Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World)

by Steffan, R. A.

  “Oh, no...” he muttered, slowing to a crawl to drive around the frantic people, some of whom waved their arms at him in a ‘get away’ gesture. “No, no, no...”

  The giant oak tree at the end of his block was bare of leaves, its branches creaking in the breeze. The thing was a hundred years old if it was a day, and had been cloaked in late summer foliage when he’d left for coffee a couple of hours ago. He pulled the Lincoln over to the curb and turned off the engine, ignoring the no-parking signs lining the block. Sirens wailed in the distance, sucking his mind back into the dream world of Detroit at night. Reality and memory wove together, overlapping.

  Len got out of the car and started walking, as though in a daze. He tried to flag down some of the people still scurrying along the street in the opposite direction. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What’s happening?” But they tugged free of his grip and kept going, white-faced.

  “Turn around!” a woman cried as she passed him with a hissing cat clutched in her arms. “What are you doing? Get away from it!”

  He blinked, focusing past her as she hurried on. The grass on the verge ahead was wilted—the leaves a sickly yellow-brown. A dead bird lay in the road. Len’s breath came fast and shallow as he cast his eyes further down the block. A human figure lay on the sidewalk, with two smaller, furry lumps lying nearby. One was black, and the other brown. He blinked, the lumps resolving into a familiar pair of dogs. Their owner walked them every morning at sunrise.

  All of the trees in the neighborhood were as bare as the big oak. Decorative shrubs and flowerbeds were brown and drooping. More dead birds littered the street... the yards... the sidewalks. And there were other people on the ground, unmoving.

  Len couldn’t feel his shoes touching the pavement as his legs continued to propel him forward without conscious direction. The sirens were getting closer, converging on the area from several directions. It felt like he had a rope tied to his sternum, the vortex of inexplicable death dragging him forward. He couldn’t have stopped for anything—the lifeless zone around his neighborhood pulled at his body with relentless force.

  The demarcation between green grass and wilted decay was stark—a sharp edge, but irregularly shaped. Len’s eyes lost focus as he approached it. He could feel the lack of life in front of him. He could hear it like a siren song... calling, calling.

  His foot landed on the other side of the borderline, and an aching absence flooded his chest in a wave, unavoidable. Irresistible. His brain misfired, sending conflicting impulses down his spine and into his limbs. Muscles jerked, flashes of light firing against the back of his eyelids like fireworks. It felt like holding a live wire between his teeth.

  The ground rose up and hit him in the face. He barely registered the impact. His body convulsed, muscles seizing uncontrollably, spine arching, limbs jerking like a marionette controlled by a drunken puppeteer. When darkness finally slid across his crackling, electrocuted mind, it was a relief.

  SEVEN

  THE SOUND OF beeping monitors and the squeak of tennis shoes on tile flooring was both familiar and unwelcome. Low voices buzzed in the background, and Len felt like he’d bitten halfway through his tongue. It was swollen and uncooperative, aching as it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  His lip ring was gone. That was the first thing to strike him as he managed to peel his tongue free and attempted to lick his lips. Len’s eyelids felt like someone had glued sandpaper to the backs of them. He made an undignified whimpering noise as he tried to open his eyes anyway. He couldn’t make out anything more than a blur of white and dark and color, but a cool hand wrapped around his bicep.

  “Hey, babe,” said a familiar voice. “There you are. Hang in there for a minute or two... I swapped out your I.V. bag for one with some of Rans’ blood in it. It’ll fix you up in a jiffy, and then we can get out of here.”

  Len blinked rapidly, trying to work up some moisture anywhere in his damned body. “Z’rah?” he slurred.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” she said. “Rans is mesmerizing a hospital administrator into writing up your release paperwork, and then immediately losing all of your admittance records in a trashcan somewhere.”

  He finally managed to pull his eyesight into focus, feeling the unmistakable tingling itch of vampire blood forcing his human body to heal at an unnatural rate. Zorah was dressed in blue scrubs, her wild spirals of hair scraped back into a ponytail. A stethoscope hung around her neck, completing her ‘don’t mind me, I’m just a normal medical professional’ disguise.

