The Devil's Soldier

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Lucien kicked in the door of another rundown house on another dead end street. They had raided so many vampire nests lately that they were beginning to look the same. Even the inside looked similar with old and often broken couches, stained walls, torn carpet. Not many vampires, especially new ones, cared about where they slept.

One of them darted by him, now attempting to muscle his way outside, but Lucien punched the vampire’s face, shattering his jaw. The vampire fell backward. Lucien caught him by his throat before he hit the ground. Lucien bet if he squeezed hard enough, he could pop off the vampire’s head like the cork from a wine bottle.

“Not yet!” Charlie yelled, hurrying through the broken front door. “We have to ask him.”

“A waste of words.” Lucien raised his fist again, but Charlie stopped him.

“Just ask,” he pushed.

Lucien closed his eyes, then opened them again. To the vampire, he asked through his teeth, “Is there any part of you that wants to do good?”

The vampire spit blood-tinged salvia into Lucien’s face. “Go to hell.”

“Now you can kill him,” Charlie said.

Lucien snapped his neck and dropped the vampire to the floor. Before he could wake, Lucien plunged a stake into his heart.

“Who else is in here?” Charlie asked, his g*n-like weapon held at eye level.

“One already escaped out the back.” Lucien c****d his head to the side. “And one’s hiding in a closet. Back bedroom.”

Charlie hurried down the darkened hall while Lucien dusted himself off. Vamp dust was the worst to get out, especially from his hair. The manager of the hotel Lucien owned, Ronald, asked him once if he had a dandruff problem after coming back from a kill. Lucien wanted to show him what it really was, but then he would be out a manager.

A series of clicks echoed from behind the wall. Lucien’s head snapped up. He recognized that sound. Charlie was almost to the closet, but what Charlie couldn’t hear was a crossbow being loaded from within.

“Charlie!” Lucien yelled and ran down the hall.

Charlie opened the closet door just as Lucien entered the bedroom. Lucien shoved him out of the way just as a wooden dagger came flying out. It pierced Lucien in the back of the right shoulder, and he fell forward into the opposite wall. He reached behind him, but couldn’t quite grasp it to pull it out.

Charlie’s face paled, but he quickly recovered and aimed his weapon at the vampire who was scrambling out of the room. A blast of electricity left the g*n. It hit the vampire in his legs, and he fell to the ground shaking uncontrollably. Charlie drove a stake through his heart.

He turned around, panting hard. “Are you okay?”

“Get this thing out of me,” Lucien growled. “It hurts like a mother fucker.”

Charlie came over and jerked the stake free. Lucien grunted in pain.

“I think you’re finally getting sweet on me,” Charlie said.

Lucien walked by him, rubbing the back of his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“You just saved my life.”

“Only because human bodies don’t clean up as nicely as a vamps.” Lucien walked outside and sniffed the air. The full moon hung high above him in a clear sky. Eve would have liked the moon tonight.

Charlie joined him on the front lawn.

“I can’t tell which direction the vampire went,” Lucien said, disappointed.

“s**t. We really needed to question one of them.”

“Why? We’ve destroyed five vampire nests within the last three weeks and not a single one knew Boaz. This isn’t working.” Lucien walked down the street to Charlie’s car. Since he had lost his temper last time, he had been more careful to keep his rage in check. At least in front of Charlie and Rick.

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Charlie asked.

Lucien said nothing, even after they got into the car and headed back to the Deific. As much fun as these never-ending vampire-killing sprees were, they needed to find a lead on Boaz.

Maybe if Lucien had kept some contacts among supernaturals, he might have a place to go to for information, but up until a year ago, he was a lone vampire with no connections to the outside world, and he’d been like that for over a hundred years.

But then Eve had found him.

An ache seared his heart. He leaned forward as if the movement might help ease the pain. He missed her so much. The only thing keeping him going was knowing that someday he would avenge her death.

“Isn’t there anyone you know? Even from two hundred years ago?”

Lucien straightened and leaned back into the seat, pretending the hole in his chest wasn’t eating away at him. “There is one vampire I could reach out to who has probably stayed more connected to my kind than I have. I’ll have to do some digging to track her down.”

“Her name?”

He paused, thinking of the female vampire. He’d only associated with her for a short time in the early eighteen hundreds. Her blood l**t had been insatiable, while Lucien had been trying to reign in his own. Their relationship hadn’t worked out for obvious reasons. “Samira.”

Lucien’s answer surprised Charlie so much, Charlie momentarily stopped driving. The car veered to the right before Charlie could regain control of it. “You know Samira?”

“I used to.”

Charlie laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?”

“Samira is one of us!”

Lucien furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, not technically with the Deific, but she works with the Ames de la Terra. I’ve occasionally worked with her on different cases. She’s intense, but she gets the job done.”

“You’re saying Samira is one of the good guys now? I don’t believe it. Not her.”

Charlie smiled and glanced at him sideways. “Even the worst of the worst can change, Lucien. That’s why we should give everyone a chance.”

Lucien scowled, hating that Charlie’s point had been proven again.

