Radiance (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #3) (13 page)

“
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

“
He’s my friend, too.” The Mariner gave a tired sigh and led the way back inside toward the firelight.

“
Watch out for the pit!” I hissed to him, and he almost fell in. I looked at Ambra and we rolled our eyes and tiptoed around the big hole in the corridor.

Ambra and I stopped in the shadows and made our way around the dark edges of the fire-lit room. Just as we had been told, I pulled the loose rope tail on pulley number three and the cage descended slowly and without a sound. The vampires were still busy with victim number one, apparently sucking the guy completely dry, so as not to waste a drop of blood. He had bites all over him. The other vampire hunters who were tied together weren’t even struggling against their bonds. Perhaps they had had a compulsion put on them.

“I am so glad to see you two!” Lucian whispered.

“
Shhh!” I said. I used the key to unlock and open the iron maiden and Ambra pulled out the silver knives that had been jabbed in him. He had bled profusely.

Lucian breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t kill the tall, skinny guy in the fisherman’s coat.”

“We know. He gave us the key to get you out.”

“
He’s the one who put me up there,” Lucian said, his eyes flashing.

“
He didn’t want to. Compulsion.”

“
I saw. Still upset at what my friend did to me. His mind is going. He’s very, very old.”

He eased out of the silver cage, ready to fight with us. He stood tall. “Give me gloves and silver and I will fight with you once again, my friends.”

I handed him my leather gloves and a couple of silver darts.

“
Is my wife all right?” Lucian asked.

“
She’s pretty banged up.”

“
I want to kill the guy who did it to her.”

I nodded to the corpse on the floor that was getting sucked dry. “Please tell me it was that guy.”

Lucian nodded. “Yes. Him. I guess I got my wish.”

“
Listen, we only have seconds, but Uta’s packing up right now. How does Switzerland sound?”

“
Right now? Like heaven!” he said.

Just as the vampires were going to take another wannabe vampire hunter off their string and feed on him, too, The Mariner created his promised diversion.

“Hey!” he said, and whacked the bigger vampire by throwing his whole Ichabod Crane skinny body at him. “Look, Lucian just got away!”

“
Aw, shit!” I said.
Not that kind of diversion, old man!

Ambra cut loose the rope of the wannabe vampire hunters from the village and I yelled, “Run, you ignorant dumbasses! And watch out for the pit in middle of the corridor!”

And then, the vampires rushed us…

Chapter Eleven

Much to my surprise, the villagers stayed and fought with us, mostly because vampires were blocking the one and only exit.

I shouted, “Don’t hurt Lucian!” and since he wasn’t going after them, but after other vampires, nobody from the wannabe vampire hunter team attacked him. They were too busy deploying their silver forks and knives at the truly evil vampires.

One of them ran up next to me, panting. “You look like you know what you’re doing. I’m stabbing the vampires with my fork and they aren’t going down!”

“You have to get them in the heart and it has to be pure silver.”

“
Damn it, my forks are only plated.”

“
Here!” I said. “Try this!” I picked up the sticky, bloody silver daggers and bars that had been used to torture poor Lucian. “Gather up that silver off the floor and defend yourselves. And then, let’s get the hell out of here!” I said.

The poor idiot who lay dead on the floor of the ruins—apparently, he was the ringleader of the amateur vampire hunters who had hurt Uta—was getting his car keys lifted from his pocket by The Mariner.

“Run!” The Mariner shouted.

We all got out of there like our pants were on fire.

Well, we had to stab a bunch of vampires on the way out. Some of them we killed, some ran away, and it was pandemonium.

Lucian pretty much paved the way with his strength and advanced fighting skills.

One of them grabbed Ambra from behind and without even twisting around, she stabbed him in the heart with her arm going backward. I’d have to remember that move.

Finally, we were outside in the cold again.

The fight had spilled into the makeshift parking lot, but luckily, we were parked in the bushes.

“
What have we learned here?” Ambra asked as we were getting on the motorbike and Lucian squeezed into the sidecar.

“
That nothing is ever going to be what you think it will,” I said.

“
Amen,” said The Mariner and strode past us to steal the dead vampire hunter’s car.

