Consequences (Blood of Pharaohs Book 1) Read online

  “It’s about time. Any complications?” Lilah grabbed an apple from the bench and her stethoscope from the hook on the rack, wrapping it around her neck. She stuffed her hand in her jeans pocket and pulled out her Swiss Army knife. Slicing a piece off the apple, she walked into the stall and offered it to the mare. As the mare munched on the apple, Lilah rubbed her hand across the horse’s withers and down the side of the belly.

  “Nope. She’s restless, but not switching her tail yet,” Jed replied.

  Lilah put the ear tips of the stethoscope in her ears and placed the stethoscope bell on the horse’s abdomen. She listened intently, smiling confidently. “Everything sounds good,” she said as she wrapped the stethoscope around her shoulders and patted the mare. “Bandage up her tail while I change out the straw, okay?”

  “No problem,” he replied, walking out of the stall.

  “Who’s my good girl?” she cooed, scratching behind the horse’s ear.

  With the reinforcements in place on the ranch, and her senses locating Lilah, Nikki relaxed, albeit minutely. “Lilah’s in the barn so I’m headed over that way.”

  “I’ll be back in the apartment, watching the football game.”

  “ESPN?”

  “No, it’s a rerun of Arkansas beating TCU in two overtimes.”

  Nikki shook her head. “If you know which side won, why watch it?”

  Sighing, Vince replied, “Because I can’t have sex in Father’s house.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  “Sex or football?”

  Nikki rolled her eyes. “Neither. If they attack the ranch, I want you to drop everything and barricade Lilah in the apartment. You will be her last defense.”

  “I’m not leaving you out there to fend them off by yourself,” Vince complained.

  “We promised our sire that we would protect her. Besides, like you said, the cavalry is here,” Nikki reminded him, but Vince remained steadfast. Nikki shrugged. “Okay, here it is. I love her, Vince. Even more so now, if that’s possible, and I can’t see a future without her. I almost told her about us tonight because it hurts too damn much to keep deceiving her.”

  “Then tell her that, damn it,” Vince growled. “Stop playing games and live for today, because, Niko, if she dies tomorrow, you’ll have nothing to show for all this pain you’re putting yourself through. And quite frankly, neither will she.” Vince closed his mouth and stared intensely at Nikki. “Thanks to your idiotic ideas, she’s lost and drifting.”

  Nikki glared at him. “Why didn’t you just say that out loud?”

  “Because, sometimes you hear me better when I think it. Are you hearing me now, sister? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Nikki tilted her head toward the barn, toward her. “Yes, brother. I’m hearing you, and I think in the 180-plus years that I’ve known you, I’m hearing you for the first time.

  “Good, now get your ass in there and make a baby,” Vince teased, slapping her on the shoulder.

  Nikki shook her head. “Uh, you know that’s impossible, right?”

  With Jed’s help, Lilah threw out the old straw and spread out a fresh layer. She told him to call it a night; that she would take first shift. She went into the tiny office at the end of the barn and pulled off her dirty blouse and blue jeans and put on a set of scrubs that she kept in a filing cabinet. Then she stretched out on the small couch and watched the monitors from the birthing stall for a few minutes before her thoughts turned inward. Nikki was beginning to consume her reasoning and that irritated her. She knew that she liked her, even before she helped her escape and drove her into town. But feeling her presence at the funeral home, respectful and non-intrusive, shed a completely different light on the woman who was paid to protect her. She imagined what it would feel like to be embraced in her muscular arms, held protectively against her chest.

  Where are you, Bec? I need your advice about a woman. A handsome woman, sexy, kind, irritating, generous, strong, infuriating, protective, alluring… Lilah dozed off listing every adjective she could think of to describe Nikki.

  “Hi, can I join you?”

  “Sure. Nikki, this is my best friend, Rebecca Lilymont. Bec, she’s the one I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, nice to meet you, Nikki. I’ve heard some wonderful things about you.”

  “Thank you, Rebecca.”

  “So, Nikki. Are you really a bodyguard?”

  “No, Rebecca. I’m actually a vampire.”

