Vindicta (The Liquidator Wars Book 1) Read online

  VINDICTA

  The Liquidator Wars Book 1

  Kindra Sowder

  &

  P. Mattern

  This edition published in 2016 by Kindra Sowder & P. Mattern (USA)

  Copyright © Kindra Sowder 2016

  Copyright © P. Mattern 2016

  Cover Art © Kindra Sowder 2016

  Editing © James Master 2016

  Formatting © Kindra Sowder 2016

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  Chapter one:

  Oh, Death

  Calyx couldn’t believe how cold Brynn already was, her pale skin drenched in the blood and the sweat of the fight that brought upon her untimely death. As Calyx knelt down beside her, a tear welling up in just one bright green glowing eye, she felt the wind kick up dust and debris from within the dark and damp alleyway.

  She had fought well. The three bodies on the ground in the alley around them were a testament to that, but one got the upper hand and shoved a dagger into the underside of her ribs in an attempt to reach her heart. Vampires didn’t turn to ash like in the movies when they died, so the only way to be certain she had indeed perished was to wait for her resurrection. And she was always privy to the safety of others, even if it meant the agony of dying.

  She hadn’t even taken a moment to think about her own safety as she fought valiantly against the enemy, exchanging blow for blow with speed and deadly accuracy.

  The Liquidators were all that stood between them and absolute freedom from war, doing all they could to prevent them from attaining their ultimate goal. To rid the world of their kind and live in peace so the vampire race could flourish once more instead of being the sniveling and terrified race they were now. To coexist amongst the humans once again.

  After what felt like an eternity, Brynn’s body gasped, shocking Calyx. She stumbled back as she crouched next to her.

  With one labored, gasping breath, she rose to a sitting position. Calyx nearly fell ass first onto the ground from her crouched position. Brynn placed her hand over her heart, it hammering within her ribcage as she turned to her companion, red eyes ablaze with life and flashing a sapphire blue.

  “Damn, that was close,” Brynn said, still stunned as the gaping wound in the center of her belly right below her ribcage began to close.

  The Liquidator had attempted to hit her heart, turning his blade at an upward angle, but she had slain him first and fell to the ground with him with what the others perceived as her final death. The pain had been excruciating, but she had suffered even more at the hands of the Liquidators before so this wound was nothing compared to anything else she had experienced. This was just a much closer step to death than any other attempt had been.

  “You don’t say,” Calyx snapped as she stared at her, eyes narrowing with disapproval. “Don’t do that shit ever again, you hear me, Daughter of Electi? I know you can take on two of them with no problem. The third one got his licks in coming from behind and managed to get under your ribcage!”

  Brynn chuckled and took a deep, relaxing breath to slow her heartbeat as she dismissed Calyx with a wave of her hand.

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.”

  She rose to her feet then, brushing the crumbled bits of dried leaves off her leather slacks and sighed with relief. As she straightened up, she saw the twins, Tarren and Bayn, striding toward her and Calyx. Neither of them looked pleased. Bayn frowned, and Tarren was positively scowling as he wiped black sticky Liquidator blood from his dagger. They stalked toward them with an animal ferocity, their distinct male scent wafting in the air toward them from down the alley. When they were finally standing before the women, Tarren looked Brynn in the eye.

  “Brynn,” he said, looking down at her from his full height of seven feet and struggling to keep his tone light as he chided her, “Remember, just before you decided to attack the horde of Liquidators someone shouted at you, ‘Wait?’ Well, that was me, and I know you heard me. I was trying to spare you a death. Why is it you always think you know best? Anyone’s timing can be off. That was unnecessary.”

  By the time he finished, he had dropped the nice guy act and came across as completely baffled and put out with her. She couldn’t say she blamed him and, in the massive city of Los Angeles, she understood exactly why he hated the fact that she ran off on her own so often. Fighting the Liquidators in the city was already tough enough, but was even harder when she didn’t listen to her men, which she often did. She could say she came by her stubbornness honestly. Her mother had been known for the same trait quite well through the community when she was alive.

  “Sorry, not sorry,” she said, looking up at him unblinking and wishing she was taller. “I appreciate your concern, but I couldn’t let anything throw my rhythm off. How many times do I have to tell you that warfare is a dance--it has a rhythm, and every move must be deliberate and timed precisely. Those that dance well survive…”

  “...Those that let their rhythm be broken, invariably perish!” Tarren finished, interrupting her completely with a sarcastic sneer on his face.

  Tarren looked to his identical twin Bayn for help, begging with wide eyes while attempting to look as if he wasn’t at all. When his brother barely blinked, his shoulders sagged, and he opened his mouth.

  “She never listens to me. Can you try to talk some sense into her, brother?” he pleaded.

  Bayn smirked, his eyebrows rising in amusement.