“
Where are you going?” I asked him, just before we headed out.

“
I want to see what’s on the other side.”

Ambra said, “Get to shelter. The sun will come up soon.”

“I know,” he said and at the crossroads, we went one way and the Mariner went the other.

With a sinking feeling that comes with knowledge that you’d rather not know, I watched him in the rearview mirror, heading east into the coming dawn.

“We gotta get some sunscreen on you, Lucian. And a big hat.”

“
Can I ask you something?” he shouted into the wind.

“
Anything!”

“
Did you come to Romania to rescue me from vampire hunters or to shanghai me into becoming one?”

“
Truthfully, it was the latter. The rescue was unplanned. The shanghai, or job offer, as I would rather call it, was planned after much thought and discussion with Ambra.”

“
Ah,” Lucian said.

“
Are you gonna say no to coming on board as a vampire hunter?” I asked.

“
No,” Lucian said, and grinned with all of his fangs. “As you Americans say, let’s rock and roll.”

Chapter Twelve

We zoomed toward the town of Bran as fast as we could with three people on this contraption. We had to get Uta and the kids before the idiot vampire hunters showed up there and tried to again murder him or beat up his wife.

“I’m sorry that one man lost his life on this fool’s errand of theirs,” I said.

“
It’s even worse than you imagine,” Lucian said. “When they were caught, the man who died actually asked to become a vampire instead of getting killed. They let him think that they were doing that to him, but they kept sucking the life out of him and when he realized that he had been had and was going to die, he shrieked horrifically and fought them. To no avail.”

“
We heard him cry out a couple of times,” Ambra said.

“
That was his death cry.”

“
Why wouldn’t they make him into a vampire?” she asked.

“
Food is scarce in Romania for vampires. We don’t often make more of us because it creates even more competition for food, especially in small towns and outlying areas with a tiny population where you actually have to live where you eat. It’s not a good situation to feed on your neighbors. There is also a clannishness that is almost as snobbish as if we are breeding fine horses, which is ridiculous, of course, but it makes a difference to
them
which vampire created a new vampire. It’s very much a lineage thing that the ones I know who are descended from the ancients certainly keep track of and belittle the ones who are…
diluted
.”

“
Elitism among vampires. How bizarre,” I said.

“
What are the circumstances under which you
would
create a new vampire?” Ambra asked.

Just as we pulled up in front of his butcher shop and saw our rental car full of his wife and bouncing kids, he got choked up and said, “As lonely as it will be to see all of them grow old and die before me, I don’t want anyone I care about to become a vampire because of me.”

“Has
she
asked you to do it?” I asked.

He looked at me sharply. “Yes. Every day. I keep saying no. And I mean it. You should know, since I will be joining your team, that I have no intention of creating any vampires or ever again drinking human blood. I am done with all of that.”

“I believe you,” I said.

Uta cried out, so excited to see that we had come back with him. She jumped out of the car, and shouted, “Lucian!” and covered him with kisses. “Thank you, thank you, for bringing my husband back to me!” She wept on his neck and said his name like a prayer, over and over. The kids were overjoyed, too.

My heart was truly full in those moments of their reunion. When we set out for the train station in the rented station wagon, with the motorbike and sidecar rolled up and secured on a trailer that Uta had hooked up to the station wagon, I realized that today was one of my best days ever, well, since I had become a vampire hunter.

Chapter Thirteen

At the train station, Ambra asked for directions to something called an abattoir, and she and Lucian went to it while I stayed with Uta and the kids in the nice warm train station lobby. They came back with blood for him to drink. I didn’t even know what an abattoir was until Ambra told me what it meant: slaughterhouse. Further, she told me that it was horse blood. I was woozy and upset, just thinking of it. Maybe it was the first time that I really got grossed out by thinking about vampires drinking blood. And it was because of horse blood. I love horses. What a country.

Lucian went into the restroom and in a stall, drank half of the big bottle of horse blood he had bought and put the other half on ice in a cooler that also held the children’s juices and snacks for the train. And then he smeared himself with sunscreen and put on a big hat.

Ambra and I saw them off at the small station. I called home to let them know that a vampire was coming to the castle, with his family, to stay. And to show them to Lucas’ old suite.

