Vamped Up (27 page)

A slew of death shades bubbled and stretched across the floor, headed right for him. He stole a few more strides, then dove headfirst through the gash in the heavy chamber door. His trench coat caught on the wood shards and ripped to shreds. He rolled out of it onto the floor of the inner chamber and slammed against the same whitewashed tablet from his past. His head immediately throbbed; his breath came out in pained pants.

He didn’t have to see Eve to know she was right above him, strapped to the tablet he’d smacked against. He was instantly sledgehammered by the overwhelming scent of her blood. He clamped down his bloodlust by biting down on his tongue and scissoring it between his teeth. Reaching up, he grasped the smooth stretch of her arm, then ghosted down to where it was hooked to the stone. She whimpered, sounding tired and desperate—it hollowed him.

Expecting the swarm of death shades to sweep into the chamber behind him, Ruan rushed to his feet, finger to grenade pin.

“Come on, suckers,” he ground out. “Let’s rock.” He’d toss that grenade through the death shades, through that door, and a toss another through the goddamn brick wall to get Eve out if he had to.

But the next few seconds happened much too fast to think anything through.

Feeling pure hatred seethe behind him, Ruan spun around, his eyes catching on Savage’s familiar black scar. The sucker was guarding Eve himself . . .

Ruan pulled two blades from the strap on his arm and let them fly from his fingers. Savage ducked, dodging the spinning weapons. An orb of light gathered between Savage’s outstretched hands. He thrust the ball of energy into the air. Ruan dove to the ground, expecting to be blasted with the same fireball he’d seen in the alley behind Mirage. He rolled to his back and kick-flipped to his feet.

But the explosion didn’t come.

“What the fuck?” Savage mumbled, staring down at his empty hands. Blood dripped from his fangs, down the rough edge of his chin.

Wait . . .
Savage had fed. With a hiss, Ruan’s gaze snapped to Eve. Two bloody and ravaged puncture marks glistened in the soft cradle of her neck. The sucker had been draining her.

“NO!” Ruan roared, seeing nothing but red. He leapt into the air, aimed to rip out his jugular. But Savage jumped back with speed Ruan wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen the flash with his own eyes.

Savage drew his Glock and popped off two quick shots.

The bullets hit Ruan square in the chest. He staggered back from the sheer force of the hit. His rib cage pinched tight. The bullets burrowed deep into his heart. Eve’s scream drowned out Ruan’s own battle cry as he charged Savage, slamming him against the wall.

Savage’s gun fell to the floor, cartwheeling across the stone and out of reach. He laughed in Ruan’s face, a deep gurgle that echoed off the chamber walls. “You think I really need a gun to bring you to your knees?”

Blurred with hell-raising fury, Ruan rained fist after fist down on Savage’s head. His ears were deaf to anything but Eve’s thunderous cries. His eyes hazy with anything but the deep groove in Savage’s face. But Savage’s hands seemed to be everywhere at once. Slamming into Ruan’s face. Jabbing his side. Breaking his ribs. Slicing his heart in two. He was much too strong. Abnormally so, even for a therian-vampire hybrid.

They fumbled against one another . . . until an overpowering warmth spread through Ruan’s chest, spread outward to his arms, numbing his fists until they couldn’t clench any longer.

“What’s wrong, Loverboy? The silver of those bullets finally sinking in?” Savage slammed Ruan’s head against a massive stone cemented crookedly in the wall. “You can bruise me up all you want in this pathetic battle of yours. I’ve already won the war.”

Ruan felt his chest rupture. “You haven’t won shit.” He choked down a blood-curdled cough, then connected another fist to Savage’s temple.

As the numbness consumed Ruan’s body like wildfire, his legs wobbled. And with a final blow to Savage’s jaw, the pain finally dragged Ruan to his knees.

His world blurred. Stars danced in his eyes.

“Ah, there you go. I knew you’d give up sooner or later.” Savage’s laugh buzzed in his ears, low and distant. “You cannot defeat me, you meddling leech! I control the mawares of—”

In one lightning-quick strike, Ruan unsheathed the dagger from his boot and reared up, sinking the blade deep into Savage’s side.

