Last Vamp Standing (8 page)

Chapter Seven

“Blood will spill and Savage will bring an end to vamps in Crimson Bay. But, having no part in their battle, we will be spared.”

W
ATCHER
A
RCHIVE, UPDATE

“W
AKEY, WAKEY,” A
scratchy voice taunted from somewhere above. “ ’Bout time you come ’round.”

Dante registered his surroundings with the speed and clarity of a snapshot. They were in a hole. Ten by ten with walls as high as a two-story building. Chunky groves circled the sides as if dull shovels had been used to hollow it out. The walls and floor were clay, hard but cold. And the shadow of their captor loomed over them, tall and broad, as thick and solid as the fir trees towering behind him.

He’d been here before. . . .

Arian crouched at Dante’s side, hissing through clenched teeth. Ruan checked his belt for weapons and came up disappointed. He must’ve lost them in the jump.

“Who are you?” Dante scanned the ring of the pit, searching for other movement. He caught nothing. “What do you want?”

“I’m Pike, head of the Watchers.” He spread thick, shadowed arms to the area around him, as if hundreds of his people—
Watchers
—were standing by. “And I welcome you to our forest.”

Did he really teleport to the same damned forest from last night? Something had really jacked with his trajectory . . .

“Quite a welcome,” Dante said, clenching and unclenching his fists, readying himself for hand-to-hand. “My name’s Dante. And this is my buddy, Ruan. How ’bout you drop us a rope so we can climb out and introduce ourselves properly.”

“Easy,” Ariana whispered. “There’ll be twenty more Watchers protecting his back.”

“She’s a smart one.” Pike knelt out of the shadows and leaned over the edge of the pit. His spiked white hair was nearly translucent against his baby powder white skin and flaming crimson eyes. He looked albino, but it could’ve been the contrast between his black leather garb and the paleness of the moonlight reflecting off his skin. He nudged his chin at Ariana. Dante wanted to nudge it clean off. “We’ve been waiting for you, Ariana.”

“She’s none of your concern.” Dante stepped in front of Ariana, blocking her from the daggers shooting through Pike’s eyes.

She stepped around him. “What do you want?”

“From all of you? Nothing.” He snarled into a smile. “From you? Everything.”

To hell with this.

Dante hissed so loud that the birds in the canopies over their heads scattered into the night sky. “As soon as I recharge my batteries, you’ll wish you hadn’t said that.”

He’d need longer than a few minutes to teleport again, but the twisted ringleader didn’t need to know that. At least his voices were quiet, gurgling in the back of his mind. He’d cherish a clear head when he cut Pike’s clean off.

“Oh, there’s fire in you.” Pike laughed. “I like that. But you see there’s a magic in this forest, in our little compound. I know you feel it. Mawares can be used and abused inside Black Moon, but not in here.”

Dante bit back a smug smile. His teleporting gig had zip-zero to do with mawares. Once his energy kick started, Ruan and Ariana would be out of the pit. And Dante would be out for blood.

“Let us out,” Dante growled. “You’ll die by my hand anyway, but you can at least save the lives of your precious Watchers.”

Whatever they were.

Pike cocked his head to the side, measuring Dante’s words. “If only it were that easy.”

Without another word, he stood and spun on his heel, disappearing into the dark.

Questions cycloned through Dante’s mind, mixing a bunch of shit he wanted to say with a bunch of shit he should say instead. He turned on Ariana—the elder with the answers.

What the hell was going on?
“You know that guy,” he said, watching for a shift of her eyes or an irregular flutter on her neck.

“I know of him.” She rubbed her leg, then tugged her robe down to cover the scratches that were healing there. “I told you not to get involved in all of this. I told you to leave me be.”

Yeah, like that would happen.
“This is the same forest from last night. How’d I end up here again?”

“My maware is astral-projecting.” Her voice had an air of superiority that grated against Dante’s ears. “You met with my projection in the black market, just like you did last time. When you teleported me out, you somehow got snapped back to my physical self . . . and right now, that’s in the middle of the Watchers’ compound.”

Questions flared through Dante’s mind.

“You know the Watchers? Pike?”

