Last Vamp Standing (9 page)

As the gristle of demonic voices drummed in Dante’s ears, he leaned back on his haunches and used every tense muscle in his body to propel himself over the lip of the pit and through the air. He landed with a thud, crouched knee to earth, not two feet from the Watchers.

Tweedle Dee and Dum weren’t using their size to their advantage, gearing for battle as he expected. They’d retreated from the fire, arms extended, crimson eyes pleading. Again, their mouths moved, but their words fell silent on Dante’s buzzing ears.

He stalked forward, watching every shadow in the place.

“Release me and my friends,” Dante said, aware that a handful of other Watchers had emerged from the building behind him. He kept his feet light, his nails ready to dig someone’s heart out.

As one Watcher sneaked up behind him, Dante spun around, slicing his dagger-like nails through the air, and cut right through the thin sheath of skin covering the Watcher’s throat. The Watcher went bug-eyed, grasping at the blood trickling out the gash like he could stuff all the red ooze back in.

Dante’s inner demon rejoiced, laughing in a greedy husk. At least Dante’s ears had drained of the muck. He could hear the whooshing sounds of the forest and the gasps from Watchers circling about.

“Easy now,” a deep voice boomed from the shadows beside him. “You don’t wanna be doin’ this.”

Hungry for blood, Dante sliced through the air a second time and came up dry. The Watcher had jumped back, out of striking range. Good move, considering Dante felt like he was about to erupt.

The Watcher had dirty red hair and eyes as flat black as an abyss. One of these things was not like the other. And Dante had just found him.

It stunned him enough to grant him pause.

“Pike want a word with Ariana. That all.” His words were garbled, but Dante got the gist. “Then you go free. All you.”

“Last time I checked, you didn’t need to dump people at the bottom of a pit to talk.”

“Aye, I wonder that, too.” The red-head nodded and barked an order at a Watcher to his right. “’Bout time we got to it anyway.”

Dante scoped out the courtyard again. Within a few cold seconds, it was full of Watchers. They stood eerily still, hands at their sides, curious looks slathered across their cherubic faces. They were mostly white haired and red eyed, no trace of fangs, no therian odor. Dark, tribal tattoos on their necks peeked from beneath milky white robes. He’d never seen anything like them.

This sucker was an exception, though, and seemed to want to do business. If Dante was going to get ambushed by a bunch of albino forest rats, he wanted to take one down with him. One fat leader of the pack.

“Where’s Pike?” Dante asked as two Watchers tied a large loop around the bottom of a rope and lowered it into the pit.

“Pike no want to talk to you until biz done.”

“Who are you then?”

“Name’s Echo. But that’s not what important.”

Oh, but it was important. Dante was already tallying up the ranks of who to kill in which order. For now, Pike would have the first honor.

Ariana climbed out of the pit and unhooked her legs from the rope. The instant she laid eyes on Dante, her lips curved into the tiniest of smiles that sparked something in Dante’s chest. But her smile vanished and her cheeks paled when she set her sights on the red-headed Watcher in front of her.

“You asshole!” she yelled and charged him.

As the two Watchers sent down the rope for Ruan, a handful of others stormed Ariana. She screamed as they dragged her by her hair across the courtyard.

Letting his inner demon wail, Dante rushed to Ariana’s side. He didn’t make it.

A mass of white bodies swarmed him, toppling him over, smashing him to the ground. He couldn’t overtake them all at once. He expected fists in his face. Feet in his gut. Blood spurting from his nose, eyes, and ears. He’d expected a fight to the death.

It didn’t come.

They smothered him with their bodies, lying on top of him, covering his mouth and eyes and ears with milky white hands. They manhandled Dante’s hands behind his back. Tied his hands and his feet with thick lengths of rope. Then with a great heave, they hauled him over their heads.

Through the fog of limbs smothering his body, Dante didn’t think for one second about his own safety. It was Ariana he worried about. Her safety he was determined to secure. No matter what happened to him, he’d find a way to get her out of this mess.

As they carried him to the glowing pit on the opposite side of the stage and dropped him beside Ariana, Dante could’ve sworn her buddy, Echo, wore a look of shock.

