Consequences (Blood of Pharaohs Book 1) Read online

  Blood of Pharaohs

  Consequences

  Book One

  by Mairsile

  Blood of Pharaohs – Consequences (Book One)

  © 2016 by Mairsile. All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, without written permission.

  Editor: Tracy Seybold

  Cover Design: Mairsile

  Other books by Mairsile

  www.Mairsile.com

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  Acknowledgements

  To all my friends for their encouragement, thank you.

  And as always, may the glory go to God.

  Mairsile

  Prologue

  November 2, 2013

  College Station, Texas

  Lilah pulled Nikki’s head down and kissed her hungrily, fervently.

  Groaning, she returned her kiss with equal passion and unimaginable need.

  “I love you, Nikki,” she muttered, wanting more, much more.

  “My lovely Lilah Rose,” Nikki replied.

  “I want to be with you for the rest of my life,” she sighed, pressing her head against Nikki’s solid chest. The euphoria was short lived though, when Nikki exhaled and removed her arms.

  “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled.

  Lilah searched her eyes, feeling a sudden chill. Gone was the loving passion she saw when they talked, laughed, kissed. Now they were cold and disconcerting. Her heart began to beat faster as her uncertainty quickly turned to panic. Something was terribly wrong.

  “What’s wrong? Are you… are you breaking up with me?” Lilah asked. I don’t understand. Oh, God, no. Please, don’t leave me. Please.

  Nikki heard her thoughts and gasped. She cupped her cheek and she kissed her again, eagerly, desperately at first, but then more gently and deliberately.

  Lilah moaned in her embrace, calming as Nikki’s fingers brushed past the throbbing pulse in her neck, and then skittered across her shoulders. A tingle of electricity ran up her arm, flowing out across her body and she looked at Nikki with large, questioning eyes.

  Nikki watched her green doe eyes swirl under her influence as she compelled her to sleep. Just before her eyelids closed, a tear escaped, splashing onto her hand. Her heart burned as if the dampness was acid.

  “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, clutching her to her chest, her head slumped against her heart. She held her sleeping form for a few moments more. Inhaling deeply, she stroked her blond hair and memorized the feel of her small body in her arms.

  Trembling, she carried Lilah into the bedroom as she murmured, “Forgive me. I love you, too. More than my heart can take… but I must protect you. My world is too dangerous for one as fragile as you.” She laid her gently on the bed, placed her hand on her arm and kissed her forehead. “You must forget me,” she whispered in her ear, sending another wave of persuasion into her mind. Then she moved to the far corner of the room where she kept watch as Lilah slept.

  A few moments later, Lilah’s eyelids fluttered open, and she sat up with a start. She looked around in confusion until she saw Nikki standing by the door. Her first instinct was to panic, but she had such a calming, trusting aura about her. Still, she backed as far away as she could. “Who are you?”

  Nikki didn’t answer. She gave Lilah a sorrowful smile and walked out of the hotel room, leaving her confused, slightly alarmed and indignant.

  “Well, how rude.”

  Chapter One

  November 4, 2016

  South Padre Island, Texas

  The Texas night air was thick with humidity, the kind that trickled down your back and stuck to your shirt. The flat cotton fields forty-five miles south of South Padre Island, Texas, seemed to stretch on for miles. Clusters of trees dotted the landscape here and there, offering shade to the weary cotton farmer. The fields lay dormant now that the harvesting was finished. Empty hulls were scattered across the ground, with white puffs of cotton too small to glean picked up by the wind and blown across the college student’s thin, naked body, sticking to her bloody skin, tangling in her brown hair, and catching on her dark eyelashes.

  On an access road beside that cotton field, crouched behind a beat-up Ford pickup, dingy white and rusting with age, Nikki opened the passenger side door while Vince kept watch. An empty whiskey bottle rolled out of the truck and fell to the ground. The truck cab was littered with whiskey and beer bottles, but it was the adrenaline scent of a human female mixed with vampire blood that told her they had found the bastards they were tracking.

