Death Embraces: Mortis Vampire Series, #2

Chapter One

I WOKE TO FIND MYSELF staring at darkness so intense that only by blinking could I tell that my eyes were open at all. My left cheek was pressed against something soft yet gritty that smelled suspiciously like dirt. That’s because it is dirt, I thought in increasing confusion.

Granules of soil were in my nose and mouth and clung to my eyelashes. Worst of all they scraped harshly against the raw edges of my neck. Wait a minute...the raw edges of my neck? I didn’t like the sound of that very much. As far as I knew necks weren’t supposed to have edges, raw or otherwise. They were just supposed to be attached to your shoulders. Then it dawned on me; I couldn’t feel anything below my neck at all.

Shocked, bewildered and terrified, I lay helplessly on my side, whimpering pathetically. I didn’t know where I was, how I’d gotten there or how I’d come to be paralysed. Keeping my mind as blank as possible seemed to be the way to cope with being in this state. Thinking would lead to panic. Screaming and general hysteria would shortly follow.

The only concession I made to my predicament was to close my left eye to prevent any further dirt from entering it. A few persistent grains were gleefully scratching away at my eyeball. Apart from that small annoyance, I felt no pain. There was just a vast and distressing nothingness below my neck.

After an unknown length of time had passed, I finally admitted that I couldn’t lie there forever doing nothing. I had to deal with my predicament. Finding out where I was would be a good place to start.

Opening my right eye, I rolled it to the left and right then up and down. My night vision had kicked in and it was far better than I could remember it being before. My inspection told me that the wall was only two or three inches away from my face. Strangely, the ceiling also seemed to be only a few inches away. Wherever I was, I didn’t have much room to move.

I must be partially buried, I whispered. I had to be because my cheek was sitting flush against the ground. If I’d been lying on my side, my head would have been canted downwards at an uncomfortable angle. The only conclusion I could come to was that someone had attacked me and had put me in a tiny room. They had then piled dirt inside and had half buried me in it. What kind of psycho would do something like this? Sadly, there were a lot of sick people out there who had strange ideas of fun.

Since I couldn’t feel anything below my neck, turning my head was going to take monumental effort. After straining for a few minutes without getting anywhere, I closed my eye again and concentrated on the part of my neck that I could still feel. As far as I could determine, feeling stopped at the base of my neck just above where my shoulders began. I wouldn’t be able to turn my whole body over if I was buried, but that wasn’t my plan. I just needed to turn my head enough to see the room more clearly.

Ok, you can do this, I murmured encouragingly to myself. Pep talks had never had much effect on me before, but this time proved to be the exception.

Creaking audibly, the muscles in my neck responded to my mental command and my head began to turn. Once it started, my head flopped over with surprising ease, almost as if I wasn’t half buried. Or as if my head wasn’t actually tethered to my body. That’s a good one, Nat. You’re not paralysed at all, you’re just a detached head! Ha, ha, ha. My silent amusement held more than a touch of hysteria.

After my brief bout of dark hilarity faded, I examined the room. It had stark, unpainted wooden walls and ceiling. The building must have been constructed fairly recently because the wood still smelled freshly cut.

Woodwork wasn’t my speciality, but it looked like cheap pine to me. A pair of hinges to the left caught my eye. It almost looked like the ceiling was actually a trap door. To back up this theory, a small metal lock had been placed on the wall to the right, just below the ceiling.

Sweeping my eyes from left to right and back again, it occurred to me that the room was only about a foot wide. That isn’t possible, my confused subconscious said. My shoulders and hips are wider than that. There’s no way I’d fit in a room that small.

Peering down towards my feet, I realized I couldn’t see them, or any other part of me for that matter. My body wasn’t paralysed, it simply wasn’t there. The room I was in wasn’t a room at all. It was a box. A tiny little box.

When the fact finally sank in that my body was missing and that I was just a head in a box, I subsided into a panic. I’m not sure how long I spent screaming and gibbering, but the most frequent phrases I used were; I’m a head in a box! Head! Box! Arrgghh!

Finally exhausted from my screaming fit, I wound down to the stage where I was whimpering again. How can this be? I moaned. What in G-G-G. I stuttered on God and couldn’t spit it out. What in C-C. I couldn’t say Christ either. J-J. Jesus was also a no go. Damn it! For some reason, I couldn’t say the Lord’s name out loud.

I admit I had a sneaking suspicion why this might be the case. Three facts had occurred to me since I’d woken up as a head in a box; I could see in the dark like a nocturnal animal; my head wasn’t attached to my body yet I was somehow still alive and I couldn’t say God out loud. Add all three together and I could only come to one conclusion. I’m a zombie, I moaned then sobbed at how low I’d fallen.

