Blood Possession (21 page)

Nachari held the child in his gaze, noting the deferential posture, replaying the appropriate, acquiescent tone of his voice, and he knew that something monumental had just happened. A channel had opened, creating a bridge between Braden and the house of Jadon’s ancient traditions—an extrasensory pathway that would offer the child full access to the Vampyrs’ collective memories.

Nachari felt a sudden surge of enormous power and knew that Napolean Mondragon had somehow registered the occurrence at the same moment—taken note of the sacred gift that had been passed onto the boy.

The king would not invade their space or speak telepathically.

He would not seek information that wasn’t offered to him, but there could be no mistake: The surge of energy that had just passed through young Braden Bratianu was too powerful to go unnoticed by the heart and soul of the people—Napolean would remain linked to Braden on a highly acute spiritual pathway where he could carefully monitor the young acolyte’s progress from now on.

Whew…

Would the surprises never end?

Nachari let out a deep breath. “Very well, then. Shall we begin?”

fourteen

Gabe Lorenz was strapped to a cold metal table, his arms and legs bound with tight, unyielding rope. His throat was sore and his mouth was dry as he continued to tug against his restraints and struggled to open his eyes.

“Where am I?” he croaked as his eyes began to focus.

The last thing Gabe remembered was walking out of the twenty-four-hour, fit-for-life gym after an extremely vigorous workout. He had been on his way to the shooting range to reassess his marksmanship skills before hiring himself out as a private bodyguard to a foreign dignitary. Being one of the best hand-to-hand combat experts in his early twenties—capable of killing a man in under five seconds with his bare hands—he had decided it was time to make some serious money. He was rapidly approaching thirty, and he needed to take advantage of his declining youth while he still had some stamina.

He blinked his eyes in quick succession, forcing them to open—and stay that way—and then his heart began to flutter wildly in his chest, momentarily seizing as if it were gripped in the clutches of an iron fist. He was in a dark, underground chamber illuminated solely by tiny flames—hundreds of black candles set inside deep, hand-carved crevices in an ancient stone wall—and a dense gray fog rose from the floor, swirling all around him.

His eyes narrowed their focus, straining to see through the fog, and his breath caught in his throat.

Standing directly to his left—and bending over the table with a curious and darkly evil expression on his face—was a giant of a man with coal-black eyes and muscles so defined that they rippled when he moved. He was wearing a tight black muscle-shirt over a pair of faded blue jeans, and he had the look of a warrior about him. Power practically oozed from his pores. And confidence? As far as this bad-ass was concerned, he owned the entire freakin’ world.

Gabe grimaced. What the hell was up with the guy’s hair? It was blacker than the night, and it shimmered with evenly dispersed bloodred locks, almost like it was a…living thing…and the color came from the roots—not some kind of hair-dye.

The dude leaned forward and smiled…or grimaced. Basically, he turned his lips up and then he bowed his head in an infinitesimal gesture of acknowledgment before purring his words: “Welcome, human. I am Salvatore Nistor, and you are a temporary…necessity…in the house of Jaegar. I do hope you enjoy your stay.”

Human?

Gabe’s terror was palpable in the room—and Gabe Lorenz
never
rattled—as his adrenaline and desperation kicked into overdrive. “Shit…
shit
…oh…what the hell…oh, shit!” The dude had
fangs
extending from his mouth, and his eyes glowed reddish-orange. And it wasn’t from any contacts. “What the—”

“A vampire,” the fanged giant answered wickedly, emphasizing the “V” and rolling the “R’s” with a foreign accent for effect.

Vampire?
Whatever the hell he was, Gabe knew instinctively that the dude was a sadist. He tugged harder at his ropes, even though he knew they weren’t going to budge. He raised his head as far as he could and glanced around the rest of the room to see if there was any kind of—

“Sweet mother of God!”

