Until Dawn Read online

  Even through his fear, Liam gave me an appreciative smile.

  “Aye, thanks fer yer appreciation of my fine craftsmanship lass. Are you leaving us?”

  I nodded slightly.

  “I know when I’m not welcome but thank you for the drinks and a few decent moments to forget my break-up. I would come back, but I doubt that would be a good idea, considering.”

  I gingerly stepped past the ginger, and I could feel her cold outrage rushing against my back. This force was like the sensations I often had around weird people. This was as if I could feel power or something else primal leaking from them. This was the first time it nearly froze my lungs, but the sensation was one I had grown up learning to block out completely. Somehow, I had managed to dodge the nuthouse. I was a smart kid, so telling people you sometimes saw and felt weird shit, was not a good idea. I compartmentalized, and I never spoke of it to anyone, ever!

  “Don’t you just turn your back on me, witch.”

  The voice was shipped ice, and the tone was promising something even death couldn’t solve or save me from. I spun on my heels and my eyes were wide with shock.

  She called me a witch?!

  “Look, I don’t know what kind of crazy you have here lady, but I’ve already had to deal with one cray-cray redhead tonight, I am over my limit. Call me a witch, or a bitch again, and I’ll punch your pretty teeth down your throat.”

  My voice was hard like any street-urchin used to scrapping and defending themselves. I also had eight-years of jiu jitsu training, and a black belt to prove I was no one’s victim. Her eyes shone a deep edge of shock, she was not used to being dressed down in front of her fan club. I turned on my heels when she didn’t lash out. Last I saw her, she was just standing there still as the grave.

  I muttered some choice words as I trot to the closest corner, where I could hail a cab. Damn Henry, what was he thinking sending me to some random dive bar, even one with a theme that I could appreciate? What in the hell had that bitch meant, bruja?

  That entire situation was just twenty-kinds of fucked up. So, fucked up, I didn’t even notice the five short men who followed me into the alley I was using to cut over to the main road.

  Shit, what now?!

  I spun, and I was looking down at five four-and-a-half-foot-tall stocky broad midgets. Their bodies clad in black leather and their heads all adorned with a sick smelling red cap. I couldn’t see the details perfectly, but I had excellent night vision. The caps looked like they were gory, like a blood-soaked cloth from one of my criminology studies. If that hadn’t sent my alarm bells off, the black blades in their hands certainly managed to do the trick!

  What the fuck are they?!

  Long slender ears peeked out from beyond the caps. They were like the tall people I saw in that bar with long ears, except, not exactly like them. Their beady eyes were black and hungry looking.

  My heart hammered in my chest, and my adrenaline soared through my body, lending a numbing chill to my muscles, and yet still loosening them at the same time. I spread my legs evenly; my training was deeply ingrained in me. Any time you’re presented with a physical confrontation, always ensure your center is well balanced.

  I didn’t ball up my fingers, but I did raise my hands in front of me in a relaxed defensive posture. I was focusing on all the years of hand-to-hand training I had, working through the best ways to disarm midget men of their knives.

  This just wasn’t my night.

  Three:

  “Oh, lookie here, the wee little lass thinks she can defend herself.”

  The leading little Irish midget sneered at me and licked the tip of his blade, ew. My eyes narrowed, and I tracked the motions in the peripheral of my vision. Two more were trying to stalk to my flanks like a pack of tiny wolves.

  “Listen here slim, if you want to get out of this alive, now’s your chance. I won’t be charged with your murder when I shove that blade through your own neck.”

  His eyes flicked to the one to his right.

  “You sure this one is from her place? She’s acting very mortal, just without the screamin and such one would expect from a human.”

  He said the word human like it was bile in his mouth. The right shorty nodded in confirmation.

  “Aye, we saw her come out of the Cold Coffin, we did. She’s just trying to fool ye boss.”

  The Boss turned back, and his hungry glint was back in full-force. A cruel smile touched his lips.

