CHAPTER ONE
Iwasn’t sure how long I’d been in this coffin. From the kink in my neck, I assumed it had been a significant amount of time. The coffin was swaying, as if conveyed by a coach. The one I was used to sleeping in wasn’t as nice, but it had suited me, abiding by supernatural rules I hardly understood myself. This one was free of dirt. Reposing in native soil was a requirement for a vampire, despite the inconveniences it presented, like the one time the dirt had become infested with fungus gnat larvae. How tedious it had been to have the correct soil shipped to my castle. I simply couldn’t abide the thought of those squirming insects, so I’d had an entirely new coffin produced, yet I’d had to sleep in a different chamber to avoid the eggs being laid again by the lingering gnats, and the whole process beginning anew.
One didn’t think of such things when ruminating on the realities of immortality, but it wasn’t all glamorous. I would take this satin interior to that cloying earth any day, but until now, that simply hadn’t been an option.
My mind was still clearing as I tried to grasp exactly where I was. I’d thought the sound I’d heard when I’d come to had been of breaking bones. It was one of my favorite sounds, and quite the music to awaken to. But alas, I now understood it to be the sound of a twig snapping beneath the coach wheels. How dreadfully mundane.
I was breathing hard, sweating, and I licked my dry lips as my hand strayed down to my left leg. The injury there was an old one. A clean break, but I’d never managed to run the same. For years it hadn’t mattered—the dull ache only appearing after a short jog or with the change of weather—but it had vanished completely when I’d become immortal, and I was glad to find that it hadn’t returned with my new situation. I was physically in fine condition, aside from being restrained in this capsule and carried off like a sack of grain. My fingers grazed the fine interior of the coffin that held me prisoner. It was too dark to see anything, which was strange for me, as I was usually able to see in the dark no matter how little light.
And then I realized what the steady tremors I felt reverberating through my body were.
My heart. It was beating.
My breath caught, and I realized that I was breathing. I’d often inhaled and exhaled out of habit, a way for my kind to blend in with humans, even though it was unnecessary. Now, it was keeping me alive. It would ensure my heart kept beating, bringing vital oxygen to my blood.
I laughed, the feeling like a tickle in my chest as my heart, recently just a cancerous lump of flesh in the center of my body, convulsed. It was like having a live bird at my core. I half-remembered the feeling from my past life, the sensation becoming familiar all at once in the same way that memory of my aching leg had come racing back.
I was human, just as Vrykolakas had promised.
As thrilling as the new feelings that washed over me were, I also felt a dread coiling unbidden in my stomach. I was mortal. Vulnerable. My senses were dull, like I was buried beneath the ground, everything muffled and far away. I could hear the wheels of the coach creaking, but that was all save my own breathing.
Who was driving the coach? Where was I going? I frowned, recalling how Vrykolakas had said something about delivering me to a friend. I couldn’t fathom who that could be, but I was sure to find out soon enough.
I was preoccupied with my new body. Or was it my old one? If I’d been restored exactly to my old self before turning, surely the old ache in my leg would have returned. But it seemed that I had turned human from my vampire’s perfected form. Vrykolakas couldn’t simply turn back the hands of time then. Whatever he had done, it had been effective enough, draining my powers and returning my humanity to me.
A chill raced through my body, and I ran my hands over my limbs to generate some warmth, realizing that I felt more sensation than I had as a vampire, as if my nerves had awakened. They would make me more vulnerable to pain and pleasure. More human and open to manipulation. Without my heightened senses, this development made me uneasy, but I would need to adjust to my deficiencies quickly if I was going to complete the task set before me. If I ever hoped to return to that powerful form.
The carriage driver called something that I couldn’t make out, and the carriage began to slow. A minute later, all was still. My breathing was so loud in my ears, my pulse quickening as the unknown lay before me. I did not enjoy this feeling of helplessness.
“You received the notice ahead of my arrival, I take it. You had a month.” A man’s voice. Probably the driver.
“I admit it took me by surprise, but I was able to secure accommodations,” came the reply from a woman. An older woman. Something about her voice was familiar … or perhaps it was the cadence of her speech. “Are the … particulars of the communication accurate?”
“That they are. Would you like me to release him here, or inside?”
“Here will do nicely. The duke’s staff need not see this. It would raise unnecessary questions.”
“Very well, my lady.”
A cracking to my left made me flinch, and I scrabbled back as debris fell into the coffin, as did a faint glow of light. Despite the light, I could tell that it was dark outside. There was a flickering, like that of a lantern nearby. That fact did little to slow my racing heart. I had no idea what to expect when the lid was removed from the coffin. Whose mercy would I be entrusted to?
A crowbar lifted the cover slowly, coaxing nails out by the force exerted against it. In a moment, it came free, and the lid was shoved aside to reveal cool night air and the dark interior of a wagon.
I blinked as I slowly rose to find a long-faced man watching me with indifference. He seemed to be assuring himself that I was unharmed. When he turned to the woman beside him, he nodded. “Right as rain, he is. Delivered, as promised.”
“Count, is that you?” a woman asked.
I hesitated. “You may have me at a disadvantage, I’m afraid,” I said in a restrained reply.
A sigh. “That’s him, alright. Thank you.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” the driver said, reaching out to help me to my feet.
I found that I was unsteady, and I welcomed the hand as I was settled onto solid ground, where I took a moment to dust off a smart suit. I hadn’t been wearing anything earlier, so this had to have been procured for me by Vrykolakas, as had the coach. Whether the driver was a servant of the vampire god, or merely under hypnosis, I wasn’t sure. Whenever I utilized trance magic on a victim, it left them in a dreamlike state, able to accept only simple commands. The driver’s actions seemed coherent, but that may have been a testament to the superior skills of Vrykolakas.
The driver was already pulling away when I turned to regard my benefactor, whose generosity I was so reliant upon.
I squinted at the woman. It was dark, and unlike the driver, she didn’t carry a lantern. My vision clearly wasn’t what it used to be, as previously I would have been able to make out the pores on this woman’s face, no matter how little light. I drew closer and the woman hardly registered the movement. It took me a second to realize that it was because she was blind. My eyes darted to the cane at her side. “Do I know you?”
