Prologue

200 Years Ago…

She couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t believe it, yet her eyes stared past him into the afterlife, cold and dead. Her body was limp as he kneeled and lifted her into his arms. In the distance, he heard them, those humans, screaming. 

“Send those demons back to hell where they belong!”

The scent of ash and blood filled the dark sky, but it was all an afterthought. The human’s Holy War against vampires, their pope, and their fear all mean nothing to him. Not without her. The days of bloodshed and terror faded away at the sight of her pale, blue-tinged face. 

She couldn’t be gone. She could not have left him behind in this world to persist without her.

“Look at me,” he whispered, stroking her face. “Look at me and say something.”

His jaw trembled, and his eyes burned as she did neither. They had vowed forever, yet she did not move. 

Slowly, he dropped his gaze to her chest, where the glint of silver, still burning her insides, caught his eye, turning her blood to ash and sparks of light. Her blood soaked the black fabric of his robe as he pulled her up against his chest. The cross burned against his sternum, but he could barely feel it as he felt his heart growing hard and cold. The cold sparked a white-hot burning fury that started to boil in his veins. 

His power heaved and ebbed. The skin of his face skin itched as he felt the wounds starting to heal. The humans calling for more blood and more death resonated through him. They had started this. They had called for death. 

So, he would give it to them. 

“I will kill them all,” he said as his cheeks grew warm with tears and his wings stretched out like a great shadow around them. “Their blood with soak the land.”

“Kill them all!” A human screamed nearby. 

He lowered her body to the ground and pressed one last kiss to her cold lips. 

“I will see you again,” he said as he rose to his feet.

It would not be today or the day after, but some day in the far future when a human or another vampire was powerful enough to cut him down. He turned, and his eyes focused on the group of humans nearby. 

They would drown in their own blood. He spread his wings and spread them, letting them lift him into the air. They stopped, staring up at him. He felt the feathers of his wings ripple and begin to turn black with his fury.

“Angel?” One of them gasped. 

“That’s no angel!” Someone else cried. “Kill—”

He darted down, snatching the man up and ripping out his throat. He drank the gushing, hot liquid greedily, draining his body. The blood fed the fire on him. 

In the distance, he heard someone screaming, a loud inhuman, roaring repetition of that word. The humans turned into fountains of blood. Torn to pieces and drowning in their blood. They swung their swords for the last time as he broke them and cracked their shields. 

“Kill!” The voice screeched, shaking the air with its fury. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

The human soldiers gripped their crosses and trembled before him. He broke through their defenses and swept the battlefield. It wasn’t until blood flowed like a river through the trenches in the ground that he realized that he had been the one screaming. He hovered above the bloodied battlefield and felt nothing but fury. 

Where had they all gone? Their crazy, feverish desire to kill? Weren’t there more humans to tear to shreds? It hadn’t been enough, considering the pope’s war cries. Were they all the forces he could manage to send into the vampire’s world?

The wind smelled of the decaying blood of humans and vampires. Hundreds if not thousands of lives had been lost on this battlefield, and in the distance, he saw the gate that the humans had torn into the vampire’s world, their underground sanctuary, begin to close. He flew towards it as it was sealed closed, leaving behind thousands of bodies. He slammed his fist against the stone. 

It shivered under the force, but the gateway was closed. The war was over, but the hatred still burned in him. He would simply use the other gates to exact his revenge on the humans from above.

Current Day….

“Please!” The woman cried, scrambling to try and escape him. It had been decades since a human had enough knowledge and enough guts to try to escape him. This one was weak and only slightly more pitiful than all the others. “Please, I didn’t do anything! I’m innocent.”

She sobbed as he dragged her down into the underground caverns towards the gates of his home. She was the noisiest of his recent steals. He threw her into the cage where he kept the humans he’d stolen from the upper world. She shrieked and darted away from the corpse that was still rotting, bloodless and unmoving. 

