Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (20 page)

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” I asked the sky. It stared back at me without offering me any insights.

Looking around as well as I could since my face was pointing at the sky, all I saw was a sea of grass. I couldn’t spot anything nearby that I could use as cover when the sun came up in several hours. Then I remembered I’d thrown my backpack to safety so my belongings wouldn’t be torched.

With my neck no longer attached to my body, it took practice to
force the muscles into motion. Rocking from side to side, my head finally turned over so I was looking at the grass. It made me dizzy to see sky, grass, sky, grass over and over as I rolled but I finally spotted a familiar dark lump.

Rolling to a stop beside my backpack, I was relieved to see the coat had come loose enough that I could hide my head beneath it. Grabbing
hold of the grass with my teeth, I pulled my head beneath the coat and made sure it was properly covered. When dawn came, my head would be safe but what about the rest of my body? I shuddered to think what would happen to me if I couldn’t get myself back together again. The last time this had happened, I’d vowed I would drag my bits out into the open and let the sun finish me off. I now knew the sun could burn me down to the bone but I would just regenerate again. Miserable and frightened, I huddled beneath the coat, trying and failing to come up with a plan of action.

A couple of hours
later, I heard stealthy movement as something approached through the grass. Whatever it was, it made little noise. I didn’t detect footsteps, just a weird sort of skittering sound. Then I heard the same noise coming from the other side.
It must be animals drawn by the smell of cooked imps.
The bodies had been dragged away but the crispy smell still lingered.

Something poked the coat right in front of my eyes and I mashed my lips closed to keep in a startled squeak. Poking and prodding, it touched my forehead, paused and moved down
to my nose and felt the tip. The second animal joined the party and prodded the back of my head.

Expecting the coat to be nudged aside and something with teeth to appear, I was rattled when the backpack was suddenly yanked out from beneath the coat. I saw a flash of something small and white then the black material settled to the ground. Seconds later, the coat shifted then rolled, trapping my head inside.

Both the coat and backpack were dragged through the grass. It was a long and painfully slow process. I could have chewed my way free from the coat but I had suspicions about what had kidnapped my head. The glimpse of the white thing had made me revise my opinion that it was an animal. It had looked like an albino spider, except arachnids didn’t have fingernails, as far as I knew.

At last, we came to a stop and the coat was
flipped open. The first thing I noticed was a jumbled mass of white flesh. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disturbed that my body parts had regathered again. Since both of my boots were mixed up in the jumble, I assumed my feet hadn’t been able to extricate themselves from their confines.

Lefty and Righty sat on the ground before me as if expecting praise. Maybe they were. “Good job at getting me back together, guys.”
It was weird addressing my appendages as if they were living, thinking things.

Righty gave me the thumbs up
in response as if it really could hear me. A couple of bones were poking out through the skin from when it had been stomped on by the imp.

Lefty grabbed me by the hair and dragged my head over to the pile.
I tried to send my consciousness into the detached pieces but couldn’t even sense them. My attempts to possess them had no effect at all. I was afraid of what would happen once they became reunited. Would I even have control over my own body or would the imp blood have control instead?

Placing my head at the top of the pile, my hands scurried to the rest of the jumble. I had a feeling they’d tried to reattach themselves but hadn’t been able to without the final
missing piece. As if in response to the thought, the mass twitched. It took some rearranging but first the feet became connected, then my legs, lower and upper body, hands and arms.

Now only one piece remained.
With increasing dread, I watched as my feet pushed my body closer to my head. I felt the usual flood of hot pain when the severed ends met. Whole again, my consciousness was suddenly thrust from my body.

I floated in a black emptiness that was devoid of sound. Weightless, I drifted aimlessly with no point of reference or direction to aim for. I wasn’t in the cavern of doom. There were no bonfires to light the dark space. I wasn’t in a jungle with something unspeakably hungry beneath the ground waiting for someone or something to come close enough so that it could feed. I was nowhere and nowhen.

Am I dead?
The thought should have frightened me but I was actually relieved. Being an unholy creature of the night, I kind of figured I’d end up in hell once I finally died.
Maybe this
is
hell. Maybe I have to float in the dark alone for all eternity.

Before I could become too uncomfortable
with this line of thinking, I opened my eyes. Being utterly weightless, I hadn’t realized that they were even closed. A dull silver metal wall stretched out to either side. It was cold when I brushed my fingertips across it.

Something
suddenly bumped into my back. Floundering, I managed to turn around and started back at a face only inches away from mine. Aged, pinched and wrinkled, there was something familiar about the shape of the jaw. Lifeless dirty hair hung limply over the person’s brow.

Reaching out, I touched the ancient cheek lightly, wondering how I knew this vampire. His eyes cracked open
slightly. “Help us, Natalie,” the wizened creature croaked.

“Argh!” Sitting up, my heart tried to thud in my chest but couldn’t because it had died along with the rest of me the night I’d been turned by Silvius. I’d had a lot of strange visions during the past six months but that had been one of the weirdest by far.

Distant whispers drew my attention and I cocked my head to listen.
They sounded like they were coming from behind me. I turned my head slowly and peered around using my peripheral vision. A group of large beings were huddled about fifty feet away. Massed together, all I could see was that they were very dark. Squinting, I turned further to get a better look.

“
Shh, she’s awake,” one muttered in a thick, guttural and inhuman voice.