“No!” Savage stumbled back. He pressed his hands against his gushing stomach wound and stared at Ruan, wide-eyed. Disbelieving. As if out of all the knowledge of this world, he didn’t, or couldn’t, see that coming. Somehow reacting to their master’s agony, a blur of death shades poured through the gash in the chamber door and melted along the floor. They spilled over and around him, covering him in some sort of protective shield.

Feeling like a grenade went off in his chest, Ruan dragged himself over the floor. Away from Savage and the death shades. Toward Eve—his only salvation. He couldn’t suppress the outpouring of blood from his organs any longer. He coughed violently, smattering the stone in Rorschach patterns of crimson that made his head spin with delirium.

“Eve,” he breathed. He reached up for her, his arm like lead. She was cold . . . much too cold. And she was covered in something silky. Wet. It moved.

With a bat-like squeal, a death shade slinked off the tablet behind him—one that must’ve been covering Eve’s body—and swept its frigid curtain of doom around Ruan’s shoulders, up his back and over his head. He shuddered against its sweeping waves, but went rigid as rock—frozen from death’s cool promise rather than fear.

He fought the pull to succumb to the dark, but it was too strong. The death shade was heavy. Suffocating. All-consuming. As Ruan took a labored breath, he inhaled a single whiff of smoke from the death shade’s cover. It wiggled along his tongue like a lover’s stroke, slid down his throat like woodsy wine, and left its sulfur taste stuck between his teeth. The tendril of evil burrowed its way into the lining of his lungs, slithered with the blood in his veins, and pumped into his heart, aching to fill his body and search out his soul.

“No,” he heard Eve say from a great distance away. “Lilith, don’t!”

Lilith . .
 .

Starbursts of fire exploded against the death shade covering Ruan’s body. It hissed, shrank away, writhing to escape the blinding light shooting from Lilith’s fingertips.

Ruan barely mustered the energy to lift his lids . . . just in time to see Savage rise from the corner, death shades cloaking him from head to toe.

“You’re too late, Lilith” Savage seethed. “The death shades have already bound to me. They do as I say now.”

“You can’t control them all, Kane. That kind of power is not meant for one vampire.”

“Ah, but I’m not like other vampires now, am I?”

“We’ll see.” Lilith blasted a solid stream of fire against the death shades protecting Savage’s body. They slid off him like melting wax and scurried over the floor in a frenzy. She ceased fire. The room grew cold. “Call them off now and I’ll spare your life.”

“A forgiving heart has always been your weakness.” Savage spread his arms wide. “Take her!” The death shades answered his command. They oozed into one monstrous death shade, rising up into something resembling a coiled serpent, arching back, ready to strike.

Lilith widened her stance, unleashed brilliant streams of fire into the heart of the beast. It shrank back, fought forward, slamming against the powerful flame. Walls warped. Thunder from the opening of hell’s gates shook the entire fort.

Ruan blinked hard. Slowly. Fought to watch the light and dark slam against one another in the most even battle he’d ever seen. Sparks flew through the room. Death shades pushed against Lilith’s blast stronger than she could hold. Her feet slid back. She was trying to hold her ground. And failing.

Savage opened his chest wide and lifted his arms to the sky. “You may think it’s an even fight now,” he cackled, hidden behind a massive veil of shadow. “But how about fighting
all
the death shades at once? I command you—” he screamed over the deafening anger of the firefight.

“Ruan!” Lilith yelled. “Give me the Grimorium Verum—it’s the only way!”

But Ruan was groggy. His insides raw. Charred. “I couldn’t . . . can’t remember . . .”

“The words I used in 1912 . . .” She spread her hands apart. “ . . .
aprilgaza commando
!” She split her thick stream of starburst into two. The death shades met both streams equally, fighting against the fire. As the shade at the front shrank away from the light, another melted forward. “Eve can bind the energy in the amulet but the incantation has to come from you! You’re the one who cast it away. You’re the only one who can bring it back! Do it!”

The dark tugged at Ruan’s spirit, dampening his ability to breathe, let alone speak. His mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t, couldn’t, fall from his tongue. The grim realization of what would happen to Eve now, if he left this world, washed over him like a tidal wave. Eve was going to be left to die in this goddamned chamber again. Because of him, she’d die by a soul-snatching death shade rather than his bloodlust. Even by his death, she wouldn’t be free.

Once again, he’d failed her.

As blackness closed in, threatening to suffocate the last human part of him, Ruan looked into Lilith’s desperate eyes and said, “My soul . . . my soul for her life.”

