Unchanged (Morta Fox Book 3) Page 3

  “Get up, Ester. We’re going,” Layla said without waiting for me to finish. The boy sitting next to Ester pulled her to her feet, and the man stood up, too.

  I walked out of the house and waited for them there. They began to whisper, and I focused on something else. I didn’t want to eavesdrop on their private conversation so I gave them a few minutes.

  When they finally came out, Ester was no longer crying.

  “If you make one wrong move, I’m going to shoot you,” Layla said, showing me her gun. “I have silver bullets.”

  “Yes, I know. You told me,” I said. She didn’t need to know that I knew the truth, so I let her believe she had the upper hand. “See that building over there? That’s where we’re going. Get to the—”

  “You’re coming with us,” Layla said. She sounded more and more like the woman she had been before I drank her blood.

  “I thought you—”

  “Lead the way, we’ll follow.” She waved her gun in front of me as if to tell me she’d keep it pointed at my back.

  With a nod, I managed to turn around before I smiled. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk—just that I kept forgetting what it was like when somebody didn’t know what you could do. When humans didn’t know.

  But I said nothing else, and I led the way to the building at a normal pace. I strained my ears and breathed through my nose every few seconds to make sure we were alone.

  We were. Nobody close enough to hear us, if I couldn’t hear them. And finally, we made it inside the building.

  Offices, maybe a bank. Broken windows and burned walls outside, but inside, it wasn’t all that bad. Or it wouldn’t have been if there hadn’t been human bones scattered along the hallway.

  Layla covered her kids’ eyes as we walked up the stairs. Nothing smelled funny. The dust had settled. Nobody had been in there in a long time, so I was confident until we reached the top floor. Well, the one below it, because the top one was ruined. Half the roof had fallen inside.

  The offices were big enough to fit in a few of the couches I’d seen on the way up. The humans could sleep on them.

  “I will be right back,” I said and I walked out the door. I had to find fabric to cover the windows, too.

  It didn’t take me more than fifteen minutes to gather enough curtains from all over the place together with a couple of nails, bring them up, and then go back down for the couches. They were made of leather so they would be easy to clean, but very uncomfortable. Office furniture, but they would have to do.

  I lined them in front of the door to the hallway until I got everything I needed, and when I opened the door to the office we’d chosen, I found them curled up in a corner again.

  Without a word, I grabbed the four desks and put them outside before I brought the couches in. They didn’t make a single sound, just watched me as I covered the windows with the curtains, than hammered the nails with my hands. But the rhythm of their heartbeats told me everything I needed to know.

  They didn’t trust me. They were scared. They were regretful. They were desperate, hopeless.

  The best way I knew how to get them used to me was to let them see me do something—anything—while they watched, so I tore a piece of a curtain and used it to wipe the dust off the couches. After that, I left them again and checked every office in there. I found a bottle of rum and some cheap whiskey but nothing else. No water and no food.

  “Can you sit on the couches at least? I’m going to repeat this as many times as necessary: I will not hurt you,” I said when I found them in the same position again. They wouldn’t move. “Layla, come on. Your kids need to lie down.”

  Her heartbeat sped the second I said her name. I had no idea how to get them to relax. What else could I do to show that I wasn’t going to hurt them?

  “What’s your name?” Layla finally said.

  “Why do you want to go to Brazil?” I had been dying to ask. Had they no idea what was there?

  “Your name,” she insisted. It looked like I was going to have to wait another night for the answer.

  “Hammer.”

  “Your real name,” she said.

  I smiled. “You can’t ask a vampire for his real name.”

  “Why not?” Ester said and regretted it the next second.

  “Okay, I have an idea. If you guys just get up and sit down with me on the couches, I’ll answer all of your questions. You must be curious, aren’t you?” Maybe it wouldn’t work but it was worth the try.

  To my absolute astonishment, Ester was the first to stand up. I thought she was going to be the only one to protest, but what do you know? She sat on the couch farthest away from mine, and in the next couple of minutes, everyone followed. They all sat in one couch, though they had another empty one.

  “Great,” I said, grinning. This was progress. “So, in our world, there’s power in a name. A true name can be used to summon someone from all the way across the world. Like, if I called someone by their real name, they would hear it no matter where they were, and they can’t refuse the invitation. They must show up.”

  Except Chandra. She was the only one I’d tried to summon who hadn’t showed up. I’d given her real name to Morta’s sister. The reminder made me shiver. Why would Harley want Chandra’s real name?

  “You mean vampires,” Layla said.

  “Yes, vampires.” It was no use thinking about those things so I cleared my head and focused on the humans.

  “Are you really going to take us to Brazil?” the man asked.

  “Do you know that that place is full of vampires? It’s about the most dangerous place in the world.”

  “Yes, we know. And you said you’d take us there. Will you or won’t you?”

  “If that’s what you want.” The words tasted sour in my mouth. Was I willing to waste all that time to get them to Brazil—to their death?

  “What can you do?” Layla asked. “What exactly can you do?”

  “There’s a lot of things I can do.”

