A Vampire's Bane Read online

  A Vampire's Bane

  Raven Steele

  Ava Mason

  Copyright © 2019 by Raven Steele

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  A Vampire’s Bane

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  Chapter 1

  Thick and muscular but lithe as a jaguar, the vampire strode down the street with the confidence of a lion. His hurried, lengthy steps echoed off the dilapidated buildings around him and rats scrambled to clear the area or faced the unfortunate squish under his unruly shoe. From where I stood, perched on the rooftop above him, I could see the glow of his silver eyes.

  He yanked open the door of the large warehouse across the street. It squealed in protest and banged against the back wall as he disappeared inside. I refrained from rolling my eyes at his unnecessary clamor; vampires were only noisy like that when they wanted to feel important.

  Briar and I were following the same vamp I’d seen at Sinsual the night I met her. I’d kept an eye on him after that night, never finding anything too interesting except that he distastefully drank from humans in a more public manner than I was comfortable with. After Silas died, the vamp had disappeared, only to reappear again nearly a week ago at the same club. This time, something about him had set off my radar like a demon rising from the grave. He was trouble and now, I was determined to find out what kind.

  A slight breath of wind, cold and invading, brushed the base of my neck. The temperature of its invisible touch was too cold for this time of night. I glanced behind me and surveyed the dark rooftops in the distance. Someone was watching us. I was as sure of it as I was the number of times Briar had adjusted her bra.

  “Why do you keep looking behind us, Sammie?” Briar whispered. “The action’s down there.”

  Her gaze dropped to the parking lot thirty feet below us. The sliver of a moon barely illuminated the large moving truck as it rumbled toward the big warehouse. We had been perched on this small spot of roof across the street for nearly two hours. The vampire had come here every day this week. Tonight, we were going to find out why.

  Briar shifted her position against the hard bricks for the tenth time, but I had barely moved. I enjoyed the stillness and the feeling of being at one with the darkness.

  “It’s nothing,” I finally answered, not wanting to worry her. The vamp led us to discover that Bodian Dynamics was back in business. We thought we had beat them back out at Evergreen swamps, but they’d returned only a few weeks later in a different location. And not just any location. The exact warehouse where Dominic and Vincent had kept the drugged-up shifters. I still hadn’t figured out how they gained ownership. One day it belonged to the Silver Claws, the next it belonged to the large research organization. “And don’t call me Sammie, Briarpatch.”

  She groaned. “That is the worst nickname ever.”

  “That’s why I say it.”

  “No, I mean, literally. It’s dumb. Why not call me Badass Briar or Briar Big Bush or—”

  I silenced her before she could say something else stupid and pointed below us. The truck had come to a stop and the back door had opened into an empty bay. Two men and one woman, vampires, waited expectantly at the edge. I expected to see workers unload boxes or crates from the back of the truck, but instead, a dozen people were rushed out, their hands bound. Briar and I glanced at each other. Moonlight captured a speckle of gold in her brown eyes.

  “Human?” She raised her eyebrows.

  I looked back at them and focused my vampire senses. Their chests rose and fell in a regular pattern, which meant they weren’t vampires. I sniffed the air, sorting out Briar’s shifter scent, and even Luke’s still clinging to her. He was hanging out with Briar every day now.

  I zeroed in on the people being held captive. A faint aroma of shifters, magic and chemicals reached me. I’d smelled the chemical scent before. The mutated creatures Briar called Hydes. It was a name I thought was ridiculous at first, but the more I witnessed their strange conversion from human-like to monster, the more I saw the similarities between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s transformation.

  “I believe they are shifters, human and a witch or two.”

  Briar cursed. I resisted the urge to scold her for her foul mouth. I had always been taught to choose my words carefully. Words were important and conveyed different messages. Cursing was reserved for extreme moments. Briar seemed to have a lot of those.

  Briar shook her head and adjusted her bra for the seventh time. “I can’t believe they are still at it. We’re going to have to do something drastic so our message is more clear. Can we burn the place down?”

  “Not yet.” She adjusted her bra again. “And quit playing with your brassiere.”

  “I can’t help it.” She tugged at it, grunting. “I put my booby knife in wrong, and it keeps poking me. And don’t say the word brassiere. It shows your age.”

  I motioned to the twin blades warming my back. “You could carry a blade like a normal person.”

  She scoffed and turned back toward the warehouse. “Nothing about that is normal.”

  I watched her for a moment, my dead heart tightening. Briar had been through so much this last year, her whole life really. She had learned the hard way that seeking revenge created jagged scars on our minds that never quite healed right. But she tried. Every day she woke up and pushed through the darkness I felt inside her. It mirrored my own. Maybe that’s why I felt a connection to her the first day we met, despite her abrasive language and uncouth behavior.

