Blood Redemption (5 page)

Saber felt like an infant, curled up into a fetal position, staring up at flashing
colors.

Moving shapes.

Dipping objects.

They swirled around his head as some funky music played in the background. Childish
sounds.

Lullabies?

His stared wide-eyed at a soft green object: fluid, moving, twisting like the wind.
It was covered in frogs—what the heck?—and little blue dragons. Was he hallucinating?
He opened his mouth to speak, and the sound that came out was garbled and unintelligible.

Nonsense.

Random syllables.

He leaned forward and stared even closer at the object.

Ah, yes; it was a blanket. And he was somehow tangled up inside of it. He started
to wiggle and squirm in a desperate effort to get the creepy thing off of him, when
all at once, he was startled by the sound of loud, disturbing voices.

“Rafael, no!
Please
…I’m not ready.”

A high-pitched voice, the female, the one called Lorna was rushing toward him—how
was she doing it? Could she fly?—and she looked like a giant.
Great Evil Lord S
’nepres
, he had to get free from this green and blue restraint!

He started to cry.

No…to wail.

The sounds were just too much, too loud, the vibrations spinning all around him as
the woman argued with the man. He told her it had to be done, and she begged him not
to do it. He told her that the Blood would come for the unnamed one and claim him,
too, if he didn’t hurry, and she bawled like a ninny.

Saber cringed.

The one called Rafael was gone now. He had simply left the inconsolable woman kneeling
on the floor in a pile of her own grief, pleading—nice guy—and now… now she was slowly
pulling herself up and approaching—

Approaching what?

A bassinette?

Him?

Saber reached up to grasp his head, and his tiny arms flailed wildly instead. Holy
Demoness of the Night, he had no control over his body whatsoever. Shit! What was
this?

As the giant figure of the woman loomed closer and closer, he folded in on himself
in a panic. He had to get out! Get away! Stop her!

Wake up!

“Wake up!” Ramsey’s thunderous voice pierced the vapor of confusion, and Saber shot
upright on the cot.

He was lying in his cell covered in sweat, his feet loosely bound by diamond-studded
leather straps to the end of the cot.

“Bad dream, Chief?” Ramsey asked, his husky voice cutting through the haze. “You’ve
been asleep for about ten hours—didn’t think you were coming back.”

Saber’s eyes flashed to the sentinel’s, measuring the distinctive hazel orbs for signs
of truth. Ten hours? What in the world?

Last he remembered, he had been feeding on someone’s neck. He turned to regard his
captors; there were two of them present: Ramsey and Saxson Olaru. Last time, it had
been Santos, right before the duo had…drugged him.

Still gasping for air, he made a point of slowing down his breathing, and lay back
on the cot. The sentinels had drugged him, and he must have been dreaming.

As relief began to wash over him, a funny feeling prickled his spine. Wait a minute.
Had he been dreaming…or remembering? He swallowed a lump in his throat and ran a tired
hand through his matted hair. Damn, he needed another shower! The woman he had seen,
Lorna, had she been real or imaginary? Had he imagined the whole awful scene, or had
he recalled something while in a drug-induced sleep?

Impossible
, he thought. He couldn’t recall anything between Lorna and Rafael Dzuna, least of
all the night they sacrificed one of two twins to the Blood—unless…he had been there.
And how was that even possible?

He bit a hole in his tongue, as if the action could cut off the thoughts.

No
.

Absolutely not!

“What’s going on?” Ramsey asked, as if the sadistic bastard gave a crap. “You look
like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Saber stared at him blankly, trying to process all the madness converging in his mind.
He was Saber Alexiares, firstborn son of Damien Alexiares, brother to Diablo and Dane,
soldier in the house of Jaegar, descendant of the offspring of humans and dark lords.
He wasn’t anybody’s punk, and he hadn’t been raised to hide like a pitiful human from
things that went bump in the night.

Hell, he
was
the thing that went bump in the night.

