The Damned (26 page)

The vampire laughed as though he had just heard the world’s greatest joke. “You are a funny one, my friend,” he said at last.

“I’m not joking,” Holgar said, staring into the other’s eyes to show his commitment.

The vampire stared back for a moment, then stopped laughing. “Why do you care about these pathetic humans?”

“Because they are my friends. Because there is no need for bloodshed here, not now, not ever.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. There will be blood here, starting with yours if you don’t stand aside.” The vampire took a step closer and straightened to his full height, trying to intimidate Holgar.

But Holgar had played far too many wolf games, seen too many power struggles, to let the Curser win so easily. He too stood up straighter, and clenched his fists so the muscles on his arms rippled in a show of strength.

The vampire lashed out at Holgar, taking him by surprise. Long nails scratched his cheek just below his left eye. Holgar jerked out of the way with a roar and then launched himself at the vampire, who easily sidestepped him, as though he were dodging an errant tennis ball.

They’re faster than people say
, Holgar realized as he steadied himself, wrenching a knee in the process.
How is it you kill a vampire? Stake through the heart? Decapitation?

He panned the area for a weapon he could use. The only thing he saw was a birdhouse. He grabbed it, ripping the box free and smashing it. He grabbed a jagged piece of the roof and turned back to the vampire. The creature had the audacity to look bored, which enraged Holgar more. He lunged, swinging the stake toward the thing’s chest.

The vampire slid out of his way, tripping him in the process. Holgar barely managed to let go of the stake before he would have impaled himself as he hit the ground. He rolled onto his back, and the Cursed One bent down, grabbed his shirt, and hoisted Holgar to his feet. It bit him on the neck. Terror shot adrenalin through Holgar’s body. He picked up the creature, ripping its fangs free in the process, then hoisted it over his head and slammed it down on top of the post for the birdhouse.

A moment later the vampire disintegrated into ash. Spent from all of the exertion, Holgar lost his balance and toppled to the ground.

As he lay there, he knew he had been lucky, and he was grateful. He could have just as easily been dead.

He dragged himself back inside. Kirstinne, who had been taking pictures of herself with her phone, came over when she saw him. She moved him away from the crowd, into a corner, and touched his cheek.

“Are you okay?”

“I got in a fight. Can I walk you home?”

“No, I’m spending the night here. Elsa’s parents will be back from the movies around midnight.”

He hesitated, wanting to tell her what had happened, but it could wait. There had been only one vampire at the party. “Be safe,” he said.

“You too,” she said. She gave him a quick kiss and then melted back into the throng.

His wounds began to heal and itch as he made his way home. When he finally got there, he saw a strange car in the driveway. He slipped quietly in through the back door, intent on getting to his room before his father’s company saw him in his current state.

He hadn’t gone ten steps, though, when he heard his name.

“Good, Holgar. I wanted you to meet someone,” his father called from their parlor.

Holgar went into the room, which was decorated with his grandmother’s cross-stitches of the Danish flag and woodland meadows. Holgar’s father and a stranger were seated on their sofa, holding mugs of beer.

The man stood up. He was tall, but not as tall as Holgar, with black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and thick brows and lashes. His nose was long and thin, and his eyes were dark.

There was no humor in his expression, and less warmth. He felt dangerous. Menacing.

Holgar realized the stench of rotting blood was not the lingering smell of dead vampire on his jeans, but new and overpowering.

The stranger was no man. He was a vampire.

“What is this?” Holgar asked bluntly in Danish.

“Buenas noches,”
said the vampire. “You are Holgar,
sí
? The son of my new friend.” His English was heavily accented.

Holgar frowned. “Friend?” he asked, also in English.

“I’ve been forging an alliance between your pack and myself. We’re going to work together to do great things,” the vampire said with a smile, flashing his fangs.

Holgar could feel the evil rolling off of him, and it made his hackles rise. He looked to his father for confirmation, and his father nodded. There was a light in his father’s eyes that he didn’t like. The look of him, the smell, reminded Holgar of the night his father had taken down the hunter in the forest.