Perhaps he didn’t have as much control as Dante gave him credit for.

Chapter Eight

A
RIANA LEANED OVER
the edge of the pit. Fire writhed at the bottom, seething and spitting flames hotter than she’d ever felt before. It was so incandescently bright, so white hot, she couldn’t look at it longer than a fraction of a second.

But she couldn’t look away either.

She was inexplicably drawn to it.

Like the last sunrise she’d witnessed before transitioning into a vampire. Her twenties hadn’t been kind to her as the transition had taken over. Eating habits had changed from salty, sugary foods to devilishly warm blood. Light sensitivity had drawn her indoors during the day.

But one morning in particular had singed into her memory.

Knowing it was the last time she’d see the sun, Ariana forced herself to stand in her front yard, beside her father’s rusted windmill, in front of her mother’s pristinely planted herb garden. She waited for the sun to rise over the ridge of purple mountains that separated her sleepy valley from the sea.

With a deep breath and a chill creeping over her heart, Ariana stared straight into the sun. Its golden arch peeked above the highest peak of the Cascade mountain range. Golden rays of light burned, scorching deep within her sockets, yet she couldn’t look away.

She was about to become a slave to the dark. She owed herself one last look at the light. Although transitioning into an elder had granted Ariana the ability to day-walk, nothing could match that last glimpse at the sun before she spent a couple hundred years in the dark.

The fire in the pit before her now was no less cornea piercing than that memorable sunrise. No less blazing.

But something in Ariana’s gut told her that those flames weren’t kindred to the sun, pure and brilliant in their magnitude. They were the fires of hell, raw with despair, lashing at the sides of the pit with fiery whips.

“If you weren’t so stubborn,” Ariana said as they dropped Dante to his knees beside her, “you’d be with Ruan on the streets of Crimson Bay by now. Aren’t you happy you decided to teleport out of the black market and
help
me?”

Both Dante’s wrists and ankles had been tied behind his back. She’d never known Watchers to be so violent.

“If I’d left you in the black market, I wouldn’t get to hear you thank me later.” The swirling gold in Dante’s eyes chilled to soft amber and the steel of his jaw pulsed with agitation.

“Thank you?” She tugged at the ropes they’d tied around her wrists. “What do you suppose I’m going to thank you for?”

“Saving your life.”

“Oh yes, this,” she hissed, glaring into the pit, “is spectacular. Thank you.”

Ariana slid her gaze away from Dante as two Watchers dragged Ruan to their side and dropped him in the dirt. His blonde hair flopped in front of his face, but it couldn’t hide the red smudges on his cheekbones. He looked like he’d been hauled face first through the clay. He probably had.

The Watchers circled them, hungry with curiosity. Other than Echo, Ariana had never met a Watcher before. She’d only heard their legends and whispered their tales to others. She’d first met Echo in the forest after one of her astral-projections, and although she’d insisted he never return, he did, time after time, and eventually became a friend. Someone she could trust.

Guess that trust was garbage now, wasn’t it?

The two Watchers in front of them now were mirror images of one another. Stark white hair. Porcelain smooth skin. Expressionless stares on their faces. Echo was so different from the rest, with thick, scarlet locks and flat black eyes. He was just as large as his Watcher brothers and sisters, but his looks were undeniably unique.

What made him different? And where had he disappeared to, anyway?

Ruan whispered something to Dante. The emerald-eyed vamp scanned the buildings, the trees, their captors. He looked like he’d calculated a handful of escape possibilities with the speed and expertise of Houdini. Ariana got the impression Ruan had maneuvered out of a situation like this a time or two before.

“How much longer until you can jump us out?” Ruan said, louder, when Dante didn’t answer.

Pike said mawares couldn’t be used near their compound. Confusion prickled the hairs on the back of Ariana’s neck. Although she didn’t pick up the elder vibe from Dante, the fact that he could still teleport made her wonder exactly what kind of magic he wielded.

“Ten,” Dante said, sitting back on his haunches. He jerked at the ropes looped around his ankles. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

“You won’t be here that long.”

