She pulled the hood over her head before leaving the house and walking toward the blood bank. It was the only other place she could think of that Pallas would be. There were over a dozen men and women in white standing on the steps of the large chalet renovated into the blood bank after the war. She’d placed one foot on the first step when two men moved to intercept her.
“No one will be entering today,” one of them informed her briskly.
“I’m only looking for my friend,” she replied. “She works here.”
“No one is entering today.”
Tempest glanced at the closed front doors, but she removed her foot from the step. If Pallas wasn’t in there, then where was she? And if they weren’t allowed to enter the blood bank, and these troops had captured all of the humans, how were they going to survive?
Uneasiness had been eating at her since these vampires had invaded her town, but now true terror began to slither through her stomach. Nausea twisted in her gut; she retreated further from the blood bank and toward the businesses. Her gaze slid over the men and women patrolling high up in the mountains again.
They were trapped here. The solitary air she’d always loved about the town now worked completely against them. It would be almost impossible for anyone to move in and out of the valley without being spotted from above. Almost impossible, she contemplated as she continued down the street. She could find a way out of here; the only problem was she didn’t know if she was brave enough to attempt it.
She passed other residents of the town as she made her way back toward the orphanage. Her step faltered when she spotted the blockade at the far end of the road. The street they had barricaded was the easiest and fastest way out of town; there were no homes beyond the barricade. There was only miles of uninhabited valley and mountains rarely traversed by the outside world.
She didn’t have to look behind the hotel to know the mountain road, the only other way out of town, would also be blocked. The mountain road was far less traveled on a normal day. It was more hazardous than the main road as it wound through steep mountain passes. In the winter, rockslides often blocked the passage until spring.
Staring at the line of men and women in the white cloaks, stretching from one mountain to another across the road, her hands clenched as she fought the urge to lift her fingers and start gnawing on her nails. It was a habit she’d battled for years, but she couldn’t quite shake it.
She was almost back to the orphanage when the door opened and a head popped out. Tempest’s shoulders slouched; she forced herself to walk calmly when she spotted Pallas standing in the doorway. She was afraid she would be tackled into the snow by someone in white if she started running. Picking up her pace, she hurried through the snow to the open door of the orphanage.
“There you are,” she breathed.
She nudged Pallas back inside before embracing her friend. Pallas was five inches shorter than she was. She was also a lot more voluptuous with breasts so ample Tempest could barely get her arms around her. Pallas hugged her back before stepping away. Pallas’s thin brown hair hung in wispy strands around her pretty, oval-shaped face.
“Where were you?” Pallas demanded.
“Looking for you, and trying to figure out what is going on.” Tempest shrugged out of her cloak as Abbott and the other children appeared in the doorway. “Why don’t you take the younger children upstairs, Nora,” she suggested.
Nora’s blue eyes darted around before she gave a brief nod and gestured for the younger boys and Agnes to go upstairs. Tempest motioned toward the living room, glancing back to make sure the children were out of earshot before following Pallas and Abbott inside. Far larger than her home, the living room of the orphanage had two couches, a love seat, and a large coffee table in the center of the room.
A piano, tucked into the corner, had remained untouched since she’d been a little girl. The one child who had known how to play it had aged out and moved on from the town years ago. She had no idea who the vampires were in the portraits lining the walls; they’d been here decades before she had.
To the left of the living room was the dining room with a table that could seat twenty vampires around it. She’d spent a fair number of nights sitting at the table, hoping to be fed, but going to bed hungry. More recently, she’d often sat at the table to play games and laugh with the children. Over the past year and a half, she’d started to believe these children would never have to experience hunger again, but now she suspected she’d been wrong.
Closing the sliding doors separating the living room from the hall, she pressed an ear to them before being satisfied the children weren’t creeping down the stairs to listen to their conversation. She turned to Abbott and Pallas and hurried to join them near the front windows.
“Do you know what is going on?” she asked Pallas.
Pallas tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “No. They knocked on our door last night and told me I had to house two of them.”
Tempest glanced at the window as a half-dozen horses trotted by, heading toward the hotel at the end of the road. “We have three staying here,” she murmured, watching as the riders dismounted and hurried inside. “They said it was on the queen’s orders.”
“That’s what they told me too, but it can’t be true.”
Pallas’s words caught her attention. “Why not?” she inquired.
Pallas stepped closer and cast her voice low. She wrung her hands nervously before her as she looked between the two of them and began to speak, “The queen was a human. I can’t see her treating humans so poorly. When I told them I worked at the blood bank, they took me there this morning to show them how things ran. All of the humans are locked within there. Some of them are hooked up to needles and containers like the ones used before the new king took power. Why would the queen bring that practice back now and turn it on the humans? She fought so relentlessly to free them from their oppression before becoming the vampire queen. She was a rebel and a blood slave herself, Tempest. None of it makes any sense to me.”
