Vampire Apocalypse.

Revelations.

by Katriena Knights.

PRELUDE.

Beautiful. It had been a long time since he had seen such beauty.

She lay sleeping on a small bed where she was supposed to be safe, her black hair spread over a pink flowered pillowcase, black lashes against ivory cheeks. Six years old, he thought.

She might remember. He wished he could have found her earlier, so all that happened tonight would be forgotten.

He knelt beside the bed. She'd dropped her teddy bear onto the pink carpet. He picked it up and held it a moment, looking into the empty gaze of its plastic eyes. Gently, he laid it aside.

His fingers touched her throat, just below her ear, feeling her pulse. It pattered beneath his touch, a child's heartbeat. If there had been any doubt she was the one, it disappeared as her blood moved beneath his fingers. A soft tingle pa.s.sed over his skin.

Three, perhaps four humans out of nearly six billion, and he'd found one. He couldn't help smiling at the wonder of it.

She opened her eyes. His smile faded as fear touched her face.

"Shh," he said. "It's all right." The compulsion in his voice quieted her, and she lay still, looking at him in wonderment.

"Don't be afraid."

He touched her face, then bent to her, and put his teeth in her throat. 8

ONE.

Lorelei Fletcher was in over her head. She should have followed her instincts from the beginning. Too late for that now-she just hoped she could get the h.e.l.l out of here somehow.

On any other night but Halloween she never would have followed Dina east of Tompkins Square Park, dance club or no dance club. But Halloween and her vampire costume made her feel invincible, so she'd agreed.

They'd never made it to the dance club. Instead, following directions given Dina by her latest boyfriend, they'd ended up here, in a bizarre tenement building where all the rooms seemed to be connected, and where no hallway seemed to be the same shape from moment to moment. Lorelei was beginning to wonder if the weird smell in the place was some kind of hallucinogen.

It would, at least, be a logical explanation for why everyone was so weird.

Everybody in the place was dressed like a vampire. It hadn't seemed strange at first. It was Halloween, after all. Lorelei herself made a stunning vampiress, or so she thought, with her black hair and naturally milky complexion. But, unlike the weirdoes at this party, she only played vampire one day a year.

She had to admit the image of the vampire intrigued her, sometimes to the point of obsession. She could spend days watching every vampire movie she could find, tracing dim, elusive memories. In twenty years, she hadn't found a mirror to the scene she remembered from childhood.

But compared to these nuts, she was a paragon of sanity.

She'd been accosted half a dozen times by guys with razor blades, and, looking for the bathroom, she'd stumbled into a couple of leather-clad women sucking each other's wrists with an enthusiasm Lorelei reserved for s.e.x or good chocolate. She'd heard about things like this, but she'd never really believed people could be so freaky. So much for unbridled optimism.

She wished she knew where Dina was. Lorelei had lost track of her about an hour ago, when they'd split up to find the front door. They were supposed to meet at a designated bathroom fifteen minutes later, but Lorelei hadn't seen Dina since. Nor had she seen the front door.

Somewhere a clock began to strike. Lorelei looked at her watch. Midnight. A woman in a bright red cape brushed by her, a coppery smell of blood drifting in her wake.

"Excuse me," Lorelei said, but the woman only cast a grin over her shoulder and kept walking.

"Thank you so much." Lorelei came to a halt and crossed her arms. This was ridiculous. She could swear she'd been down this stretch of hallway at least twice. Where the h.e.l.l had the front door gone? She thought a minute. If she went this way, she should end up back at the bathroom...

"No!"

The voice, faint but frantic, seemed to come from around a bend in the hall. Lorelei froze. Had it been-?

"No! Stop it, Nicky!"

"Dina!" Lorelei broke into a run.

"Get your hands off me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Dina!" Lorelei ran full-tilt into the closed door. She was certain it was the bathroom-or a bathroom-and behind it Dina's voice rose, frantic.

"No! Nicky, no!" The voice sobbed now in terror.

Lorelei slammed herself into the door. "Dina! Dina, hang on!"

Hang on to what? Lorelei had no idea what was going on.

Her breath tore in her throat, heaving toward panic. Visions of razor blades and blood swam in her mind. She smashed herself again and again into the door until she thought her shoulder would shatter. Suddenly the door came open with the sickening sound of splintering wood.

There was Dina. There were no razor blades, but there was blood.

A big, dark-haired man had her pinned against the wall, face buried in the bend of her throat. Of course, Lorelei thought fleetingly. If they thought they were vampires, of course they'd go for the throat. Shallow cuts, probably, like the wrist cuts.

"Get away from her, you freak!" Lorelei grabbed the man 10 by the shoulder and dragged at him, trying to haul him off Dina.

But he was heavy, and stronger than she could have imagined...

Panic clawed up her throat. This wasn't like the wrist- sucking girls in the bathroom. Something more was going on here. The room reeked of blood. From this angle, Lorelei could see it, winding in a thick, red line down Dina's bare shoulder, down the length of her arm, dripping steadily from the end of her index finger. Dina's head was thrown back, the man's mouth fastened to her throat...

He was killing her.

Lorelei struck him again, fruitlessly. Then, so deep into panic she had no awareness of it anymore, she grabbed a handful of his silky black hair and jerked as hard as she could.

The man's head snapped back. Blood sprayed everywhere.

He turned toward Lorelei as Dina's body slumped down to the floor, filling the small room with a rhythmic spray of blood that suddenly subsided.

The man grabbed Lorelei's hair on either side of her face, holding her riveted. She'd thought the paleness of his skin was makeup, skillfully applied. Now she saw it was only his skin, smooth, seamless, painfully white. He opened his blood-filled mouth and she saw white again, slender fangs.

He struck.