And he’d be damned if he didn’t face his enemy—any enemy—head-on.

“Can you…can you check something for me?” he mumbled, hating that he was reduced to
asking Ramsey Olaru for help. But what else could he do?

The six-foot-five, muscle-bound sentinel raised his sculpted eyebrows—and wasn’t that
just a walking contradiction, a lethal-looking vampire with the sculpted features
of a print-model. Funny that. “Like what?” Ramsey asked suspiciously.

Saber exhaled slowly. No point in dragging it out. “That family—the Dzunas—was there
a blanket?”

“Excuse me?” Ramsey said.

“A blanket,” Saber repeated. “The night of the sacrifice, before their son was taken;
did the kid have a blue and green blanket?” He braced himself for the laughter and
scorn he knew was coming, but to his surprise, Ramsey’s face tightened with intensity,
and his light eyes grew dark with contemplation. “Anything else?”

Saber shook his head from side to side in disgust and tried not to virtually hiss
the words. “Frogs or dragons…whatever! Just find out about an effin’ blanket.”

The brutal warrior leaned back on his heels and dropped into a casual, indifferent
stance; whatever concern had shone in his eyes was now gone. “I’ll think about it,”
he grunted.

Saber nodded. That was all he could ask.

It wasn’t like the information would matter one way or the other.

Vanya Demir retreated once again to the private cabin toward the back of the plane.
She closed the shade over the small cabin window and reclined on the slender compartmental
bed. She was travel-weary, and her sense of time was all muddled. She had twelve more
hours of flying to go; and although it would be around noon in Colorado, it was still
around nine PM in Romania—no matter how she turned it, she was exhausted.

She fluffed the pillow, flipped it over, and fluffed it again. Then she tossed and
turned on the semi-comfortable bed in an attempt to find a better position.

The problem wasn’t really the accommodations: The house of Jadon kept an incredibly
nice private plane. It was her restless, beleaguered mind that kept her from sleeping
peacefully, the incessant nightmares that had recently begun to haunt her. Whether
sitting upright in the plane’s main cabin, or reclining in the sleeping compartment,
every time she drifted off, the dream would begin again where it last left off.

Where in the world were these strange images coming from?
Vanya wondered. By all the celestial gods and goddesses, what was going on? She hadn’t
been this plagued by night terrors in centuries. Okay, well, she had no memory of
her dreams during The Long Sleep—the term both she and her sister Princess Ciopori
used in reference to the 2,810 years they had remained in the ground, cocooned in
the earth, in a state of unconscious limbo, sleeping deep beneath the fertile soil
of Dark Moon Vale, awaiting a rescuer to awaken them.

Vanya and Ciopori were the only remaining members of a long-ago race, the two surviving
females from a time that preceded the Blood Curse. They were the royal daughters of
King Sakarias and Queen Jade, the surviving siblings of the original twins, Jadon
and Jaegar Demir, and as all of the Vampyr now knew, Jadon had secretly saved their
lives during that fateful, tumultuous time. In a desperate attempt to keep Prince
Jaegar’s bloodthirsty soldiers from sacrificing the last of the monarchy—every other
female in their homeland had already been slain—Jadon had rushed them out of the castle
in the middle of the night in secrecy. He had turned them over to a sympathetic convoy
of warriors, a covert group of mercenaries led by the powerful wizard Fabien, and
Fabien had placed the females in a deep, enchanted sleep far away in the New World,
in order to await Jadon’s return. Needless to say, Jadon never returned; but thank
the gods, Ciopori had been Marquis Silivasi’s
destiny
. It was the powerful connection between the two would-be lovers that had awakened
Ciopori’s resting soul, and Marquis had rescued Vanya in turn.