“Give her a call. I think you could learn a lot from Samira. Plus, she has resources we may not and could have a lead on Boaz. I’ll text you her number.”

Lucien grunted an approval and turned to stare out the window. He hoped to endure the rest of the ride in silence, but Charlie had other plans.

“Are you meeting with Henry again?” Charlie asked.

“In a few hours.”

“How’s that coming, anyway?”

“It’s coming.”

“Are you able to use magic now?”

“None of your business.” Lucien hated talking about his training with Henry. It felt too personal, probably because it was. Henry was constantly badgering Lucien to look inside himself to see things that Lucien didn’t believe were there. Lucien loathed it.

“Maybe if you could speed up the process, we might have better luck finding Boaz.”

Lucien huffed. “You’re the psychic.”

“Boaz is blocking me with magic, and you know that. What we need is someone with magic who can use their ability to hunt him down.”

“Then ask Henry. He’s the super powerful one.”

Charlie shook his head. “Henry is our secret weapon. Boaz can’t know he’s alive. Not yet, anyway.”

Henry wasn’t their only secret weapon. Lucien’s magic was the other. At least, that’s what Henry said. Lucien wasn’t convinced. Sure, Lucien could do a few things, like the whole turning-into-smoke-and-flying thing. He liked that one the most. As for the rest of it? If he concentrated long enough he could move objects, but so what? That was nothing compared to what Boaz could do. Lucien was hardly a weapon.

Charlie drove into the underground parking garage beneath the Deific office in Wildemoor They had come here from Skystead a couple of weeks ago when there was a sudden increase in vampires. This was a major concern, especially since his brother, Aiden, was dead along with Aiden’s plan to unleash a deadly plague among the humans. So who was turning these new vampires, and why?

The elevator doors opened.

“Are you going straight up to your place?” Charlie asked as they stepped inside.

The pain in Lucien’s heart ignited all over again, a deep burning that constantly threatened to consume him. His place was once Eve’s apartment. Every time he stepped inside it, he smelled her and felt her presence. She was a ghost in his life, but no matter how much sorrow it caused him, he’d rather have her as a ghost than nothing at all.

“I’m going to get some work done first. Can I use the conference room?”

“Go for it. I’m going to crash.”

Just before the elevator stopped, a steady calm washed over Lucien. It was a familiar feeling. “Henry’s here.”

Charlie groaned. “At this hour? I wanted to get some sleep.”

The elevator doors opened. Henry stood there waiting for them. “Sorry, Charlie, but I need your opinion on this too. You can sleep in tomorrow.”

“You mean today,” Charlie mumbled as he walked past him. “Let’s go into the conference room.”

Lucien flipped on a nearby light. The rest of the office was quiet and dark. It would be another four hours before anyone else arrived.

“How did it go?” Henry asked, walking next to Lucien.

Henry, who rarely appeared stressed, had deep lines etched into his forehead.

“Same as always. Just a bunch of vampires who don’t know anything.” He turned the light on in the conference room.

A large whiteboard hung on the wall. Scribbled on it were a bunch of locations of where vampire activity had been reported. Lucien walked around a long table to the other side of the room.

“Lucien saved my life tonight,” Charlie told Henry as he collapsed into a rolling chair. It spun around several times.

The corners of Henry’s mouth lifted. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“It surprised me,” Lucien said.

Henry dropped a newspaper onto the center of the conference table. “Have you read the news?”

“Missed it today,” Charlie said through a yawn.

Lucien picked up the paper and scanned the front page. “Virginia’s governor was found dead in his home.”

“Read the bottom right, too,” Henry said.

Lucien glanced down. “And a senator died in California.”

“Rough day to be in politics,” Charlie observed.

Henry lowered into a chair. “This month there have been a total of six high-up government officials found dead. One committed suicide, one was murdered and the other four were either ruled as accidents or natural causes. Can you tell me when in history this has happened before?”

The room fell silent. Lucien hated politics, but a lot of supernaturals liked them. It was one area of their lives where they felt in control, as they were easily able to manipulate humans either through bribes or threats. It didn’t take much. The supernaturals used their influence to have certain laws passed in their favor. For example, keeping the US borders open. Supernaturals loved all the undocumented people coming into the country. No one seemed to notice when one disappeared.

“It hasn’t happened … ever,” Henry pointed out while he removed his long brown jacket and draped it onto the back of the chair.

Lucien stared down at the newspaper. “You believe these aren’t accidents.”

A pain stabbed him in the head, hard enough that he cried out and dropped to his knees.

Henry and Charlie jumped to their feet.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.

Lucien drilled his palms into his temples, as if he could somehow squish whatever was twisting his brain. His vision changed, flashing blues and oranges. He fell over on the ground, gritting his teeth.

Henry knelt down beside him, his hands outstretched and hovering over Lucien’s body. He said something in a language Lucien didn’t recognize.

Slowly, the pressure subsided and his muscles relaxed, but just before the pain disappeared altogether, Lucien heard a single word from a voice he never thought he would hear again.

Lucien.

Lucien’s eyes flew open, and he sucked air into his lungs.

“It’s Eve,” he gasped. “She’s alive!”