  “Good, then I will skin this bitch while she’s still alive to enjoy it.”

  That was chilling, and my gooseflesh now had another layer of gooseflesh. He gave no warning; he came at me fast, amazingly fast for his stature and his thick muscle mass on his small body. I barely caught his wrist in time to twist and deflect the fast-moving black blur of steel.

  I kicked, seeing his short friend from the right coming in, and I cracked his nose with a popping sound. I twisted his arm the wrong way, hyper-extending it. The third on the left rushed in, and I didn’t have time to think, I just pried his blade from his hand and I jabbed it into his neck. I would puke and cry over that when my adrenaline and my fight-or-flight inspired battle trance ended.

  I lashed out with a snap-kick and caught the next midget in the chin. I spun back just barely missing his starving cold blade. The next rushing from the right, replacing the one I had busted in the nose, came too fast for me to fully dodge, and he slashed a thin ribbon of my flesh with his blade. My right thigh burned in protest. Not the first time I had been cut, but it still hurt like a bitch!

  I grunted in pain and I smacked a bladed hand away from the left, and I jammed the blade I’d stolen into another throat and I lost it this time. The midgets roared and the three remaining rushed me as one, only I spun and kicked two of them with a single roundhouse, a fancy move that usually only works in a damn movie! I would never try for that luck a second time!

  I danced back, but still caught a thrust to the gut, and I grabbed hold of the hand attached to the blade. I twisted his arm, and I tossed him to the ground and I followed him and rammed my fist into his throat three times, feeling the power behind my blows and the nasty strangling sounds that followed, I knew that I had crushed his larynx.

  Another blade bit into my right kidney, and I spun and backhanded the small man, who flipped into a large green dumpster. I pulled the blade in my gut free and I collided with the last standing midget, and his blade bit into my chest, and my stolen blade found his heart and he dropped like a puppet with his strings cut.

  Blood was flowing now, and I still had a cold blade stuck in my lower back. My body was chilling more now, and my vision was blurring. The dwarf rose to his feet and he leered at me with some grim satisfaction.

  “You’ll make for a nice hat bitch. I’ll try to fuck you until you die, that will be fun.”

  He licked his lips and began to approach me. I tried to struggle to my feet, but blood loss and trauma were warring now. I was going to die I knew it.

  This is it, death by stabbing and rape? I’m just another fucking statistic? I didn’t even get to change my own fucking fate, much less save anyone else.

  My thoughts were cold, detached from my reality. Howls rent through the air like sirens blasting. I looked up and I noticed the last dwarf man was backing away. He tried to run, but a crimson blur came up on him and knocked him back into the dumpster I had just kicked him into a moment before.

  Her red-blonde hair flowed like a cascade of fresh blood under the moonlight. Her milky skin was radiant in the subdued light of the darkest point of night. To her left and right, a pair of massive dogs—no wolves—appeared snapping at the little man.

  “I have warned you lot to keep yourselves in Manhattan with your bitch of a queen. This one was innocent she didn’t even know what she was!”

  That icy tone was the same unmistakable voice as the hot and very scary mob girl from the club. She slowly stepped forward, and I suddenly felt grateful that I could see whatever horror she was going to
visit on my last surviving attacker.

  “Mistress, the lass is still breathing, but just so. She can be saved.”

  Liam!

  I felt his warm hands cup my cheeks and tears stung my eyes. I had never enjoyed a man touching me, but right now this platonic affection as I lay dying, was more than an orphan could have hoped for at the end.

  “Shit, Liam, you know what she is, right? Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do?”

  I couldn’t see his look, but he voice was clipped, but still reverent to Seri.

  “Mistress, this was an act of war on an innocent, there are allotments for turning a necromancer under such rare exceptional circumstances.”

  Turning? Necromancer?

  My mind was spinning, and not just from the blood loss. She huffed, and I felt her chilly power fizzing in the air and she grew brighter and brighter in my second sight. I could not “see” her now, but I could feel her and track her movement, as if I was looking at her. This was not common for me, even considering the many crazy things I have seen in my life!

