Covenant: Immortal Soulless, #4

By Tanith Frost

Tame the dragon. Close the rift. Don't trust anyone.

Aviva's new assignment sounds like something out of a fairy tale, except this time the damsel has been tasked with guarding the dragon. Though he's plenty to deal with all on his own, it soon becomes clear that this monster trapped in human form is the least of her worries. The open rift that brought him to Earth threatens the veil of secrecy protecting the supernatural world, and the vampires of Maelstrom need to find it before they're exposed. Worse, it seems that they may not be the only ones hunting for it. If the strange power that flows through the rift falls into the wrong hands, it could spell disaster for Aviva and everyone she cares about.

With only a shifty dragon-man and an inexperienced enchantress by her side, Aviva races to find the rift before the enemy does—a task that only grows more challenging when she uncovers a trail of deception and lies that leads straight to the highest ranks of her clan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sparrowcat Press
• Release date: Jun 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781775169147

Book preview

1

The clock is going to drive me insane.

It doesn’t seem to be bothering Chester, though. My fingers tighten around the arms of the stiff-backed chair he instructed me to seat myself in ten minutes ago. He hasn’t said a word since. He’s been focused on his papers, shuffling them more than seems necessary, never glancing at the black and white clock on the wall.

Tick. Tick.

Shuffle.

He leans back in his chair. I sit up straighter, then slouch again as he turns and pulls another file from the cabinet beside him.

The head of the Department of Unnatural Resources doesn’t seem to have changed much since I last saw him more than a year ago. I have, though. A year running with werewolves followed by an assignment that leads to slaughtering an enemy will do that to anyone, living or dead.

His unhurried movements are going to drive me mad. This, too, is no different from the last time we met, when he sentenced me to my solitary role at the werewolf sanctuary.

I narrow my eyes at him.

He’s wearing the same fucking tie. I’m sure of it.

Chester, about the assignment?

He glances up at me, looking as if he forgot I was here. It’s an act, one intended to remind me of who’s in charge, of whose time is more important as it passes so audibly—even if his time is being used reviewing files, and mine should be moving me toward an assignment I don’t have nearly enough details on.

I’ve got the papers here, he says, but doesn’t offer anything more.

I was led to believe— I begin, then hesitate. It sounds stupid. Like Miranda must have been playing a trick on me when she handed me a piece of paper covered in notes and a sketch of a creature that belongs in medieval legends. I’ll say the word; Chester will laugh, and he’ll give me my real assignment.

He raises his eyebrows and waits.

A dragon. It’s hard to get the word out.

Chester folds his hands on top of the papers. He doesn’t laugh. You were led correctly.

But that’s—

He holds up a hand to stop me. It’s not impossible. I should think by now that you’d understand that.

He’s got a point. Here I sit, a woman without a heartbeat, part of a society of legendary blood-sucking monsters I never believed existed when I was alive. I’ve been a vampire for years now, feeding and fighting with the best of them—even if I don’t qualify as one of the best by most vampires’ standards. I’ve faced rogue vampires and the shadows left behind by their victims. I’ve seen werewolves transform, and I’ve been changed by their power. I’ve dipped my toes in a vast, swirling ocean of supernatural energies that was invisible to me when I lived.

I have no right to claim anything is impossible or unbelievable.

It just seems like a different class of creature. I cross one leg over the other, resting my right ankle on my left knee, and resist the urge to grab something from his desk to fiddle with. Fairy tales instead of horror stories.

You’re not entirely wrong. But don’t worry about running out and getting fitted for a suit of armour just yet. Chester pulls a file from the bottom of the pile but doesn’t open it. Dragons aren’t a naturally occurring species here.

As opposed to everything else the Department of Unnatural Resources deals with?

He shoots me a dry look. They’re not part of the local supernatural ecosystem, if that suits you better. While dragons occasionally show up here, they’ve come from other worlds.

I open my mouth to respond and come up blank.

