Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) Read online

  As the day wore on, my legs ached from the nonstop march. My toes were going numb from the cold and my head throbbed. I had barely eaten in two days and a forest still going through spring thaw wasn’t exactly overflowing with things I could eat. At least, I didn’t think it was. I had never been the outdoor type.

  But the aches and pains were forgotten as the sun started its slow descent toward the horizon and I had yet to see any sign of civilization or even the road. Panic was chipping away at my calm. What was the next step to my master plan? Going back to the house was definitely not an option, and not because I was unsure I could find it again.

  I stopped in an open clearing and glanced up at the distant horizon. The sun was barely peeking over the edge. At best, there was only another thirty minutes of good light. Did I keep going in the dark and risk stepping into a hole that could break my leg? Did I stop and build a fire so I didn’t freeze to death in the night? Two thin blankets weren’t going to be enough when they’d barely kept the cold away while I’d been trudging through the woods during the daylight hours. Of course, I didn’t have a lighter or matches. My odds of starting a fire with a bunch of wet branches were pretty slim even if I wasn’t afraid of being spotted.

  Tension and fear grew within me as the minutes ticked by and the sun sank lower. Sleep would be impossible until the sun rose again and that was for the best. Vanko was my biggest threat. Nightwalkers could move with blinding speed. It would be too easy for him to catch up to me despite the fact that I’d been walking all day. I needed to keep moving if I was to have any chance of escaping him.

  Keeping the blankets wrapped around my arms, I continued through the woods, praying that some sign of civilization would finally emerge from the thickening darkness. But it wasn’t to be.

  Within two hours, I was spending more time picking myself up from the ground than I was making forward progress. My palms were covered in a series of little scrapes and cuts from where I’d tried to catch myself as I fell. My jeans were cold and muddy. And there was no light for me to follow. I kept looking for a break in the trees where I’d see a light from a building or a car, something to tell me that there was another person somewhere out there. I couldn’t possibly be the last creature alive in the world, but it was beginning to feel that way.

  The wolves quickly proved me wrong. Somewhere out the woods, a wolf lifted its voice in a lonesome song for a moon I couldn’t even see. I froze, listening to the forlorn song, trying to get a feel for what direction it was in and how far away. A couple seconds later, another joined it and this one sounded closer.

  Fuck. Were they hunting me? Dear god, I knew I was an easy meal, but I didn’t need to worry about being eaten by a pack of wolves when a pissed off vampire was probably hot on my heels. Brushing aside the fact that I couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of me, I started to run through the woods, trying to put more distance between where I thought the wolves might be and myself. I wasn’t making much progress as I painfully bounced off trees while their branches slashed across my face.

  Above my heavy breathing and my plodding footsteps through the brush, I became aware of another sound. I wasn’t the only one moving through the dead leaves, only this creature was moving with more speed and grace. A scream jumped from me when something large brushed past me with a low growl. I stumbled and landed hard on my knees. The dark creature turned, its large eyes reflecting light from some unseen source. One of the wolves had reached me. It growled low and deep, the sound wringing a whimper from me. I had nothing to fight it, nothing to stop it from ripping my throat out. Hell, I could barely see the thing in the darkness.

  A second later, its growl was echoed by a second directly behind me. They’d both found me and I hadn’t a prayer.

  “You shouldn’t have tried to escape, Erin.” Vanko’s cold voice drifted through the air in a sing-song melody. The sound chilled me in a way that the wolves couldn’t. I closed my eyes and choked back a sob. I didn’t know if he controlled the wolves and sent them after me, or if the wolves simply didn’t care about the nightwalker because he wasn’t a warm meal. Either way, Vanko was not there to save me.

  “Stefan didn’t ask you to kidnap me. He didn’t ask you to turn me,” I said when I could draw a deep breath. Opening my eyes, I stared into the darkness and still could not spot him. “Nothing you told me last night was the truth.”

  “And how do you know that?” His voice coursed strangely around me as if he was circling me like a vulture in the sky, and yet he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t disturb the wind or crush a single leaf under foot.

  I blinked, sending hot tears down my cold, wind-bitten cheeks. “Because I know Stefan. He would never place me in harm’s way.”

  A large hand closed around my throat and yanked me up so that I was dangling in the air with my toes just barely scraping across the ground. I tried to gasp, but I couldn’t. Vanko loomed before me as he slammed me against a large tree. His white skin glowed, ethereal and ghost-like, as if he’d become the specter of death I’d been running from since stepping out in those wretched woods.

  My heart lurched at the sight of his fangs bared. His blue eyes shone as if lit by some horrible magic. I tried to fight him off, but he grabbed my wrist with his free hand and pinned it against the tree over my head. Putting my heels against the tree, I attempted to push off and break free, but the nightwalker was stronger than me. I couldn’t break free.

  “Then I guess it’s safe to throw away the last of our pretenses now,” he snarled. His hand moved enough on my neck so that he could sink his fangs deep into my flesh, wringing a scream out of me.

