The Vampire Sword (Vampire Sorceress Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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  About the Author

  THE VAMPIRE SWORD

  Book 1 of The Vampire Sorceress

  T.L. Cerepaka

  Published by Annulus Publishing.

  Copyright © T.L. Cerepaka 2018. All rights reserved.

  Contact: [email protected]

  Cover design by BZN Studio

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, send an email to the above contact.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  I’ve been singing in church my whole life, which makes sense, given I was a pastor’s kid and all that. As a result, I was pretty familiar with feeling nervous about getting up on the stage in front of other people, even if they were people I had known my whole life. It used to be really bad when I was younger, but even now, when I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman, I still got nerves every now and then.

  But one thing I never dealt with growing up was a large, pale-skinned man bursting through the stained glass window above the baptistery behind me and plunging his teeth—fangs?—into my neck right in front of the whole congregation.

  It all happened so fast. One moment, I was putting my microphone back on its stand while my dad, the pastor, stood up to begin a prayer. The next, I heard shattered glass and felt two large hands close around my shoulders and then two thick teeth sink into my neck. What made it even worse was that it felt like the man was drinking my blood, as if he was drawing my blood out of my neck with his teeth.

  I screamed and kicked back at him, but my kicks did little to hurt him. His legs felt solid as stone and his fingers gripped my arms like iron. I cried to God to help me, but I wasn’t sure my cry for help was even intelligible over my own screams.

  Through my bleary eyes, I could see the rest of the congregation running out the doors, screaming their heads off. It pained me to see everyone so afraid, but there was nothing I could do about it, because I couldn’t even save myself. I reached behind myself and pushed at the man biting into my neck, but it was useless. He was huge and solid, like my gym teacher back in seventh grade, only he was infinitely creepier than my seventh grade gym teacher ever was.

  Suddenly, I heard a gunshot go off and the man let go of me. He gasped in pain—a strange hissing noise more like a snake than a human—and let go of me. I immediately stumbled forward and leaned on the altar, feeling my bloody neck, which was hot and sticky from the exposed blood. I shook and found it hard to stand even with the help of the altar. Nonetheless, I looked over my shoulder to see what had happened to my attacker, probably because I was too stupid to take advantage of this moment to just run away.

  My attacker was clutching his shoulder, where he appeared to have been shot. Black blood was leaking out of his shoulder; at least, I assumed it was blood, but human blood was not black, so I had no idea what it actually was. Maybe it was my own blood loss that was making me see things.

  “Tara!” a voice cried out below. “Get down!”

  I looked down to see Dad standing below the stage, aiming a pistol up at me. Dad was a middle-aged guy who was usually pretty mellow, but right now, he looked like he was ready to go to war. His eyes were wide and alert, while he held the gun steady and true. I knew that Dad liked to shoot, but I was amazed at how he had managed such a clutch shot without hitting me.

  “Dad?” I said, my voice dangerously weak. I winced at the pain in my neck. “Where did you—”

  “I’ll answer your questions later,” said Dad. He climbed up the stage to join me and said, “Are you all right? Your neck—”

  A loud hissing noise behind us made us both look toward the choir seats. My attacker was still clutching his shoulder, but now he was glaring at Dad with the most intense hate I had ever seen on another person’s face. He hissed in a very inhuman way and lunged toward us.

  Dad shoved me out of the way and I fell to the floor just as the attacker stopped before him. Dad aimed his gun at the attacker, but my attacker slapped the gun out of his hand and punched Dad in the chest. Dad slammed into the altar, knocking both him and the altar off into the empty front pews below where they fell with a crash.

  “Dad!” I screamed, clutching my bloody neck as I tried to sit up. “No!”

  My attacker turned his attention back to me. That was when I noticed his deep red eyes. They were actually blood red, the same shade as my own blood even, and they weren’t human. They actually reminded me of the bats I once studied in biology class, except its inhuman eyes reflected an evil intelligence behind them.

  I tried to crawl away, but my attacker pinned me to the floor with one heavy foot and grabbed my neck with its hand. It forced me to look into its face. I could smell death mixed with blood on its breath and I wanted to choke on the stink.

  “I was given orders not to kill the daughter of the Hunter,” said my attacker in a low, raspy voice that sent shivers down my spine. “But your blood is so delicious, so pure, that I simply cannot help myself. Just a little bit more and—”

  Without warning, two strong hands appeared on my attacker’s shoulders and ripped him off me. My attacker cried out in shock as he was thrown away from me and landed on the other side of the platform, where he lay with a comically stunned look on his face.