She nodded, pulled her braid out of the back of her robe, and let it fall over her shoulder. Absentmindedly Dante thought about the blue ribbon tied on his wrist. The ribbon that once held those chestnut strands of silk together. He resisted the urge to stroke its frayed edges.

“Well, I guess you could say I know one Watcher in particular.”

Dante didn’t like the change in her tone when she mentioned this other Watcher. Her voice went soft. She was familiar with him.
How
familiar was the question of the hour.

He’d lose an arm if he touched her again
.

Dante clamped down the impulses surging through him by chomping on the side of his tongue.

“When I astral-project,” she continued, beginning to pace around their dirt prison, her shredded, burgundy robe flaring around her, “Echo watches over me, over my physical self. He’s supposed to protect me. This time, when I left, he—he dragged me away.”

Echo.
The Watcher had betrayed her. And he’d signed his death warrant. But he wouldn’t die quickly, oh no. He’d die a slow, painful death for putting Ariana in this position. And Dante would enjoy sucking every last ounce of life from his soul as he grated Echo’s skull against the rough face of one of those fir trees.

Thorns ripped into Dante’s side as his gaze shot to her leg. Her robe was shredded from the knee down, but the wound had gone from mangled to sunset pink between the black market and this place.

Even though the wound was gone and Echo’s betrayal was said and done, both marks remained. As Dante thought about his plans for the Watcher, he realized that he and Echo were one and the same.

He was no better . . .

“What do they want with you?” Ruan asked. He charged from one edge of the pit to the other and leaped as high as he could up the wall. He barely made it halfway before skidding back to the bottom. “That Pike fellow seemed oddly excited to have you here.”

“Too excited,” Dante bit out, watching Ruan flail like a damned fish.

Ariana eyed the ring of the pit as if trying to figure her own way out. “I think they want to hold me for ransom.”

Ruan shot Dante a what-the-fuck glare that burned to the core, then took a second stab at the wall.

“Are Watchers elder hunters?” Dante kept his voice low. The more he knew about his new enemy, the better.

“No, they’re not.” She shook her head as Ruan slid down to the ground again. “That’s just it. They’re peaceful creatures. They stay in the forest outside my haven and monitor our activity. They don’t intervene. I’ve never seen them angry or violent. They’ve never done anything like this.”

“That you know about.”

“Give me some credit, would you?” She planted her hands on her hips. “They live in the forest outside my haven. I would’ve heard.”

“What value are you to them?”

“I’m not worth anything.” She held her chin high. “My Primus won’t pay for my return.”

“Then why are we here?”

She paused. For a second Dante thought she was going to clam up.

“I belong to Black Moon. I know you’ve heard of it.”

“Shit.” Ruan sprang off the wall. “You could’ve said something earlier.”

She focused on Dante, squaring her petite shoulders to him. “I think Pike wants to be granted entrance.”

“Of course he does,” Ruan said, coming around to face her. “Who wouldn’t want the type of protection your haven guarantees?”

Thinking he’d rather be anywhere by himself than in a “family” with a bunch of crazy Watchers or intruding khissmates, Dante raised his hand. Ruan smacked it down. Then he took the opportunity to petition Ariana. Like a good guppy would.

“I work at ReVamp, a vampire rehabilitation center in San Francisco,” Ruan said. “Since Savage has been tearing through havens in Crimson Bay, vamp refugees are coming to us looking for help. We can’t house them all. We need a larger haven . . . one with an enchanted barrier protecting it.”

“Black Moon’s Primus won’t allow it. Only elders are allowed inside.”

“Then you can talk to him.”

“No.”

“I’m a newly transitioned elder,” Ruan said, folding his arms over his chest. “He’ll grant me access. I’ll do it.”

“He won’t listen.” The angles of Ariana’s face shadowed over as someone walked near the edge of the pit above them. “Not to the Watchers. Not to you.”

“His stubbornness will ruin what he’s fought to build.” Dante scraped a dirt clod off the wall and crumbled it between his fingers. “If your Primus stands by and does nothing, waiting for Savage to exterminate all the vampires he can find, there won’t be any left to transition to elders anyway. Black Moon will eventually fall.”

“It can’t. That’s not possible.” Something dark flickered across Ariana’s expression. Before Dante could read it, the demonic voice in his soul resurfaced, hungry for blood.