“Father, they kill people,” Holgar said softly.

“Yes,” his father said, his grin growing broader. His dark blue eyes shone in his tanned face. “And this alliance will ensure that we no longer have to disguise what we are from the world.”

Holgar whined in his throat and hunched his shoulders. “It’s wrong,” he whispered.

Quick as a flash his father backhanded him across the mouth, so hard that Holgar tasted blood. There were consequences for questioning your alpha. Holgar had never before given his father cause to strike him. He had always been the good wolf, the one who knew his place, the one who followed his leader. But in his heart he knew that this was the wrong path and that it could only lead to destruction.

His father glared at him, and Holgar dropped his eyes submissively, standing as though he’d tucked his currently absent tail between his legs.

“Better,” his father said.

After the creature left, and they were alone, his father challenged him:

“What are you thinking?”

“It’s wrong to kill for sport, and that’s what they do,” Holgar said. “I know. I’ve seen their hearts.”

“And have you not seen mine?”

“We’re better than this, Father. We have a good life here,” Holgar said, wincing as he waited for a second blow to land. It never came, though, and when Holgar raised his eyes, he saw that his father was amused.

“You’re naive, son, and that’s probably my fault. This is not a good life. This is boring. Hunting deer for sport?
That
is beneath us. We have a chance for greatness, and we will take our rightful place in history. Humans are just another form of prey. Evolution decrees that the stronger, the more evolved, live off the lesser. For millennia we’ve allowed humans to think they were the top of that evolutionary scale. No more.”

“So, you’re going to be the Cursed Ones’ lapdogs?”

His father bared his teeth and growled low in his throat. “Not lapdogs; partners. Where they have been cursed, we have been blessed. It’s balance, harmony, that we should join together. Equals in the new order. Tomorrow I’ll call a pack meeting, and everyone will meet our new partners.”

There was no talking him out of it, Holgar could tell. He dropped his head and went to his room, where he spent a restless night.

The next day the pack met in the Vibbards’ barn, which served as their meetinghouse. Kirstinne remained with her parents, flirting with Holgar from across the room. But he stood aloof and watched as his father delivered the news, hoping to see signs of dissent. He wasn’t strong enough to oppose his father, but some of the others were.

Yet none of them challenged his father. They all agreed with him. He looked around at the faces of some of the others closer to his age, and they too seemed eager—excited, even—to move ahead with the plan. He couldn’t see Kirstinne’s face, but he hoped she shared his resistance.

“Now, we’ll get a chance to meet our partners in about an hour. Until then, enjoy the food,” his father said, gesturing to the tables that had been set up around the perimeters of the room.

The smell of the bloody deer meat made Holgar’s stomach growl, but he had more pressing needs than food. As he listened to the excited chatter, Kirstinne sidled up to him, nuzzled his cheek, and picked up a haunch of meat. She offered it to him first, and when he waved it away, she took a nibble. As she chewed, her expression was thoughtful, and that gave him hope.

He took her arm and led her outside, away from prying werewolf ears.

“What do you think?” he asked.

She tried to pop a little piece of deer meat into his mouth. He gently rebuffed her.

“I’m not sure. It sounds . . . interesting. It just seems so odd, especially given what we were talking about yesterday.”

“It’s wrong,” he pushed.

She shook her head slowly. “Not wrong, just one possibility.”

Frustration rose in him. “The Cursed Ones are evil, and it is wrong to join them.”

Kirstinne put down the chunk of meat. “What are you saying?”

“I can’t challenge him. I can’t stop this partnership from forming. But I don’t have to stay here to see it happen. And neither do you.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

Holgar took a deep breath and grabbed her hand. “I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going to go just yet, but I’ll figure it out. I want you to come with me.”

She stared at him for a moment before pulling free and taking a step backward. She shook her head violently. “I can’t. This is my life, my family. I can’t leave my pack. And I can’t believe you, of all people, would ask me to.”

