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To Jennifer Schober for her tremendous support over the past four years.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Rose Hilliard and the team at St. Martin’s Press for creating and supporting the Born in Chains vision!
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
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Also by Caris Roane
Praise for the Guardians of Ascension series
About the Author
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
Chained to a cavern wall, Adrien hung forward from his shackles, arms shaking. The short length of the wrought-iron loops prevented him from falling to his knees, but after hours of torture he couldn’t stand up straight and his shoulder joints were loose and screaming.
The torturers had come and gone.
Through his pain, he heard his half brothers calling to him, shouting his name, forcing him to concentrate.
He tried. But something else snagged him. The power that always hovered just at the edge of consciousness, the power of the Ancestrals that he rejected every day of his life, whispered to him, She’s here.
The vision came over him and his heart seized. He could feel the future in his bones as the images pressed in on him, of a beautiful woman with soft highlights in her light brown hair, gold earrings sparkling and dangling past her chin, a warm smile on her lips. She wore a deep burgundy velvet gown, the color of blood, trimmed with what looked like gold crystals over a bodice that revealed a deep line of cleavage. Her shoulders, arms, and back were bare. And he felt something for her, something that called to his vampire soul, something that made him strain against his manacles.
He needed to get to her, to be with her, to keep her safe.
The vision rolled.
Let’s go, she said. She extended her hand to him. He took it, then just as he felt the softness of her palm and fingers, the vision ended, dissipating like dust in the wind.
But not the sensations left behind, the need he felt to be with her, to get to her. He strained harder in his chains, hurting himself all over again.
Suddenly his stomach cramped and his body seized. He cried out in agony. He heard his brothers shouting at him but he couldn’t respond.
The vision of the woman had ignited his blood-hunger.
Getting just enough blood while chained up had been another form of torture. He and his imprisoned brothers suffered the agonies of blood-hunger, the cramps, the saliva that thickened in his mouth, the dreams during the daylight hours of piercing a vein.
If some act of fortune didn’t break in his direction soon, blood-madness would follow.
“Adrien, talk to us. Adrien.”
He recognized the voice. Lucian, his oldest half brother, the one who carried the sins-of-the-father in his soul. He’d been the one to break them out of their father’s compound, leading them into a new life of shedding years of intolerable pain and channeling all their ensuing rage into fierce fighting skills. They’d become peacekeepers in their world.
“Adrien, come back to us, brother.” Marius this time.
The pain ratcheted up, from both deep bruises and surface cuts. He’d been lashed with a whip then beaten with its stick end. He wasn’t sure which hurt worse.
“Adrien, answer us.” Lucian again.
He tried to speak, but his throat felt washed with fire. In the middle of everything, he’d shouted his pain and his rage.
Fortunately his blood-hunger began to dissipate, and he opened his eyes. Man-made dry-stone walls separated him from his two brothers, so that they were lined up on one side of the cavern like horses in stalls.
“Adrien?”
“I’m here.” His voice was barely a whisper.
But vampires had excellent hearing, so Lucian and Marius shouted their joy that he was still alive. They’d been in this Himalayan hellhole for the past year, sent here by the Council of Ancestrals, now ruled by Daniel Briggs, the monster who had chained them up personally, adding a touch of his preternatural power to the manacles so none of them could escape.
Lucian called to him again. “Adrien, repeat the vows.”
The vows. Yes, the vows had held them together all these centuries, from the time of their escape from the monster’s experiments on his young.
Adrien tried to join in. His lips moved, but he couldn’t make the sound come out.
“In times of chaos, what feeds the will?” Lucian shouted the words.
“Blood!” His brother’s voice resounded through the cavern, catching Adrien’s soul and easing his pain.
“What feeds us in the midst of destruction?” Lucian once more.
“Blood!” Marius cried.
“Throughout our lives, what serves the body?”
“Blood.”
“Blood,” Adrien whispered, trying to do his part, but a thousand whip marks all over his body still trapped his voice.
Pain. So much pain.
His turn to recover today. They’d each been put under the whip once a week, beaten and sliced up repeatedly. Sometimes the women who performed the torture brought clubs and battle chains just to mix things up.
“Adrien, do you hear me?” Lucian called out strong and loud. “Give the response. We’re waiting for you.”
Adrien blinked back the stinging sweat that dripped into one of the cuts on his cheek. His dark hair hung in damp clumps in front of him. The humid air, the torture, and his sweat created a cloud of wet stink and pain. Hanging as he was, his shoulders ached as though fire burned in each. He needed to draw himself back, but he could barely move.
“Adrien,” Lucian called out again, his voice sharp and commanding. “Give the ritual response. Now.”
“Blood,” Adrien said, the word like a soft scratch against wood, a mere hush in the dark vaulted cavern. A metallic taste filled Adrien’s mouth.
