Captive: A Graced Novella (The Graced Series), page 1
CAPTIVE
A GRACED NOVELLA
AMANDA PILLAR
About Captive
Civilization has ended.
Vampires, werewolves, and the Graced are at war with their human creators, and humanity is losing. But Laney might hold the key to salvation. Held captive with her fellow humans by alpha Wolfgang and his pack of weres, Laney secretly inches ever closer to breaking were and vampire blood dependency forever.
But Laney doesn't have long. Their numbers decimated by plague, humans are being kidnapped and reduced to livestock. And when Laney and her sister are abducted by a neighboring vampire clan, their only hope lies in Wolf – who doesn't know the shocking secret Laney has gone to great lengths to conceal.
Contents
About Captive
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
More by Amanda Pillar
About Amanda
Dedication
To Tom.
Prologue
A long time before the events in Graced …
The world’s in ruins around me. I was born in a time of war, and knew civilization was always doomed to go in one direction, and it certainly wasn’t up. It makes it hard to feel optimistic for your future, right? I’ve seen once proud cities crumble to dust, pulverized by bombs, and then cannibalized for their precious materials, so that another town may endure. How long can humanity and their cousins, the Graced, survive the weres and the vampires?
So few cities – towns, really – are left, running on bootlegged systems, with their all-important medical supplies stored and guarded like precious jewels. There aren’t enough scientists left to make things like antibiotics anymore, let alone cure cancer or heart disease (laughably once humanity’s biggest fear). And that’s assuming there are any doctors around to do the curing. Medical professionals were either killed outright or kidnapped and held hostage early on in the war. I only know of a handful who are ‘free,’ and they’ve been trained in specialist labs, focusing on doing the one thing they can to preserve humanity: removing the immortal threat.
Destroying humanity’s greatest creation.
But what about the rest of us?
I’m not human, nor am I immortal, so I really got the shit end of that deal. Humans had wanted the one thing they couldn’t have: more time. Geneticists had experimented, splicing DNA, manipulating genes, cutting and snipping and culling until they ended up with a byproduct they hadn’t predicted: my people, the Graced. The colors of our eyes eventually became synonymous with our abilities: Blue for empaths, Green for telepathy and Gray for telekinesis. Some were so strong, they could trigger devastating earthquakes, or make people into puppets, or even control mobs by turning their anger into bliss. I should know; I’m a Gray who could level a city if I wanted to.
And sometimes, I really want to.
My ability makes me feared, even by other Graceds. It’s why I’ve never told my sisters how strong I am. They’re only half-Graced – one with no ability due to her Hazel eyes, and one with a psychic touch so delicate, it can’t even be used in self-defense. I don’t want to see fear in their eyes when they look at me.
Even though my people were technically a failed experiment, scientists realized we may be the first step in achieving their ultimate goal. And so the trials continued, until one day, the first vampires and weres were born. Their weaknesses – the wood and silver allergies – had been coded into their genetics as a type of scientific joke, one that I think most people don’t find particularly funny anymore. Especially since the only thing that sustains them is flesh and blood.
Human flesh and blood.
And that brings me back to the vampire-were war and the reason for it. It used to be a human/immortal war, but that changed a decade ago, after a plague decimated human and Graced populations. Now, the reason is simple: whoever controls the food source controls the world.
But Graceds are useful for more than one reason: we can breed with vampires and weres, increasing their numbers while reducing ours. So the immortals have extra motivation to capture one of us. Eventually though, humans may go extinct, and if that happens, the weres and vampires will also die out. It might actually be a blessing.
For now though, the creators are the hunted. A once proud race has been reduced to nothing more than cattle. Part of me doesn’t care that humanity has been so cheapened; they’re just reaping what they’d sown, after all. But my sisters are half-human, and that’s not their fault. So I’ll fight for them, at least while I can.
Nothing is more important than family, not even freedom.
~ Quin Kirkman, Journal
Chapter 1
Dying is for the weak. Only the strong survive.
~ Quin Kirkman, Journal
“If you so much as blink, I’ll rip your throat out.”
The voice was deep and melodious and it took a moment for the words to register. But the cold steel of the blade pressed to her esophagus spoke louder. Laney held still. She doubted she’d ever been quite so motionless in her life. She was even holding her breath.
Laney’s attacker was pressed to her back. He had one hand wrapped around her shoulders, the other holding the offending knife. She could feel his cold exhalations on her cheek, smell the stale blood on his breath.
