Tainted Blood Page 9

  “Is all of this necessary, Tomás?” Ada placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Yes, Ada, it’s necessary! I loved him like a brother! We deserve to know the truth.”

  “I loved him, too. You know that. But we have them here now, and our revenge will be swift. What use is there in hearing their lies? The sooner we are done with this mess, the better.”

  The female vampire grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and hauled me to my feet. It didn’t escape my attention that lifting my full weight appeared to cause her no more effort than lifting an empty cardboard box might have.

  “The honor is yours,” Ada said, pushing me in front of the brooding male.

  Tomás stared at me for a moment, then looked back to Ada. “I want—need—to know how and why this happened. What’s to say it won’t happen again? Next time it could be one of us…”

  “I hardly think they will give us much trouble from beyond the grave.”

  “You know what I mean, Ada. What if there is more to it… or others involved?”

  “Then we make an example of them,” Ada replied. “I think we should start with the arms and legs and see how much of a mess we can make.”

  Ada’s hand shot out and locked onto my wrist like an iron vice. I was vaguely aware of Hiram’s voice pleading in the distance, as an electric pain shot up my arm and into my shoulder. She wrenched my arm straight out, not loosening her grip.

  “Off at the shoulder or elbow? I’m partial to the shoulder, myself. Creates more of a spectacle for whoever finds the—”

  Her words and my pain cut off at the same instance. Actually, everything cut off.

  Everything went black.

  Chapter 15

  The blackness around me was total and formless. But it wasn’t empty… I could sense something in front of me and not all that far away. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could feel a presence or, at least, the anticipation of a presence.

  I tried to reach out, but nothing seemed to change. I couldn’t see my arms as I tried to wave them in front of me, and even more disturbing, I couldn’t feel them either. I couldn’t feel much of anything beyond a strange thrum or buzz that seemed to pulse somewhere deep inside.

  The dark veil around me peeled back suddenly like I was looking out through the now open eyes of another being. I was no longer in the living room of Linus’s house. The room was dark and small, and there was a slatted door or window just inches from my face.

  I reached out to touch it, but again nothing happened. I had no control over my own body, and the familiarity of the situation finally dawned on me. I was looking through someone else’s eyes. Or something else’s.

  Through the slats in front of me, I could make out the blurred shapes of some kind of kitchen. Large, dark cabinets and an oversized granite island made up the sum total of what I was allowed to see.

  But I was more interested in what I could hear. A man’s voice was coming closer, and even at the edge of hearing, I could tell it was agitated or angry.

  “—bad. Bad! I’m so stupid!” There was a loud thud like the sound of someone kicking open a door, then a dark, blurry figure passed in front of my view through the slats.

  “It’s my own fault,” the voice continued more softly. “I’ve always been too easily swayed… never a leader.” The voice laughed harshly. “Never anything. Well, that’s not true. A pawn. A sap. An idiot!”

  The man paced around the granite island, occasionally slapping his palm against its surface as if to punctuate some thought he had decided not to speak aloud.

  He stopped and chuckled to himself. “What are the odds, though? Four hundred and ninety-seven years on this blob of dirt and only now I run into one… What kind of foul luck is that? It’s a cosmic joke.”

  The figure moved away from view for several seconds, but I could still hear the man muttering to himself somewhere off to the side of the room.

  “Airtight plan, she had said. Who could possibly know? How about some random Eldritch-touched woman who decides to go for a stroll through my skull!? Gods, Ada, aren’t you ever going to get here? I’m about to lose it!”

  The man’s outburst seemed to trigger a reaction from my ride. My view glided over a few inches, as dark hands reached out and pushed the door in front of us open.

  We loped out into a kitchen that was lit only by the pale lights of twin chandeliers. Several floor-to-ceiling windows lined one wall of the attached dining room, but they were shuttered with dark wood. Even though I had never stepped foot inside the room, it was easy to tell it was Linus’s house. The dark hardwood floor and light gray walls were a dead-on match for the living room I had been in only moments before.

  Linus was standing near a large, opulent table with his back toward us. He looked smaller than he had in my vision, but that was likely because I was larger than I had been. We crept silently toward him, gliding catlike until we stood right behind and above him.

  And then we waited.

  When the vampire finally turned around, his mouth of overcrowded fangs formed a comical O of surprise, before flitting back into a frown of anger.

  “What, pray tell, made you think I wanted your company, creature? Could you not tell from my pleasant disposition that I was about to spend some quality time sunning myself to death out on the front lawn? I would ask you to join me, but I hardly think I would want your disgusting face to be the last thing I see. Be gone! Scat!”

  We took another step forward.

  “Are you hard of hearing as well as ugly? I said leave me alone.”

  Linus’s look of irritation morphed into something else. “Oh… Oh, Ada. I didn’t expect it to come from you. How disappointing.”

  Without warning the vampire launched himself at us like a man-shaped missile. He blurred at us, a frantic whirlwind of limbs and fangs.

  I couldn’t stifle my panicked scream, but it made little difference. Nothing came out anyway.

