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FATAL
RETRIBUTION
A RAINA KIRKLAND NOVEL
Book 1
By Diana Graves
Copyright © 2011 Diana Graves
All rights reserved.
Book cover & format by Diana Graves, www.dianagraves.org
Kindle Edition
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License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Disclaimer
This book is a work of pure fiction. Characters, places and incidents are creations of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to people, living or dead, businesses, events or places is purely coincidental.
Acknowledges
To my family and friends, thank you.
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OTHER WORKS
Fatal Retribution
Mortal Sentry
Grave Omen
Deadly Encounters
Toxic Warrior
The Artist: The Serial Series Book 1
The Librarian: The Serial Series Book 2
The Zombie Book: Zombie Book 1
Adult Coloring Book: Dark Whimsy
10
I WATCHED MELVERN walk away, back to the crowd of people surrounding the sitting area. The false memory of having sex with him was too fresh in my mind not to blush when I caught myself admiring his strong back-side. I was ashamed of it, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of him, sexually at least. The imaginary sex felt so real, so tangible.
“Raina?” Mato said from a few feet away. I jumped and instantly blushed—more if that was at all possible. I’d been staring at Melvern for how long? I didn’t know.
“Yes?”
Mato seemed to search for his words on the floor, as though they were written there for him to read from. “May I talk with you?”
“Yes,” I said tentatively. “But, can we talk outside? I think I need some fresh air.”
He looked up and back at the table of food. “Have you had enough to eat?”
“No, but I’m fine,” I said, and he tilted his head toward the elevator, telling me to lead the way, so I did.
The town was bustling with life. I could appreciate it more knowing that my brothers would live, sort of. The streets and shops were filled with people and creatures of all kinds going on about their night. The locals mostly consisted of vampires like Mato. Many of them had visible tattoos covering their arms, legs and faces. It wasn’t uncommon for collectives to have identifiable tattoos. Seth had three green dots between his thumb and pointer finger with red vines forming the letters B.F. for his collective, Bastion Fatal. It would seem that these Native vamps adopted the practice, and took it to the extreme.
I cracked a big smile when I saw a gothic Starbucks on the corner of Bite Me Street right next to Dark Ally’s BooX, a welcomed bit of unexpected normalcy in all this freakish chaos.
“Can we get some coffee?” I asked Mato.
He was standing by my side, looking down at me with an oh-so-serious face, but he nodded. The serious face worried me.
I took in the town as we made our way toward the café. I was noticing more about the town than I had when we arrived this morning. Horse drawn carriages strolled up and down the main street. Dark and sinister looking totem poles and gaudy street lamps stood tall, overshadowed only by the old overgrown forest that seemed to have the entire town closely surrounded. Gargoyles were perched high on the courthouse, but they were like no gargoyles I had ever seen. They seemed a strange mix of Gothic Victorian and Native American design, much like the rest of this town. The names of the roads and shops gave the town away as a tourist destination. Names like Coffin Threads Clothing Store and Dante’s Inferno Bakery put a much needed smile on my face. Mato didn’t smile. Maybe he didn’t agree with Darkness appealing to the vacationing masses. Maybe he saw it as selling out, maybe. Then again, he was a cop. Maybe he was just too jaded to appreciate the silly things in life.
The Starbucks was actually pretty much like any other I’d been to. It was simply decorated in darker shades of the same sort of trendy décor. Instead of browns and greens and blues it was blacks and greys and reds. And it was full of the same sort of people doing the same sort of things, just fewer humans.
“What will it be?” asked the blue-haired barista with a nametag that read, Laura. By the N tattooed on her neck, I knew she was a necromancer, a person born with a natural ability to raise the dead. There used to be a law that all human-looking non-humans had to be branded; N for necromancer, W for witch, F for Fey, and so on. That was until it was ruled unconstitutional sixty some years ago, which was why I had to ask, “Why the brand?”
She gave me a deadpan face and rolled her eyes, “I was born in a small town and laws might change, but people don’t.”
“That is true. I’ll have a tall soy-latte.” I usually got a real fancy drink when I went out for coffee, but I didn’t feel like fancy coffee. “You?” I asked Mato. “I’m buying.”
“Vente, hot, thanks.” Mato took a seat in a smooth red velvet chair.
“Seven, fifty,” Laura said. I took my wallet from my back pocket. It was thin because it only held three items. My driver’s license, my bank card and my papers, proof of being a registered and legal witch in Washington State. I’m sure Laura had similar papers in her wallet.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked as I took the seat next to Mato in a shiny black wood chair with a red cushioned seat.