  “Wha—” he tried.

  “What happened?” Her face went carefully blank. “Better if we leave that until we’re someplace a bit... less public. I’ve already been throwing the vampire hypnotism thing around quite a bit, because I don’t, in fact, know jack shit about nursing. How are you feeling now?”

  Len tried to take stock. “Like my arteries have termites,” he decided. “Cheers for using Rans’ blood and not yours, though. No offense.”

  “None taken,” she said dryly.

  Len had heard horror stories of the effects of succubus blood, whether the succubus in question also happened to be a vampire or not. ‘Undead Viagra’ was the least explicit way of describing it.

  At the moment, however, he was honestly more concerned with the hole in his memory regarding how he’d ended up in a hospital bed in the first place. He prodded at it in much the same way he’d prodded at his missing lip ring. Then something less important but more immediate occurred to him. “Shit! All of my piercings are going to close up!”

  Vampire blood wasn’t particular about what it healed, and it was standard procedure for medical staff to remove any metal jewelry they found so it wouldn’t interfere with scans or MRIs.

  “Um... yeah. Sorry about that,” Zorah said. “Not really top of our list of concerns once we finally tracked you down, I’m afraid. Right now, I’m much more interested in the best way to get you unhooked from all this stuff without setting off any alarms.”

  The hole in Len’s memory throbbed insistently, full of darkness. Very bad things lurked in the shadows, waiting for their moment to pounce. He shoved his awareness of the unsettling gap to one side as best he could. That gave him space to consider the next most obvious question. Did he really want to be sprung from the hospital by a pair of vampires, when the alternative was to stay here in this nice adjustable bed, with the potential for interesting painkillers and the professional opinions of real, honest-to-god doctors and nurses who knew what the hell they were doing?

  “That depends,” he told Zorah. “If I tell you how to unhook me, what happens next?”

  She was already running her fingers along the various tubes and wires, trying to sort out what was what. “We get you back to Chicago, which is arguably safer for you than being here in St. Louis.”

  His heart sank. Chicago.

  “The damned Fae’s here with you, isn’t he?” Len asked in resignation.

  But she shook her head, busy untangling the heart monitor leads. “No, it’s too dangerous. He’s still behind the wards.”

  Len frowned. “Did you fly here?” Which, of course, meant something considerably different for a vampire than a human, and did not in any way involve commercial jetliners or O’Hare Airport.

  “No. Too slow,” she said. “We brought our own ride—just not a Fae one.”

  “Can I say no to this?” he asked, as another figure approached the bed.

  “I wouldn’t suggest it,” Rans told him, looking ridiculously out of place with his dark jeans, long leather coat, and artfully mussed rock-star hair. “Besides, I’ve just spent twenty minutes getting your release paperwork sorted.”

  Len sighed, giving up. For lack of any better options, he talked Zorah through the process of unhooking him without sending the duty nurse running in with a crash cart in tow. The imaginary insects scuttling around in his veins seemed to have finished putting him back together after... whatever had happened to him. He climbed carefully out of the bed,
trying not to moon either of the vampires with his bare ass showing through the open back of the hospital gown he was wearing.

  “You might want these,” Rans said dryly, handing him his clothing.

  He took the pile of folded clothes, staring at the sweat pants and hoodie in hopes that they might jog his memory. The sense of wrongness grew deeper, and a vague memory of ghosts in his bedroom made his stomach dip.

  Rans was watching him intently. “Best not think on it too hard. Not quite yet, anyway,” said the vampire. “Let’s just get where we’re going.”

  Once Len had pulled on his pants and shoes, then tugged off the gown and shrugged into his t-shirt and hoodie, Rans handed over a plastic bag containing Len’s wallet, phone, and now-useless jewelry.

  “If we’re going to be gone awhile, I should swing by the house first,” Len said, even as the words raised a new tide of dread in his chest. “Pick up some things.”