Her eyes darted from side to side, trying to count how many vampires there were. All the humans had been herded into the village center, a patch of bare earth situated in the middle of their small settlement. Faces that were all the colors of humanity looked around at each other, some wild-eyed with fear, others resigned and worn. All of the eyes were Brown or shades thereof, except for the vampires, who had purple irises. She sought out her sister, hoping that she wasn’t among those in the middle of the village.
A ring of wattle and daub huts lined the open area, spanning back three rows. Their settlement was on were lands; they should have been safe, at least from leech attacks. From the weres, not so much. She hoped Jane had managed to escape. On her second sweep, though, she met the worried Hazel gaze of her sister. A sinking feeling uncurled in her gut. Fear for herself, that was normal, but now she also had to worry about Jane.
“Take them all.” That smooth tone again.
She counted four vampires in her field of vision, but there were probably more. They were dressed in military fatigues and had short haircuts – which would take constant maintenance, considering how fast their hair grew – and each carried an assault rifle and a large knife, not that they really needed them. Vampires were so fast they could knock out most humans before they had time to blink. Arms were unnecessary against a settlement of regular humans, which, as far as anyone was aware, was the case.
The weapons probably meant the vampires either thought there’d be weres here to protect the settlement, or they meant serious business. Laney feared it was the latter. If the weres had thought there’d be an attack, then the villagers would have been moved somewhere safe. And then there would have been a slaughter. The weres took their ownership over humans – their ‘cattle’ – very seriously.
Only Laney and one other villager were held physically captive by the vampires. Fear kept the others stationary. Her friends and sister stared at her with worried gazes. They wore a variety of drab dresses, pants and shirts. No one was outfitted for the cold weather, and she couldn’t stop the involuntary shiver from traveling up her spine. The knife pressed closer to her throat. Looking up, she took in the sky overhead, gray and ominous; she bet it would rain within the next hour. Hopefully they were no longer out in the open when it happened.
The vampire’s arm tightened around her shoulders before he let go and shoved her forward. She lost her balance and stumbled, only to be caught by some of the other villagers. Laney spun around and tried to take stock of the situation. It was worse than she’d thought. There were ten vampires and two large bio-fueled trucks. She could probably debilitate two or three, maybe four of the leeches. Maybe ruin one of the trucks. But she couldn’t take on all of the vampires or destroy both trucks. She wasn’t strong enough to do much more, half-breed that she was. Laney was just thankful that she still wore her contact lens. At least they had a secret advantage, if the time ever came for her to act.
The vampire who’d held her stared over the huddled villagers. His eyes were an icy, bright purple, his face a deep brown in contrast. His head was shaven, and he radiated a cold that was bone deep. She’d bet that he was second generation. That kind of emotionless state was bred into the early vampires. Not that there were all that many left after the wars. And the majority of those who were alive were third or fourth generation, at the earliest.
In the corner of her vision, near the ring of trees that surrounded the settlement, she spotted a figure lurking. She was surprised they hadn’t been caught by the vam
Then again, maybe they wouldn’t.
“You are all property of the Raven Clan now. If you try to escape, you will be drained dry and left for the predators that lurk in the forests around your village. If you fight, you will be punished.” The vampire grinned. “Trust me, you won’t like the punishment, but we will.”
Chapter 2
I put my sisters in the safest place I could think of: a were compound. Sounds crazy, I know, but keeping them hidden in plain sight may just save them. Some might say I should just stash them with Graceds, but too many of them hate humans beyond reason, even those who are only half-bloods.
~ Quin Kirkman, Journal
“They’re all gone.”
“What do you mean gone?” Wolfgang – or Wolf – demanded.
They were in the war room of a bunker that Wolf and his men had ‘appropriated.’ The room was about a hundred yards underground, with air shafts stretching upward into the black depths above. The vents on the surface were hidden with elaborate plantings, shields and all kinds of goodies that were irreplaceable now. The factories that had once built the technology were crumbling ruins, the scientists and engineers either dead or captured. There were very few ‘free’ humans left.
Actually, there were few humans at all.
Inside the compound, all the furniture was sleek glass and stainless steel, very vampiric, which is why Wolf enjoyed it so much. Anything he could steal from a filthy leech was better than anything he could buy from one. And he’d made sure that the vampire wouldn’t be coming back to claim what was his. There was something altogether satisfying in ripping out a leech’s throat. Even if their blood tasted like candy rather than dinner.
But unlike the wolf he was named for – and who he shifted into – Wolf didn’t just kill to eat. He killed to survive, and sometimes, when a leech was involved, he killed for fun. Because there was only one race more fucked up than his: the vampires. He’d never met one that wasn’t a born sociopath.
