Scarlet Dusk (27 page)

IT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE…

Serena frowned, looking over at Zoey’s troubled face and turned to Zane, who hadn’t stopped clenching his fists since the news came out.

“Zane, we need to think about this for a minute,” Serena frowned, turning to Zoey. “We can’t just rush into this! I feel we should call The Council in on this!”

“Serena, it might be
too
late if we wait for their arrival,” Zoey shook her head. “We need to move fast.”

“You can’t be serious! I am usually all for jumping into a situation…but
this
?” Serena shook her head, “It’s suicide!”

Zane shook his head. “We need to destroy him.”

“Are you serious? By now he’s probably got an army of dead minions!” Serena bit her lip, the sudden churning in her gut causing her to groan and clutch her stomach.

She knew this feeling.

She was afraid.

It was
almost laughable if it weren’t so frightening.

The great Serena Vailean—the beautiful, blonde, busty
badass clan leader—terrified.

And all it had taken was a murder-happy death-wizard rapist gradually modifying a six-foot lizard into a devil-on-Earth.

Serena recited that back to herself.

Suddenly it didn’t seem so foolish.

“It doesn’t matter either way, Serena, because you are staying here,” Zane said.

Serena blinked. “Wh-what? You expect me to stay while you go and—”

“Zoey? Can you give us a moment?” Zane took a deep breath.

Zoey, biting her lip, nodded and started for the door.

“You can’t be serious!” Serena whimpered, “We’re finally together again; we’re about to have a family together… and you want to go off on a mission that you might not come back from?” Serena whimpered, “Please, Zane—
please
—don’t go back out there! He’s not your responsibility; he’s
not
your fucking problem anymore!”

“But he is
, Serena,” Zane pressed his hands to either side of her face and forced her to look up at him. “I can’t allow my son—
our
child—to be born into a world with something like
that
in it. I
need
to do this for
us.
And
that’s
why I’m going to succeed.”

She shook her head, allowi
ng the tears to finally fall, “And what if you
don’t
succeed?”

“I can’t allow myself to
think like that, Serena.” Zane sighed.

He
began to pace for a moment, and she could tell he was working towards something and shook her head.

“Zane, what is it?”

Before he was even halfway down—before the knee of his pants had had a chance to marry the floorboards—Serena’s eyes had flooded with tears as her body began to shake with both excitement and panic; her lips parting in shock, however no words were able to form as she watched in shock.

“Serena,” Zane reached into his back pocket and produced the box, “I spent a lot of time wondering what I’d say if this day came”—he frowned and shook his head—“
when
this day came, and I’d always been so terrified that, when I finally pushed myself to be brave enough to get down on one knee, I wouldn’t be smart enough to know what to say. Well, that day is here now and…” Zane stammered and chuckled at his own nerves, “And I can see that all of my fears—every concern I ever had about being too stupid to offer you the eloquence that you deserved—was every bit as accurate as a prediction could be…”

The two shared a nervous chuckle at that.

“But,” Zane cleared his throat and looked up into Serena’s eyes, “I’m also proud to say that, now that this day is finally here, I
am
smart enough to know that, now that I’m here, it isn’t about how many poems I could—or, let’s be fair,
couldn’t
—quote that make me want to write hundreds more about you, or about how many years I can—or
wish
I could—calculate in my head I’d want to share with you, or even about the names of great men I’d never be able to memorize who’ve come before me who had changed things for the better so that I could be here, saying what I’m about to say to you. Now that I’m finally able to speak these words, I know that no vocabulary that I’d made myself memorize would make a difference today could adequately say what the three most simple words could convey when each one carried with it the
truest
depth of its meaning: I love you.” Zane opened the box then, and the ring caught the light as he held it up. “I truly love you, Serena Vailean, and I want to marry you.”

Serena took a deep breath through her tears and looked up at him, “Zane Murdoch. You are
more
of an idiot than I thought if you think I’m going to let you go now.”

“Then I guess it’s good that I
don’t need your permission to let me go, Serena,” Zane bit his lip. “I
need
to do this; I
need
to kill Maledictus. And I
will not
fail.”

Serena whimpered
as Zane slid the ring on her finger. She didn’t want to admit it—didn’t want to give in to the truth that she could see in her now-fiancé’s eyes—but she couldn’t bring herself to fight it.

“J-just swear that you’ll come back, you asshole,” Serena sobbed.

Zane nodded. “You know I will, baby, because I’m
your
asshole for life.”

Frozen in sh
ock, she watched as Zane pressed a kiss to her cheek, stood up and walked out the door.

“Zoey, keep an eye on
my future wife, please; she
is
carrying my child.”

And, just like that, he was gone.

Gone to kill a monster.

SO MANY YEARS OF HIDING AND PLAYING IT SAFE
after that
one
stupid mistake had left Celine desperate for the protection of anybody stronger than her.

