Page 7 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

7

N yte

Astraea truly thought I would leave her, and my mind had been punishing itself since our training session. I enjoyed the heat of her anger, but I couldn’t stand the twist of her resentment.

It was better this way. If I was good, I would let her continue to believe I was leaving and that I would not care. That I wouldn’t look back.

Truth was, I would never look forward if I had to leave her behind. I would choose darkness because within that depth of nothingness my denial could thrive.

“Vampire,” Elliot muttered.

Not to me. He’d made a game with Zeik, Kerrah, and Sorleen—the rest of the Golden Guard—trying to guess if every new person who walked into the establishment we sat in was human or a transitioned vampire.

The Guard were loyal to me and had fine skills as the most highly trained I’d overseen personally. I knew them better than I thought they knew themselves. Every weakness and flaw, habit and desire. I could break them as easily as I made them, yet that never crossed my mind. Never once had I wanted them gone, even when they tested my patience to the very edge.

We’d come to a bordello at the edge of Vesitire where there’d been a number of reports of missing persons. This new strain of vampires had rounded ears, not pointed. They were masterful at blending in, whereas the soulless and shadowless were born with an immortal grace and stillness that also set them apart.

“Not a vampire,” I countered, taking a drink. The human wine was doing nothing to curb my sharp edges from being away from Astraea.

“We’ve been tracking them longer than you,” Elliot challenged. “We know the tells.”

“We are them,” Kerrah added. She sat lazily, elbow propped on the table, playing with a strand of her brown hair.

“Exactly!” Elliot said.

“What are these tells you look for?” I asked.

It was Zeik who replied, “Without getting close enough for scent, it’s always in the arrogance. He comes in here like he could kill everyone to get what he wants.”

“Arrogance is human nature and it feeds on the rich. He could kill everyone to get what he wants; he doesn’t need fangs for it.”

The transitioned were difficult to distinguish from the humans. Even their changed scent was faint and required me to get too close for casual conversation. They were the ultimate weapon in disguise, which became clear when I’d witnessed how fast they could tear through a room with insatiable bloodlust. It was a threat I needed to get under my control.

“Now we need to find out,” Kerrah said. Her palm slapped the middle of the table. “Not me.”

Zeik mirrored her movement and echoed her words, his strength far greater because of his broad build; I swore I heard the table splinter. Elliot quickly followed. Sorleen was slower, not speaking but joining her hand with theirs. She was the most recent Golden Guard. It had been a hundred years since she triumphed in her Libertatem, but her past was haunted and I’d heard her game was particularly brutal, that she’d had to kill her competitors at the end to gain their key pieces. She’d then learned her whole family, who she’d been determined to protect by competing in the Libertatem, had been slaughtered by blood vampires right before she’d won safety from them for her kingdom.

“You act like children,” I grumbled, finishing off my drink.

“You act like you have a stick up your ass,” Kerrah countered.

I wouldn’t break double figures counting how many people would dare speak to me that way.

I stood, heading over to the brown haired man who looked to be past his forties. He leaned one arm on the bar and with the other hooked the waist of a woman working as she passed. She startled to it, uncomfortable with his arm tugging her closer when she tried to keep a little space.

He was making this too easy for me.

When his eyes landed on me all the false confidence fell from his face and that conceited mouth finally stopped spilling self-importance to fill the void left by what others wouldn’t give him. The woman read my signal and scooted off before I dropped a hand to the man’s shoulder.

I was about to be proven right.

Nightsdeath surfaced as the thing that had a craving for human blood, the vampire kin part of me. I was born fae, made a vampire, and had the wings of an outcasted celestial. An accursed trifecta.

My teeth pierced the flesh of his neck before a sound could escape his mouth. Screams from onlookers filled in for his silent horror as I drank from him. His blood had a bitter note and certainly wasn’t anything to indulge in. Human blood was like wine: there were far sweeter to be sampled and some could be simply sour. It had been so long since I’d tasted it at all that a dark hunger was overcoming me regardless, and if I didn’t stop I would kill him.

I even found myself reaching into his mind, crushing the fear to make him weak and susceptible in my trap. He had no family and had inherited his money from a rich uncle who died just this year. No—he’d killed him for the money. No woman to love. No children to bear it either. He’d spent this time gambling away riches he didn’t know what to do with other than drink and take.

I could kill him.

The world wouldn’t miss him. No one would care.

Just a little more.

If I let him go he would continue to waste away, gamble his fortune, end up dying by some idiotic means anyway.

In all my deliberation I’d passed the point of no return. I drank the final measure that thumped one last deep beat in his chest before it had nothing left to circulate.