He spit on the floor and tried again. “Blood.” Still a hoarse whisper. “Blood.” Louder. “Blood.”
He repeated the word until his vocal cords decided to function again and now he shouted into the jagged stone walls.
He kept shouting until his brothers joined him. “Blood, blood, blood.”
His strength returned slowly until at last he reached back and grabbed the heavy links of black wrought iron. He drew himself upright, his cut feet bearing his weight and causing a new round of agony. But at least his arms weren’t threatening to pop out of their sockets. He hooked his elbow in the slack loop of the chain and laid his head down on his arm, the only way he could sleep.
Yes, sleep was what he needed, but just as he might have drifted off his thoughts snagged on Daniel and the Council he ruled, which had allowed him to send Adrien and his brothers to the vampire prison in the Himalayas.
Over the past two years Daniel had ripped the vampire world apart, removing authority from the five smaller local courts an
d transferring it to the weak-willed, poorly governed Council of Ancestrals. He was growing in wealth in a heinous, soulless manner, by dispossessing well-to-do vampires of their fortunes and selling off extensive mineral rights to a human named Harris Kiernan, a typical man of his species, full of greed and little else.
Adrien wanted both Kiernan and Daniel dead so that they could do no more harm against the vampire world. But mostly he wanted Daniel dead, his body burned, bones ground to dust, and every last element salted.
He nodded against the chains, his body aching head-to-toe. So help him God, yes, he’d see Daniel dead.
And with his determination shored up once more, he fell asleep.
* * *
As darkness fell, and with a lantern in hand, Lily Haven moved up the path that led to the secret cavern prison.
She walked behind one of the jailers, a female vampire of Indian origin, her skin slightly paler than that of her human counterparts. The woman flicked the black leather handle of a whip, a sign of preference, ownership, usage.
Lily couldn’t believe she was here, that any of this was happening, that vampires existed and she would soon be bound to one.
The blood-chain around Lily’s neck, the tool she’d be using to take control of a large male vampire, vibrated almost painfully.
She could feel him now, and the terrible pain he endured, the one whose blood had been forged into the metal that now hung in thin loops around her neck.
Harris Kiernan had warned her what the female guards did to the prisoners, torturing the men to the point of death, each of them once a week, something that had been going on since shortly after the prisoners’ arrival a year ago. He’d told her to prepare herself for a rough ride on every front—that her job here in India, to take charge of the vampire known as Adrien, would only be the beginning of a difficult trek.
Difficult didn’t begin to describe her journey of the last two years. It had started with an attack on her neighborhood while she’d been visiting her sister in Oregon. A vicious group of vampires had gone through her neighborhood on a rampage, killing, raping, and stealing, an event the US government still called “an unparalleled gang-related attack.” That night she’d lost what was most precious to her: a beloved husband, a daughter Jessie, just five, and her son Josh, who had been eight at the time.
She’d grieved without cessation until two months ago when she’d learned that her son was still alive. Josh, now ten, still lived, which is what had brought her here. Kiernan had held her son captive for two years, though well cared for, she’d been assured. And all Lily had to do to get him back was take charge of a powerful vampire and use him to find what was called an extinction weapon. Then Josh would be returned to her.
* * *
Lily carried a damp washcloth in her free hand, intending to hold it to her nose given the terrible conditions in the cavern-turned-prison. As she drew near the opening, she saw that the doorway was lined with intricately carved stone blocks, a sign that she had entered a secret vampire world.
The first hint of the stench inside reached her and she jerked her wrist, bringing the washcloth to her face.
The woman glanced at Lily. “Some say it smells like a garbage bin behind a restaurant, only a hundred times worse. I don’t smell it, of course. I’ve got a nose like a hyena.” Then she laughed, whipped her head around, and moved within. “Like the prisoners inside, anyone can get used to the smells.”
Lily remained for a moment near the entrance, breathing through her mouth as much she could, the washcloth pressed over the bridge of her nose. Finally she lifted the lantern high and followed, watching as dirt gave way to a floor made of stone pavers.
Crossing the threshold, she saw that the space rose to at least fifty feet in height, a typical-looking cave made of jagged dark rock, although portions of the walls appeared to have been worked with chisels at one time. Maybe there were even patterns but given the dim light, she couldn’t tell.
She hadn’t gotten more than fifteen feet when a wave of dizziness washed over her and she stopped.
The dizziness again. From the time she’d put the chain on, her senses had come alive in a way she’d never experienced before, as though she could know things if she just focused.
But this time the feeling of knowing became more and more specific until the space in front of her shifted, moving fast all around the edges. A vision emerged as the women brought one of the prisoners from his individual space, an open cell separated from other cells with walls of stacked stones. She recognized him from the dossiers she had on each vampire. He was the one called Adrien, the one she’d be taking with her.
