The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4)

BOOK: The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4)
6.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

 

 

 

 

THE VAMPIRE’S RELEASE

Book Four of the Undead in Brown County Series

By S.J. Wright

 

 

This book is dedicated to my sons.

Your smiles, laughter and hugs bring me such joy.

I adore you both so much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,  or events is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

 

Copyright © 2012 by Stephanie J. Wright

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

 

 

 

PROLOGUE

June 29, 1952

The whiskey blurs out real life nicely.  The burn as it goes down is nothing anymore to me.  Claire has said that she’ll find every one of my hidden bottles.  She couldn’t.  I don’t even know where they are.  I don’t know where they come from most of the time.  I think the god-damned vampires are behind the whole thing.  If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t want the stuff.  I wouldn’t need it.
 

Little Robby found a loose fang in the north meadow yesterday.  I told him it was probably from a coyote.  The kid looked at me like I was a liar.  He’s a sharp one.  I hate that he will have to fool with all this when I’m gone.  That’s the biggest reason I started writing in this journal.  When I finally keel over, I hope all these damned vampires are gone.  But if not, Robby’s going to need to know.

The new one, Michael, is a different sort.  He hates my guts and never lets me forget it.  And he’s angry at the Council for putting him away.  Now that I know why they did it, I’m always telling Claire to head into the house early.  I don’t need him creating vampire freaks out of my family.

-
       
From the Journal of Jonathan Wood

 

 

Chapter 1 – Michael

 

There was a part of m
e that realized I had succeeded, e
ven though my ancie
nt body struggled against death and afforded
me little in the way of physical relief from
the torture.  A
fter having so much of
my blood
drained from my veins by doctors bent on replicating its properties,
the agony of going without
was
becoming
familiar.

I was cold.  I realized vaguely that I had been cold for a long time.  But I had never physically felt it as sharply as I did in that horrible little room.  The instinct that humans have to shiver is not present in vampires.  So I lay there in that bed like a corpse, feeling the sensation of it as I never had before.

The walls of my prison were oddly comfortin
g in a twisted sort of way.  They were keeping me in what looked to be an old bedroom with yellow peeling wallpaper decorated in roses.  Not just red roses, but pink, yellow, and white.  They were a vague reminder of the morning I strolled through a decadent French garden
with Amanda in 1933.  I remembered how she had fretted so much over a few errant drops of blood that had spoiled her yellow morning dress after joining me for a warm red liquid breakfast.  I had laughed at her vanity only after checking my own clothing for any spots.

We seemed made for each other, her and I.  Two deadly pieces of forgotten humanity bent on flooding ourselves with pleasure, whether it was gorging ourselves on the blood of a Russian prince, playing in high-stakes
card
games against American heiresses or climbing to the summit of Mount
Everest

Of course, it
was not all blind succulence.  There were single seconds of that
period
in which I saw the truth of my immortal lover.  She was unusually violent with her victims, often removing their heads from their shoulders immediately after having her fill.  Whether she felt any real guilt over her excessive mutilations was unclear to me.  Having her near was enough back then.  I may have even felt a measure of admiration towards her daring ways.

In the end, my own fragile strands of morality held fast. 
One hard and fast rule I have adhered to since becoming undead was to never, ever hurt a child.  I suppose there is some connection there to my
own childhood, and I don’t doubt that a deep session with an open-minded psychotherapist would reveal much about that particular qualm,
if I were
willing to put myself through such a thing.  But
this rule of mine regarding children
was not something that Amanda and I agreed on. 

The first time I caught her trying to take the blood of an innocent boy, an inner rage consumed me that was so
fierce;
I temporarily forgot
the love I had
for my gorgeous redhead
.  She felt the sting of my teeth and felt the strength of my hands around her neck for the fi
rst time.  It startled her, that
intense
emotional reaction
.
 
She saw something in me during that moment that frightened her, and it had nothing to do with my physical strength or speed.  She seemed to recognize the fierce light in my eyes.  Perhaps it was familiar due to someone in her past that had held firm to some belief that didn’t coincide with her own lack of humanity.

It changed our relationship, creating doubt and distrust where before there had only been
adrenalin
and mutual satisfaction.
 
The boy she’d been feeding from survived.  Barely.   I was more cautious after that incident and began to spend more time away from Amanda.  She adapted to the change, drawing away from me long enough to cause me to
worry and then returning like a beautiful bird to
whichever
dark place I’d taken myself.

My disillusionment with her grew and festered like a boil, the infection spreading and hardening
me against her numerous charms until the only positive thing
s
we had left
were memories
of our early days together.
  Such as the rose garden in Paris.

