Forgotten Heir: Realm Doors Book One

Chapter Ten

She woke with a start, Dalahan's words still repeating in her head. Checking her watch, she discovered it had already passed three in the morning, yet even the barn was silent. It didn't surprise her that Luke and Anthony had gone to bed early for vampires; they had been up all day. She was grateful for the fact. No one needed to know what she had planned as she changed into jeans, t-shirt and coat, and prepared herself to face death's fangs.

Creeping silently through the pitch dark stables, Cara utilised her new ability to tread lightly, ensuring none of the others noticed as she slipped out of the door and into the cool early, grabbing Luke’s helmet as she went. She pulled the tarpaulin off his bike and pushed the blue BMW onto the road. For a while, she rolled the bike silently over the mountain tracks, putting some distance between herself and the sleeping men who’d undoubtedly charge after her intent on hauling her back if they heard the roar of a starting engine.

Having a deprived life had benefits; she’d often come in contact with the wrong sort of people, and one such vagrant had taught her to ride... So as long as the police didn’t ask me for her bike licence, she'd be ok. She didn’t have the key for the ignition, but that didn’t matter. When Cara climbed onto the bike, she placed her hand gently against it, completely aware of every wire and bolt that made it up. With a spark of magical energy, the vehicle roared into angry life.

“Thank you, Kalidir, for finally giving me the ability to use sorcery. I know how you’ll regret it in the morning,” she murmured to herself.

She had four hours at most before Kalidir missed her, she could put a lot of distance between herself and her protectors in those hours. More than Kalidir would be able to make up without knowing where she'd headed. Unfortunately, she didn't know where she was heading either, but her heart told her south, and she remembered Ric’s words: I will always be able to find you. She hoped the trick worked both ways.

Trying not to think, she rode at speed through the deserted early morning roads. She don’t want to dwell one what lay ahead, nor what Kalidir would feel when he realised she'd ignored his orders. She hoped he could forgive her, although she doubted she'd live long enough to know either way. Pushing away such thoughts, she emptied her mind, trying to open herself to whichever instinct had led Ric back to her. Focusing on a destination would confuse matters; retrieving Ric required an act of faith, and she turned off roads and onto knew ones as her intuition told her, following a trail without a map.

Cold chilled her as the early morning wind whipped angrily through her ragged coat. She hated the wind right until the heavens opened, then she learned to loathe the rain which soaked her to the skin and made her tires slip on the tarmac. She couldn’t remember ever seeing rain so strong nor spray so blinding. It forced her to slow her pace, and she resented that. Over head a streak of lightning lit up the storm clouds with a rumbling roar of thunder travelling in its wake.

‘I would choose today to joy ride a motorcycle,’ she thought bitterly.

At least the weather kept the roads quite; few were foolish enough to drive in through the torrential downpour. Although Cara found herself praying that anyone she did speed up on bothered to use their fog lights, otherwise she feared she'd land in their back seat long before realising there was an obstacle.

The craggy mountains of Scotland and the rolling hills of Cumbria passed by unseen as she travelled on in the blinding wet, with a grim determination that wouldn’t permit her to pull over for a rest. Exhaustion didn't matter. Nothing would ever matter again if she let Ric die.

“There is no honour in fearing death,” she reminded herself again, but in het my mind Kalidir’s voice reprimanded her, responding that the first man to utter such words had been tried and tortured under elahdril law, and the second had been made vampire and currently hung in writhing agony from a basement wall.

They were hardly the ideal to follow if she wanted a safe or peaceful life... But the, she'd ever had a safe and peaceful life, so there was nothing new there.
As the morning began to brighten and turned into noon, she knew she was getting close. She still rode down through the west of the country, but it wouldn't be much further. Not much further at all, in fact.

Cara didn’t know how many hours she'd sat, soaking and cold, on the saddle of the BMW when she finally rumbled passed the Cumbrian town of Kendal and onto farm land, but shortly afterwards she found a dirt track which led up to a deserted, derelict farm house.

Stopping the bike, she climbed stiffly off it and onto the cracked pavement outside the crumbling building. No one came out of the house at the sound of her approach, and she felt momentarily confused as to why her whole heart screamed at her that Ric was nearby.

Pushing the creaking, groaning front door open, she stepped onto the faded orange tiles in a hallway that had seen no person in decades. Cobwebs coated the walls and ceilings, silver over the black mildew and damp. Her ears recognised the scuttling of rodents between the ceiling and the first floor, as well as in the decaying walls. It was a sound she’d grown accustomed to while homeless and sheltering in such abandoned and forgotten places.

Sighing, Cara leaned down to massage her legs. They ached from the long ride, and she needed some relief before she climbed back in the bike and continued her search. As she stood up again, her gaze landed on a door which stood propped against the wall. It was an ordinary, mundane door, not a portal between realms. All the same, it gave her the answer to the riddle of Ric's location.

