Ravaged: A Dark Vampire Reverse Harem Romance (Dark Vampires Book 2) Read online

  I was looking at cages, and the people inside…

  A shiver came over me. I didn’t even want to finish the thought.

  The procession ended at a rudimentary bamboo throne adorned with jewels, fruit and many human skulls. Upon the throne sat a heavyset woman with dark brown eyes and a scornful face. She was dressed in furs, feathers and bones just like her other tribesmen, but her garments were certainly more lavish, and an elaborate crown made from bones distinguished her as the leader.

  My captors threw me down onto my knees in front of her. I steadied myself in the mossy dirt and looked up.

  “Life bringer.” The chieftain woman hissed the words while laughing to herself. “Race traitor.”

  “Look I just want to—”

  “Silence!” she screamed. “The great lake has spoken. She says you bring many foods to me and I.”

  I vaguely remembered one of the men in my village telling me that the Udari worshiped a great lake set at the center of these swamps. They bathed in its waters, drank from it, they claimed it was the goddess of all creation.

  The problem was that the waters in this part of the outlands were all heavily radiated from the wars. It was probably part of the reason the Udari were so batshit insane, living and drinking on the shores of a radioactive lake. There was also the madness that came from a cannibalistic diet.

  Needless to say, I realized I wasn’t dealing with the sane. It appeared to be an ongoing theme for me at this point.

  “You will bare many fruits for us,” she said. “Our grandest prisoner. Seeds in the stomach. Seeds grow big. Seeds feed us all.”

  “You want to imprison me, impregnate me, and eat my offspring?”

  “Life bringer!” she shouted, more for the village’s sake than mine. It appeared my questions or concerns didn’t factor into her plan at all. Great.

  Before I could protest or try and talk my way out of the less-than-ideal arrangement, more arms were forcing me back onto my feet and dragging me off through the trees. It was only a minute before they were pulling back a giant bamboo lattice and tossing me into the trench beneath. I hit the cold mossy earth with a heavy thud and sighed as the grate closed overhead again.

  Judging by the height of the walls I was at least twelve feet below the surface. As far as prisons went this one wouldn’t be too hard to escape, but I would need time to try and put a plan together. I tested the dirt walls and found they gave away rather easily. Getting out wouldn’t be that hard, right?

  When nightfall came, I would find out.

  The day took forever to pass, and by the time darkness finally arrived I was tired, hungry, and dehydrated. Part of me wondered if I should have stayed back at the castle. At least the vampires had sort of been looking after me, and all that wild sex had been fun.

  No. I was better off on my own. That was the only choice I had now. I had to keep running. I had to keep going until I found a place, a place I could call my own.

  But they need you, a voice said in the back of my mind. Ronan and the others… they’ll lose their minds without you.

  Was that my problem? Maybe they should have thought about that when they turned themselves into fucking vampire dragons. Ronan said they’d ignored the warnings. Why was I the one that had to right that wrong?

  The most bizarre thing is that a small part of me did feel as though it was my responsibility, but that was probably just some twisted prisoner guilt working through my mind.

  Get up and get out. Start running.

  It was that or become a human burger factory for an insane cannibal tribe.

  With that as my motivation I started digging, my hands scraping at the dirt and pulling clumps away as I carved a rudimentary slope leading up out of the pit. As my hands and feet were still bound the work was harder than I had anticipated, but once I was out, I could make my way deep into the swampland and cut the ties on a broken tree or something.

  I’d figure it out.

  It took me about forty minutes to carve my way up and out of the pit, digging up at an angle so I avoided the bamboo ceiling above me. As I was digging, I saw fires spring up in the nearby village, accompanied by the sound of beating drums and wild singing. It sounded like they were celebrating something. I didn’t plan on sticking around to find out what.

  When I reached the surface, I used a tree to pull myself up and then started hopping away from the village. I almost lost my footing a few times and tumbled over, but I forced myself to go slow and kept moving. This really wasn’t the most ideal way to escape, but the Udari were full-tilt bonkers and I needed to get out of there pronto.

  About five minutes passed and I thought I was doing rather well. I reckoned I had a pretty good chance of actually getting out. I hadn’t seen a guard all day and the party was still blaring on in the background behind me. It was even starting to get quieter as I made my escape.

  Then a group of them stepped out from the shadows, appearing before me with dark and sadistic smiles on their faces. “Life bringer,” one of them said. The rest laughed. With a sharp tug they turned me around and started marching back towards the camp.

  “We watch,” the head guard said, his voice deep and powerful. “All time. You dig. We watch. You jump. We watch. All time.”

  He gestured to a wooden watchtower hidden in the trees just above my cell. My heart sunk in my chest. They had been watching me the whole time, probably laughing to themselves as they let me think I was escaping for over an hour.

  Fuck these fucking bastards.

  We passed the trench that had been my accommodation for the day and the guards carried me back into the main village, where I saw the celebrations properly for the first time. A great fire was roaring at the village center and the Udari were dancing around it, all as naked as the day they were born. They stopped as we approached, and once again I was thrown before the mad chieftain woman.