Apparently satisfied that I’m prepared to shut up and listen, Chester opens the file to reveal a page covered in small print. I’m short on time tonight, so we’ll keep the explanations brief. You can ask Elizabeth for details should you need them. For now, understand that from time to time a rift will open between this world and another. He leans forward. Not other planets, understand. Worlds otherwise inaccessible to ours.

I got that, yeah. I can’t even be insulted that he’s talking down to me. This is a bit much to wrap my head around, and I wish I’d spent more time reading science fiction and fantasy.

Not that any of it would likely have helped me. I suspect that those stories reflect the reality of this situation about as well as stories about vampires falling in love with humans reflect our actual predatory nature.

Rifts are unpredictable, Chester continues, glancing down at the file, unexplainable thus far, and dangerous when creatures from those other worlds stumble into ours. Reports stretch back thousands of years from all over the world. Newfoundland has had its share of reports. Sea monsters, occasional mermaid sightings, a proper sea dragon spotted along the south shore in the seventeen hundreds. Even if we disregard the most outlandish claims, it’s safe to say this is a bit of a problem area for rift activity. We had an incident a few years back in a small island town not far from here. Reports of monsters, magic... His brow furrows. We had quite a time covering that up. But aside from dealing with the humans who spotted the creatures, there’s not usually much for us to do. The creatures either find their way home or die when they’re unable to adapt to this world. When the rifts close, there’s often not enough of their strange power here to sustain them, and they eventually disappear.

Are all supernatural species from elsewhere? I understand that it doesn’t matter in a practical sense, but the question of why vampires exist is a fascinating one.

Not us, certainly. Chester looks a little disgusted at the idea. The void power that sustains vampires is as much a constant in this world as the light in living humans. These creatures are one-off cases, not invasive species, and not evolved forms of existing species.

Chester obviously favours the evolution viewpoint. It’s not an answer that works for me, but I can’t say the alternatives I’ve run into have been more appealing.

So why are we concerned about this one? I ask.

His thin lips tighten. This case is special. First, he’s not entirely a dragon. Not physically, at least. He seems to be trapped in human form.

I can’t help the blank stare that must make me look like a complete idiot. And we’re sure we’re not just dealing with a crazy person because...

Chester almost smiles, if I’m interpreting the quick twitch of one corner of his mouth correctly. We considered that, of course, when we received reports of—he glances at the page again, then flips to the next—a ‘total psycho,’ end quote, roaming the woods naked, chasing moose, catching trout bare-handed and eating them raw, claiming he was a great dragon. We managed to obtain blood samples—no easy feat, I assure you—which showed that he’s nothing like a human. Nothing like anything else in this world, for that matter. We haven’t got a straight story from him regarding how a dragon arrived here in his current state, but there’s no doubt he’s telling the truth on that one count. He’s proven to be wild, unmanageable, and either unable or unwilling to try to assimilate with humans until we locate his rift and return him to his world.

He slips a photo out from among the pages before him and slides it across the desk. I don’t want to seem too eager, so I reach for it more slowly than I’d like.

The eyes are what grab me first, but there’s a lot to see.

The man in the photo is huge—almost impossibly big for a human, certainly not the kind of person I’m used to seeing walking around the streets of St. John’s at night. He’s standing in the middle of a field. Someone made him put pants on, but apparently that’s where the battle ended. His bare torso is covered in muscle, sharply defined as he twists to glare back at whoever’s holding the camera. Long, dark hair hangs in tangles over his shoulders, and his arms are marked with what look like faint triangular tattoos in a scale pattern. His heavy beard doesn’t hide the savage snarl that twists his mouth.

But I keep coming back to the eyes. Pale, with a faintly violet hue even in the shadows beneath his hair and his heavy brows. They seem to be glaring directly at me.

I’m glad we’ve got plenty of time and space between us, at least for now. He looks like he’s going to rip whoever’s holding the camera apart, and like he could do it with his bare hands.

But when the shock of his intense gaze fades, another fact surfaces.