  Stagnant water pooled in the ditch beside the truck. Mosquitos buzzed around their heads, but the insects didn’t bite the two vampires. Nikki closed the door quietly and held up three fingers. Vince nodded and peeked over the truck bed. Three men loitered together some three hundred feet from the truck that they had apparently left on the farm road. Nikki knew that the men wouldn’t be able to smell them from that distance. Plus, the wind was in their favor and blew their scent toward Nikki and Vince, confirming that all three were vampires.

  Vince crouched down again and slashed his hand through the air, indicating he would take a position behind the truck, and Nikki would flank left. The two of them used hand signals to communicate, even though it was two in the morning and the waxing crescent moon gave off little illumination. No matter, their eyes could draw light from the smallest source.

  Brother and sister by the same sire, Dominique Delgadillo was born in the Hispanic section of New York City in 1835. She didn’t know her father, but her mother, who worked in a factory making gentlemen’s hats, was strong willed and taught her daughter to treat people with kindness and respect, something she felt lacking in her own life. Dominique changed her name several times to fit the circumstances.

  At twenty-six, when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, she bound her breasts, cut her dark hair almost to the scalp and volunteered in the Spanish Company of the Garibaldi Guard, 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment under the name, Nicky Delgadillo. The regiment was divided into companies based on a man’s heritage; German, Hungarian, Swiss, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

  She was turned at age twenty-seven, just as she was about to be married while on furlough during the war. Though sickly pale compared to most Hispanics, she was tan compared to most vampires, something her vampire brother, Vince, loved to tease her about.

  Nicky who calls herself Nikki in present day, was tall, with solid muscles and an intense face, and she had the perfect V-shaped figure that allowed her to conceal her weapon easily. Her wavy, shoulder-length, coffee-colored hair often found its way into her large, dark brown eyes. She had maintained the same eye color she had before she was turned, although like her skin, they were slightly paler by comparison. Her beauty was natural and unassuming and her calm essence reassuring.

  The one thing Nikki wished she could change about herself was her element. She had the rare, often sought after fifth element, commonly called the Spirit element, that could bring the dead back to life. When a human was turned, they usually inherited their sire’s element; Fire, Water, Wind, or Earth. But on rare occasions, for whatever reason, they wielded a different power from their sire, and on an even rarer occasion, they possessed the ability to hear a person’s thoughts, dream-walk with a human, and bring back the dead, as Nikki could. If she could have picked her element, Nikki would prefer to inherit her sire’s element so she could
manipulate the air and fly, like her brother Vince.

  Vinceslao “Vince” Tomassetti, was also born in the 19th century, 1835, in the Italian section of New York City. They lived six blocks away from each other, but the different sections didn’t venture out of their ethnic areas. He would not meet Nikki until the first Battle of Bull Run, when Nikki saved his life from a Confederate’s bayonet. Like Nikki, Vince had volunteered to fight with the Garibaldi Guard, although he joined the Italian Company.

  Vince was to have been best man at Nikki’s wedding, but just before they were to leave for the church, he and Nikki were attacked and turned against their will. Unlike his dark, moody sister, Vince was a jokester who loved to tease. His curly blond hair was cut short and always had that windblown look, thanks to his ability to manipulate air. He had a round, almost cherubic face, with large, full lips and inquisitive blue eyes, Vince always had a grin on his face and a joke at the ready. The women swarmed to him like bees to honey, and he never lacked for fresh blood and incredible sex. He was the self-proclaimed king of orgies, but he never took a human against her will, nor did he drain her to death. He was the epitome of an Italian gentleman… most of the time.