“What happened in the hall—you did not know what was happening to you, you were not warned. This makes me think that you are not well informed about your condition, and you should be.”
“They just said that I would go through all the changes. They didn’t specify what that meant.”
“They should have,” he said.
A different barista handed us our drinks in turn. He was a thin dark vampire named Tom. My latte came in a small cup with a lid, too hot to drink just yet. Mato’s blood came in a large cup with a lid too, but he drank it down quickly.
“Good?” I asked when he was done.
He nodded and set his empty cup down. “Local blood.”
As I understood it, most restaurants and such got their blood from China, the biggest exporter of human blood for vampire consumption in the world. “Is local somehow better than foreign?” I asked.
“Yes, local means fresh.”
“That makes sense.”
“You should know all that will take place in your body,” said Mato getting back on subject.
“Such as?”
“You will gain in weight. Your bones will become denser. Not like stone, like those of a vampire, but they will be harder to break and you may become anemic. Your skin will become paler, your nails and hair will grow faster. You will find that under-cooked meat has some appeal.”
“I’m a vegan.”
“For now,” he said.
“Is that all of it?”
“You will begin to prefer the night—and your teeth will fall out.”
My eyes shot impossibly wide, “Huh?”
“Others will grow back in their place, stronger sharper teeth. There will be a learning curve and your inner cheeks and tongue will suffer for some time.”
“And all of this is going to happen over the next few months?”
Mato nodded. I took my first sip of latte while I thought: tougher bones, paler skin, cravings for bloody meat, living at night, vampire teeth…Yup, everything but death and full on bloodlust.
“Oh, there is one more thing.”
“Really?” I said from over my coffee, and I couldn’t keep the worry off my face or out of my voice.
“You may gain your—power. All vampires have something they can do that most other creatures cannot. Most speculate that it has something to do with different parts of the brain being accessible. The most common vampire trait is mind reading, like Master Melvern”
“What’s Olathia’s talent?”
Mato smiled then, a wide one that made him look so inviting. I instantly felt comfortable sitting with him, enjoying my coffee, even though the conversation was less than pleasant.
“She conjures lust and feeds from it.”
“She’s a succubus?” He nodded. “And you?” I asked before I remembered that I already knew. His smile became faint on his lips.
“I know people, their nature at least.”
“You know me?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked, and I instantly wished I hadn’t but I couldn’t help myself. Melvern could have been lying just to mess with me. But, I think my reason was a bit more pathetic than that. I was twenty-one years old and I never had a boyfriend before. If what Melvern said was true I wanted to hear Mato say it. Even though I didn’t know him. Even though a relationship with him was so farfetched a concept that I could barely entertain it. I wanted to hear him say he wanted me the way Melvern said he did.
Mato’s face became serious again. He leaned forward in his chair and held out his hand to me. I placed my hand in his. It was warm. He looked at me, directly at me with his honey-gold eyes, and I struggled not to flinch under his unwavering attention.
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| FATAL RETRIBUTION DREAM CAST!!!! |
“What do you see?” I finally asked.
He dropped his gaze and licked his lips. “You are a good person, truly.”
“Thanks,” I murmured. I was a little disappointed. I couldn’t help it, but what did I expect? That he would confess love? That’s just outrageous, and I had to laugh at myself, just a little.
Still holding my hand, Mato stood and looked down at me. For a moment there was tension between us. I knew what he thought of me, he knew what he thought of me, but neither of us knew what I thought of him. I suddenly felt heat crawl up my face and I took a sip of coffee to distract me.
“I must head back to the station. Will you be okay to find your way back to the clinic?”
I nodded with a mouth full of coffee and a cheesy smile on my face. He smiled down at me and let go of my hand before he headed out the door.
“Hot damn, he could bite me any night!” a woman called out.
I turned to find a table of young witches. They were staring after Mato and laughing. One of them caught me looking and winked at me. I quickly turned back around and sipped my coffee only for a minute longer before I headed out the door.
I didn’t want to go back to the clinic just yet. I looked down Bite Me Street and while it looked utterly deserted, it also looked completely inviting. Bite Me Street was a residential area, and like most of the buildings in this town, the houses looked like they were all relatively new construction. They looked the same, same design and same dramatic paint. Cookie cutter houses with the Addam’s Family in mind, vampire suburbia. I liked it.