The guy is hot. Objectively. In a dirty-and-disgusting-but-imagine-if-he-cleaned-up kind of way. The thought of what he must smell like is enough to make me gag, though. Even if it weren’t, there’s no chance of actual attraction. I’ve made mistakes in my time, but I’ve learned from them. One interspecies disaster was enough for me, and falling for a vampire ended in heartbreak that I’m not even close to being over yet. I’m done with getting tangled up in that shit.

But objectively...

I take a moment to enjoy the view, ignoring those piercing eyes. I’m sure the effect will be ruined once I meet this monster.

So why haven’t we killed him? I hand the photo back to Chester. I’m not suggesting it. This actually sounds like an interesting assignment, if a dangerous one. But vampires aren’t known for our tolerance of anything that risks revealing the supernatural world to humans. Prompted by a comment from an enemy, I’ve been doing some reading over the past few days to keep my mind off more personal problems. I’m learning that there aren’t many limits to what we’ll do to keep things quiet.

Not that I’m surprised. I just hate that she was right about us.

We’re still considering our options. Chester scowls at the photo before he tucks it beneath the other papers. We have locked him away, and for now he’s generally behaving himself. Capturing a living dragon in any form is nearly unheard of, and we want to use him to gather as much information as we can to help us in the future.

I hold back a smile, not wanting him to see how much this pleases me. I’ve spent so much time focusing on the unsavoury side of our species that it’s easy to forget that we’re more than what humans perceive us to be. Given what I know about our kind, preserving this dragon is downright progressive. Suddenly, I feel a bit warmer toward Chester and wonder how hard it’s been to shape the department into something other than a threat-crushing response team.

We also hope to use him to locate his rift. Chester glances up at me. He’s not weakening as he would be if it had closed, and there’s some concern that this may be what we call a pernicious rift.

I want to make a joke about that being my next band name. I don’t. Chester is not easily amused.

I wish someone around here were.

We don’t know how long it was open before he came through. Years, maybe. These things are hard to track, and not of great concern when there’s no obvious threat. Most rifts are too small for anything like a dragon—even one in human form—to come through. We believe energies come through, but they don’t seem to affect us. But if this rift is large and not going anywhere, we need to find it and guard it to make sure nothing else sneaks through. If that happens, the threats could go well beyond issues of secrecy.

Chester closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. If my excitement over this talk of energies is showing, he’s not seeing it.

That’s good. I can’t help the thrill of anticipation that flows over me at the idea of discovering a new energy, just one of many that bathe this land in powers that are imperceptible to most.

It took me a long time to realize that I perceive power in ways that other vampires don’t. The dark energies left behind when a human’s light is snuffed out by a supernatural creature, the bright fire that gives werewolves their strength and transformation abilities, and even the void itself—the power that animates and sustains vampires the world over—are clearer to me than they are to others. While we all perceive them on some level, whether it be the instinctive revulsion vampires and werewolves feel when we encounter each other or an occasional ability to sense another vampire’s intentions toward us, we’re all affected by them.

But I’m drawn to them in a different way. I connect to energies on a level that’s far deeper than my body’s senses, though I perceive them as having physical properties. I guess attributing a black chill to the void and a golden warmth to werewolf fire is the only way my mind can understand things so far beyond the physical plane.

I can’t fight my curiosity when I encounter an unfamiliar power. It’s been a gift and a curse, one that led me to befriend werewolves, feed on one, sleep with him, and unintentionally take his fire into me when he died. That fire changed the void within me in ways I still don’t understand, and it helped me identify another power when it threatened me and my clan. A strange power, as unseen as any other, but that I perceived as blue as it sent electric tingles over my skin. My perceptions led us to the enemy we’d once thought invincible and allowed me to finally end the nightmare she’d brought down on us for decades.

If my gift is a curse for me, it was something far worse for Helena Slade, the world’s most fearsome vampire hunter.

Maybe I’ll be able to find the rift, too, if I can find a way to sense this otherworldly power.