  At first, I thought that the man who saved me was Dad, but when I looked up at the man who now stood over me, I realized that he wasn’t Dad at all. For one, Dad wasn’t nearly that handsome. Maybe it was the blood loss making me go crazy, but the man who saved me looked as handsome as a movie star, with the most kissable lips ima
ginable.

  He was a tall and imposing man, broad shouldered, but not as thick or beefy as my attacker. His skin was very pale and his hair was dark, but while those features made my attacker look like a beast, they served only to enhance this guy’s handsomeness. Even the long scar across his right cheek didn’t take away from his attractive features.

  But the blood red eyes that looked down on me certainly did, because they were nearly a match for the blood red eyes of my attacker. Yet there was a hint of compassion and concern in them, none of that malevolent animal intelligence that was evident in the eyes of my attacker.

  “Are you okay?” said the man. His voice was rich and smooth, though a little dangerous. “Aside from your neck, that is.”

  I blinked. “Uh, who are you and why are you so handsome?”

  The man opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment he was tackled by my attacker. The two of them fell onto the stage, grappling and biting at each other like two cats fighting in an alley. They somehow managed to avoid rolling into me, but I moved away from them anyway as best as I could. I couldn’t get far, however, because of my neck, which was still bleeding out. I was finding it harder and harder to retain consciousness.

  But then I remembered Dad and looked over into the pews of the congregation. Everyone was gone now, except for Dad, who was lying unconscious on the now-splintered altar below. Blood leaked from his forehead, but given how his chest was rising and falling, I knew he was still alive. Thank God.

  But then I heard a loud snapping sound and looked back over at the two men fighting. My attacker was on top of my savior, snapping at him, but the man who had saved me was holding him back with his claws. It looked like the man who had saved me was on the losing end of the battle, and with Dad out cold, I would be at the mercy of my attacker if he managed to kill the guy who had saved me. Yet how was I supposed to help my savior when I was bleeding and injured myself?

  That was when I noticed Dad’s gun lying a few feet away from me. Dad must have dropped it when my attacker punched him earlier and remembered how the gun had harmed my attacker, even though my attacker didn’t seem to be human. I wasn’t much of a sharpshooter, but Dad used to take me out to the gun range when I was younger, so I reached over, grabbed the gun, and aimed it at my attacker.

  But then the two men flipped, with the handsome one on top and the monstrous one on bottom. It didn’t help that my consciousness was rapidly fading in and out, making it harder for me to aim well. I knew I would lose consciousness soon, but I needed to hang in there just a couple of minutes longer.

  “Handsome guy!” I shouted. “Move!”

  Luckily, the handsome guy seemed to hear me, because he rolled off my attacker and out of my range. At the same time, my attacker jumped to his feet, growling and snarling, but I took that moment to aim at his head and fire.

  My attacker’s head exploded. Black blood and strange organic tissue flew everywhere as my attacker’s corpse collapsed onto the stage. At the same time, I dropped the gun to the floor and clutched my shoulder more tightly than ever. Darkness was rapidly appearing in the corners of my eyes and soon I would lose consciousness entirely.

  Suddenly, the handsome man appeared over me and said, “Tara, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  I tried to speak, but then the darkness washed over me and I slipped into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I had no idea where I was, but I was pretty sure I was having a dream. I was walking through what seemed like an endless, pitch black void. There were no distinguishing features, no landmarks or objects to tell me where I was. There wasn’t a sun, moon, stars, or anything to indicate that I was on Earth, yet somehow I walked along what felt like pretty firm ground nonetheless. It was an odd sensation, but I didn’t question it because it was a dream and dreams didn’t have to make sense.

  As I walked, I heard whispers around me, voices I didn’t recognize speaking in languages I didn’t understand. But one thing I did understand was that these voices were whispering about me. I heard my name, Tara Lee, mentioned more than once, but every time I looked around to see who was speaking, I saw nothing. I even reached out a few times, but could never feel anyone or anything other than empty shadows. Yet I was sure that somewhere just beyond my range of vision were a whole group of people watching my every move, waiting to see what I would do.

  I felt the same way. Although this was my dream, I was just as curious to see what I would do as anyone else was. My legs walked with purpose, independent of whatever I wanted. It was like my legs knew where they were supposed to go and I was just supposed to be along for the ride. Such a thought would have terrified me under other circumstances, but in this dream, I just noted it in an abstract, clinical way, the way a scientist would write down interesting data from an experiment he just performed.

  Soon, however, I saw something else in this void. It was far ahead at first, little more than a speck on the horizon, but as I drew closer, the object became easier to see. It was a sword of some sort, standing hilt up in a pedestal. It was a pretty large sword, too, about the size of a great sword. Its blade was not silver, however, but blood red, the exact same shade as the eyes of the man who saved me. Its hilt was shaped like bat wings, but that made it look intimidating rather than cute.

