Death Deceives Read online

  “No one will try to stop us from living in the Court mansion?” one of the male vamps asked. His expression was hopeful beneath the layers of grime that covered his face.

  “There is no one left to stop you,” Geordie said. “They’re all on their way to the First’s lair.”

  Marie exchanged glances with her friends. Each either nodded in agreement or shrugged to indicate they didn’t particularly care where they went. “We will go to the mansion and prepare it for your return.” Marie’s eyes skidded away from me as she made her promise. She took the dazed human by the arm and turned him around.

  “One more thing,” I told the group before they headed for the van. “When we return,” if we return, “things are going to change with how we treat our food. I mean the humans,” I corrected myself.

  “What do you mean?” Marie asked.

  “I mean that we are no longer going to kill them or keep them in cages. We will have to find a way to feed without causing them misery.” I could tell from their blank expressions that they thought I was crazy but were too afraid to come right out and say it.

  “As you say,” Marie said and urged their driver towards the van. Her reply was about as noncommittal as you could get. I wasn’t used to trying to order anyone around but surely my status as Mortis had to be good for something.

  As the van turned around and headed back towards France, Geordie grinned at me. “I knew we would be able to save some of our kin.”

  “A remnant shall remain,” Gregor murmured, quoting from the prophecy that had been written about me. The prophet had somehow managed to get his wires crossed somewhere along the way. It seemed that I wouldn’t ultimately be responsible for wiping out our kind. Our alien father and his tainted blood would be. I was merely the instrument that would destroy the imps we would all one day become.

  Chapter Ten

  It took us four more nights to close in on the migrating courtiers. We were deep in Russia by then and were still heading north-east. Twice more, we set a trap for small groups of our migrating kin. Both times, all of the vamps had been either possessed or had sentient shadows that would soon possess them. Geordie had been the most affected when we’d been forced to cut the groups down. He was on a mission to save as many of us as we could. I was on a mission to stop the First from increasing the numbers of his army.

  After a long night of driving, we stopped for the day in a reasonable sized town that had a few hotels to choose from. As usual, we picked rooms on different floors in an attempt to gain a semblance of privacy.

  Closing and locking the door to our room, Luc automatically switched on the TV and found a news station. It was still a shock to see the reports on imp activity. They hadn’t just attacked one town that first night but had targeted several simultaneously. Since then, they had attacked more and more small towns.

  Hundreds of humans were either dead or missing. I had little doubt that those who were only missing at the moment would also soon be dead. Some would be turned into vampires and then into imps. The humans were beginning to suspect that they were no longer at the top of the food chain. Naturally, this concept was a trifle unsettling for them.

  A rattled news reporter stood on the outskirts of one of the towns that had recently been raided. The army had arrived in a convoy of trucks and had cordoned off the place. The soldier’s expressions were stoic but beneath that they were shell shocked.

  Bodies had been gathered in a long line and were covered in bright blue sheets of plastic. The brightly coloured, almost festive tarpaulins flapped in a breeze, giving us brief, unwanted, glimpses of the dead. Carrion birds had come from far and wide. Hunkered in groups, they waited for the guard’s attention to wander so they could sneak in for a quick snack.

  “As you can see behind me,” the reporter said in Russian, “the death toll is steadily rising. The army has no answers as to why this is happening. Many believe that the end times are here and that demons have risen to punish the wicked.” The camera zoomed in on the line of bodies, stopping on a shape that was far too small to belong to an adult. “I wonder what this small child did to deserve such harsh fate?” The reporter’s tone was accusing and it hit me straight in the gut.

  Luc muted the TV and I was tempted to kick it through the wall into the neighbouring room. We had to put a stop to the attacks soon because the army was doing a shitty job of it. Not a single imp had been killed or captured. So far, there had only been garbled reports from the few survivors who had managed to escape. Only one person, a teenaged girl, had managed to record any images of the imps. She’d captured a short video of one of the attacks on her mobile phone. The image of a seven foot monster dragging a kicking and screaming human off by his hair had been played over and over.

  I wasn’t surprised to see that the Russians had called in help from overseas. They’d once been bitter enemies with America but now the westerners were apparently lending a hand during this crisis. I’d seen their leader, a tall, thin blonde guy, organizing troops wearing American flags on their uniforms.

  “We’ll catch up to the courtiers soon,” Luc said with a smile that seemed hollow. “Then we will follow them and discover where the First has his lair.”

  “Yeah, then he can turn us all into imps and we can join in on the next raiding party,” I said brightly then wished I hadn’t when he winced.

  Taking a seat beside Luc on the small, lumpy couch, I took his hand. “I know the odds don’t look good that we’ll make it out of this.” He slanted me a look that said I was stating the obvious. “But something has to work in our favour. Every time I’ve been down and out, things have always worked out for me. I’m Mortis, queen of death, so I have to win.” I didn’t know if I was trying to convince Luc or myself of that.

  “Are you telling me that I should have faith, Natalie?” he asked me with a wry smile.