Since then, a lot had happened: Ciopori and Marquis had fallen in love, mated, and
given birth to their firstborn son, Nikolai Jadon Silivasi. And Vanya Demir, having
shared a brief romantic tryst with the ancient king, Napolean Mondragon, had decided
to return to the University in Romania in order to revive the original theology of
the people. She had begun to draft what would soon become the first written texts
of the forgotten spells, the Celestial Magick, that had been entrusted to the females
of their race so long ago, an invaluable work of restoration and legacy for the surviving
males in the house of Jadon.

Vanya sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. It was simply no use: sleeping,
that is. Her mind would not stop wandering. Perhaps, then, she should take a deeper
look at her dream…give it the attention it demanded.

Perhaps if she set pen to paper in a literal sense, she could metaphorically put the
images to rest, and her subconscious would give her a break.

Perhaps.

She had hours and hours ahead of her in flight; it was at least worth a try.

Deciding on this new course of action, Vanya rose from the bed, retrieved her journal
from her carry-on bag, turned to a blank page, and began to record the nightmare.

The dream always begins the same
.
I am wandering through the old country when I come across a cave, a place of unparalleled
darkness. Something in my soul registers danger immediately, and I am
overwhelmed with a feeling of flight. The desire to run. I don’t want to go any further
or explore; I simply wish to retreat; but something draws me forward.

The cave is eerie and damp; it is covered in moss and
stala
ctites
, and I hug my arms to my chest in response to the chill. Yet
and
still
,
I push forward.

And that’s when I see him—it—the fire-breathing dragon. His eyes are like
brilliant
rubies
at first,
rare precious stones which conceal
ancient
secrets,
reflect
an
uncanny
intelligence
back at me;
but they quickly turn to a pair of
hot coals
,
infused
with rage,
saturated with
contempt, and
full of
demonic purpose.

I step back in alarm
.
The creature is fierce, and I know that he will destroy me if I let him. Slowly,
ever so carefully, I begin to retreat. My feet are now bare, and the rocky floor is
rough against my
soles
, tearing at my flesh and causing me great distress, but I am too afraid to cry out,
les
t
the vicious beast pounce in response to my fear.

It is then that I notice the treasure.

It is a small chest
,
ornately decorated, and it rests behind the monster, almost as if he is guarding
it. Hiding it. I don’t feel as if he is protecting it—perhaps he isn’t even aware
of it—but he is certainly standing as a
n impassible
barrier to
T
he
P
eople
, preventing them from
discover
ing
it.

When I say The People, I mean the Vampyr, the descendants of my brother Jadon’s house
,
those who still retain their souls. And I cannot tell you how I know, but there is
something of
such
great value and significance in this treasure chest, something that belongs to the
house of Jadon
, something I deeply wish to return to the
king
.

The dragon levels his fiery gaze on me, and I am hypnotized by those eyes—those hateful,
dangerous, glorious eyes. He will not let me get to the treasure; he will not allow
me to return it to my people.

I don’t know what to do.

Everything in my soul screams at me to flee the beast; yet everything in my ancient
memory demands that I unlock the chest. I am torn. Conflicted. Terrified.

And that’s when the dragon opens his fearsome mouth and begins to breathe fire, scorching
me from head to toe. My thin linen
nightgown
is ablaze, and I gasp from the heat
and the pain.

And then I scream, a piteous
,
never
-
ending cry.

And then I awaken.

Vanya wiped her brow and set the journal and pen down on the bed. There. She had recorded
the dream. Perhaps, now, her subconscious would give her a moment’s peace. Wetting
her suddenly dry lips with her tongue, she couldn’t help but wonder what the omen
meant: She was a celestial princess, a female of a forgotten race, imbued with an
ancient wisdom and mystical powers. Surely the gods were trying to tell her something,
and whatever it was, it was vitally important to the people.

Frowning, she decided to try once again to get some sleep if possible. Soon, she would
be back in Dark Moon Vale with Marquis and Ciopori, yet she knew what had to be done.

She had to let Napolean know about the nightmare…right away.

In fact, the moment she landed, she needed to go to the manse.

Surely the wise king would understand the meaning behind the prophecy.