Blood Wraiths

CHAPTER ONE

HOON

Hoon lay unmoving, unbreathing; his skin, cracked and desiccated, wrapped along his bones in papery ribbons. The once black hair had turned gray and dry as the straw he lay upon, forgotten in one of the king's dungeons. His spread-eagled limbs, spellcorded to the metal loops at the ends of pegs in the floor, no longer ached-there was not enough muscle tissue left in them to ache. He could not see. The fluid in his eyes had dried and without it he was blind. The vampire hungered. He dreamed of blood and the taste of death in his mouth. Hoon had no strength to move; his desire to struggle against his bonds had faded to dim memory with the months of his imprisonment. At least his captors no longer came down to torture and torment him. They had not even bothered to put the deadly seals on the cords that would have slain him had he tried to remove them. They had not needed to. By the time they chained him here, the harsh attentions they had paid him earlier had left Hoon too wasted and wounded to attempt anything. Now, he was just a creature of dreams and memories.

Rats rustled through the straw, chittering along the edges of the dungeon. Several of them ran across him and his wasted body managed a faint shudder as he wondered if they had come to gnaw upon him. Then they were gone again … or at least he no longer heard them and he slipped back into a dreaming state out of torpor.

He dreamed of Amalthea. He had loved her. His wife. And he had murdered her. He and Timon, his oldest son, had murdered her. He considered himself an honorable man, for although he had raped and murdered her, he had not tasted the smallest drop of her blood.

Murder: the word swirled through his mind, repeating and repeating. She had helped Waejonan, Hoon's youngest brother, murder Hoon's children, Timon's brothers and sisters, in a rite of unholy magic.

He climbed the side of the stone mansion, his nails finding every tiny crevice and irregularity, clinging to it like a lizard. When he paused to glance to his right he could see at a distance Torment Lake where his brother liked to hold his rites and his public executions. The golden sands of foam-drenched, loamy soil would never be clean of all the blood that had been spilled there. A circle of trees framed the lake and his view. Then he turned his gaze again to the half-circle above him that was his wife's balcony. He could smell her perfume, her musk, the sweet life in her veins even at this far remove. Timon had chosen a different path to this place. He wondered how his son managed.

Then he began to climb again.

The sound of softly padding bare feet on the smooth stone of the balcony made him pause. Hoon listened until he was certain there was only one person there. Then he peered over the edge between the wrought iron balusters.

There she was. For a moment all that he could think of was how beautiful she was, her long black hair blowing in the morning breeze, her burnished copper skin, her delicate cheekbones, and full lips. He heaved himself over balustrade onto the balcony and stood before her. "Amalthea," Hoon murmured.

As a Lemyari vampire, the sunlight held no dangers for him, and its touch warmed his chill flesh like the kiss of life: it glinted on his black hair, grazed the points of his ears and gilded his olive skin with golden highlights. A dangerous sensuality lay in the depths of his large eyes, exposed itself on the chiseled planes of his cheekbones with their hollows, and settled on his full lips.

She started at his voice and retreated half a step. "Brandrahoon, you should not be here."

"An odd greeting from a wife to the husband she has not seen in years…" Hoon responded, his lips curling back with a trace of skepticism.

"You are exiled, that is all." She came forward then and touched his face. "Kiss me, husband."

He took her into his arms and kissed her. Her sweet body moved against his invitingly and he felt his fangs start to emerge. One small taste — just one small taste — But no, from the day he had known what he had become, Hoon had vowed not to drink from this woman. He pulled away from her. "How are the children?"

"The children?" She faltered and then took his hand. "They are well. Come inside where you will not be seen. Let me give you a wife's proper welcome to her husband. Then I will bring you to them."

He did not tell her that he already knew they were dead, all seven of them. Hoon allowed her to lead him through the curtained doors into their bedchamber. The large bed with its tremendous columns still stood in the corner, where he had gotten his children on her. Loss twisted through his stomach in vines of pain with leaves of sorrow.

He studied the alterations in the room in an effort to drag himself from his memories. The drapes had changed. When he had dwelled here, Amalthea had preferred blues and deep greens. Now they were crimson and black. The wall hangings too had changed, they now depicted lewd scenes of hunts and demonic debaucheries. Hoon found a decanter of wine on the table and a glass. Since his turning, he could not eat the fruits of the earth, but he could drink. He poured a glass and drank it. His eyes widened at the taste: it was spiked with human blood. When had she started drinking this?

Hoon turned to ask and saw that she had opened her bodice.

"Come, Brandrahoon, husband… is this what you want?" She lifted one breast free and his manhood reacted to it.

For an instant his decision to kill her wavered as he reached for her breasts. Her shadow on the wall, flickering in the lamplight, showed her raise a death-runed blade to strike him down from the back as they embraced. Hoon spun, seized her wrist, and crushed it. Thick carpeting muted the sound of the blade falling. Rage took him and he threw her onto the bed, ripping her skirts away. He forced her legs open and fumbled with the ties of his pants.

"I hate you," Amalthea shrieked.

Then another form emerged from the bed curtains and seized her shoulders, pinning her to the bed.

"Timon…" She faltered in her struggles and Hoon plunged his manhood inside her.

Timon's eyes filled with tears. "Kill her father. You know what she did."

"Waejonan will destroy you both," she snarled as Hoon tore at her body, her thighs spread wide beneath his hands.

"You laughed when they impaled me… I was a long time dying, mother," Timon said, his voice catching.

Hoon would never forget finding Timon, the pole lengthwise through his body, spear tip emerging from his shoulder. He had turned him to save him.

As his seed spilled into her, he pulled a blade from his waist and opened her throat. That was as close as the undead could come to the ugly rites of rape and death practiced by the sa'necari… Sa'necari like his brother… the way they had murdered his other six children.

The memory dissolved as he took her dead body once more as a woman and then he and his son loosed themselves upon the household in a carnage of vengeance and blood. They left a single woman alive to tell Waejonan who had done it.

GODWAR CENTRAL

Blood Wraiths

CHAPTER ONE

HOON