Blood Demons

  Cover Copy

  BLOODS AND CRYPTS

  Once again, America is under siege. A devastating terrorist attack has destroyed one of the nation’s most treasured landmarks. With Mt. Rushmore now reduced to a pile of rubble, Major Josiah Key, commander of the secretive Cerberus Unit, is dispatched to hunt down the mastermind responsible: the most fanatically evil extremist the world has ever known. And he’s hidden in the most isolate region of the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan.

  Climbing to the fiend’s remote, mysterious caves, the four-person Cerberus team encounters bloodless corpses that lead them to confront one of the greatest evils in human history: the Vetela…unholy creatures who inhabit the bodies of the dead and the source of all vampire legends. Their sole purpose is to guard the terrorist, and with his help, the Vetela, are finally ready to come into the light and lay waste to all humanity.

  Blood Demons

  A Team Cerberus Thriller

  Richard Jeffries

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Lyrical Underground books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Richard Jeffries

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund- raising, and educational or institutional use.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  LYRICAL PRESS Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: March 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0501-4

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0501-X

  First Print Edition: March 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0503-8

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0503-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Travis, without whom there would be no point.

  Or dinner.

  Prologue

  Craven knew his master was serious. He knew it in the most abhorrent way conceivable.

  Craven had moved to Veranesi to become an acolyte, and had been serving the master for years. He had become this slum’s taaboot in order to best perform this function. When someone died in this warren of fetid stones, it was Craven who came to take the corpse away—often leaving the site filthier than when he entered.

  In truth, he could have only become a “caretaker of corpses” in these bowels of the village, since the rest of Veranesi would not have allowed him anywhere near their deceased. Veranesi was a place that studied, embraced, and even venerated death, and anyone who did not have to beg Craven’s services prayed he did not exist.

  His name was not Craven, but he did not remember, or even know, his birth name. Craven was his death name—the name his mother gave him as she died of dysentery in his arms, telling him feverish stories of his past and future lives on the Night of Demons.

  Craven could not remember how old he had been then. He might have just become a teenager, but he doubted it. He could only judge by his memories of being strong enough to hold his mother on a muddy bank of the Ganges, keeping her torso above the water line as she clutched and screeched at him.

  He could have been as young as five, he decided, since, by then, his mother was little more than a skeleton covered in parched, paper-thin flesh. As she contorted and writhed in his spasming arms—pumping blood, mucous, water, and feces into the blessedly dirty river from her submerged lower half—she vomited out her hysterical demands and dire warnings.

  His father was Mahasona, she swore—the most feared demon, the one whose very name meant vileness.

  “That is your fate, that is your destiny, that is your calling,” she babbled at him. “You cannot escape it, you cannot avoid it, you cannot deny it.”

  When she had finally become very quiet, still clutching at him with claws that seemed sculpted by the gods upon him, he simply loosened his muscles until the Ganges’s mighty current pulled her away. The scratches her broken nails left in his flesh festered for what seemed like months.

  The woman had been right. For a pitifully short time, Craven had tried to find a way out of his doom, but each time it seemed as if he might make a human connection, the internal and external disease his parents had infected him with made him a source of revulsion at best, shame at worst. All too soon, he embraced his fate and went in search of his father.

  To his surprise, and then quickly his fear, it did not take long. In the cramped recesses of every town and village he was forced to hide in, the name of the “Great Demon” could be heard. To Craven’s addled mind, it was as if he was following whispers that floated in the fusty air like stinging nettles.

  By the time he had reached Veranesi, their meeting seemed preordained. Even before then, Craven accepted that he was seeking his master, not his father. And his master was the first man he set eyes upon once he stepped onto the stones of the rocky graveyard on the outskirts of the city. As the legends said, his master was a fierce giant with the head of a bear and the eyes of a tiger. From deep within his cowled robe, Craven heard him say but a single instruction.

  “Serve me well.”

  Then he walked away, deep into Veranesi, bringing the souls, skins, and skulls of his victims behind him like the folds of a draping cape.

  Every year since then, Craven brought his master an offering on the Night of the Demon. At first it was the freshest corpse he had collected. Initially, he had tried sneaking into the hovels of the recently deceased and stealing the bodies, but the family members who caught him—rather than have him beaten or arrested—had begged him to complete his task, with their repulsed consent.

