Page 24 of Tainted Souls
“I was distracted,” I muttered, dusting myself off.
He squeezed my shoulder. “Learn not to be.”
It wasn’t a reprimand, more like a gentle nudge toward better focus.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked, his gaze drifting toward the door.
Saul’s absence from our private training sessions was nothing new. In fact, he avoided them every chance he could. He preferred brooding in silence and arguing with our father to picking up a weapon.
I took a big chug from my water bottle, pondering whether I should cover for him or not. “Probably hiding in the library again, pretending to study.”
Absolutely not.
Saul had been getting away with being ‘sick’ a little too much. If he wanted me to keep carrying his weight, he’d have to start paying me, either in snacks or in favors, like letting me borrow his gaming console for a week.
Before my father could press for details, the alarm started blaring, urgent and high-pitched. He cocked his head to one side, listening to the code through his earpiece.
“Breach in the west wing,” he told me. “Level five.”
My body stiffened in dread. Level five meant vampires—multiple, powerful ones—inside Redmoore itself. A near impossibility.
“Stay here and keep yourself hidden,” he ordered, already moving toward the door, drawing his sidearm. “Lock the training hall and don’t open it for anyone but me or the general.”
“But I can help—”
“No!” The force of his command stopped me in my tracks. His eyes softened for bit. “Please, sweetheart. Just this once, do as I ask.”
Something in his voice made me nod. He pressed his palm to the scanner beside the door, initiating lockdown protocols.
“I love you,” he said, words that rarely left his lips.
I would’ve said it back, if I knew it was the last chance I was going to get.
The wait in that training hall felt like hours, forced to listen to the distant cacophony of gunfire, shouting, and the occasional inhuman screech that made my pulse spike. Each passing minute stretched my patience thinner. The noises grew fainter, the gunshots more sporadic.
When the silence and my panic finally settled, I could no longer bear it. Had the threat been neutralized? Was anyone coming for me?
I had to know what happened. Had to help where I still could. Against my father’s explicit orders, I overrode the lockdown with my emergency access code.
The hallway outside was eerily quiet, the overhead lights flickering, the air charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.
I moved cautiously toward the west wing, pressing myself against the wall at each intersection, just as I’d been taught. The scent of blood grew stronger with each step—human blood. I swallowed hard, forcing back the instinctual hunger that rose within me. Now wasn’t the time.
As I rounded the final corner, I froze. Bodies lay scattered across the floor of the grand atrium, their weapons still clutched in lifeless hands. But what caught my eye was the lone figure still standing in the center of the room, my father, facing off against someone I couldn’t quite see. Someone who was little more than a blur, moving with a speed that no ordinary vampire should possess.
It must’ve been what triggered the level five alert.
I should’ve run for help, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the battle.
My father was magnificent, decades of training evident in every movement. He seemed to know weak spots I’d never seen anyone hit, targeting delicate areas that no one else would think to exploit—the kind my mother must’ve shown him in their years together.
For a moment, I believed he might actually win.
Then, one of the corpses twitched. Another rolled onto its side with a wet crack of bone. My breath hitched as I watched theguards I’d assumed dead rise slowly, jerkily, like puppets yanked upright by invisible strings.
I clamped a hand over my mouth as their heads turned toward the fight. With my father busy deflecting a strike from the blur, I staggered back a step. Why? Why would they turn on him? Had the blur forced them? Bent their wills somehow?
I searched their faces for recognition, for some trace of resistance, but found only blank obedience. Mindless. Controlled.
