The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 3): Blood of Gold Read online

  “‘Fear not the hunter,’” Landry intoned. “I’m not sure we want that to be the message people hear. It’s been decided to take this Terrill and as many of his followers as we can find and bring them under our… protection. We want them alive, if possible.”

  “If possible?” Jeffers asked.

  “I mean that,” Landry nodded. “That isn’t some code to take them down. We need to find out what this Terrill is about. We need a sample of that blood of gold. So do everything you can to keep at least one of these new-type vampires alive. If possible, Terrill himself. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Callendar and Jeffers said.

  “We have word that they’re holed up in Bend, Oregon. You’re flying out tonight along with our crack SWAT unit. Bring them back, agents. Bring back the blood of gold.”

  #

  Now, as Callendar stood in the darkness outside the small house where Sylvie lived, he was halfway glad. He didn’t think it was up to the FBI to decide what happened to Terrill and his followers.

  No, that was up to God… and the Shadow that opposed Him.

  Chapter 7

  “I want to go home,” Laura said. Behind her back, Patty rolled her eyes with an exaggerated shake of her head.

  “We’re your family now,” Simone said. “We’re your sisters.” And, as with any sisters, there was tension and rivalry. Laura apparently didn’t remember that she’d spent several years in foster care or camped out on couches at friends’ houses. No one had even reported her missing.

  “I want to go home,” Laura repeated.

  Simone realized with a shudder that she was talking about the prison they’d just escaped from. “We can’t do that,” she said gently.

  Laura stamped her foot and left the living room. The abandoned house nestled in the thick grove of trees had been empty for a long time. There was a thick layer of dust on everything. Patty had found a battered broom in one of the closets and set about busily sweeping. There was a single bed in one of the bedrooms, and Patty had immediately declared dibs. Simone had stared at the soiled mattress dubiously and agreed. Laura didn’t seem to care. They found a few rickety chairs and tables spread through the three-bedroom house and gathered them all into the living room. But no matter how Simone tried to decorate the room with flowers and prints out of moldy books, it still felt like a prison.

  The first night, Simone had gone out foraging, ransacking storage sheds for a few pieces of furniture and some bedding she doubted the neighbors would miss. They had released their captive, Rod, from the closet that night, with the warning that he would be tracked down and hurt if he tried to escape.

  Surprisingly, he offered to help them. “I could hook up the electricity to the neighbors’; they won’t notice until they get next month’s bill, if then. With electricity, I can hook you up to the well and you’ll have running water.”

  Patty cheered up at the offer. “I’ll guard him,” she said.

  As they headed out, she said, “I’m warning you, Rod, I’ll rip your head off if you try anything. I’m feeling pretty hungry.”

  Rod didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look frightened, for some reason.

  By the next morning, they were a functioning household. Simone insisted they seal up all the windows so no light would escape. They didn’t really need to have lights on, but it seemed to comfort them somehow, as if they were living a normal life again.

  That satisfaction had lasted about two more days.

  “Laura’s right, you know,” Patty said now. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Why not? We’ve got everything we need,” Simone argued.

  “We don’t have food,” Patty said. “I keep looking at Rod like he’s a pork chop or something. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.”

  “That will be true no matter where we go,” Simone said. “At least here, we’re safe. We’ll find some animals somewhere, eat them.”

  Patty shook her head. “You always were a townie. You don’t understand these country folk. They all know each other; they all know what’s going on in the neighborhood. We won’t be hidden for long, especially if we start stealing their precious livestock.”

  “We’ll go farther afield,” Simone insisted.

  “You have a bigger problem on your hands,” Patty said. “I’m not sure I care whether I feed on a human. I never did like people much, and I like them even less now. We’re vampires, Simone. We aren’t them.”

  It’s wrong! Simone wanted to shout. But she, too, had been getting the urge to taste human blood. It only seemed wrong when she thought about it. If she just went with her emotions, she found she really didn’t care anymore, either.

  No, she thought. I won’t do it.

  It was becoming more and more obvious that she was going to have trouble restraining her “sisters.” She would be loyal to them first, no matter what. Rod seemed like a nice enough guy, but what did she really owe him? He was human, and Simone woke up every night feeling less and less like a mortal.

  A coldness had settled over her, a calculating hunger she’d never felt before. Of the three of them, she was the only one who had had a solid home life, who had ever subscribed to the moral values imbued in them by school and family. Her two sisters had never had that luxury. For them, life had always been a dog-eat-dog existence. It wasn’t much of a stretch to a vampire-eat-human existence.

  It wasn’t the fault of all humans that the Monster had imprisoned them. He’d been a monster even before he was Turned, but not everyone was like that. Still, Simone found that her anger didn’t distinguish as much between “good guys” and “bad guys” as it used to. Humans were a different species now. They were prey. Food.

  She shook her head. They hadn’t yet crossed that boundary into the forbidden. Simone sensed that once they did, they were lost. They would be forever hungry and forever damned. So far, Laura and Patty, in spite of her bravado, were too frightened to wander far from their refuge, too scared to hunt, but that wouldn’t last much longer. The hunger was building.