  “Um, sure.” Faith in what? Me? That was a laugh. Faith that my strange dark luck at getting myself out of scrapes would continue? Maybe. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t write us off before we’ve even had a shot at taking down the First and his offspring.”

  Luc studied me for a long moment then leaned over and kissed my brow. “You are right, of course. You’ve managed to get yourself out of situations that would have left any normal vampire dead or insane.” We both knew that I was many things, but ‘normal’ wasn’t one of them. I could write a book about how abnormal I was.

  Since we were so close to our quarry, I decided to wear one of my black suits when we rose the next night. They were excellent for wearing into battle and had the added advantage of making me almost invisible in the dark. Luc smirked like the dirty old vampire he was when I left the bathroom wearing the suit. “Well now, remind me to thank Emperor Ishida for gifting you with these outfits.” His hand slid down the slick leather to squeeze my butt. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen me in the outfit but the novelty obviously hadn’t worn off yet.

  “You should see me in the red one,” I teased. Not that I’d even tried it on yet. I seemed to move from one crisis to the next without a break in between. It hadn’t given me much time to try on my unused suit. Luc’s eyes darkened but a knock at the door halted him before he could lower his head for a kiss.

  Geordie pushed his way inside as soon as I unlocked the door. He spared a leer at my outfit then headed for the TV. “You’d better see this,” he said and switched it on. Gregor and Igor trooped inside, looking even grimer than usual.

  This time, the imps had attacked a larger town. A news camera panned over streets that were littered with the dead. Limbs had been torn free and heads had been hacked off. Blood, darkened to a rusty maroon colour, covered the still forms and pooled in the streets. This was the same style of mindless carnage we’d witnessed in the catacombs beneath the Court mansion. The reporter was near tears as she tried to describe the butchery that we could all see for ourselves.

  In the background, the blonde American soldier strode past with a furious glare at her. �
��Get these vultures out of here,” he snarled to the group of lackeys trotting after him. Two men peeled away and jogged towards the camera crew. I doubted any humans watching the broadcast would have heard the order, it had been uttered very quietly.

  “They are increasing their attacks, which means they have grown in number,” Gregor said as Geordie muted the TV.

  “We must be close to their lair by now,” Igor deduced. By the way he was clutching his knife, he was eager to go into battle.

  Luc turned to me. “You’d better try to sense them before we leave, Natalie. We don’t want to walk into a trap.”

  Nodding, I closed my eyes and sent out my senses. I’d gotten a lot better at putting aside distractions. Even Geordie’s quiet comment that he’d like to peel me out of the suit was easily ignored. So was the kick Igor launched at the teen and the mischievous giggle that followed when Geordie successfully dodged out of the way.

  Sweeping the area to the north-east, I frowned when I came up blank. Widening the search, I frowned harder. All four men were regarding me with worry when I opened my eyes again. “What’s wrong?” Luc asked.

  “I can’t sense them. It’s like they’ve disappeared.”

  Gregor had an answer for my dilemma. “Then we must be closer than we thought. They’ve entered the First’s cavern and he is masking their presence from you.”

  “Now what?” Geordie demanded. “Do we search the country blindly until we stumble across a big cave?” One thing about Geordie that both amused and annoyed me was his ability to be even more sarcastic than me at times.

  “I think we should question someone from the army,” Igor suggested. “They will have extensive knowledge of the towns that have been attacked. They may have narrowed down where the imps disappear to each day.”

  That was the thing that had the humans so puzzled. The imps only attacked at night and then seemed to vanish during the day. Since most of the earth’s population slept at night, they were superstitiously afraid of nocturnal creatures. Before I’d become a nocturnal creature myself, I’d also been afraid of the dark. Rats had been another thing I’d been terrified of. Thanks to my new condition as the living dead, I no longer feared either.

  “They should have figured out the imps are hiding somewhere beneath the earth by now,” Luc pointed out.

  Gregor fisted a hand and rested his chin on it, deep in thought. We let him think the problem through without interrupting him. He was smarter than the rest of us and we all knew it. “I think Igor’s plan has merit,” he said at last. “Questioning someone from the army is most likely our best avenue. When we stop at our next destination, we should keep our eyes peeled for a soldier we can kidnap.”

  Well, at least he isn’t trying to sugar coat it. Most humans would have phrased the plan differently. It was a reminder that, while he appeared to be urbane on the surface, on the inside Gregor was a monster just like the rest of us.

  With that, we trooped downstairs to our cars. Igor led this time and Luc and I followed closely behind him. We’d been driving for a couple of hours when I heard a strange whumping noise from above. “Do you hear that?” I asked Luc. It rapidly grew louder until it sounded like it was right above us.

  Peering out through his window, my sombre companion pointed at the sky. “It’s a helicopter. It appears to have camouflage painting on it,” he said after a few moments of scrutiny.

  Turning my attention back to the road, I saw that Igor had come to a stop and that we were about to crash into him. “Look out!” I shouted even as Luc slammed his foot on the brake. Our car slid for a few feet and came to rest just behind Igor’s larger vehicle.

