A Shade of Vampire 7: A Break of Day (7 page)

A bachelor party. This is worse than I thought.

He rushed over to Matthew, whispered something in his ear, and sped back toward me with a huge grin on his chubby face. He looked like he’d just hit the jackpot. I took his hand, placed it around my waist, and led him away from all the noise and smoke.

“I want to take you somewhere special,” I purred.

“Oh, do ya? Where might that be?”

“You’ll see. Let’s run.”

Once we were far enough away for his screams to be inaudible beneath the loud music, I pulled his head toward me and bit into his neck, inserting my venom. He squealed and struggled at first, trying to escape my grip, but eventually his body became too weak and he fell to the ground, twitching. I picked him up and flung him over my shoulder like he was a sack of coal. Within a few seconds, I was by the open hatch to the submarine. Liana reached out her hands and I handed the man to her. Then I washed my mouth in the sea, removing all traces of blood from my face, and headed back to the party.

I caught a few more men in this way, some tall, short, skinny and round. The Elder didn’t seem to have any particular preference. It went for whoever was the easiest target. I even managed to lure away a drunk girl by telling her I had some bottles of free booze and needed her help carrying them.

As I travelled back and forth from the submarine, I passed by other vampires with their victims. Once we’d finished with the bachelor party, we quickly moved further down the beach and started work on another party. It turned out that the beach was lined with dozens of late-night raves.

We finished our work only when Liana indicated that we couldn’t fit any more people in the submarine, at which point we all returned through the hatch. I gasped to see the yield of our fishing expedition. The floor of the passenger area was lined with people writhing and screaming, most still in the middle of their transformation.

What have I just done?
I looked around at Ashley and the other female vessels, my accomplices. Behind their hollow eyes, I knew they all felt the same.

Sensing my horror, a voice hissed in my ear.

Won’t you be proud of your little Rose helping us do this one day…

Days had passed and Sofia had still not returned. Being cooped up in that little cabin, listening to the seconds tick by, was beginning to drive me insane.

I’d been on the phone to Aiden three times a day since her disappearance. He had no news for me either. It was a mystery. We were back to square one, only this time, we didn’t even have any clue as to her location. No matter how hopeless the situation had been before, at least we’d known from the Ageless that she’d been sent to Cruor. Aiden suspected that the witch had come for her again. What other explanation could there be?

A voice began to nag at me, a voice that I’d been trying to exile.
If, as Ibrahim suggested, Sofia had indeed lost her mind, she could have run out in the sun and committed suicide. Maybe you just didn’t spot the body…

I picked up my phone and dialed Corrine’s number.

“Derek? Have you found her?” Corrine answered the phone.

“No, Corrine. But I need to speak to Ibrahim right away.”

I heard Corrine calling for him and he came on the line a few seconds later.

“Sofia still hasn’t returned,” I said. “And she hasn’t arrived at Headquarters either. I think you were wrong about the Ageless. She
must
have come for her again. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Derek, I’ve communicated with the Ageless. She didn’t come for your wife again.”

“Then she’s lying!” I shouted, punching my fist through a cupboard door.

“I’m not lying, Derek.” A cool voice spoke from behind me.

I dropped the phone. Whirling around, I found myself face to face with the witch who’d stolen my life from me. Fury boiled within me on seeing her standing there, so calm and collected. It took all my willpower to not lunge for her throat.

“You!” I spat. “What made you deign to appear now?”

“You haven’t been cooperating,” she said bluntly. “You’ve neglected your mission of gathering up immunes and helping restore balance.”

Is she insane?

The insolent tone of her voice made me lose all control. A blaze of fire shot from my palms and flew right toward the witch. It set the end of her long silver robe alight. She mumbled a few words and water gushed out of her own palms, extinguishing the fire.

My chest still heaving with outrage, I tried to steady the shaking in my voice as I said, “Listen, you bitch. If you wish to continue standing there with that long hair of yours intact, you’d better rethink your attitude.”

