Read The Vampire's Reflection Online

Authors: Shayne Leighton

Tags: #Vampires

The Vampire's Reflection (26 page)

Valek glanced over at Sarah, whose watery, horrified eyes were fixated on the floor below.

“They are going to kill us,” she squeaked.

“Well, this was
your
plan. At any rate, they shouldn’t. I’m their liege. I wonder if they’ll recognize that and obey me.”

“Valek, they’re
animals
. Just like you said.”

“Trust me. I have a feeling this will work.” Valek swung down easily from the rafter, Sarah still in his arm, and set her carefully on her feet. She glowered at him.

The horses were finishing up their first hellish meal, sucking from the flesh of the Troll, when the first of them looked up and locked eyes with him. Valek could hear Sarah’s mental cringe when her gaze fell upon the mutilated body of the Troll in the hay. She hid her face in her hands as he took one commanding step toward Beta.
You are in my command now
, he thought toward the horse.
You will do as I say and follow my order
.

Beta slowly lowered her head, as did the male horse. Valek smiled, satisfied.

Sarah tugged hard on the sleeve of Valek’s jacket. “Excuse me. Please inform those of us less equipped what is going on.”

“I told you.” He shrugged. “Trust me.” Valek walked over to the Demon horses, which had changed considerably in appearance. Beta’s coat now seemed infinitely more lustrous, taking on its own sort of midnight glow even in the shadowed barn. Her black hair looked as glossy as the Vltava at dusk. The male horse now matched her, though he used to be an odd sort of slate color. Valek decided to name him Jiri. Both of their large eyes seemed a bit more slanted and were the same as Valek’s illuminated, glacier blue.

Valek walked over to Beta. He had more of a connection with her, for some reason. “Saddle up,” he said, beginning to lay down a blanket and pad before strapping one of the leather saddles to her back, and fastening the bridle as well.

“Done this before?” Sarah quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Once or twice.” Valek pursed his lips and tried not to smile too broadly.

Sarah started the same way on Jiri, who made a threatening grunt when she came near. Hesitating, she glanced nervously at Valek. He simply nodded at her to proceed. She did so, with Charlotte’s satchel slung across her shoulder. “Prague is the next and only Occult city to the north,” she explained.

“Good. So, it should not be too difficult. With these beasts, we’ll be to Prague in hours.”

“No. I say we make the indicated stops along the way. I have a strong feeling about it. You never know who’s watching and who knows we have this.” She indicated the note, holding it up in her fist. “We need to be safe about this. If someone is on our trail, we need to throw them off. The Parliament gave us these implicit instructions for a reason. They’re keeping us safe. We need to follow them.”

Valek frowned at her. “You’re probably right. Although, how do we know if this is from a trusted source? This could be from one of Aiden’s minions. Maybe we should take refuge in the Moravian Occult. We can ask someone there if they know anything about Abelim, or about the Parliament.”

“Listen, no one from the Moravian Occult will know—”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s where I’m from!” The look in her eyes suggested that Valek should discontinue the argument. Her gaze wavered before dropping to the floor. “I know there are no Vampires left in the Moravian Occult, because I was there the night it happened. There’s nothing left in my city except creatures like that.” She jabbed her porcelain finger to the Troll’s corpse.

Valek could hear a jumble of memories in her mind as it swirled, recollecting her not-so-distant past. A bunch of images mixed together depicted several unfamiliar faces. Vampires, he recognized. She had been friends with a few of them—perhaps…was there a romance with one? He couldn’t quite tell, for the images were flying at him so quickly.

Valek cleared his throat and averted his gaze from her. “We’re off on the trail, then,” he murmured before mounting his chosen horse. Sarah quickly followed suit and they trotted out of the barn. "Tyn Nad Vltavou it is."

The promise of dawn washed over the bruised sky, through the canopy of leaves, as though God had spilled it. Brilliant reds and pinks shimmied across the black underbelly of nighttime foliage and Valek knew this was a sight he would never take for granted. Sunrise. Perhaps nature’s most impressive phenomenon. Earth turns. Earth revolves around one shining beacon in the center of its universe. Earth revolves around one, glimmering star. There are millions of stars, Valek thought. Billions and trillions. But out of the whole universe, Earth chose this one to be its source of life—its gravity. Without it, there would be perpetual darkness. And as the Earth was married to its revolution, and night is married to day, Valek could not deny the sensational gravity that was pulling him back in the direction of home.