So what exactly is my assignment? I ask, maybe a little too eagerly.

Keeping an eye on the dragon. Feeding him. Making sure he doesn’t get into trouble.

My temper flares, and I push it down before I can say something snarky. I’m beginning to feel like this is a running joke. Guard the werewolves. Watch over the elderly vampires in their decaying home.

Mind a fucking dragon.

Anyone the clan doesn’t want to deal with seems to become my problem.

I’m trained to investigate, not to babysit, I tell him. I trained under Maelstrom’s most accomplished rogue hunter, and I personally solved the last string of—

Keeping an eye on the dragon, Chester repeats more firmly, cutting me off. I suppose your training will serve you well. You’re prepared for physical combat?

I bite my tongue and nod. I’ve accepted that I don’t fit in with vampire society very well, and have let go of the idea that I might one day rise to some respected and powerful position. But that doesn’t mean I can afford to make enemies. I seem to piss those in power off everywhere I go, and I suspect it’s only our high elder’s interest in me that’s kept me employed thus far, even if the jobs have become less appealing with each new assignment.

But even Miranda’s patience isn’t going to be endless, and since the attack on the Inferno that left her injured and weak, she hasn’t been in a position to worry about me.

I’m on my own, and I’d better start watching my ass if I want to survive.

Chester slides a map and driving directions across the desk. You can keep these. Elizabeth will be expecting you tomorrow night. She’s heading up this project for me, and you’ll answer to her. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other issues to deal with.

I stand to leave but pause at the door. May I ask how the werewolves are doing?

It’s hard to believe I only left them a month ago. It feels like a year, and I haven’t spoken to any of them since Daniel picked me up in October.

Chester is already into another file, and he doesn’t seem pleased by the interruption. No issues thus far. I’m actually impressed. The female-led pack is in the process of moving to our western territories. Where we’ll monitor them closely, of course.

He doesn’t dismiss me again but turns his attention firmly back to his papers.

I don’t tell him that the female alpha’s name is Irene, or that anyone who knew her and the others would speak more respectfully, or that the weres are as invested in keeping our world secret as any vampire is. It wouldn’t make any difference if I did, except to bruise my reputation a little more.

We’re not supposed to care. It’s bad for business.

I leave Chester’s office with my brain full of questions, but there’s only one that I can deal with at this moment: What the hell do you pack to babysit a dragon?

Not that I have much to choose from. I’ve been staying in a hotel for the past week, and before that I was living out of a suitcase. I don’t suppose I’ll need to dress up for this. I’ll need to be able to move, though, and—

My thoughts vanish as I pass the department secretary’s desk and catch sight of the vampire standing beside it.

Viktor.

Fuck, but he’s creepy. He’s not even leaning on the desk, not talking to the human sitting there tasked with computer-based research involving machines that are beyond irritating to vampire senses. He’s just standing there, his back ramrod straight, hands at his sides.

Waiting.

It would almost be funny if he weren’t terrifying on a level that’s as instinctive as it is rational. My body’s response to the dark power that flows around him is to tense, ready to run or to fight.

There’s no racing heartbeat, though, and I’m glad of that. One less distraction.

Viktor turns toward me. My steps slow.

Aviva, he says. He seems vaguely pleased about something. I open myself to him, though I expect experiencing his power on a deep level will leave me feeling contaminated.

I’m not wrong, and I immediately regret the experiment. I get nothing from him. Just a sense of the void, made somehow bland and oily by being channelled through him, unremarkable otherwise in anything but its depth and overwhelming presence.

Still, it’s something. I was surprised when Daniel told me this was part of my gift—feeling the void as something different in each individual vampire. I can’t say I’m drawn to it in any way in Viktor’s case, but it’s a little more information than I had before.

Know thine enemy, and all of that.

Good evening, Viktor. I keep my voice calm and level. I’m tempted to walk right on by him but can’t bear the thought of him reaching out a hand to stop me.