No actual tears slid down my face to go with the sobs and crying was frustratingly unsatisfying. One good thing, possibly the only good thing, about being a zombie so far was that no snot clogged my nose. Tears and mucus seemed to be beyond my ability to produce now.

Ok, I whispered to myself once I’d calmed down again. I just need to figure this out. Someone turned me into a zombie and cut off my head. Who could possibly hate me that much?

Thinking long and hard, I came up blank. As the manager of a clothing store in the centre of Brisbane, I had a few rivals in the area. I didn’t think any of them practiced the dark arts and I hadn’t been outright enemies with them. My parents had died when I was nineteen and I’d been pretty much alone for the past nine years. I had no friends or remaining family members who might despise me enough to wreak this kind of revenge on me. The idea that one of my infrequent boyfriends was behind this was simply ludicrous. I’d been single for a couple of years now and couldn’t remember the last time I’d been on an actual date. None of my exes had been into the occult and I just couldn’t see any of them holding a grudge for this long. Besides, they’d all dumped me. If anyone had a right to unholy vengeance, surely I did.

That thought rang a dim bell. The word ‘unholy’ brought to mind a picture of a cross. The picture doubled and the lone cross became a pair. I had the sense that they were old and heavy and possibly made of iron. A much smaller silver cross sat in the centre. Old and tarnished, it was decorated with fancy filigree. The workmanship was exquisite.

"Not unholy, I corrected myself. Holy. The holy...something." Holy what? Spots? Stains? Blotches? Nah, that wasn’t right, but it was close. The word I was looking for was right on the tip of my tongue. I thought it might start with an m.

Someone had taught me a trick once that might help me solve the mystery. If you couldn’t remember the name of something, but you could remember what it started with, just start saying words that began with that letter. Usually by the fifth word you came up with the correct one.

Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to give it a go. "The holy Martian. Mutant. Maggot. Meat. Mark. Mark! That rang a much louder bell. The holy marks!"

Excitement ran from the tip of my head down to the raw stump of my neck. That’s it! Now what the hell does that mean and what does it have to do with me being a zombie?

It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer to it. Not yet anyway. My memory still remained stubbornly vague. Maybe because remembering will be both painful and unpleasant. I was a zombie for Christ’s sake, of course it was going to be unpleasant.

Blinking obstinate grains of dirt out of my left eye, I winked at the lid of the box as if I was trying to send out a message in Morse code. Dot-dot-dash-dash-dash. I was suddenly stricken with the giggles and was soon laughing hysterically. It sounded awful in the enclosed space and I gave myself a massive case of the creeps.

If I’m a zombie, why do I still have a sense of humour? I should have been pining mindlessly for a snack of human brains. Maybe I wasn’t a zombie at all. Maybe I was something else. What other type of creature could survive having its head chopped off?

Prodding my teeth with my tongue, I located my incisors and winced at how long and sharp they seemed to be. Ah crap, I said with despair as the truth finally became unavoidable. I wasn’t a mindless brain eating zombie at all, but something even worse. I was an evil, blood sucking creature of the night. I’m a vampire! I cried with utter desolation.

Chapter Two

MY MEMORY CAME FLOODING back like a movie in fast forward. My last day as a mortal had been spent in a prolonged agony of needing to pee. It had been Friday, Brisbane’s late night shopping day, which meant I’d had to stay at work until nine pm.

A last minute customer had delayed me enough that all of the shops had been closed when I’d left for the night. It had been spooky creeping down the deserted alley that led to the lone bathroom. A weird old man had jumped me when I’d exited from the toilet. It turned out he wasn’t just a strange old man, he was an ancient and possibly insane vampire by the name of Silvius.

Silvius had knocked me out and carried me to a small crypt in the nearby cemetery. When I’d risen after three nights of excruciating pain, he had explained that he’d turned me for the express purpose of becoming his new servant.

I hadn’t exactly been thrilled with the idea. I’d been even less happy when he’d started cackling madly and I saw the length and sharpness of his teeth. It was then that I figured out Silvius was a vampire. Ok, he’d actually told me he was a vampire, but I hadn’t really believed him until I saw his fangs descend and he’d started laughing at me.

My natural instinct had been to stab him through the chest with whatever object was handy. A heavy metal cross had been the closest weapon. I’d snapped it off a nearby sarcophagus and had speared it across the room at him. By some miracle, it had hit him squarely in the heart. Silvius hadn’t died quietly. Screaming and coughing up thick black blood, he added to his misery by catching on fire when he tried to pull the cross out of his chest. Holy objects were seriously bad mojo for our kind.

