out of a semi-aware state, dreading what the morning might bring.

  * * *

  Unsurprisingly, the morning brought Caspian’s return. A portal sizzled into existence, dragging my fractured awareness back to the here-and-now. The floating ball of light whizzed through, dazzling my exhausted eyes, and Caspian followed.

  He did not make the gesture I’d noticed other Fae use to close the portal, but it snapped shut behind him nonetheless. I forced my sluggish mind to think back over my unpleasant association with the man in front of me, connections slipping into place.

  I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth, testing whether I had enough saliva to speak. “Where’s your torture expert this morning, Golden Boy?” I rasped.

  Caspian’s eyes took in the cracked water gourd lying at the base of the wall before returning to me with a look of utter contempt. I could imagine what he was seeing—muddy clothing, bruised jaw, red eyes, cracked lips.

  “He’ll be along in a few minutes to pick up where we left off yesterday,” the Fae said. His lips twisted as though addressing me directly left a bad taste in his mouth. “I came ahead to explain what awaits you if you continue to resist Reefe’s attempts to scrive your magical core.”

  I stared at him, willing myself not to break eye contact. “You can’t do magic, can you?” I asked in a hoarse voice. “Not the shiny, exciting kind, anyway. That wasn’t even your portal just now, was it?”

  If not for the faint tightening at the edge of his jaw, I’d have thought he was ignoring my words completely.

  “Today,” he continued, “we will not waste more time beating around the bush. The source of your foul energy is clear enough. I will find out what lies beneath the demon taint, if I have to tear pieces of you out by the roots one-by-one to do so.”

  “But it won’t be you doing the tearing, now will it?” I shot back. “You have to bring in someone else to help with that part. What’s the deal? Did you spend too much time playing human on Earth, or something? Though that didn’t seem to stop Albigard from being a magical badass—”

  Caspian stepped forward until he was looming over me. Idly, I wished for enough strength to swing a foot up and kick him in the nuts. Did Fae have testicles? I hoped I’d have a chance to find out before I died.

  “Once your broken body has given up the last of its secrets, you will be taken away and euthanized like the misbegotten beast you are. I shall take great satisfaction in watching the surprise on your face as your decapitated head hits the ground and rolls away.”

  I peered up at him, my weakness making me strangely numb to fear. “What did I ever do to piss on your cornflakes, Caspian? I mean… seriously.”

  Caspian drew breath—to answer, or maybe to spit on me. I wasn’t sure. Before he could do either, though, the portal opened again and Fae Two stepped through, closing it behind him with a wave. I took some slight satisfaction in the fact that he looked like shit, at least for a Fae—way less unruffled and iridescent than his boss, for instance. Instead, he looked flustered and like he was in need of a good night’s sleep.

  Caspian subsided, stepping away to address his underling instead. “Don’t bother binding it to the wall today,” he said. “I think the filth on the floor will do just fine for such a creature.”

  Did the second Fae look a bit troubled at that, or was I just imagining things? It didn’t matter. A moment later, a wave of magic hit me, gluing me to the damp, chilly mud as effectively as I’d been pinned to the wall yesterday.

  “I really, really hate this, you know,” I told the floating ball of light hovering above the ugly tab
leau the three of us made.

  Next came the warding coils, and then, the pain. Caspian hadn’t been lying—Fae Two—or Reefe, or whatever he was called—went straight for the place in my pelvis that still ached from the previous day’s torture. The feeling yanked fresh screams from my throat, just as it had before. But even after the pitiful amount of rainwater I’d managed to lick up, I was still most of a day further along in the process of dying of thirst.

  And I have to say, trying to scream while being physically unable to do more than wheeze and choke might just be the most horrible feeling a human being is capable of experiencing. Because while Caspian and his cronies considered me nothing more than a monstrous mistake, in my head, I was still just a human girl who’d been dragged headfirst into something far, far beyond her depth.

  “We can keep this up all day if necessary, demonkin,” Caspian growled.

  Fuck you, I mouthed silently… right before I passed out again.