He was naked, the state all the men were kept in, and his dark hair, not quite black, hung in lank, filthy strands almost to his shoulders.
He stared from beneath tight brows as he walked forward, a kind of soft light illuminating her vision. The chains between his manacled feet dragged against the stone, making a scraping sound she wouldn’t soon forget. Male guards stood nearby with Tasers, one of the most effective weapons against vampires. Something about the vampire metabolism made them susceptible to electricity.
Adrien was tall, six-six according to the file on him, and much paler than the resident Indian counterparts, clearly descended from European stock. Despite the length of his captivity, he was well muscled, and in this vision he didn’t have a single wound or scar on him. He was incredibly handsome, his cheekbones strong, a shallow indentation in his chin, his lips full, his brows straight. She had seen pictures of him, but she hadn’t been exactly prepared for the breadth of his shoulders or the flexing of his powerful thighs as he moved.
She was drawn to him, something she didn’t want to be feeling at all given that he was what she despised most: a vampire.
Now she sensed the time sequence. Two hours ago. He’d been tortured only two hours ago.
The vision continued as the guards threatened to use the Tasers unless Adrien did as he was told. He obeyed, backing up to the wall. The guards slipped the loose chains from each manacled wrist over hooks on the wall.
When the whipping began, Lily closed her eyes, but the vision didn’t care and showed her everything anyway, straight into her head, each strike on Adrien’s flesh, each cry from his lips, blood flowing from wound after wound until his flesh peeled away from his body in a hundred different places.
The women took turns flaying him, eyes glittering, nostrils flaring, sweat flowing from the work it took to wield the whip and make the cuts as deep as possible.
Not until Adrien passed out did the vision begin to fade.
“Hey, human, you in some kinda trance?”
Lily blinked and her eyesight returned; her sense of smell as well. Somehow in watching the vision, she’d taken the washcloth from her nose. She returned it now and only with tremendous effort kept from vomiting.
“Take me to Adrien,” she mumbled behind the terry cloth.
“You’re in luck. He’s still hanging from the obedience hooks.” The woman laughed once more. “These prisoners never learn.”
Lily wasn’t far from Adrien now. She could feel him, as though she already knew him, but the sensation rankled. Adrien, and all his kind, deserved to disappear from the face of the earth, so why should she care about his pain? He was a vampire, like the ones who had destroyed her family and her neighbors.
As she turned the corner of one of the high walls made of flat stones stacked neatly on top of one another, there Adrien was, just like in the vision, cut up and beaten. But because two hours had passed, he was well on his way to healing. Like the rest of his kind, he had a powerful ability to recover from the most severe wounds within hours.
He rested his head on the chains, but with his eyes closed, he held himself upright, feet planted over a foot apart.
She set the lantern on the floor. “Where does he go after a whipping?”
“Back to his stall, not much different from this. Smaller.”
With the damp cloth still pr
essed to her face, Lily glanced at the stone floor at his feet. He stood in a pool of dark blood, his blood, and what she assumed were layers of dried blood beneath.
She tore her gaze away and lifted her chin. The chain-based visions wanted to return, sweeping over her, but she pressed them back. She had seen enough for now.
“Leave this cave,” she said to the woman.
“What?”
“You heard me. I want to be alone with the prisoner.”
The woman opened and closed her mouth, then shrugged. She slapped her whip against her hand and muttered something about human bitches that needed to be drained dry.
When she was gone, Lily drew close to Adrien, standing only four feet away. She continued to breathe through her mouth and held the washcloth close. Even with half-healed cuts all over his body, he was magnificent, like something sculpted from marble. His brows, however, were pulled into a tight knot.
But as she stared up at him the chains hummed, and she knew a deeper truth about the vampire: He was trying to figure out not how to escape, but how to murder someone. She felt his determination as though it released in his sweat.
* * *
Adrien returned to consciousness, but he didn’t know why. He was only partially healed, and his body throbbed with pain. Usually he’d sleep for hours to complete his healing process as quickly as possible.
Yet something had awakened him, but what?
Above the usual filth of the cavern, he smelled a scent different from the vampires who usually took shifts—a human smell, one that filled him with rage.
He despised the world of humans, always taking what they wanted no matter who got hurt, or robbed, or dispossessed; the way they traded, for a few miserable dollars, the flesh of their kind into the forbidden sex-slave rings of his world, never to be seen again. And the way they illegally purchased the mineral rights of the caves Daniel Briggs stole from his fellow vampires.
And now a human was here, a woman, in the Himalayan prison.
Small sparks flew through his mind, as though part of him registered what was happening though the other part stayed sunk in denial. The muscles of his arms reacted, flexing in deep pulls then relaxing as if displaying his biceps. His abs knotted up in the same way.