  “Oh my God. She has fangs!”

  As if she were drowning in a pool of water, Lilah sat up, gasping for air. Nikki was sitting beside her, smiling.

  “Bad dream?” she asked.

  Lilah scooted back against the arm of the couch. “I’m not sure,” she replied, looking at her as if she had two heads. “It was nice at first. I was talking with Rebecca and then you showed up.”

  “Sounds normal. I have been attached to you at the hip ever since I arrived.”

  “Yeah, but you showed us your, um…”

  “Fangs?” Nikki asked, snarling as she bared her teeth and lunged at Lilah’s neck.

  Chapter Eight

  November 7, 2016

  da Polenta Ranch, Texas

  A shooting star streaked across the midnight sky just as a blood-curdling scream broke the silence. Ranch hands came running out of the bunkhouse, stumbling and tripping over each other. Leonard charged out of the house, and they all headed for the barn.

  Nikki and Vince were by her side in an instant. “Lilah. Lilah, wake up.”

  “What’s wrong with her? She’s not waking up,” Vince pointed out.

  “No, Nikki. Please, don’t!” Lilah screamed unconsciously.

  “Damn, that’s some nightmare,” Vince said worriedly.

  Nikki put her hand on Lilah’s arm. She tilted her head, pushing her current into her mind. “Shit,” she groused, removing her hand. “It’s not a nightmare, Vince. Someone’s in there with her.”

  “You think it’s a Spirit spook?”

  “Yes. I can’t influence her from the outside. I need to dream-walk with her. Have the cavalry keep everyone out of here, then look around for an immortal who looks like they’re sleeping. They would be close by.”

  “What about her father?”

  “I don’t know; make something up,” Nikki retorted, sitting down on the floor beside Lilah and taking her hand.

  Vince rushed out just as the barn door swung open. “False alarm,” he yelled, his hands waving in the air. “Just a bad dream. Everything’s all right. Go back to bed.”

  Most of the men grumbled as they turned around and walked back to the bunkhouse. Vince called one of the immortals over and told him to guard the office and not let anyone in under any circumstance. Then he met Leonard halfway between the house and the barn.

  “What was that scream? Where’s my daughter?” Leonard demanded.

  “Uh, sir, uh, that was your daughter who screamed, and uh…”

  “What? What’s going on?” Leonard insisted.

  Vince’s mind raced through his options. If he told him it was just a bad dream, he’d want to comfort her. But if he told Lilah’s father that it was sexual in nature, chances were he’d not want to see that. “Uh, she was having sex, sir.”

  Leonard’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at the barn for a moment before raking his fingers through his gray hair. Then he snarled at Vince before returning to the house.

  “Lilah, you’re having a nightmare. Wake up now.” Nikki had put herself into a dream state and cautiously called to Lilah from a distance so as not to frighten her more. But she did not respond.

  A dark energy stepped out of the shadows beside Lilah. “She can’t hear you, bodyguard. She is in my dream-walk,” the man said with a thick Russian accent. The man was shorter than Nikki by six inches, his gray hair was balding and he had bad teeth. Obviously, he had been turned later in life, which would be his weakness, and obviously, he was expendable or they would have sent more.<
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  Nikki stepped closer and noticed that the man carried a sword in each hand. If he willed it, the Russian could kill Lilah in her dreams. Nikki slowly, calmly, pulled her sword out and took another step closer. “You’re not one of my sire’s children,” Nikki stated. “How did you fool the others?”

  “It’s not hard to fool a fool,” the vampire boasted.

  “You know you’re going to die, right? There are immortals all over this ranch, and they will find you. Who are you sacrificing yourself for?”

  The man knelt beside Lilah’s motionless body. She was in a dream within a dream, and Nikki couldn’t pull her back unless she could touch her from inside the second dream. In order to do that, she needed to trick the immortal, who was now stroking Lilah’s forehead, into pulling her inside it.

  “You love this one, yes?”

  “I am her bodyguard, sworn to protect her. And what about you? Who sent you here?”