“No!” Eve yelled from behind him, fear trembling in her voice. “Ruan, wait!”

“I loved you the best I could, Eve.” Switches flipped in his brain. Memories unlocked. His heart withered, beating its final tune. “I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.” Riding his last breath, he exhaled, “
A Grimorium Verum . . . aprirligaza commando . . .”

He couldn’t muster the will to open his eyes—to see if the enchantment Lilith used in 1912 made the tome appear. He couldn’t even tell if the rumbling all around him was from the firefight between the death shades and Lilith’s fire burst, or his core collapsing into the Ever After. And even though he knew it wasn’t possible, that Eve was still strapped to the table, and he’d failed her when she needed it most of all, Ruan could’ve sworn her arms cradled him in the softest of embraces as he tumbled into oblivion.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“The difference between vampires and elders is simple: vampires know when to fight . . . elders, when to succumb.”

The Gap Between Our Fangs
by Elder Cross

“R
UAN!”
E
VE SCREAMED
over the hair-splitting roar of death shades. “Ruan, don’t leave me!”

As Lilith reached a hand for the Grimorium Verum, which had appeared teetering on the very edge of the tablet, the bursts of fire spewing from her fingers dimmed. Wild gusts of wind blew through the chamber. The death shades shoved forward, knocking her off balance. “I can’t hold them much longer!

“Ruan!” Eve pulled on the straps binding her hands. “Ruan, come back! You can’t leave me here without you!”

Savage’s maniacal laugh was the only thing Eve could hear over the hard pounding of her heart. Shock morphed into anger. Anger boiled over into pure, unadulterated rage. She breathed hard through her nostrils, clenched her teeth. The amulet went hot. Burned her chest. Energy hummed in her veins, making her skin itch and her lips twitch.

She thrashed her head back against the back of the tablet and screamed, willing her soul to explode out of this place and find Ruan’s again. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be happening. The entire chamber flashed blindingly white, heating up to scorching levels; sweat trickled down her temples. When Eve brought her gaze back to center, she gasped. Streams of white light twirled out of the onyx eye of the amulet, entwining together, reaching the ceiling.

Her body heated to unnatural levels.

Death shades weakened, their shades immediately dimming under the brilliance of the sudden surge of energy.
How the hell was this happening?

“That’s it!” Lilith yelled. Strobes of light sparked from her fingertips, beating back the onslaught of shades. “Take it!” She tossed the Grimorium Verum onto Eve’s chest.

The instant the weight registered on top of her, braids of energy rippled through the room, though not from the amulet or the tome. Thick waves of violet light shot from Eve’s palms, into the tome and the amulet, then burst through the opposite side of each. They twisted and turned along one another like a magical braid, stretching through space, searching the chamber for something to latch onto.

“What the hell’s going on?” Savage asked over the rush of energy in her head. “This is not the way it’s supposed to be! This is not what’s written!”

“We’re writing new history,” Lilith laughed. “And you’re no longer a part of it.”

The death shades, taking form into something thick and ominous like shadows of demons, suddenly looked like faint reflections in broad daylight—insignificant and see-through in places. The waves of light, sensing dark energy, fired through her palms and tunneled right through them. One after another, the rippling streams of light passed through the death shades, carving a hole, then shooting through the other side and back again. With each pass, the waves illuminated brighter than before. The death shades fizzled and hissed, shrinking away.

“I won’t let you!” Savage hissed, then looked to the cracked ceiling. “I summon
all
the death shades in my command . . . steal their souls!”

Fort Point shook so forcefully, so loudly, Eve thought for sure the rock wall it sat upon was breaking away, tumbling into the bay.

As a surge of death shades pushed through the chamber door, seething with fury, cresting over the top of them, Lilith lunged for Eve, splaying herself over the top of her. Pulsing waves poured out Eve’s palms, through the tome, through the amulet, wrapped around the both of them—faster and faster, tighter and tighter—until they were so thick and bright, Eve had to pinch her eyes shut to keep from being blinded by the magnitude of them.

The stone tablet disappeared beneath Eve’s body. The air trembled, rolling in waves around them. Disorientation set in. When Eve dared open her eyes again, the chamber was no more. Savage and the death shades were nowhere in sight.