When she and Kristine had been caught feeding off of the then-human Zane—the act that had turned him in the first place thanks to Raith’s interference—by Serena’s younger brother, she’d thrown herself at his mercy. In exchange for safety from punishment for both feeding on a human and, ten times worse, actually
siring
a new vampire in the process, they’d gladly tossed the others in their group to Keith as a means of impressing The Council. For them, having a connection to somebody steadily climbing the ranks of the mythos government meant protection for them, and if all Keith demanded in exchange for absolute protection was their compliance, who were they to question it?

So when Keith ordered Celine to stick around the newly-turned Zane and his loyal lapdog buddy to make sure that no dangerous revelations were had, she didn’t question the order. She’d actually gone above and beyond and gotten engaged to her unknowing “son”—though she hated to look at it like that—just so she could be certain that she was safe from recognition.

But the more she saw of what was becoming of Zane and Raith’s friendship—the partnership they’d formed as mythos mercenaries; solving all sorts of mysteries and taking out all sorts of dangerous rogues—made Celine all the more nervous that she and Kristine might be found out. And if she and Kristine were found out, it wouldn’t be long until Keith’s deceitful efforts were brought to light, and so Keith ordered her to do the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to do.

He told her to kill them.

All her life, Celine had just wanted to have fun. She lived to party and get crazy; never to fight or play the role of the dangerous life-taker. She might’ve been born a vampire, but all of her friends had teased that she was the most human of all of them. What had happened with Zane had been a stupid mistake; an accident brought about from too many stupid vamps in one place at one time and too many enchanted drugs in their systems. She couldn’t bear to see her life ruined, or worse, because of one stupid mistake, but she also couldn’t bring herself to remedy the risk by becoming a murderer.

So she did the next best thing: she arranged to have the taroe tribe Zane and Raith intended to steal from catch them. The taroe were a self-contained tribe of magic users up in the mountains; nobody bothered them and, in turn, they didn’t bother anybody. But if they caught a pair of thieves in their village—if they discovered a plot from a couple of mythos to steal from them—then there was no reason to assume that they wouldn’t just kill them as an example of what happened to any outsiders who came poking about.

It could’ve been so simple!

It should’ve been so simple!

It would’ve been so simple!

If only the taroe bastards hadn’t taken the offense so seriously.

If only they’d just
killed
Zane and Raith.

If only they hadn’t sacrificed the relic with the
Maledictus
curse in it to inflict their punishment.

That relic, as it turned out, had represented a sizable chunk of Keith’s plans, and having it crammed inside the body of the vampire one of his rogue subordinates had accidently sired
had not
been a part of his plans.

That relic, as it turned out, contained the remains of a psychotic and sociopathic death-wizard,
Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, who, late in the tenth century, had gotten carried away in a power-struggle against an overly dramatic varcol—one of the first breeds of vampire to walk the earth—by the name of Utukku. According to Keith, Utukku had already amassed a sizable list of offenses with The Council of that time—enough that they’d taken two of his fingers as punishment for his crimes—and, when things with the death-wizard had gotten out of hand and he’d caused one of history’s largest and most fatal earthquakes, Utukku had stepped in to prove to The Council that he knew enough to clean up the mess he’d made. The early reports, which Keith had gained access to because of his father’s connections to The Council’s records, stated that Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband had sacrificed himself to preserve his aura’s essence—and essence that was said to be a festering and twisted breed of murderous and perverse evil—within his prized chalice, which, during the containment process, had been warped and caked in carbon, creating the dark, twisted relic that had eventually found its way to the taroe tribe.

And while the taroe had no clue what it was they’d acquired, the mysterious power it contained had enticed them and compelled them to keep it as a holy keepsake in the center of their village, which was
exactly
where Keith was content in letting it stay until the time was right.

The young vampire was, if nothing else, quite thorough in his scheming. Though the exact nature of the relic was a mystery, his research had shown him that anywhere the Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband-chalice went, chaos was never far behind.

It traveled far and wide during the Crusades.

It gained power and insight in Nazi Germany.

It tasted blood and terror during The Khmer Rouge.

Its impact over the centuries were clear to those who cared enough to research its history; those like Keith Vailean. After he’d pinpointed its location, he’d twisted and manipulated those around him so that he could, as nothing more than a son tagging along with his father, arrange to visit the site and, in doing so, found a pair of patsies who’d made a stupid mistake.

Content with letting the relic stay with the taroe and destroy the tribe from the inside, he needed only to wait. Then, with the taroe all dead, he could retrieve the relic and, with it, gain untold power within The Council as the young prodigy that solved a mystery of over a thousand years!

An incredible feat if one didn’t speculate that the last Council member to actually
care
about the whereabouts of the Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband relic had given up the search in the early sixteenth century.

Which was
exactly
why Keith felt comfortable waiting for his prize; content that he wasn’t in competition from any others seeking that glory. The relic was safe and sound within the ignorant grasp of the taroe tribe…

Until Celine, in an attempt at indirectly following his order to kill Zane and Raith, inadvertently brought the curse the only thing it needed: a host.