  Simone went into the kitchen, then down the hallway. Where was Laura? With mounting panic, she checked the three bedrooms.

  She was hurrying back to the living room to tell Patty that Laura was nowhere to be found when she heard voices coming from Rod’s closet. She opened the door. Rod was sitting cross-legged in the corner. Curled up next to him was Laura, in the same posture that Simone remembered from night after night of lying on the cold cement floor of their prison: on her side, wrapped in as small a ball as she could make of herself.

  Rod looked up. “She’s all right. She just wanted to escape for awhile.” He seemed genuinely concerned about Laura’s welfare.

  Simone didn’t answer him. She crouched over Laura and pressed her until she got to her knees. From there, she managed to get the girl to her feet. Rod started to follow them out. “Stay!” she ordered, then mumbled, “Thank you.”

  More than ever, she was determined to save this man. Rod had thought he was being kind. He hadn’t seen what Simone had seen upon opening the door. Laura’s head had been only inches away from the man’s legs, and her fangs had been extended and glistening.

  Simone had found Laura just in time.

  #

  Kelton walked out into the sunlight, never doubting. He could feel the cold, damp soul of his Maker settling into his bones. He was like a passenger in his own body, nominally in charge of his movements, but knowing that someone else was really making the decisions.

  The sunlight poured down on him, but it seemed to stop a few inches away. It wasn’t so much that he could now survive in daytime; instead, it was as if the sunlight never reached him, as if the darkness that filled him repelled all light and he was a concentrated patch of night gliding through the hours.

  He saw someone approaching. The man hesitated, looking as though he wanted to cross the street, but then got ahold of his courage, hunched his shoulders and walked quickly past. Kelton put on his goofy smile, but instead
of reassuring the stranger, it made the man grow pale, and he seemed to be holding back a shout.

  Huh, I guess I’ve lost it, Kelton thought. Well, I always did wonder why the stupid grin worked.

  #

  Feller was lost. He was FBI: he’d always been FBI. Without his job, he was nothing, nobody. He was vampire, a scavenger feeding off society. He hated himself. Every morning, he fought the temptation to open the curtains and let the sunlight burn him out of existence.

  That was the story he tried to tell himself, but he knew he was lying. In truth, he loved himself, loved being a vampire, and could care less about being an FBI agent. He went hunting every night and felt no qualms about it.

  He awoke with the fall of darkness, as he did every night thanks to the internal clock that all vampires possessed. Instantly, he knew he was being hunted. They were trying to be quiet, in their clumsy human way. They were two floors down, working their way up the stairwell of the abandoned apartment building. Feller counted the footfalls. There were six of them, all young, judging by the vigorousness of their steps; all young men, and all armed, judging by the sound of confidence in their voices.

  Feller thought about slipping away, then decided, No, I’m hungry and I’m mad, and these young men need to be taught a final lesson.

  Feller wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t left town. Everyone in Crescent City was on high alert. The entire surviving populace knew about vampires, and gangs of youth spent every night searching the shadowy corners for the creatures of darkness. The humans had the upper hand this time. They always had the upper hand when they were aware and vigilant, for they could move around by day and by night and always had superior numbers. One on one, vampires were more dangerous, but, armed with the latest weapons, modern humans would win in the end. It was simple math.

  That was why vampires had always lurked in the shadows and caught their unsuspecting prey by surprise. As a vampire hunter, Feller had been opposed to acknowledging the existence of vampires, on the grounds that it would panic the public. Now he saw clearly that it had been simple turf-protecting on his part, self-serving, like most of his motives. He hadn’t really cared about vampires. Even the best vampire hunter usually confronted only a bare handful in a lifetime. No, the world of vampires had just been his turf to consolidate and expand.

  One thing about being a vampire: you no longer harbored illusions. You saw life clearly, in all its brutal reality.

  That’s why he was surprised by his own hesitance to leave the area. The farther he moved away from here, the more unsuspecting the humans would be. This was probably the most dangerous place on Earth for vampires, for not only was the citizenry up in arms, but possibly every professional vampire hunter in the world had descended on this one small coastal city in Northern California.

  Perhaps it was the challenge. Killing the hunters, turning the tables. That took real skill.

  As a former vampire hunter, Feller knew all the tricks. So far, he had managed to avoid any confrontations with humans who actually posed a danger. He was breaking his own rules tonight of never challenging more than three opponents at a time, but he was feeling good, feeling strong. All the burns had healed.

  When Robert had opened the curtains in that death room, Feller had been caught flat-footed. He’d fled, but not before most of his skin and a lot of his flesh had burned away. He’d hidden in the rafters of the old motel until darkness had fallen, and then flopped to the floor and fled into the chaos and destruction outside. Even the other vampires had avoided him, a skeleton with red meat on it, eyes bulging from a bare skull, the bare bones of his feet slapping against the pavement.

  He’d found a human, sniffed the little old woman out from hundreds of yards away, torn open the door of her small house and fallen on her. She had died with a resigned moan. She had only been enough to begin the healing. Many more humans had died before Feller was himself again.