Their gazes whipped around, setting upon Pike. He kneeled before Ariana and cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. “You must know it’s nothing personal,” he said. “Echo talked about you all the time. About your smarts, your wit . . . your timeless beauty.” He brushed the back of his hand down her cheek. “You are appealing in a pure, natural kind of way, aren’t you?” His hand smelled musky, in a fresh and innocent, burn your nose hairs kind of way.

As Ariana jerked away from his touch, Dante lunged forward, snapping at Pike’s arm. Pike recoiled, lifting his hand to smack Dante with the back swing of it. Pausing inches from Dante’s cheek, Pike eyed him with morbid interest.

“You almost got me there, vamp. My reactions haven’t dulled as easily as the rest.” He licked his lips. Even his tongue was chalky white. “But I won’t strike you. I won’t give in to the violence surging through me. As long as my temper is bottled within me, my place is cemented in the Ever After. Spilling your blood is not worth falling from that throne. You, on the other hand,” he said to Ariana, “are worth much more than any of us realize. You are the key to our inner peace.”

“Hey, Watcher,” Dante spat, drawing attention to himself. “Touch Ariana again, and you’ll
watch
me scalp off every inch of your skin that touched hers.”

Dante’s voice had deepened to such a harsh rasp, Ariana barely recognized the voice to be his. Pure, unadulterated hatred seeped through Dante’s skin, saturating the air between them. It was menace. Lingering heavy on her skin, her tongue. Fuzzing her ears.

But it wasn’t the brashness of his emotions that startled her. It was the warming of her chest. That odd stirring in her stomach that appreciated his protectiveness. No one had ever stood up for her before, and in the short time she’d known Dante, he’d done it three times—in the black market when Juan Carlos had smacked her, when he’d pushed her into the room in the black market and dashed into the hall to lead the therians away, and now, with the Watchers.

When had she become such a damsel? It wasn’t like her. Not in the slightest.

“Violence will earn you a place in hell amongst the truly evil, the wretched, and the weak willed,” Pike said calmly. “I refuse to rise to your challenge and take my place among them.”

“I’ve had enough of the games. We’ve waited too long for this moment to push it off a second longer.” A pasty-skinned Watcher stepped forward, dressed in a white robe that licked the ground like ocean foam. “We refuse to live our life a prisoner to our sin nature. To be free from the temptations plaguing us, we must find the one who wields the power of our ancestors. That vamp must be a member of Black Moon and have the ancient marking branded into their flesh. We have been informed of the mark on your forearm, my dear.”

Damn Echo for betraying her darkest secrets. He was the only one she’d ever shown the odd marking to. The only one she thought she could trust. She knew two things for certain: she wasn’t a Watcher, clearly not the one they’d been waiting for, and she was going to kick Echo’s ass into the next century when he came out of hiding.

The Watcher towered over Ariana, looking down her nose like she ruled the very air Ariana breathed.

“I don’t know what mark you’re talking about,” Ariana lied, willing her heart to stop leapfrogging between her stomach and her throat.

“You may lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to us.” The woman smiled, her marble-like lips cracking from the sudden movement.

With a jolt, the woman yanked back the sleeve of Ariana’s robe, exposing the darkening marks on her arm. Tonight the dots were clearly arching into a half circle. And at the very top of the marking, pointing toward her hand, was a straight line of dots that looked like they formed a sword . . . with a few dots branching off each side to make a hilt.

It almost looked like the symbol of Black Moon—a crescent moon with a sword stabbing clear through it—but how would that be possible? How would the symbol of their haven show up on her skin? And why would each projection she made into Crimson Bay be darkening the mark?

“Your friendship with Echo taught us many things about you and the haven you call home,” the female whispered. “You are the one.”

Damn it, how could she have trusted Echo? How could she not have had a single inkling that he’d planned to serve her up on a platter?

Chubby hands slid beneath Ariana’s arms and hoisted her to her feet. She fought against the Watcher’s hold, feeling like a Chihuahua fighting back against a pitbull. She was all bark and no bite, going nowhere in the struggle to be free. The more she fought, the more easily the Watcher handled her.

As the Watchers standing around the fire began to mumble an eerie chant, Ariana was pushed from behind, right into the rock lip of the flaming pit. What were they going to do? Sacrifice her?

