Puppet/Master (The Vale Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Puppet/Master

  The Vale Chronicles Book 1

  Joel Abernathy

  Copyright © 2019 by Joel Abernathy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  With thanks to my wonderful beta readers and ARC team, and special thanks to Eli for your support as a Sigma Patron!

  Contents

  Connect

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Connect

  About the Author

  Connect

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  Prologue

  The children lined up along the wall, bare feet padding silently and eyes averted as the woman with the electric prod stood by, watching closely. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the small brown-haired boy near the end of the line stumble. He’d caught his toe on a broken piece of white tile that seemed to morph into the same dimensionless space as every other clinical plane in the room.

  The boy let out a tiny whimper as the ragged edge split his skin. One of the guards blocking the door growled audibly and he saw the headmistress adjust her grip on the long handle of her prod.

  A hand grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back to his place in line. He looked into the wide blue eyes that met his own, surrounded by a veil of long hair as black as his pupils.

  The other boy didn’t have a name. Neither of them did. He was Blue Eyes in the small brunette’s mind. Another child plucked from the blood farms, saved from a life hooked up to needles that would bleed him dry, if he wasn’t purchased by a wealthy vampire or an elf who wished to use his lifeblood for magic.

  They called it saved, at any rate. The boy found it difficult to believe when they were condemned to a life of grueling training, constantly pitted against one another in the hopes that they would one day emerge from the chrysalis of death to be revealed as the greatest treasure any vampire could possess: a chimera.

  Chimeras were rare and indistinguishable from humans, so the human children collected from the farms were gathered and sifted through like sand, all in hopes of finding that one gold nugget in a million grains.

  The boy was sure the only gold that ran through his veins was the kind the vampires bled with their syringes and tubes. If anyone had a chance at becoming one of the beautiful gods who rose from the ashes of transformation and emerged stronger than the natural-born vampires themselves, it was Blue Eyes.

  He was, after all, the favorite. He ran faster than the others. He was stronger. He fought without reservation and drew blood in their combat sessions like it was his birthright, but there was still kindness in his eyes. The glimmer of a will unbroken.

  Blue Eyes raised a finger to his lips and the boy nodded in understanding. He stood with his back against the wall and the toes of his uniform boots touching. The headmistress didn’t tolerate noise and she certainly didn’t tolerate weakness.

  They were gathered for a momentous occasion that afternoon. Or maybe it was night. The boy hadn’t seen the sky since infancy, and then only for the short trip from the farm to the Academy, but he saw it in his dreams—a shimmering blanket of lavender sprinkled with jewel drops as sweetly colorful as candy. In his dreams, he would stretch his arms open and the sky would come down to wrap around him like a crystalline cocoon. It would morph and harden around him, keeping him safe and sound until he could emerge the creature he was always meant to become.

  Most chrysalises birthed elegant butterflies with gossamer wings, but this one was different. When it finally broke open, the boy would become a bird with great wings strong enough to carry him away to some distant shore where they could never chase him. Maybe even Blue Eyes, too.

  “Bring them in,” the Headmistress ordered once she seemed reasonably satisfied with the children’s orderliness. Two guards left the room and returned with two twenty-year-old humans, one male and one female. The boy knew they were twenty, because that was the age at which all human students of the Academy made the choice, even though it wasn’t really a choice at all. The day they got a name.

  It was either a word-name, as all the ghouls wore to distinguish one from the other, or a true-name. The kind only the Master Vampire himself could bestow. A name that meant you were someone. A name that made you someone.

  How the boy longed for a name that would never be. He had only seen Eric on a few occasions at a distance, but the impossibly beautiful creature always seemed so kind. So gentle. To be named by one so beautiful… surely that meant something.

  Maybe it was even enough to clip his wings and leave him content with a life spent in service to the beasts who’d taken him from a mother he did not know, beasts who subjected him to a life of tests and grueling training that was both meant to break and strengthen his will.

  In ten years’ time, the boy would make his choice. One way or another, he would have his name. Today, it was their turn and he watched as the man and woman were forced into metal chairs with thick straps across their arms, chests and ankles.

  The boy swallowed the knot in his throat and tried not to breathe too loud. This was the first time the newest group would witness the gruesome transformation from human to… one or the other. Even so, whispers from the previous classes had trickled down and given him enough reason to be terrified. For all the butterflies he would never be to flutter around in his stomach like a swarm.