The hell-horses’ new hooves did not make a sound as they moved swiftly through the blanket of fresh snow in the dense forest. It was still dark under the dense trees. Though they didn’t have a plan or a path in the vegetation, Valek trusted Sarah’s intuition as she led them forward. He listened for a moment to her mind.

Fear. That was the first thing he heard. Fear and uncertainty. She was letting the fates guide them, all the while, following the Parliament’s map. Valek could hardly argue with that. After all, the fates were what led them all to victory at the Regime. And there was another piece to her thoughts—perhaps an alternative agenda, though Sarah kept that part carefully guarded. She must have guessed he was listening, so he immediately tuned out.

He recalled Francis going on about this ancient, Dark City. He’d spoken about it one night while they were both drunk on blood, about his own creator—an elder who lived in the city of eternal night. Francis had always referred to it as being somewhere both in the center and at the bottom at the same time. Distantly, Valek tried to imagine exactly what he could have meant.

Chapter Sixteen

 

In The Dark

 

 

Charlotte’s hand smacked down on the empty space beside her. The undisturbed comforter was cold and empty—more like slate and less like satin—as she sat up and assessed the all-too-quiet room. Thick, velvet drapes to the windows that overlooked the town square had been left open, letting the soft starlight in, creating silver pools on the dusty floor. She sat up in the cold bed, realizing just how void the room was. She realized she was completely alone as she sat up, eyeing very possible corner of the bedroom, clutching the wool blanket under her chin. It was cold in the room. A chill must have crept in through a crack in the window, for she could see puffs of mist form in front of her nose with each nervous breath. Quickly, she reached for her nightdress and pulled it over her head. Vacancy hollowed out her ears as she toed over to the large, glassy pane. Peering to the outside, she found the streets just as empty as the bedroom felt.

This night seemed blacker than usual, the darkness overwhelming her human vision. The town square was motionless, with all of the business doors bolted tight. There was no movement in the street, as far she could tell. It was almost…scary. She never used to view nighttime like this. It used to be easy for her. Day was the thing that had been unfamiliar and scary.

Frowning, she turned on her heel to see a very tall, baleful shadow looming suddenly near the bed. Her heart leapt as a smile spread instantly across her face. She squinted through the thick shadows as she stepped once toward it.

“Valek?” She cocked her head and hugged her arms around herself. Her heart lurched in her chest when the shadow clucked at her, its large head shaking fluidly back and forth as it finally took one step into the light. That was when she realized the figure was not at all who she thought it was.

Charlotte stopped walking when Lusian’s slanted, glacier eyes were the gaze that met hers. Immediately, in reaction to him being there, her scar at the left side of her neck began to throb under a dull ache, and she pressed her hand against it. Her throat felt drier than sand, and she struggled to get her next thought out. He must have come for a feeding.

“Th-thirsty?” She choked.

Lusian’s cocky, overconfident grin flashed across his smug face again as he stepped steadily closer to her. She froze, eyeing him carefully, his body only inches before hers. The intensity of the way he looked at her forced her gaze to the floor.

A dark chuckle resonated from behind his clenched jaw. “Not really. Though you wish I were, don’t you?” He stopped only inches before her and ran a silver claw from the hollow at the center of her collarbone down her middle, withdrawing just before he reached a dangerous place. It made Charlotte shiver. Her pulse in her throat stopped her airflow as her cheeks began to burn.

She frowned. Something wasn’t right. “Where is Valek?”

Again, Lusian’s only reply was a smug grin and a deep chortle that was so low, Charlotte questioned if she actually heard it at all.

“Won’t you tell me?” She fought to say the words as sweetly as possible in spite of her tongue going dry—in spite of her addiction that grew steadily worse with each passing moment she looked the Vampire in the face. In spite of how afraid she was of him. She held her breath, struggling to overcome her mortal limitations and break through the walls into
his
mind. The scar smoldered under her hand.
Where is Valek?

