Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series)
Read Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) Online
Authors: J.C. Diem
Death
Deceives
J.C. Diem
Copyright 2013 J.C. Diem
All rights reserved.
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Cover art
: J.C. Diem
Images
: ©Veronika Vasilyuk - Dreamstime.com
©
Loraliu - Dreamstime.com
Table of Contents
Standing in the doorway of our new safe-house, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was being watched. A glance up and down the unfamiliar hallway confirmed that I was alone.
You’re just jumpy because you’ll probably all be dead soon,
my subconscious told me sourly.
Being hunted by seven foot tall grey imps was definitely making me edgy.
My friends and I would face the leader of the imps one day soon and I had a feeling the meeting wouldn’t go well for us. My subconscious had already made the assumption that none of us would make it out unalive. Somewhere deep inside, I kind of agreed with it.
Taking one last look at the deserted yard, I
shut the door. I’d only taken a cursory look at the farmhouse as Luc and I had arrived, enough to know that it was two stories high and was made of a combination of brick and wood.
While i
t was fairly nondescript from the exterior, the interior was a different story. Inside, it was just plain ugly. A long corridor stretched ahead of me with a pair of doors on each side. Prints of sunflowers hung at regular intervals on the walls. I’d never liked sunflowers, either the real thing or pictures of them. No flower should be that big, it was unnatural.
As
if the hideous sunflower prints weren’t already enough to condemn the house to ugliness, the colour scheme was awful. The walls were lime green and the carpet was a now faded orange that might have been bright enough to sear the eyeballs when it had been new. I thought the French had better taste than this. Evidently, the décor hadn’t been updated in several decades.
It was automatic
for me to lock the door before moving deeper into the house. I didn’t know why I bothered since any imp or vampire could knock it down with one hand. It was a habit that was left over from when I’d still been human. Since I’d only been undead for about six months or so, I did actually manage to still feel human sometimes. The rest of the time I felt exactly like what I was, an unholy monster that drank human blood to survive.
Catching sight of my four shadows
trailing behind me, I held in a shudder that would have wracked me from head to toe if I’d let it escape.
No wonder I feel like I’m being watched.
I had three shadows too many and I was beginning to feel crowded inside my own skin.
Simply being turned into a vampire hadn’t been enough for me.
I, Natalie Pierce had been fated for much worse than that. I was Mortis, which was Latin for death. It was poetic somehow to be named ‘death’ by a language that itself was also dead.
It had been
prophesized long ago that I would be both the bane and saviour of vampirekind. Having a prophecy written about me was proving to be far less exciting than I’d thought. Everyone had expectations of me and most of the time I wasn’t sure I even qualified for the job. Having that kind of pressure hanging over my head made me nervous.
I’d read the prophecy and it
hadn’t mentioned my entourage of shadows. Being a creature of legend, it seemed the normal rules didn’t apply to me. Ingesting the blood of our kin was supposed to kill us but I hadn’t been so lucky. With each infusion of the diseased black ooze that passed for our blood, I’d changed in different ways. The first taste had turned me into the undead. The second time I hadn’t actually ingested the gunk. It had been delivered directly to my heart via a knife wound in my chest and had given me the ability to heal much faster than normal. The third taste had made me ultra-quick and even stronger than I’d already been.
Consequently,
I was a faster, more powerful, un-killable killing machine who could heal most wounds almost instantly. You’d think the benefits would be worth the pain I’d gone through but I was still doubtful on that topic. One thing was certain, it wasn’t much fun being the strangest of all the monsters in the world.
Speaking of
being strange, the fourth time I’d tasted vampire blood, it hadn’t given me new powers or changed me physically. The transfer of fluids had happened when I’d accidentally bitten Luc during one of our naked romps together. I’d been sucked into his memories and had witnessed the most painful moments of his lengthy unlife.
“Natalie,
” Geordie yelled, rousing me from my gloomy thoughts. “Get your butt in here!”
A staircase at the far end of the hallway led
upwards to the lightless and gloomy second floor but I ignored it for now. Arrowing towards the quiet sounds of conversation, I pushed open a door to the left and found myself in a living room. The colour scheme wasn’t quite as bad in here with pale peach carpet and urine yellow wallpaper.
Two couches sat facing each other across a battered
pine coffee table. Most of the furniture in the room had seen better days. The muddy brown fabric on the couch appeared to be velvet. It was worn and threadbare so it was difficult to tell for sure.
Luc, the love of my
unlife, patted the empty seat beside him in invitation. Geordie pouted when I accepted. Sitting on the couch directly opposite from me, his lower lip pooched out slightly with his disappointment.
Luc, or Lord
Lucentio as he was known by most European vampires, was around thirty in mortal years. He was Italian, six feet tall, had black hair, was broodingly handsome and had a body most women would drool over. Like all vampires over three hundred, his pupils had grown large enough to take over the irises completely. I had no idea what colour his eyes had been before he’d been turned. As hard as it was to believe, seven hundred years had passed since the night his life had ended and his unlife had begun.