Viktor, elder of Maelstrom, second only to Miranda in power—and now that she’s weak, apparently determined to take it all from her.

Viktor, ancient and powerful, who tried to get vampire hunters to do his dirty work, using weak members of Maelstrom as bait, hoping to take out both our weakness and our enemy in one opportunistic shot.

Viktor, who failed in that plan because of me.

What an asshole.

A hint of a smile plays at Viktor’s lips. It does nothing to soften the chill of his black eyes. What do you think of your new assignment?

I take a second—no longer, or he’ll wonder what I’m hiding—to consider that he obviously thinks this was his idea. Miranda gave me the impression it was hers. At least, she’s the one who handed me the paper that brought me here. Maybe later, when his eyes aren’t boring icy holes through me, I’ll take a moment to be pleased about the fact that, even in her weakness, she might be manipulating him.

I’ll do what I can to help, I tell him, offering no indication that I’m insulted or in any way displeased, and do my best to keep things under control.

I’m sure you will. Of course, your best hasn’t always served you well, has it? Trouble seems to follow wherever you go.

He’s still smiling. Why the fuck is he still smiling?

I suppose it does. It was good of you to trust me with such an important assignment.

His smile broadens into something predatory, showing a hint of his fangs. You can thank me later.

But there’s a question mark there. A hint of if you survive that long hanging unspoken in the air.

Could I take the dragon-man from Chester’s photo in a one-on-one fight? I can’t imagine a vampire losing to a human, even one built like that. We’re too strong, too fast. But he’s not human. He’s something else, and Chester said he’s not cut off from the powers of his own world.

Miranda did say this assignment would be more dangerous than anything I’ve dealt with before.

You’re a capable and clever girl. Viktor leans closer, and I fight off the shiver that threatens to race down my spine. We’ll see how you do without your safety net.

The chill that’s been crawling over my skin since I spotted him settles in my heart.

Absolute fucking cold-hearted bastard.

Part of his recent attempt to shift Miranda’s power to himself was to eliminate her supporters where he could. She still has her assistant, Clark. She still has Trent, the vampire who created her, who showed up as an unexpected hitch in whatever Viktor’s plans might be.

But he managed to send Daniel away—her top rogue hunter, powerful in ways even Miranda probably doesn’t understand, and unfailingly loyal to her and to Maelstrom.

And to me, before I turned him away.

Viktor sent him to another clan. I don’t know why. I don’t know for how long. But the fact is that I’ve lost my trainer and my partner, maybe for good.

Viktor nods as if my shattered confidence is written across my face. It probably is. I’ve never been as good at keeping my own secrets as Daniel wanted me to be.

Viktor leaves the office, closing the door tight behind him.

I wait, ignoring the questioning looks the human behind the counter is shooting me. She’ll be one of us some day. With the way things are going for me, she’ll outrank me a year after that. But for now, I don’t owe her anything.

This is what Viktor wants. To see me shaken as I approach a new challenge. To undermine me and set me up for failure.

Well, fuck Viktor. He’s right. I’ve always had support, whether it was from Daniel, a werewolf, or a pack of old vampires everyone else thought were no good to anyone. But in the end, I’ve also stood alone and faced the enemy. A rogue elder. A powerful alpha werewolf. A human who saw Daniel and me as nothing but monsters, underestimating my determination to get both of us out of there in one piece.

What’s one little dragon compared to all of that?

The thought sounds convincing, but my heart’s not buying it. I want Daniel here. I want the comfort of his power, the assurance that he’ll be an absolute asshole if that’s what it takes to keep this beast in line, the chance to exchange glances with him when everything goes to shit, knowing that we’ve been through hell before and will bring each other out of it again.

It’s weakness. Love, as I’ve been told time and time again since my death, is an aspect of the light, and therefore undesirable for vampires. Love is vulnerability, an opening in a vampire’s armour that enemies will exploit.

That’s why I sent Daniel away. Why I didn’t answer when he asked whether I loved him.

I