“I thought that you had understood the importance of maintaining balance between…”

“Balance! Pray tell, exactly what is this ‘balance’, witch? Because I haven’t seen any semblance of
balance
here. Now that I think about it, the only
balance
I’ve witnessed is in your heavenly realm. Is that just a coincidence?” Fire reignited from my palms, forcing her to douse the cabin with water.

This time, to my surprise, the witch cast her head downward. I’d hardly ever seen her face express emotions. But I could have sworn that I saw a flicker of guilt.

Finally she cleared her throat. “We had never intended for things to get this out of hand.”

“What are you talking about?”

The witch sighed and took a seat in a chair. She motioned that I do the same.

The Ageless leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “What I’m about to tell you has never been revealed to anyone from this realm before. It’s part of our kind’s ancient history. But first, close your eyes.” When I looked at her untrustingly, the only reassurance she gave me was: “You’ll understand why soon enough.”

I didn’t trust her, but I was so hungry to hear what she had to say, I decided not to argue. As soon as I shut my eyes, a strange vision appeared in my mind. I was looking down upon a vast range of black mountains that stretched out as far as I could see. There was not a hint of vegetation in sight, nor any other life for that matter, just miles upon miles of shades of black and grey. There appeared to be no sun, yet the sky, which was speckled with dark clouds, had an eerie reddish tinge.

“Where on Earth…?” I began to ask.

“Not Earth,” the Ageless said. “That is Cruor, a dead realm. It’s devoid of life, save for the hapless souls that have been kidnapped there. The Elders live like spirits within the bowels of the mountains.”

“What kind of evil are these creatures?”

“They have no physical form of their own. They are like parasites. Their very existence depends upon sucking life out of others. Blood is of particular value to them. They store blood and—even when they are not inhabiting a vessel and thus cannot drink it—they gain sustenance from it simply by remaining in close proximity. The blood of immunes is particularly potent…”

“Immunes,” I said suddenly. “How is Sofia a vampire?”

“Immunes on Earth are no longer immunes once brought to Cruor. They become too affected by the atmosphere of that realm to resist infection.”

“What
are
immunes? How did they come to be?” I opened my eyes briefly to see the witch shift in her chair.

“That is a long story… Close your eyes again.” This time the vision of a very different realm appeared. “Behold, Aviary, realm of the Hawks, or ‘Guardians’ as they like to call themselves.”

A harsh sun beat down on dense jungles. I’d always thought that our redwoods at The Shade were magnificent, but the trees of Aviary were three times the width. Swarms of bees the size of small birds buzzed around giant flowers. The place seemed larger than life, almost Jurassic. Wild four-legged carnivores the likes of which I’d never encountered before raced through the vegetation. Massive predatory birds crowded the skies. Finally, I spotted the Hawks themselves, muscular men and women whose features would have looked almost human, had it not been for their sharp beaks and black wings. I recognized them from when Arron had arranged for some to accompany us during the storming of The Blood Keep.

“Cruor and Aviary,” the witch continued, “have been enemies since time immemorial. Legend has it that the Elders of Cruor attacked Aviary to extract its life source. And the Hawks… well, they don’t forgive easily. They’ve been at war with Cruor ever since.”

“All right. But you still haven’t answered my question. What are immunes?” I said.

“There was a time, before I came to power, when Cruor posed its first threat to The Sanctuary. We… we didn’t want this looming over us. We struck a bargain with the Elders that we’d provide them with access to sustenance and in return they would leave us in peace. My ancestors used their magic to create gates between the vampire realm and Earth. To make the deal more attractive for the Elders, we also created ‘immunes’. We arrived at a potion that could be injected into a human’s bloodstream. It made their blood sweeter, but most of all, they were immune to being turned into vampires while on Earth. Their succulent blood could be consumed without fear of turning them. We created only a few thousand immunes, but with time those blood strands were passed on through the generations.”