  A pair of semi-trailers had stopped about a hundred feet in front of Igor’s car. Smelly exhaust fumes spewed from their tailpipes, indicating that the engines were still running. The trucks were parked side by side, blocking the narrow section of highway completely. We couldn’t see who was behind the wheel, but now that we were so close, I could sense the passengers they carried.

  “Um, do you remember when you said you didn’t want us to walk into a trap?” I said uneasily.

  “I believe we may have just done so,” Luc replied. Before I could answer in the affirmative, headlights flooded our car from behind. Igor, Gregor and Geordie turned in dismay, peering out through their back window. Luc and I did the same but couldn’t make out much through the brightness.

  Expecting to be rammed from behind, I was relieved when a truck pulled up beside us instead. Several other vehicles pulled in behind it. On the side of the truck was the unexpected symbol of the Russian army. “Huh. It looks like the cavalry has arrived,” I said in surprise.

  We exchanged glances as a soldier exited from the lead truck. “I don’t think that they are quite aware they are the cavalry yet,” Luc said as the soldier unclipped a torch from his belt. He sauntered towards the idling trucks, passing Igor’s car with a brief look inside.

  “The fool is going to get himself killed,” came quietly from Igor in the car ahead of us.

  “Better him than us,” Geordie muttered.

  The soldier was halfway to the semis when the doors were thrown open. Crammed in together, the imps looked more than ever like clones. The soldier froze in shock at his first live sighting of the imp army. Grey skinned monsters with batlike faces pointed at our cars and roared in rage. Orange eyes blinked and squinted against the headlights of the army vehicles shining at them. All wore tattered loincloths that had one been human clothing, sacks or any other scraps of material they could find to cover their nakedness.

  Finally understanding what he was looking at, the lone soldier fumbled for his weapon. “It’s the unknown entities! Mow them down!” he screamed in Russian. His handgun was small but the bullets took down three of the imps with head shots. Soldiers boiled out from the army vehicles, taking cover and firing at the First’s progeny.

  Luc wasted no time in reversing out of the fray. He pulled the car over to the side of the road at what he judged to be a safe distance from any stray bullets that might come our way. Igor parked just in front of us. We exited our cars and scrambled up a low hill to observe the confrontation. The helicopter circled above, shining a light on the darker areas of battle.

  While they were big, strong and ugly, the imps fell easily enough beneath the hail of gunfire. Black blood flew as the first few ranks went down with their limbs and heads blown apart. Much faster and far more savage than the humans, dozens of imps leaped clear of the trucks and ran toward the soldiers. The night was rent with gunfire and shrieks of pain, terror and primordial roars of triumph.

  Once the two sides clashed, the odds turned dramatically in the imp’s favour. With their longer reach, they were able to tear arms off before the soldiers could even aim their weapons. A few of the monsters picked up fallen weapons and turned them on the Russians. I’d witnessed them using guns before but this behaviour indicated a level of intelligence that disturbed me. Most of the imps I’d come across so far had struck me as being one step up from drooling idiots.

  I’d taken a rough count of imps as they’d launched themselves from the truck and there were at least a hundred. They’d been crammed in the back of the trucks like cattle going to the slaughter. The slaughter they’d planned had been meant for me and my friends but the army had inadvertently come to our aid. Now the soldiers who bravely faced the ‘unknown entities’ were being decimated.

  “If the soldiers hadn’t come along, we’d be dog food by now,” Geordie said in shocked wonder.

  “It was pretty lucky for us they turned up,” I replied. Deep down, I wondered if this was luck or fate. I hated being at the mercy of something I didn’t even really believe in but in this instance I wasn’t about to complain.

  After the initial flurry of activity, half of the imps had been cut down. The soldiers had been outnumbered two to one to begin with and the numbers were still the same now. Twenty or so men took shelter behind their vehicles, taking pot shots at the imps whenever one stuck
its head out far enough.

  Falling back to their trucks, the remaining forty-odd imps had a short meeting. Several pointed to us on the hilltop while the others shouted them down. “They’re trying to decide whether to come directly for us or to finish off the soldiers first,” Gregor said with calm detachment.

  Clutching a machete tightly, Igor shared his thoughts. “If I were them, I’d split into two teams. I’d send one to distract the soldiers and the other to target us.”

  “It appears the imps have chosen your method,” Luc observed as half of the imps wheeled off and ran in our direction. The remaining half surged towards the soldiers. Most had armed themselves and both groups started firing at either us or at the soldiers.

  I’d left the backpack in the car but my twin swords crisscrossed my back. I drew the blades and raced down the hill to meet the monsters. Luc, Gregor and Igor weren’t far behind me. With a roar, an imp raised his gun to shoot me point blank in the face. One of my swords sheared his arm off before he could shoot me. The severed limb hit the ground and bullets sprayed the area when his finger clamped down on the trigger. Several imps shrieked in pain as the projectiles shattered their shins or ankles.

  I stabbed the imp through the heart then moved on to the next one. Luc was at my back, using a sword Igor had given him to slice and defend as the monsters tried to overwhelm me. I was their true target and they were determined to take me down. Calmly and methodically, I speared hearts and sliced throats as I worked my way into the centre of the group.