A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21) (4 page)

Oh, God.

What have they become?

Their faces were shrunken, as were their lips, and their noses had receded into their skulls. Their eyes, small black dots in the center of their eye sockets, stared down at me, unblinking. I scanned the ceiling to see if I could recognize Hans. They were all so horrifically transformed.

“Hans,” I called weakly.

Please let this be a nightmare. Please. Don’t let Hans be lost to me.

Arletta clutched my hand as the body—a male—hanging directly above us shifted. We all stood back as his hands detached from the ceiling. He dropped to the floor and crumpled in a heap.
Could this be him?
We rushed forward, and I reached out, my insides squirming as I touched his papery, skeletal shoulder. He seemed too weak to stand up. I gripped the upper portion of his bony arm, afraid that it might snap even at the slightest pressure. Braithe clutched his other arm and slowly, we raised him to his feet.

Now I was able to take him in fully for the first time. He was approximately the right height for Hans, allowing for the bend now in his spine. And although his face was so horribly deformed, I could just about make out the shadow of his familiar strong jawline.

“Hans?” I urged.

He stared back at me blankly.

“Is that you, brother?” Braithe asked.

He continued looking at us as though he either couldn’t hear, or didn’t understand.

What happened to you?

“We need to get him out of here,” I choked, looking desperately at his siblings. “We need to get him back to the ship and feed him blood. He’ll recover. I know he will.”

Although my brain told me that he would never recover from such a state, my heart couldn’t let go. I held onto the irrational hope that somehow, if we just fed him enough blood, he would recover slowly but surely, and he would be mine again. Hans. The same man I’d fallen in love with.

“Arletta, Julie.” Hans’ youngest brother, Colin, addressed us. “Go open the door wider so we can carry him through. I’m not sure he can even walk.”

Although I didn’t want to leave Hans’ side, we did as Colin suggested. Arletta and I hurried back to the door and heaved it open wider, as wide as it would go.

A snarl came from behind us. Then a strangled yell. Braithe’s yell.

Arletta and I whirled around to see Braithe on the floor, Hans on top of him… attacking his throat.

I was too stunned to even move. But Arletta shrieked and raced forward.

The siblings hauled Hans off Braithe, and as they pushed the former away and helped Braithe to his feet, I could see that Hans had ripped a huge gash in his neck. Braithe looked in agony as he gripped the side of his throat and attempted to stem the blood flow.

Sharp fangs still bared, Hans wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his bony hand before his dull eyes fixed on me. More bodies dropped from the ceiling and stood to their feet. Their gazes narrowed in on us.

“We have to get out of here!” Braithe wheezed. He was already the slowest of all of us, his leg having not yet fully healed after Ben injured it. His brothers held his arms and dragged him toward me and the door.

I just stood, frozen. As Hans’ siblings exited the room, I couldn’t find my feet to follow.
Hans is still here. We have to take him with us
. Even as the emaciated vampires began lurching toward us with alarming speed—Hans at the forefront—a manic gleam in their tiny black eyes, I still stood there, stunned. If Colin hadn’t grabbed my arm and forced me through the door, I would’ve stayed there. The brothers slammed the stone door closed after us and bolted it just as bodies hit up against the other side, scratching and clawing at the stone.

“They were all going to attack us,” Arletta gasped, clutching her chest as she breathed out.

“Hans,” I whispered, staring at the door. “He’s still in there! We have to get him out.”

Braithe, who sat on one of the stairs nursing his throat, shook his head, his face ashen. “Not until we figure out what the hell Hans has become.”

“Elder? What was that?” Frederick, Hans’ other younger brother, demanded.

The voice took a moment to reply. “Something… peculiar. Perhaps even… miraculous.”

“Miraculous?” Arletta cried. “My brother, he—” She broke down sobbing on the floor. I would’ve joined her, had I still not been so shell shocked.

“During their starvation, it appears they reached a boundary from which there was no return,” the Elder mused.

Before anyone could ask anything more of the Elder, Braithe let out a guttural roar of pain. It came so suddenly, my heart leapt into my throat and I jolted back in alarm.