I remembered something strange about Silvius as I examined my memory. Even stranger than him being an actual vampire, that was. His shadow, I said to myself. It moved on its own.

More memories came crashing back then. I remembered meeting ‘Lord Lucentio’ in the cold and lonely mausoleum that had been my home so briefly. He had kept me safe as we’d travelled to Romania to question an aged vampire prophet about my future. Thanks to the holy marks I’d managed to acquire on both palms, my new friend thought I was the scourge of vampirekind. I even had a title; Mortis, which was Latin for death. My sole purpose was apparently to wipe out ‘the damned’.

Luc, as I’d nicknamed Lucentio mainly because I was Australian and lazy, and I were met by guards from the Court upon landing in France on our way to Romania. The Court, a group of snobby European vampires numbering in the hundreds if not thousands, was run by a panel of nine Councillors. Of those nine, the Comtesse was the one who was really in charge.

Portents had been seen at my strange new birth, but that was only one inconsequential detail that barely concerned the Comtesse. Her main concern was a female vamp that was killing off the European vampire population. It was rumoured that she was the dreaded Mortis.

Luc and I were pretty sure that particular gig already belonged to me. Checking with the prophet who had foreseen my arrival a couple of thousand years ago had seemed like a good idea. Luckily for us, the Comtesse had reached the same conclusion. She ordered Luc to head to Romania to question the seer about the renegade female vamp. I’d tagged along with him for the ride.

Vincent, the creepy custodian of the prophet’s domain, met us when we arrived at the Romanian mountain hideaway. Like Silvius, his shadow had a life all of its own. It gave me chills just looking at the thing. Unfortunately, Vincent wasn’t the only one in the underground lair to have a shadow that seemed to be able to act independently.

After finding a secret journal that had been squirrelled away by the prophet, we quickly determined that I was indeed the fabled Mortis. Being the scourge of vampirekind had never been on my wish list and it wasn’t a job I’d ever aspired to. Before I could even get used to the idea of what fate had in store for me, Vincent set his lackeys onto us. We were forced to dispatch them and then him. Believe me, the world was better off without them.

During their attack, I discovered that the holy marks on my hands weren’t just unusual decorations, they were also deadly weapons. If the head of a vampire happened to come between my palms, it invariably imploded shortly afterwards. But only if I willed the implosion to happen. Otherwise, my hands were just like anyone else’s. Honest.

After we landed back in France, Luc phoned the Court mansion to warn them of Vincent’s treachery. No one had answered. This disturbed my companion greatly since the phone was always manned. The mansion seemed to be deserted.

Meeting up with Igor and Geordie, a pair of Court servants and Luc’s acquaintances, we drove to the mansion to try to determine what had happened. We discovered that the impersonator had made an appearance and had sliced her way through a number of guards. The Councillors and remaining courtiers had sensibly scattered like dust motes in the wind.

Along with having the holy marks and being impervious to holy water and stakes through the heart, I had one other weird talent. I could interpret foreign languages, both spoken and written. The journal that was unintelligible to everyone else, said that I would battle the vamp who was impersonating me and that I would win. I would then go forth and smite down the damned. Lastly, and most horribly, I would be smitten myself. Worst of all, I knew who was fated to smite me.

Luc’s plan was to follow the path set out for me by the prophet and to find the woman impersonating me so that I could kill her. My goal was slightly more self-serving, I just wanted to stay alive. Or maybe unalive would be more accurate. I figured the only way to do that was to run away like a coward. Death was a state I very much wanted to avoid.

During my all too brief escape, I encountered a crowd of sewer vamps lurking beneath London. I knew the Brits didn’t always like Australians, but their lack of hospitality had been appalling. Their leader was a guy called Alexander and he had been heavily into experimenting on vampires who were stupid enough to fall into his clutches. He fancied himself as a scientist and was hell bent on creating a stronger, faster and harder to kill breed of vampires. What he got was me.

Being the latest vampire to stupidly fall into his clutches, Alexander had cut my chest open then dripped his diseased blood into my dead, unbeating heart. The pain had been prolonged and exquisite. Unfortunately for Alexander, his experiment worked. The wound in my chest closed and I healed so quickly that it was almost unbelievable. I was stronger and faster just like he’d wanted. I guess he’d never considered that if his experiment worked his lab rat might just turn on him.

But turn on him I did and he’d paid the price of using me as a test subject. Instead of politely dying on the stone slab as Alexander had expected me to, I taught him a harsh lesson on what happened to anyone who screwed with Mortis.

Luc caught up to me shortly after I left the sewers and guilt tripped me into re-joining the hunt to take down my imposter. We found her trail and quickly caught up to her. As prophesized, I killed her. I used my holy marks to pop her head like a ripe pimple. She’d disintegrated, leaving behind only her clothes, weapons and a nasty stain on the floor.

