Tainted Blood Read online

  “Vampire resurrection…” Gladys paced around me, sizing me up from head to toe. “I’m already the pinnacle of creation, but an insurance policy is just good planning. That alone is reason enough to keep you in my service.”

  “I’m not here to help you take over the world,” I said, darting a glance toward where Luka lay. I relaxed a little when I saw his chest rising and falling. “And I’m certainly not here to act as your personal resuscitation machine.”

  “Your original reasons for being here are of little consequence now, wouldn’t you agree? Your bodyguard over there isn’t even a match for one of my revenants. Against me… well, you’ve already seen that for yourself.”

  “Yeah, you’re big and strong,” I said, offering my least sincere smile. “But there’s no way to use all that power to beat me into resurrecting you if something happens. It just doesn’t work that way. So, if that’s why you want me around…”

  “Everyone has a price,” Gladys cooed. “It’s just a matter of finding the right leverage.”

  “The barmaid—the Norm,” Linus called out. “She saved Meredith from Carl. They’re close.”

  Up until then, Francie had been less than an afterthought. Gladys hadn’t even so much as looked in her direction.

  She looked now, and I did not like the expression in her eyes.

  “Don’t touch her.” I moved to step between them, but Gladys was faster.

  “Isn’t that kind of you,” Gladys chuckled and draped a long, slender arm around Francie’s neck. “You brought the leverage I needed right to me.”

  “Listen, if you hurt her—”

  “I’m here because I wanted to be,” Francie interrupted. “Not to make things harder for you, Mer. Don’t do anything she asks.”

  “Ah, the valiant friend to the end,” Gladys sneered. “Would you really let a friend like that die just out of stubbornness?” She chuckled again, then waved an irritatingly dismissive hand in my direction. “Don’t bother answering that. I already know the answer. Your emotions flow as freely as that untapped power of yours does.”

  I raised my chin in defiance and took a step toward her, but I knew she was right. I couldn’t willingly let her hurt Francie. She had been my only real friend in the world for these last years. My sister, really. And, sure, I knew that Gladys would kill us eventually, when I outlived my usefulness, but there were a lot of things worse than death.

  And I couldn’t allow any of them to happen to my friend.

  “Good.” Gladys pulled her arm from Francie’s shoulders and returned to her desk. “I’m glad we have that settled.”

  “Do not forget my role in all this,” Linus said. His pants made a soft scraping sound as he scooted across the floor to be closer to the desk. “I brought you this wonder. That’s more than Carl could have done for you.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot, Linus? I know you would stab me in the back just as quickly as you did these trusting fools if you thought anyone else held the upper hand. Your loyalty lies where you think you have the most to gain.”

  “I have always—”

  “Shut that ever-yammering mouth of yours before I shut it permanently.”

  Linus snapped his mouth closed with an audible clack.

  “As I was saying, I don’t particularly mind your absence of a moral center. It makes your actions easier to predict and means you won’t grow a sudden backbone. The power lies with me, so I know I can continue to expect your allegiance.”

  “Of course you can, my—”

  “Call me your queen one more time and I will reconsider.”

  “Uh, of course, Gladys. May I ask for something in return for my deeds this day?”

  “More than sparing your life?”

  “Turn me, please. I cannot bear being in this weak and withering body any longer. Make me what I once was—what I was meant to always be.”

  “That form served Carl well enough.” Gladys tapped a slender finger against her pale lips. “And if it was good enough for him…”

  “I doubt this body even has enough life left to see me through the end of the week,” Linus whined. “After what this lot did to it, I’m surprised I even made it this far.”

  I stared in disbelief at the old man as he inched his way closer to Gladys’s feet. He had been dead just a few hours ago, and now he had the gall to complain about his new life.

  I let that anger envelop me. What made it worse was that it was more my fault than his. Luka had known what Linus really was—had wanted to put an end to him long before things got to this point. But I just had to stay his hand.

  Look at where that righteousness got us…

  If looks could kill, Linus would have keeled over before he slithered one more inch across the office floor. I felt Francie move to my side, but her comforting solidarity only seemed to magnify the rage that was not-so-slowly building inside my chest. That anger, and the helplessness that kept me from doing anything about it, blurred my vision until I was seeing double.

  Except… the only thing that was actually doubled was Linus, as he continued his pathetic inchworm act. I held my hands out in front of me, but nothing else was distorted—not the large, drab office around me, and not Francie or the softly snoring Luka who still lay crumpled by the similarly crumpled wall.

  Only Linus was distorted.

  I squinted my eyes at the man on the floor and slowly realized I wasn’t seeing double at all. I was seeing two distinct people—Linus, the vampire that he was, and Carl’s body. I didn’t know what it meant, but I intended to find out.

  “What—what’s she doing?” Linus’s eyes widened as I strode over to him, ignoring everything else.

  “Maybe she can’t bear watching your pathetic squirming any longer,” Gladys replied.

  “Stop her!” His voice again became that shrill whine that cut right through me.

  “I would… but I can feel the rage absolutely boiling off of her.” There was a smile in Gladys’s voice. “And I kind of want to see what happens.”