  “I need specifics. The best and worst things.”

  “So you can keep yourself safer,” I said and she nodded. This was going to suck. “You can’t.”

  “Just tell me,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “I can see, hear, smell better than you. I can move faster, heal in a blink of an eye. My instincts are enhanced. I can only be killed if you cut my head off, and that is a very hard thing to do.”

  “But you can’t stand the sun,” she said.

  “Yes. We’re unconscious through the day. It’s not a matter of preference—we just can’t stay awake. Silver makes us weak. It drains our strength. We can heal with blood, but without it, we can easily get to the point where we lose control of our mind and become…” animals.

  “Like you were tonight,” the man said.

  “Yes, like I was tonight. And if Layla hadn’t given me her blood…let’s just say I’m very thankful and I’m going to repay the favor by keeping you safe.”

  “Why were you like that?” Ester whispered.

  “Because I was captured by some other vampires. I managed to escape, but the silver had done too much damage already.”

  I didn’t like talking about any of that but if I stopped, they would, too.

  “Why were you captured? Aren’t all vampires together?” Layla said.

  A laugh couldn’t be avoided. “No, vampires are almost never together.” They seemed genuinely surprised. “Can I ask what you were doing in that building all by yourselves at night?”

  “No,” Ester said, but both the man and Layla told her to shut up.

  “We were late. The door to the Underground closes five minutes before sundown. We reached the door two minutes later and we couldn’t get it,” the man said.

  “The Underground?” I knew nothing about an Underground.

  “That’s all you’re going to get,” Layla said. “How soon can we get on our way?”

  “Okay, can you tell me where we are for now?”

  “We’re near Dallas,” Layla said. So we were a night’s run away from Manhattan. And Morta.

  “I thought vampires could tell where they are all the time,” Ester mumbled.

  “Well, no. That’s a lie.” It was damn funny, too.

  “How soon?” Layla repeated.

  “Listen, Layla, I can take you to Brazil. I said I would and I will, but you have to know, that place is dangerous. It’s the biggest vampire coven to have ever existed. You would die.”

  Her jaw clenched. “We won’t die.”

  “Trust me, you will.”

  There was no clearer way I could say it. They wouldn’t last a full minute.

  “Trust you?” she said, her voice high pitched. “You said you’d take us!”

  “And I will! Like I said, if that’s what you want, I will, but—”

  “Then do. We saved your life,” the man said. He was right. They had saved my life. But…

  “There’s something you should know first,” I said, swallowing hard. Force of habit. “There’s a war coming.”

  “We’ve been at war for the past three decades,” the man said.

  “Another one. The vampires that are in Brazil are going to attack the Walls and they’re going to kill everyone inside.”

  “Yes, we know.” What?

  “What do you mean, you know? You know how?”

  “We just do! Can you tell us how soon we can leave? How fast can we get there?”

  This was making no sense at all. Humans who knew about Brazil and the war? Something felt horribly wrong.

  “I can offer you an alternative,” I said through gritted teeth. No matter how alarming it was that they knew that much, sending them there would be cruel.

  “We don’t want an alternative!” Layla said.


  “Will you hear me out first?” She clamped her mouth shut and sat back so I took that as a yes. “There’s a place in Canada. A small town of humans. A vampire is with them, and he keeps them safe. They are actually the safest humans—beings on Earth.”

  I should’ve thought about it sooner. I needed to get to Victor. Victor had a town full of humans he kept safe. I didn’t need to waste any more time before going after him. I would just take them with me.

  But…they couldn’t run.

  “Why is that? Why does the vampire keep them safe?” Layla asked, her curiosity piqued.

  “He built a whole town for them. Gets them whatever they need on top of protection. In return, they give him blood.”

  “Oh,” Layla said, nodding like she’d just figured everything out. “So they’re slaves.”

  “Actually, no. They get to choose if they want to give their blood to Victor.”

  “Nobody would give away their blood for free,” Ester said, disgusted.

  “You’d be surprised at how many of them give it gladly. He’s offered them a life far away from this madness. They’re safe. They can eat and drink all they want. They can walk around their city without fear. They’re…normal.” As normal as a community could be. “There are no weapons. No violence. No crime. There are schools, jobs, even doctors.”

  It was all nearly perfect. So perfect that, when Victor had invited me to spend a couple centuries with him in Nova Terra, I’d thought about it for a week before turning him down.

  “Sounds like a fairy tale,” Layla said.

  “It’s a real place, Layla. It’s called Nova Terra, and they actually have green trees there. Clean water.”

  “Why have we never heard of such a place? And how can a single vampire keep a whole city safe?” the man asked.

  I smiled. “He’s the first.”

  “The first what?” said Ester.

  “The first vampire. The most powerful one alive.”

  The only one more powerful than Mohg. I didn’t know if they believed me or not, but they were definitely surprised.

  “The most powerful vampire alive just created a town for himself?” It sounded weird when she put it like that, but it was the truth.

  “Yup. And you can live there, too.”

  “I’m not giving away my blood,” Ester said, hugging her knees to her chest.

