Twilight Vendetta Read online

  Today, however, I have some more encouraging news. I have been accepted (albeit, reluctantly) into a small band of vampires. I will not divulge any identifying information about who or where they are. But I will report in and tell you what I learn about them.

  What I have observed so far is a group of wary, and understandably angry individuals with sharp, intelligent minds and deep, powerful feelings. People who are in many ways just like you and I. People who fed me when I was hungry and have shown no signs of aggression or hostility. I do not feel threatened by them. They think and they feel. They love and they hate. They laugh and they mourn. Their rights have been trampled. They and their loved ones have been hunted, and in many cases imprisoned or killed by humankind. More cases, my friends, than any of us ever imagined.

  I am in a unique position to tell their stories. And that is what I intend to do. Because only by knowing the truth of their nature, of who and what they really are, apart from the old wives’ tales, superstitions, fictional mythos and outright propaganda, can there ever be an end to the undeclared war between our kind and theirs. Only understanding can bring peace.

  And if it doesn’t, and soon, there will be no preventing all-out war from re-erupting between the species. And this time, make no mistake, the vampires will fight back. They might even win.

  Peace is in everyone’s best interests. I’ll report in as often as I can from this most intimate and unique vantage point.

  Dee Dee LaRue. #ERFU

  After posting to ERFU.org, Emma saved the original in an encrypted, password protected file. This blog series would eventually become the best selling book of her entire career, and even more importantly, a testament that might help avert war. People needed to know the truth, both about what their government was doing behind their backs, and about what vampires were truly like. The ERFU site, and others like it, were anonymous but gaining an increasingly devoted audience of progressive, forward thinking citizens who were ahead of the curve as far as tolerance and understanding. While everyone was still arguing over which rights were granted or denied to their fellow humans, the ERFU group was advocating civil rights for vampires. But anonymously. The host site and URL were changing constantly. A tweet would go out to followers announcing the new address and then it would change. And even then, she knew she was taking a big risk. It wouldn’t take too much determination for them to track down the true identity of Dee Dee LaRue. They just hadn’t found her to be worth the effort.

  Yet.

  But the fact was, they were already looking for her. They’d arrested her father. They knew he had a daughter. They knew her name. And how deeply would they have to dig to find that her mother had once been a Vegas showgirl whose stage name was Dee Dee LaRue? Probably not the best choice for her nom de plume. But with every post she composed, she prayed her mother might somehow see it, recognize the name, and know it was her. Fighting for vampire rights. Fighting, truly, to get her mom back.

  She disabled the Internet connection but left the tablet turned on, because its battery was in the red zone and she wanted it to run completely dead. Impossible to trace that way. Then she removed the battery from the phone she’d used as her hotspot and shoved it into a pocket to be tossed far from here at the first opportunity.

  All that done, she headed for the basement, because that was the last place she’d known the vampires to be heading. Her search for likely locations of a secret government prison had only taken a few minutes. But they wouldn’t know that.

  “Hello down there? I’ve got a pretty solid idea where to start looking,” she called. She was standing at the top of the basement stairs, speaking loudly into the darkness of a cellar. There was no sound from below. “Devlin?” she called. “Come on, I know you’re down there.”

  He stepped into sight at the bottom of the stairs, moving from deep black shadow into the paltry light that spilled from the open doorway. It wasn’t much light, but she’d needed some to work by and had found an old oil lamp with fuel still inside, resting on that fabulous marble mantle. She held the lamp in one hand now, clasping it around its slender, wineglass-like stem. Its chimney was tall and narrow, its glass base all cut with swirls and patterns. She must look like the heroine in a gothic novel, she thought. All she needed was a flowing satin peignoir.

  “How did you know I was here?” he asked.

  She shrugged and started down the stairs, testing each one before putting her full weight on it. “I don’t know. Just did.” When she reached the bottom, she held up the light and looked at the minuscule amount of basement touched by its pool. The walls were solid rock. Not stacked stone or piled blocks or smooth concrete, just rock. “Is this where you all are going to sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a place that would be hidden, even if someone came snooping?”

  “There are several.”

  She looked up at him then, brows raised and said, “But you’re not going to show me, are you, Devlin?”

  “I don’t see any reason to.”

  “You still don’t trust me.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know you.”

  “You’ve known me since I was two. You know I risked my life to tell you about the kids. About the only way you don’t know me is in the Biblical sense.” She lowered her eyes. “Yet.”

  “Emma, I told you–”

  “I don’t suppose you trust me enough to tell me about them? Wolf and Sheena?”

  “Why would I tell you about them?”

  She shrugged. “Because if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even know they were alive. They’d have no chance of rescue. No one would be coming to save them, because everyone would think they were dead, and the government could do whatever it wanted to them. And besides, I already know a little, and what I’ll extrapolate from the tidbits I’ve gleaned is probably going to be way off base.”

  He sighed. “You should’ve been a lawyer.”

  “What harm can it do to tell me? I’m here. I’m surrounded by vampires. What am I gonna do, alert the media?”