  I knelt beside Linus and looked at him more closely. I could see the features on the surface—the age-crinkled eyes that were now screwed into an almost comical look of confusion and fear—but I could also see the dark eyes, solemn mouth, and ageless features of the vampire that I first encountered in my vision. Both entities were equally clear to me, and clearly still separate on some level.

  “What are you doing?” Linus whispered.

  Instead of replying, I reached out toward his face. He tried to wriggle away, but there was little use. He was too slow to get anywhere.

  Linus bucked and shuddered under my touch, but I held on as the strange cold electricity of the vampire within the human shell crackled and writhed against my palm. After a moment, and when I thought I had a handle on what I was feeling, I started to stand up again. As I did so, I pulled.

  It didn’t take a lot of effort, certainly no more than it would have to open a stuck door, but after the briefest of moments, Carl’s body slumped to the floor.

  And Linus’s shade stood over it.

  “No! You can’t—”

  With a thought—maybe something more innate than a thought—I pushed the shade away, back to whatever limbo or afterlife from which I previously summoned it. There was no fanfare, no last-minute wails of terror or sorrow. Only a blink and then an absence.

  But something did stir just behind my vision. Or maybe it wasn’t in sight at all—just something lurking inside my mind’s eye. It fluttered and grew, like void-black flames licking up and out against a walled universe before existence. It was only an inkling, barely a glimpse of what I felt was the truth of the thing, but it felt like power.

  It felt like death.

  “Did you kill him?” Gladys had crept close and now towered over me from behind.

  “I sent him back to where he belongs,” I said, spinning to face her. “Carl should be okay, I guess.”

  Gladys shrugged. “I like Carl better anyway. Now, if the theatrics a
re over, I’ll have the two of you escorted to your new… home.”

  Gladys snapped her fingers and a large shadowy figure lumbered out of a darkened corridor near the back of the office. Almost before the revenant cleared the threshold, another of its grotesque brethren lurched out after it.

  And then another.

  Gladys smiled wickedly. “They won’t bite. Unless you struggle…”

  Chapter 28

  “Mer?” Francie’s voice was almost childlike in its worry, and I couldn’t blame her. She was coming face-to-face with not one, but three monsters right out of a childhood nightmare.

  Before I could say anything reassuring, not that I knew what that might be, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Luka’s haggard, but alive, face staring down at me. “What did I miss?”

  “Oh, nothing of real importance,” Gladys said, holding up a hand to halt the slow march of her macabre servants. “You’re surprisingly hardy, even for a Primal. I doubt there are very many being’s in this world that could withstand a strike from me and live to tell the tale. A pity that I’m still going to have to put you down…”

  “Hey, what about that leverage?” I stepped between them before Gladys could get any closer to Luka. “Surely having two of my friends at your mercy would be better than having only one.”

  Gladys smiled and shook her head. “She is leverage,” she said, jabbing a finger at Francie. “He’s just a liability and a headache waiting to happen. I don’t need that.”

  The room inverted and flew beneath me as Gladys casually flung me out of the way. On the floor, inches from where Carl’s unconscious body lay, I watched Luka tense his massive body for Gladys’s attack.

  “You don’t need to—” I tried.

  The woman’s pale fist blurred out like lightning, driving right at the center of Luka’s broad chest once again, but this time the thunderous sound of contact did not come. As injured and weary as he must have been, Luka was able to anticipate the blow this time around, and he turned Gladys’s fist at the very last instant and staggered to the side.

  “Impressive,” Gladys sneered.

  Luka did not waste energy on replying. Instead, he threw his massive body at Gladys, swinging both of his arms down with his full strength. Even in his diminished state, the speed and violence of the attack were breathtaking.

  There was no snarky comment this time from Gladys, she weathered the assault by shielding herself with both arms, finally breaking the attack by shoving Luka back and pulling away. Her dark hair was tousled, and a single red-black trickle of blood streamed down from her hairline, but otherwise, she appeared little worse for the wear.

  “If I were crueler,” Gladys said, “I would simply let you do that a few more times and watch you spend the little energy and life you have left. But I am merciful…”

  “I do not need your mercy.” Luka heaved himself at Gladys again. His attack was much faster than any mere human could have mustered, but it was far too slow by his standards.

  Gladys caught both of his massive wrists easily and held Luka in place like a child throwing a tantrum. She cast a sideways glance in my direction. “Now is the time, if you’d like to say something to him.”

  I was never good at goodbyes. So, in lieu of one, I jumped to my feet and sprang onto the tall woman’s back like a spider monkey shimmying up a slender tree. Sparks of light danced at the edge of my vision as I put every ounce of my strength into a sleeper hold. It was like trying to choke the life out of a marble statue…

  “Dear God…” Gladys sighed, tossing Luka to the floor. “After the demonstration I’ve put on here, I didn’t think this was a lesson I was going to need to teach you. But I guess you’re a slow learner.”

  “I guess I—” I was airborne before I could finish. For what felt like five solid seconds, I flew through the air just like I had been launched from a cannon.

  Only, there was no net waiting for me at the end.