  Linus hit the creature like a Mack truck, gnashing and slashing, quite literally, tooth and nail. He was allowed to continue his attack, uninterrupted, for several long seconds before he seemingly tired and gave up.

  “Can’t blame me for trying,” he said. “But I will not run. It is not dignified. You might as well get on with it.”

  The creature did.

  I couldn’t close my eyes, but I did everything in my power to tune out the macabre display in front of me. I’m certain some of Linus’s grisly death penetrated that barrier I tried to form, but I would just have to leave that for the nightmares that surely would come later.

  ***

  “What did you do to her!?”

  I woke to the view of an enraged Tomás shaking me against the hardwood floor. I could also just make out the form of Ada lying half across my legs, partly out of view.

  Part of me was still sure I was watching everything unfold through the eyes of that creature, so I only stared blankly into the male vampire’s wide, angry eyes.

  “What’s happening?” Ada’s slurred words tore Tomás away from me.

  “Are you alright? What—what happened to you?

  I sat up and watched Tomás faun over Ada and pulled my feet out from under her. While they were occupied, it seemed like a good opportunity to stand up and get some distance from them, even though I knew there was no chance of outrunning them.

  “Are you alright?” Hiram half-whispered. He was still sitting on the floor a few feet away.

  “Ask me that in a few seconds,” I said, deciding to do something that would probably get us both killed even more quickly.

  “She killed Linus!” I stared down at the two vampires, trying not to imagine one of them lunging for me like Linus had that creature.

  “What?” Tomás’s expression was one of confusion rather than anger. “Just… what? What just happened to the two of you, and what is she talking about, Ada?”

  I expected Ada to rail against the accusation, or maybe just attack me outright. But she could only stare back like
a deer caught in headlights. She looked even more confused than Tomás and, more than that, she looked distraught.

  “Why?” Her word came out in a single, desperate gasp.

  “Why what, Ada?” Tomás’s head pivoted from Ada to me, and then back again. “Did she hurt you?”

  “Why?” she asked again. She shuttered as a sob rocked her body. Shining crescent moons formed beneath her eyes as tears welled and then spilled down her cheeks. I’m not sure why, but I expected vampire tears to be made of blood. “Why would you make me see that? How—” She sobbed again. “It was cruel enough that they made me do it in the first place, but to see it happen—to participate in it like that. My God…”

  I finally understood. She had witnessed Linus’s killing just like I had. Only for her, it was a matter of seeing her own handiwork unfold in person. I still didn’t know how she controlled the creature, or what that creature even was, but I was certain Ada had the answers I needed.

  “If you loved Linus so much, why would you have him murdered?” I needed to strike while she was still in shock, and while Tomás was here to witness what she had to say. “You know what? Murdered is too mundane a word for what you had done to him. That was slaughter… a massacre—”

  “Stop!” She slammed both of her fists down, splintering the hardwood floor at her sides. “I did love him. I do. But I didn’t have a choice. You don’t know what you’re wrapped up in… Neither did I when this all started.”

  Ada looked sharply to Tomás, as though suddenly realizing he was still here. Her friend pulled back like he had been slapped.

  “Then… it’s true? You had something to do with that?” He gestured harshly toward the other room. “My God, Ada… the three of us were family! More than family. How could you break centuries of bond? What could be so important?”

  “And while we’re at it,” I put in, “what did you do with the Bessons?”

  Ada looked poised to say something to Tomás, but my question seemed to catch her off guard. “What are Bessons?”

  “You just admitted to killing your vampire friend,” I said. “It’s hardly the time to be playing dumb now. They were the human couple in the city. You know, the one your monster was living with… and snacking on.”

  “It’s not just my mon—”

  The whole house shuddered, as an explosion ripped through one of the nearby rooms. The sounds of shattering glass and splintering wood seemed to hang in the air for long seconds after the cacophony ended.

  Ada was on her feet in a blur. “It’s here,” she hissed.

  “Ada, what’s going on?” Tomás started moving toward the sound, but Ada grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back.

  “I’m sorry, Tomás. Truly.”

  “Call it off, Ada.” I motioned for Hiram to get up and move toward the door. If this thing went south, which seemed very likely at this point, we were going to need to make a hasty retreat at any moment.

  “I can’t! I was granted dominion, but if the creature is here that means my control has been stripped away. I cannot stop them.”

  Them. Great, more than one sometimes invisible and always unstoppable monster. That’s just what I was hoping for.

  “Tomás, I beg of you, take them and run. I can stall it for only a moment, but perhaps it will be enough for your escape.”

  The other vampire shook his head. “Despite what has happened with Linus, you are still my sister. We will fight this together.”

  “There is no fighting it, Tomás. They are vampire revenants…”

  “Botchlings? Why would such abominations be allowed to—”

  “Not allowed, made. On purpose. With the pure blood from the First.”

  “No, this is not possible…”

  Another series of loud thuds sounded from somewhere closer within the house.

  “We don’t have time to debate this,” Ada said. “Allow me to atone in this small way, I beg you.”