  It was Nikki who unintentionally taught Vince how to fly. The South was losing the war and their sire requested they return to Mississippi to regroup. Halfway there, they took refuge from the sun in a cave. Before the sun came up, thinking that Vince was already asleep, Nikki took a quick bath in the stream near the cave. But Vince wasn’t asleep and when she walked out of the water completely naked, he was so shocked that he caused the wind to churn, lifting him up in the air. Up until that time, he had not been able to manipulate the wind, so he quickly forgot that Nikki didn’t have man parts, and began tormenting her with his new ability.

  Now the siblings were bounty killers for their sire, Ludovico da Polenta, and hunted down vampires who were stupid enough to create mischief in Ludovico’s territory, as those three immortals apparently had just done.

  Nikki smelled the blood on the human before she saw her, and with another breath, she confirmed that the girl was dead and at the beginning stages of decomposition. She looked away quickly. “Vince. They killed a girl,” she stated anxiously.

  “It’s not her, Niko. Stay focused. It’s not her. Can you read them?”

  Nikki concentrated on her element, but there was nothing in the void of space between them and the immortals. “No. They’re probably just too far away.”

  “No matter. Let’s go get these fuckers. Stay focused.”

  Stay focused. Nikki’s eyes burned with anger as her fangs descended, ready for battle. It’s not her. She removed her shirt, her muscles flexing with purpose, and pulled out the Panabas sword sheathed at her back, under her tank top. She was never without the twenty-eight inch, single-edged, curved blade with a pointed tip. The hilt was bound in dark brown leather, indented in places where Nikki’s iron grip had held it. The myth surrounding the sword would have you believe that it was human skin on the hilt. In her current career as a bounty killer, Nikki perpetuated that myth, though it was far from true. Moving faster than human speed, Nikki charged out of sight, circling into position.

  Vince, standing beside the truck, pulled a crossbow pistol from his side holster and loaded a syringe dart. He took aim at one of the men and let the silver-tipped syringe full of a dead human’s blood sail into the vampire’s chest. He loaded another syringe and fired at the next man, repeating the action again for the third man. The darts couldn’t carry enough blood to kill a vampire, but they were enough to slow them down.

  One of the men only sneered and pulled the syringe out, throwing it to the ground. Abruptly, the ground beneath Vince opened and he fell in. But in the blink of an eye, Vince lifted up into the air, grinning at the Earth vampire as he shot another dart at him. The immortal grabbed his burning chest and fell to his knees and blood poured from his eyes and nose. The veins in his neck protruded as the poison quickly made its way through his body. Vince hit him with another dart, and then another, and the man began to implode from within. Even if it didn’t kill him, the immortal would be easy to kill as he thrashed about on the ground.

  As soon as Nikki saw the first man hit with a dart, she rushed at the one standing closest to him. The vampire was ready for her. He was holding a short-shaft battle-axe with twin axe blades in a firm grip, and in one fluid motion, he swung it over his head once and then twirled around, slashing out at Nikki. Obviously, Vince’s dart had missed the behemoth.

  Double-gripping her sword like a baseball bat, Nikki deflected the battle-axe, slicing deep into the man’s arm. The man blanched, but his wound was already beginning to heal and he attacked again. As metal struck against metal, sparks flew, lighting up the night like firecrackers.

  Nikki could tell that the woman-killer wasn’t as old as she was, because his style was more desperate than skilled. Yet he wasn’t newly turned either. He had command of the Water element, although luckily for Nikki, there wasn’t much water to command in a cotton field. Nikki might have shown mercy, until she saw the terrified look frozen in place on the dead girl’s face. She looks familiar to me? Instead, she dodged another lunge, rolled under her opponent into a crouching position, where she sliced her sword through the tendons on the back of the man’s knees, causing him to kneel on the ground. Nikki stood up, raised her sword, and decapitated him without preamble.

  Vince landed and stood over the vampire he had poisoned with multiple darts. Nikki tossed him her bloody sword.

  “How come we couldn’t smell you?” the vampire asked.

