Vampire Apocalypse
Book Two:
Apotheosis
***
Katriena Knights
Lilith shook in Jarod’s arms
He looked at her. She was staring out the window, pupils dilated,
breathing fast and ragged.
“Lilith?” He tried to turn her away from the window but failed.
Gently, he ran his hand over her hair, pressed his lips against her throat.
“Lilith.”
Her lips strained for words, finally produced a raspy sound. “Kill
me,” she breathed. “Ialdaboth will have you all, through me, if you
don’t.”
“There’s a way to save you,” he said, “and we both know what
that is.”
“If I take you now, I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t.”
Her eyes had widened, desperate and wild. “I will. I need it so
much.”
“Then take it.” Clenching his teeth, he broke the scabs on his
wrist and held the wound to her lips. The blood reddened her mouth
and her pupils contracted
She turned away from the window, grabbed him, and sank her
teeth into his throat.
Her fangs stung sinking in, tiny scalpels puncturing skin and vein.
His hands went up involuntarily, but when he grasped her arms, he
couldn’t push her away. She was immovable. Her mouth pulled at his
throat, drawing mouthful after mouthful of blood. The pain, though, had
stopped, leaving behind only the rhythm. It matched his heartbeat. She
shifted, and he felt her body against his, her breasts pressing softly
against his chest, her hands spread on his back.
Let go, he thought. That’s enough. I can’t take anymore.
I can’t, her answer came. I can’t stop.
He would have called for help if he could, but his voice stopped in
his throat behind her penetrating teeth. His heartbeat filled his head,
pounding, pounding . . . how long until it stopped?
To Doug
Other Books by Katriena Knights
Vampire Apocalypse Book One: Revelations
Time and Time Again
The Haunting of Rory Campbell
Vampire Apocalypse
Book Two:
Apotheosis
***
Katriena Knights
Prologue
From Lucien’s personal journals
To Whom It May Concern:
I leave this document behind in the hopes that no one but myself
will ever read it. For if this is found and I am not here, then I am most
likely dead, and all has been lost.
Enough with the melodramatics. On with the story.
Let’s start with me. I was born twelve thousand years ago, give
or take a century, in a cave in the Carpathian Mountains, the offspring
of a virgin girl and the demon to whom she was offered in an effort to
placate the angry gods. I had three half-brothers, each born to different
mothers. We are not vampires, but we birthed that entire race
through exchange of blood. May I take this moment to apologize on
behalf of the four of us? After all, the gods, unplacated by our births,
continued to be angry, and the vampire race has not yet been much of
a boon to the planet.
They might be, though, someday. That’s where the rest of the
story comes in.
Four and a half thousand years ago, I died. More or less. It was
the Flood, the big Black Sea flood the Sumerians wrote about. The
Hebrews did, too, if I remember right. There was torrential water and
mud, and I didn’t get out in time.
Neither did my half-brother, Aanu. We drowned and were lost in
the mud for a century or two. And we dreamed.
Eventually, we clawed our way out. When we compared notes,
we discovered we’d dreamed the same dreams. Or overlapping dreams,
something of that nature. In any case, when we started writing them
down, they fit together. So we compiled them and gave them a fancy
name—The Book of Changing Blood.
We weren’t sure what they all meant. Prophecies, maybe. But
over four thousand years passed before they started coming true.
Okay, here’s the part where you need to start paying attention.
Because if the unthinkable happens and we have lost and Ialdaboth
has won, the only way to salvage anything might be to reconstruct the
sequence of events. Otherwise there will be no shoveling us back out
of the darkness.
It started with an old Indian shaman—some variety of Sioux, I
think, but I’m not sure—and some herbs given to his tribe by an unnamed
vampire back in the mists of time. His people safeguarded the
herbs until, one day, the vampire Julian washed up on the banks of their
favorite fishing river. With the aid of these herbs, Julian abstained from
human blood for over two centuries.
Abstaining changed him. He became less sensitive to daylight
and able to consume some forms of solid food. His transformation was
kicked into high gear when he fed from two other vampires, then from
the Senior of the New York City vampire enclave. Normally, this should
have killed him—instead it killed them. I never knew the Senior’s name.
It’s not important. He was old. Very old. Old as dirt, even, but not quite
as old as me.
The interaction of the different blood within Julian’s body changed
him yet again. But he needed one more catalyst, which he found in the
blood of one Lorelei Fletcher, coincidentally or, actually, probably not—
the woman he met and fell ass-over-fangs in love with.