Well, shit.

The body dropped from my grip when my teeth released him, and I braced a hand on the damp wooden bar. I hadn’t intended to kill him when I’d come over here to prove he wasn’t a transitioned—their blood was foul to another vampire—and even now I wish I could say I felt guilty about it.

“Damn, I was sure of that one,” Elliot muttered behind me.

I was gathering my breath, reeling so much from the trance the blood pulled me into that I’d long forgotten the euphoria of. It was racing within me now, like a surge of energy that could kill everyone in this room before one person could finish screaming. I had control of myself but I couldn’t deny I’d missed the exhilarating high of a feed.

“Hunting vampires, are you?” A seductive feminine voice spoke.

The establishment had mostly cleared out. Some women workers clutched each other in the corners, observing us with both fear and curiosity. There was a time vampires were alluring to the humans. Feeding on them could be a mutually pleasurable experience.

My eyes dragged to the woman who spoke. She sat cross-legged on a table, leaning her hands on either side of her as she watched us with a wickedly intrigued smile. Her deep wine-red hair was pulled back high with several braids.

“Did you take bets on me?” she asked.

“You gave her a pass,” Zeik grunted, pushing Elliot.

“In my defense, she came in looking a sad, lost puppy.”

Her mouth only quirked to that. “You’re lacking a mind with a deeper sense of perception,” she said to me.

It wasn’t often I was gripped by intrigue about someone. The others, however, took offense, now pinning her with cutting looks of disdain.

“I trust my own just fine,” I said; reaching down to pluck the dead man’s pocket square, I wiped the blood cornering my mouth.

“A lone wolf never survives.”

“When it can’t be killed, it’ll take its chances.”

“Then why do you keep these brainless fools around you?”

“Do you know who we are?” Zeik said, folding his arms, and making his build even more intimidating.

“The esteemed Golden Guard,” she gushed, mocking them with a straightening pose and bat of her lashes. Then her face fell, unfazed.

“Then you know what it took to get here,” he snapped.

“How you got here is well known, and I’ll admit, the Libertatem sounds like hell. But many of us play a game of survival just by living and don’t get a damn title for it.”

“She has a point,” Kerrah muttered. The hand she laid on Zeik’s arm relaxed him. “But I was leaning more on Nyte’s side with him not being a vampire.”

They all regarded the dead human. Darkness spilled from my fingers to engulf the body, sweeping his existence away. It had been a reckless, dangerous risk to drink after so long in sobriety when it became a struggle to subdue the beast inside me wanting to seek out more. That tuned acutely to the pulse of the women across the room and made my mouth salivate with the thought of how much more delectable their blood would be.

It was a line I would not cross. Except for those who’d given themselves willingly, I’d never harmed a woman.

The others were chatting but I had to focus on my control. I needed an outlet for this rush of adrenaline and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to wreak havoc or expend it in a wild heated passion. My mind flooded with the image of glittering silver hair and seductive light blue eyes. My obsession for Astraea clawed its way to the surface and every fiber of my being longed for her. I had to get this over with. Then I would find her.

“What do you want?” I asked, straightening and turning to the red-haired beauty.

“I heard you’re looking for Drystan.”

“What do you know of him?”

“From what I gather, more than his own brother.”

“Don’t play with me. It won’t end well for you.”

“I haven’t started playing with you, and I’ll take my chances.”

I kind of admired her quick wit and boldness. I also wanted to snap her neck for it.

“Where is he?”

“For that, I want something in return.”

“I don’t bargain with rogues.”

“Then let me join your little tribe of nightmares.”

“My—what?”

She gestured around at Elliot and the others. “This band of rogues .”

“We did not come out on top of our Libertatem games to be likened to strays like you,” Zeik said.

“Of course, the prized Golden Guard of the king, except… there is no king now, is there? Looks like you’re all just rogues like the rest of us.”

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Nadia.”

“Do you work for my brother?”

“I thought we established I’m a rogue.”

“Bored of that, are you?” Zeik chimed in, studying her with crossed arms.

“You could say that. I know where your brother is; I know a lot of things about the transitioned vampire army he’s been building.”

“What’s in it for you by sharing that with us?” Elliot asked.

“I want to join you.”

“I don’t know what you think it is we do,” Kerrah said, leaning against a table.

Nadia shrugged. “I’m intrigued to find out what the Band of Nightmares gets up to with their time.”

“I quite like the name,” Zeik commented.

She wouldn’t be my problem if I agreed, and I wouldn’t care if the others decided to dispose of her at any point.

