Phoenix Contract: Part One (Fallen Angel Watchers Book 1) (3 page)

“What is it?” Aiden asked

“A dog whistle,” Matthew explained.

“A-a what?” Aiden frowned, wondering if her ears were working properly. The priest didn’t even own a dog.

To her consternation, Matthew brought the silver whistle to his lips and let loose a silent blast. The action provoked a chorus of inhuman growls from within the bushes. “Ah, they’re undead,” Matthew said in a scholarly tone. “The frequency range of their hearing far exceeds our own.” The priest blew the whistle again, and another round of angry growls emerged from the shadows, betraying the positions of the creatures stalking them. Aiden estimated their numbers at between five and seven.

“What would undead be doing here? It’s a university campus, not a cemetery or mass grave site.” Aiden gripped Matthew’s arm harder and propelled him faster in the direction of the parking lot. She fished out the heavy silver crucifix that she wore around her neck on a long chain. She had read plenty about various undead—ghouls, zombies, vampires, and ghosts—but never actually encountered one in real life.

“I have no idea,” Matthew said. He blew on the whistle again, and the creatures snarled their displeasure. “But notice how they’re circling and not attacking. It does seem like we’re being herded, doesn’t it? Interesting. Such atypical behavior suggests they are under the control of a master.”

“Why are you blowing on that thing?” Aiden asked, wishing the priest would stop. The whistle only seemed to aggravate the creatures. When they neared the parking lot, her desperate glance around confirmed that the undead were closer, moving at the same painful pace.

Matthew stopped walking and tilted his head back to gaze upward. “Call it sending an SOS. Of course, I’m presuming Magnus is within hearing range, but you’d think a pack of undead intruding in his territory would grab his attention.”

“He who? Who’s Magnus? Father, don’t stop walking.” Disregarding her feeling of being left out of a vital loop, Aiden urged him along. In the dark, the creatures were close enough to observe in silhouette—long, emaciated bodies with spindly limbs.

“Magnus is an old friend of mine. You could say we’re old drinking buddies.” Matthew laughed at some private joke and then stopped. “Hmm, well, this isn’t good. In fact, it appears rather dire.”

“You don’t drink,” Aiden said. “Watch out!”

An emaciated figure wearing tattered clothing stepped forward. Aiden caught a glimpse of bright orange hair and the pale features of a teenage boy. The boy’s eyes were bright and malicious, burning within the ghastly mass of flesh which had once been his face. A steady stream of drool ran down his chin.

Matthew brought the whistle to his lips for another blast, and the boy lashed out. He struck Matthew’s hand, swatting away the dog whistle. Bizarre mission complete, he snatched his prize from the pavement and dashed back to the others.

“Hmmph,” Matthew grunted. “It appears the whistle annoyed them more than I’d have thought.” The priest reached automatically for his crucifix. The undead continued to close from behind, forcing them forward.

“Yes, it would seem so,” Aiden agreed grimly, seeing no easy way out of their desperate situation. “Do you really think they have a master?” If they did, at least that would be something. A master might be reasoned or bartered with.

“I’m not sure, but their behavior is certainly unusual,” Matthew said. “Their actions are coordinated, the product of cooperation. Most undead, except the noble vampire bloodlines, suffer from advanced cognitive degeneration, rendering such things as strategy and all but the most rudimentary pack behavior beyond their grasp.”

“A necromancer could pull this off,” Aiden surmised.

They reached the parking lot where a street lamp cast a protective halo of light onto her Acura. Belatedly, she remembered her keys and shoved her hand into her purse, cursing the oversight.

“Here they come again,” Matthew said.

Abandoning her search, Aiden turned and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her mentor. They backed to her vehicle, and she braced for the onslaught. Aiden held her crucifix before her, and Matthew did the same. Amazingly, the priest’s stance was unwavering. He held his crucifix rock-steady in spite of his physical frailty.