She was enveloped in a white fuzzy mist that seemed to go on forever in every direction. She was floating in mid-air, though she felt firmly grounded. She reached out into nothing, feeling the mist dust her fingers like snow. Her gaze caught upon her sleeve.

“Holy hell,” she breathed, and jerked her hand back. Her ice-blue sweater was gone. So were her jeans. And her Nikes. In their place was a midnight-black gown that put Lilith’s crimson ensemble to shame. Long sweeping train. Full skirt. Rustling black taffeta flowing off the sides and back. Sleeves that hugged her arms, then drooped off her wrists, tucking into the corseted lace bodice top. She pulled up the whimsical dress in front. Matching knee-high boots peeked from underneath. “This can’t be happening.”

Wobbly on her own feet, Eve took a hesitant step on a floor she couldn’t see, but knew was there, beneath the mist rolling everywhere yet nowhere at all.

This is the stuff movies are made of,
she thought, reaching out into the blanket of snow-like fog surrounding her. What happened to the cresting wall of death shades, ready to crash over them? What happened to Savage?
This can’t be real. Hell, what she was wearing couldn’t be real.

“You’ll get used to the feeling,” a familiar voice sang behind her. “I’m just glad to see you’ve finally got some style.”

Eve spun around, shocked to see Lilith standing before her, more elegantly poised than ever. Her scarlet hair seemed
more
red than Eve recalled. Amplified. Like the heart of a flame. And her eyes—were they always that piercing crimson? And was her skin as unblemished white as it appeared now? Somehow, in this place void of all color, Lilith stood out like the lone, ripe cherry on a white blossomed cherry tree.

“You will learn that everything is exaggerated in this place. From your emotions to your thoughts to your hair.”

Her hair?
Eve reached up, touched two fingers to long Chinese pins criss-crossed through a twisted curl of hair. A slick chunk of blonde swept across her forehead and was pinned behind her ear. As she met Lilith’s glowing eyes, she wondered if hers were as bright and mesmerizing.

“Yes, my dear. They are infinitely beautiful. Complementary opposites. Like the sun and stars,” Lilith swooned, gliding toward her. “But we have much more important things to think about than our beauty, if you can believe it.”

Eve felt her face crinkle. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud? Wasn’t she
thinking
it? How could Lilith be reading her thoughts?

Lilith’s thick lips curled into a luminous, spell-binding smile. “In this place thoughts are as good as spoken. You’ll learn that over time. And you’ll learn to block some thoughts from intrusion, too.” She winked.

Why was she using phrases like
you’ll get used to it
and
over time
? Was she going to be stuck here? And where exactly was here anyway? Where was Ruan? If this was the Ever After, shouldn’t he be here? Suddenly dizzy, Eve closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

“I’ll try to catch up.” Lilith took a deep breath, then said, “You won’t be stuck here, unless you want to be.
Here
is the Ever After. Your equilibrium will be off for awhile, but as you learn to judge the speed and time of your entry, the dizziness will abate.” Lilith placed a gentle hand on the small of her back. “For now, I need you to walk with me.”

Walk where?
There was nowhere to go. Just miles and miles of milky white skyline that blended into an even murkier white landscape stretching as far as the eye could see.
And what did she say about judging her entry?

Laughing, Lilith guided her slowly into a thick curtain of mist.

“What’s so funny?” Eve asked, stomach tumbling.

“I forgot how confusing the first entry into the Ever After can be.” They walked along, destination masked. Lilith said, “I assure you that all your questions will be answered in time. After all, this
is
your enlightenment and it would not be right for me to deny what you seek.”

“Enlightenment?”

“First, you must listen. If you are to help elders, you must further understand them. I felt disillusioned when I transitioned into an elder. The change is . . . sudden, to say the least. One minute you’re as normal as any other vampire, bloodlusting and cocky as hell, feeling as if you’ve conquered the world and defeated death. The next minute, you’re tumbling into the Ever After.”

“Is it really that sudden?” Eve asked, feeling lightheaded. “Wait, how am I being enlightened? I don’t have vampire blood. And if elders can tumble into the Ever After, are they considered dead?”

“You have many questions. And many of them will be answered in time.” Lilith squeezed Eve’s arm. “But let me finish. When a vampire first transitions into elder status, they notice the veil between your world and the Ever After thinning away to nothing. One day, out of the blue, the world slips through their fingertips. The pull to the Ever After becomes too strong to resist. Only after an elder has successfully transitioned to the other side is a maware bestowed upon them. They may then freely pass through dimensions, from earth to the Ever After, as often as they wish.”

