Weaken the Knees (The Immortal World Book 6) Read online

  Weaken the Knees

  The Immortal World Book 6

  Shannon A. Hiner

  Copyright © 2020 Shannon A. Hiner

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9798631968486

  Cover Design By FuelingtheFire Industries

  Image By Carlo Dapino licensed through Shutterstock

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction.

  All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1

  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

  Part 2

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part 3

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part 4

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  The Immortal World

  About The Author

  The Immortal World

  Only the Stars Know

  Shadows on the Wall

  Die For Me Again

  Tears You Apart

  Theory of Resonance

  Weaken the Knees

  ~Novellas~

  The Eleventh Light

  The White Lady’s Song

  Like Fire and Powder

  Coming in 2021

  We Are Only Shadows (Book 7)

  Dedicated to:

  Anne Rice -- for making vampires cool

  Chris Moore -- for making the hilarious

  Jeaniene Frost -- for making them sexy

  & Stephenie Meyer -- for ruining everything.

  Prologue

  -Present-

  “Ibet you’re wondering how we got here.”

  Water dripped down the algae coated walls to drop on one limp, dirt encrusted, arm before hitting the ground. Another droplet hit a sallow, sunken cheek and slid down the jaw, a sick approximation of tears.

  “The truth is, so am I.”

  I leaned my arm against his shoulder and looked the corpse in its wide-staring, blank eyes. “I mean, I remember everything that happened . . . but how that came to this?” I waved my hand to the cell, encompassing the stone walls, thick metal bars over the door and small window alike, and the dirt floor.

  Rain during the day had come washing through the grate of the air vent high in the wall of the cell, soaking down the walls and turning the floor into a mud pit. On the plus side, it meant no sunlight to avoid like the literal plague, and the mud might actually form a thick enough coat on my skin to protect me for a few days.

  “Start at the beginning?” I responded to the corpse’s unspoken query. “What does that even mean? The day I was born? The time I agreed to work on Hadrian Catane’s little project? The night that the original six poured from the bowels of hell to spread the good news that death doesn’t have to be the end for humanity, we can rise again to walk the night, and live off the blood of our families?”

  I scoffed. “The beginning. Everyone starts at the beginning. Why don’t we start at the end?” I nudged the corpse’s arm. “The night I died? I was a sacrifice, you know. A blood sacrifice. How ironic is that? Everyone in my village thought a dragon lived up in the castle on the hill. That’s what they all said. People kept disappearing when they went up to the old keep’s ruins. They said it was a monster.

  “I knew better, though. The real monster lived in town. In the same house as me. One room down.”

  I learned early on, the worst monsters don’t occupy the dark.

  The worst monsters walk in the daylight, hiding in plain sight behind smiles and false affability. They can find you anytime.

  Hurt you anywhere.

  When my people elected to send me as an offering for the monster on the hill, there was a moment where I felt betrayed and fearful. It passed quickly. If the village priest was right, beyond this daylight nightmare was a world of peace and joy. It would probably hurt when the dragon killed me, but what pain could it inflict worse than what I had already been through?

  Even after they chained me to the tree, I felt hope. When their blades cut into my skin and hot blood trickled down my fingers and legs, my tears were for the peace I prayed waited beyond.

  He came to me in the darkness. Swift, and soft, and welcome.

  The night air seemed to part before him like opening fingers. His shadow was upon me before I could blink. He didn’t strike at first. Not like I expected. Standing over me, his presence didn’t frighten or make me tremble. I felt no alarm at the prospect of my untimely death.

  Cool blood still trickled from my skin and the light breeze made me shiver. Though I couldn’t see his face, I heard him breathe deeply and felt his attention shift.

  “Little one, what have they done to you?”

  Unexpected tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes. But I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want him to think I cared what they did to me. It wasn’t the betrayal that caused emotion to rise within me, but his soft, sad voice. The nighttime monster drifted closer to me, a hand outstretched to draw the locks of my tangled, dirty hair away from my face. The gesture was gentle yet so fast, I could scarcely react before his hand was back at his side.

  His presence whispered all around me, soothing and calm. I was bleeding out, chained on a hillside, an offering to a creature of the night, and I hadn’t felt so peaceful since before my father’s death.

  I shivered against the cold once more.

  The monster clicked his tongue and said in his soft, warm voice, “You’ve lost much blood. Maybe too much.”

  I didn’t respond. The tears stabbed at my eyes once more and I leaned back against the post that held me chained to the hill.

  “If I leave you here, you’ll be dead by morning.”

  I swallowed. I had counted on a quick death at his hands; why was he hesitating?

  “Your family might be able to save you, if you were released from these chains and taken to a doctor immediately.”