“No!” she cried. Fear turning her bones to stone, Ariana pulled out all the stops. “You’re kind people. You don’t believe in violence. Black Moon has kept you hidden from the rest of the world for years. Pike and our Primus had a deal!”

Although she had no clue what that deal was, she’d always known one existed. It only made sense. Why else would her Primus allow the Watchers to live within Black Moon’s range?

Flames jumped up the walls of the pit, threatening to overwhelm the edge and spill over the side. Watchers closed in from all around her, a swell of white pushing through the dark.

“Silence the voices within,” they chanted in one slithery voice. “It is time to end our suffering.”

“Oh, God.” Her blood ran ice cold.

This was it. But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

Ariana pushed back against the horde of cherubic-faced Watchers, skidding her feet in the dirt. Her heart hammered against her chest and her whole body shuddered as she fought to get through them. She was a pinball bounced from the chest of one massive Watcher to the other.

She couldn’t die. There was still so much she had to do with her life.

“It is time to end our suffering . . .” Their moan echoed through Ariana’s ears, over and over again, pounding in time with her heart. She was trapped. A mouse in a snake cage, wondering which hungry predator was going to strike first. Which Watcher would be the one to push her over the edge of the pit?

A Watcher stepped forward, snatched Ariana by the wrist, and dragged her closer to the fire. Ariana tugged against the pasty woman, skidding her feet in the dirt, but her strength was no match. A thunderous roar sounded from behind her as the woman held Ariana’s hand over the pit, palm down.

The fire was scorching hot, flooding Ariana’s forearm with waves of unbearable heat. A crimson flare shot from the heart of the pit and rammed through her fingers, ricocheting up her arm with the speed and intensity of a lightning bolt. Writhing to escape the torturous heat, Ariana thrashed against the woman’s hold, pleading with the other Watchers for help.

Where was Echo? Was he among them? Watching from afar? Why wasn’t he stopping this?

As her hand went numb and an electric current buzzed up her arm, Ariana twisted her hand and caught a glimpse of the mark on her forearm. She gasped, frozen in disbelief. The fire hadn’t burned or charred her skin at all! The mark on her skin was deeply grooved and black—branded—with raised red marks outlining it.

On her forearm, raised and warm, was a large half-moon reaching nearly elbow to wrist. A sword speared through the center, its tip touching the heart of her elbow. It was clearly the symbol of Black Moon; there was no guessing now.

What had they done?

Movement sparked out of the corner of Ariana’s eye, arresting the blood in her veins.

It was Dante. He steamrolled through the crowd of Watchers, shoving them to the ground as he passed. Shredded pieces of rope hung from his wrists and dragged from his ankles. His irises swirled gold like glowing molten lava. His jaw was set hard, his face shadowed by impenetrable rage.

Watchers swarmed Dante as the woman continued to hold Ariana’s palm over the fire. They consumed him in a sea of white until Ariana thought for sure that was the last time she’d ever see him again. Despair rooted in her stomach.

A guttural cry, too demonic to come from Dante’s lips, sliced through the night as a blast of icy air whipped around the courtyard. The Watchers that had circled Dante flew through the air as if he was the center of the sub-zero vortex, and landed on the other side of the pit. Right on their white-robed asses.

Ariana couldn’t describe what happened next as anything but surreal.

The glacial blast of air circled the courtyard faster and faster, taking on a solid, gray form. It was a tornado that grew in breadth instead of height. A cyclone that breathed air instead of water. It thrashed around and around, skimming against the walls of the compound, swiping Watchers off their feet. The woman holding Ariana’s hand lost her footing, slammed into the ground, and was dragged away.

Holding her arm against her chest, Ariana instinctively looked for a place to hide. But as the wind gusted harder, lifting Watchers off their feet and pinning them to the walls, Ariana realized it wasn’t affecting her—it was swirling
around
her. And it wasn’t affecting Dante either. He was kneeling in the dead center of the vortex, head hung low, breathing hard.

Was he doing this?

The air around Ariana seemed peaceful. Oddly serene.

And just like that, like a light switch flipped, Dante lifted his gaze to hers. The icy wind exhausted its strength and disappeared. Like it was never there at all.