The Vampire reached to her and tucked a stray curl behind her left ear. Her stomach rolled, but not in the good way it did when Valek touched her. This was more a sick, guilty feeling. Lusian disgusted her far beyond anything before. Yet her need still lingered behind the apprehension, behind the hatred, behind the contempt. She was drawn to him, as she was to all the rest of them, perhaps because that was the predatory effect they had on all human beings—to lure them in. His sapphire eyes flashed inches away from her face and she could tell he was listening to her mind.

“Valek’s gone,” Lusian said simply and widened his stance. He crossed his thick arms across his chest, and though it was only very slight, Charlotte noticed his eyes harden as he said this.

Charlotte frowned. “Is he hunting?”

“No. He left with Sarah just minutes before you woke up.”

There was an odd sort of finite feeling to the way Lusian said this. She could tell he was being truthful. What was he talking about? She pressed her lips together as she struggled to tear through her own mind. The recollection of the night before hit her abruptly. How Valek had betrayed her, the cathedral garden and, and their conversation back inside the house.

“He is not to return?” she asked as her heart hammered against her sternum, her pulse wild in her ears. Images from the night before flashed in half-second increments like flash bulbs bursting in her mind. He left. Panic lit up her nerve endings and the room tilted. Nearly choking on her shock, she needed to sit down. The salty water that gathered in her eyes stung the bridge of her nose. She wound her fingers into tight fists at her sides as she fought the nausea away.

Lusian shrugged and turned away from her, his gaze shifting about the room. “Don’t know.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. His thoughts were heavily guarded, too, so I suppose it wasn’t something he wanted any of us to find out.” He turned his glare back on her. “I guess that includes you as well.”

“No,” she said mostly to herself. “No, he promised he would come back.”

“And I am certain he will keep his promise,” Lusian said sarcastically, with a sugary, feigned kindness.

It was becoming harder to breathe now. How could he just leave? How could he leave without her? Something glinted in the silver moonlight at the corner of her eye. She shifted her gaze to the headboard, where she saw a mess of metal chains and manacles that had been fixed there with large, silvery bolts, hanging there, like they were waiting for her. The same bindings from Valek’s office. The same ones he’d used to lock up that mortal woman for his bizarre experiment. It looked as if they had been torn from the gurney to be fastened there to the bed. Her heart plunged from her throat to her bowels as she looked back at Lusian’s disgusting grin again. Something instinctive told her she needed to run.

Charlotte raced out of the bedroom, her bare footsteps thumping down the long, upstairs hallway. The morning light coming through the windows created a harsh, white glow that burned her eyes with the suddenness of it. She plummeted down the staircase and into the study where she found all of the familiar, bloodless faces that had become like fixtures in the house. Every familiar set of blue eyes, every extreme jaw line and set of claws and shiny incisors. All of them—except for one.

Dusana, Jorge, and Sasha gazed back at her from different areas of the room, though she didn’t lock eyes long enough with any of them to register what kind of emotion was playing on their faces. The room started to spin with the heavy feeling of Valek’s absence.
Where had he gone
, she asked herself again. She tore through her memory for a clue—an answer that he might have given her along the days leading up to this. The image of him and Sarah hurrying through the town square just the night before. The image of Valek’s burning eyes as he’d watched her grapple with the pain just a few nights earlier. As he’d watched Lusian….

She spun to face the threshold where Lusian stood, his massive form blockading it. “You know something! He told you where he was going! I know he did!” she hollered. “Tell me!”

Lusian rolled his eyes. “No, stupid girl.”

The rest of them remained silent.

Charlotte’s gaze dashed about the room, searching for him again in a frenzied panic as though he might somehow magically appear. He didn’t. Valek
had
to be coming back, she thought. He would never abandon her. Not in a million years. Not with
these
predators. Never.

She shoved past Lusian and ran around the stairs, through the kitchen, and into Valek’s white, sterile office. Empty. Valek’s papers were a mess around his desk—the way he’d left them before they had been captured by the Regime months ago. He’d never gone back to his work. Charlotte shuddered when she thought about what was left over in the freezer. The woman.

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