  My family. They weren’t coming for me. And even if they did . . . I shuddered. I could smell mint suddenly and it made my stomach lurch. Just a phantom memory. He wasn’t here. I would be dead by morning. Never again would he hurt me.

  “Or . . .” the monster said, leaning toward me. He didn’t continue the thought.

  I steadied myself and looked up slowly. “Or?” My voice cracked in my dry throat and I coughed. “Please.” Please kill me. Please end this. Please don’t let me ever go back there.

  “Or,” he whispered, closer suddenly, taking up my whole line of sight with his darkness. “I could save you.”

  I shook my head, closing my eyes once more. I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what I was d
enying. But I didn’t want to live. I knew that.

  “You won’t survive the night, little one. I vow it.”

  Thank God. Thank . . . this monster.

  “But you could be reborn.”

  “Please . . .” I trembled before him, but it wasn’t from fear.

  He seemed to know that as his cool hand cupped my cheek and he leaned down to press a chill kiss to my temple. His lips turned hungry against my skin as they moved down my face and past my chin. Sharp teeth brushed my skin like velvet. Cool breath soothed the hot slice into my neck. One of his hands steadied my head, the other gripped my shoulder with surprising tenderness. Blood raced to meet his lips, to flee my body. Burning tears escaped my closed eyes and turned cold in the breeze, making icy trails down my cheeks and under my ears.

  Safe. Sheltered. Protected.

  These things I hadn’t felt in over thirteen years, I felt now in his embrace. My heart strained to keep beating against the tide of blood seeping farther and farther away. But the beats it made, it made for him. Death cradled me, held me secure. Unwilling this sacrifice was not. I gave myself.

  My only regret that night, as I died on the hillside at just seventeen years old, was the other monster, the daylight one, lived on.

  Part 1

  Last Summer

  (AKA forever ago)

  Chapter 1

  Thumping music filled the air, pulsating through mirrored walls, unsteady stools, and the grimy floor. Cigarette smoke clouded her nostrils, cloying its way down her throat. Rene Kaplan eyed the floor-to-ceiling mirrors along the back wall and kept pace with the reflection of a young woman across the club as she navigated the crowd with a sinuous ease that belied the tension in her shoulders. She could easily be mistaken for a teenager with her slight build and wide eyes. Still, with her knee-high black stiletto boots—the sharpness of which could only be rivaled by her double-winged eyeliner—she could pass for early twenties in a pinch.

  Rene spared a glance for the other patrons of the club. No one else seemed to mark her presence yet. Her leather jacket and black leggings combined with the boots got her in the door, and their tight fit now eased her through the throng of heartbeats and pumping blood without brushing against any collateral damage.

  Her path came to a point in the corner of the room and she met the girl in the mirror with a sardonic tilt of her head. High, full cheekbones and a sweetly curved mouth gave the impression of docile purity. Most people missed the dark slash of her brows over cold indigo eyes on the first pass.

  The ones who got a second look ended up dead.

  Resting her back against her own misleading reflection, Rene surveyed the rest of the club. One of the more straight-laced joints in the city, the majority of its patrons were bored businessmen and women looking to while away their Friday after work and forget about the monotony of their lives. These clubs were some of the most dangerous she’d been in. They hid the evil within. Dumps and dives didn’t have to hide their drugs, prostitution, and assorted violences. Places like this, their patrons paid extra for the appearance of clean hands.

  Her lip lifted in a silent snarl as she took in the suits and ties, A-line skirts, and sensible matte pumps.

  Hypocrites.

  From her vantage point, she observed all of the club’s comings and goings. Finally, she saw the head of slickly styled hair she was waiting for. He was a year or two older than the picture she’d been provided. The signs of depravity in his face had deepened and he was an eighth of an inch shorter. She wondered how he would take that news. His face possessed the kind of arrogant beauty she couldn’t stand in a man. Any creature who grew to adulthood with those perfectly proportioned features and piercing good looks couldn’t be expected to have a good bone in their body.

  Leaving his coat at the door, the man grinned at the bartender and made some sort of hand signal. Rene licked her cool, dry lips as she watched him make his way across the room to a booth where three others sat. Her muscles bunched as her eyes narrowed and pupils dilated. Dressed down from his business garb of earlier that day, the man wore only his dress shirt and slacks. The light blue shirt’s top two buttons were undone as well as the cuffs. His sleeves were rolled back almost to his elbows.

  The blood ran sluggish and cool in her veins. Three days since her last job. Even across the club, she could see his pulse beat against the skin of his throat. The thin layer of tissue was just a salty wrapping for the meal beneath. For a moment all she could think of was how her teeth would slide through it and hot rushing blood would burst forth.

  A cracking sound broke the brief trance and she looked back to see a long lengthwise splinter in the mirror where her hand rested.