A ‘cursed one.’

The
Maledictus
.

Terrified of the monster that returned when she was expecting a messenger bearing bad news, Celine fled, and Keith, not trusting the simple-minded sang with all his secrets, arranged to have her memories of all involvement with him secured. On his orders, a powerful auric had placed a protective bind on the memories that, if tampered with, would put the invading mind into a coma and, in cases of weaker aurics, kill them.

Satisfied that his secrets were safe and seeing a potential unraveling of all of his planning, Keith forced his plans into action ahead of schedule. Traveling to Europe with the excuse of furthering his work with The Council—a half-truth, since it
was
the mythos government’s resources that he was after—he called upon Kristine to infiltrate a team of mythos hunters—posing as a fellow human expert in the field—and guiding them wherever Keith needed them to be. Once she had successfully gained the trust and control of the leader of the hunters, Devon—despite the threat of a budding romance that was blossoming between them—Keith knew he could, through her, point them at whoever he needed dead. Using this resource, he’d arranged to have his mother killed and his father implicated in the tragedy. Then, both his father’s clan
and
his allies with The Council distracted by the tragedy, he was free to work around the unforeseen element of a walking, talking
Maledictus
; the exact nature of which he couldn’t fathom, but, through what he’d established of its effects, was a destructive force that could easily represent one of biggest threats to both mythos
and
mankind.

A turn of events that, if properly manipulated, could be even
more
beneficial than simply tracking down an ancient relic.

But Keith needed leverage; an angle. Keith needed more power.

As luck would have it, his brash sister had taken the death of their mother far harder than he’d expected, and her father’s hand in her death, though never proven, had been just enough to convince her to leave the clan, and, in doing so, forfeit her role as the next to lead the Clan of Vail.

Then, as luck would have it, his grief-stricken father, desperate for somebody to take under his wing with the loss of both his scorned daughter and scholar son, found and “adopted” the carrier of the curse, Zane Murdoch, as an apprentice warrior to the clan.

And, just like that,
everything
fell into place!

The power that Keith was a waiting heir to
exactly
the kind of power he needed to take down a threat as great as the one this Zane was carrying, and, now that he’d been brought into the Clan of Vail’s walls, there was no longer any need to track him. The playing board was set for him to swoop in and kill the
Maledictus
; an act that would land him among the highest-ranking Council chairs practically overnight! But to claim the role quickly he’d had to arrange for his father to be killed in a way that none—especially The Council—would feel inclined to investigate.

He needed strength and effectiveness; he needed a killer.

Fortunately he still had Kristine and her team of mythos-hunters.

Unfortunately
, Keith’s sister had gone and seduced their leader, compromising Kristine’s influence over the group. Proving herself to be the loose cannon he’d feared her to be—certain that it had been her influence that had tipped Celine to attack the human-Zane in the first place several years earlier—Kristine had crashed an engagement party between Devon and his sister.

Whether it was a jealous rage or a clever attempt at regaining control of the mythos-hunters through a mutual tragedy, she’d wound up murdering his sister’s lover and, as a surprising bonus, driving her to become a shut-in.

Confident that his sister was out of the picture, he went about contacting the proper sources to murder his father, and while there
had
been a few complications—several loose ends that came close to tipping off Gregori Vailean of his son’s treacheries—Keith had been able to see his father’s clan left without a leader without a single hitch.

Except one…

Zane, his target, had been entrusted by Keith’s father to bring his daughter, the rightful heir to the role of clan leader, back into their walls.

Suddenly all of Keith’s plans—every carefully constructed piece of the puzzle—had meant
nothing
. Eager to see his plans finalized by his own hand, he’d returned home with the hopes of causing an internal collapse within the Clan of Vail with the assistance of local therions. If he moved fast enough, his sister would never secure the role of leader and, in all of the chaos, Keith could snag control, kill Zane, implicate his sister as he’d once implicated his father, and be hailed as a hero while his father’s legacy collapsed, while his sister’s interference was met with criminal charges, and while he secured his future as one of the most powerful mythos on the planet; capable of reshaping the world however he saw fit.

But, as both Serena Vailean and Zane Murdoch had proven several times over, they weren’t happy unless they were, with every single step they made, interfering with
somebody’s
plans, even if they weren’t directly aware of them.

With Keith’s deceit and treachery brought to The Council’s attention, the young vampire had been put away, and Kristine and Celine—suddenly finding themselves potentially standing in a very dangerous spotlight—decided to use what little influence they’d acquired through their contact with Keith to
literally
construct their own solution, and, in the process, the means to take out a mutually despised interloper in their lives: Serena Vailean.

Kristine was eager to see Serena dead for her involvement with Devon and her interference with her hopes at obtaining power through Keith’s plans.