Tempest felt as if the world slowed as more horses pranced down the road. She’d heard those same things about the queen, but had all the rumors been wrong? She didn’t understand how that could be possible. Some of the stories were probably wrong, yes, but she couldn’t see all of them being wrong, and with the more compassionate treatment of humans recently, she knew they couldn’t be.
“Who is she then?” she pondered aloud.
“I don’t know, but she has a lot of followers,” Pallas replied.
Tempest studied the mountains looming over their town. “Someone has to get out of here, and get help,” she murmured.
CHAPTER 6
William spent the next two weeks moving from town to town in search of the man who had ended his life. Night was descending when he rode his horse into a small town nestled into a small cropping of mountains. In the distance, a larger mountain chain stretched high into the sky; he’d look there next if he found no hint of Kane within this town.
He tossed his reins to the stable boy who rushed up to greet him and gave him a small gold coin. “I’ll take real good care of him sir!” the boy gushed out.
“Hold on.” William dug into his money purse and pulled out another coin. “I need someone to send word back to the town of Chippman for me.”
He didn’t know if Aria and Braith were still there, but Jack would be able to get in touch with them if they weren’t. The boy’s eyes fixed on the coin. “My brother can sir.”
“Bring him to me.”
“I will.” The boy hurried away with Achilles. William stood in the doorway of the stable, staring out at the distant mountains. A shuffle of feet alerted him to the return of the two boys. The second one was an older vampire of maybe fourteen or fifteen. William handed the coin to the older boy. Both children stared at it with hungry eyes.
“You are to go to Chippman and find Jack or Aria; tell them William is well. There will be two more gold coins there for you if y
ou do.”
The older boy nodded eagerly and slipped the coin into his pocket. The promise of two gold coins would annoy Jack, an added bonus in his mind, but it would also guarantee the boy completed his mission.
“I’ll leave now, sir,” the boy said eagerly.
“Good.” William stepped into the snow floating down in lazy spirals. Walking down the street, he stopped outside of the tavern before walking up the stairs and opening the door. A few heads turned in his direction, but most remained focused on their games or conversations. He took in all of the faces, but Kane’s ugly mug wasn’t amongst the sparse crowd.
He barely glanced around the interior. He’d been in hundreds of taverns over the years; they had all blurred into the same picture in his mind. They all had dim lighting with candles placed around the tables. There was always a card or dice game going on amongst the patrons. Ale flowed freely, as did the women. A fire crackled in the large fireplace across from him; the heat of it warmed the small, smoke-filled building. Pulling his cloak off, he draped it over the back of a chair before sliding into it.
“Can I get you something?” a pretty, petite blonde asked him when she arrived at his side.
“A tankard of ale.” He threw some coins across the table toward her. “And keep them coming.”
“I sure will,” she replied as she eagerly scooped up the money and slid it into her pocket.
His fingers tapped the surface of the scarred table as he tried to control his impatience and annoyance. He’d set out knowing this could be a lengthy process, but secretly he’d expected to find Kane and settle this as quickly as possible. He’d never been one for waiting; he didn’t like being denied what he sought.
He had to keep a hold on his patience; he would only end up getting himself killed if he didn’t. It went against his nature to be so methodical and restrained about something he truly wanted. Unable to sit still any longer, he rose to his feet and walked over to a poker game in the corner.
“Can I join?” he inquired.
“Do you have coin?” a human man inquired.
William slapped some coins on the table. The man beside him slid over to the empty chair, making room for him at the table. He sat in the vacated chair and took hold of the cards dealt to him. The first hour passed in mundane conversation about the weather and the crops to be planted in the spring.
William listened and offered his advice as the game progressed before finally asking the question he asked in every town he stopped in. “Has a man, by the name of Kane, passed through here over the past five months?”
They all looked up at him before focusing on their cards again. “Never heard of him,” the human across the way told him as he tossed some more money into the growing pot in the middle of the table.
“He’s about five ten, stocky build, cropped brown hair. Has a scar that starts at his hairline; it goes to his chin before twisting up to his bottom lip.”
The human beside him stopped dealing the cards and turned toward William. His mouth pursed, a line creased the bridge of his nose. “I saw him once, about three months ago. Not here, but in a town about fifty miles north of here. He was with a group of other men. Ugly son of a bitch with a personality to match his face. I left that town before the winter set in.”
William sat up straighter in his chair; he barely managed to keep himself from crushing the cards in his hands. It was the first lead he’d stumbled across since Kane had run him through. “What was the name of this town?”
The man’s eyes narrowed as he shrewdly assessed William and the money sitting before him. “How much is it worth to you?”
William’s fangs tingled with the urge to rip the man’s throat out. Steadying his anger, William pushed a few silver coins toward the man. “That’s all you’ll get from me, and if I don’t get my answer, I’ll beat you into a bloody pulp.” The man froze in the middle of grabbing his coin. “And if I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll come back here and kill you myself.”
