Rise of Blood (The Vampire Crown Book 2) Page 2

  “And, if we fall, which we won’t, it’ll hurt like hell, but it won’t kill either of us.” He scooted even closer now, so close that he’d have to hop onto the branch with me if he wanted to bridge the gap between us anymore. “Nothing will, Mercy. I understand that this is a hard idea to wrap your head around, but this is forever. You have the rest of eternity.”

  “Is that a proposal?” I asked, my eyebrows darting up playfully.

  I watched with amusement as the color drained from Kristoff’s face; not an easy task for a vampire.

  “I-I’m not sure what you’re-”

  “Calm down, dork. It’s just a joke,” I said, grinning and shaking my head at him. “I’m not even ready to go public with this yet, plus I’m still a teenager. I’m not ready to march down the aisle wearing white.” I tilted my head to the side. “Vampires can still wear white, right?”

  “Unless it’s after Labor Day,” he answered.

  “Was that a joke? Did you actually just make a joke?” I asked, chuckling loudly and running a hand through my hair.

  “You’re not the only one with skills, Mercy Conroy,” Kristoff answered, and in that moment, I wanted him to hop onto my branch. I wanted him to be as close to me as possible, even if the extra weight meant the damn thing would snap.

  “You can’t call me that, you know?” I said curtailing my smile as a bit of hurt moved through me like a shadow. “You can’t use my last name here. You know there were rumors about Caster and my mother. If people found out I was Coralie Conroy’s daughter, they might realize I’m also Caster’s kid.”

  “I know,” Kristoff said, nodding almost solemnly at me. “But there’s no one here now, and I love that name.” Finally, he blinked at me. “I love it so much.”

  “Your name’s not so bad yourself, you know?” I asked, patting the branch next to me. “Even if you do have to share it with your brother.”

  Kristoff leapt with all the speed and intensity I’d watched him use when we were waging war. Before I could blink, he was beside me, his shoulder pressing against mine. Luckily, the branch held us both.

  “Let’s not talk about my brother,” Kristoff said. Suddenly, I found his hand on my neck. His fingers trickled up to my cheek, brushing errant strands of hair from my face. Like my sight, my sense of touch had basically exploded since the day I turned into a vampire. Everything that brushed against me was more intense. That went double for Kristoff’s hands.

  As he spoke though, I heard a catch in his throat, another one of my supersized senses at work. And because I was never one to eave well enough alone, I just had to ask the question I knew he didn’t want me to.

  “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” I asked, placing my hand on top of his and squeezing it.

  Kristoff sighed, his jaw tensing. “Isaac can take care of himself. He’s been doing it for decades now.”

  “I’m sure he can,” I said, instantly regretting that I’d brought it up. “That doesn’t mean you don’t worry about him, though. I mean, no one’s heard from him for weeks now.”

  “That’s nothing,” Kristoff said, shaking his head hard. “I spent most of the ‘60s not knowing where he was. He does this.”

  And, just like that, Kristoff had began sliding away from me.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said, biting my lip.

  “You didn’t,” he said. “I’m not upset. I’m not even worried.” He shook his head hard. “It’s just…can’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I asked, staring at the man and narrowing my eyes. Since I was a new vampire, and since I was unlike any vampire who had ever lived (seeing as how the unique nature of my DNA and the way I turned made me the only vampire in existence with access to magical abilities), I was told it would take me awhile before I figured out the extent of what I was capable of. I could hear better than I ever had before, but apparently I couldn’t hear as well as Kristoff. “What are you hearing?”

  “I thought it was the reindeer at first,” Kristoff said, staring at me. “But, when I got closer to you, it got louder, and then, when I touched you, it sped up.” He looked down at my chest, confused and a little horrified. “Mercy, did your heart start beating again?”

  And, as those words left Kristoff’s mouth, a surge of the worst pain I had ever felt in my life ran through me. Before I knew it, I was off the branch. I was falling through the air. The pain in my body was so intense that I didn’t even mind when I hit the ground…or when my neck snapped because of it.