Dig the truth from her flesh.

“Shut up,” Dante groaned, digging his fingers into his temples.

“You’ve really got to work on your anger issues.” Ariana turned her back on him and studied the top ridge of the pit.

“Not you.”

She’s holding something back. Sift the answers from her blood!

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Dante said, eyeing the great height of the wall. He couldn’t ignore the voices forever. And he knew what would happen if he tried . . .

He wasn’t about to expose the monster scratching beneath the surface of his skin. Not now. Not when Ruan and Ariana were the only potential casualties in range.

“You think I haven’t already thought of a million ways out?” Ruan said. “Even if you manage to scale the walls, you’ll have to face Pike and whatever creatures these Watchers are.”

“They’re people like you and me,” Ariana said. “Only much larger.”

She’s lying! Make her pay for her sin!

“They’re more than that.” Dante sniffed the air, trying to catch hints of therian, vamp, or mundane. They were definitely something he’d never sensed before. “Smarter, too.”

The gravelly demonic voice mixed with Ruan’s, creating a scratchy cocktail of demon and vamp that Dante couldn’t penetrate. The nonstop pounding was giving him a migraine sent straight from the devil. The voices were deep. Gurgling. Not human. Certainly not his own.

Beat the blood from—
we have to do something—
suck from their souls!—
we can come up with—

“Shit, this isn’t good.” Dante grit through chattering teeth. He couldn’t even hear what the voices were saying anymore. They were a constant spewing of demonic racket. Like Marilyn Manson on crack, full blast and permanent repeat. “Had to be now, didn’t it?”

“Dude, you all right?” Ruan’s voice squeaked through the haze plugging Dante’s ears. “Your eyes—they’re glowing gold again.”

The earth spun beneath Dante’s feet, pitching him into the wall. His entire body seized from blood to bone.

Ariana paced around him and got close. Too close. Her naturally drugging fragrance hit Dante like a claw hammer. Right to the jaw. His back teeth ground to dust. And the voices only got louder.

“If you know what’s good for you,” he forced out, peeling his eyelids apart. Red streaks blurred his vision as a wicked bout of nausea rolled through his stomach. “You’ll stay the hell away from me.”

“Dante,” she reached for him, her voice softer than it had been moments before. She was concerned . . .

There was no telling what would happen if she touched him now. Although she’d touched him in the black market and silenced his voices, only for a moment, he couldn’t take the chance that it’d go down that way again. He could be too far gone to know the difference between Ariana and a soul he wanted to feed from. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—hurt her.

With a jolt that slammed his heart against his rib cage, Dante leaped up the wall, higher than he’d ever jumped before. His nails shot from their beds, elongating to knife-like picks that he shoved into the wall.

“Holy shit,” Ruan said somewhere below.

Dante moved too fast to hear anything else. He kicked off the wall. Thrust his nails in higher. Deeper. Leaped and clawed again. And again. When he caught the top edge of the pit, he stopped, tucking his legs beneath him.

The Watchers had built Fort fucking Knox in the middle of the forest.

Two-story buildings made of wood and rock surrounded the pit, with four towers standing tall between wide-trunked trees. The center courtyard was open, about the size of an auditorium, with two flaming fire rings, benches circling each ring, and some sort of stage supported by weak wooden piers. On the other side of the stage, there looked to be another pit dug into the ground, wider than theirs with an orange haze swallowing the opening.

There had to be fifty Watchers living in the compound. It was big enough to support at least that many.

Dante ducked into the shadow of the pit as two Watchers walked from an arched opening to his left and straddled the benches in front of the nearest fire. Their mouths moved as if they were talking, but hell if Dante could hear a word over the crashing voices in his head.

Ariana had been right. They were larger than any vamp or therian he’d ever seen. Seven feet tall, give or take six inches, three hundred or so pounds, and decked chin to toe in black leather. These two gave the term
beast
new meaning.

But there were only two—Tweedle Dee and Dum.

They looked like twins, with shimmering white hair that reached mid-back. It was dreaded, tinseled with chunks of dirt, and their skin was so pale it was nearly see-through. Their eyes—or at least the eyes of the one facing his direction—were cherry red, glossy and pressing.