  “Because, dumbass.” Vince held the sword over his head. “We bathe.” Faster than the eye could see, Vince sliced through the man’s neck, scoffing at the surprised look on the vampire’s face as the head rolled a few feet away. Vince bent over and used the man’s shirt to wipe the blood off before handing the weapon back to Nikki.

  “You missed one,” Nikki said, smelling the air for the third man.

  “In your dreams, Niko,” Vince quipped. “I always hit my target; you’re just getting old and feeble.”

  “We’re not even two hundred years old yet. Compared to our sire, we’re still babies. Besides,” Nikki said, holding up a set of keys, “he’s in the truck, looking for these.”

  Vince slapped her on the chest with the back of his hand. “Well, come on then, what are we waiting for?”

  In the very short time it took the two of them to reach the truck, the man had fled, running down the road at immortal speed. No matter, Vince pulled out his crossbow and shot his poisonous dart into the man’s back. Then he shot another, barely missing Nikki, who was almost upon the man after the first shot.

  “Damn it, Nikki!” Vince bellowed, flying after her.

  Nikki tackle the immortal and knocked him to the ground.

  When Vince caught up to her, he noticed a dart hanging from the man’s belt. It had not delivered a full dose of the poison.

  “Told you I had hit him,” Vince boasted.

  Nikki ignored her brother and grabbed a handful of the vampire’s hair and yanked his head back. “Who is your sire?”

  “I don’t have one,” the vampire replied tersely, his fangs dripping with blood. His own blood.

  “Is he dead?” Nikki asked.

  While it was impossible to turn a human without becoming his sire, it was unethical to turn him or her and then abandon them. Vampires had very high ethics when it came to producing more of their kind. Creating too many vampires would result in the humans, whose blood they needed to sustain themselves, becoming extinct. Too few, and a fallen realm could change the balance.

  When the immortal didn’t answer, Nikki concentrated on the man’s thoughts. She couldn’t hear them. Shocked, she looked up at Vince.

  “You can’t read him?” Vince asked cerebrally.

  Nikki shook her head. “How many darts do you have left, Vince?” she asked, looking at the man’s frightened face. “We’ll just keep shooting him u
ntil the sun comes up and fries his ass to a crisp.”

  Vince slid another dart onto the barrel and cocked the string. “I’ve got plenty,” he said, showing the immortal the ten darts he had snapped to the bottom of the crossbow, just before he shot another dart into the man’s leg.

  The rogue vampire screamed and then grunted, “Fuck you,” before he had a coughing fit that brought up blood. “You’re just going to kill me anyway,” he choked out between coughs.

  “Yes, that’s true. But if you tell us what we want to know, I’ll make it quick and painless,” Nikki coerced him.

  The man said nothing, whether from insolence or pain Nikki couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t hear his thoughts. She was at a distinct disadvantage that made her feel very uncomfortable.

  Vince shot a third dart into the man’s chest. The effect was almost instantaneous. The immortal’s blood boiled up and streamed down his face from every orifice, and he screamed, tearing at his clothes, trying to cool the fire inside.

  “Ludovico da Polenta,” he spat out, blood speckling Nikki’s jeans.

  Nikki looked at Vince, whose whitish face flushed gray.

  “You fucking liar!” Vince shouted.

  “You are not my sire’s son,” Nikki declared.

  “Yeah, and you’re not our brother, either,” Vince added

  Annoyed, Nikki frowned at Vince. “I just said that, idiot.”

  “Am not,” Vince whined.

  “Are too,” Nikki bantered.

  The man’s lungs were filling up with the poison, and he choked again. “It’s true. He sent us down here to keep you two busy, but we ran into all those college beauties and couldn’t resist a quick meal.”

  Nikki looked at the young girl lying dead on the ground. In the heat of battle, she had forgotten her. “You are not our father’s sire because you would know he would never allow you to drain an innocent girl to death.” As she raised her sword over the man’s head and swung, Nikki wished she hadn’t promised the immortal a quick death.