When he took her blood, he became something else. Something
no longer a vampire. He no longer fed on blood but on human energy.
I do that, as well, but when I take energy, it depletes the person from
whom I feed. Julian’s feeding amplifies the energy of the fed-upon. It’s
a strange and rather miraculous process, with implications which have
yet to be fully explored.
There’s a Dr. Greene here with us, in the enclave, who’s experimenting
with different blood combinations, isolating catalysts, things
like that. He was able to use Julian’s blood, combined with blood from
another vampire named Nicholas, to cure cancer. That should give you
some idea of where all this could be headed.
Much of this, I’ve discovered, is outlined in the Book of Changing
Blood, or what remains of it. Because a good deal of it was destroyed
by my two brothers, Ialdaboth and Ruha, and their followers,
who believe vampires should not change, that we and our Blood-Born
progeny are demons and will always be demons, and we should just
deal with it. I don’t believe that is true. I don’t believe the vampire race
was created to drag the world into hell. I believe we and our Children
have the potential to save the world, or at least part of it.
So some of our wo
rk has involved reconstructing the Book. And
the rest has been figuring out what the hell is going on as the shit hits
the fan around us. For instance, Julian got Lorelei pregnant. We have
no idea what that’s going to mean. Vampires are sterile—but he’s not
so much a vampire anymore, is he? So we’re waiting to see what
happens, waiting to see what kind of progeny she produces. Then there
are the Children—vampires who were Changed before they reached
puberty. Julian has Dr. Greene working on a way to return their mortality.
If it works for them, could it work for other vampires?
The biggest obstacle right now, though, is Ialdaboth. He’s determined
to stop us, and if you find this place in ruins, with my bones
decorating the office and slaughtered vampires strewn about in the
halls, he’s done just that. He tried to finish off Julian, kidnapping Lorelei
as bait, but his former minion Lilith got in his way and stopped it. She
was dead for about five minutes until Julian got to her. Ialdaboth blasted
the living hell out of her, and Julian brought her back to life. Brought her
back to life. I can’t stress that enough. We’re not sure where her
loyalties lie, but we are sure that Ialdaboth will try again. And if he
does, we have to stop him.
Have to. Because if we don’t, everything we’ve found is lost, I
am dead, and you are reading this.
Let’s just hope to God no one ever reads this.
We strive for a world in which there are choices. The choice to
be vampire or mortal. The choice to be a child—to live the life that was
taken.
Does immortality become a gift I can bestow, without the curse
of vampirism? Can I also give mortality to those who desire it?
What is my vision for the community of vampires? Not only those
whose enclave I now guide, but all of them, everywhere, throughout
the world.
Do we become a force for good, or do we become a catalyst for
evil?
My touch, my blood, can perform miracles, can give life where
there was none, can restore mortality where there was only the curse
of undeath.
What have I become? What has Lorelei become? And what of
the child she carries? Children—twins. Will they be human or vampire?
Or something else altogether?
Then there is the matter of Ialdaboth. We defeated him once,
Lucien and I, but only temporarily. I have doubts about whether we
can do it again. We need more. More power, more knowledge.
I should know more than I do. The Senior knew things I do not,
but I can’t access all his memories. I should be able to, but there are
barriers. Perhaps I have to go through all of the Senior’s life, his time,
his powers, and his loves, to find what I need.
I don’t look forward to the process. There are places in there I
really don’t want to go. So I fill my time with other concerns, gathering
what information I can.
Lilith must know something. She was with Ialdaboth’s enclave
for a long time. Could she be the key? I wonder whenever I visit her,
watching her as she lies in her hospital bed, a pale, beautiful thing. She
looks as if she is made of white wax, or marble. What knowledge lies
behind those quiescent eyes?
Lilith
. . . likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need
no repentance.
Luke 15:7
It is impossible for those who were once enlightened . . . if
they shall fall away, to renew them again into repentance.
Hebrews 6:4-6
If they want to come, let them come. I’m not turning anyone
away.
Email—Julian to Lucien
Blessed be the Children of the Dark, for they may return to
the Light, and thus be saved.
The Book of Changing Blood
One
Lilith hurt everywhere, deep, pervasive pain that filled every inch
of her. She could barely move without it shifting, growing and receding
and always moving, as if some bizarre form of life had taken root just
beneath her skin.
