Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (48 page)

The sun beats down.  Trees sway, and leaves crinkle in the breeze.  Cross smells the grass and tastes the frost off the mountains.  He smiles and holds Danica close.  He’s happy, so happy.  He’s just afraid it will all end.

Because it will.  Nothing lasts forever, and they both know it, and that’s why they have to seize this life, seize these moments.  Why they have to live while there’s still time.  All of the sacrifices made and lives lost won’t mean a thing if those most precious things they died for aren’t tasted each and every day.

Cross holds her close.  He never wants to let go.

Sometimes he sees the ghosts of those he’s lost.  He’ll always bear the burden of those lives – it’s something he’ll never leave behind, and shouldn’t.  They mean too much to him.  For every person he lost he knows he saved another, but that doesn’t lessen the burden.

We can be more.
  He doesn’t even remember where he first heard those words, but they’ve become his mantra, his drive.  Once he was a scared boy, a freak, an outcast.  He was a soldier, a brother.  He was the one who lost those he loved, again and again, the one who was forced to carry on alone. 

Never again. 
We can be more.
He says it to her as the sun starts to set, as the night birds sing and the two of them move indoors to the heat of the cabin.  They’ll eat stew, read together, laugh together.  Live.  They know that Danica’s spirit and the traps he’s laid will alert them to coming dangers.  The world is far from safe, but it’s a better place than it was.  It’s hard to know everything that’s different – just like The Black, there are subtle signs, vague memories and notions of how things used to be.  Cross commits everything he remembers down to paper as a way of chronicling what has come to pass.

Sometimes that terrifies him, that realization that things have changed and he might not understand what.  This life that just months ago had seemed so impossible, this foolish fantasy of a blissful existence off in some secluded place with the woman who’s changed him, who loves him, who he’s gone to hell and back for and who has borne his weight more times than he can count...it seems too perfect, sometimes. 

He lays there in the cabin on a large bed they built together. They float in an ocean of dark blankets, with the smell of cedar and tallow candles and the sound of the wind gently pushing against the house.  Danica is warm in his arms, her soft face nuzzled against his neck. 

He stares up at the ceiling, half expecting to see a white spider, for something to come crashing through the door, but he knows somehow it won’t, that they’re safe, at least for now. 

As he lays there in the bliss of everything he’d ever hoped to have once the war was over, Eric Cross can’t help but wonder if it’s real.

Am I here now?  Is this really happening? 

Is this place real?

But after the fear subsides, after his breathing slows, after he realizes he’s finally in a place where he doesn’t know terror, then he realizes the truth, and it glows inside him like a star. 

That place, that life, is real to them.  And that’s enough.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As you may or may not have guessed, this is the final book of the
Blood Skies
saga, at least for a while.  I honestly didn’t mean to blindside anyone like that, but sometimes you have to listen to your muse, and in this case I think she’s got it right.

Blood Skies
was originally envisioned as a 6 book series, but as I was writing (and struggling with)
Chain of Shadows
I realized I had more story to tell, so I plotted out the rest of the series and arrived at a 9 book cycle.  Then, as I was writing
Vampire Down
, I found myself jumping ahead in my plotting machine.  I tried to reel it in, and came to realize that 3 more books would be stretching things thin. 
Way
thin.  So, while it was too late to go back to just 6 books, I made a conscious effort to tie things up with Book 7.

Did I succeed?  Probably not as much as I would have liked.  I did my best to tie up the loose ends and provide some sort of explanation as to what the heck was happening with the dozens of strange plot elements I’d dropped over the course of the books.  Likely the continuity police will have me incarcerated for a few infractions, and fans might be non-too pleased with the rapid manner in which things came to an end, but that’s how it goes sometimes.  No one saw Kane’s death coming; I doubt you saw the end of the series coming, either.

Now, this is not meant to say that I’ll never write in the
Blood Skies
universe again. 
The Ending Dream
and
Darker Sunset
are still plot ideas I’d like to pursue, but I’ll need some time to circle back to them, re-envision them, and write them so they either form a shorter story arc or each stand on their own.  The current story-line, such as it was, needed to end, and those pesky vampires and Azradayne had to go. 

I will admit I feel like a bit of a wimp not being able to kill off Cross.  I’d planned for he and Danica to both die, but those first three chapters broke my ugly little heart, and I just couldn’t stand the notion of not having them wind up somewhere happy.  Assuming, of course, that’s what actually happened...

I’d like to thank you, the reader, for your support of this series.  It’s been a heck of a ride roughly 4 years in the making, and these novels have really given me the basis to build myself as an author, entrepreneur and storyteller.  And I have plenty left.  Cross and the world After the Black may be done (at least for the moment), but The Skullborn Trilogy has yet to be completed, as do the remaining 2 trilogies set on the world of Malzaria (lucky for us, 6 of the remaining 7 novels in my epic fantasy series are already written, so unless I drop the ball with the last book in the third trilogy no one needs to worry about that one stopping short).

I also do intend to actually release
Blood Angel Rising
someday, and now that
Blood Skies
is at least momentarily finished I can give it the attention it deserves.  I’m also still in the planning stages of
Colder
, a mystery/thriller which is guaranteed to be a major challenge for me as a writer.  Someone once told me trying new things is how we grow: I’ll get back to you once I have an opinion... ;D

Thanks to Jen Kirchner, Shannon Gambino, Alan Edwards, Danielle Hamilton and Candice Bundy, whose assistance both early and later on with these books was invaluable to their development.  Jen, in particular, was absolutely pivotal in getting books 2-6 off the ground (even if she doesn’t know it), and if the book you just read sucks it’s probably because I never gave her the chance to see it before it was published. 

Thank you to Lib for her encouragement, love and support.  None of this could have happened without her. 

Thanks to Barry for the covers, which continue to kick ass.

And thank you, reader, for taking a chance on me.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, and trust me when I promise there’s still a lot more to come.

Steven

February 24
th
, 2014

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Montano isn’t well.  There’s no longer any point in denying it.

Steven is the author of
City of Scars, Path of Bones
,
the Blood Skies series (
Blood Skies, Black Scars, Soulrazor, Crown of Ash, The Witch’s Eye,
Chain of Shadows, Vampire Down
),
Tales of a Blood Earth 1
and
2,
Crucifix Point
, and
something black…
.  He’s currently hard at work on
Blood Angel Rising
, a paranormal thriller;
The Black Tower
, the conclusion to
The Skullborn
trilogy; and
Colder,
a mystery.

He lives and works in Michigan.

Visit Steven’s official website,
http://steven-montano.com/