Five creatures advanced and formed a loose circle around the priest and girl. The undead had once been normal people from all walks of life: the carrot-topped teenage boy, a policewoman wearing her tattered uniform, an elderly man, a black man, and a young golden-haired girl with no right arm. Their flesh possessed the anemic pallor of the undead, and all were in various stages of decay. None wore funeral attire. Most likely, they were innocent people, murdered and turned into monsters, listed as missing persons in some government database with family and friends still searching and grieving. Their tragedy made them all that much more horrific.

“Vampires?” Aiden asked. Even with a racing heart, she could not entirely contain her curiosity. According to her studies, vampires were nothing more than demonically animated corpses, capable of retaining the personality and memories of their host. But they lacked souls.

“Yes, I concur,” Matthew said. “Vampires.”

“Upyr, actually, we’re a Russian subspecies, terribly exotic in these parts.” The cultured and educated male voice possessed a British upper-class accent. The new vampire arrived on the scene, a tall man with hawkish features and silvery hair. He had been in his eighties when he died. Unlike the others, intelligence shone in his cold and calculating blue eyes. He wore a dark blue suit of tasteful and expensive design with a pink dress shirt. His neatly knotted tie featured a contrasting pattern of light blue and navy diamonds. He had a navy handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, and his cuff links were diamonds. In spite of his meticulous effort to maintain a neat appearance, his jacket had a tear on the shoulder and dried blood stained the front of his shirt.

The others moved aside and allowed him to pass, clearly deferring to him.

Aiden watched the newcomer with a mixture of fear and fascination. It was one thing to read about such creatures in books, it was another to come face to face with a monster. The British vampire regarded Aiden with amusement and spread his arms to oblige her inspection. His fingers were tipped in long nails which tapered to needle-sharp points. The hunger in his eyes made her skin crawl.

The vampire grinned broadly. “The girl is pretty, Matthew, but don’t you think she’s a mite young for you?”

Aiden gasped. “Father, you know him?” Her head swiveled toward Matthew.

The priest was mute with shock, face drained of color, expression horrified.

The sound of his name jolted Matthew. “D-D-Daniel? How did this happen to you, man?”

Daniel laughed. “How do you suppose? I always was one to chase the Fountain of Youth, Matt, seeking true immortality. You might say I miscalculated rather badly.”

Matthew exhaled. “Dear God,” he breathed.

Daniel’s eyes shone with energetic madness. “Oh, but God had nothing to do with it. I do despise having to make such a clichéd reply, but the situation clearly mandates it, don’t you think,
Father
?”

“Daniel, I don’t think—”

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” The vampire indicated his body with sweeping hands. “We’re not supposed to end up like this, are we, old fellow?”

“No, we’re not. But we seem to with alarming frequency,” Matthew said. The priest’s strange tone chilled Aiden’s blood. He sounded fatalistic and resigned.

The Englishman swung toward Aiden. “The name is Daniel Adams, my dear.” He offered her a mocking bow. “I presume that you’re Aiden, Matthew’s ward?”

“Yes, that’s correct. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she returned, having been raised with manners.

The social nicety seemed to satisfy the Englishman in spite of Aiden’s complete lack of sincerity. Daniel spoke fast. “You’re a lovely young lady, Aiden, the very image of your mother. You have her eyes and her hair, exactly as I remember.”

Stunned, Aiden opened her mouth. “Thank you, I—” She bit her tongue, thoughts spinning with a hundred different questions. Had Daniel really known her mother? How? Why had she never even heard of the man before?

“I can see you’re just full of questions,” Daniel exclaimed. “Allow me to oblige. You see, Matt and I are old friends going back to our university years. We were once the best of buddies, the fastest friends, isn’t that so, Matt? You, Niall, and I were the three musketeers.”

“Niall?” Aiden parroted. “Do you know Magnus?”

Daniel’s expression turned ugly. “How is old Magnus, Matt?”

Matthew released a bark of laughter. “Old Magnus is holding up better than both of us.” His final word failed on a raspy wheeze.

“Who’s Niall?” Aiden asked, attempting to redirect the conversation. If Matthew’s SOS somehow made it to this Magnus, then she wanted the vampires caught unaware.

Bitterness tinged Daniel’s voice. “Niall Talcott, another friend. Matthew here betrayed us both.” The vampire shot the priest a vicious accusatory glare.