“Fine,” I said. The others all snapped their gazes to me. “She’ll get us the information we need faster. Kill her if she becomes an annoyance, or—” I targeted a look of warning on her, one that had dropped men to their knees; she wisely straightened with her first sign of unease. “If you find her to be a spy for my brother, or anyone for that matter, her death is mine. And let me tell you, little rogue, it will not be merciful.”

“You’re as charming as I expected, Nightsdeath,” she sang.

“Expect what you want of a monster; it’ll still find ways to terrorize you.”

Nadia hopped off the table. “I am at your service,” she said with mock bow.

“Then talk.”

“His highness is where he’s always been—overseeing the transitioned vampires. Those who are deemed sane enough eventually get to leave the mountain they’re trained in. A series of caves carved high in a deserted pocket of Vesitire. His— your— father wanted it to be of the utmost discretion. As far as I know, the other vampires don’t know of the creations other than the golden guard. They have no knowledge of the scale to which the army has been built.”

Elliot frowned deeply. “We know there’s far more than us, but an army?”

Nadia nodded. Her green eyes shifted to me. “To prove my loyalty I’ll give you the first piece of insight.”

I had a bad fucking feeling, but nothing about the many storms clashing in this war would be pleasant.

“Go on,” I prompted.

“It takes dying with the blood of a shadowless in the human system to return as a transitioned. Have you ever wondered what the consequences are?”

“Bloodlust isn’t enough?” Sorleen muttered. They were the first words she’d spoken from her quiet observance.

Nadia regarded her as if just noting her presence. “You think you’re all loyal to Nyte. But your creator can demand you turn against him at any moment.”

“Our creator?” Zeik echoed.

“The transition creates a blood bond,” Nadia clarified.

“How do you know this?” Elliot asked.

“I made it my business to. When you have nowhere to go and no one to see, time without purpose can drive you to madness. I never wanted to return to that mountain once I was free, but I also felt like I had to gain something back. I watched a transitioned who was out of control and Drystan stopped him with mere words. The vampire tried to resist, insatiable in his bloodlust that had torn through a dozen humans, but he couldn’t fight the prince who just stood there, commanding him to stop. It dawned on me then, the power Drystan had over anyone who was turned by his blood.”

My bad feeling manifested as something cold and dark and ugly, I came to a realization before she could even confirm the turn this was about to take.

“You were turned by Drystan’s blood,” I concluded. Her silence was answer enough.

“So if you kill your creator…?” Zeik hedged.

“We won’t be able to be commanded against our will,” Nadia confirmed.

“Shit,” Elliot muttered. “How do we know who our creator is?”

“You’d feel it if you were close to them—the submission. It’s like a compulsion to please them even if you despise them.”

Everyone was staring at me.

“Your attachment to me is entirely of your own foolish volition,” I grumbled at the unspoken accusation.

“Attachment is a strong word,” Elliot said.

“You haven’t attempted to kill Drystan yet?” I asked Nadia. My fist clamped tight against my trembles of anger.

“I haven’t liked my odds. He’s smart, elusive.”

Yes he was. I didn’t credit him enough for his intelligence; I didn’t think he needed it. Until now, if he truly planned to risk his life based on a fable to reach Death’s realm.

I didn’t tell her the problem might be solved soon enough.

“So you’ve come to me for an alliance?”

“I watched you on the rooftops not long after the Libertatem. I was curious about you when I heard you were back. It looked like both of you were ready to kill the other up there.”

I could think about killing my brother a million times, but hearing someone else talk of it— plan for it—was itching at something highly defensive in me. Drystan was many things, but he was my problem to deal with.

“No one approaches him without my knowledge or presence,” I warned everyone.

“We’re not going now?” Nadia said, crossing her arms with an impatient frown.

It was the last thing I wanted to do right now. The night was falling, and I had been away from my Starlight too long.

“Keep her in your sights,” I told Elliot.

“I didn’t come to be a pet on a leash,” Nadia snapped.

“Go after Drystan without my knowledge, little rogue, and you’ll understand what it feels like to crave death.”

“Where are you going?” she asked with an edge of bitterness.

“None of your concern. We’ll visit my little brother tomorrow.”

Drystan was prone to saying things that provoked the shit out of me and I was too on edge with my high from the blood to deal with him tonight. Human blood drove a certain kind of frenzy I needed an outlet for. I was trying not to kill senselessly, so instead of venturing to unleash my heightened emotions in violence, I craved to turn my impulses toward my Starlight. Astraea could taunt and test me to the very edge too, but unlike anyone else, whether in rage or passion, I desired every piece of her.