My mind was beginning to reel at the sheer scope of the witches’ deception. Perhaps sensing my rage, the witch moved on. “So… now that we had pacified the Elders, we thought our problems had been solved. That was until Aviary turned on us and threatened to storm our realm for assisting their enemies. In their eyes, we had given Cruor an unfair advantage. Thus, to pacify the Hawks, we agreed to create their own gates to Earth, in order to maintain a balance between the two realms.”

At this point, I could no longer contain my anger. “Why the hell did you have to divert all this to us? Couldn’t you just have destroyed the gates linking to your own realm, the gates between The Sanctuary and Cruor and Aviary?”

“Between the supernatural realms, no gates are needed. It’s only when entering this mortal realm that we require special portals.” The witch continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “Maintaining a balance has always been challenging, since one realm was always trying to gain more of a foothold than the other. But, since your discovery of the cure to vampirism and the arrival of numerous Elders, we’ve been forced to implicate your kind more and more in this struggle…”

“So let me get this clear,” I fumed. My palms felt like they were about to start blazing again. “This balance you’ve been harping on about is nothing but a way to save your own backsides from getting burned. Everything revolves around diverting the heat away from your realm toward ours. You stole my wife from me because Cruor demanded it and you were too scared to deny them. And to top it all off, you had the gall to try to persuade me to help you with all of this by collecting immunes for you!” I spat at her feet. “You’re nothing but conceited self-serving cowards. You don’t deserve the air you breathe.” I directed my palms to her and more flames erupted.

The witch’s eyes widened before she once again manifested water to extinguish my fire. “If you were in our position, wouldn’t you have done the same to protect your own kind?”

“Deliberately direct such evil toward vulnerable people who’d never done my kind any harm? Do you really need me to answer that?” I stormed out onto the verandah. “And why are you even here telling me all of this? Out of the goodness of your heart?” I sneered at her.

The witch followed me outside. “You must understand that my role as leader has always been to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors, the Ancients. For the protection of our kind, they set down rules that I and my council have always abided by… but Ibrahim has opened my mind to another possibility.”

“Oh, and what is that?”

“Working together might serve our realm better.”

“Again,
your
realm!
Your
safety.
Your
peace of mind. Let’s ignore the countless innocent lives you’ve ripped apart and the many more you’re about to destroy. Can we please spend more time thinking about how we can keep you comfortable? Because I honestly don’t think enough effort has been put into that already.”

It was hard to find words to express my exasperation and disbelief. I stared at her, struggling to comprehend that any creature could be so incapable of conscience. I recalled the flash of guilt in her eyes.
Is this just an act she is forced to put on to retain her status as leader to her kind? Or perhaps that look of guilt was meant to manipulate me, and the inhabitants of The Sanctuary do indeed have hearts of stone… or no hearts at all.

“Our realm is called ‘The Sanctuary’ for a reason,” she said coolly. “As leader, I must abide by our code which is, first and foremost, to ensure the serenity of our kind.”

My eyes narrowed. “So, given that you are the only beings in the universe whose existence matters, why would you want to risk upsetting your balance? You seem to be managing just fine. Why do you even want our cooperation?”

“Since the discovery of the cure—something even I didn’t foresee—and the influx of Elders through the portal, tension between the Elders and Hawks has been growing rapidly. Each side is becoming more and more demanding and it’s becoming impossible to satisfy them. Recent demands that we could not reconcile have led to direct threats to our own realm, something that hasn’t happened since I began my rule.”

“I see,” I said. “Now that using us as your pawns has become troublesome for
you
, you’ve realized that removing us as bait from the table is going to make life easier for
you
… because?”

“They won’t have as much to fight over. If we seal off their entries into this realm then, yes, their attention will be on us. But that is already starting to happen. When you’re drifting in a sea of sharks, having two sacks of raw meat will produce more of a signal for attack than having just one.”

I nodded slowly. At least the witch now seemed to have decided to be honest with me about the level of their narcissism. “If you want cooperation, first tell me where my wife is.”