  “Well, she is our Queen and Brigade Leader. I think she knows that you speak out of concern. But she is tough, brother. There is no arguing with her when she managed to leave the bodies of three Liquidators on the ground, now is there?”

  Tarren went quiet, brooding as Brynn gave an impromptu curtsey, trying to keep her laughter in check and the grin from her face. She adored the Craven Twins, and they were invaluable in battle--almost as much as Calyx was. They were smart, cunning, and fast, knowing their way around any weapon they put their hands on. Because all of them knew what they were doing, they made a formidable phalanx during a battle along with others of her comrades in arms.

  But Tarren would always try to go all ‘big brother’ on her. As annoyed as she got with his insistence to treat her like a younger sibling she knew it was because he loved her. The twins and Calyx, along with her little sister Gwenyth, were the only real family she had ever known after the death of their parents, leaving her to lead the House of Electi against the Liquidators. To protect them and ensure their race would survive.

  Suddenly Brynn whipped around, her long hair twirling in an arc through the smog-laden air. She knew she had forgotten something.

  “Oh, shit!” she said suddenly, “The Quaji. I need to hurry. I can feel them slipping away.”

  Digging into the small suede bag that she had at her waist, she pulled out a small glass vial with a cork stopper and ran over to one of the fallen Liquidators. She knelt on the blood-soaked concrete at his side. Brushing her hair back from her ear, she leaned down and listened for his last breath. I
t was the only sign of the Quaji leaving their bodies besides the soft snap and emerging light.

  She was able to see the soul spark as it ascended. She possessed what the Mages called “the Sapphire eye” that made it clear to her when the last spark of life left the body and began to ascend toward the Heavens. Quickly, she brushed her hand through the air to cause the air currents to guide it into the glass vial. She had to be very careful never to touch it for fear of contaminating it with her own blackness, but she had been doing this since childhood and was well practiced.

  She went around to the other bodies, listening carefully as each one spoke to her in its deafeningly silent way. One of the fallen must have died while she was still fighting for her life, but she did manage to retrieve the soul of the third without issue.

  Still, on one knee, she held her captured treasures within the three vials up to the waning darkness of night. Inside each, there was something that moved and sparkled with a prismatic incandescent glow. It was something eternal and could be easily reanimated--not by her, but by a Mage that was skilled in the highest of magical arts.

  A soul spark, that was the basic description of what she held in her hands, and it was the only hope they had of replenishing their ranks without turning any more humans. That was something they were attempting not to do even though the humans largely outnumbered them, the war between vampires and Liquidators waging just under the surface of what the human beings were aware of. Brynn hoped it would remain that way. As long as fertile females within their race could continue to breed, there would be no need to get the humans involved. So the Quaji was precious, and she cradled it to her chest, right above her heart.

  She sensed a warm hand on her shoulder, and she turned to see Calyx standing behind her while the twins hung back, allowing them to have their moment of privacy and understanding. The sun peeked just over the horizon, throwing a beautiful mixture of pinks, oranges, and crimsons into the morning sky and she felt the familiar buzz within her bones that alerted them of the rising sun. It was a hum that she felt moving through her and down into the ground beneath her knees, and she knew the others could feel it too. The sight of it along the cityscape almost made her stop in awe.

  So beautiful, yet so deadly to her and her kind.

  “We’ve gotta go. The sun is rising,” she whispered as she looked down at Brynn, her eyes studying her friend as Calyx's green eyes glowed with the power of the rising orb.

  Chapter two:

  House of Electi

  Even with the sun rising and the thrum of its power over her race moving through her bones, Brynn moved through the School of the House of Electi with purpose. Her blonde hair was streaked with red, flowing behind her like a cape and reaching to her swiveling hips. The walls of the tunnel were cut out of jagged rock, the location being the abandoned nuclear escape tunnels in Los Angeles.

  The humans said, according to the miracle of the internet, that they led to nowhere but that wasn’t true at all. Because of their close work with the Fae, the Fae had enchanted the school that the House of Electi built to shield it from the human eye. So, it didn’t matter how many times they walked through the expanse of twists and turns. They would always find nothing and be led out back into the waking world, the school only being visible to those that were magically inclined.

  The suede bag that held her small glass jars weighted heavily on her hip, the weight of what she truly carried inside nearly crippling seeing as she was charged with the Quaji because of her gift.

  The light that led them through the tunnels was dim because vampires didn’t need a lot of light to be able to see perfectly. Having the night vision of an African cat definitely helped, but passing through it did cast strange shadows on the walls, as if they were truly creatures of the evening that were attempting to follow her into the school. The thought sent a chill up her spine.

  She tugged at the lapels of her jacket, zipping it halfway up so that no one could see that she had nearly lost her life that night. As a daughter of Electi, she had been trained at this very school by the female they called Natalia. Her sister Gwenyth didn’t partake in training because she did not want to be a warrior. Natalia used to fight alongside her parents all that time ago but had developed another rare gift among the vampire race, causing her to no longer be able to take her place in battle against the Liquidators.