She supposed she shouldn’t complain, though. Not that long ago,
she’d been dead.
It was hard to judge the passage of time, but she thought it had
been about three days since Julian, Lucien, and Lorelei had brought her
here. Her sworn enemies, up until that time. Until Julian had brought
her back to life.
Here, in this part of the vampire Underground, there was no real
day or night, but the pull of the daytime Sleep still claimed her at appropriate
intervals. Here they fed her on harvested blood and kept her
carefully alive in spite of the role she’d recently played in Lorelei’s
kidnapping.
If she’d returned to her own people, she would be dead by now.
Instead she’d passed into the realm of the enemy and remained alive.
She blinked at the pale green ceiling of what she supposed could
most accurately be called a hospital room. It still amazed her that they
were leaving her alone. She could have yanked out her IV and slipped
away, feeling her way—somehow—out of the convoluted turnings of
the corridors and tunnels of the Underground. But she had no desire to
go anywhere. Once or twice Julian had come in and said hello to her,
held up his end of a short, inane conversation while his dark eyes had
he hadn’t bothered to talk. He’d just looked at her. She had no doubt
that they both could read every thought that meandered through her
head. So they knew where she stood. They knew she was, at least for
the moment, conflicted enough to be considered safe.
The door to her room squeaked, and she looked up to see Dr.
Greene enter. He came every day at about this time to check on her.
He smiled. “Good evening. How are you doing?”
He took her chart from the table by the door and looked at it. She
wondered why. He couldn’t have that many patients, not here. Surely
he could remember what her problems were.
“Like shit,” she answered.
He nodded soberly. “I’ve been running some cultures in the lab.
My prediction is that the pain will start to decrease in about twelve
hours.”
“That’s a relief.”
He checked her IV drip, where rich, garnet blood had begun to
enter her system minutes after she’d returned from the Sleep. “Are
you hungry at all?”
“No. Not really.”
“It’s not quite the same, is it?”
“No. Not quite.”
Her system’s dissatisfaction with the stale blood was secondary,
though, to the consuming pain. Still, the doctor’s understanding surprised
her. He was a mortal, after all, full of live, pulsing blood. He
would have made a damned fine breakfast.
Seemingly unconcerned by his status as possible food item, the
doctor checked her IV again, adjusted the timer, looked at the machine
that blinked with her vital signs. “You’ll be all right.”
“Yeah.” She doubted that. She’d made some very dangerous enemies
by protecting Lorelei and her unborn child. Ialdaboth wanted her
dead. Sooner or later, she knew he would get what he wanted.
Dr. Jarod Greene closed the door behind him and leaned on it,
gathering his thoughts. Lilith was improving rapidly. No surprise there.
Vampires healed with predictable rapidity when given half a chance.
That Lilith had been technically dead for a time didn’t seem to have
affected her recovery rate.
Yes, physically, she was recovering nicely. But he was still concerned
about her mental and emotional states. Especially since he knew
Julian and Lucien would be all over her with questions as soon as he
declared her healthy.
And so went his dilemma as a doctor. The information Julian wanted
from Lilith was important, but Jarod didn’t want to risk her health. Nor
did he want to endanger Julian’s plans to move against Ialdaboth’s
forces. He had to make the right call, and he wasn’t sure yet what that
was.
In any case, Julian was expecting him—again—right now. These
daily meetings were starting to get tedious.
As usual, Julian and Lucien were waiting for him in his office.
Jarod had asked them repeatedly not to touch anything in there—he
had a number of projects and experiments underway. Still, as he entered,
Lucien snatched his hands away from a shelf and hid them behind
his back. Julian gave Lucien a wry look.
“You can talk to her tomorrow,” said Jarod. He hoped giving them
an answer up front might gain him some privacy.
No such luck.
Julian settled onto the edge of the desk. “What’s your opinion of
her?”
“My opinion?” Jarod shrugged. “I think she’ll be well enough for
you to talk to her in twelve hours.”
“I mean as a person.”
He rarely got any but medical questions from his patients. He
liked it that way. It made everything less personal and helped him forget
he was the go-to medical guy for a colony of vampires.
“She’s not a person,” he said, not really thinking. “She’s a vampire.”
His lack of tact registered when Julian narrowed his eyes, his
mouth compressing.
“All right then,” Julian said, his tone clipped. “What do you think