  “Fine, you take them and deal with the last one. I will call him later and exert my claim over this girl. If not, he will come to try to steal her from me, you know this, yet you ask this of me!”

  She sounded tired, almost human now, but still very alien, still other.

  “Aye, I know Seri, and I’m not sorry. This lass is special, and she was a bloody good tipper to boot.”

  Seri huffed, and I felt her warmth blanket my cold body. I was shivering, no longer able to move on my own. I felt Liam hand me to Seri like a broken bloody doll. She supported my body as if I was no more than a sheet of paper.

  “I have this matter in hand my friend, now ensure his death is slow and grisly. Mail his parts back to his lady queen, so she dares not invade my beach again.”

  She spoke of Dark Age justice as if it were the most rational thing ever! She leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone for my ears only.

  “This will hurt young one, I do not relish your suffering, for you fought like a mighty Amazon. You would never have lost, if only you had been armed, or even knew to be weary.”

  Something akin to admiration and respect was in her tone. She leaned in and I felt fangs pierce my neck. I screamed as the agony of the burning fire rushed through my body. I felt her chill dig inside me burning and freezing me from the inside out. This went on for what felt like five lifetimes. She shushed me, and I felt her hot peppery-copper laden breath tickling my face.

  She held her free hand up to my mouth. I felt something hot and thick coating my lips and slowly dribbling into my mouth. I didn’t want to swallow, but I did. I swallowed, and I found enough strength to pull my hands to her wrist. I drank, too delirious and burning with an agony that had no name, too much so to realize what I was doing.

  She hummed and brushed my raven locks form my face. I looked deep into her cold-blue eyes, and they were the last sight I saw as the world faded to black.

  Four:

  Waking up bumping my head on the lid of a velvety soft ceiling was frightening. I pushed up, and the lid—this had to be a damn lid—swung open. I was hyperventilating, and I took in the sights and dull sounds of the bar I remembered from the night before.

  It took me a couple seconds to realize what I had been sleeping in, a real fucking coffin! I sprang out with a burst of agility in my movements that should have scared me. Looking down, I confirmed the bloody clothes were still there, and there were several holes in my shirt and my green cargo pants. Only my leather jacket was absent. I was suddenly wondering why only the jacket, forgetting all about my lack of pain for a moment.

  I felt down my body, checking every site of every wound, all flesh smooth, except for the white lightly curved scares marring my silky skin. My skin was lighter than it had been the night before, very pale for a purely Hispanic girl! My hair was matted with blood, but otherwise the same black silk it had always been. For some reason I felt very relieved to know this, so I hadn’t woken up with a race-change of some sort.

  I took an experimental step forward and I found that nothing pained me. My legs felt strong, in fact, they felt much stronger than before the attack. Something cold hummed in my veins and I nearly tripped over myself at the strange sensation flowing through my body. It was much stronger, more potent than the weird vibrations I had sometimes felt around certain people.

  I was alone, but I did hear someone milling about in what seemed to be a storeroom to the side of the main bar. To say that I was in shock, would be understating the effect last night had on me!

  I needed clothes, clothes and an exit strategy. I knew that I hadn’t made up last night, but I couldn’t explain any of it in any sane way! Little men with red caps on their heads and black knives, I felt like I was forgetting something. This was unlike me because I never forget anything that is my blessing and my curse.

  All I knew for sure was nothing that happened last night was “normal.” Even my very loose definition of normal couldn’t cover the seven layers of crazy that happened to me last night! I had died, or so I thought. Now I was walking around barefoot and my bladder chose this moment to remind me that I was very much awake, and it needed relief.

  The floor of the bar was surprisingly spotless, as if the owner had some kind of fairies that came out of the woodwork and cleaned the bar at night.

  Fairies…

  I remembered the thing I had forgotten in my haze of fear addled combat. Redcap was a type of mythological fairy that hales form the dark court of winter. They dip their hats in the blood of their victims!

