Under a Sanguine Moon: Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Vantasyl Clan Vampire Hunter Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Free Gift Offer

  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

  Free Gift Offer

  What Now?

  Special Thanks

  Copyright © March, 2016 by Travis Simmons

  The Vantasyl Clan Vampire Hunter Series Book One:

  Under a Sanguine Moon

  ISBN 978-1479218288

  Published by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Cover Design by: Najla Qamber Designs

  Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Editing by: Wyrding Ways Press

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means—by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either are the product of the authors imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Get eight original tales of dark fantasy FREE by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/1TZSxun

  A scream tore through the cabin, waking Ricket from a dead sleep.

  “Mom?” he called, out in the dark. But he was unsure if he could trust his senses. It had ended abruptly, as if it were the remnant of a faded dream. He lay back in his straw bed, the quilt that he’d use in cooler weather tangled at his feet. It was much too warm now for the blankets. The full, blood moon shown through the gaps in the shutter’s slats, painting his room in an eerie crimson glow.

  Ricket listened closely for another sound, but it was difficult to hear anything over the hammering of his own heart or the wind slamming a shutter against the outside wall. The sanguine moon danced with the fitful tossing of the shutters. Ricket Welsh shut his eyes and tried snuggling back to sleep, until he heard the sound of glass shatter on the floor.

  He bolted upright, hands clenching the blanket as he stared about the room.

  A strangled cry forced him out of his bed. It had sounded just down the hall…his parent’s room. Ricket froze in the doorway. Fear thundered through him. He’d been warned about Danthea by friends when he left the island of Laulorie. The Once Splendid City, they had called it. By day it thrived and shined. But at nightfall, every undead horror known to man lurked the streets whilst the living locked themselves safely away behind silver-lined shutters and blessed doors the vile creatures couldn’t cross.

  His hands clenched at his side. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing and forced the thought from his mind. He didn’t know what was happening in the house, for all he knew his mother could simply have dropped a glass.

  But he didn’t believe that. He mentally searched for his sword, wondering where he could have left it. His father, Darven, had taught him to use the blade earlier that year—at least that’s what he said. The truth was that Darven wasn't all that experienced himself, so there had been a lot of learning on both their ends.

  “Closet,” he whispered. That’s where he’d left the sword.

  Another scream rippled through the darkness of the house. Ricket forgot the sword as mobility returned to his limbs and he thundered through his doorway and down the empty hallway and into his parent’s room. In the light streaming through the slats of the shutter, he saw a shadowy form hunched over his mother. Something black and wet dripped on the floor at their feet.

  A despairing groan slipped from between Ricket’s quivering lips.

  The creature turned. Its eyes glowed red in the darkness of its ruined face. His mother’s body slumped from the vampire’s hands. Her head crunched sickeningly on the floor and she lay motionless. The vampire stepped toward him, passing through the bloodied light of the moon that bathed the floor. Ricket could make out more details of the sallow face; the large red eyes; the hollow gap of the beast’s mouth. The vampire’s lips puckered out like a rosebud unfurling in the light of the sun. Row after row of needle-sharp teeth lined the depths of the creature’s mouth.

  Ricket stumbled backwards away catching his foot on the carpet that lined the wooden hallway. His arms wind milled and he teetered at the top of the stairs.

  Still the beast came for him. Slow, as if in a dream its feet whisked across the floor. The vampire had Ricket Welsh where it wanted him. There was no place to flee. He wouldn’t dare leave the house, not on any normal night and least of all on sanguine night. Not when the blood Sabbath was at its height. It was the one night of the year—when the moon was bathed in blood—that the vampires and their kin were their strongest. The only night of the year when they drew power from the moon and were twice as powerful as they were every other night.

  Ricket corrected his stance. He knew there wasn’t anything he could do. He took one backward step down the stairs. The beast drew closer, its arms splayed outward. In the darkness of the hall its eyes glowed like embers, illuminating the gory visage of its mouth still laced with his parent’s blood.

  This couldn’t be happening. How did he get inside? Vampires had to be invited in. Or was it different on sanguine night? Ricket swallowed deeply.

  The vampire stopped and raised a hand to beckon him forth. Ricket turned his eyes away in an effort to avoid the vampire’s hypnotic gaze.

  The vampire hissed.

  Ricket wouldn’t die like this. He wouldn’t let the beast have him. He wouldn’t let the rosebud mark of the vampire’s kiss mar his throat as it had his parent’s. He settled his weight into his legs and when he heard the vampire crest the top of the stairs, its cold presence right before him, Ricket launched himself upward.

  He connected with the vampire’s legs and the beast went down. It tumbled over the stairs, end over end, it’s clawed hands reaching out to grasp Ricket’s legs and take him with it, but Ricket got away, barely avoiding the clammy grip.

