Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (9 page)

Furiously whispered conversation was exchanged. “How do we know you won’t just kill us when we come out?” called a shaky female voice.

“You don’t,” Luc responded. “You have five seconds.” He didn’t give them time to consider the offer and started counting immediately. “One. Two. Three.” The rear door opened before he could count down any further.

Holding their hands up to show they were unarmed, six vampires disembarked from the van. Shaking and terrified, they huddled together
, standing shoulder to shoulder for comfort. Luc gestured for them to move around to the front of the vehicle.

Proving he really was Igor’s apprentice, Geordie was given the task of clearing the road. He moved the van to the side of the road but left the headlights on. Igor and Luc’s cars were shifted next.
With six of our number holding their hands in the air, we made a suspicious sight and I hoped no other cars would interrupt our meeting.

“What do you want from us?” the female who had called out from inside the van asked.
Although she spoke in French, none of the group looked like courtiers to me. Their clothes were too shabby and they were far less attractive than any other courtiers I’d ever seen. The female spokesperson had very short auburn hair, teeth that overlapped in the front and a prominent nose. The other five were even less appealing than she was.

“
What is your name?” Gregor asked her.

“Marie,” she said and swivelled to face him.

“Do you know where your master was taking you, Marie?” Gregor asked.

Marie shook
her head. “Something strange happened to Antony a few nights ago. When he came back from a hunt, he was a different man. He’d also captured a slave.” She nodded towards the human. He stood by the side of the road, staring vacantly at nothing. The death of his hypnotizer hadn’t snapped him out of his daze. I figured it would wear off in its own good time.

“
Your master was leading you to your doom,” Geordie said solemnly.

“What do you mean?” asked one of the male captives.

“Have you heard of the legend of the First of our kind?” Gregor asked the group. He received six nods.

“What do legends have to do with what happened to Antony?” the female asked. She lowered her hands and crossed her arms over her chest. The rest hesitated and dropped their hands as well. Standing in the light of the van, I’d been watching their shadows and none were acting independently
so far. Some shadows could keep up the pretence for a while but they always gave themselves away in the end.

“
He isn’t a legend,” Luc said and drew the group’s attention. “The First is very real and he has created an army of grey creatures.”

Incredulous, the female gaped at Luc. “
You are speaking of the monsters attacking Russia? How is this possible?”

Headlights lit up the road and we paused until the car swished past. “It is a long story,”
Gregor said, gaining their attention again. “The short version is; our Father’s blood was tainted and the taint has carried to each and every vampire ever created. Eventually, our blood transforms our shadows into sentient beings. Once this happens, they have the ability to possess us. Your master was possessed and was answering the call the First has sent out. You were being taken to his lair where you would all be turned into what our friend here calls ‘imps’.”

At
Gregor’s nod in my direction, six heads swivelled around to view me. “Who are you?” Marie asked.

“I
am Mortis,” I replied. I expected screaming, panic and attempts to flee and was surprised when the female started giggling.

“Mortis isn’t real,” she told me when she recovered herself. “She’s just a
fairy tale told to fledglings to make them obey the rules.”

Clearly, a demonstration would be required. Putting my swords back in the sheaths that crisscrossed my back, I held my hands up with the palms facing the small group. This time, the predicted screams issued forth. One of the vamps managed to slip between Geordie and me
and tried to run. I let him get fifty feet away before chasing after him.

Putting on a burst of speed, I leaped into the air. Wind blew my hair back and rushed through my ears then I landed in front of the fleeing lackey and turned to face him. Shocked that I’d managed to get
ahead of him, he skidded to a stop and landed on his backside. His feet scrambled for purchase but I didn’t give him the chance to scurry away again.

Grabbing him by the ankle, I dragged him back to the group and dropped him in their midst.

“Are you going to kill us?” Marie asked in a small, frightened voice.

“Only if anyone makes me chase them again
,” I said darkly.

“None of us are going to kill you,”
Gregor soothed them while frowning at me. “We were trying to prevent any unpossessed kin from being taken to the First’s lair.”

“W
hat are you going to do with us?” asked one of the others.

Gregor
looked momentarily dumbfounded. None of us had thought that far ahead. Privately, I’d expected the entire group to have been taken over by their shadows.
What the hell do we do with them now?
Taking them with us wasn’t an option. Not if we wanted to remain unnoticed. The larger our group became, the more attention we’d attract.

“
Maybe they should head back to the mansion,” Geordie said timidly. “Someone needs to look after the place.”

“
Are you speaking of the Court’s home?” Marie asked. “Our master took us there once, to show us what we could never be a part of.” The group looked sad, as if they had missed out on something wonderful. Once they found the catacombs and saw what kind of conditions they would have been living in, their opinion would swiftly change.

Gregor
gave them a sympathetic look but I knew how crafty he was. He was ten steps ahead of me and had some plan in mind already. “We are at war with both the Council and the First. When the war is over, we will be greatly diminished in numbers. Now is your chance to be a part of a new and far better family.”

While I liked
Gregor’s confidence that we would come out as the victors, I wasn’t sure about his idea that we’d make a big happy clan. In my limited experience, when vampires gathered in numbers, bad things happened to humans. The only exception to this that I’d seen so far was the Japanese vampire nation. They’d managed to coexist with their food for thousands of years. If they could do it, maybe we could pull it off as well.
Or maybe you will all die at the hands of the First and the humans will end up as cattle.
I heaved a silent sigh at the continued negative thinking of my subconscious.