  The Academy’s chief physician approached the young man first with a large needle attached to a hanging bag filled with the Master Vampire’s blood. The human spat in his face, but he didn’t react. Instead, he plunged the needle deep into the young man’s vein in the crook of his arm and the boy winced in sympathy.

  He dared to glance over at Blue Eyes, whose face was a blank mask. Exactly as it was supposed to be. The boy turned back to watch as the subject writhed in his chair, moaning in agony as the vampire blood began to work its way through his system.

  The physician approached the young woman next. Even from across the room, the boy could see the fear in her eyes, but she lifted her chin high and fixed them on the man coming toward her. When the needle went into her skin, she didn’t make a sound.

  The boy was afraid to breathe.

  Moments passed. Hours or maybe minutes. Time was a flimsy concept in their world. The young man who’d been biting down his painful moans screamed suddenly and it didn’t take long
for the boy to realize why.

  His skin was bubbling, searing blisters forming instantaneously from his hand to the edge of his shirt sleeve. He thrashed and writhed in his chair as the vampire blood became a poison within his bloodstream.

  Soon the skin on the right side of his face began to burn and blister the same way. The boy’s heart wrenched itself into his gut and he held his breath as the headmistress and her guards stood by doing nothing.

  The young woman was taking deep, measured breaths, her eyes clenched shut as if she’d found a way to drown out the world around her. Surely she had to know the odds of her meeting the same fate as the one beside her--the boy she’d grown up with--were a thousand to one.

  When the young man’s flesh had seared away to bone and muscle, visible under a glossy sheen of plasma and blood, the guards unbound him from the chair. The headmistress walked over as they held him, dangling listlessly from both arms, his knees barely scraping the floor. She held a clipboard in her hand and marked something off as she stared down at the recently disfigured human with an expression of total apathy.

  “Status: Failed. Identification: Stone,” she announced with equal disinterest. “Get him to the recovery bay.”

  The guards dragged the moaning man out and the boy only let himself breathe when the doors were closed. He turned to the woman in the chair, who was clearly in a great deal of pain even though her flesh showed no signs of wear.

  It was so unlikely that she would turn out to be a chimera, and yet even the guards were watching her intently. The headmistress cocked her head slightly, her tapping pen the only sound in the room save for the other woman’s labored breathing.

  Suddenly, she went limp. The boy’s eyes widened and he wondered if this was it. It was rare, but some of the subjects died before they had the chance to become a vampire or a ghoul. The guards regularly lamented the fact that more didn’t go their way. In the never-ending quest to build an army of chimeras, a surplus of ghouls became a logistical nuisance. They seldom died and when they did, they never decayed. There were only so many uses for a former human whose blood was undrinkable.

  The young woman’s eyes flew open just as the headmistress seemed ready to approach and check on her. Through a veil of tangled yellow hair, her face went from plain and pretty to a ghastly snarl, but her skin was unblemished. The only physical change was the fact that her eyes were now as red as the blood rushing into her veins. They locked on the children across the room and the boy felt her staring right into his soul. When she opened her lips and let out a monstrous, hungry shriek, he quaked and tried to sink back into the wall.

  She strained and lashed out at the guards who made an attempt to restrain her.

  “Get the fentanyl,” the headmistress ordered.

  One of the guards raised a thick syringe filled with clear liquid.

  A chimera who had survived the vampire transformation could never be killed, by stake or by poison, but it would be enough to restrain her temporarily. The boy hoped.

  He watched with bated breath as the needle plunged into her neck and she issued another shriek that made his soul feel like it was tearing into thin strips. Her thrashing became so violent the chair shook and the boy was sure she’d break free, but she slumped over just as quickly as she had risen and that was that.

  The guards carted her off and the headmistress finally turned her attention to the children she’d been ignoring. “Well,” she said with the air of satisfaction, her shoulders squared proudly in her uniform jacket. “You’re a remarkably fortunate bunch, aren’t you? Your first viewing and you already got to see the transformation of a chimera.”

  A laugh filled the boy’s throat, but he choked it down with a strangled gulp.

  Fortunate. Was that what they were?

  “Any questions?” the headmistress asked. She sounded almost chipper. Clearly she was looking forward to having a good report to give the Master Vampire.

  A girl at the end of the line raised her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “What will her name be?” the girl asked in a timid voice, as if she was afraid her curiosity would earn her punishment.