  Rans and Zorah exchanged a look. “No. I’m afraid you really shouldn’t,” Rans told him. The hint of glacial light in his blue eyes told Len that any attempt to push the issue was likely to result in him being mesmerized into compliance... albeit in the politest and most British way possible.

  Len swallowed. “Right. Just so you know—I am, at a guess, about ten minutes away from losing my shit completely. So if we’re leaving, we should do it now.”

  “Self-awareness is an important virtue,” Rans said. “Let’s go.”

  “The nearest elevator is this way,” Zorah added, gesturing to the right.

  Len followed them out, marveling at the complete disinterest of the nurses and staff at the sight of a formerly unconscious patient wandering away in the company of a woman unconvincingly wearing scrubs, and a guy who belonged on the cover of Rolling Stone.

  I’ve already been throwing the vampire hypnotism thing around quite a bit, Zorah had said. Len couldn’t help wondering what her definition of ‘quite a bit’ entailed. Whatever the case, no one questioned them. They emerged a few minutes later into the lazy, slanted sunlight of a late summer afternoon, the doors whooshing shut behind them.

  Len looked back at the building, not used to seeing a hospital from the perspective of the front doors rather than the emergency entrance.

  “Here’s the real question. Is my insurance going to cover all that?” he asked. When neither of the others answered, he added, “That was a joke, by the way. I don’t actually have insurance.”

  “Not to worry,” Rans said. “With no records on file relating to your stay, they’ll have no one to bill.”

  “That’s handy, I guess.” He looked around. “So, uh... where’s this ride of yours who definitely isn’t a Fae?”

  On cue, a dark figure peeled itself away from the wall next to a small landscaped area containing a couple of benches, neatly trimmed shrubs, and cheerfully blooming flowers. Len blinked, the scene of vibrant plants flickering in double exposure with a vision of bare branches and wilted brown leaves for a split second.

  Zorah took him by the arm and led him forward, breaking the odd moment.

  “One demon taxi service, ready and waiting,” she said. “Next stop, Chicago.”

  Every nerve in Len’s body sat up and took notice as the man... demon... approached, meeting them halfway. Aside from Zorah, who was one-quarter succubus, Len had only properly met one other demon before. That one had been female, evil, and making a rather concerted effort to kill him and his friends at the time.

  By contrast, this demon was suave, striking, and allegedly on their side—for the moment, at least. This, Len gathered, was the infamous Nigellus... who’d once saved Rans’ life, and now had a claim on his soul in turn—and on Zorah’s, by extension. In the shitshow currently masquerading as Len’s reality, selling your soul to the devil was... a bit more than a clichéd metaphor. It seemed that for supernaturals, souls were a currency more valuable than gold—and everyone wanted a piece.

  Nigellus appeared to be an imposing man in his late forties—a few inches taller than Len’s six feet. His features were hawk-like; his dark hair streaked white at the temples, receding into a noticeable widow’s peak. His eyes were the exact color of the most expensive top-shelf bourbon The Brown Fox used to stock. He was dressed in a conservative but exquisitely cut black business suit.

  I don’t always reap the souls of my enemies, Len thought irreverently, but when I do, they admire the quality of my tailoring all the way down to Hell.

  That intense, whiskey-colored gaze flickered over Len with limited interest, doubtless taking in his homeless-chic fashion statement and the dark circles under his eyes. Len tried not to feel like a gazelle confronted by a lion.

  “Are we ready to depart?” asked the demon, with the kind of resonant, unforgettable voice that should be hosting a wildly successful late night radio show about ghosts and aliens and things that go bump in the night.

  “You bet we are,” Zorah muttered, glancing around to make sure no one was looking their way. “The sooner we can figure out what to do about this mess, the better.”

  With no warning, Len’s heart gave a startled double-thud as memories began to filter back in. The dream. Calling Kat. The coffee shop. Driving home—

  “Oh, shit,” he said, just as an unfamiliar hand grasped him above the elbow, and everything went dark.

  EIGHT

  IF TRAVELING BY Fae portal felt like freefalling through space, traveling via demon teleportation felt like being squeezed through a gap significantly too small for his body. Thankfully, it didn’t last long before Len and the others popped back into existence in a depressingly familiar kitchen—though at least it looked like someone had dusted and knocked down the cobwebs since he’d last been here.