  The Russian smiled. “My sire. My lover.”

  “Irinushka Yuliana is your lover?” Nikki watched the man’s face and the reaction she saw told her that she was correct. “If she loved you, why would she send you to your death?”

  “Death is not death for me, American. I will ascend and wait for my lover to come to me. We will be together forever.”

  Is he on drugs? Is that how the Russian bitch is manipulating him? Damn, I wish I could hear his thoughts. Like Nikki, the Russian was a fifth element, and the Spirit element cannot hear the thoughts of their own kind. It prevented their thoughts from being used against other Spirits in battle. And in a dream-walk, other aspects of Nikki’s element, such as compulsion, were also muted. She had no power inside the dream, other than the power of her own words, which she feared would be useless against this man’s blind worship. This immortal wanted to die.

  Nikki needed to hurry. If Vince killed the unconscious body of this man, she wouldn’t be able to reach Lilah in the second dream and she would never wake up.

  “And where will you ascend to? Heaven?” Nikki took another step forward, her sword still pointing down.

  “A heaven like you’ll never know,” he retorted.

  “Can you show me?” Nikki asked. “No tricks. I just want to know what your heaven is like before I kill you.”

  The man stood up and scoffed at Nikki. “Why should I show you that which you can never ascend to? It is only for me and Irinushka.”

  “You mean you and the rest of her army full of spliced-up automatons?” Nikki took another step closer. One more step and she’d be close enough to grab the man.

  “What’s this word, spliced up? We take no drugs. Our strength comes from Irinushka. She anoints us with her powers.”

  “Her powers? What is her element?”

  “She is absolute.”

  Nikki shook her head, a trickle of fear running down her spine. She gestured with her free hand as she stepped forward. “Are you telling me that she has all five elements?” The Russian seemed surprised, and Nikki knew she was on to something. “What will your sire think about you giving away all her secrets?”

  The Russian’s bravado was replaced with trepidation. His shoulders slumped and he lowered his sword. Then suddenly he bent down and touched Lilah’s arm. Just as he dissolved into the void, Nikki grabbed his arm and also melted from the first dream into the second. This was where Lilah’s mind was being held captive and all Nikki needed to do was wake her and she would descend into the first dream.

  Nikki immediately rushed to Lilah’s side. “Lilah, wake up. You’re having a nightmare, WAKE UP!”

  Still caught in the second dream, the Russian took advantage of Nikki’s distraction with the girl and ran his sword through Nikki’s abdomen just as Nikki touched Lilah’s arm. She slipped down into the first dream state. Nikki had never felt such pain, and she screamed in agony, waking Lilah, although she was still trapped in the nightmare.

  “Where am I?” Lilah looked around at the windowless white room with no doors. “Am I dreaming?” She looked up and recognized Nikki when she came into focus. “Oh my God!” Nikki had a longsword sticking out of her belly, blood dripping off it. Lilah wanted to vomit, or faint, or run for help, but the shock and horror of the grisly sight paralyzed her. All she could do was watch.

  Nikki glanced at her quickly, gathering strength from the knowledge that she was safe for the moment, even if she wasn’t awake yet. She turned her attention back to the Russian when she felt him pull the sword from her body. Her wound would not heal in a dream state. She had a matter of minutes before her lifeblood drained away, and she would die. She turned her sword toward herself and pushed it under her arm and into the Russian’s thigh. The man stumbled when Nikki withdrew her sword and sliced at him again.

  Nikki turned, stood up and gripped her sword with both hands. She sliced her sword through the Russian’s neck and the man’s head burst into flames as his body burned to ash in a matter of seconds.

  Lilah had seen the whole thing, watching with gaping mouth and wide eyes. She didn’t know why she was so relieved that Nikki had won, not after she had terrorized her with her fangs. But something inside her mind told her it had to be a nightmare, because when she looked at her now, Nikki’s eyes revealed only concern and there were no fangs in her mouth.

  Nikki reached her hand out to Lilah from the second dream-plane. She was trapped and dying, and the only thing she could think of was to take one last look at the woman she loved more than life itself.