  Pain lanced through my throat like he’d dug two sharp daggers into me and now he was trying to pull every ounce of my being through the wound. Where Stefan’s bite had almost immediately dissolved into something wonderful, Vanko caused only pain. I fought him, but it made no difference. His hand tightened on my throat with his thumb pressing into my windpipe, making it impossible to breathe. My vision wavered as I started to slip down a black tunnel into nothingness. I fought it for a second, but the lassitude soaking into my muscles soon won out.

  It would be over soon. I hadn’t wanted to die like this. Not out in a patch of lonely woods without a soul knowing what had happened to me. I would have liked to have been able to see Stefan one last time, to thank him for all the times that he made me laugh and for the concern in his soft, gray eyes.

  Darkness swirled around me. My body was gone and now there was just a wonderful lightness. A nothing that encompassed everything. It was unsettling and peaceful.

  It doesn’t have to be over.

  The voice washed out of the nothingness. Or maybe it was a part of the nothingness. I tried to locate the speaker, but there was only the complete blackness around me.

  This doesn’t have to be the end.

  What do you mean? I asked, or at least thought the words, not sure if the voice could hear my words.

  You can come back. You can have the power to exact vengeance for this attack. You can take control.

  Something in me stirred at the idea. I could have my life back?

  You could have a life.

  I don’t want vengeance or revenge. This was wrong, but getting revenge wouldn’t suddenly make this right again.

  The voice drifted away and I floated, growing weaker. I was becoming more insubstantial by the second. A part of me wanted to panic, to fight, but I just couldn’t find the energy. I’d been fighting for so long. Maybe all I needed was some rest at last. If only I’d had more time...

  More time for Stefan? The voice had returned, little more than a whisper. You could return to Stefan. You could have that life.

  Another chance with Stefan? But... there isn’t... we don’t have that chance.

  You could. Do you want that chance?

  Yes.

  Then fight.

  I wasn’t sure what the voice meant by fighting. I was too weak. I was nothing more than a wisp of smoke now,
caught on a breeze heading somewhere cold.

  And then something red penetrated the darkness. It seemed like a light at first and I willed myself to drift toward it. The light wrapped around me, cold and thick, until I thought I was drowning in it. I tried to fight the light, but I soon found that the more it filled me, the stronger I became, the more substantial I felt. I grew still, letting the heavy red light wash over me, filling me until there was nothing but the growing power deep within me and the promise of another chance.

  I would fight my way back. I would get my second chance with Stefan. And maybe I would even get my revenge for this drop into the darkness. It wasn’t sounding quite so bad any longer… and I was suddenly so very hungry.

  Chapter 12

  I woke with a scream. I don’t know why I was screaming. The horrific sound just soared up my throat, ripping from my chest like a banshee’s wail until it bounced off the walls only to pummel me in the chest. My first memory was of drowning. I was been drowning in the darkness, drowning in the thick red light, drowning in blood.

  The final thought brought me up short, cutting off sound with a startling sharpness. I nearly screamed again, but I clamped both of my trembling hands over my mouth to hold back the sound. I stopped breathing and tried to burrow into myself, concentrating on the rhythm of my heart until the initial panic subsided. But there was no heartbeat. My brain locked up at the realization. How was that even possible? I was nearly coming out of my skin in fear. My heart should have been racing. It should have been pounding so hard that it was nearly coming out of my chest. There was nothing but a frightening stillness to it all. It was then that I also realized that my lungs weren’t burning from a need to suck in air. There was no tightness in my chest from a lack of oxygen. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said I was dead. But that couldn’t be....

  Memories slammed into my brain and I gasped. I jerked at the force of the images passing before my eyes and hit my head against the stone wall behind me. Vanko had caught me, run me down in the woods after I’d escape. He’d bitten me, drained me... and the voice. The voice skipping through my mind with a promise for a second chance. Vanko turned me... Vanko had made me into a nightwalker.

  A howl of frustration and terror rose up, muffled only by the hands still on my mouth. I was dead. I was dead, but not. I was a vampire.

  With a whimper, I dropped my hands to my side and found I was sitting on dirt, but there was a flat wall behind me. Had he taken me back to the house? Using the cold damp wall, I tried to push to my feet, but I was so weak. My head had begun to ache and there was gnawing need growing in my chest. A tense, twitchy feeling was creeping through my limbs and biting at my flesh. Something was wrong. This couldn’t be right.

  On my second try, I managed to get to my feet, but I remained leaning against the wall for support. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back and tried to ignore the fine trembling in my fingers. It wasn’t panic. It was hunger. Or fatigue. Maybe I was still healing from my ordeal. Dying and coming back couldn’t be an easy thing on a person’s body. God, I hoped that was right. But did he even care about me now? I was a nightwalker and all the churches claimed that nightwalkers were abominations, servants of the devil. I didn’t feel like Satan’s whore, but maybe that came later.

  I started to push away from the wall when I heard a sound. It was distant but drawing closer. Footsteps. Even, steady footsteps. Straining, I realized that the footsteps were actually coming from well above me. They weren’t close enough to be directly above me. No, the person was on the second floor and coming down. I was back in the house, or at the very least, in a two-story building.