  “You fail your test, life bringer,” she said with a note of expectancy. “Bad fruit run. Good fruit stay. You still bare us fruit, but you will run no longer.”

  Drums started beating through the darkness, picking up pace and volume as the villagers chanted too. I was officially freaked the fuck out. What were they planning?

  The chieftain pushed herself up from her throne of bones, pulled a stone dagger from her side and approached me. She scored a cut into my thigh, then the other, and then my arms.

  “Our great goddess lives in all, even you, life bringer. Legs feed the men. Arms feed the women. We take them, you still bring fruit. We all eat. We all live. All worship the goddess!”

  “All worship the goddess!” the village repeated.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait!”

  I was shouting the word over and over as guards hoisted me up onto a stone table and produced long and rusted blades that were about to take every limb from my body. The Udari chieftain was going to take my appendages and throw me back into a dirt hole, to live my life out as some immobile breeding machine?

  Fuck that!

  But what could I do? Their strength completely overpowered me, and they were already tying me down with strong vines.

  And that was when I heard something in the night sky overhead. A deep and guttural roar that shook the earth itself. The entire tribe fell into a stupefied silence, the drums and their chanting stopping completely, the roaring fire and the swamp’s ambient nature the only sound among the quiet.

  Then there was a scream, and another, and before I knew it the entire tribe were screaming, running about in all directions, their torches trailing through the air wildly as they ran. I had no idea what was happening, but then I saw something great break through the dark cloud overhead, a vast shape with massive wings. It burst from the darkness like a great angel of death, fire spouting from its throat and igniting the village.

  Dragon. Vampire.

  They’d come for me.

  The men who were about to take my arms and legs dropped their blades and took off into the fray, screaming along with the rest as gr
eat flame encompassed their village. I threw myself up into a sitting position and saw the Udari chieftain standing in front of her fire.

  Overhead the dragon looped back and forth over the clearing, bellowing great spouts of fire which ignited the swampland surrounding the village. Most of the structures were on fire now, and all but the chieftain had fled for the trees.

  With great gusts of air, the dragon’s huge wings brought it down to the ground, extinguishing some of the fires around the village, including the one the Udari had been dancing around at the start of the night. As it came to the ground its form shifted, shrinking through the air and changing shape until it became a man.

  Xander.

  He had landed only a few feet away from the chieftain. He was completely naked, his pale skin smudged black from fire and smoke.

  “Diablo…” the woman whispered to herself in terror. She readied a spear in her hand.

  “Leave now,” Xander said, waving his hand through the air calmly. He was using his control on her; of that I had no doubt. “Take your people to the city in the west. I am an angel of your goddess. The land is not safe here anymore. It is making you sick.”

  So strong was the conviction of her madness that I wondered how much his control could influence her, but I saw her nodding her head. “The goddess?” she said.

  “I am her archangel, Xander, sent by the goddess to bring you this message. Go west and leave these lands. The fruit has grown bad. You will die here.”

  The chieftain merely nodded her head and then she was off and running into the burning swampland. As soon as she left Xander came over to me and released my ties. His eyes were bright red. He was lucid.

  “You found me,” I said, more surprised than anything.

  “The jet has a tracker on it. It didn’t take long to put the pieces together and figure out what happened. You crash landed directly in Udari territory. Fortunate that you survived the crash, but you couldn’t have picked a worse place to crash land.”

  “How did you convince her to leave?”

  He waved his hands through the air and his appearance changed. Feathers, bone, and white war-paint adorned his body. “This is how I looked to her. I decided to appeal to her religion. It is the only humanity they have left, as twisted as it is.”

  “Very smart.” Ronan hadn’t been lying. Xander really was the brains.

  “I’m not just a pretty face.” The illusion broke and I found myself looking at the naked vampire again. He was more slender than Ronan and Victor, but still in incredibly good shape. The cock hanging between his legs was no laughing matter either. Were all the vampires in the coven incredibly well endowed?

  “What now?” I said, swallowing down my nerves. Red eyes flared in my direction.

  “Well normally I’d suggest we go back to the castle, but Ronan and the others are going to be quite displeased when they realized I lied to them.”

  “You what?”

  Xander smiled. “Once we realized you were gone Ronan asked for my help in tracking you down. Finding your jet’s signal was easy enough, but I told a small white lie to my brothers. I told them you had headed for the nearest vampire city, Vrakal.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “So, I could have you to myself.”

  I turned my head. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Xander turned away from me and paced across the damp soil before looking back. “Let’s face it Lily, I know that this situation probably isn’t exactly what you had in mind for yourself. A human prisoner for four vampire lovers? If I was in your situation I would have run too.”

  “You would?”

  He nodded. “Of course. You have something extraordinary inside of you now, something that most in these crazy lands would kill to have. It makes sense that my brother Ronan would not give you a choice. He cares about my brothers and me. He wants to make sure our coven succeeds. But I’m different.”

  “Different… how?”