Arletta scrambled up from where she’d been crumpled on the floor and gazed down at her brother, along with Frederick and Colin. Braithe slid from his seat on the stairs and tumbled to the ground. We were about to dip down and help him back up when claws protruded from his fingers and he lashed out, catching Colin’s arm.

“Braithe?” Colin gasped, staring down at the gash his brother had just ripped in his arm. “What are you doing?”

Braithe let out another roar, so loud and so anguished that one would have thought he was being murdered.

“Elder, what’s happening?” I asked, my voice trembling.

But the Elder’s presence had slipped away.

“I have no idea what’s wrong with our brother,” Frederick said, straining to contain Braithe, “but we need to get back to the ship. Before we can help Hans, we’ve got to figure out why Braithe is reacting like this.”

“But Hans is—” I began, weakly.

“Julie!” Colin snapped as he helped Frederick restrain Braithe, who was continuing to lash out. “Get a grip. Hans has been trapped in there for eighteen years. A few more hours, or even days, won’t make a difference while we gather together some blood for him so he doesn’t try to attack one of us again, and try to figure out what in heaven’s name is going on.”

Frederick and Colin wrestled Braithe up the staircase as he continued to thrash. Arletta and I followed closely behind and together, we hurried away from the chamber. The chamber I’d waited eighteen years to find. Now, I was leaving it without my love.

We stumbled along the network of tunnels and made our way back out into the open, where we headed straight for our ship.

Arletta and I helped Frederick and Colin force Braithe onto the deck and down the staircase to the level beneath. The two brothers forced Braithe inside a cabin and locked the door. Braithe banged against it. Only a few seconds later, his fist smashed through the wood, spraying splinters everywhere. We looked at each other with wide-eyed panic as he forced the door back open and launched himself toward Arletta—the nearest person to him.

“He’s lost his mind,” Frederick grunted as he forced Braithe backward, “We’re going to have to sedate him somehow… I’m sorry to do this to you, brother.” The two brothers worked together in pinning Braithe against the wall. Colin gripped the back of his neck. I looked away as he jerked it backward, snapping his brother’s neck.

Braithe fell to the floor, unconscious. The four of us picked him up and carried him back into the room. We laid him on the bed and reentered the corridor, closing the splintered door behind us.

“What now?” I croaked.

“We have maybe twelve to twenty-four hours before Braithe’s spine heals,” Frederick said. “I’m hoping his behavior was just some kind of reaction to his own brother attacking him.” He looked unsettled as he glanced through the hole in the door at the still form of Braithe lying on the bed. “Hopefully, he will have recovered by the time he comes to.”

A
fter we paralyzed Braithe
, the first thing I wanted to do was gather blood and take it to Hans. But Frederick was against it.

“I don’t think we should go anywhere near that chamber again until Braithe has recovered,” Frederick said as we made our way up to the deck. “In fact, I don’t feel comfortable staying near this beach. We’ll move further into the ocean and float there for a while.”

“Why do we need to wait?” I asked.

“I just…” Frederick hesitated, a look of concern in his eyes. “I have a very bad feeling about this. I just want to see Braithe recovered before we go near that dungeon again.”

Colin and Frederick navigated the ship away from Cruor’s shore. My eyes stung with tears as I gazed back at the beach.

Once the shoreline had faded into the distance, Frederick guided the sea creatures to a stop while Colin lowered the anchor.

We sat around a table on the upper deck in tense silence. We were all still recovering from the shock of everything we’d just been through.

As the early-morning hours approached, even though we didn’t expect Braithe’s spine to have recovered yet—in fact, we weren’t expecting it to for at least another three hours—Frederick stood up and mumbled that he was going to go check on his brother. The rest of us were too anxious not to accompany him. Leaving our seats and descending to the lower deck together, we froze on the staircase as the corridor came into view. The damaged door behind which Frederick and Colin had laid Braithe on a bed was wide open.

“Didn’t we shut that?” Arletta murmured.

“Yes. We left it shut,” Frederick answered, daring to move forward again. We reached the bottom of the stairs and peered cautiously through the door into the open room.

It was empty.

My eyes falling to the floor, I noticed clumps of honey brown hair… Braithe’s hair?

A snarl came from our right. We twisted to see…
Hans?
A slouching skeletal figure with thin, stark-white skin, and a nose shrunken into its face. He had the same terrifying appearance as my lover and yet he was wearing Braithe’s clothes. He was also slightly shorter than Hans.