  Chapter 3

  My head was swimming in pain as I slowly came back to the land of the…well, not the living, per say, but back to Tenebris. It took a second for me to remember what had happened, how the ground had come up to meet me, kissing me hard enough to snap my neck into at least two pieces. As I did, though, as echoes of the haunting pain that had wrestled me off that tree branch flooded me, so did something else. It was a whisper, a panicked and frantic thing that knocked against the forefront of my brain and helped jolt me back into a horrified and troubled consciousness.

  What good is a bomb if it doesn’t go off?

  The words shook me as I startled upright, screaming at the top of my lungs, my hands moving quickly to my neck. Feeling it, and breathing heavy, labored breaths, I realized that my neck wasn’t snapped anymore. It was healed.

  My eyebrows arched upward, wondering if that meant I had been out longer than I originally thought. Vampire healing was fast. That much was obvious. Still, it wouldn’t be fast enough to completely heal a snapped neck in anything less than a week or so. That either meant I had been unconscious for at least that long, or something else was at play here.

  Looking around the room I found myself in, a spacious bedroom with medical equipment and high ceilings, I saw I wasn’t alone.

  “Calm down, Mercy,” Desdemona, my father’s righthand woman and resident mystic said, walking toward me with a serene look on her face and a pink braid slung over her shoulder. “Everything is going to be alright.”

  “Where am I?” I asked, looking out the window and seeing the ever-present moon that (thanks to me) always hung above Tenebris. “How did I get here?”

  “Kristoff brought you here, Mercy,” Desdemona said. “After what happened in the woods, he thought this was the best place for you to rest and recover.”

  “And where is here exactly?” I asked, looking around and realizing I had never seen this part of the castle before, let alone any medical equipment at all.

  “You’re in the Centrifuge,” Desdemona said. “But there are more pressing issues than your placement right now. We have to discuss what happened to you. We need to talk about-”

  “How long have I been unconscious?” I asked, cutting the woman off and tossing the sheets that lay over me to the floor. I found that I was wearing a hospital gown and, though I hadn’t really felt them before, my legs and arms were studded with rounded white patches that had metal knobs on the ends. “What the hell are these?”

  “Mercy,” Desdemona said. “I understand you’re confused. I don’t blame you. All of your questions will be answered, but first I need you to calm down a little. Your aura is practically screaming, and I can’t concentrate because of it.”

  “My aura?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “I didn’t think vampires had auras.”

  Desdemona took a deep breath, looking me up and down as I stood on wobbly legs, grabbing the nearby wall for support.

  “They don’t usually,” she conceded, nodding at me. “Of course, they also don’t usually have beating hearts.”

  As the words left her mouth, the memory of Kristoff staring at me, staring at my chest and questioning the beating sound coming out of it, filled my mind.

  “My God,” I muttered, placing my hand over the place where my heart still sat and feeling it beat again. The motion jarred me even more than it had before, sending a shudder through me.

  It had been forever since I’d felt this, since I’d felt any movement within this
part of my body. The fact that it was in motion again made me feel strange. It made me feel human.

  “What’s happening to me, Desdemona?” I asked, clutching over my heart until I had a handful of hard linen against my palm.

  Desdemona stared at me for a long moment before shaking her head. “Your father,” she said simply. “I promised I would wait for your father.”

  “What?” I asked, pushing off the wall and walking toward her. As I did, I felt a rush run through me. It straightened me up, making me feel strong, stronger than I ever had before. Even as a newborn vampire, I had never felt this insanely powerful.

  “Slow down!” Desdemona said. As she did, I began to realize just how fast I was going. Before I could stop myself, I had slammed into the woman, inadvertently pressing her against the door with more force than I ever would have touched her with intentionally.

  She screamed and I heard something snap. Instantly, I pulled back, gasping hard and falling to the floor.