Julian Cavanaugh had been sitting in the alley for hours, chain smoking and smelling blood. He came here every Halloween, to remind himself of what he'd been, and what he'd become.

Sometimes he wondered why he did it. With the blood- smell in his nostrils the craving became almost unbearable even with the aid of the cigarettes, which weren't exactly over-the- counter Marlboros. But if he could sit here from dusk until dawn, smelling the blood and not giving in to the need, he knew he could make it another year.

As of tonight, it would be two hundred and thirty-six.

Sometimes he thought it was a waste of time, namely the hours he invested every week making the cigarettes. The tobacco he could buy at the mall, nicely dried and prepared, but 11 three of the other ingredients were herbs which, as far as he knew, had been extinct on this planet for a millennium. Except for the few plants preserved by a Native American shaman, given to him by a G.o.d of blood then pa.s.sed on to Julian two hundred and thirty-six years ago.

Deep, throaty laughter came from a second-story window.

Julian recognized the voice. Nicholas had been made a vampire three years ago tonight, during the annual Halloween bloodbash.

Vivian had made him. As Julian recalled, she'd found him in a bar and brought him home for the party. It was strange to Julian how many humans were willing to come, to slash their wrists and lap each others' blood, pretending to be something they couldn't begin to imagine.

Julian lit another cigarette from the tip of the b.u.t.t in his mouth and listened to Nicholas' voice. A woman answered him, first laughing seductively, then, suddenly, in fear.

"No. Stop it, Nicky." He heard scuffling. "Get your hands off me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Then she screamed, "No!"

Julian closed his eyes tight and sucked hard on the cigarette.

He'd promised himself a long time ago to stay out of the business of other vampires. But he hated to hear the taking of an unwilling victim.

He should get up and walk away. Inside, the voices rose.

Another woman's voice screamed from the other side of the door. Julian snubbed the cigarette against the brick wall and put the b.u.t.t in his jacket pocket. Gathering himself, he leapt, catching the sill and levering himself up on it. The cigarettes had stilled the need for blood, but hadn't affected his strength.

The victim's head lolled against the partly-open window.

All Julian could see was a ma.s.s of gold-brown hair and Nicholas'

face pressed into her neck. Julian grabbed the window and shoved upward. He should have moved faster. Now it was too late to save her.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst inward and another woman half-fell into the room. With an astonishing show of strength, she tore Nicholas away from the dying blonde woman.

And Nicholas, predictably, turned on her.

Julian launched himself through the window and onto 12 Nicholas' back, breaking him loose from his victim and knocking him to the floor. The woman fell in a heap to the ground, all pale skin and black hair, unconscious, not from blood loss, but from the beginning of the vampire's trance. Her throat had been p.r.i.c.ked, but not penetrated.

Nicholas, interrupted at the beginning of a new feed, stumbled. Julian grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down.

The younger vampire glared up at him, eyes glinting black.

"You," he said, his voice still wet with blood from the first girl.

"How observant," said Julian dryly.

Nicholas leaped at him. Julian hadn't expected that and he threw up an arm to ward Nicholas off, but he landed hard against him, threw a punch that smashed Julian's lip against his teeth.

The taste of his own blood made Julian momentarily dizzy.

"Stop," he said, his voice pitched low and deep.

Nicholas stopped. He was young, his three years no match for Julian's eight centuries. He gaped at Julian, then struggled to formed words. "There's a Call out for you, man."

Julian stared. There had been no Call put out for a vampire for nearly two centuries. But under the compulsion, Nicholas had no choice but to tell the truth.

"Sleep," Julian said finally, and Nicholas slumped to the floor.

Julian turned to the dark-haired woman. She was alive. He could still help her. It was far too late for the other woman. All he could do was get away from the smell of her blood as quickly as possible. Gently, he lifted the living woman from the floor.

At home in the deep darkness of the early morning, Julian put the woman in one of the spare bedrooms and tucked the blankets around her. She'd be safe here until daybreak, if he could protect her from himself.

Not that he was much of a threat at the moment. His head ached from the effort of holding a compulsion over the cab driver who'd brought them here. It was the only way he could get the unconscious woman from the fringes of the vampire colony to his house in Connecticut without awkward questions. 13 The pain faded slowly as he knelt next to the bed to watch her.

Her soft breathing and the slight movement of her eyes under closed lids rea.s.sured him. The vampire trance seemed not to have damaged her, seemed to be wearing off and weakening in the usual manner. He touched her face, telling himself he was checking her temperature, the texture of her skin, to judge her recovery. In truth, he only wanted to touch her. Blood pulsed just below her skin, a tickle of sensation under his fingers.

Leave her. Leave her before you kill her.

It was the best advice he'd heard all day. He forced himself away from her bedside. She'd be safe alone. Safer, even. He went downstairs, out onto the porch, and lit a cigarette.

"You have no idea."

Startled, Julian dropped the cigarette he'd just lit.

"Show yourself," he said, putting as much force into the compulsion as he could while fumbling for the cigarette. The last thing he needed was attention from his neighbors, and setting his lawn on fire would definitely bring that. Not to mention each b.u.t.t represented a half-hour of labor.

The voice came closer, laughing now, as a dark, hulking shadow came into view. A human figure, yet not human, face shadowed by the long, dark cloak that obscured the outlines of the rest of his body.

"Your voice tricks won't work on me," he went on. "You're far too young."

He was right. Julian could feel it now, the age rolling off the other vampire in waves, the power behind it. Julian had only felt such a thing in the presence of the Senior. There was no vampire older or more powerful than the Senior.

But this one was, and this one was not the Senior.

"Who are you?" Julian took a deep drag on the cigarette.

The appearance of the stranger had driven most of his thoughts about the woman out of his head. The blast of smoke did the rest.