SWNOVELS Chapter First Contact
Lanterns starkly highlighted the horses, and from the shadows behind the animals stepped a dark-clad figure in tight-fitting leather pants, a bodice, and a hooded cloak with knee-high boots.
The stranger’s mysterious, chilling presence unsettled Alena. Her scent pungently vampire, yet wrong.
There was something predatory in the way she moved, but it didn’t compare to Marcus’ powerful panther-like gait.
He was a natural leader with a strong personality and the ability to enchant people into liking and respecting him.
His wisdom and innate ability to gauge people’s intentions had brought him to her father’s attention.
Although slow to anger, one dared not discount the danger he posed to any adversary. The vultures, who descended on this castle when the council declared Victor dead and instated Marcus as his heir, swiftly learned their lesson. Yet they barely rattled his defenses; his retaliation left them reeling.
The dhampir stopped some distance from them, making no further move or acknowledging their presence.
Tension squared her shoulders and widened her stance, speaking of wariness, and it was a reasonable reaction under the circumstances.
They were all cautious, expecting treachery and death as the divide between them stretched into a chasm.
Rowan would never have received an invitation to enter between those imposing twin gates if the situation hadn’t drastically changed,
***
Marcus studied Rowan unobtrusively.
Her gait betrayed the kind of self-assurance attained from being self-reliant, and it was a trait gained from having faced the odds and triumphed.
Even though she didn’t possess Alena’s gracefully elegant stride, which directly resulted from her birthright, education, and awareness of her position, she made an impression.
“Show yourself,” he demanded.
The dark-clad woman didn’t budge, and he accepted that she wouldn’t respond. Perhaps Alena was right—he made an error in judgment by summoning this stranger, but they didn’t really have a choice.
“Does she not speak?” Alena asked.
The question appeared to irk Rowan into lowering her hood, exposing her face just as he reluctantly re-evaluated his options, and her appearance shocked him.
“Who are your companions?” Unease drew his glance away from the familiar seeming lines of her face to the darkness behind her.
The lanterns highlighted the green and brown of her eyes.
Dark blond hair with corn-colored highlights framed a face of pure, natural beauty, and her features were disturbingly vampire for a halfling.
“Speak up,” Alena insisted, her tone revealing her reaction to the undeniable truth ingrained into every part of Rowan by Victor’s blood, which had forged them both.
The similarities in their build, carriage and the structure of their faces seemed uncanny.
A tiny frown tugged at Rowan’s brow as she watched them react to the proof that she and Alena were undoubtedly sisters.
The lesser attributes of their mothers only made them individual, and Rowan’s looks carried a more earthy cast while Alena leaned toward the too-perfect elegance of the vampire.
Her gaze restlessly measured both them and her surroundings, while something taut and coiled lived under the surface of her skin. Did she constantly fight to remain in command of her inner animal as he did every day?
The restraint hardening her gaze tolerated no weakness, especially in their presence.
Did she see Alena as the half-sister she envied and who loathed the idea of her existence while he was the intruder who replaced their dangerous and often cruel sire?
Why did she not answer?
Careful observation revealed an ingrained defensiveness in her eyes, and he sighed.
Winning her confidence might prove an impossible task, and if it were conceivable, it would take little to lose it again. Should he bother to continue this meeting when she may, at best, be a dangerous and unpredictable ally?
***
They were the last people Rowan wanted to confront on this moonless night, and although she tried to answer them, her mouth would not obey her will.
Even though Victor believed he loved her human mother, she wasn’t sure her father even grasped the concept. A man who loves a woman does not allow her to conceive an infant that her body isn’t equipped to sustain and rejects her desire to end the pregnancy.
Against Ilse’s wishes, he turned his lover into a vampire to save the halfling child in her womb before killing her at her own insistence. Not having chosen the turn, she refused to become an out-of-control killer.
“Is she mute?” A touch of irritation laced Alena’s voice, and anger flared in Rowan’s chest.