Then the prophecy had taken a wrong turn. According to the journal, I was supposed to go on a killing spree and start thinning down the bulk of vampirekind. Instead, Luc, my trusted companion and occasional bed partner, had been ordered to lop my head off.

Only the timing of his attack had come as a surprise to me. Thanks to a drawing on the last page in the prophet’s journal, I knew Luc had been fated to be my own personal doom. I’d hidden the drawing from him so he wouldn’t have to suffer the knowledge that he would be my end. After all, we had been naked together a couple of times. Ok, maybe more than a couple.

I should have had plenty of time to get used to the idea of my impending death. I should have had years, decades or even centuries to steel myself to the inevitable. Instead, I’d been untimely stricken down by my dark and brooding protector before I could even begin my destiny of whittling down the vamp population.

A pout formed on my lips. It just isn’t fair! I hadn’t even started to kill off the vampire race yet and I had been reduced to being a head in a box. I knew who was at fault here. Yes I do, I murmured craftily into the darkness of the box that was just large enough to contain my hacked off head. Yes indeedy.

Lord Lucentio might have been the one to separate my head from my body, but I remembered who had given him the order. The praying mantis, I snarled in a truly evil tone. Most vampires referred to her as the Comtesse. I called her a praying mantis because her midnight black eyes were set too far apart. They were also as creepy and soulless as the insect I named her after.

During our very first meeting I’d figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t like her. Mostly because she’d made me strip naked in front of two hundred or so courtiers. I figured she’d done that to humiliate me and to put me in my place. I had the feeling that she wasn’t happy that Luc had made me his servant. He’d sworn centuries ago that he would never turn a human into one of us.

It was a lie, of course, me being his servant. Silvius had been my maker, but we couldn’t exactly tell people that I’d offed the old guy. Murdering your maker was a big no no for vampires. That was one more thing that set me apart from the rest of my kin. I’d killed my master and had survived.

Getting back to the Comtesse, the second time we’d met she’d ordered my death. It had all been a bit hazy to start with, but I was remembering it very clearly now. I also recalled what Luc had said to me just before chopping off my head. He’d said that no vampire could refuse an order given to them by their master. Luc had told me earlier that his master was dead and that he was a free man. If that was the case then the Comtesse shouldn’t have had any power over him. Yet he had followed her order anyway. I found that little fact very interesting.

After my head had been severed from my body, it had bounced to a stop at an angle where I could watch as my body was hacked apart by frenzied Court guards. When the chopping was over, the Comtesse had examined my remains. I’d begun shutting down then, but had seen something odd about her shadow. It had moved of its own accord, just like Silvius’ and Alexander’s had.

I might be down, but I still wasn’t out and I knew two secrets about the praying mantis that few others knew. Number one: she was Luc’s true master. Number two: the Comtesse had a shadow that acted independently. This was a fact that only I could possibly know because I was the only one who could see them in action.

Her shadow had spoken to me as my poor rent body had been kicked into a heap and I’d been on the edge of blacking out. Did you really think you were any match for us? It had whispered into my mind. You have failed, Mortis and now we are free to rise.

It sounded crazy, but I was certain that the shadows were tied to the creature that had created the vampire race in the first place. The prophet’s journal had explained how we’d come to be. A book I’d acquired after dispatching Alexander the sewer vamp had confirmed it.

A long, long time ago, an alien that was close to being a demi-god had shared its blood with a human, promising the fool eternal life. It had lied, surprise, surprise. We didn’t have eternal life at all. What we had was a temporary and often miserable unlife. We could be killed pretty easily if you knew how to take us down. Some of the more wily vampires managed to live for thousands of years, but in the end we would all be reduced to messy stains on the ground.

Over the millennia, the alien blood in our veins had begun to evolve. Eventually, it had begun to change our shadows, turning them sentient. On two occasions, shadows had acted against me directly. Alexander’s had even managed to possess him and take over his body. Eventually, they would all gain the power to do so.

Once this happened, our shadows would then be in charge. That could only mean one thing; the progeny of our long dead alien father would be in control of the deadliest creatures on earth.

Chapter Three

MY MEMORY WAS COMPLETE and now I knew how and why I had become a head in a box. When my body hadn’t instantly been turned into noisome liquid after being decapitated, the Comtesse’s solution must have been to hack me to pieces.

The picture of my dismembered limbs being kicked into a small pile was fresh enough. It was a gruesome sight, but I fixed it in my mind and examined it closely. Through the ragged tears in my clothing, I made out severed feet, hands, legs, arms and my body in two pieces. All up, including