  After the prisoners below us were ushered into the warehouse, the boxes I had been expecting to see came next. Large ones stamped with Bodian Dynamic’s logo. “Let’s get closer.”

  I didn’t wait for her to respond. By the way she was tapping obsessively against the bricks with her fingers, she was just as anxious as I was to pick a fight.

  Leaping from the rooftop, I landed in a crouch on the sidewalk below. Briar joined me a second later. We darted behind another truck that had been there all night and peered around the side. Beside the dozen or so captives, there were at least six Hydes and a few vampires. I sucked in a quiet breath when I recognized one of them worked for Mateo.

  I leaned back into the truck, thinking hard. He must be working against Mateo. He had to be. Mateo couldn’t be working with Bodian. He had helped us destroy one of their facilities only weeks ago.

  “What’s the plan?” Briar turned to me.

  I looked
around the side again, a familiar hunger racing though my veins, and took off my glasses. I folded them up and placed them on the bumper of the truck. “Kill and destroy.”

  A slow smile spread up her face. “Just what I was hoping you would say.”

  Briar darted out of our hiding place first and leapt into the open bay of the building, holding a dagger she’d snatched from her boot. It wouldn’t be very effective against the vampires, but that wasn’t who she was aiming for. I was right behind her when she slashed the throat of a Hyde so deep his head lobbed to his shoulder, attached only by a small flap of skin. She kicked him to the concrete floor and leapt over the body. That got everyone’s attention.

  Almost everyone. The vampire I recognized lunged for me. I shoved him to the side, sending him flying across the room. I didn’t want to kill him just yet. There were some questions I needed answered.

  Two Hydes attacked me at once. They were strong, far stronger than a regular human, and fast, too. I swung my blade forward, but the first one dodged just as the other rammed his fist into my spine. Pain shot through my body, but, like I was taught so many years ago, I compartmentalized the heat.

  Relying more on instinct, I swung around, my blade slicing through the air so fast, I could barely track it. It met its mark, decapitating the Hyde behind me. A thrill raced through me at the sight and sound of the blood misting the air in front of me. For a split second, I moved to partake of the crimson liquid, desperate to feel it coat my throat and stomach, but the better half of me, the part I had trained and honed over the last several hundred years, held back.

  For the next few minutes, Briar and I made quick work of killing the Hydes and vampires. There was only one left—Mateo’s man. I stalked toward him as he scrambled across the floor away from me, blood smearing the floor from a wound in his leg. Briar had almost killed him, but I had stopped her just in time. Behind me, Briar was freeing the prisoners.

  “Why are you here?” I said to the vampire on the floor. His back hit a concrete wall, leaving him nowhere to run.

  He didn’t look at me. His gaze was darting to the space above me, as if expecting help. This gave me pause.

  Keeping my blade fixed in his direction, I slowly looked up and focused my senses. I could hear nothing, smell nothing, but my sixth sense … “Briar!”

  I slowly backed up toward her. She cut the ropes from the last of the prisoners, saying, “All of you get out of here.”

  “No one’s going anywhere,” a deep and familiar voice said from up above.

  “Well, shit,” Briar said.

  Above us, slowly approaching the railing, was Mateo, followed by the rest of the Sangre Nocturnas, at least three dozen of them.

  “Angel?” Briar said, sounding as confused as I felt. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Angel’s expression was unreadable as he stared down at us. Mateo’s was the same.

  I clutched the blade tightly in my hands. “What is the meaning of this, Mateo? When did you start working with Bodian Dynamics?”

  His jaw muscles bulged, and he curled his fingers around the railing. “You shouldn’t be here, Samira. You and Briar need to leave. Now.”

  “Answer me!” The sting I felt from his betrayal reached a place in my heart I thought I’d buried. This wound couldn’t surface again. I’d barely survived it the first time.

  “Samira, please,” he said, his voice softening. “You must leave. None of this concerns you.”

  “Like hell!” Briar snapped. She kicked at a nearby box. “I know first-hand how horrible these drugs are. I won’t allow you to infect these people,” she motioned to the group of people cowering near the truck, “or anyone else.”

  “Stay out of it, Briar,” Angel said, his voice a warning, but there was a look in his eye, a warmth directed in Briar’s direction.

  “You stay out of it,” she retorted. “I thought you were better than this.”

  “Enough!” I let out an exasperated sigh and met Mateo’s gaze. “We fought side by side with you, with all of you, to stop Bodian. How can you now be working with them?”

  “There are things you don’t understand. So I’ll say it again, leave now before we make you leave.”