  “You won’t be required to. Remember, you can choose.”

  If Victor decided to take them in. But it was worth a shot. I wasn’t lying to them—Nova Terra was the safest place for humans. The only place Mohg wouldn’t dare to even go close to.

  “Suppose we believe that such a place exists,” Layla said, arching her brows. However, her shoulders were more relaxed and her grip around her children had loosened considerably. They all seemed to be much more comfortable than before. “How are you going to get us there?”

  Ah, the million-dollar question. How, indeed.

  V

  Question after question, dawn came before I realized it. I hadn’t talked that much since…since Morta. The humans were relaxed but still far away from trusting me and that was okay. They were going to take the day to decide whether they wanted to go back to living in a bunker—where apparently forty two other people lived—or if they wanted to go to Brazil. Or to Victor in Nova Terra.

  I wasn’t happy about it, but I made it clear that the decision would have to be made by the time I woke up the next night.

  “I’ll be in the next room,” I said to Layla as she put the kids—Macy and Mark—on the couch. They were sound asleep. “Can you make sure nobody goes in there during the day?”

  Layla looked back at the others. Ester and her brother Charlie were asleep, and the man—Arthur—almost gone, too. She nodded and walked out of the room.

  I was going to sleep in the other one across the hall. It was considerably smaller, but there were no windows in there so it was a no-brainer. The floor looked comfortable enough.

  “Listen, I…” Layla started, her eyes to her feet. “I want to thank you for keeping us safe.”

  “Why did you do it?” I asked instead.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you give me your blood? You could’ve left me there. Killed me. Why didn’t you?”

  They were terrified of me—of vampires. It was hard to imagine what had gone on inside her head in those moments.

  “My kids,” Layla whispered. “It was worth risking it. I chose a maybe instead of a definite death.”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you try to trust me? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to make sure nobody else will, too. I owe you my life.”

  No matter that I would’ve continued to live even after I’d lost control and ripped apart any human close to me. It would have been a miserable life to bear the deaths of two children on my shoulders.

  “I can’t promise you that, Hammer. I’ve seen too much already. But I can promise you we’ll know what we want to do by nightfall.”

  ***

  “We have to go.”

  My eyes popped open just as someone spanked me. Layla.

  I jumped to my feet, and she fell on her ass. “What?”

  “Ester and Charlie…they…they told the others. They’re coming up!” she cried. “We have to go, right now.”

  “Okay, calm down. What the hell happened?” But she didn’t need to say it. I could already hear them. Fifteen humans were five floors below and running up the stairs. “Shit.”

  “My kids…” Layla breathed. “Please.”

  “You’re going to be fine, okay? They’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Yes, yes, they will. I locked them inside the bunker.” Fuck.

  “Okay, stop crying. Where are the kids?”

  I was already out the door, and she followed. Four more floors. Fifteen humans. If I couldn’t figure out a way to escape, I was going to have to kill them.

  The kids were in the other room, hugging each other on Arthur’s lap. They were crying, too. I tore away the fabric I’d put on the windows and broke the glass. We were high—fifteen stories up, and the humans were barely two more floors away.

  There was no way I could jump with all of them on me, and I wouldn’t have enough time to jump with the kids, then be back in time for Layla and Arthur.

  One more floor.

  “Stay here and don’t open the door for any reason,” I said to Layla, and she nodded. “Do you have anything on you? Any weapon aside from the gun?”

  I figured if I could maybe hurt them enough to stall them, killing wouldn’t be necessary.

  “A…a knife,” Layla said and reached for her backpack. She pulled out something as big as my forearm, safely wrapped in a piece of thick velvet.

  I reached for it but I jumped back the next second. My fingers burned. What the hell?

  Silver. When Layla took the velvet piece off, I saw it. It was something like a small sword with an arched tip and with beautiful carvings on both sides. Argentium. The kind of silver I couldn’t even stand close to, let alone touch.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said and made it out in the hallway just as the humans came up the stairs to it.

  They were all men, all big and bearded. They had guns and knives, and some even had baseball bats.

  “Gentleman, I’m sure—” I was cut off by a gunshot. They were definitely not interested in chatting.

  I disappeared inside the room I’d spent the day in and left the door only half open. It was dark in there, and the space was small but it would be enough.

  They started shooting at the door and a bullet buried itself in my gut. It hurt like a mother, but nothing like silver, so I didn’t give it too much thought. I moved against the wall and waited.

  They shot about forty bullets before they stopped. Their heartbeats were erratic and their breathing heavy. Finally, someone pushed the door open.

  I grabbed him by the rifle and pulled him inside. I shut the door and got away from it again when they started to shoot. With my arm around the man’s neck, I held him tightly. His throat was so close to my mouth. His blood screamed my name, but I resisted. There was no time for feeding, and when the man lost consciousness, I put him down on the ground and opened the door halfway again.

  Two made for it this time while a third kept shooting. Two bullets went through my forearm, but two more men were unconscious in the next minute, lying on the floor right next to the first.