  * * *

  I awoke alone. The sky above me was light rather than dark this time, though I couldn’t have said whether it was later on the same day or the following day. My vision was blurry, and trying to clear it somehow seemed like far too much work to be worthwhile.

  For several minutes, I thought they must have left me magically bound to the floor, because my arms and legs didn’t respond when I thought about moving them. Then, I realized I really was just that battered and weak. With a concentrated effort, I lifted my head to look around the cell.

  Empty. They hadn’t even left me bread and water this time.

  Yeah, Zorah… wow. Way to go. You really showed them, didn’t you?

  The snide inner voice was irrelevant, though. I couldn’t have moved from my position and sat up to eat or drink it anyway. The deeply buried human instinct that tells you when you’re about to die was chiming too late, too late, too late in a repetitive internal refrain.

  I was done. I couldn’t fight anymore—not that fighting had gained me anything useful to this point. Idly, I wondered if Reefe had managed to succeed this time at whatever he was trying to do to me.

  Then a portal opened, and a raspy groan emerged from my lips, unbidden.

  No. I didn’t want to do this anymore.

  Please, no more.

  FOURTEEN

  I FLINCHED BACKWARD WHEN a figure stepped out of the portal. When I blinked against the awful sandpapery feel of my eyelids, my vision eventually cleared enough to see that it wasn’t Caspian or his underling, and I relaxed marginally. I was still sprawled on the floor next to the rough wood of the wall, and I looked up from beneath the messy tangle of my hair with wary eyes. A second Fae joined the first—guards, I thought, although I didn’t recognize either of their faces.

  “Get the thing on its feet and clean the filth off its clothes,” the first one muttered. “Mab’s garden, the stench it gives off is foul. Did we piss someone off to get these orders, or what?”

  If I thought I’d have been able to manage more than a croak, I might’ve made some quip like, ‘Stench? Yeah, that tends to happen when you lock someone up inside a tree and torment them for days.’

  “Her,” I rasped instead. “Not ‘it.’”

  Fuck, why was I even bothering? What possible benefit did I expect to gain from the effort?

  Indeed, the guards eyeballed me like I was stinking vermin that had just stood up and demanded voting rights. Neither of them responded, merely dragging me upright by the biceps.

  It hurt every bit as much as I’d expected it to. How could muscles and joints throb with so much agony without tearing and shattering to pieces? I moaned, choking on the noise. Then the choking tore at my roiling stomach, making me retch. There wasn’t even enough moisture left inside me for bile to come up at this point.

  “Try giving it the water,” said the second one. “See if that shuts it up.”

  The other one removed one of the weird water-gourd things from a strap over his shoulder and uncorked it, thrusting the opening toward my mouth. I groaned again and clenched my eyes shut. Jesus. At what point had I gotten so thirsty that I could actually smell water when it was nearby?

  I bit the inside of my cheek hard. There was some reason I shouldn’t drink this. It was important. Important enough that I’d dumped the last water they’d sent me onto the dirt floor. What was it? Why the hell had I done that instead of slaking my thirst?

  Oh. Right.

  Faerie food and faerie drink. Faerie gifts… accept them and you gave the faeries a way to control you… or something. I’d drunk Albigard’s mead, and now he could find me anywhere.

  But did it really matter anymore? The Fae already controlled me. They already had me, and soon they would kill me—if I didn’t die of thirst before then. I could feel my mouth trying and failing to salivate at the prospect of drinking something. Eating something. The thought of that cool liquid sliding across my tongue and down my throat was like a siren song.

  Only one thing held me back. What if Caspian had sent it? What if it was his gift? I swiped out weakly, fresh pain exploding through my body as I knocked the gourd out of the guard’s surprised grip. It hit the ground and splashed across our feet and lower legs.

  “Animal!” he growled, and hit me across the face.

  My head jerked sideways and the room swayed, but beyond that the impact barely registered amongst my body’s clamoring distress. Maybe I could absorb some of the water soaking my filthy jeans via osmosis. Or would that still count as consuming Fae drink?