  There was no time to waste. Ricket barely afforded himself a backwards glance, stumbling down the hall toward his bedroom. He slammed the door, bolted it right and raced to the closet.

  It was a mess. His mother had always told him to clean it but he never listened. Now that there was a vampire in the house and he couldn’t find his sword in all of the clutter, he wished he’d listened.

  His hand slipped over the blade, blood welling to the surface of his palm. He gasped and pulled back, clenching his fist over the throbbing wound.

  His bedroom door thundered. The thin wooden bolt wouldn’t hold the beast for long.

  Blood dripped onto the floor. Ricket threw aside the mounds of clothes and hay that he’d brought in from the streets the day before revealing the short sword. Its blade—bathed in his blood—glowed ruby with the light of the sanguine moon.

  Ricket grabbed the pommel and his hand brushed across a forgotten pouch the sword had been laying on.

  The door shattered inward. Splinters skittered across the floor as the shadow of the vam
pire loomed through the doorway. The beast closed in on him. Ricket held the sword out between them. His hand shook and his vision swam with adrenaline. How on earth was he going to fight this beast? Did he think he was some kind of hunter? There was no chance of surviving against the vampire if his father hadn’t. His father might not be the best with a sword, but he was better than Ricket.

  The vampire laughed a strange sound whistling through the rows of teeth that made up his sucker-like mouth. The eyes glowed brighter as if they were catching flame with the mirth the vampire felt.

  The pommel of Ricket’s sword was slick with blood. He tried not to think of how small he was. Even if the vampire wasn’t large and bulky, Ricket would have been smaller than him. Nothing more than a gnat fighting the strength of a hurricane.

  He swallowed hard and the sword wavered in his grasp. The vampire crept closer.

  Ricket’s bare feet shifted backwards. The floor was slick with remnants of the blood running down his wrist.

  Then the vampire was upon him. He felt the sword slapped from his hands, clattering away beneath the bed. Ricket tripped over the pile of clothes behind him into the closet, slamming his head against the wall.

  The vampire was on him, and Ricket could barely move. His size was a disadvantage. He was pinned down. The larger creature wedged his legs between Ricket’s, pushing his legs wide open and making it hard for him to move.

  The vampire bent low, pressing his mouth against the flesh of Ricket’s neck. He felt the sucker of the mouth, the rosebud of teeth closing around his flesh. Each row of teeth drawing his skin further and further into the depths of the vampire’s mouth until his jugular was at the opening of the beast’s bloody maw. Then the proboscis tongue came out.

  It lanced into Ricket’s neck. The tongue was sharp as any tooth. Ricket cried out as it punctured his vein and began to siphon blood out.

  He beat at the beast. He bucked his hips up against the creature, trying in vain to free himself from the pressing weight. It made no difference. He would be dead before long. Dead like his parents.

  Something dug into the back of his head. It was soft, yet firm. Then he remembered the pouch under the sword. Something his father had given him along with the sword. He had never looked inside and his father never pressed him to open it. At any rate, it was the only thing he could reach.

  Ricket grappled for the pouch, his strength waning as his blood ebbed into the vampire.

  Struggling with the weakening onset of death, he clubbed the vampire with the pouch.

  A shower of silver dust rained down upon them. Silver shavings sifted through Ricket’s messy black hair, like stars glimmering in the night sky.

  The vampire hissed and pulled away from Ricket. The wound throbbed as blood gushed forth. Ricket pressed a cold hand to the feverish rosebud and pushed with all his might to stave off the flow of blood. He was weakening though. He wasn’t going to make it.

  The vampire was gone. A mist of smoke followed the beast out of Ricket’s bedroom door.

  Ricket pushed to his feet, still grasping his neck and the empty pouch. He slumped against the wall and lumbered into the hall.

  He slumped to his knees. The sun was just beginning to rise, and through the doorway of his parent’s room Ricket could see the waxy body of his mother, caught in the light of the rising sun.

  Smoke rose from her corpse. She’d already started to turn. The sun would see her permanently dead and for that, Ricket was thankful. There was no way he had the strength left to end his mother’s undead life. He was near death himself. She was his mother. Even if he’d had the means to do so, he wouldn’t be able to look upon her and kill her.

  Blue flame sprouted up from her body. The corpse lurched to a sitting position, her dead white eyes riveted on his face. An inhuman scream tore from her throat. Already her mouth had transformed into that of a vampire.

  Ricket watched as she tried to stand, but the power of the sun was too powerful. Her body was drifting away to dust. Her blond hair caught with blue flames; upwards the sparks and ashes of her body drifted. The miasma of her body’s dust drifted out the open window and into the light of dawn. Soon, nothing more remained of his mother than the haunting scream that would forever echo through the darkest recesses of Ricket’s memory.