The street was lit, but not too well that I couldn’t see the waxing moon in the sky, or the stars.
A block down the street I came to a house with police tape up around the yard and candles and flowers on the sidewalk. It was obviously a memorial to someone. The candles melted down to cover the sidewalk and street in multi-colored wax. There was a great big piece of cardboard attached to a stake in the ground with a picture of a man stuck to it. I didn’t know how to feel as I looked into the face of the man who attacked us this morning. He looked kindly when he wasn’t trying to kill me. He had smiling eyes, small and personal. His thin brown hair was combed to the side, leaving his dark bushing eyebrows the most striking part about his face. Under the photo, “R.I.P Paul Frito,” was written in big bubble letters.
“Poor Paul,” said a small voice. I looked down the sidewalk to find a little boy on a blue bike.
“Yeah?” I said. The boy looked a lot like the guard from the clinic, and I wondered if they were related. It was a very small town after all.
“The vampire hunter was called to Mrs. Keller’s house this morning because something killed her dog. I guess it was Paul,” said the boy pointing his small finger toward Paul’s picture. “He turned into a vampire.”
“Why did he go into the woods if he was in a town full of people?” I asked myself more than the boy.
“All these lights,” he said in his small voice. “New vampires don’t like the light. Not at all.”
“Do you know how this happened?”
“Everyone knows why, but no one knows how,” the boy said.
“Why did this happen?”
“Cause Paul had a bad life. He was so sad.” The boy was shaking his head with his eyes to the ground. “He was my friend,” the boy cried and sped away.
“Wait! Please!” I yelled after him, but he didn’t stop or look back.
I looked back at Paul’s photo and I wanted to be mad at him, but I felt sorry for him instead, and I hated that. The boy had said Paul had a bad life, that he was sad. But, if Paul had such a horrible life why would he want to be a vampire? Unless he was attacked like us, and then he was just as much a victim as we were.
After pacing for a while I ducked under the police tape and headed for the house. I walked around to the back until I spotted an open window. Small towns; got to love them. I set my coffee down and climbed in.
It was dark and smelled of stale and rotting food. From the windowsill, I looked out over Paul’s kitchen. It was small and cluttered with junk. Old beer cans were stacked in a corner, and probably every magazine he’d ever bought was sprawled out over the table and counters. The window I was perched on sat directly in front of the dining table. I carefully maneuvered out of the window and off the table, without touching too much junk.
I kept my hands over my mouth as I came to the kitchen sink, where a putrid smell of stagnant water, rotting food and sour milk overpowered my senses. This man was in desperate need of a housekeeper.
It was strange that there were no personal pictures on the walls, nothing but naked women and movie posters.
“This guy was a pig, but that doesn’t explain anything,” I said to myself. I made my way into the living room to find the front door wide open and two glowing eyes looking at me from the dark. They were like cat eyes but over five feet too high to belong to any cat.
“Have you satisfied your curiosity?” asked a familiar voice, Mato’s voice.
I put my hands up in the air, “I’m sorry I broke in.” My heart was instantly in my throat. “Am I in trouble?”
“No,” he said. He closed the front door and turned on a lamp that sat at an end table beside the cluttered couch. With the light on the room looked ten times worse. Junk food, video games, garbage and magazines seemed the theme of the living room.
“Why am I not in trouble?”
“Why would you be?” he asked plainly. He looked scary in the dim light. His pale skin was luminous. I opened my mouth to answer him but he interrupted me. “You have questions about Paul?”
“Yes, of course I do,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and locking one knee. I looked at Paul’s place warily. I felt like crap. Mato was the sheriff and I was standing in his crime scene. “Shit, I’m walking in your evidence, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. I’m so sorry.”
“Do not be sorry,” he said. He moved some clutter off the couch and onto the coffee table with liquid grace. “You are not hurting anything by being here. Sit,” he said gesturing to the couch. As he sat down his head gave a little twitch and his eyes wandered slightly, but he looked back at me with a fangless smile of encouragement, so I sat beside him silently. At the clinic and café I felt safe being with Mato, but now that I was alone with him in the dark of an empty house, my heart was beating fast in my chest, my feet felt cold. He was a dead man, a blood drinker. He could probably kill me with his pinky if he wanted to.
“I’m still sorry,” I said.
“What did you expect to find?” he asked as he folded his hands in his lap.
“I don’t know; something that would explain why and how Paul became a vampire, something that would tell me where I’m supposed to direct all this…anger.” I spared a thought for using his attraction to me to entice him into telling me everything he knew, but I quickly dismissed that notion. I was not, nor would I ever be that kind of woman. Instead I simply asked outright, “Was he attacked?”