Her words caught. “What do you mean ‘successfully transitioned’? Are there vampires who fail to transition into elders?”

Laughing, Lilith said, “For a transition to be successful, an elder must fully commit to leaving their old world behind. Every part of it. There is no room in the Ever After for vampires who selfishly hold on to worldly things.”

Eve clutched the amulet, which was still pulsing from remnants of the energy she’d miraculously summoned in the chamber. Why did she get the feeling that Lilith was no longer talking
to her
, but
about her
? Was she trying to say Eve was like a newly-transitioned elder, confused and naïve? Or was Eve the distracting possession for a transitioning elder? She’d never been more confused.

Lilith smiled again, breezy and light. Just the way the air in this place felt on Eve’s skin.

“You never answered my question,” Eve said simply, her feet now walking alongside Lilith’s like they knew where they were headed of their own accord.

“Which of the ones you fired off, do you want answered the most?”

Eve thought about the information Lilith had spouted, and the answers she craved. “How can an elder die if they’re already able to pass to the Ever After?”

“If angels can fall from grace, elders can lose the ability to dimension-jump.”

Angels?

“Those creatures are a tale for another day. What’s important to understand now is that when elders die, they become bound to the Ever After as every other soul on earth. That is, if their mawares are intact and not spellbound into the amulet around your neck. And now, because of you, elders have that opportunity again.”

Eve’s eyes focused far off. Was that a series of rolling hills in the distance? She squinted. With arches perched on top? Or was it some eerie Ever After mirage? She breathed deep, trying to come to grips with what Lilith was saying and how it connected to her. And to Ruan.

“Do try and focus,” Lilith said. “I’m trying to tell you that you’ve done it. You’ve harnessed the energy within you and released the fragments of mawares that were trapped in your amulet. I have to admit that I’ve never been more proud of a mundane—pure spirit or no. A second later and I would not have been able to fight off those death shades.”

Eve’s chest warmed as soft waves of energy flowed through her. It felt like the rush of first love. Admiration. Respect.

Up ahead, a cobblestone path came into view, snaking though white-topped grass. Lilith guided Eve along, stepping carefully upon it. As they glided over the heavenly smooth cobblestone, dipped around its bends and hugged its curves, the mist faded away as an unexpectedly warm breeze swept over the whitescape.

A massive stone arch perched upon the closest hill pushed through the fog. It was beautiful. Unbelievably large. Angelic white. With cherubs tooting horns embossed on the sides. And coiling from the bottom of the hill, all the way to the top, walking right up to the opening of the monolithic arch, was a line up of silhouettes.

Elders.

“Where are they going” Eve asked as they wound around the bottom of the hill. She kept an eye on the peak as, one by one, the elders stepped between the arch’s massive legs, blended with the shadows beneath, and disappeared.

“These elders were ones who were previously earth-bound as ghosts. Thanks to you, they’ll now rest in peace, the dark and light of their shades forever in tranquility. When you bring elders here, you will guide them to this arch.”

Eve nodded, understanding. That’s what Lilith wanted for the elders in her charge all along.

As they passed by, setting the next hill and arch in their sights, the elders looked down upon Eve and Lilith. Some waved. A few nodded. Most stared on, waiting their turn beneath the heavenly gateway.

When they reached the base of the next hill, Eve couldn’t help but notice the white-topped grass had turned brown, splotchy, and dead in more places than it lived. Warm breezes dancing across the Ever After had turned cold. Chilling to the bone. The arch on the hill wasn’t magnificent and welcoming like the last. It was gray and cracked with dark tinged spots and black vines spidering up the sides. Gargoyles baring thick fangs hung over the edges, glaring down at the few elders waiting to pass beneath its cracked arch.

“Who . . . who are they?” Eve asked, coming to a stop at the base of the hill where the cobblestone path turned to clay and trod upward to the gothic arch.

“They are elders who lost the light of their souls . . . the light half of their shades. They must now descend to the pits of the Ever After with other souls who are as dark as they are.”

As Eve opened her mouth to question every word she’d heard, Lilith said, “There are things in the pits of the Ever After more menacing than vampires and therians, though mundanes would like to think those are the worst of the world.”