The man’s hand hesitated over the coins before he snatched them up and shoved them into his pocket. “The town is Chester. I’m not sure if he’s still there or not.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s still there or not, it only matters that he was there. Are you going to stick with your story?”
The man glanced nervously at his friends. His heartbeat kicked up, it beat more loudly in William’s hypersensitive ears, causing his fangs to tingle more. The foul stench of panic wafted off the human as beads of sweat broke out across his forehead. “Ye… Yes,” he stammered out.
William bit into his wrist. He moved so fast from his chair the man never had a chance to react before William jerked his head back by his hair and held his wrist over the man’s mouth. Beads of blood plopped onto his lips and chin. His lips clamped together to keep from swallowing the blood.
Bending low, William almost rested his chin on the man’s shoulder as he spoke, “Now, with the knowledge I can track you anywhere if I force my blood into you, are you going to stick with that story?”
“Hey now…” the one vampire at the table started.
“Stay out of this!” William snarled at him. The vampire’s mouth shut as he quickly settled back into the chair he’d half risen from. The eyes of the human William held slid toward him, but his head didn’t move an inch. “Are you going to stick with your story?”
“Yes,” the man squeaked.
“Good.” William released his hair before rising to his full height. He straightened his loose fitting, green flax shirt, before grabbing his cloak and swinging it over his shoulders. The men at the table stared at him with frightened eyes. They glanced nervously at each other, before sliding their chairs away from the table. “Have a good night.”
William turned and strode away from the building. He should feel bad for what he’d done to the man, to a human. It went against everything he’d been as a human. He’d become the thing he’d once hated most, an overpowering, vicious vampire.
Two years ago, he would have gladly killed himself for what he’d just done. However, two years ago he’d only cared about taking back what had been ripped away from the humans years before he was born. He’d believed all vampires were evil, they were all on the wrong side, and his side had been the only good one, the only right one.
I was so naïve and stupid. He gave a disgusted shake of his head.
The man he’d been two years ago never would have understood or condoned what he’d just done. The man he was now understood there was much more at work within this world; there was no clear right or wrong. There were many things he would become and do over the following years. Many lines he would cross he’d never believed he would, and he would gladly do it all if it meant accomplishing what he had to. No matter how badly he wanted vengeance though, he would never risk the peace they’d established since the war, and being arrested for what he’d just done could do that.
He’d intended to spend the night in this town, but it would be best to get out of here before those men regrouped and possibly reported him to some king’s men. The brother of the queen being arrested for threatening humans would be a gigantic set back he couldn’t unleash on the newfound, tenuous truce between humans and vampires.
A sliver of guilt pierced his gut, but it was drowned out by the excitement pulsating through him. This was the closest he’d come to Kane; the first real lead he’d uncovered. He couldn’t feel guilty when he was finally gaining on him.
Reclaiming his barely rested horse, he paid the stable boy for enough grain to last a couple of days. He didn’t plan to go far, only to the closest cave. Achilles could rest then, but he would need more food. He climbed into the saddle and nudged the horse out of the town at a trot.
***
William rode by the small white sign announcing, Chester pop. 604. He took in the serene streets as he progressed down the main street of the town. The log cabins lining the road were all quiet and dark, none of the curtains stirred. No one stepped outside to
stare at or greet the new arrival.
His eyebrows drew together as he surveyed the pristine, snow-covered roads. No footprints or hoofmarks marred the snow. It looked as if no one had traveled through here since the last snowfall, but that made no sense, the residents would have at least walked outside at some point.
Uneasiness churned in his gut when he pulled up in front of the stable. He tied Achilles to the post outside the building when no one came out to take the animal from him. He stood and stared, uncertain of what to make of this place. Perhaps everyone in town was like Hannah and Lucas and couldn’t be out in the daytime. However, he doubted an entire town would be afflicted with such a condition, and unless there had been fresh snow this morning, there still would have been footprints somewhere.
He glanced at Achilles, the horse stared back at him, seemingly asking the same questions rolling through him. Where was everyone and if they weren’t here then what had happened to them?
He pulled his bow from his back and an arrow from his quiver. Nocking the arrow against the bow, he climbed the steps to the tavern and pushed the bottom of the door open an inch with the toe of his boot. He turned his head and strained his ears, but he heard no movement within. The smell of cooking human food didn’t tickle his nose; he didn’t detect the more metallic odor of blood either. He glanced back at Achilles before thrusting the door the rest of the way open.
Standing in the doorway, he stared into the shadows of the empty tavern. The three overturned chairs in the middle of the room were the only sign anyone had ever been here. Cobwebs, dangling from the wooden beams above him, fluttered in the breeze flowing through the door behind him. He pushed aside a web tickling against his cheek.
Stepping forward, his boots kicked up dust that swirled around him. The small particles of it danced in the light filtering through the windows. With his eyes, ears and nose, he probed the building, but he didn’t detect any heartbeats or smell anything alive within it as he continued onward.