Sleeping With The Vampire (Immortal Vampire #2)

Chapter 10

Lucca

I leave the capital right away.

From the car I call Sunil.

“Where are you?” I ask.

I hear music and voices in the back and can barely make out his voice.

“At a club. The Tower,” he shouts.

“I think you should stay at the house,” I say. “Things are happening, they may be moving against us.”

“What?”

He can’t hear me over the music and I put down the phone, furious. How could he be partying at a time like this? It seemed foolish and irresponsible, and I worried that he was not as careful as I thought he was.

I have called Ragnar and Layrr but both their phones have been turned off. Something is happening back home. Marlon had sent me a message the previous night, saying that the latest shipment of product would be accompanied by a small army to protect it. But this is the last I’ve heard from anyone out west.

I have always kept out of politics but I can’t ignore what is happening now. This could be the end of my family and everything I have worked so hard for. But leaving Izzy behind is causing me something close to physical pain. After the night we just had, it feels wrong to abandon her in the Capital. I know now that she also feels the attraction and the connection between us and despite the turmoil that it brings her, she does not want to resist it. I am almost sure that our missions are in alignment and that her father’s killer is linked to whoever has been targeting me.

As the Grey Mountains rise before us, I feel myself calming down and my resolve steadying. In the capital I may not have felt entirely safe, but here was my turf, I was in charge. My first stop was the Eyrie, where my second-in-command, Finn, was waiting for me.

“What is going on with the signal?” I asked him, irritably. “I have been unable to get hold of anyone?”

Finn nodded slowly. “There has been a disruption of the signal. It is unclear if it is deliberate.”

“Where are my sons?”

“They went with the convoy of shipment. I sent crows with them. They reported back that there was an attempted ambush but our men fought them off. They gave chase and are in hiding somewhere around Mill Creek.”

I stood at the window and gave his words some thought. Mill Creek was a dangerous area, very inhospitable ground and not ideal for a battle.

“Do we know who they are?”

“It is unclear who they are affiliated to, but they are strong and fearless, our kind.”

“As we thought.”

Finn said slowly, “There are rumors of drugs, of incredible strength and regeneration.”

“Regeneration?” I asked, incredulous.

“These vampires must be burned or they come back to life.”

I thought of what I’d heard in the capital about tainted blood. I wondered if some of them were taking the drugged blood intentionally, to increase their strength and fighting ability.

“Ragnar says they will wait for night-time to hit them.”

“I will join them, send word to Lord Ferney that I want him and his men at the castle as soon as possible.”

I could see he didn’t like the thought of me getting involved but this was time for a show of strength.

“What do you hear of Elspeth?”

Elspeth headed the family of Een, the third partner in the Syndicate. His face was grave. “They have also been losing product shipments and people. They have reported it to the Council but nothing has been done.”

“What about the main center?” This was the main blood bank and situated outside the capital.

“According to my sources, no problems. Business is booming.”

“Tempesto,” I muttered, darkly.

“Sire, you must feed, especially if you plan to go out later.”

“Send the message to Lord Ferney, right away! We leave at sunset!”

My mobile was still not working and I couldn’t contact Izzy.

I thought about what she had told me the previous evening. It made me think about the last weeks of the Great War, when it seemed like the entire world was going up in smoke. Millions of humans had been killed and what remained of them hid in caves under the mountains, trying to keep out demons and vampires. Vampires fought against each other while growing weaker as blood supply was running out and it became more precious. Strange alliances formed between werewolves and faeries, elves and brogs, to try and ensure the survival of their species.

I did not want to return to those days of anarchy and chaos. We had worked so hard to establish this peace and my family had flourished, but it seemed our success was a threat.

In the late afternoon, Lord Ferney from the nearby Fort Ferney arrived with his army of men. Jock had been one of the men from my original army and when I arrived in the West and was proclaimed king, I awarded him some land on the far end of the valley. He was in charge of some blood outlets and also guarded the roads to the north. We sometimes had incursions from roaming tribes and these had to be cut down before they infiltrated our lands.

“Jock!” I was relieved to see my old friend with a good number of fighters.

“Lucca, good to see you,” his face was grave as we walked towards the guardhouse.

“I was glad to get your call for help,” he said. “I think we may have a problem on our hands.”

Jock told me there had been a number of refugees coming in from the north. The stories seemed to be the same, of looting and pillaging and roaming bandits setting fire to villages as well as the cities.

“But the news from Ginnerlong is really what worries me,” he said.

Ginnerlong was the main city in the north. It fell under council rule but had no local leader. “A fair number of vampires have been killed,” Jock said.

“How is that possible?”

“There was a shipment of toxic blood last month. Apparently hundreds of them of them collapsed and died.”

“Toxic blood?” I had never heard of it.