  That is still just a myth!

  Says the girl who just woke up with nothing but pale scars instead of feeding the worms!

  Ok, how can this be happening?!

  “Top-o-the mornin to ya lass.”

  I whirled in the direction of the voice at neck-break speed. My teeth punched out, and I made a hissing sound. All of this happened before my brain could convince me that it was not human to hiss and bare fangs.

  Liam held up hands holding a pair of amber liquid bottles. Right, Liam the bartender, who I think helped me? At least he didn’t let me die. My body stilled much more so than was normal or even human behavior. Again, my brain was on hiatus and I was just acting seven kinds of crazy now!

  “Easy there Dove. I’m just going to sit these down on their shelves, then I will whip you up some eggs and sausage. The sausage should help with the transition. How I wished I had sausage when I went through my puberty and my blood-cravings manifested. But, that was a very different time. Have a seat, and I’ll fix you some food and we can have us a nice long chat, yeah?”

  He was smooth and completely charming in his Scottish way. Again, if I had been into men, I would have let him bend me over any object in this bar, but he just didn’t do it for me. His reasonable tone seemed to ground me and my mind slowed down enough to process basic needs. I was indeed hungry; in fact, my stomach was currently rebelling against the tyrannical body that hadn’t fed it in too long! In addition, my bladder…

  “I have to pee…”

  I blushed slightly as I said this, aware now that it was the very first thing I had said since waking up from certain death. A conversationalist, I was not! Liam just grinned his silly Highland grin and nodded slightly, pointing his head beyond me to the back-left hand corner. I spotted a door.

  “Just through the white door there lass, just try not to fall in, yeah?”

  His eyes twinkled with mischief and I did the only sensible thing under the circumstances, I wagged my right middle finger at him as I retreated, lest my bladder lay waste to my already dirty undies! I could hear Liam’s deep chuckle from behind and my face heated up further. That man had a way with pissing a girl off, even if I didn’t really feel any heat to the need to punch him.

  The bathroom was functional and practical, but it was also done in blood red and black colors. Even the metalworking was black or red. Someone liked the color red a lot, and I had hal
f a guess who she was.

  Never have I felt so relieved to fulfil basic bodily needs in all my life! There is something primal about being at the very precipice of death and coming back, which lends a new vantage point to life.

  Sitting on the bar table was a stack of clothes, my clothes. Liam had laid out a towel and my old Nevermind tee shirt with the X’ed out eyes and the tongue hanging out. My black Sketchers and my pristinely cleaned leather jacket sat beside a large bath towel.

  “If you go through the back door and up the stairs, my loft is the right-hand door. I left it unlocked for you. You can have a nice shower and get changed, yeah? That should help you feel better.”

  I studied him for a very long moment. Liam had been nothing but kind to me so far, but I didn’t trust anything right now. He sighed and extended his hand in the direction of the back.

  “I’m not gonna peep on ye lass. Bloody hell woman, I could have done that anytime in the past three days!”

  My eyes widened.

  “Three days?!”

  My surprised tone was almost shrill, and I did not do shrill.

  “Aye, three days is the time it takes for a mortal to turn from human into a vampire—what we are.”

  I blinked at his casual V-bomb drop, like this was an everyday topic for him. Which, from all I had seen, probably was the case, but I was still a very human girl.

  “Vampire?”

  I laced enough doubt and contempt in the word to make it sound like I was cursing him. Liam didn’t even flinch at my mood, or my tone. I had forgotten, Liam was used to scary female tones.

  “Look, I promise to talk to you at length, please just go clean off all that smelly blood. Ye reek of redcap and that’s not a smell I much enjoy breathing in, yeah.”

  His strange logic had me turning and moving for my clothes, before I could think better of my decision, or before I could decide to break one of these bottles over his head. Some part of me seemed to be arrested with the thought of smashing in Liam’s head, which probably comes from my very Mexican temper. My mother, flake that she was, gave me a real mean streak when angry.