Mato stiffened and his vampire eyes shifted slightly again and then came back to me but he was silent.
“You don’t have to tell me. In fact, you shouldn’t,” I said, and hung my head.
“Yesterday morning we got a call from one of Paul’s neighbors. They found their pet dead in their yard. It looked like human bite marks. It is not out of place for pets to become someone’s meal up here, but the animal was so viciously mangled that it alarmed me. I called Ruy to lead the investigation and then I went to my chamber for the day. When I awoke tonight, I was informed about all that has transpired.”
“How did you know it was Paul?” I asked.
“It is a small town. When you and your siblings described the vampire’s appearance the officers knew who it was,” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Before I went to the clinic I talked with the officers that processed the house. They found nothing to explain how Paul contracted vampirism.”
“So he didn’t escape from the VCC then, which means it wasn’t a proper state approved infection.”
“Paul wanted to be a vampire and he was well off and well loved. He could have bribed any vampire here into infecting him, but that is illegal and an automatic death sentence for both parties. Paul would not do that. He would not have risked someone he loved,” Mato said.
I flinched with disgust in myself. Mato had told me stuff he probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t bat my eyes at him, or touch his leg, or even give him extended eye contact, yet he seemed willing enough to talk.
“I don’t think you should have told me that.”
“You asked—,” he began but I cut him off.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked, for your sake. It’s just that I want to know so badly. I want…,” I shook my head while I searched for the right words. “I want this to make sense. I want something better to tell Nick than, ‘shit happens.’ I want the person or people responsible to pay for this. Paul took our humanity—or what little we had. He took our lives and gave us something darker, full of pain and for eternity. I want to know why.”
Suddenly all the day’s horrors began to crash down on me. I could hear Nick’s screams in my mind. I could see his wide eyes begging for help that I couldn’t give; pleading for me to save him. I had to watch him die in pain, helpless. I began to cry and Mato put his arm around my shoulders. He pulled me in toward him so that I was practically in his lap and I let him. I wrapped my arms around his chest and laid my head against his shoulder. His heart was beating fast also, fast with the blood of others. Vampires physiology was still so much a mystery, dead yet not, immortal yet not.
“If I help you it is my choice,” he said with his lips pressed lightly against the top of my head, so that I felt the warmth of his words. “Do not feel guilty for it. I will tell you what I feel you should know. If that makes me a bad cop, then so be it. I would rather be a good friend to you.”
I loosened my hold on him and looked up into his face. “But you don’t know me well enough to take risks like that.”
“In a way, I know you better than you know yourself.”
We looked at each other for another long moment, as though we were daring the other to make the first move, to close that distance. I was still half lying in his lap with my arms loosely wrapped around him and his around me. What would happen if I closed that distance and pressed my lips against his? Would he kiss me back? Would it be soft and gentle, or fierce and passionate? Would he pull me close, explore my body with his hands until the heat between us became too much to bear and we—I practically jumped to the other end of the couch. I didn’t know what Mato’s face looked like because I was very focused on the brown carpet. I needed to cool down.
“I want to take a look around the house for myself before we go,” I heard Mato say.
I nodded without looking up from the carpet until a thought occurred to me. “Wait, how did you know where I was?” I asked.
Mato smiled and looked down at his worn boots. “I followed you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly before he got up and started looking around the room.
I watched him from my seat and thought about what Melvern had said. About how Mato liked me more than I liked him, how he thought those wonderful things of me, and all I saw in him was a pretty vampire. I felt guilty for it. He’s picking out curtains, while I’m picking out condoms-metaphorically speaking.
Mato looked up at the ceiling, “Can you smell something odd with your new vampire senses?” he asked.
I took in a deep breath, and quickly regretted it, nauseating. I shouldn’t have done that, not in that place, not with my ability to smell. “I smell—rotting things, laundry, mold, and—blood?” I raised an eyebrow.
Mato’s eyes narrowed. “It’s up stairs,” he said. He dashed to the stairs with that crazy vampire speed that made me dizzy, and I followed him, though, my progress was slower. Heaps of dirty clothes and garbage littered the stairs, making them hard to manage.
As I came to the top of the stairs I could see Mato standing in a doorway. His glowing eyes were staring down at something small in his hand.
“This explains a great deal. I do not know how the others could have missed it,” he said.