She kicked herself for her stupidity; Ric was near, but not near at the same time. Taking a deep breath, she used her elahdril magic to shift silently into Blutholme, needing a realm door no more than any other supernatural would. She found herself in a deserted courtyard, with rounded cobblestones under her feet and the eclipsed sun looming overhead, a red halo over the dark manor house in front of her. A manor which, once she was inside, would prevent her shifting back to the Mundane.

Candles flickered in a few of the windows, but most were black, unseeing eyes. The dark openings gave her the creeps. In fact, the dark itself unnerved her. It seemed oppressive there, but she expected the manor’s occupants revelled in it.

She moved silently towards the large house, keeping to the blackest shadows and struggling not to stumble as she stubbed her toe on some unseen root or tripped over an uneven cobble. There was no one nearby, not that she could see, but she had to admit that her night vision wasn’t that well developed. She lurched cautiously towards the corner of the building, where an alley slipped between the high stone wall and the manor. It seemed as though it would lead to an old servants’ entrance at the rear.

Perfect.

She couldn’t hear any signs of life, but then why would she? Vampires were silent and deadly and she was in their world now, and not the safe protected environment the clubs and realm doors created either. No, she'd found her way into the real Blutholme, dark and hungry for blood.

As she stumbled over some obstacle and tumbled painfully to the footpath, Cara had to bite her tongue to prevent a cry of surprised pain from escaping her. She lay on top of the obstacle, and its smell hit her in waves. The thing smelled of rotting meat, the pungent odour wafting up to suffocate her.

Oh, gods, no!

Reaching out, her fingers found what felt to be a cold arm. Rows of bite marks, each caked in dried blood, littered the limb. The discovery proved that the Lady did not follow the Vampire Council’s order to leave victims alive. No, she made her own rules.

Still, Cara  felt obliged to confirm that there really was nothing to be done for the person she'd landed on. Switch to her other, magical, sight, she confirmed that the body was completely dead. It’s lack of an aura told her more than even a still pulse would. The dead man didn't even retain the pale, barely visible aura of vampirekind. However, as she raised her head again, she did see the pale blue glimmering of a vampire advancing towards her.

Why hadn’t she thought to looking for auras in the darkness earlier? Stupid girl! Stupid, undertrained, girl!

She turned to scramble in thee other direction, only to be faced with another blue lined figure coming up behind her. She let myself sigh miserably, them she checked her glamour was holding, her scent human enough, before she resigned herself to her fate.

There was no where for her to run,  so she didn’t try to pull away as the vampire guards hauled her to her feet and frog-marched her back to the manor’s front door and into the Lady’s current residence. So much for her rescue attempt.

The blonde woman with the face of an innocent teen lounged on a large couch surrounded by candles, her expression intrigued as Cara was dragged bodily into her presence and hurled at her feet. Cara tried to find the spark of magic at her core, despite Kalidir's warnings. She wanted some weapon to hurl at the Lady. Of course, she couldn’t access it. Kalidir was right, wards prevented the use sorcery. Damn it! Cara berated herself, telling herself she was a fool and that her friends had been correct; she should never have sought out the monster before her.

“There is no honour in fearing death,” she whispered again, forcing herself to believe the words.

She no sooner spoke than the Lady leapt up. Then she was in front of Cara, dragging her to her feet by her hair. She wince in pain as Ric's sire shook her, demanding, “What did you say?”

Cara slammed my mouth shut, figuratively zipping her lips. The Lady shook her again as she turned to face the guards, without letting go.

“Where did you find her?”

Cara could see better in the flickering candle light, and as one of her captors stepped forward, she saw he was ginger headed, freckle-faced boy, one who had only been fifteen or sixteen at  his turn. He bowed low to his mistress before answering.

“She was skulking around the northern servants’ path my Lady.”

The Lady stared at Cara intently, and she felt her mind buzzing in alarm as the ancient vampire tried to manipulate her.

“I will not be as easy to control as others,” she spat angrily at her.

Why be cautious now, while already as deep in shit as she could get? The Lady still clutched her hair, and Cara suspected she intended to pull her scalp from her skull.

Ric's maker's lips pursed before she replied. “Maybe not, little mortal witch, but your emotions are still mine to read. You’re afraid,” she told her, as if Cara didn’t already know. “But you’re also anxious for someone other than yourself. Tell me little girl, why are you skulking around my house and how did you get here?”

When no answer was forthcoming, the Lady grabbed her by the throat, forcing her to stand on her tiptoes to avoid being strangled. The vampire studied her with those ageless, penetrating eyes... At least the Lady thought Cara to be mortal, although she had no idea how that would help her situation.

“I came from the portal in Kendal,” she lied to her captor.

Early in their relationship, she and Ric had stayed at a cottage in the Lake District. The club he’d intended to use to get donor blood had recently been shut down by werewolves, and it took a great deal of driving around to find the dive of a vampire bar in Kendal’s town centre. Cara hoped, for her sake, that the bar was still there.