Jock’s voice dropped even lower. “It was tested. The blood contained radionuclides. High doses of radioactivity.”

“Who supplied it?” I immediately wanted to know.

“I don’t know. Not you, not from the Capital either. It may have been intercepted.”

“Why didn’t you contact me immediately?” I wanted to know.

“I’ve tried calling you but I’ve been struggling to get through. The signal is so messed up lately. I came by last week but you weren’t in. I’ve left messages!”

This was true. I had seen the messages and had not gotten back to him. The developments with Izzy had taken up so much of my time and attention, I had lost focus on other things. Before that, I had been obsessed with finding Tanata’s killer. Jock’s problems had seemed unimportant. Now, I could see that I had made a mistake. Whatever was happening in the north was key to understanding what was happening in the rest of the land.

“Who is in charge of Ginnerlong now?” I asked.

“The Council have sent someone to keep the order and have posted Guards all over to prevent more violence. But the refugees don’t like him. They fear him. He is called the Servant. His guards have dogs that are exceptionally violent and cruel. They rip people’s throats out and leave them to die on the streets.”

“He is called the Servant?”

Here it was again, mention of a person I knew only in the darkest sense.

“Do you know him?” Jock asked, seeing my concern.

“As far as I know, he is loyal to the underworld, a medium and a wizard. Not a friend of our cause.”

A man arrived with news that there had been reports of fighting near Mill Creek.

We had to get there, fast.

In the early evening as the last of the light was dying, we got into trucks and cars and drove down to find Ragnar and Layrr, who were waiting at a farm near the creek. They were armed with all kinds of weapons as well as fire sticks, to burn the bodies. Ragnar was excited, thrilled at the prospect of the looming clash but Layrr seemed troubled. I asked him why and he said the thugs who had fought back had seemed completely unprepared to fight. But despite their lack of skill and weapons, they were ferocious, with an energy that must have come from another source.

We split up in to three different groups and approached the creek from all sides. There was a clearing beside the river where there were some ruins and we thought the men were hiding here. When Ragnar’s group arrived at the ruins, however, there was nobody there. Layer’s men found nothing on their way to the same destination. I started to get a bad feeling, perhaps this was a trap.

Our men stayed up on the hill, checking the surrounding grounds for activity and that was when I saw the plume of smoke coming from far over the mountains. I called to Jock, “What do you think that is?” and pointed it out to him.

“Some kind of rocket launch?”

I immediately called to the others to evacuate and get away from Mill Creek. We tried to get out of there as fast as we could and just in time, because the next moment there was a high-pitched whistling noise as a missile plunged into the creek and exploded.

A few people were injured but not seriously and it was clear that we had been led into the creek in the hope that we would be sitting ducks and able to be wiped out by a single strike.

We withdrew to higher ground and Ragnar sent one of his men over to let us know that they had spotted some cars leaving a nearby area. They were setting out after them. Jock and his men set off to join him.

I decided to return to the castle to strategize and think over the new information Jock had given me. It seemed something had been afoot for a while and I had not been paying attention. As we returned to our cars, a convoy of sleek electric cars arrived, blocking our return.

I watched as one of the cars, several from the front stopped. A man got out, with long, sleek black hair and an unnaturally white face. I knew at once, it was the Servant.

“King Lucca!” he greeted me, like an old friend.

I suddenly realized that this was the point of the entire conflict, it was to draw me out and put me in a vulnerable position. Finn had warned against me coming here but I would not listen.

“You are, the Servant,” I said, counting the number of men he had with him.

“Indeed, that is me,” he said, with false modesty, bowing from the waist. He was smiling widely but it was not friendly.

“I have been sent to restore order to the north and, indeed, now also in the West.”

“What do you mean?”

“The scourge behind the poisoned blood of course,” he said, his voice filling with concern. “I am acting on behalf of the Council, taking control of these lands…”

Before he could say another word, I summoned my army of crows to descend onto the convoy. Birds came diving down from the sky, screeching and screaming, flapping their wings and breaking up the groups of soldiers surrounding The Servant. The sky became dark as the crows blocked out the remainder of the light and I used the cover of darkness to get away as bullets rained down on us all of a sudden.

“Get back, get back!” I shouted to my men and those of us able to, took flight, heading back to the castle as quickly as possible.

Once I was safely within the walls of the castle, I paused to take stock of the situation, feeling suddenly unwell.

“Sire?” It was Finn, coming out to meet me.

“Are Layrr and Ragnar back yet?” He shook his head.

“What about Jock?”

“No, Lord Ferney is not here. But you, my lord, you… have been inured!”

I looked down and saw that I, indeed, had been shot. I saw dark blood and the dizziness made sense.

“Arm… the walls…” I said. “Get the…men back,” I managed before falling against Finn who immediately called for help to get me up to my rooms.