  “Different in that I am going to give you a choice. There’s no point in dragging you back to the castle if you’re not going to be happy there. You’ll only find a way to escape again. I know you’re smart like that. So, let me put the question to you. What is it you want to do Lily? There’s six hours until sunrise, and in that time, I can fly you hundreds of miles in any direction. Tell me what you want to happen, and I will make it so. You can have freedom if you like. You never have to see me or my brothers again.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  None of this made any sense. Xander and his brothers needed me to live. Surely, he wasn’t just going to let me walk away like this?

  “There isn’t one. I want to prove to you that I value whatever you choose. Say the word and I’ll take you somewhere, and then I can be out of your hair forever. Hurry up though… I struggled to grab hold of this lucidity. I’m not sure how long I can hold it.”

  It was then that I saw him flinch, and for a moment darkness flashed in those red eyes.

  Where could I go? An outlander like me would never survive in the human or vampire cities, and everyone in these parts was now looking for me, chasing down a bounty that could make them the king of whatever swamp they hailed from.

  The castle felt like it was really the only safe place, but Xander was giving me a ticket to anywhere. Could I really pass that up?

  Then I realized where I needed to go. There was an answer to the problem in front of me, it was staring me right in the face. Ronan and his brothers thought I was the only one that could help break the darkness inside of them, but there was another that could, I was sure of that.

  “I know where I want to go,” I said to him boldly.

  He smiled. “Great. Where are we heading to?”

  4

  I was hungry, tired, and severely dehydrated so hopping onto a vampire dragon and taking a ride to anywhere didn’t sound too appealing. I gave Xander my destination and could immediately see his regret.

  “You’re sure?” he said, his voice grave and low.

  “You said, anywhere.” I crossed my arms, unwilling to budge from the point. He held my gaze easily, his bright reds dissecting every inch of my soul with their calm and placid nature. Then something unexpected happened. He smiled. “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “I just realized I might not be the brains in the castle anymore. I came down here with a plan, Lily, and by offering you a ticket to anywhere I was hoping I would get the upper hand. You’ve… you’ve surprised me, however.”

  “You will take me?” I steeled my jaw and tried to keep myself tall, but fatigue was catching up to me. Just standing was hard at the moment.

  “I made a promise to you, so I will keep it, but I will be honest. This destination terrifies me, allow me to shift and then you can—Lily!”

  I was trying my hardest to pay attention when my legs gave away. Xander reacted in the split second, moving forward and catching me in his strong arms. He cradled me in his embrace and placed a hand against my forehead. “Damn it, you’re burning up something crazy. You must have an infection or something. Do you have any open wounds?”

  A headache was starting to thump through my temples. I pointed out the cuts the chieftain had scored, along with the cut from the spearhead in my side. “It kind of burns. I’m thirsty.”

  “I should have realized you needed better care. You may have chosen a good destination after all, but it doesn’t make me any less terrified about going there. I’ll heal you the best I can for now.”

  Before I could protest, he brought my wrist to his mouth and bit down gently. It stung for a second, but then a warm and beautiful light was flowing through my veins. He had sedated me with something, just as Victor had when he healed my shoulder.

  “What is that?” I said hazily.

  “We have the ability to secrete a venom. There are several different affects we can administer, but I have chosen a healing serum for now, it should keep your maladies at bay until we arrive.”

  Then he stepped b
ack, putting distance between us before he shifted back into his gigantic dragon form. I already felt like I was hallucinating thanks to this strange swamp fever. Seeing a giant dragon appear from nowhere didn’t make things any easier.

  Climb on, he said, his voice clear in my mind. Make sure you keep tight hold during the flight. I will be able to catch you, but I don’t want to take the risk.

  “Have you ever ridden a dragon? It’s quite hard.”

  I suspect you didn’t mount Ronan correctly. Climb on, and this time position yourself higher on the neck. If you’re in the right place it’s actually very difficult to fall off.

  I followed his instructions as best as I could, climbing a little higher up his neck than I naturally would have. Xander’s advice paid off. My butt slipped into a natural seat amid his scales, and there were even ridges where I could comfortably hold on. It felt much more secure this time.

  He brought his giant wings up and down until we were off the floor and circling the burning village. It wasn’t long before it shrank away to nothing, the night air rustling through my hair as we headed for our destination. I had no idea how far away it was; I had never actually been there. It was only halfway through the journey that I figured out which direction we were heading in. Xander was taking me to the black woods.

  For the most part the outlands were wild and untamed. The stretch of land that existed outside of official city borders were home to free tribes that didn’t associate with bureaucracy in the ‘civilized’ zones. It was more dangerous out here, but we had free reign to live as we wanted to. Despite that freedom there were places that even experienced hunters didn’t go, and the black woods was one of them.

  A couple thousand acres across, little was known about the black woods except that living things entered and rarely exited again. The trees were dark, giant and swallowed every mote of light that dared enter its shadows. Dark and powerful beings were said to live inside the forest’s heart, but humans like me had no idea.