  Desdemona did the same thing, clutching her arm and wincing in agony.

  “Desdemona, are you-”

  The door pushed open before I could finish my statement. Looking up, I saw Andy walking in, a half-eaten chocolate bar in one hand, which he immediately dropped upon sight of me.

  “Mercy, you’re awake?” he asked, swallowing hard. Suddenly, his eyes opened widely. Looking down at Desdemona, his body tensed. “Oh God, you’re awake!”

  “Andy,” I said, looking at my hands and seeing how much they were shaking. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I feel strange. It’s like I’m vibrating on some other level or something.”

  “Well, that’s kind of because you are,” Andy said, eyeing Desdemona and stepping toward me.

  “Andy, don’t you dare!” Desdemona said, still clutching her arm, still wincing in pain. “We promised her father that we’d-”

  “Screw her father,” Andy said. “My friend is awake and afraid, and I’m not about to let her stay that way for a second longer than I have to.”

  A shot of pain ran through me, reminding me just why I’d fallen in the first place. It sent my hands clutching into fists, and that wasn’t the worst of it. The pain caused sparks to fly from my closed fists, burning me and causing me to writhe on the floor.

  “Andy!” I shrieked.

  “Dematose!” Andy said, his unscarred hand, stretched toward me. As he spoke, something like peace rushed through my body, salving a wound I still couldn’t see. My body rested, and I watched Andy come toward me, tears in his eyes. “Damnit!” he yelled in hushed anger. “I can’t believe she did this.”

  “Did what?” I asked, taking a deep breath and trying to calm myself. “Andy, what’s happening to me.”

  “My mother,” he said flatly, his jaw tightening.

  “Your mother?” I asked. “How could this have anything to do with your mother?”

  “Because,” my friend said, shaking his head. “When you were fighting her that day, before you took her powers, she did something horrible.” He ran a hand through his hair as a single tear ran down his cheek. “She…she put a curse on you, Mercy.”

  Chapter 4

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Caster said, glaring at Andy, who was sitting on the bed beside me, staring at his shoes with an arm entangled in mine. “I specifically asked that no one alert my daughter of her condition before I had a chance to see her.”

  Desdemona had been taken away, whisked off to have whatever bone I snapped when I tried to reach her tended to, though I was by no means alone. In addition to Andy, whose arm was covered in a sleeve and who had put a glove over his non-bandaged hand to make skin to skin contact between us impossible- I had my friend Toya and Kristoff with me.

  Though saying I was afraid of my father was an overstatement, the fact that he was an age-old vampire who had earned the nickname ‘Caster the Merciless’ at some point in his endless life didn’t do much to add a calming vibe to the scene here. In any regard, I was happy to have them around.

  “He was just trying to make me feel better,” I said. I would have given Andy’s arm a little squeeze to let him know I was on his side, but given what just happened to Desdemona, any movement of mine would probably result in a hospital stay for my friend.

  “What he was doing was ignoring a direct order from his king,” Caster answered.

  I felt Andy tense beside me. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t let that slide, just like I knew it would have been in everyone’s best interests if only he had.

  “I’m not a vampire, man,” Andy said, still looking at his shoes. “You might be a king here, but you’re not mine.”

  I could feel a noticeable shift in the air as the tension in the room ratcheted up a couple thousand notches all at once.

  “You live within these walls, boy. That makes you a citizen of Tenebris, and vampire or not, that makes you my subject.” My father stepped forward, his deep eyes bearing into Andy with enough intensity to shatter glass. “Is that understood?”

  Andy didn’t look up.

  “Caster,” I muttered, taking a deep and steadying breath. “This isn’t necessary.”

  “It’s more than necessary, Mercy,” my father said without breaking his gaze on the young warlock. “A kingdom is a house of cards. Any change in the wind, even a small one, might be enough to knock it down. Now, I don’t mind your friends being here, even the ones who think of me as a monstrous nuisance, but I refuse to allow my authority to be compromised.” His eyes broke from Andy for just a second, resting on Kristoff. “I’ve allowed that to happen before, and I think it’s safe to say the results were disastrous.”