He arched his back and bucked like a wild animal, fighting so hard to come off the table that his muscles tore and his wrists and ankles began to bleed as the rope cut into them. He rocked the table so hard it almost tipped over. Standing—no,
hanging
—to his right was another male just like the one bending over him: a tower of a man with black-and-red hair, only this guy’s was cut short, and he was hanging by a short length of chain, both of his wrists shackled and stretched high above his head. The chain, in turn, was anchored to the ceiling by a large iron peg, and the guy was bare-chested and drenched in blood.

His throat, wrists, and inner thighs had been slit open, and the blood was running in pools from his major arteries into a large steel bucket positioned directly beneath his bare feet. The sadist was collecting his freakin’ blood, and all around the base of the bucket, that strange, eerie fog continued to swirl, dip, and
hiss
as it spun around in a cyclone enveloping the offering.

Gabe shook his head to clear his vision. Holy…shit. There were strange objects surrounding the bucket, barely masked behind the smoke: engraved images of what appeared to be dark angels, various cut plants and herbs soaked in blood, and more black candles of every variety with mystic symbols carved into the hardened wax. In the center of the bucket of blood, there was an otherworldly fire blazing red, purple, and blue—burning not on the fuel of wood or coal—but from the very essence of the blood itself.

“Oh, hell no!” Gabe bellowed.

The vampire reached down and pinned both of Gabe’s arms, holding him still against the table. “Do not waste your energy, human,” he snarled. “You are going to need every ounce of your strength to complete the task you are about to be given.” The vampire’s strength was indefinable. In fact, he felt more like an iron tank than a man, holding Gabe to the table with effortless ease.

Gabe sucked in his breath and willed his heart rate to slow down—to maintain a steady, manageable rhythm—before he had a heart attack. What had the vampire said? He was going to be given a task?

This was good.

Very good.

If they needed him—if they planned to use him even temporarily—then that meant they weren’t going to kill him…just yet. And if the task had anything to do with using his special combat or marksman skills, then he needed to make sure his arms, legs, and mental faculties remained functioning and intact. He needed to buy some time.

Gabe swallowed hard, pushing through the fear. “What kind of task?”

His question was met with a stunning blow to the jaw.

The impact rattled his bones and broke several of his back teeth.

“You do not speak to me unless I ask you to, human!” The guy literally growled like an animal. “Ever!”

Gabe turned his head to the side, choked on the coppery taste of blood, and spit out the loose fragments of his back teeth. Still coughing, he refocused his eyes on the
thing
in front of him…remaining deathly quiet all the while.

Lesson learned.

He was no idiot.

The vampire gestured toward the hanging male, and then walked over to stand next to him. “This,” he practically sang in a lyrical voice that played over Gabe’s body as much as it vibrated in his eardrums, “is Victor Dirga, the firstborn son of Octavio. He is honored among our kind, yet he will soon be sacrificed to our Dark Lord Ademordna. Do not overestimate your value, human.”

When he spoke the name of the dark lord, the room went momentarily black.

A harsh, icy wind swept over Gabe’s body, and his windpipe sealed shut, making it impossible to breathe, even as he felt the overwhelming urge to retch. He was filled with a sense of foreboding like nothing he had ever felt before; it was like being mired in a dark, emotional sludge, sinking in a malevolent quicksand made of mankind’s most base emotions. Death, Murder, Addiction, and Insanity all took residence in his body at once. Guilt, Fear, Shame, and Hatred pooled in his gut like a living, breathing entity. And he felt the full force of each emotion as if he were living the experience right then and there—on the table—a sensation beyond illness, a pain beyond torture…his mind, body, and soul in an advanced stage of spiritual cancer.

The vampire fell to one knee, bowed his head, and the suffocating energy lifted…although it didn’t leave. Rather, it just seemed to hover, both along the ceiling and at the base of the bucket of blood.

Gabe sucked in the air that had returned to him as the vampire stood back up and ran a sharp fingernail—no, a claw—along the hanging male’s chest. “Our lord will require one such sacrifice every day in order to answer our summons, so time is of the essence, is it not, Gabe?”

Gabe didn’t dare answer. His stomach turned over in waves of nausea, and he felt like he might just black out, but he struggled to focus…and listen.