  Confusion was replaced with desire to help, and Lilah reached her hand out to her and pulled her into her dream. “Are you all right?” she gasped, looking at the blood seeping from her wound. Nikki stumbled and fell to the ground, and Lilah immediately pressed both hands over the cut to try to stop the bleeding. “No! Stay with me, Nikki.”

  “Lovely Lilah Rose,” she whispered. “I need you to…”

  “To what, Nikki? What do you need?”

  Nikki raised a trembling hand and grabbed her arm. “I need you to wake up now.”

  Her touch jolted them both and they woke up at the same time, Lilah more slowly than Nikki, who was on her feet almost instantly.

  Vince was standing at the end of the couch, a sheepish grin on his face. “Have a nice nap?” he teased.

  “It wasn’t nice but it was very educational,” Nikki replied, as the blood in her wound clotted instantly and new tissue began to fill in the gaps where the sword had sliced through her. The jagged edges of torn skin at the exit wound knitted together until the wound was closed. In another few minutes, there would be no visible signs that Nikki had ever been stabbed, except for one.

  Lilah groaned. “Oh my God, what a horrid dream I had.” She pulled herself up on the couch and squinted at Nikki. She scooted back as her heart began to race. “Was it a dream?”

  Nikki smiled at her, a large, revealing smile that showed her that her incisors were perfectly normal.

  Oh, thank God. But…, why does she still frighten me? Lilah gave her a weak smile that quickly turned into a grimace. “Nikki! Is that blood on your shirt?” She pointed to the torn shirt with drying blood.

  Nikki looked down at her shirt. “Oh, uh…” She had forgotten about the battle the moment she saw that Lilah was all right.

  “Yeah, that’s my fault,” Vince confessed. “I spilt a cherry cola on her and it splashed everywhere.”

  “Clumsy oaf. You’re always spilling something,” Nikki added to the pretense. “I’ll go inside and get cleaned up.” She looked at Vince, who nodded and said non-verbally, “I’ll stay with her, sis.”

  Nikki ran at inhuman speed into the house and down to her sire’s personal suite. She called her father, listening to the speaker phone ring as she pulled off her shirt and threw it in the garbage can. She felt weak, depleted, so she walked over to the refrigerator, hoping that the blood supply had been restocked. Much to her relief, it had been.

  “Hello?”

  Nikki grabbed a bag and walked back to the speaker beside the
rotary telephone. “I have news, Papá.”

  “Tell me,” Ludovico commanded.

  “They attacked us here, at the ranch. Just one immortal, who dream-walked with Lilah, terrorizing her by pretending to be me. Papá, he was one of the six immortals you sent down here.”

  “I only sent five, Nikki. He must have joined them as they traveled.”

  “But wouldn’t the others know he wasn’t part of the team?”

  “Not necessarily. I pulled them together from several different areas. Were there consequences to his actions?”

  “Yes.” Nikki hung her head and sighed. “Lilah has some residual fear of me.”

  “Use your influence; tell her to forget it,” Ludovico instructed.

  Nikki did not want to make Lilah forget again. It was getting harder and harder to use her influence on her. She knew that the more she did, the less there would be of the person she loved. She was not the type of immortal who wanted a puppet on a string.

  “The Russian who attacked Lilah told me that Irinushka was his lover and he would die for her. Sire, he told me that she possesses all five elements.”

  “Shit! Lucy, get in here, now!” The speaker phone rattled at Ludovico’s thunderous demand.

  “How is that even possible?” Nikki asked.

  “Inbreeding,” Ludovico said, and hung up the phone.

  Nikki stared at the speaker for a moment, feeling like her world had suddenly tilted on its axis. Inbreeding. It was possible of course, but the unwritten law forbid it. Draining humans and replacing their blood with an immortal’s was the natural way to create a vampire. But to drain a vampire’s blood and replace it with another immortal’s blood, also known as inbreeding in the immortals’ world, was not only immoral, but very dangerous as well. The inbred became weak, both in body and mind, and would kill indiscriminately, if he didn’t go insane first.