Geordie had been about fifteen when he’d been turned and would remain a teenager forever. His hair was dirty blonde and had a habit of falling into his eyes. His pupils hadn’t grown to their maximum size yet and a faint ring of blue still showed
around the edges. The teen was only a couple of inches taller than my average five feet four inches and he wasn’t much bigger than me across the shoulders. He was only two hundred, practically still a baby. The two men, and I struggled to include Geordie in that category, were opposites in every way. It was both amusing and annoying having the teen lusting after me.
Boy, y
ou really have tickets on yourself,
my subconscious stated sarcastically. I had a hate-hate relationship with my subconscious. It constantly made fun of me, deflated my ego and told me things that I didn’t want to hear. In this case it was right, as usual. As a human, I’d been fairly average; twenty-eight years old, a slender Australian size eight and had been mildly pretty at best. Only as a vampire had I gained any real beauty. Even so, I’d seen vamps that were far more attractive than I was. While my hair, just past shoulder length, dark brown with blonde highlights, remained the same, my face and body had undergone a few subtle alterations. I was now more than mildly pretty. Human men swooned at the sight of me to the point of embarrassment. Vampires still tended to be fairly underwhelmed by me most of the time. Luc seemed to find me attractive enough but he’d been willing to do the naked mambo with me even before I’d been transformed into my current state of unholy loveliness.
Geordie
’s persistent crush on me probably stemmed more from the fact that I was a commoner rather than one of the snobby courtiers he was used to seeing every day. If that wasn’t the reason he wanted to jump me then I was stumped as to why he found me attractive.
Maybe because you could be intellectual twins,
my subconscious offered. That was its way of telling me I could still be childish at times. It was difficult to argue with the truth.
“We should be safe
on this farm, for a while,” Gregor said, taking the remaining vacant seat on the couch beside Geordie.
I wasn’t sure how old
Gregor was in actual years but he’d have been in his forties when he’d been turned. He was the most urbane vampire I’d met and had a pretty decent library at his mansion in the UK. A mane of dark blonde hair framed his ruggedly handsome face.
I bet he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a meal
,
I mused
.
All vampires had their tricks to lure humans in. Some had enhanced beauty, like me, and others had stealth and cunning. My maker, Silvius, could trick humans into thinking he was a harmless, excessively wrinkled old man. That was how the bald old freak had nabbed me. Gregor had a nicely balanced blend of charm, good looks and cunning.
“But how long
will we remain safe?” Igor asked. He straddled a creaky kitchen chair that had been turned around the wrong way and leaned his arms against the back. “The grey monsters will find us again soon enough.” His expression was dour to match his tone.
Grizzled
and not the least bit handsome, Igor was an enigma to me. He was Russian, of unknown age and was good friends with Luc. Coarse black hair that refused to be tamed fell over his forehead and stopped just above his eyes. If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to guess, I’d say he would have been about fifty when he’d been turned. Like Geordie, he wore rough woollen pants and jacket and an off white shirt most of the time. He’d be able to blend in with any farming community easily but would have trouble fitting into any other setting. He served as a chauffeur to the Court but was comfortable lounging around with a pair of lords. Not that Luc or Gregor looked much like lords at the moment. Their fine clothing was tattered and stained from our recent battle with the ‘grey monsters’.
“Can you sense them, Natalie?” Luc asked as I settled beside him. The couch springs had sprung and poked into my butt uncomfortably.
Since no one else was complaining about the crappy furniture, I kept my wisecracks to myself. I placed the backpack that I rarely let out of my sight on the floor by my feet. It contained everything I owned in the world, which was pretty pathetic when I thought about it. Once upon a time I’d had a job, an apartment and an actual wardrobe full of clothes from my store. Yep, I’d been a clothing store manager in my previous life. That was all gone now and my life would never be the same again.
Luc raised an eyebrow impatiently, reminding me that he’d just asked me a question.
I’d been following their conversation remotely, hearing the words without really listening to them.
I’d have preferred to take a shower to wash the ooze off
before launching into a detailed discussion about our circumstances. Black ichor-like blood was in my hair and coated both my skin and black leather suit. Two more skin tight suits just like it were stashed in my backpack. Emperor Ishida, leader of the Japanese vampire nation, had given them to me when I’d joined their ranks for four months to learn how to fight like their best warriors.
A fourth suit, in blood
red, was still waiting to be worn. Ishida had given it to me as a reward for cleansing the Japanese vamps of their damned. I’d only don that particular suit when it was time to face my ultimate foe. That reminded me of what I was supposed to be sensing. “I’ll just check.” Closing my eyes, I leaned against Luc. His arm slid across my shoulder and pulled me to his side. Sending out my senses, I detected no other living or unliving creatures nearby. “I don’t sense any imps at the moment.”