  I stopped in front of the sword, which was glowing softly in the darkness, a soft red glow that made my skin look like blood. Somehow, the sword looked simultaneously new and old, like it had been crafted ages ago but had been preserved from the elements forever. I felt a compulsion to touch it, but I resisted because I was afraid of what might happen if I did.

  “Touch it,” said a voice in my ear. It sounded like the voice of a monster, deep and guttural with barely a trace of humanity left in it. “Grab the hilt and pull. Take what is yours and wield the Sword you are destined to wield. Destroy those who stand in your way. Use its power and become a god.”

  I had no idea who was speaking in my ear, but it sounded so compelling that I began reaching out toward the sword’s hilt. But when my fingers were less than an inch away from the sword, I heard another voice in my ear—Dad’s voice—saying, “Tara, wake up!”

  The other voice—the guttural growl one—hissed in my ear as the sword started to vanish before me. As the darkness closed in on me, the voice growled in my ear, “Don’t forget what you saw here, daughter of the Hunter. Remember and return, for the Sword yearns for your touch.”

  All of a sudden, my eyes opened and I found myself lying in my bed in the spare room of Dad’s house. Though the light on the ceiling wasn’t very bright, it still hurt my eyes because of how abrupt the transition was. It actually hurt to look at the light, and not just in the way that staring directly at lights hurts, either. It was like being stabbed in the eyes, so I looked at the face hovering above me for some relief.

  It was Dad. He had a bandage around his head, where he had been injured, but other that, he looked okay for a middle-aged man who had been punched into a solid wood altar by a bodybuilder. He smiled when he saw my eyes open.

  “Tara,” said Dad, who sounded relieved. “I thought you might not wake up. You were in such terrible condition, especially with your neck, and—”

  “My neck,” I said. I absently touched the spot on my neck where I had been bitten, only to feel solid flesh without even a hint of a bite. “What? How did it heal so quickly?”

  “So you remember what happened?” said Dad, leaning closer to me with an urgent look on his face. “Can you tell me what happened before you fell unconscious?”

  I blinked and did my best to remember. “Um … I remember someone attacking me on the platform in front of the congregation. Then you shot him, but he punched you, but then some guy I don’t know saved me, and then I shot the guy who attacked me and killed him. I think.”

  Dad sighed. “Good. You remember. I was worried that you might not.”

  Still rubbing my neck, I said, “I remember all right, but I don’t understand—
”

  All of a sudden, a powerful thirst overcame me. My mouth felt suddenly dry and all I could think about was drinking. For some reason I was thinking about drinking blood, but that was probably just because I had been bitten on the neck recently and so that was still on my mind.

  “Dad, I need water,” I said, licking my lips. “I need water now.”

  Dad immediately handed me a cup of water—which he apparently had just for this emergency—and I greedily drank it. At first, the ice cold water felt good on my parched mouth, but as soon as the last drop went into my stomach, the overwhelming thirst returned.

  “Dad,” I said, staring up at Dad again. “The water didn’t work. I’m still thirsty. I—”

  I stopped speaking when I saw the horrified expression appear on Dad’s face. He looked as if all of his worst fears had just come true, like he was living in a nightmare. I didn’t understand what he found so scary, but it scared me as much as it did him.

  “Dad?” I said. “Are you okay? You look scared.”

  Dad opened his mouth, but then closed it abruptly, as if trying to decide what to say. For some reason I focused on Dad’s neck and started to think about how tasty his blood would feel in my mouth. It probably wouldn’t taste all that great, but at this point, I was willing to try anything to get my fix.

  But then I shook my head. What was I thinking? Drinking blood was gross. Only crazy people and vampires did that. And because I wasn’t crazy nor a vampire, I couldn’t explain why I was so tempted to drink Dad’s blood. I must still have been suffering from blood loss or something, which was making me think crazy things.

  “No …” Dad said in a low voice. “This can’t be … please God, don’t let this happen to my one and only daughter …”

  “Don’t let what happen to your one and only daughter?” I said in alarm. “Dad, what’s the problem?”

  Dad bit his lower lip. He looked like he was holding back his tears, which surprised me, because the last time I had seen Dad cry was at Mom’s funeral ten years ago. Why would he be crying now? I wasn’t dead or dying, after all. Sure, I’d suffered a pretty big wound, but even that had somehow healed up miraculously, and given how it happened in a church, maybe it was a miracle after all. Was Dad just so overcome with emotion that he was letting it get the best of him? Perhaps it was just the stress of the situation starting to get to him.