  He looked down at her, nodded once. “I don’t know that sharing this knowledge with you could do any harm.”

  “Knowledge never does any harm. Knowledge is power.”

  “Not always the case, I think. But….” He pressed his lips, then nodded once. “They call them the Offspring,” he said. “The government agency known as DPI, for–”

  “Division of Paranormal Investigations,” she said.

  “Right. The DPI created a race of super soldiers by injecting members of The Chosen with a drug called BDX.”

  She was surprised, both that he had answered at all, and by what he’d said. Yes, Bellamy had given her the crib note version in the Jeep, but she’d half thought it was his own wild theory, that there would be a more logical explanation. “Against their will?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. They promised the BDs that it would cure their condition, that they wouldn’t weaken and die young, that they would not only be powerful and strong, but that they would experience an entire mortal lifetime.”

  Her eyes widened. This was the first she was hearing of a cure. Since her mom and dad had never registered her as BD positive, and it hadn’t been required, possibly even tested for, when she was born, they wouldn’t have known to contact her.

  “It wasn’t a cure, Emma,” Devlin said, reading her face or maybe her mind. “It was a lie, and there was a terrible side effect. In times of extreme duress, their hearts explode from their chests. It’s a horrible death. I’ve seen it.”

  She grimaced and pressed a hand to her own chest, a sheer reflex. “Is there anything that can be done for them?”

  “Most of them are already dead. Once DPI finished with them, they euthanized them, en masse. I only know of one survivor, but there could be more.”

  “My God.”

  “Sheena and Wolf, and others like them, are the Offspring of those unfortunate Chosen. Specimens were harvested from the BD-Exers, the super soldiers. O
vum and sperm were taken. DPI used them to make–”

  “Test tube babies,” she finished. “My mother told me never to trust the DPI, or the government at all. She never let me be registered as BD positive. She said there was no telling what they intended to do with that information. She was right.”

  “She was very wise.”

  “Is,” Emma said. “She is very wise. I won’t believe she’s dead. Not until I have proof.”

  He nodded slowly, took her by the arm, and led her deeper into the darkness so that the pool of her lamplight spread out around them. “The children that came of these experiments are incredibly strong. DPI kept them in cages, raised them like animals, and trained them to kill vampires. We found them imprisoned below decks aboard the Anemone, along with more than a hundred captive vampires intended to be used for their training.”

  Emma could barely believe what she was hearing. It was even worse than she’d known. Children, used as weapons? Raised in cages? “How...how many of them?”

  “There were thirteen on the ship. They’d been produced in equal numbers of males and females. Four batches. Sheena and Wolf are the oldest, at seventeen. There were four eleven-year-olds, three seven-year-olds–I presume there were originally four and hate to think what happened to the missing little girl–and four two-year-olds.”

  “Two-year-olds?”

  He nodded. “When I left the ship, only the seventeens and the sevens were still aboard.”

  “What happened to the rest?” she was almost afraid to ask.

  “As vampires left the ship at various points near shore, they took the kids with them, hoping to find a safe place to raise them in secret and protect them from ever returning to DPI custody. I had no idea the seventeens intended to jump overboard and try to follow my group when we left. By the time I realized what had happened and went back for them, it was too late. Or so I thought.”

  She lowered her head, shaking it slowly. “Bell told me a little of this, but I had no idea it was real. Or this bad.” As she spoke, she absently fingered the locket around her neck, which had been dangling unnoticed from the rearview mirror in her Jeep until she’d put it on, not wanting to be far from it. “And I thought I had it rough. At least I had parents,” she said softly.

  “I’m sorry about your mother, Emma.” He bent nearer, taking the locket gently from between her breasts, his fingers brushing across her skin and sending shivers of pleasure and desire all the way to her toes. He lifted the locket and snapped it open, then looked closely at the loving couple within. “You look like her.”

  “I don’t–”

  “You do. She’s a beautiful woman, Emma. And so are you.” He lowered the locket back into place, and this time when the backs of his fingers brushed across the upper swell of her breasts, she was sure it was deliberate. “I’m very sorry that you lost her.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw that he meant it. “She’s not lost. Just misplaced. I think she’s still alive. I think she just realized she was putting us in danger by staying with us, and so she ran away. She did it to protect her family. I’ll find her someday.”

  “I hope you do.”

  The sincerity in his voice touched her, drew emotion from deep inside her, and she found herself leaning closer. His body was like a larger planet, pulling hers by the force of its gravity. And he leaned in too. Tipping her head up as her eyes fell closed, she wet her lips and waited for his to touch them. She felt them draw close, then felt his whisper touch her lips, “We’ll sleep there.”

  She opened her eyes, shivering with need. He was still very close, but no longer looking at her. He’d pulled back and was looking beyond her instead, so she turned and lifted the lamp higher.

  Three arch shaped holes had been cut, or more likely blasted into the rock wall. No, not holes. Tunnels. She moved closer, poking her head and lamplight into the first of them and looking around. The long rock tunnel bent and curved away from the light ahead of her. “Where does it go?” she asked, and her voice echoed.