  As the gang of youths crept up the staircase to his floor, laughably loud to his heightened senses, he decided to remain where he was, hidden in a closet. They would check, of course. He was counting on it.

  He heard them giggling and shushing each other. It had probably been days since they’d actually seen a vampire. They weren’t really expecting to find one; they were just reliving the glory of previous nights of hunting. When one of the young men opened the closet door, his eyes weren’t even focused. They were already moving away, on to the next thing. Then his head snapped back in a double take.

  It was too late.

  Feller fired his FBI-supplied Glock twice, the silencer muffling the shots. The kid fell limply to the floor, folding almost without a sound. One of his friends called out tentatively, “Sergi?” Feller fired in the direction of the voice, heard a thud, then walked out of the closet into the middle of the room. Only one of the remaining youths had a gun, and Feller fired into his head.

  It was down to three opponents, the number he preferred to deal with.

  He was on the first kid before any of the three could move, using his claws to rip into his neck. He left his victim standing, blood spurting out into the room, not yet aware he was dead.

  One of the surviving hunters attacked Feller with a big Bowie knife. He almost caught the vampire by surprise with an overhand blow, but then the kid slipped on the blood-soaked floor and slid into Feller’s grasp. Reaching down, Feller took hold of his head and twisted it. The hunter’s neck snapped, but Feller kept twisting until his head came off. He rolled it toward the last hunter.

  The lone survivor was running, as humans always did. Feller caught him at the top of the steps, bit into his neck and drank deep. This was the real prize: the warm red blood of a still-living human. When he was done, he’d go back and feast on the dead, but nothing could match the sheer exhilaration he felt at sucking the adrenalized blood of a terrorized teenager.

  “Well done,” he heard a voice say.

  Feller dropped the dead guy and reached for his gun.

  “No need for that,” the voice admonished. Feller used his sharp night vision to scan the stairs, the hallways, the room behind him. There was nothing there. No, wait. There was a shadow, darkness where there should have been clarity. Feller could see into the darkest shadows, but he couldn’t penetrate this void.

  A huge vampire walked out of the shadow; that is, he became visible, but the darkness accompanied him. His voice was low and neutral, yet not quite masculine. It was a voice that seemed to be made of many voices.

  “What do you want?” Feller asked. He raised his Glock and considered firing. It wouldn’t kill the other vampire, but it might slow him down. Feller didn’t care that this new opponent was one of his own kind. He felt nothing toward other vampires and suspected they felt nothing toward him.

  The hulking vampire gave him a big grin, or at least appeared to be trying to. It was a rictus, a death mask, and Feller, who thought he’d seen everything, felt a chill.

  “My name is Kelton. I have been granted powers that most vampires don’t possess.”

  “Good for you,” Feller said. “So what?”

  “If you follow me, I will give you the power to walk in sunlight,” Kelton said.

  Feller lowered his gun. This was what made being a vampire dangerous: humans merely needed to uncover them, just draw back the curtains, overturn the rock, and they would win, with all the daylight hours at their command. At night, the fight was equal, but unless vampires had time to prepare for the morning, they were always going to be vulnerable.

  Even Feller, the former vampire hunter who knew all the tricks.

  “You can do that?” he asked.

  “Yes… but you must descend into a deeper darkness than ever you have known, from which there will be no return.”

  “Let’s do it,” Feller laughed. “I have no desire to return to what I was.” He holstered his gun and opened his arms.

  Moving with blinding speed, the other vampire scooped him up before he was quite ready, and Feller felt his neck
being sliced by huge fangs. As a cold lassitude swept through his blood, he had a final thought: I hope this wasn’t some sort of trick.

  In his mind, he clearly heard the words “You have been chosen.”

  Chapter 8

  Rod sat in the dark and wondered if he should try to escape. The closet was big enough for him to lie down in, but he wasn’t sleepy. He felt an unexpected pity for these poor girls, especially once he figured out who they were. Everyone in Crescent City knew about two of the girls, how they had disappeared into thin air. Most thought them dead, or taken far away. The other girl, Laura, had been such a throwaway that no one had even missed her.

  Rod wanted to help them.

  Stockholm syndrome? he wondered. He didn’t think so, but then, someone suffering from Stockholm syndrome probably wouldn’t, right?

  The door opened, but he couldn’t see who was there. It was equally dark in the hallway. It freaked him out a little, how the girls could move around in the dark as if all the lights were on. Now, they usually only turned on the lights when he was there.

  Someone slipped into the closet beside him.

  “Laura?” he whispered.

  “No,” he heard a husky voice say. “It’s Simone. I want to ask you some questions.”

  He sat up, hitting his head on the shelf above him. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the sudden lump in his throat. “Sure.”

  Ever since that first day, Rod had tried not to stare at her, but it was difficult. Simone was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, dark-haired and slender, without any guile in her face. He felt almost guilty being attracted to her, because she was like a young girl in demeanor… but she was all woman in form. Her low voice was unbelievably sexy. Her no-nonsense manner was immensely appealing, especially now that he knew what she had been through. It was her presence, more than anything else, that had kept him from trying to get away.