Aiden perceived Matthew’s exhaustion beneath his veneer of strength.

“I did not betray you,” Matthew said. His arm which held the crucifix trembled, causing his hand to drop slightly before he raised it again. “I recanted our heresy rather than accept banishment. You and Niall both had the same choice.”

Daniel exploded. “Heresy! Heresy! You dare call it heresy? It was the truth. The truth, do you hear me? It was a cover-up.” Enraged, the vampire flew at Matthew, straight into the priest’s crucifix.

Matthew withstood the assault without flinching. The holy symbol connected with the vampire’s cheek. Flesh hissed and blistered. With a shriek, Daniel stumbled backward, clutching at his burned face, a hand plastered to his cheek.

The servant vampires surged forward, agitated with blood lust and their master’s anger.

“Stay,” Daniel hissed, bringing his minions under control once more.

“Our research was wrong,” Matthew said, speaking as if nothing had occurred. “We were wrong.”

“Matthew, you sold out.” Daniel’s tone dropped to a hush, a change scarier than his violent outburst. “We all knew it was the truth. Niall and I both spent our entire lives in exile because we had the integrity to stand by our beliefs.”

“I see your temper hasn’t improved,” Matthew said with a cool smile and demeaning tone. “The Congress of the Houses would’ve called our research heresy no matter what I’d said or done. I’m not responsible for the choices or the consequences. I repeat, I did not betray you.”

Daniel went unnaturally still, staring hard at Father Matthew with glittering eyes. For a second he appeared ready to lash out. Then, inanely, the vampire burst into violent laughter. “Oh, very good, Matthew. Bravo! Bravo! Stick to your guns. Admit nothing—not even at the bitter end. I admire your aplomb. Not to mention your ability to tell a bald-faced lie. You always were the craftiest of us. Niall and I couldn’t hold a candle to you. Tell me, does Aiden know how she was bought?”

“Bought?” Aiden said. “What do you mean?”

“He means nothing. Don’t listen to him, Aiden. He lies in an attempt to divide us,” Matthew said. “Daniel, leave Aiden out of this. Your dispute is with me. She has nothing to do with any of it.”

Aiden ground her teeth. “No, don’t leave me out of it. What is he talking about?” She looked from Matthew to Daniel and then back again before repeating the question. “What is he talking about?”

Daniel performed a pantomime of surprise. “What, you’ve never told her? Matt, for shame. For shame.” Daniel sidled closer to Aiden.

She turned her crucifix toward the vampire and fixed her gaze upon his burned cheek as a reminder of the creature’s true nature. “Say it,” Aiden said.

Daniel huffed but kept his distance from the crucifix. “Let’s be straight up then if we’re going to talk about the truth, eh? Aiden, did you know dear Matthew here became your guardian just one week after he recanted our alleged heresy?”

“It was one week after your mother’s death in childbirth also,” Matthew said. “Another unfortunate but coincidental event. Don’t listen to his lies, Aiden.”

Aiden cast her mentor a sharp look. Then she addressed Daniel. “No, no, I didn’t know that. What exactly was this heresy you keep bringing up?”

“Alleged heresy,” Daniel corrected.

“Alleged,” Aiden agreed with a ready nod. Guiltily, she did her best to ignore her mentor’s weighted stare.

The Englishman rushed to provide an explanation. “I’ll spare you a detailed account of the pain-staking historical research we performed, the anthropological studies, the extensive theological discourse,” Daniel said, “and I’ll bypass the uncanonical aspects of our work since they do not directly pertain to what I’m about to reveal—”

“Get on with it man,” Matthew intoned with heavy sarcasm. “You always did love the sound of your own voice.”

Daniel glared at Matthew and continued, “In a nutshell, our theory postulated that the angelic ancestry of Nephilim Brethren has been used successfully in conjunction with mystical and demonic energies in order to achieve an unending existence.”

“Immortality?” Aiden said.

“Precisely!” The vampire nodded, his expression intent, eyes full of obsession and lust. “There is historical precedence. The legend of the Phoenix, the fall of House Shemyaza—”