The choice her mother made did not make her despise Victor any less. If he hadn’t crossed the line, Ilse wouldn’t have fallen pregnant, and if he hadn’t strayed from his marriage bed, she wouldn’t have been born into a life of misery.
“I am Rowan.” The simple declaration broke the spell. She lifted her chin and met their eyes, something no lesser vampire would dare. “Why have you summoned me?” They were everything she expected them to be, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Never once did she blame her mother for anything that happened. As a human woman, Ilse, had been the innocent victim of a vampire’s will.
Despised by mortals and scorned by vampires, Rowan fit nowhere and rarely received kindness from either species. The lessons Victor taught her of trust had shattered the last of her illusions. While life created armor around her heart, and the barrier grew thick with the passing seasons.
***
A month ago, Rowan would have paid no heed to the letter which invited her to this castle. That version of her would have argued that no force on earth could convince her to come to this place that her sister and father called home.
The ancient castle’s perimeter walls stood sentinel over the ages. It witnessed the rise and fall of many masters, both mortal and vampire. The passage of countless feet smoothed the weathered cobblestones and imbued them with the memory of several wars. Humans and vampires spilled their lifeblood on this courtyard over matters of pride, faith, greed, and fear.
From the battlements to the extensive gardens, this historic building reeked of wealth, influence, privilege, and paranoia.
The drawbridge, the towering walls, and the moat, which might have been essential to the first human inhabitants, were both pretentious and ineffectual in the age of vampires. Such things may deter a human army, but it would never keep a vampire out, and none of it impressed her.
A sensation between hatred and pain tore at her insides at seeing so much of herself in the woman who stared at her. So many thoughts hiding behind that icy reserve.
***
The hope that they might know what caused all the senseless attacks on helpless humans and the wholesale extermination of vampires brought her here. Yet she was honest enough to admit more persuaded her to enter this place than their circumstances.
She learned little in the three months since they were first contracted to hunt these creatures. Primarily gathering that they weren’t human or any breed of vampire she had encountered during her travels.
They did not feed or loot but invaded, slaughtered, and disappeared. What reason or rhyme there was to their actions, she could not determine. Mercy did not live in their cold dead hearts, and they spared neither women, infants, children, or the elderly, not even house pets or farm animals.
Wealthy men had paid the human mercenaries with whom she served to see to the interests of their people. Instead, they lost half their number to this strange foe.
The creatures were nearly indestructible, immune to daylight, and their talons contained poisoned barbs that broke off in their victims’ flesh. Their venom killed a grown man in minutes, and vampires suffered for days before succumbing to the same fate.
The contract no longer mattered to any of them. They sought vengeance for their deceased and justice for the murdered innocents, but there was no way to achieve either without help.
Humans stood no chance against these critters, and Marcus had the ear of the vampire King. Perhaps he would bring an army to exterminate the vermin plague, or it was how her fellow warriors reasoned. She suspected there were already too many of the creatures, and they might even kill a vampire of Marcus’s caliber.
Had vampirekind finally discovered an implacable and undefeatable enemy? She couldn’t help wondering what impact this would have on humanity.
***
Despite her distrust of this summons, Rowan had hoped they might help, but facing them, she discovered herself at a loss. How should she approach them or talk to them when they were a living reminder of all she was not?
Tension consumed her, and she was out of her depth for the first time in years. For the life of her, and despite her resolution to avoid Alena as much as possible, she couldn’t keep her gaze from wandering to her sibling.
As the child who dreamed of a family vied with the woman who only learned of love that it destroyed, her emotions gravitated between resentment and curiosity.
She didn’t expect anyone to abide her presence this close to the vampire princess, and she had never even met Victor. Only Alena shared blood with her; She had no other family, and was a mistake. A selfish choice made by a narcissistic man.
One half of her avoided looking directly into Alena’s eyes in dread of the contempt and rejection she expected. The other half challenged her to learn the truth and allow the stupid sentimentality of her inner child to die its final death. Why, then, did she see a vulnerable woman staring at her when she allowed herself to look?
(Version 4