  “Enough,” said the other guard. “Let’s just deliver it before the Court like we’re supposed to. I can’t get away from it fast enough, honestly.”

  Feeling’s mutual, asshole.

  The guard holding me grunted. “Yeah. Filthy creature. Can you even imagine letting a demon fuck you? Much less carrying demon-spawn around for months and actually birthing it. Humans are so disgusting.”

  God, I wanted to spit at them. I wanted to lift my chin and deliver a cutting verbal smackdown that would leave them smarting for days. I wanted to be a badass faerie-killing assassin and overpower them… take their weapons… leap through the open portal and fuck up every Fae standing between me and wherever they were keeping my father now.

  Instead, I stood on shaky legs, my body trembling so hard it threatened to send me straight back down to the ground, feeling the burn behind my eyeballs that meant I’d be crying like a little bitch if I wasn’t too dehydrated to make tears.

  “Go to hell,” I managed, more the shape of the words than an actual sound.

  The second guard only made a sound of disgust. One of them muttered a new spell, and my damp, muddy clothing instantly dried, the dirt flaking away. Between them, the pair hauled me through the portal to whatever lay on the other side. And what lay on the other side was one of those big, official-looking buildings with plants and flowers choking the interior, like the place we’d met with the Recorder. It might’ve been the same building or a different one. With all the vines and leaves everywhere, it was impossible to tell.

  I was dragged inside. A pair of double doors loomed in front of us, flanked by more stony faced guards. Their eyes flicked over me and the one on the right said, “You’re expected. Take the thing inside. They’re ready to begin.”

  What few functioning brain cells I possessed were starting to fire intermittently. Maybe this was it. This looked like the kind of building in which you might sentence someone to be executed. Maybe I’d be out of Caspian’s reach soon.

  Sudden worry pricked at me. I still didn’t know what had become of my father. He needed care. Medical care, psychological care. He needed to be on Earth, not this terrible and astonishing place inhabited by beautiful monsters. I had to pull myself together enough that I could at least speak. I needed to be able to ask what had happened to him… to beg for his freedom in exchange for my life, if the chance arose.

  The doors swung open, but I still couldn’t do more than croak. My throat was as dry as the Sahara no matter how
many times I tried to swallow.

  The chamber beyond made me certain that I was right about where we were. Like so many things on Dhuinne, it was different in subtle ways from anything I was familiar with on Earth, while still clearly announcing its purpose. This was a courtroom. Or perhaps more accurately, a Court-room. If I was right, I had finally come face to face with the Fae Court.

  The place was spectacular. As with so much of Dhuinne, it, too, was choked with living things, the invading plants almost appearing to move as they battled and strained to grow longer, lusher, more colorful than their neighbors. The room was delineated clearly into three zones. The far end was raised on a platform a couple of feet above the area inside the double doors. But the raised area was also divided down the middle, separating the left and right sides of the dais. Each side held a long wooden seating area like a judge’s bench.

  An open area lay in front of the split dais. The guards hauled me toward it, passing pew-like seats on either side of the aisle we were traversing. The seats were mostly full from what I could see through all the leaves. The pews held a mix of people, while the raised sections at the front appeared segregated by sex—females on the right and males on the left.

  My shoes fell soundlessly on more of the weird Fae moss—the blue-green of the natural carpet broken here and there by tiny white flowers poking through. I’d heard the low murmur of people talking amongst themselves when the doors first opened to admit my guards, but the chamber became very quiet the moment the Fae inside noticed my arrival.

  The guards dumped me in the empty area at the base of the platform, and without their support, my knees crumpled immediately. At least the moss made for a soft landing, though I felt strangely bad about having crushed some of the little white flowers.

  “The prisoner, as requested, Honored Ones,” said the guard on my left, as both bowed low.

  One of the male Fae on the raised platform stood, looking down his nose at me. My heart stuttered and sped up as I recognized Caspian, dressed now in fine robes rather than the utilitarian clothing I’d grown used to seeing over the past couple of days.