  The headmistress smiled knowingly. It was a strange smile. The kind that made the boy feel colder for having seen it. “That’s for Master Eric to decide. One day, maybe he’ll choose yours as well.”

  The boy’s heart sank as it finally slowed down from the frantic pitter-patter rhythm it had kept through the whole display. He knew now more than ever that if he was ever given a name, it would be nothing more than the first word that sprang into the headmistress’ head. It was only a rare soul who had the strength to survive the transformation without becoming a ghoul, and there was no longer any question about it.

  The boy was not one of them.

  1

  Arden

  The meaning of life was something that had never troubled Arden the way it did most people, immortal or otherwise. His existence had been given a defined purpose from the moment of his birth, and its name was Eric. His master, his father, his god. Every moment of his life was devoted to the Master Vampire, and while he slept in the dark confines of a coffin, unaware of the time that passed outside the comfort of those velvet-lined walls, he dreamed of all the blood he’d spill for his master the next time he was called upon.

  Arden existed for him.

  Rose for him.

  Bled for him and killed for him.

  It was the rhythm of his life beating within his hollow chest, and the blood made it into a glorious symphony. It didn’t matter whether those periods of dormancy lasted for weeks or decades; who was a violin to question the refrain of a composer?

  Curled up on his side on a bed of plush silk and red velvet, the vampire looked more like a doll than a weapon. His build was slight and his white hair had grown out enough for the brown roots to show. The only blemish on his ivory skin was the narrow scar that cut down the left side of his bottom lip, a final token to remember his mortal life by, given on the day his body had been frozen forever at the age of twenty.

  Arden’s full lips stretched into a satisfied smile as he slept. He could still taste the blood of his last offering to his master. The sinuous neck of Eric’s greatest enemy—a courtier named Rowan who had declared his loyalty to the Master Vampire’s face while whispering conspiracies behind his back.

  Betrayal had such a sweet aftertaste.

  The next target Arden would be awakened to assassinate remained as much of a mystery as what day the coffin lid would finally open once more, but it didn’t matter. He would do as he always had. He would obey, and when Eric was ready to put him back in his box, he would fold himself like an obedient doll and let them seal him away until he was needed again.

  All he asked was to be needed. To serve. To sate his thirst with the blood of his master’s enemies.

  As the Master Vampire of Ark, the most powerful of the vampire-controlled nations in the world of Teros, Eric had plenty of those to go around, but Arden wasn’t the only doll in his collection. His only grievance was the fact that there were others, but that wasn’t his right to question, either. Eric was his entire world, but he knew he was merely the vampire’s favorite weapon, and it was enough.

  It was always enough.

  Light came and with it, a familiar face. Fair brows knit together in concern over a face of pleasantly angular features that hadn’t aged a day.

  Lauren’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail high and tight enough to smooth out the sparse wrinkles in her forehead, as usual. She looked in on the young man in the coffin and her stern features softened into the faintest of smiles as his eyes opened fully.

  “Time to wake up, Arden,” she said in a voice as warm as the light that swallowed the darkness that had been Arden’s world for…

  “How long?” he asked, sitting up slowly. His body was slightly stiff from being immobile for so long, even though the deep slumber that could only come from a coffin’s rest had kept him from feeling it the way he
might have when he was human.

  So long ago that was.

  “A year,” she answered. Her half-smile widened when she saw the surprise on his face. She was holding a thick white bathrobe open for him in the same room he’d gone to sleep in. Bare walls, featureless save for the emergency lock panel on the door. That never changed. “The fae have been quiet.”

  “If he needs me, they must be making some noise,” he said, taking the hand of the silent human guard next to the coffin as the man helped him out. He didn’t recognize the guard, but he rarely did. It wasn’t a position many were eager to stay in, if promotion was an option.

  Lauren was the only other constant in his life, besides Eric. Them and death.

  The new guard was tall and bigger than most. Elves were by far the tallest among the seven distinct species that controlled Teros, with the fae close behind them in stature. Shifters varied in height depending on their affinity for a particular animal form, but human males were generally sturdy and this one put most of them to shame. It was why their species made the perfect food supply. They were hardy enough to withstand multiple feedings, when done responsibly, but too weak to overpower their vampire masters.

  This one had a flashing port in his neck, technology courtesy of the elven allies of the vampire realm. The elves needed blood for their magic, and the vampires had plenty of it, so in turn, they shared their advanced technology. Symbiosis at its finest.