  I sized up their numbers, their strengths and skills. One of them, a vampire on the end, stood out. The one we followed here. It took me only a second to place his dark hair and silver eyes. What was Mateo’s relationship with him? Had Mateo been working with him all along?

  Briar and I couldn’t win a battle against them. I glanced back at the fearful group of supernaturals. At least four of them were human from what I could tell. “Let us take them, at least. Whatever you’re involved with, don’t harm others, especially our own kind. That can’t be what you want.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, then stared with that fiery gaze that still burned a line of heat straight through me. “Take them, but, Samira, I warn you. Don’t get involved again. There may be consequences I can’t stop next time.”

  I didn’t acknowledge him as I ushered the group of people away from there, but Briar pointed at Angel. “You and I are going to have words later, back-stabbing asshat.”

  After grabbing my glasses, we left the warehouse, hurrying quietly away, in case anyone changed their minds. I could barely put two thoughts together from the shock at seeing Mateo there. It didn’t make sense. He had always been against harming supernaturals without cause. So what would prompt him to work with Bodian Dynamics? Money? He had plenty. And money had never been a motivator in the past.

  We reached the van a few blocks away. By the way Briar was pacing in front of it, she was still pissed. I turned to the nearest person, a shifter by the smell of it. “Who did this to you?”

  He shook his head, his eyes downcast. “I don’t know. One minute I was sitting at the bar, the next I was in the back of a truck tied up with rope. The others are all the same.”

  Briar had stopped to listen. “Where are you from?”

  “Wildemoor.”

  “That’s hundreds of miles away!” she gasped.

  “Take everyone to the bus stop and leave the keys in the visor.” I said, handing him the keys in my pocket. “Get home and make sure the others do, too.”

  He nodded and thanked us.

  I addressed the rest of them. “There’s money in the glove box. Divide it up and return home.”

  No one argued as they climbed in, many of them in shock. None of them looked harmed, which was something. As soon as they were gone, Briar cursed a string of words, half I didn’t recognize. I began to walk home. She fell in step next to me.

  “I just don’t get it,” she complained. “I thought they were on our side. Hell, we killed the smoke monster together!”

  I didn’t say anything. Pain was leaking out of the scar on my heart, making it difficult to breathe. Somehow, Mateo had found a way to betray me again. I was a fool for letting him back into my life, even as a business acquaintance and nothing more.

  “Why aren’t you more upset?” Briar said, eyeing me sideways. “The dude you like to blink at just betrayed us. Don’t you ever feel anything?”

  Anger surged through me, touching the dark places in my mind, the place where ancient rage festered and burned. I stopped and inhaled a breath, careful to calm the beast inside me. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. I can only go forward, only do what has to be done.”

  “Bullshit. March your skinny ass back there and give him a piece of your mind! What he did was so messed up and you know it!”

  I tried to block out her words, to not give in to the emotions tugging at my heart. It was dangerous to pull those strings. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  She shoved me, not hard, but enough to make the fangs grow long in my mouth.

  “Feel something, Samira,” she said. “Let loose so we can finally—”

  I slammed into her, lifting her by the collar, and raced across the road in a blink of an eye until we slammed into the side of a building. Inc
hes from her face, I hissed, “Do you want to see what happens when I let loose, Briar Big Bush? There is a monster inside me you don’t want to poke. The beast is real and it is hungry for blood and violence.”

  She searched my eyes, her brows furrowed. “I have so many jokes going through my head right now, I don’t know which one to say first.”

  I let her go and turned away. I shouldn’t have expected her to be serious.

  “Oh, come on, Samira. You think you’re the only one who tries not to feel? I did it for years and look where that got me! Sure, it hurts like hell, but you need to show emotions or you’re going to end up alone in a very dark place.”

  “I’ve managed this long.”

  She touched me lightly on the arm. “But you don’t have to. You were there for me when I needed someone the most. Let me be there for you. I can tell you’re hurting. What Mateo did, it had to have pissed you off.”

  “I am really…pissed off.” I let myself say the words, let myself feel this one emotion.

  She smiled. “There you go. It’s a start. Let’s see what else you got in you.”

  Her words struck a chord, rattling me to the core. “No one, especially my friends, can see what’s inside me. If you did, you’d run away screaming.”

  Before she could respond, I disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 2

  Stars kissed the night above me. Their light was a constant assurance that I didn’t have to give into the darkness. No matter how black or suffocating, there would always be light. Even if it was only a pinpoint. I thought of this as I walked back to Lynx’s house. Briar didn’t understand, nor would she unless I told her the truth about my past. But if she, if any of them, knew… I couldn’t think about the consequences.