  Glancing around to make sure no one else noticed, Rene pushed off from the wall and began to weave through the crowd like a viper through reeds. Not the time to be thinking of dinner. Finish the job first. Work first, then play. Thinking only of the fun afterward could make her sloppy. She needed to be paid.

  She shook her head briskly and checked the weapons concealed at her wrists and ankles. Technically she didn’t need them—considering the two razor sharp points concealed within her mouth—but better safe than sorry. She didn’t like to be caught off guard. These days there were more and more immortals haunting the clubs. Like some sort of bad cliché, they came to be gawked at and find easy victims.

  Never mind the fact that Rene was there for her dinner. The only reason she had ended up in this club was her quarry had chosen it. Every night for three days. This was his favorite haunt, and he was hers. At least until the end of the night.

  When she was halfway across the room, he stood from the booth. Veering right toward the bar, Rene was careful not to catch his or his companions’ eyes. He threw a laughing comment over his shoulder as he walked away from the relative safety of his companions and farther into the club’s cavernous innards.

  “Well, what’s a—” A voice slurred from her right.

  Turning her eyes on him, she gave him the full weight of her unnerving blue stare.

  The drunken human stopped abruptly and seemed to decide she was more trouble than she was worth. “Meant no offense,” he grumbled and meandered off.

  No, he didn’t. But she had heard it all. What’s a young thing like you doing in here? You sure you’re legal? It your birthday?

  Yes, she looked seventeen and always would. When she was in a better mood she would tell them, Yes, it is my birthday. Just turned 234!

  They laughed. They always laughed.

  Her quarry rounded a corner to the darkened hall. Two seconds later, Rene followed him.

  Straight down the hall, silent as death, she stalked him. Her mouth watered even as her gums began to ache seductively. Her luck held; no one else was in the hall, and he never heard her. He opened the door to the men’s room and went through. Before he could lock the single stall door, Rene slid in behind him.

  When his dark eyes lit on her, he was shocked for all of two seconds before he grinned. “You’re a little young for my tastes, but I could make an exception if you just give me a minute.”

  Rene’s mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “I’m sure you could,” she purred and pushed him against the wall. A little too hard, if the speed with which he crashed into it was any indication . . . and the crack of his head against the hard plaster.

  Without turning around, she reached back to lock the door.

  He groaned and touched the back of his head, pulling away bloodstained fingers. “What the—”

  She lunged.

  His scream was swallowed up in the pulse and thump of the music. Her slight body held him captive to death. He couldn’t fight her superior strength. The rage that drove her. Fingers curling into his hair, she wrenched his head back and sank her teeth in. She took her time, savored each of his last heartbeats and the renewed life pumping through her veins.

  He tasted the same as the rest of them.

  Like revenge.

  ∞∞∞

&
nbsp; Being full wasn’t the same for vampires. Humans, when they had their fill, had warm, crowded stomachs. They were lethargic, sated. Vampires didn’t have full stomachs. They didn’t have empty stomachs, either. Stomachs weren’t really anywhere on their radar. A full vampire experienced pure, undiluted life, liquid fire flowing white hot through every vein.

  Rene walked the city for hours to ride that high. Walked until the soles of her boots wore thin. Walked until she had seen every street, road, boulevard, and avenue. Listened to the sounds of the city, blaring car horns, rushing subways, and all the beating hearts a damned soul could wish for.

  When the high wore off, she returned home.

  Her one bedroom apartment was decorated in a palette of dark gray, white, and some pops of brown here and there. The furnished rooms were filled with expensive but comfortable furniture. The main room consisted of a serviceable galley kitchen—which she never used—and a living area boasting a large sectional couch, various end tables, and a flat screen TV mounted on one wall. Most of the end tables were piled with her collection. Organized chaos.

  In one corner of the room, the long sofa table displayed the phonograph she bought in the early 1920s. On each side, records were piled high. The adjacent cabinet was actually a record player from the following decade. She couldn’t use either of them as often as she liked, as the uncultured swine living in the apartment below her complained to the property management when Sinatra’s voice interrupted his human sleep schedule. The sound from the machines, the resonating tone, seeped into the walls and took a person right back to the time and place it was first recorded.

  The bookcase in the other corner held a Stereo 8 surrounded by eight-tracks. Floating shelves behind the couch housed the cassette and CD players. The end tables on either side of the couch held disc racks.

  On the coffee table between the couch and the television was the newest addition to her collection: a shiny MP3 audio dock, only five years old. On the table beside it was her newest MP3 player. Sadly, she’d already had to replace it three times. The CD player was her fifth, and they were getting harder and harder to find. The cassette player was the second. Was it her imagination, or were the devices becoming less and less dependable as time went on? The record players had never been replaced, and still played as true as the day she bought them. As a result, she’d taken to buying modern albums on vinyl as well.