  He whirled on Zorah and Rans, swaying a bit. “Shit. Shit! Is Kat all right?”

  Zorah steadied him with a hand on his arm. “I don’t know who that is. Was she with you? What do you remember?”

  He stepped away, breaking contact with her, and lifted a hand to his forehead as though he could physically settle his whirling thoughts into place. “I... no. Wait. I think I was alone. We had coffee at that little place on Bancroft. But then I left her there and drove back to the house.”

  Albigard appeared in the doorway like a wraith, gripping the wooden frame with one hand. His face was haggard in a way Len had never seen it before, even when the Fae had been injured... or freshly punched. Green eyes flicked to the demon standing on the other side of his warded kitchen, holding the same expression as a cat assessing the massive Rottweiler his owners just brought home from the pet store.

  “Len? You drove back to the house and... what happened next?” Zorah prompted, ignoring the wary standoff taking place across the length of the room.

  Disjointed images assailed him—people running... bodies lying still on the ground... dead trees... the tiny corpses of birds littering the road. A band of panic tightened around Len’s chest as he remembered parking his car. Following the inexorable pull toward the zone of destruction like an automaton.

  “Everything was dead,” he said hoarsely. “People, animals, trees, grass...”

  “We saw it,” Rans put in, his tone sharp. “When we came looking for you. Did you see what caused it?”

  “No,” Len told him. “I think it was already gone before I got there.”

  Nigellus sighed. “There is little mystery involved. It doesn’t take any great feat of deduction to conclude that the Wild Hunt returned to the weak spot it had already torn open between the realms. Obviously it ventured further afield in its new territory this time, before retreating to more familiar ground.”

  Albigard looked positively nauseated, his grip on the doorframe tightening until the wood creaked audibly. “The Hunt does not kill indiscriminately,” he protested.

  Nigellus scoffed. “Until now, the Hunt has never had access to a place containing life that dies so easily. For a force that sucks the soul of living things into the Void, Earth is a feast.”

  Len
tried to catch up with the conversation, appalled. “So you’re saying that—after you specifically told me that thing would try to follow you to Chicago and wouldn’t bother St. Louis any more—it came back and killed every living thing in my neighborhood?”

  He tried to picture Betty dead... the sweet old woman who lived across the street. Ryan and Cherise, with their toddler, and another baby on the way. The irritating guy three houses down, who blasted his stereo late at night. His heartbeat began to pound in his ears, and he slammed an imaginary door closed on those thoughts, blocking them off. Someone had dragged a battered table and chairs into the empty dining area next to the kitchen. Len stumbled over and grabbed a chair, sinking into it shakily.

  The silence in response to his words was damning. It stretched painfully until Nigellus cleared his throat.

  “It didn’t kill every living thing,” said the demon.

  All eyes moved to Len. He looked up, feeling the weight of those gazes pressing on him. “I told you,” he snapped. “It was gone before I got back.”

  Rans’ brow furrowed. “Is it a lingering effect, then... the killing? Or does it only occur when the Hunt is actively present?”

  There was a pause before Albigard replied. “Once the Hunt retreats, there is no reason to believe anything harmful would remain behind.”

  Zorah frowned and gestured at Len with one hand. “And yet we found Len in the hospital, still unconscious after experiencing, uh... what were they called? Myotonic seizures? And he’d been that way for more than a day.”

  Len frowned, too. “You mean myoclonic seizures? That was the diagnosis?”

  “Yes, it was. What’s the last thing you can recall?” Rans pressed.

  He cast his mind back with considerable reluctance. “I... parked the car? There were people running down the street, and I could see a big tree at the end of the road that had died and lost all its leaves in the two hours since I’d left to go meet Kat. The grass was brown.” His lips grew stiff as he forced himself to keep talking. “When I got closer, I saw people and animals dead, too. I kept walking. It was like I couldn’t stop. Like I was being pulled forward.” He swallowed painfully. “How big an area was affected?”