When I hung up, Ambra said, “Now, I want some quality time with you,
s’il vous plaît
.”

“
You got it. That works out perfectly since we have to wait two days for Corb—”

She pressed her lips on mine to make me stop talking.

Ambra and I ended up staying in a hotel for two days because we had to wait for Corbin. He wanted us to accompany him back to Switzerland with his bitch wolf and her new cubs. He also said he had a big surprise for us. Since he was already traveling with a full-grown wolf and her new litter of cubs, radioactive ones, I was almost afraid to ask him what the hell it was that could be a bigger surprise than that.

Ambra and I spent those two days wrapped up in each other and barely left the hotel room for anything. We ordered room service and made frequent use of the “Do Not Disturb” sign printed in 5 languages.

I lost count of the times we made love and even more, how many times we kissed. The moments ticked by way too fast. I wanted to hold her in my arms forever and just…shut out the rest of the world. She felt amazing and sometimes, I couldn’t believe she could even love me as much as she did. As we lay there in the afterglow, our legs entwined, and our pulses beating hard—I could even see hers in the side of her dewy neck—she turned to me and looked as if she wanted to say something greater than, “I love you.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“
Nothing.”

When a woman says
nothing
, it really means…
something
.

“
Are you happy?” I asked.

“
Rand, don’t ask that.” Usually, she told me more of what was on her mind, or I could feel it, but the closer we got physically, the more she was hesitant to spew something emotional. Of course, we had just had such a hard few days. Or was it weeks?

That time, she did read my mind. “I wish we could decompress like this for about a month. It just feels good to have the time for each other. And to rest. And
l’amour
. And eat well. And even sleep normal hours.”

“
Agreed.”

She let go of a long, contented sigh. It sounded like the sea hitting the sand. It was release and gratitude and sexual satisfaction all rolled up into a big exhalation.

Quietly, she rested against me and we fell asleep. Time after time, we woke up to make love again like the end of the world was coming.

We ate mass quantities of food from room service. Ridiculously, I smeared her with whipped cream and strawberries and ate them off her belly. She thought it was romantic, and I thought it was silly, but Ambra needed to be acknowledged as pretty and sexy, not just as a powerful assassin of vampires. When she wasn’t in vampire hunter mode, she was an incredible and athletic lover with imagination and so much fun that I hoped I would never be too old to enjoy a physical love life with her.

All through this two-day tryst with Ambra in the hotel, whenever she got up to use the restroom or slept, I kept in touch with Corbin through email and finally, he called me when Ambra was uncharacteristically snoring next to me.

“
What’s up?”

“
Check out of your love nest and meet me at the train station in two hours so we can ride back together.”

“
How are the wolf cubs?”

“
They took to each other right away. She’s fed them and cleaned them and well, we have a lot to talk about, even besides the wolves.”

“
You’re not going to tell me?” I asked.

“
I don’t want to wreck the surprise.”

Ambra and I got to the train station and made our way to his car and then, to his compartment. I saw that he had upgraded us to a couple of suites, which was very nice, because I was enjoying my alone time with the beautiful Ambra and wasn’t ready to share a room with Corbin and a bunch of wolves.

Ambra and I unloaded our stuff into our luxury suite and once we settled in, I phoned Corbin.

“
Okay. We’re on the train to Zürich with you. What’s the surprise?”

“
Meet me in the observation car,” he said mysteriously.

“
Will your wolves be okay in the room by themselves?”

“
Yes, they are all sleeping. And it turns out you shouldn’t go in there because she is super protective right now.”

“
Fine with me.” I hung up and looked at Ambra.

“
He wants us to meet him in the observation car. The mama wolf is extra protective and we shouldn’t go in his compartment.”

She nodded. “This is more than the wolves. He’s about to tell us something we didn’t expect.”

“I fear that is true.”

Ambra and I walked hand in hand to the observation car and found Corbin at the bar with a beautiful young woman—she had short, strawberry-blonde hair, vivid green eyes, and a rather impressive curvy figure. In fact, she was stunning. Not only was she stunning, she was practically glowing with happiness and energy.