“We can start a new pack,” he begged, heart aching at the look of rejection in her eyes.

“No! I can’t. This is where I belong. I follow my alpha, no matter what,” she said.

“But Kirstinne!”

She put her hand on his. “Stay, Holgar, please. I won’t tell anyone about this.”

Stunned, he stared at her. “I can’t stay,” he whispered.

“Then there’s nothing left to talk about,” she said, with a catch in her throat. Without another word she turned and ran back toward the house, passing his father on the way.

Holgar stood his ground as his father approached. “She looks upset.”

Holgar shrugged. “We both are.”

His father’s blue eyes narrowed. “So are our new friends. I just got a call. Apparently, one of them went missing last night. They’ve asked for our help to find him.”

“Don’t you have better things to do than look for one of their prodigals?”

“It’s a gesture of goodwill and faith. Come back inside so I can brief everyone together. We’ll start a hunt, find out when and where he was last seen. Hopefully, he just passed out in a strange lair last night. With any luck he won’t be missing for long.”

Holgar knew this was a moment he would never forget, no matter the outcome. His father had chosen the pack’s path.
And Kirstinne has chosen hers
, he thought with genuine sorrow. With his next words he would choose his.

After a beat Holgar said, “He’s not missing.”

“He’s not?” his father asked, looking perplexed.

“No.”

“Then where is he?”

“Wherever dead vampires go, I suppose.”

His father blinked. “He’s
dead
? How do you know this?” his father asked sharply.

“I was the one who killed him.”

His father looked like Holgar had slapped him. “There must have been some mistake,” he said at last.

“No mistake. He was a vampire, and I killed him. And I’m not going to stay and make nice with the Cursed Ones.”

His father turned white with rage. “Are you challenging me?”

“No, Father,” Holgar said, his heart breaking. “I’m leaving you. All of you.”

And he turned on his heel and walked away.

Three months later, tired, hungry, and covered in fresh scars, Holgar stood at the gates of the University of Salamanca. He had won a dozen fights with vampires, mosdy through sheer luck and stupidity. But he wanted to fight so that he could kill them through skill and practice. Now he intended to spend the next two years training, studying, trying to become a Hunter.

From what he understood, the Hunter was a lone wolf, like him. Holgar had crossed the paths of two other werewolf packs. In neither case had he asked permission to join. Though he had physically left his pack, he could not let go of them emotionally. He had never imagined a life without them. When he slept alone after a hunt, he dreamed that they surrounded him, telling him that they’d been wrong and he was right. His father and Kirstinne joyfully reunited with him.

But it was only a dream.

Now he looked up at the massive gates, all gingerbread and bric-a-brac, so unlike the simple lines and spareness of decoration preferred by Danes. He had never seen anything so ostentatious.

L
AS
V
EGAS
T
EAM
S
ALAMANCA
M
INUS
A
NTONIO;
T
AAMIR AND
N
OAH

Until now
, Holgar thought as he stared at the sea of flashing lights that made him squint against the brightness. It was so intense that it hurt. And his ears picked up the sounds of traffic, and the clanging of whistles, sirens, coins, and bells as they passed each casino entrance. It was nearly deafening, and he wondered how the Cursed Ones could stand it.

“Where do you think we’ll find her?” he heard Jenn ask.

He glanced to the other side of the street and then pointed. “Somehow I think that’s where we need to go,” Holgar said.

The sprawling building’s ancient Roman architecture, with white gardenlike statues, was very distinctive. The sign for the hotel appeared to have been altered; the letters in the first word were brighter and in a slightly different font than those in the second.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jenn said flatly.

“Ballsy,” Jamie said, his voice almost admiring.

“It’s got to be a trap,” Eriko said.

“There’s a bit of cheek,” Skye groaned, as she read the sign aloud:
“‘Aurora’s Palace.’”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Salamanca Hunter’s Manual:
The Soul of Your Enemy