He grabbed the other human and dragged him forward, biting into his neck and draining him until he no longer moved before dropping him to the ground. The woman he’d just procured curled up against the wall, rocking in utter terror that made him smile. 

He licked his lips and wondered if he could hold off on devouring her tonight or if he would just have to hunt again.

He chuckled and turned to grab the woman as she shrieked. His fangs pierced her neck, and he drank greedily. He wasn’t even hungry any longer, but the thrill of feeling her heart stop, of dropping her to the ground carelessly eased a bit of his anger. 

More. He decided, looking down at the body as her eyes went dim and tears rolled down her cheeks. 

More blood. More bodies. More humans dead by his hand. If he had to drain the entire upper world to appease his fury, he would. He turned and exited, heading back to his lonely keep. 

The lingering scent of his wife’s perfume still hung in the air from when he’d accidentally knocked over the bottle a few hours ago. He had saved what he could, but the scent had driven him out of the keep earlier. It was fading now, but his eyes fell on the gilded edges of his wife’s portrait. 

He lunged forward, darting across the room and pressing his hands to the stone on either side. 

He had moved this portrait years ago, he was sure, when he thought that he would simply waste away in despair. He pulled back with a cruel grin. It seemed that even she did not want him to stop his quest for blood. He walked back out of the room, casually setting the mountain of corpses ablaze to make room for more as he passed on his way to the portal to the upper world. 

The world above changed over the years, but the fury had not dwindled. Twilight had begun to descend over the city. It was cold, likely winter now. He liked winter for how much more time he had to catch his prey.

Soon, it would be dark for more than half the day. Perhaps he would go on another murdering spree that would leave the human police baffled. The flickering lights above the streets were false but as bright as pure daylight. People trudged through the snow, not looking at him. He scanned them, looking for his first prey of the night, yet none of them appealed to him. 

Once, it had not mattered, but he had grown selective with his rampages recently. Young, vibrant, full of life and vigor were his current prey of choice. 

He stopped in the middle of a silent rob. The sound of sirens in the distance caught his attention as a large metal box rushed towards him. The men in the front seat screamed. A loud blaring sound filled the air, shaking the cold air. Then, one of them lunged across the seat and pulled at the wheel in the other man’s hand. The metal box turned and skidded, tumbling over and crashing. 

“Son of a bitch!” The man cried as it came to a stop. The box opened, and the man hauled himself out as the sound of sirens grew closer. “Grab her and get moving. I’ll deal with this asshole.”

The man whirled and lifted something metallic in his hand. An explosion cut through the air. He felt something hot and small shoot past him at incredible speed. Something broke behind him, and he tilted his head. Whatever the thing in the man’s hand was, it was lethal. 

He bared his fang. It had been centuries since a human had opposed him. He saw in the man’s face the face of a bishop he’d killed so many centuries ago and darted forward, ripping the man’s head from his shoulders. 

“What the fuck?” One of them cried, scrambling out of the car. 

He grabbed the man and slammed him down to the ground before driving his foot into the man’s chest. Blood spurted out of the man’s mouth as his bones cracked and caved under the force. He stomped on the man again and again. Then, the last man came around the metal box and tried to escape. 

He cut the man off, stopping him and wrapping his hand around the man’s neck, squeezing until his eyes bulged and his neck snapped. He dropped the body, feeling a bit eased, feeling better when he heard something scraping nearby. He smelled another human and slowly glided towards it, wondering how he would kill this one. The woman was standing, shaking as she backed away from him, holding her hands up. Her face was covered with a swath of dark, soft-looking cloth. 

“P-Please, h-have mercy, I—” A strong wind blew by, unwrapping the cloth around her face and blowing off the hood from her head. 

Dark curls rushed up in the wind, and eyes he had only seen in his dreams for the past several centuries looked at him. Her face was just the same, and he stopped, staring at the woman. 

“Please…” she pleaded. 

He could barely breathe as he whispered, “Trinitia.”