Recognizing
it as the voice of an imp, I surged to my feet only to discover that the group had disappeared. Searching the area, I saw no sign that there had ever been a group at all. The grass was undisturbed and the only footprints were mine. The only signs of movement were the drag marks made by my body parts making their way to the unnatural reunion that had occurred not long ago.

Naked except for the pair of calf high black boots, I r
etraced my steps. I knelt beside my backpack to retrieve one of my two remaining black suits. Sensing movement, I rolled to the side when something came swooping at me. An imp landed on the ground where I’d been a second ago. Strangely, it had made no sound when landing. Even stranger, its skin was completely black instead of grey. Even its eyes were inky instead of orange. It growled in frustration and I heard the sound inside my head rather than with my ears.

Moonlight filtered through a break in the clouds and I finally realized what
had happened. Stretching out in a thin thread, the imp was attached to me by our feet. It turned to lunge at me again. “Hold her!” it snarled and three more dark shapes loomed over me. I’d grabbed my swords as I’d rolled and wasn’t about to let them take me down without a fight. Whipping my head around, I saw my four shadows behind me where they should have been. Each looked back over their shoulder, holding shadow swords. I was relieved to see that they weren’t sentient yet.

Now that I had imp blood in my system, I’d also been dubiously gifted with four
new imp shadows. They were indeed sentient and were intent on killing me. As I stood, three of the silhouettes made a grab for me. My swords slashed out, cutting through their insubstantial forms. The weapons had absolutely no effect but neither did they. Their hands passed through my flesh as if they were ghosts.

“What’s going on? Why can’t we touch her?” one of the imps snarled in our dead father’s language.

Scratching its head, the first silhouette reached out to prod me with a clawed finger. The finger poked into my eye, cutting off my sight but causing me no pain. Gathering itself, the shadow jumped at me, passed right through and sprawled on the ground again.

“But, one of us is supposed to be able to possess her,” one of the other three
whined. “What are we supposed to do now?”

None
of them had an answer and I wasn’t about to offer any suggestions. My brain was churning with panic as I donned one of my black suits. I was just as clueless as they were as to why they existed. Shrugging on the coat, I shouldered the backpack. Despite my fear and confusion, I still had a job to do. I’d worry about my growing following of shadows later.

After
my head had been dragged off while wrapped up in the coat, I’d lost my sense of direction. I wasn’t sure which way to go to locate the town containing the captured possessed vampire. Sending out my senses, I found nothing to help me. Either the First hadn’t heard about my supposed demise or he was just being cautious and continued to blank out every vampire and imp within several hundred kilometres.

Hunger
gnawed at my insides, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten for a while. Picking a direction, I soon heard the intermittent sounds of traffic. My four new unwanted companions kept up a constant noise of bickering in my head as I sprinted towards the highway.

Reaching the highway, I
heard another car approaching and did my best to look small and defenceless. Headlights hit me and I raised an arm to cut the glare. I began to suspect that the driver could see the four hulking imp shadows when the car swerved and almost ran off the road. Having four shadows overlapping behind me was bad enough. Having four monster sized ones standing up, looking around, scratching their nuts and reaching out menacingly with clawed hands was far worse.

Screeching to a halt, the car stalled and panicked screams came from within. Sending a
n annoyed glare at the new additions to my collection, I jogged over to the car before the driver could have a stroke. Spying me and my escorts coming towards him, he fumbled for the lock but was too late.

Yanking open the door, I pulled the driver out and captured him with my eyes.
Instantly relaxing, a goofy smile replaced his expression of abject terror. Small, thin and in his fifties, he didn’t make a very attractive meal but I had little choice at the moment.

Checking
to make sure the highway was empty in both directions, I fed from him and led him around to the passenger side of the car. He slid into the seat with a contented smile. There wasn’t enough room for five of us in the front seat so the imps settled into the back seat. Squished up, they overlapped each other, elbowing for room. I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up but kept it in. So far, I hadn’t noticed any physical or mental changes after being further infected with alien blood. But that could change at any moment.

Staring at the side of my face, my meal made a dreamy observation. “You’re so
lovely. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” He started listing what he liked about me. “Your skin is so creamy. Your hair is so soft. Your eyes are so orange.”

Automatically t
ranslating his rambling conversation, my head jerked sideways at the last comment. “Did you just say that my eyes are orange?”

“They’re like ripe
pumpkins ready to be picked and eaten,” he replied happily.

Fumbling for the rear view mirror, I angled it so that I was looking directly at my reflection. Sure enough, my eyes had turned the same shade of orange as the First’s clones.
Aghast, I hoped my subconscious would pipe up with something helpful. After a few seconds of internal debate, it offered its distinctly unhelpful insight.
You’re screwed.

My snack was able to point me in the correct direction of the town that contained my goal. He seemed uneasy at the idea of going anywhere near one of the towns that had been raided by the imps. To me, it seemed like a far safer place to be than somewhere that had yet to be attacked.

Dawn was only an hour away when we neared our
destination. Up ahead, I spied an army barricade across the exit that led to the town. Pulling over, I instructed my dreamy meal to resume his journey and set off the rest of the way on foot.

A long line of vehicles had been stopped
at the barricade. Motors were turned off and drivers and passengers had left their cars. They were squabbling with either Russian or American soldiers, stating their reasons why they needed to enter the town.

Sneaking around the
edges of the crowd, I was very careful not to be spotted by the soldiers guarding the perimeter of the town. Most wore night vision goggles and I wondered how I would look to them. My body temperature was far lower than a human’s so maybe I would just be an indistinct blob.