So, at that point, it really came as little surprise to me when he said, “Ambra and Rand, I want you to meet Dr. Sophie Sirko from the Ukraine, lately of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. She’s a wildlife biologist who specializes in wolf behavior, as I do, and she’s joining us as my new assistant. We’ll be writing scientific papers together and taking better care of the wolf pack. She knows
all
about me, and what we do. And, she’s my fiancée.”

“
Oh!” I said.

Corbin’s face broke into the biggest grin I’d ever seen from him, which gave me confidence in her. He was smitten and she looked like she was, too. And of course, she wanted to get the hell out of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Where it went from here with these two was anyone’s guess.

As I reached out my hand to shake hers, I said, “We’re so happy to have you on board, Dr. Sirko.”

“
Call me Sophie, please.”

“
Very well, Sophie. Congratulations on your engagement, too. I hope you and Corbin will be very happy together.”

“
Congratulations, Corbin and Sophie,” Ambra said, without looking at Corbin. At least she was starting to be less angry with him since the night when he had attempted to turn her. And at least now, Ambra was able to say his name. It was something anyway.

“
Thanks!” Sophie and Corbin both said.

Ambra gave Sophie a genuine hug. “Welcome aboard the crazy train.”

Chapter Fourteen

When we got back to the castle, we got everyone settled, including noisy wolf cubs and their adoptive mama wolf. Then I went for a pre-sunset ski with Ambra. She actually took me to a small hill to work on basic techniques. I was tired and hungry by the end of the lesson. She said that we needed to start over at the beginning with ski lessons. I would suffer through them, just to be with her, but I actually learned a lot once I let her be in charge and direct everything from my posture to my technique.

“
I’ll take you to a bigger hill tomorrow.”

“
So you approve of my skiing?”

“
You’ll do well if you practice and listen to all I teach you.”

We got back just after sunset, and Ambra and I shoveled big bowls of Uta’s amazing beef stew and huge biscuits into our hungry maws. She must have gone grocery shopping. Uta and Lucian’s little kids quietly played with Legos in their footie pajamas in the great hall.

“Hello, Uncle,” one of the kids said to me shyly.

“
You remember me?” I asked.

“
From the train, that first time. You bought our dinners because we only had crackers and cheese.”

“
I did that?” I said.

“
Look. I made you a flower with my Legos.” She put it on the table next to me.

“
Thank you, Erika. It’s a beautiful flower. Can I keep it?”

The little dark-haired girl nodded and ran off to play with Anton, her twin. She giggled and pointed at me. He looked up and smiled.

My heart did a little flip. I missed Kristin more than ever. That little girl’s laugh nearly slayed me.

The other vampire hunters were eating, too, and finally, Uta sat down and called the twins to their own table to eat. She was breastfeeding the baby while she ate, but she had a baby blanket over the whole operation. She had her hands full, that was for sure.

Her vampire hubby, Lucian, was in the back of the kitchen with Corbin, who was bleeding out a reindeer he’d just shot and was serving up mugs of blood for Lucian and saving the rest to refrigerate.

As Ambra and I sat side by side and ate, we surfed on our tablet computers. I immediately saw there was an email waiting for me from Samantha Moon. The subject heading read: “Kristin is likely in Southern California.”

I swallowed and tried not to make a sound that would alert Ambra until I completely read the email. I didn’t want to get my own hopes up.

Some of the attachments were maps and photos of Nero’s “lair” near the carousel in Griffith Park—it was actually a vintage utility building. To the casual eye, it was no longer used but a recent path was worn in the grass and the lock, photographed with a telephoto lens, was not completely engaged. Sam had done a lot of surveillance work.

She had included all sorts of news that gave me hope. One of the most surprising pieces of news was that her research had uncovered Kristin’s tessellation artwork for sale online with a 90027 post office box address on the contact page of the website. That corresponded to the Griffith Park/Los Feliz post office. Sam was an amazing detective.

In her email, she said she had staked out that post office for days—except for when she had to get the kids from school or had to sleep—and she saw no one go to that box, which either meant that the box was emptied while she was picking up Tammy and Anthony, or that no one had recently come to empty it. Perhaps there were no mail orders, only online orders. Sam told me not to order anything because it would spook Kristin’s captors. I agreed.