“Braithe?” Frederick gasped.

His small, dark eyes stared back at us, expressionless. Then he began to shuffle closer toward us, slowly at first, and then picking up speed.

“Run!” Colin yelled, and even though my legs felt numb with shock, I forced myself to race up the stairs. As the five of us bundled out of the trap door leading to the upper deck, we banged it shut behind us.

Frederick swore. “That was Braithe,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t understand. How—?”

His stumbling words stopped short as the trap door beneath us shuddered. That thing—Braithe—was beginning to attack it. From the force of his blows, I couldn’t imagine that it would be more than a minute before he broke through, for it was only made of wood. Frederick and Colin scurried around the deck looking for anything movable and heavy that they could place on top of the door. Apart from the table that they turned upside down and heaved over the door, there really wasn’t much else up here that we could use.

“What is going on?” Arletta sobbed.

Wood crunched, and the whole table shifted even as the brothers strained to hold it in place. Sensing what was to come, Frederick yelled toward Arletta and me. “You two, get in the lifeboat and sail away. Hurry!”

“What about you two?” I shot back. “We can’t just leave you here!”

“Just get inside and—”

The table went flying upward, sending the two brothers crashing back. Braithe sprang from the trapdoor and scanned the deck. His eyes fell first on Frederick and then Colin. I wasn’t sure if he’d noticed Arletta and me, standing all the way on the other side of the deck, but he headed straight for his brothers. He leapt first for Colin and dug his fangs into his neck.

“No!” Arletta and I screamed.

Frederick attempted to haul Braithe off, only to find Braithe attacking him and biting his neck. Both brothers were now groaning with pain, the same deep, guttural groan that Braithe had let out after he’d been attacked by Hans back down near the chamber.

Before I could stop her, Arletta had left my side and shot forward. Grabbing a metal pole along the way, she ran toward Braithe, brandishing the weapon in front of her and waving it, as if she hoped to scare him. “Back off, Braithe!” she screamed. “Don’t do this to your brothers!”

She continued holding out the pole directly in front of her, even as Braithe whirled around and fixed his attention on his sister. Staggering forward, he launched right at her. She screamed as the pole pierced Braithe’s chest, its tip appearing through his back.

I rushed over and gazed down at Braithe falling to his knees. A thick black substance seeped from his chest, a substance that I could only assume had become his blood.

“I-I killed him!” Arletta stammered, even though she hadn’t. Braithe had killed himself. It was like he had lost his mind and run right at her, even though the sharp end of the pole had been extended in front of her.

Braithe’s hands moved to the pole in his chest, and his thin fingers closed around it. With a squelch, he yanked, sliding out the pole from his flesh and sending it skidding across the deck.

“He’s still alive,” Colin panted.

Braithe shot to his feet with alarming speed.
How can this be?
The pole had punctured a hole right through his chest and even through where his heart should have been.
He should be a dead vampire.

Instead he just sprang up as though nothing had happened. His eyes fixed on Arletta, his almost nonexistent lips curving in a grimace. He lunged toward her. Frederick, even in his pain, managed to leap for Braithe and grab hold of his midriff before he could reach their sister. Frederick wrestled him to the ground, but Braithe caught hold of Frederick’s arm and sank his fangs in again. “Both of you, go now!” Frederick yelled. “Escape in the boat!”

As Arletta screamed, I had two choices. I could either join her in screaming or obey Frederick’s request to save ourselves. Arletta and I were now only moments away from being attacked. There was no time to lower the boat. Grabbing Arletta’s hand, I pulled her to the railing and with one strong push from my legs, I sent us both tumbling over the side of the boat and down into the waves. Still holding onto Arletta’s hand, I forced the two of us deep under the water before we swam as fast as we could in the opposite direction from the ship.

I kept looking back over my shoulder every few seconds, opening my eyes even though the saltwater stung, to see if the deathly form of Braithe was following after us. But as we swam further and further away from the ship, my tension eased a little. Finally, after we’d distanced ourselves by at least two miles, I allowed us to resurface to gasp for breath. It was a good thing that vampires could hold their breath for a long time.