Blood Curse (Pulse #8) (2 page)

          It had been intoxicating, she thought, her blood running hot with guilt, to see how they had all looked at her, during those brief vain moments when they had mistaken her for their Queen. For she did look like her, didn't she? A resemblance close enough to fool even the most ardent of her worshippers. The same dark hair, deep like a murder of crows. The same caramel-colored skin, blindingly white light glowing out from every pore. The same dark red lips – ruby lips, Kalina thought, like the lips of maidens in a fairy tale. Was this even
her?
The features were ostensibly the same as the ones she had grown up with, but the beauty, the power – all this was new to her. All this was the doing of Life's Blood, the sanguine force that kept surprising her, kept her as a stranger to her own body.

          She had let them think she was Nereti. She had felt how they had worshipped her, in those moments. And, although she hated to admit it, even to herself, she had enjoyed it. She had
enjoyed
the adulation, the adoration, the loyalty that in the hearts of less cruel men might even have been called love. Such a thought horrified her.

          Kalina thought then of something her mother – no, not her mother, her
adopted
mother, but that didn't sound right – used to say.
There but for the grace of God go I.
She used to say it whenever the family encountered someone who had fallen on old times – the drug-addled homeless man who wandered through the parking lot of their apartment building every now and then, the old woman who slept in the doorways of the local bookstore at night, who had frightened Kalina once when she was a child, and the old woman had told her that her life had been “cursed from the start.”
There but for the grace of God go we all,
Kalina's mother used to tell her – meaning that
it could have been any one of us.
Never judge, Kalina's mother always said – treat everyone with compassion. Because only circumstances separated the fortunate from the downtrodden, those who made the right choices and those who chose the wrong path.

          Now she thought of it again, as she remembered Nereti's cruel face, how easily she had slaughtered so many young girls, Carriers of Life's Blood that couldn't have been more than children, drained them dry. She thought of her own powers, her own face, the way she had enjoyed the worshipfulness of Nereti's vampires.
There but for the grace of God go I,
she thought.

          But she couldn't think about all that now. She had to focus. The dawn was coming, and Samson was still deep within the sands.

          “You okay?” Her voice sounded strange to her in a desolate desert like this. It was the sort of desert where you could be silent for a thousand years.

          “Let's get me out of this, all right?” Samson's snarl was hardly directed at her, but it stung.

          She began digging in the dirt, scooping up handfuls of sand.

          “I'm going as fast as I can,” she said. “But we may need backup.”

          “Backup? We're in a bloody desert, Kalina – there's nobody around for miles.”

          “Get with the times, Samson,” she smiled wryly. She pulled out her cell phone and began to dial.

          “Two thousand years on this earth,” muttered Samson under his breath, “and there are some things I'll never get used to.”

          “We've located Octavius,” Kalina's voice into the phone was quick, brisk, brusque. “He's not in Egypt any longer. But not
too
far – relatively speaking. We're in the middle of the Sahara now.” She sighed softly. “No place for lovers of the shadows, is it? I'll text you our GPS coordinates.” She nodded. “Tell the others, okay? Okay, I will.” She paused. “I love you too. And be careful.” She laughed. “Yes, I'll be careful too, although I can't promise I'll stay put. Octavius is on the move, so we have to be, too.”

          She continued digging in the dirt, until Samson felt himself free down to the shoulders, stretching his neck.

          “Even vampires get cramps,” he said.

          As Kalina dug, a dark shadow flitted across the sands.

          “Well, will you look at that?”

          Kalina's heart began to pound faster at the sound of the voice. Familiar – cocksure, full of arrogance, and yet with a good-natured confidence that always sent her reeling with desire. It was Jaegar's voice, and Kalina's heart constricted with longing.

          “Not in a million years, I say. Not in a million years would I have expected to see the great gladiator Samson the Strong buried in the sand like a child's toy.” He laughed, and his laughter echoed all across the desert. “This gives hope to all us smaller, and dare I say it, trimmer, vampires out there. Don't you think so, Kalina?”