I should have known
it would come to that sort of an end
.  I did know.  Jones had spared not a single chilling detail about how Amanda had tortured him.  At the end of our affair, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw accusations her way and remind her of the Captain, whose memory she looked on with measured indifference.
  Maybe if I could have penetrated
or
possibly cracked the protective walls she’d built around herself, I might have discovered the source of her anger.  But then everything began to go wrong with the Council.
  The monstrous head of politics rose up, creating a shadow of everything else in my world.

Isaiah was fortifying his league of minions and whispering lies into the ears of the other Council members.  It was enough of a political push to have them all begin to doubt me and whether or not I had
the ability and moral fortitude
necessary to rule.

I was supposed to be a monarch of sorts over the undead in America.  It had been Teddy’s idea. 
She had always had more faith in me than sanity should dictate.  She intended me to rise to the challenge, exercise my powers, rule with fair judgment and a moral stance that few of my kind possessed.  I often wondered what facet of my personality might
have
give
n
her that impression.  Perhaps she had heard somehow of my intense need to protect children and assumed that attribute would extend to my night-dwelling
brethren
.

Vincent and Gregory, the two eldest
brothers had been warring with one another for centuries behind the scenes. 
They had agreed reluctantly to my future reign. 
In public conferences, they were coolly polite and sometimes remarkably civil
to each other
.  What my spies discovered was that during these high-brow Council meetings, the vampires and humans hired by Vincent and Gregory were conducting their own operations of which the Council had no idea.
  It ended up being a series of attempts to gain power over human leaders through threats, bribery and cold-blooded murder.  All these things were done to humans in power in order to influence the eventual influx of vampires into American politics.

It was
a sad ploy that ended quickly once
the rest of the Council
discovered what they were attempting to do.  Gregory was reprimanded by the Council and removed from his seat. 
He retreated completely from our secretive society and from the country itself.  The last rumor I’d heard about Gregory was passed to me through my contact in London.  He had apparently taken control of a
little country in the Mideast and was passing himself off as an Islamic holy man.

Vincent was able to convince them that he was only using his agents to counteract what
Gregory’s
had done and that he was protecting vampires everywhere by doing so.
  The Council took him at his word and let him remain in his place of power among us.

Isaiah had been content to remain in the background, presiding over the meetings when necessary and dolling out his moderate opinions when he was asked.
  Towards me, he was slightly deferential in
these public venues. 
But I felt a hole in that public persona.  He was holding something back from all of us.

Victoria came face to face with Isaiah for the first time
after a meeting in New York
City
.
  As we were leaving the office building that had been the site of the meeting, h
e offered us both shelter at his
private lakeside
lodge in upstate New York.
 
I recalled the unusual strength of Victoria’s nails pressing into the wool fibers of the
sleeve
of my coat.  I remembered the way her graceful body suddenly went still and
how wide her
eyes grew in her pale face as the intentions and emotional turmoil of Isaiah were viewed through her particular gift of sight. 

Politely, I declined the invitation.  Isaiah had stared hard at Victoria for one moment, and I feared the possibility that he may have discerned the nature of her gift.  We had done what we could up
to that point
to keep Victoria’s ability to read minds a secret from the other vampires.  The only othe
r one who knew was Meekah. 

What Victoria felt from the elder vampire had pushed her into a terrifying silence.  Only after many attempts and gentle prompts could I get her to reveal to me what she had felt in Isaiah’s presence.  What was behind that bearded face and inside the brain of that creature was so dark and loaded with grisly images that Victoria had an incredibly hard time putting it into words.

Even now, I find it hard to confront the demonic intentions and memories as Victoria had explained them to me.  The extremity of Isaiah’s desire for power was acutely alarming, and I felt compelled to explain it to Teddy.  She had been a good friend and mentor to me over the centuries, and the trust between us was absolute.  She wasn’t perfect, but I was unaware of any female who could make that claim honestly.

I certainly had enough troubling wome
n in my life
over the years
.  Meekah, Amanda, Victoria, Selena, Sarah and Katie.
  Each one was like a rose of a different hue.  Just like on the wallpaper in that little room.  I stared in particular at one set of yellow roses
, which brought Sarah to the front of my mind immediately.

BOOK: The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4)
6.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Too Much to Lose by Holt, Samantha
DanielsSurrender by Sierra and VJ Summers
Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb
The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde by the Wisdom of
A Hideous Beauty by Jack Cavanaugh
The Final Wish by Tracey O'Hara
Beneath by Gill Arbuthnott
Really Weird Removals.com by Daniela Sacerdoti