  Brynn came upon the large steel doors, the small metal column directly in the center of the giant tunnel blinking. A little red light showed that the door had not been activated since classes ended. Without a moment’s hesitation, Brynn placed her fingertip on top of an empty hole directly below the flashing light on the top of the tall cylinder that rose to her belly button. There was a small metallic click and then a strong pinch in the pad of her fingertip, causing her to hiss and her fangs to elongate because of the stinging pain. She removed her finger and let the mechanisms inside of the cylinder go to work, testing her blood against the database of all DNA signatures within the race. She placed her finger inside of her mouth and licked the wound. Her saliva would begin the clotting process and, as she licked a few more times, the coppery taste reminded her that she had not fed in over a month and that she would need to soon if she had any hope of having the strength to fight.

  With an electric thrill, the light changed from a blinking red to a steady green. The doors clicked open so she could enter the school and, once she was through the doors, they closed behind her within seconds. The walls of the long hallway were white, clean and pristine, sterile even, as she made her way to the only room she would ever need in the entire school after leaving it. There was a particular storeroom for the Quaji, holding all possible security measures to ensure the Quaji remained unharmed.

  The door wasn’t in the main hallway, though, seeing as they wanted it as safe as they could make it. So, it was housed in the school’s very center with at least three different types of security mechanisms, including the same blood testing cylinder that was at the main doors along with solid steel doors laced with massive locking bars and a retinal scanner. This was to ensure that not only was the person entering a vampire but that you were allowed to be within the room in the first place.

  Brynn’s Sapphire Eye made hers the most unique, being the only vampire in the entire race with not only rods and cones, but also another part of the retina that looked like a starburst. This was what made it possible for her to see the soul spark.

  She made it to the designated room in record time, keeping one hand on the strap of her suede pack just on the chance someone attempted to act brave and grab it. Even though the place was nearly empty because it was daylight she was always extremely cautious. Some would even say overly cautious, but it was her philosophy never to risk the Quaji, and this meant, if it hadn’t been placed within the confines of the room, she would have her hands on it at all times.

  She stood in front of the solid steel door and put her finger on the blood tester, feeling the same sting as before, the light turning green to release the retinal scanner from within the wall. There was a metal ring that circled her head, a small laser ejecting from the arm that turned it as a red light shone into both of her eyes. It stung slightly, but that was only because she was weak and hadn’t fed. Even a little bit of light was too strong for her delicate vision. After another moment the laser turned green, and the bars began to slide out of their home within the door, the large mass of metal swinging open to allow her inside.

  Her booted feet crossed the threshold, the chill in the air nearly palpable as she stepped inside. A shiver moved up her spine, but she suppressed it as best as she could. The room that stored the Quaji was rather large with shelves built into the stone walls instead of lining the floor to ensure the stability of the structure that held them. They could not risk the Quaji being smashed on the ground to slip away from them when it served such a vital purpose for the vampire race.

  She ran her fingers along the shelves in an attempt to find three empty spaces to place her
newest conquests. Three Liquidator Quaji were her spoils of the fight in the alley, and because she nearly died, they had almost slipped away into the ether of the afterlife. And, once resurrected, they would have no memory of their lives as Liquidators. They would only recall their new vampire flesh and their vampire blood, the craving hitting them as soon as they were corporeal, causing them to have to feed immediately.

  Brynn finally came to an opening among the crowded shelves and began to dig inside of her bag, feeling around for the slight warmth of the Quaji inside of its glass prison. Her fingertips brushed the mild heat and she wrapped her hands around the three small, warm and tingling jars. She placed them in the open space, lovingly stroking one of them with just her pointer finger.

  “Hello, Brynn, Daughter of Electi,” a soft feminine voice came from the doorway, causing Brynn to turn her head to see her company.

  Natalia floated into the room and toward her, her long, silken blue nightgown brushing the ground as she moved. She stopped in front of Brynn, her head tilting to the side as if she sensed something, her graying eyes no longer able to visualize after becoming an Oracle. Only her mind’s eye was open now, and it knew all.

  “You could have taken the Quaji home with you and waited until the sun set, my dear.”

  “I know, Natalia, but…”

  “You were fighting again,” she gasped and gripped Brynn’s arm, squeezing hard. “You nearly suffered the final death tonight, warrior. You know we cannot risk losing you to the Liquidators. You are too precious.”

  Brynn didn’t move, only froze as she stared at the older woman. She was over five hundred years old and still looked no older than fifty, but you could see that her gift was taking its toll on her body as small crow’s feet appeared at the corners of her eyes.

  Brynn nodded. “I know, I know. We cannot collect the Quaji to replenish our ranks without the Sapphire Eye. I try to be care….”