          “You're lucky I can't wring your neck right now,” Samson snarled. But Kalina could detect a fundamental sheepishness beneath the feigned anger. They were safe, for now, and that was what mattered. “And what were you doing, while I was out on the road, trying to find the oldest and strongest leader of the Consortium? Flirting with girls in bars?”

          “Let me guess,” Jaegar joked, “you were on the phone with your clingy girlfriend, trying to explain to her that no, you
weren't
having an affair, you
weren't out with another woman
, you had an important job to do if she'd only let you do it, et cetera, et cetera...”

          Kalina smiled against herself. Everybody knew about the insecurities of Samson's latest paramour. The girl had once been Octavius' mistress and, though well-intentioned enough, wasn't exactly known for her mental stability.

          “Excuses, excuses,” Jaegar fell to his knees and began to help Kalina dig Samson out of the sand. Kalina felt his presence next to her – as powerful as an electric shock. How could he make her feel like this, even after all this time? His presence was still wildly intoxicating to her, filling her with a hunger as powerful as bloodlust, driving her mad. She wanted him so badly, now – enough to push him down into the sand and sacrifice all the power of her Life's Blood if it meant being with him as fully, as viscerally, as she wanted to be. She needed him – she
needed him.
But she had to focus on the mission at hand. Octavius was in trouble, and they had to save him.

          In a few minutes, the full body of Samson – broad-shouldered and massy – was free of the desert sands.

          “Take this ring,” Kalina took a Life's Blood ring from where it lay above a pile of vampire ash. “You'll need it.”

          Samson wiped the sand from his body. “I never thought I'd be saying this,” he said gruffly, “but thank you – Kalina, and thank you Jaegar. Credit where credit is due, I suppose.”

          “Speaking of giving thanks,” Kalina replied, “I should be thanking you. You say you know where Octavius is.” Her voice faltered, as it always did when she said that name. Was her love for him that obvious, she wondered? Even after all that had happened between them, even after the impossibility of them ever being together, Kalina still felt a wild care for him. He was the one she couldn't have – the one she'd had to give up. And the bitterness of their several partings still stung at her.

          “He's strong and smart,” Samson said. “Nereti won't break him, I know it.”

          “Kalina...'” Jaegar's voice was low and urgent, and she saw that there was a darkness in his eyes.

          “What is it?” She felt her stomach plummet. “Do you know something I don't?”

          “Kal,” he brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “Kal, I'm sorry. Nereti...well...you know how she is. She is the most ruthless of vampires, the embodiment of pure evil. She is the worst a vampire can be. And I just want to make sure you're prepared. I just want to make sure you can deal...”

          “What are you talking about?” Kalina swallowed down the worry, down the fear. “What's happening to Octavius?” She gulped. “It's bad, isn't it?”

          “As a matter of a fact...”

          Another voice came up behind her – familiar, too. Max was striding across the sands, Justin by her side.

          “Mom?” The word was still strange to her. “How did you and Justin get here so fast?”

          “We were already on our way here when you called. There was a major crisis in a nearby town. A whole community of ancient vampires – Octavius' old friends, Consortium associates – were slaughtered.”

          “No...”

          “The thing is...” Max looked worried. “Nobody but Octavius knew where they were. They were hidden – even I didn't know their exact location until I found the ash. I heard the story from one survivor. The only survivor. Five vamps came – wiped out the village completely, vampire and human alike. An inside job.”

          “You can't mean...”

          “Octavius,” Jaegar nodded. “She must have turned him.”

          “No...” Kalina bit back her tears. It couldn't be true – it
couldn't
be! “Octavius would never do that. He'd rather die than rat out his own.”

          “Maybe he didn't have a choice,” Max said.

          “What do you mean?”

          “Maybe he was tortured. Glamoured. He might not be himself,” Jaegar said. “I know you want to see him again, Kalina, but be sure you know what you're looking for. The Octavius you find might not be the one you lost.”

          She could not deal; she
would
not deal, now. She would not deal with the tears stinging at her eyes. “Then let's stop wasting time talking here and let's
move.
We need to find him!”