“No one will
try to stop us from living in the Court mansion?” one of the male vamps asked. His expression was hopeful beneath the layers of grime that covered his face.

“There is no one left to stop you,” Geordie said. “They’re all on their way to the First’s lair.”

Marie exchanged glances with her friends. Each either nodded in agreement or shrugged to indicate they didn’t particularly care where they went. “We will go to the mansion and prepare it for your return.” Marie’s eyes skidded away from me as she made her promise. She took the dazed human by the arm and turned him around.

“One
more thing,” I told the group before they headed for the van. “When we return,”
if
we return
, “things are going to change with how we treat our food. I mean the humans,” I corrected myself.

“What do you mean?” Marie asked.

“I mean that we are no longer going to kill them or keep them in cages. We will have to find a way to feed without causing them misery.” I could tell from their blank expressions that they thought I was crazy but were too afraid to come right out and say it.

“As you say,” Marie said and urged their driver towards the van. Her reply was about as noncommittal as you could get. I wasn’t used to trying to order anyone around but
surely my status as Mortis had to be good for something.

As the van turned around and headed back towards France, Geordie grinned at me. “I knew we would be able to save some of our kin.”

“A remnant shall remain,” Gregor murmured, quoting from the prophecy that had been written about me. The prophet had somehow managed to get his wires crossed somewhere along the way. It seemed that I wouldn’t ultimately be responsible for wiping out our kind. Our alien father and his tainted blood would be. I was merely the instrument that would destroy the imps we would all one day become.

It took us four more nights to close in on the migrating courtiers. We were deep in Russia by then and were still heading north-east. Twice more, we set a trap for small groups of our migrating kin. Both times, all of the vamps had been either possessed or had sentient shadows that would soon possess them. Geordie had been the most affected when we’d been forced to cut the groups down. He was on a mission to save as many of us as we could. I was on a mission to stop the First from increasing the numbers of his army.

After a long night of driving, w
e stopped for the day in a reasonable sized town that had a few hotels to choose from. As usual, we picked rooms on different floors in an attempt to gain a semblance of privacy.

Closing and locking the door to our room, Luc automatically switched on the TV and found a news station. It was still a shock to see the reports on imp activity. They had
n’t just attacked one town that first night but had targeted several simultaneously. Since then, they had attacked more and more small towns.

Hu
ndreds of humans were either dead or missing. I had little doubt that those who were only missing at the moment would also soon be dead. Some would be turned into vampires and then into imps. The humans were beginning to suspect that they were no longer at the top of the food chain. Naturally, this concept was a trifle unsettling for them.

A rattled news reporter stood on the outskirts of one of the towns that had recently been raided. The army had
arrived in a convoy of trucks and had cordoned off the place. The soldier’s expressions were stoic but beneath that they were shell shocked.

Bodies had been gathered in a
long line and were covered in bright blue sheets of plastic. The brightly coloured, almost festive tarpaulins flapped in a breeze, giving us brief, unwanted, glimpses of the dead. Carrion birds had come from far and wide. Hunkered in groups, they waited for the guard’s attention to wander so they could sneak in for a quick snack.

“As you can see behind me,” the reporter said in Russian, “the death toll is
steadily rising. The army has no answers as to why this is happening. Many believe that the end times are here and that demons have risen to punish the wicked.” The camera zoomed in on the line of bodies, stopping on a shape that was far too small to belong to an adult. “I wonder what this small child did to deserve such harsh fate?” The reporter’s tone was accusing and it hit me straight in the gut.

Luc muted the TV and I was tempted to kick it thro
ugh the wall into the neighbouring room. We had to put a stop to the attacks soon because the army was doing a shitty job of it. Not a single imp had been killed or captured. So far, there had only been garbled reports from the few survivors who had managed to escape. Only one person, a teenaged girl, had managed to record any images of the imps. She’d captured a short video of one of the attacks on her mobile phone. The image of a seven foot monster dragging a kicking and screaming human off by his hair had been played over and over.

I wasn’t surprised to see
that the Russians had called in help from overseas. They’d once been bitter enemies with America but now the westerners were apparently lending a hand during this crisis. I’d seen their leader, a tall, thin blonde guy, organizing troops wearing American flags on their uniforms.

“We’ll catch up to the
courtiers soon,” Luc said with a smile that seemed hollow. “Then we will follow them and discover where the First has his lair.”

“Yeah, then he can turn us all into imps and we can join
in on the next raiding party,” I said brightly then wished I hadn’t when he winced.

Taking a seat beside
Luc on the small, lumpy couch, I took his hand. “I know the odds don’t look good that we’ll make it out of this.” He slanted me a look that said I was stating the obvious. “But something has to work in our favour. Every time I’ve been down and out, things have always worked out for me. I’m Mortis, queen of death, so I have to win.” I didn’t know if I was trying to convince Luc or myself of that.

“Are you telling me
that I should have faith, Natalie?” he asked me with a wry smile.

“Um, sure.”
Faith in what? Me? That was a laugh. Faith that my strange dark luck at getting myself out of scrapes would continue? Maybe. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t write us off before we’ve even had a shot at taking down the First and his offspring.”

Luc
studied me for a long moment then leaned over and kissed my brow. “You are right, of course. You’ve managed to get yourself out of situations that would have left any normal vampire dead or insane.” We both knew that I was many things, but ‘normal’ wasn’t one of them. I could write a book about how abnormal I was.