  He awoke to a heavy drumbeat of sound. It was a chorus of thrumming, beating rhythm. Some of the beats were steady, calm, while others were frantic staccato stabs. Still, some were so low and so infrequent that Ricket could almost feel it slipping away, never to be heard again.

  He groaned and tried to roll over, but his wrists and ankles had been bound. Soft confinements held him in place.

  Ricket then became aware of a roaring power hammering down on him, causing him to grow weak. There was a pureness to the power that caused his muscles to slacken and his mind to rail against it.

  He knew where he was. He was in a monastery. Ricket was in one of the many hospitals housed in the holy houses of the Sun Goddess.

  The hammering he heard were the hearts of the other patients. The power was that of the one true Goddess.

  How’s that even possible? Ricket wondered through the throbbing in his head.

  He stopped struggling against the bonds when he heard soft footfalls approaching.

  “Touch and go there for a while,” a warm female voice said. Her voice was soft and husky. “We were afraid the night would take you, but you pulled through.”

  “What happened to me?” Ricket asked. He didn’t want to open his eyes yet. Even through his closed lids Ricket knew the light would be too bright for his eyes.

  “A vampire happened to you. Left you with a pretty good rosebud too,” the woman said.

  She didn’t have to say any more. Just the word vampire conjured up the image of the hulking brute and his glowing red eyes. Ricket turned his head to the side as tears burned his eyes. Unbidden, they ran down his cheeks to soak into the pillow.

  His mother, Marybeth, a monster cleansed by the sun. He could still see her staring vacantly at him, and in that gaze he could see a hint of who his mother had once been. Was there anything left of her in that moment? Was there any life left in her at all? Did she feel what was happening to her? Did she know what she’d become? Did she feel the rays of the rising sun turn her skin to ash?

  The nun gave him some time, checking the wound on his neck. When he finally turned back to face her, she started talking again.

  “You can expect some weaknesses I assume,” she said. “Have you noticed any yet?”

  Ricket cracked his eyes open. The sun was blinding, and it caused his head to throb harder. He couldn’t keep them all the way open, but he managed to keep them open enough to see his surroundings. He was on a small bed, the window above him was covered with thick drapes, but still it wasn’t enough to stop the light. His bed was separated from the rest of the infirmary by a white curtain.

  “Ah, yes. I can see it in your eyes.” Her voice was deep for a woman, a command of respect and power hidden in the cadence. Her robes were black, as all nuns wore, with a golden hood. Ricket could just barely see a tangle of red hair under the hood. She had a face that was timeless and green eyes that seemed to see more than she let on.

  “Where am I?” Ricket asked.

  “Our Lady of Perpetual Light,” the woman said. She removed the bandage from his neck and he winced at the pain as threads of the fabric clung to the wound. “In the Gate District.”

  “Near the wall…how did I get here from North Shore?”

  “A kind man found you,” the nun said. “I didn’t ask him many questions. We try not to interrogate those who bring in orphans. We don’t want to scare them from helping.” She dipped a rag into a bowl of water and bent over his neck. She was as gentle as she could be, but the wound still burned.

  Ricket let her work. Through the crack in the curtain he could see the barest of brick wall. Candles on high sconces provided light when the sun set, but at the moment sunlight radiated throug
h the room, glowing off the curtains that surrounded his bed.

  The light burned his eyes.

  “I’m Jane,” the woman said.

  “Ricket Welsh,” he said.

  “Do you know much about our church, Ricket?”

  He shook his head. He didn’t really care to, and he wasn’t completely sure that had anything to do with the vampiric power inside of him.

  “We provide worship, like all churches, but our main focus is helping those who’ve lost their homes.”

  “You’re an orphanage?” Ricket asked.

  “And shelter, yes,” Jane replied. She pulled away from his neck, dropped the rag back into the bowl of water that sat on the stand beside his bed. She opened a drawer and pulled out another bandage.

  “What happens to me now?” Ricket wondered, his throat constricting. He didn’t want to think about after. He didn’t want to think in terms of next week or next month. He couldn’t see any of those things coming. When he went to bed on sanguine night, all he could think about was breakfast the following morning, and taking the day to himself, to read out in the sun while the waves of the Sea of Sorrows lulled him to sleep. Now there would be no more reading on their front lawn. There would be no more half burned breakfasts because his mother didn’t know how to cook. There would be no more…

  Stop, he told himself.

  Jane sighed and bent over his neck, securing the badge in place. “Well, like all lost youngsters, you have an audience with the Mother Superior when you’re better.”

  Just the name Mother Superior grated on him. A rush of anger ran through his body. He wanted to lash out, not at the Mother Superior or Jane specifically, just at anything. How could this have happened? Why did this happen? His mother and father had always been so careful to ward their home with holy relics and herbs.

  “And then you will be placed,” Jane’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “From what I hear, there’s already a family interested in you. I’m not sure where the adoption stands, but they are good people.”