          “He's in Morocco,” said Max. “Near Fez.”

          Samson nodded. “That's my intel, too.”

          Kalina wiped away the tears.

          “Then that's where we'll go,” she said. “Now!”

Chapter 2

         
T
hey travelled faster than ever before. Back in the old days, Kalina remembered, she and Justin had to be carried – Stuart and Jaegar and other vampires transporting them in their arms. They'd been slowed down by the extra weight. No longer. Now Kalina could run like a vampire could run, gliding over the sands and the waves of the sea. She was no longer dead weight, a mortal imposition on vampire strength. She was powerful in her own right, fast, not a vampire but a strange hybrid third thing, neither fully mortal nor fully unnatural. And she loved it.

          This was her favorite part of Life's Blood, this feeling of power. This feeling that she could keep up with Jaegar and Samson, that she could hold her own, that she no longer had to be protected but indeed was the one doing the protecting. It filled her with excitement, with joy. She was no damsel in distress any longer, she thought gladly. She was a Carrier like her mother, a creature full of power. The feeling was intoxicating, rich, overwhelming. She had been able to fly as a Carrier for some time, but things felt different since her resurrection. Her powers were stronger still as if her brush with death had served as an electric jolt, forcing her into new life.

          And a new life it was, Kalina thought, half-bitterly. So much had changed in such a short span of time. Her dreams of college, of a normal life, were not merely postponed – in all likelihood they would be put off forever. Stuart remained with Maeve at his side at the Greystone Winery in Rutherford, California, helping to fend off any vampire attacks or incidents in town. Kalina had brought some of the Carriers they had saved from Nereti's sacrifice there. Many of them were too young to be able to protect themselves, but some of the older ones had begun to awaken to their strength. Like Sydney. Dark-eyed and hollow-cheeked, Sydney was the oldest of the Carriers to have survived Nereti's purges, and the memory of what she had seen, what she had been through, haunted her always. But she used her frustration, her rage, as a means to an end: she was constantly demanding to be taught more, to learn more – how to spot vampires, how to fight like vampires, how to kill them. “I want them all turned to ash,” Sydney had said, much to Stuart's chagrin. Stuart, who had the knowledge and experience of a vampire even while mortal, was the perfect tutor for them. But his guilt about his old life still remained.

          And of course Justin. Newly turned, Justin was going through a different kind of trauma. Poor Justin, Kalina thought mournfully. He had always been the normal one, the sane one, the
human
one, clinging to his normalcy. He hadn't wanted any special talents. He hadn't wanted any special powers. He had just wanted to go about his business, spending time with the family and friends he loved, keeping them all safe. And now he was forced to live forever as a vampire, walking the earth as a creature he despised, knowing all the while that Carriers like Sydney looked upon him with hatred and fear because of that hunger he was not sure he could bring himself to control. Every day was a struggle for him. Justin and Max flew silently at Kalina's side.     

          But Kalina couldn't think about that now. She had a new concern to occupy her – the fate of Octavius. He was in captivity, now, held by Nereti and her vampire army. And she did not even dare to think about what Nereti might be doing to him. What tortures, what glamours, might this most powerful of all vampire queen know? How might she try to break him, to make him her creature? And if what the others said were true... No...Kalina could not bring herself to think the words! Octavius
could not
have been responsible for the massacre near Fez! He could not have been responsible for all those deaths, the slaughter of his beloved friends, his allies. Octavius was a soldier, he was a man of honor – he was the most honorable being, man or vampire, that she knew. He would never...

          And yet when they arrived at that village, sand blowing across the dunes, Kalina felt the chill that meant only one thing. Death. All the houses were empty; ash was scattered on every threshold. And Kalina felt something more than that, more palpable than that. The feeling of death was all around her, searing into her skin. She swallowed, gulped, forced herself to hold back the tears. It was as if the dying vampires had left some sort of psychic mark here, memorializing their own deaths. The air was full of ghosts. The ghosts of majestic, ancient vampires, as noble and as powerful as Octavius, his loyal peers.