  Pain exploded through the entire left side of my body as I crunched into a wall. Darkness swallowed the outer edges of my vision, and something like fire-dipped razor blades rushed into my shoulder and ribcage. Even still, I was able to recognize that Gladys had taken a lot off of the throw. If I’d hit the wall as hard as Luka had earlier, I wouldn’t have felt anything ever again.

  I scrabbled to a sitting position. The pain was so intense I thought I might vomit with even the slightest movement, but I needed to see. I owed Luka that much.

  Francie swooped to my side, but I waved her away. At that moment, there wasn’t anything she could do for me.

  “Lesson learned, I hope,” Gladys called cheerily. “Here’s another—serve me and live. Cross me…” She lifted one booted foot over Luka, then hammered it down.

  “No!” My scream came out as more of a muffled groan.

  Luka caught her foot, barely, just above his chest. But it was clear he no longer possessed the strength to stop her. The boot continued to inch down, closing the short distance to the softer flesh of the large man’s neck.

  “Stop,” I croaked, wobbling shakily to my knees and then to my feet. “I won’t help you if you kill him. I refuse.”

  “No, you don’t,” Gladys replied. “You still have that delicate little flower to worry over. And she will not be as lucky as this one… I would take my time plucking every last petal from her.

  Her foot was on his throat now, and it was clear the last of Luka’s energy was gone. His fingers continued to pry fruitlessly at her unyielding boot anyway.

  “I chose… this,” Luka gasped. Even though he continued to stare up at Gladys, I knew the words were for me. And the meaning was clear. I shouldn’t blame myself. He chose to be here, so it wasn’t my fault.

  But I knew different. Enough of the mistakes were mine, and he was going to die because of it.

  Rage and sorrow like I had never known poured into my chest, tinting the world red. I knew it wouldn’t do anyone any good for me to attack Gladys, to bloody my knuckles punching her stone-like exterior. But I was going to do it anyway. She would know the depths of my rage. It would pour out of me and flow out over her smug face like lava from a volcano.

  I took one step and then fell back onto my butt as the room spun around me. I guessed my injuries were a little more severe than I had thought. My rage only grew.

  “What…”

  The sound of Gladys’s voice snapped my focus back to front and center. More precisely, it was the sound of worry in her voice.

  I watched as her foot raised slightly from Luka’s throat, and she swiveled her head to scan all sides of the office. I watched her do this from my seat on the floor. But I also watched her do it from the far side of the room.

  From about seven feet off the ground and through three different sets of eyes.

  Gladys took a step toward the revenants, toward me, and squeezed her eyes shut, straining until large blue veins stood out at the sides of her temples. I could feel her clawing for control of her trio of monstrosities, fighting with all of her considerable power to wrest control back from me.

  It was nothing against my rage.

  The three revenants, my revenants, moved forward as one, ignoring their former master’s mental pleas. We continued toward her, a physical representation of my still-mounting fury.

  Once again, those dark forms crept into my mind. They whispered of the arcane and of a time before creation, and they whispered about me. The real me. The one who stood in the Darkness before the vampires were even a thought. The one who watched while mankind sheltered in caves and scratched their animal thoughts onto the cold stone walls. The one who watched the Earth cool from a ball of molten rock.

  I felt my body, my human body, stand. There was no longer any pain. I walked over to Gladys, wedging her in from the side opposite the revenants.

  “What have you done?” Her voice held the kind of fear that could only be felt by those who had thought themselves in complete control.

  “Vampire,” I
said, tasting the word like it was the first time it had ever crossed my lips. “Vampire. But we didn’t always call you that.” Something cold and utterly ancient moved my hand to Gladys’s cheek. I brushed my fingers across her smooth, cold skin, and she recoiled.

  I didn’t know exactly what was happening to me. It was like moving through a dream where nothing really made sense, but everything seemed correct just the same. Some small part of me still felt the fear I felt earlier, and it screamed at me to run or hide. But that part grew smaller and smaller by the second as the other part of me—that hidden part that I had only known in my dreams—grew larger and more in control.

  I advanced on Gladys, and she stepped away quickly, nearly stumbling over her feet in her haste.

  “I… I will still tear you apart,” she said, taking a step back for every step I took forward. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise. This trick with the revenants is cute, but I’m still stronger than they are.”

  “Revenants?” I laughed. It sounded like someone else’s voice. “Abominations. You have perverted the gift that was the blood of The First. Even you are not worthy of what runs through your veins.” I didn’t know where the words were coming from, but they came all the same. And they felt right.

  Gladys took another step back, casting a wary glance at the grotesque army stationed behind her. She balled her fists at her side, readying for the attack.

  “They aren’t the ones you need to worry about.” I snapped my fingers, and the three huge creatures crumpled to the floor like exceptionally detailed Halloween inflatables. “How did you put it when you were threatening the life of my best friend? That you were going to take your time plucking every last petal from her?”

  “Meredith?” Luka’s tone was full of concern, but I didn’t turn to reply.

  This was my moment. I felt something I had never felt before. Powerful.

  “You’ve signed your death warrant, then.” Gladys cast one last lingering glance at the fallen revenants, then turned her eyes back on me. “They were the only chance you had.”