The hallway looked just as treacherous as the rest of the house. I really didn’t want to attempt it, but what the hay. I climbed over the bean bag chair with white balls spilling out, dirty dishes, food and a sideways turned cabinet with too many books in it to get to Mato. He held his hand out to reveal what he had found.
“It’s a used syringe,” I said.
“There is a small amount of blood in the needle,” he said holding it higher. He smiled down at me while he placed the syringe in a plastic baggie from his coat pocket.
“What does this explain?” I asked.
He smirked. “If the blood in the needle is infected blood then it could mean that Paul injected himself with vampirism. It also means we can test it against any suspects.”
“Why did Paul want to be a vampire?”
“I need to get you to the clinic. Your parents will want to leave soon.” His face was very serious again.
“So, I can’t know why Paul did this?” I shrugged.
“Are you fine with that?”
I sighed. “No, of course not, but it’s not my place to demand or even ask you to tell me.”
“I want to tell you.” That comment made me look at him and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know anymore.
“I know you have an ability to see people, to know their true character.”
“Yes,” he nodded, but besides that slight movement he was completely motionless.
“I knew that about you before I asked you in the café. I don’t know why I asked. Melvern told me. He said that you care for me, that you think I’m awesome or whatever—,” I mumbled the last bit. I’ve never felt comfortable admitting my good qualities. Faults, no big deal, but you’d never catch me admitting I’m anything near beautiful or smart. Weird, I know.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. His face gave nothing away. “Say something.”
“Melvern told you what I was thinking?”
“Yes,” and I had to look away. “He said that you thought I was honorable, and caring, but aren’t most peopling those things?”
“Look at me,” he said. He was smiling, and it was a heart stopping smile that made me feel like I was standing too far away from him. “You are not as jaded as you seem to be if that is what you truly believe. No, Raina, deep down most people are scared, lonely and selfish.”
“I’m those things too, especially right now—.”
“You are talking about emotions. Right now you feel alone, you feel scared and you feel selfish, but you are not those things. You are honorable, you are caring, and you are brave. These are things that do not change no matter the circumstances. No matter what is going on in your life you will always be brave. Even now, when your selfish feelings are telling you to demand from me what you want, you simply care too much for my wellbeing to do so.”
I blushed and managed to mumble, “Thanks.”
♦
He reached for my shoulder when I opened the clinic door, “Wait.”
“What?”
“I cannot tell you why Paul wanted to be a vampire because it is part of his personal file. All I can tell you is that he requested to become a vampire, and was turned down,” he looked at me.
“Oh.” I thought for a moment. “You said he was well off, is it possible that he bought a syringe full of vampire blood? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but if he wanted it and someone was selling it...”
“That was my conclusion as well. The selling of vampire blood is very uncommon. No vampire in their right mind would volunteer to give their blood for such a purpose. Doing so creates a psychic connection between vampire and customer…Not to mention the automatic death sentence if they got caught.” Mato shook his head, “Buying vampirism is unbelievably dangerous. There is a good reason America made vampire protocols, many in fact. The government recognizes that some people will want to become vampires. The policies put in place are there to ensure a safe turn, not only for the vampire in question, but for the general public. Do you know how to become a vampire, besides becoming infected?” He walked away from the door for more privacy and motioned for me to follow. I did and we ended up standing very close to one another beside a brick wall painted black.
I searched my memory for what Seth had told me. “I know you have to submit an application to a government agency or something. Then I think there are tests, and I know you have to be placed in a VCC for a few days after being infected. After that you have to take courses and see doctors and shrinks regularly to make sure you’re on the up and up.”
Mato stepped closer to me. My senses were better controlled now, but the scent of forest was so thick on Mato that I had to work against my impulse to close my eyes and breathe deep. Melvern was right, everything about Mato screamed sex to me. I wanted him.
“First you apply to become a vampire according to your local state regulations,” he began. “And you must pass a physical and mental examination to determine if you could handle becoming and living as a vampire. If you are approved you have ninety days to find a collective willing to take you in. If you cannot find one then there is almost no way the state will allow you to become a vampire. Collectives ensure a food source, supervision and accountability for their own. Americans do not want hungry monsters running around their streets at night without a leash. After that, you are right. They infect you and send you off to a state funded VCC or keep you in your new collective’s VCC.”
“But if someone is selling it, then none of that is in place,” I said.
“And people like Paul, who have dreamt about becoming one of the undead since they were kids, and everyone in his path become victims of greed.”
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