  My mind flittered back to something I knew about Kristoff’s past. Once, long ago, he had allowed a vampire named Katerina to convince him to stage a rebellion against my father. Back then, he believed he knew better how to run Tenebris. As I’d been told, that rebellion ended in the deaths of many and Kristoff’s banishment. Of course, it also put him on the path that would eventually lead him to me. So, maybe it wasn’t all bad.

  “He understands that, Caster,” I said, my mouth thinning into a straight line.

  “I would hope so,” my father said. “But I still need to hear him say it.” Again, my father stepped closer. “You are a guest in my kingdom, boy.”

  “Is the ‘boy’ thing really necessary?” I balked. “You barely look five years older than him.” It was true. Though my father was centuries old, he didn’t look more than drinking age. In fact, he’d have probably been carded at most bars throughout the country.

  “What I look like is of no relevance here,” Caster said. “What I am is a man who has no patience for those who would seek to undermine him.” He looked at me now. “And yes, the ‘boy’ thing is quite necessary. It reminds your friend that he has a lot of growing to do, that he has a lot of changing ahead of him. At the moment, he is a young man with no coven, no home, and a family who would very likely be thrilled to kill him should he ever cross their path again. He is here because of you, and because of my mercy.” My father shrugged. “Pun intended. And yes, he is a boy, and boys have to learn their lessons.” His gaze turned back to Andy. “So, tell me, is this a lesson you’ve learned, Andrew?”

  “Just do it,” I whispered, swallowing hard.

  Andy looked up at my father, his jaw so tight that I was very afraid he was going to scream at the vampire king and make everything a thousand times worse.

  Instead, he nodded firmly. “Your house, your rules. I get it. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” my father said, and his voice was already noticeably lighter. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can get down to business.”

  “Great,” I said, carefully freeing my arm from Andy’s and standing up. “Because I’m so damn confused, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”

  “You can start by cleaning up that language,” my father murmured. “That’s no way for a lady to speak.”

  “Are y
ou being serious right now?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. “Doesn’t that seem a little old-fashioned to you?”

  “When I was a child, there was no such thing as old-fashioned,” he answered. “Things simply hadn’t been around that long, I guess.”

  In that moment, I realized I had no idea just how old my father was. He could have been two hundred just as easily as he could have been twenty thousand years old. I just had no idea. It was a question I could ask, sure, but there were so many more important issues for me to face right now.

  “Your majesty,” Kristoff said, stepping forward, those gray eyes cutting toward me before settling on my father. “With all due respect, I think it’s time to tell Mercy the gravity of what it is we’re dealing with.”

  Kristoff’s tone was light and almost apologetic. He knew, from the way my father had acted, that if he was going to get anything done, he was going to have to do it with a soft hand. Thankfully, he was right.

  “My dear,” Caster said, turning to me. “It seems as though, when you came into your powers while decimating the Redwood coven, you did not do so without compromise.” He motioned to Kristoff. “Please explain to my daughter what happened once she was allowed to fall from her perch.”

  Kristoff blinked. “Allow is a strong word, Your Highness,” he said. “If I would have known-”

  “Tell her,” he commanded, cutting him off.

  Kristoff sighed and turned to me, his face lighting up a little as he took me in. “When you fell, when you hit the ground, I took you back to Tenebris as quickly as I could.” He shook his head. “Your heart was beating again. I didn’t know what that meant. I thought you could have been alive, and if you were alive-”

  “It meant I could die,” I said, following his train of thought to its natural conclusion. “You were afraid I was going to die.”

  “I was,” he said, and in the second of silence that passed, a flash of something moved between us. “I was afraid of a lot of things, Mercy. I didn’t know what was happening. None of it made any sense, not until we saw the symbol.”