And then, the earth spun upside down on its axis, and all that was ever right in the world ceased to exist: The vampire drew back a powerful arm and plunged it through the hanging man’s chest; he gripped the guy’s heart in an iron fist and retracted it while it was still beating. The dying man’s eyes fluttered open, and his mouth hung agape in a silent shout of terror.

Gabe screamed so loud his eardrums hurt as the vampire dropped the heart into the bucket, tenderly cupped the male by the face—almost as if he were going to kiss him—and then twisted his head off his body like it was nothing more than a dandelion on the end of a stem. “Forgive me, Victor,” the vampire muttered, dropping the head into the basin. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain.” He held both arms up to the sky, his head rolled back on his shoulders, and he began to chant over and over in a strange, primordial language.

And then, the vampire’s hair began to flap behind him as if he were standing in a great gust of wind, and his words played like an orchestra, echoing from every direction at once in a macabre chorus of entreaty. The vampire cried out—he moaned like he was in horrific pain—and then just as quickly, he turned and headed toward Gabe and the table.

Gabe prayed for death.

The thing that approached him now was beyond
not-human—
beyond just a vampire
—
he was evil incarnate. His skin glowed from a deep, crimson halo, and a terrible fire danced about his hands and fingers. His face was contorted in an ecstasy so divinely evil that it almost appeared…beautiful…hypnotic. His eyes met Gabe’s, and he seemed to pull Gabe’s very soul from his chest, effortlessly dominating his will. “You will go to the address you are given. You will seek out the dark-haired lady who stands with Napolean Mondragon, and you will try to kill her.” He swept his hand slowly over Gabe’s belly—first, the back of his fingers, and then the front. Gabe’s body convulsed, and the vampire moaned. “When Napolean Mondragon kills you for threatening his woman—and kill you, he will—you will release your soul…into his.”

Gabe frowned, as confused as he was terrified…

Release his soul?

How could he release his soul?

When a look of abject terror swept over the vampire’s face—even as he hovered above Gabe in a threatening manner—Gabe knew his goose was truly and permanently cooked: If this evil being feared something—anything—then whatever it was had to be unspeakable.

Gabe held his breath as the vampire slowly backed away from the table, retreated to the back of the room, and stood, terrified, his body flushed as flat as possible against the cold, stone wall.

Gabe clenched his eyes shut.

He couldn’t take any more.

He wished the vampire would just kill him and get it over with.

“Come forth, my lord,” the vampire shouted, his voice as thick with fear as reverence. “Accept this offering of blood…and come forth to do my bidding.”

There was a great explosion, like a bomb going off, and Gabe’s eyes flew back open. Not seeing was even worse than seeing…

Or so he thought.

“Blessed Mother, help me…” he whispered.

The bucket was suddenly engulfed in intensely hot flames that flickered wildly before merging with the dark fog, consuming each of the elements that had been offered to it—and then the conglomeration began to take form.

“Hail Mary full of grace…” Gabe began to pray.

The form of a snake?

“The Lord is with thee…”

A reptile—no, a worm—began to emerge.

“Blessed art thou amongst women; and blessed is the fruit of thy womb—”

A hideous creature with horns and claws and hooves for feet shimmered slowly into view.

Gabe struggled to remember the prayer but forgot his place. “Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.”

The face morphed in and out, taking on the visage of several other people—women, then children; boys, then young men—it was like the worm was consuming the blood of a dozen souls and becoming each as it absorbed their essence…growing more and more powerful with each offering.

And then the thing threw back its morphing head and roared like an angry lion, shaking the room in its wake.

Gabe heard a wretched, pitiable scream—a repetitious wail like that of a rotating police siren—sounding again and again in the room like nothing he had ever heard before.

And then he realized that it was his own voice.

Terror had fully consumed him.

As the worm made its way through the air—half slithering, half flying—only to halt and hover above his body, he felt as if his heart would simply explode in his chest from the shock, and relief would come at last. The horrible siren wailed on as the dark entity narrowed, dove down, and entered his mouth, burrowing all the way into the core of his body.

Gabe hacked and convulsed, and then he simply lay there motionless, deathly still, staring up at the ceiling.