  “The tunnels are one of the reasons I chose this island. I’ve only explored two of them. This one leads to a sheer cliff face over the ocean. There are steps cut into that cliff that lead down to the water where boats can be moored, completely hidden from view by a natural rock cove that forms a crescent around them. You can’t see them from the sea, or from the air either, due to an overhang above the cave.”

  “An emergency escape route,” she said.

  “Exactly. There are a couple of smaller tunnels shooting off it, one of which is nicely concealed by a slab of rock. You have to squeeze behind it to enter. That’s where we’ll rest.”

  “Do you have any beds you can put in there? Blankets, pillows even?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t feel anything when we sleep.”

  “Well, you do when you wake. Sleeping on cold rock can’t be good for you.”

  He laughed softly, but she was already exiting the cave, moving back into the basement, looking at the two remaining chasms. “What about the other two tunnels? Where do they go?”

  “The middle one goes to a spot near the lighthouse. A small pile of boulders conceal the opening on that end.”

  “And the third?”

  “That’s the one I haven’t explored yet. I have no idea where it leads. It wasn’t even mentioned in the previous owner’s papers.”

  “Well,” she said, “that should be pretty high on your to-do list then.”

  “It is. Right after we rescue Wolf and Sheena.”

  “And my father.”

  “Of course.”

  “He truly was trying to help, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to go find him.”

  “And we will. But it’s nearly dawn now, Emma.”

  “Is it?” She had no sense of the time. There was no hint of light in the basement aside from her lamp, and she’d left her phones upstairs. She didn’t dare return the battery to the one in her pocket, now that she’d used it to connect to the ERFU blog. She’d have to throw it away soon, and use another one. She’d brought the entire supply from her Jeep, so she had plenty.

  “I need to ask you not to go back to the mainland without us, Emma,” he said. “There’s too great a risk someone will see you by day and follow you back here, and we’re too vulnerable when we rest.”

  She knew all about the vulnerability of the sleeping vampire. That was how her mother....no, her mom was still out there, somewhere. “I don’t really think I could manage to get myself back to shore in a rowboat, Devlin.” She totally could. “We’ve got to be twenty miles out.” More like twelve. “I’m not a vampire, you know.”

  He nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do anything to put you at risk. You’ve saved my life three times–four times, I mean. And now you’re going to help me save my father. I’m not going to betray you or hurt you. Not any of you. I really want you to believe that.”

  He seemed to be studying her, tipping his head slightly to one side like a dog that’s heard an unfamiliar sound. But he blinked the look away and cleared his throat. “As soon as the sun goes down, we will go after your father. I promise you that.”

  She stared up into his eyes and knew this was important. She also knew that she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to kiss him more than she wanted to breathe, at that moment. Why was she so drawn to this man? “I promise, I won’t leave the island until you wake,” she said. “And I’ll be careful not to be seen. I mean, if there should be anyone passing by in a boat or a plane or anything like that.”

  He nodded. “Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome.” She held his eyes, hoping he might be tempted. He’d almost kissed her once. Why had he pulled away?

  “Have a good day exploring the island, Emma.”

  “Have a good rest, Devlin. I’ll be waiting.”

  He nodded, and she sighed in resignation. No kiss was forthcoming. He hea
ded deeper into the cave and she watched him go, then turned, holding her lamp up high and walking back to the stairway. Bellamy and Andrew were trotting down as she reached the bottom. Bellamy sent her his sweet smile. “Don’t get too bored without us, Emma.”

  “I’ll find plenty to do,” she said. “Have a good rest.”

  Impulsively, Bellamy hugged her. “We’ll get your dad back first thing,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  Then the two hurried on and Emma trotted up the stairs, meeting Tavia at the very top. Tavia nodded toward an old table where a plastic grocery bag sat. “I got some food for you, when we were on de mainland. So you won’t go hungry all day.”

  That was a relief. She’d been wondering what she was going to eat today, and figured she’d have to raid the woods for fruit or berries to get by. “Thank you, Tavia. That was thoughtful.”

  “Dun’t make me regret it.”

  She started to move past her, but Emma put a hand on her shoulder. “Tavia, I need to ask you...” she gave a nervous glance below, but the others were nowhere in sight. “Are you and Devlin...you know....”

  “Pssh! Him? Devlin, he is too bossy for me. When I choose a mate, he will be docile. Like Bellamy. Only, how you say? Straight, yes?”

  Emma laughed softly, and to her surprise Tavia smiled, and it was genuine and almost warm. “Do not get into trouble while we rest.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And about Devlin….” Tavia closed her dark eyes very slowly, then popped them open again. “De sun is rising. We talk about Devlin another time, yes?”

  “Okay.”

  Tavia nodded and hurried down the stairs, leaving Emma to wonder what had changed the Romanian’s mind about her. Maybe she’d just decided to give her a chance. Or maybe Devlin had spoken to her about her hostility.

  Doubtful. Maybe Bellamy had, though. She liked Bellamy. And she thought he and Andrew were together, and that it was a shame, because Andrew seemed like kind of a dick.