Samantha sent me a link to the art site and my heart pounded with excitement as I saw the familiar bold signature of her first and middle names: Kristin Joy. I right-clicked on the gallery images on the site, discovering the dates that the new artworks had been uploaded. I was overjoyed to find that one of the images was only a week old. There were dozens of artworks in the gallery, all Kristin’s style and with her favorite animals: unicorns, raccoons, and orca whales.

Two things were readily apparent to me: Kristin was alive and Kristin was probably earning her keep.

It took every bit of discipline I had not to use the “contact me” link. I knew Sam was right. I wouldn’t spook her captor. I would just go and retrieve my daughter.

I replied to Sam’s email with one sentence: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

I turned to Ambra and said, “Samantha Moon may have a strong lead on Kristin’s whereabouts. She’s probably in Southern California.”

Ambra’s mouth dropped open. She high-fived me and launched herself into my arms. “Can we go get her?”

“I hope so.”

“
Where is she?”

“
She’s probably in Griffith Park, where all the ancient vampires seem to end up.”

Chapter Fifteen

Before we left for the airport in Zürich, we informally gathered in the great hall for a short briefing.

“I wish I could come with all of you,” said Lucian. He looked at me with intent eyes.

“
But you have such an important job, Lucian. To hold the fort, here. Besides the fact that I don’t want you to accidentally get caught in the Southern California sunshine, we can’t leave the castle empty except for your wife and kids. It would be way too dangerous for them.”

“
I agree.”

“
Will you be ready for any enemy vampires if they come while we’re all gone?”

“
Of course. This castle is well secured. I now know all of the devices and protections, including the vampire trap. I am fully armed. We’re safe in here and we have automatic feeding and watering for the animals in the barn. We’re on lockdown until all of you return.”

“
Good man,” I said. “I’m so glad you are here, and Uta and the kids, too. I don’t know how we could have recovered as a group without you and your wife.”

“
We are glad to be here. It was bad in our hometown and I was not safe there anymore. It’s good to know you have confidence in me, as far as the security of the castle, but I also know it will be tough to beat Nero without a vampire on this hunt with you. The ancient ones are very powerful.”

I nodded. “I know. You were made from one of them. Were you not?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know a lot. Perhaps I will write it all down for you, the misadventures of my past few years.”

“
That would be good.”

Lucian sighed. “I hope you all come back safely.”

“Don’t worry.”

“
Nero is not the last of the ancients, but he is the most evil one that I know of who still exists,” he said.

“
Taking down Vlad and Delilah taught me just how weak even the strongest and fastest humans are against the ancients. What exactly makes them so strong anyway?” I asked.

“
The closer they are to the origins of our species, the more powerful they are. Every time a vampire is made from another vampire, the species gets a little more diluted. It’s almost like clones of clones, with each generation weakening a bit. Like a twentieth-generation vampire still drinks blood, of course, but they are weak fighters.”

“
Too bad we don’t have vampire genealogies.”

“
It’s not like it is written down anywhere that I know of. But only the vampires created by the ancients are almost as powerful as they are.”

After Lucian said that, I thought of Samantha Moon, who had been created by an ancient vampire, one I had killed. She had rejoiced when I had told her, and had soared high in the sky with me in her talons.

Griff, our doctor, nodded. “That makes sense to me that clones of clones are weaker,” he said. “Not that vampires are clones, but they do have generations, of a sort, like who created who. Why have we never studied this?”

“
Because there is no data?” I said. I looked at Lucian.

“
There isn’t any that I know of.”

“
We have always known the ancients were more powerful,” I continued.

Griff said, “We just didn’t know exactly why and I never heard it said quite like that.”

“With every mission, we learn more and more about vampires and how to kill them.” I nodded at Lucian. “No offense.”

“
None taken,” he replied.

“
Okay, let’s get down to the final details.” I said, “I just emailed each of you an mp4 file from the commercial release version of
Vampiress of the Opera
that I re-mixed with another sound, using Gabby’s equipment in her old sound studio. When you’re in the airport, I want all of you to play that file on your music device on a medium volume on your smart phone, iPod or music player, except in areas where you are required to turn off your electronic devices.”