  Before he could answer, a wall at the far end of the room exploded inward, spewing plaster and debris halfway across the large space. A dark figure, at least seven feet tall, stooped through the new opening. I instantly recognized the thing’s shadow-mottled flesh from my visions but seeing it from the other side was far more unnerving than I expected.

  The revenant held the rough form of a man, only it was like he had been withered and gnarled like some ancient tree. Warped was the most accurate word for the fell creature that lumbered toward us. It was as if something that should never have been in the first place was made to continue on by dark forces beyond my reckoning. Its limbs were disproportionately long for its twisted middle, and they were hinged awkwardly and in too many places.

  But it was the thing’s face that stole the show—that single bit of extreme grotesqueness that told my brain to freeze and stare rather than run away. Twin softball-sized orbs of shining obsidian bulged from the middle of its elongated gourd of a head. If the creature had ever had eyelids, they had long since been rendered useless by those protruding tumor-like organs.

  Its mouth, too, was a perversion of human form, stretched too wide and crowded too densely with icicle-shaped fangs at every corner.

  If not for Ada breaking the spell, the three of us, Tomás included, might have continued to gawk at the beast until it was too late.

  “For me, Tomás, please!” She took a step between us and the creature.

  Chapter 16

  I don’t remember ever having anyone carry me at any point in my life. I’m sure some time, probably before I was old enough to kick terribly hard, someone had hoisted me into their arms and toted me around for a few minutes.

  But, needless to say, I highly doubt that imagined interpersonal moment would have been anything at all like being rudely slung over one shoulder of a distraught and rapidly moving vampire and hurdled out onto the darkened streets of an extremely posh neighborhood.

  The dark, hulking outlines of mountainous houses, serpentine trees, and the occasional mailbox sped by me like an old-fashioned revolving stage background set to turbo. The cool, misty night air felt more like the blast of a winter storm to my face, as Tomás pushed faster and faster into an inhuman gallop.

  As the road shifted and the terrain became more uneven, my upside-down view got the rapid bounce treatment, and that quickly became far too much for my increasingly sensitive stomach.

  I turned my head to look the other way and found Hiram looking just as green as I felt and even more uncomfortable.

  “Please, can he—” Hiram’s head lulled back and forth as Tomás hopped across a series of low hedges and crossed from the roadway into a yard. “Stop,” he finished in a breathy whisper. “Please, stop…”

  “He will stop,” Tomás grunted, “when he has the two of you safely away from that abomination. “This is not so pleasant for me either.”

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Hiram gasped. “But I would hate to sully the back of your fine suit.”

  “Lock that down now,” Tomás barked. “If you vomit anywhere near me, I will run back the way we came and feed you to that thing myself. I want to honor Ada’s wishes… but there are limits.”

  “Noted.” Hiram squeezed his eyes shut, and I couldn’t help but feel for the guy. He not only had to deal with this bumpy, and slightly humiliating vampire-back ride, but he also had to go through it with me only a matter of inches away from him. He was doing admirably, considering.

  “How far are we going?” I asked. Any conversation was better than listening to Hiram’s ragged breathing.

  “You tell me,” Tomás replied. “You seem to know more about what’s going on than I do. According to Ada, there are more than one of those revenants… for all I know, we’re going right toward another one.”

  “I only knew about one of them,” I said to the vampire’s back. “And I use the word knew generously. I didn’t even know we were dealing with a revenant… whatever that is.”

  “It’s the resurrected dead,” Hiram said. “At best,
they’re typically wretched, pitiful creatures caught halfway between life and death, and they’re usually the result of an obsessed loved one who cannot let go. That monstrosity back there wasn’t like any revenant I have ever heard about.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t a human revenant,” Tomás said. “If what Ada said is true, then that thing is a vampire revenant.”

  “Then… does that mean someone brought back vampires from the dead?” I asked. “Is that even a thing?”

  We dipped down a road next to a small shopping center, and Tomás slowed his incredible pace as we slipped between two of the closed and unlit stores. After he dropped us each gently from his shoulders, I had to hold onto one of the store’s brick walls just to keep from keeling over. It felt like the world was still bobbing up and down just like before, only it was now moving in the wrong direction.

  “That thing wasn’t a resurrected vampire,” Tomás said in a hushed tone. “At least, not like you might think.”

  “It’s the result of a botched turning?” Hiram tested his legs away from the support of the wall. He looked wobbly but less nauseated than before. “I read something about that some time ago, but it was my understanding such things were rare and short-lived.”

  “You are far better versed than any non-vampire has any right to be,” Tomás replied. We are a secretive people…”

  Hiram puffed out his chest a little. “I am something of a scholar.”

  “Indeed. Well, you are quite correct. There are cases when the turning of a human simply goes wrong. No one understands why, and it is exceedingly rare, but it does happen. It could be that some individuals are just not compatible—maybe it’s something passed down the bloodline.”

  “And when that happens, one of those monsters is the result?” It sure put a negative spin on the turning process that I was familiar with from books and movies. Imagine giving the gift of immortality to a loved one, only to wake up next to Gigantor the Horrendous.