Wolf stood at one end of the conference room, a glass table stretching out before him, with a human and two guards positioned down the other end. The guards were dressed like him, in black clothing that had more sewn rips and tears than intact material. Clothing didn’t survive a were’s shapeshift, and with the constant fighting for land – and food – garb was the least of anyone’s concerns.
Wolf strode forward, his steps purposeful. He met the tired Gray gaze of the man before him. Quin was Graced, and they were so rare now as to be almost mythical. They didn’t normally side with vampires or weres; they were considered food, and often forced into being bedmates, since Graceds were the only race weres or vampires could breed with outside of their own.
“Gone as in taken.” Quin was an ally of sorts. He helped them out from time to time, and they gave him a safe haven when he needed it. The man had never said why he offered his aid, and Wolf wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Perspiration dripped down from the Graced’s forehead, pooling in a dusty puddle at his throat. The man stank of sweat and fatigue, but he stood on his own two feet. His telekinesis was probably keeping him upright. But you couldn’t show weakness to a room full of predators, and Wolf respected the Graced for that. Not that Wolf trusted him, but there were few men, Graced, human or were, who he would trust. That’s what happened when you were in the middle of a war. Especially a war that had been going on for almost as long as he’d been alive. Although the motivations had changed.
It took a few moments for Wolf to process what he’d been told. “Who took them?”
Quin snorted. “They didn’t leave a calling card. But it’s pretty easy to figure out.”
Wolf growled into the stale, recycled air. “That fucking bastard!”
Wolf’s territory was surrounded by two other were groups, and one vampire clan. There was a peace treaty of sorts with the other weres: Wolf didn’t touch their cattle if they left his alone. But the vampires didn’t care about rules. Their appetites were growing uncontrollably. There was even talk of a merger – where all the vampire clans would band together to create some kind of super-clan to wipe out the weres once and for all. No competition for the cattle, then.
A new, deeper voice entered the conversation. “Marcus doesn’t run the Blood Clan there anymore.”
Trace, a werebear who shifted into the biggest black bear Wolf had ever seen, was standing at the entrance to the room, behind the two guards. His skin was so dark, light was simply absorbed; only the white of his eyes and teeth gave away his position in the dim corridor. And his smell. But a Graced would never notice that. The guards moved to the side to let the bear enter.
“They had a coup?” Wolf frowned. “Why didn’t I know about this? We could have taken advantage of it.”
Trace shook his head. “He was there one day, dead and gone the next.”
“Great.” Wolf shoved a hand over his dreadlocks. A new leech to deal with. He’d have to learn all their tricks and how to counter them. And somehow, he had to figure out how to get his cattle – humans – back. The clan had a number of separate settlements, but even the loss of one human meant someone would go hungry that month.
“Word is that Tatiana is now in charge of the newly named Raven Clan. She’s also apparently taken control of the nearest three vamp clans.”
Wolf froze, his hand tangled in his blond-brown hair.
Tatiana.
There were few vampire reputations that could really rattle Wolf, but hers was one of them. First generation, and insane as a cut snake. She could be charming and vivacious one minute, then ripping your still-beating heart out of your chest the next. All with a beautiful smile, framed by lush red lips.
“This is not good,” Wolf said softly, lowering his hand, clenching it into a fist at his side.
“No shit,” Quin quipped.
Everyone knew who Tatiana was.
“I thought she was dead,” one of the guards said.
Trace shook his head. “Her son, Vincent, was staked in the last were attack on her previous fortress. She must have survived.”
First generation weres and vampires were extremely hard to kill. And now that the last of her children had been eliminated …
“She’s going to be out for revenge,” Wolf said.
“The were who killed him is long dead,” Trace commented.
Wolf shook his head. “Revenge for one such as her isn’t limited to the killer. She’ll be after every were who ever breathed in his direction.” And his people were right in her line of fire.
“What about the humans?” Quin asked in the following silence.
“What about them?” Trace queried.
The Graced’s Gray eyes almost glowed. The table began to shake. “We can’t just leave them there! They’ll become addicts. Shells of their former selves. Used for more than just food.”
Wolf looked at him, really looked at the other man. Typically, Graceds didn’t have a lot of time for humans, either. Humans were afraid of the other race; their thoughts, emotions and physical bodies were not theirs to control with a Graced nearby. So Graceds usually kept to themselves. Not wanted by anyone, except for breeding purposes.
“Why do you care?” Wolf asked.
Quin took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “My sisters were in that settlement.”
Both Trace and Wolf winced. “We can’t just break into a vampire stronghold to get them out.” Wolf blinked. “Wait – we had Graceds in one of my settlements? Why didn’t you tell me?”