  When the person reached the staircase to the basement, I began to notice more than sounds. New scents assailed me. Sweat and alcohol. My head turned toward the approaching person and I twitched. The musky scent was familiar. It was the man from earlier... Otto. He was coming to my prison.

  There was something else hanging in the air. Hypnotic. Sweet and yet a little metallic. I couldn’t place it, but the growling need in my chest grew worse. My teeth aches and every muscle strained until I felt like I was going to scream. By the time he’d stopped outside the room, my thoughts were a twisted, tangled mess. The voice had come back.

  Need to feed. Need to bite. Need to feed.

  The world was lost in a red haze even though I was still trapped in absolute darkness. The hunger beat me back. I was no longer in control of my limbs. I was nothing more than a weak observer who had been shoved in the corner of my own fragile mind. Terror gripped me. I was afraid of the voice and this driving need. I was afraid of what was going to happen to Otto.

  A scream fought to break free, but it left my lips as a nearly silent growl. I tried to warn him not to come into the room until I had a grasp of myself again, but not a whisper of sound escaped me.

  A key clinked against the lock in the door and scraped as it was turned. A grin stretched my lips in a frightening mockery of amusement and I wept inside. Otto was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop myself.

  The door opened, throwing bright yellow light across me. The pain in my eyes was immediate, I cringed back, shrinking into the deep shadows that crowded the corners of the room. At the same time, hunger beat at me. That lovely scent I had picked up when he first entered the basement was now everywhere so that I was drowning in it. What meager ground I’d managed to gain when the pain in my eyes broke the darker impulses controlling me was lost when Otto stepped into the room, his hand outstretched as if he meant to grab me.

  I lunged, flying off the wall to tackle him into the opposite wall. His head cracked against the stone and the scent of blood engulfed me. There was nothing left of me. No will or horror or even remorse when I bit into the man’s throat. He cried out and his heart pounded so hard I could taste it on my tongue.

  His blood rushed in and with it came power. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was sucking on a lightning bolt. Everything came alive for a second. The world was suddenly more and I was sure that I could control it all so long as I could remain at this man’s throat.

  But while injured and initially stunned, Otto wasn’t out. Grabbing me by the shoulders, he pushed me off him with more force than I would have expected. I didn’t go far. I lunged for him again less than a second later. A low growl escaped him as he barely managed to stop me a second time. He tried to push me off, but he’d already lost enough blood to weaken him and nothing was going to keep me from his neck now.

  He barked something in me in a language I didn’t understand, and at that moment I didn’t care. With a growl of my own, I pulled his right hand off my arm and I heard a loud snapping noise as the bones in his wrist broke beneath my fingers. He screamed and the pain was enough to weaken him. Slamming him against the wall again, I returned to his throat and was immediately lost in the best feeling I’d ever known in my life. It was better than sex and chocolate and furry kittens cuddling on a lazy Sunday.

  Otto fought me, but his strength was gone. There was no removing me now. His grip on my shoulder with his left hand loosened and finally fell to the ground. His entire body went limp as his hold on consciousness failed next. The heartbeat I could taste with every pull of his blood slowed. Death pulled at him, a dark sinking vortex sucking him down. I kept drinking, some small part of me praying that I could get pulled down into that unforgiving vortex as well. I could chase death this way and I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that I’d just killed a man for his blood.

  But Otto died and I could not follow him.

  Pushing away from Otto’s corpse, I could now stand with ease. All the weakness that I had plagued me earlier was gone and I felt wonderful. There was no hunger, no aches or pains. Nothing. Living had come with so many little discomforts that we learned to overlook as we moved through our day, but there was none of this.

  Blood dripped down from my chin, catching the light from the open doorway, and I thought about the fact that I’d just killed a man. A
part of me mourned. It screamed and cried and cringed in horror at what I’d done, but the rest of me felt nothing.

  No, that was wrong. I longed for nothingness. But what I felt was triumphant and powerful. Otto had kidnapped me. He’d helped the man who’d killed me and turned me into a nightwalker. How could I possibly feel bad for killing such a treacherous creature?

  I sensed something to my right. A tingling or maybe a shift in the air. I turned sharply to find Vanko stepping into the open doorway though the nightwalker hadn’t made a sound. He took a long look at me and then at the dead body. A frown pulled at the corners of his mouth and his eyes narrowed on me. He wasn’t pleased that I’d killed his little helper.

  “He was not to be your first meal, Erin,” the nightwalker said shortly, sounding put out. “I had a nice girl I picked up from the nearby village. She might be a little sickly, but she would have been just what you deserved for your disobedience. But no, you had to dine on Otto.”

  An evil smile crossed Vanko’s face and I cringed slightly. “I guess it is fitting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was the one who’d located you last night.”

  I looked back at Otto and even the little part of me that had mourned his death suddenly grew still and silent. Not only had he been my kidnapper, but the bastard had been out there in the woods, helping to track me down. Yeah, I didn’t feel quite so bad about his death after all. I guess I just wasn’t the good person I thought I was. Death has a way of changing your perspective.

  “Come along,” Vanko said irritably, turning away from my room and walking toward the stairs.