  Eventually, emboldened by his master’s acceptance of his offerings, Craven dared make one request: “Free me.”

  It seemed as if his master ignored him, but Craven knew he did not. Each year, on the Night of the Demon, he gave his offering and made his request. But, as the years wore on, his master grew bored.

  “Fresher, stronger, younger,” Craven had heard him say. Or maybe he heard the master think it—he was never sure.

  Soon, Craven began experimenting in preservation, trying to keep the youngest bodies fresher longer, littering his abattoir with his experiments in different stages of decomposition.

  The results satisfied his master for a time—too short a time—but then the demand for more potent offerings returned.

  As horrified as the other slum-dwellers were, none dared approach Craven. Yet none rebuffed him when he appeared to take their deceased from them. Eventually, however, a young doctor dared visit, emboldened by the whispers that had reached him. Other doctors came later, amazed at the tales told by the first man.

  All seemed impress
ed by Craven’s skills, if not his appearance and rancid odor. There were no complaints about his demeanor, however. In stories told around café tables, Craven’s manners were always described as unfailingly humble, soft-spoke, and polite. Soon, the doctors, too, were giving the man tasks they found too distasteful to complete.

  So that year, on the Night of the Demon, Craven had brought his master a fresh fetus, taken from the corpse of a pregnant girl. For the first time his master had met his eyes, and, self-aware of his own accomplishment, Craven had taken that moment to elucidate his traditional request.

  “Free me of my pain.”

  His master had not answered in thoughts or spoken words, but his eyes had glimmered with understanding, and his expression had set in acknowledgement.

  That had been the year before this, and, as the seasons had passed, and the Night of the Demon had approached, Craven felt as if he were about to be truly born. He had no idea what year it was, or how old that made him. He knew from how the heat and rain was diminishing that the time was coming. Then, he knew from the full moon that it was the very night.

  He stood in his worn, permanently stained, robes. His feet, as always, were unshod. He took a thin canvas sack and pulled it over his shoulder, its contents across his dark, sinewy back. He didn’t bother looking around the long, thin, narrow, stone room that had seemingly been constructed around him by necessity—straw mats in one corner, stone tables in another, drains in the dirt floor that emptied fluid into the Ganges, and discolored buckets of steel and wood everywhere.

  One way or another he knew he would not return to it.

  When he stepped into the night, he did not see his neighbors, and they struggled not to see him. That was especially true on the Night of the Demon, when forgotten souls are remembered and charity is done though prayer. Those who were not hiding would be at Mass or doing vigilance at family graves.

  Craven trudged a path that was not well-worn, but one he knew well. It was a path that stank of offal, flowers, muslin, silk, and ivory. It was a trudge through excrement, food scraps, and rubbish. But the aromas and obstructions grew few and then gave way to nature. It took him out of the residences and into the hills.

  At a place where three paths met he came to a mass of seemingly impassable rocks, but, as he had many times before, found a place that left just enough room for a human to twist themselves through a fissure. Inside was another path that seemed to grow in length and height as he stepped. There was a pulsating glow from around a corner that led him, as it always had.

  As Craven stepped around the outcropping, his master’s inner sanctum lay before him. The foul scent came first, long before he laid eyes on the place. In the triangular-shaped space, the walls were etched with images of an elephant, deer, goat, horse, and sheep. His master sat amid them, on a throne of stone, eating pig flesh and drinking buffalo blood with red hands painted upon his own hands, and red eyes painted above his own eyes.

  He sat behind a bonfire that made the shadows of his inner circle dance. But Craven could only see the shadows. The inner circle was veiled from his still-human eyes. The only other human he could actually perceive was his master’s companion for the evening.

  Each year, there had been another—always the most vital, always the most lovely—stretched out at his feet, as if in a living coma. Craven was certain that others also presented his master an offering on this night—an offering that was far out of his ability to attain.

  But this year, even Craven paused, his pained eyes widening in acknowledgement. The dark-haired girl who was curled between his master’s feet and the fire was the most beautiful he had ever seen—as if her face, shape, and even her essence had been fashioned from his innermost desires.

  “Yes.”

  Craven could not tell whether his master’s voice appeared in his ear or in his mind. It made no difference. By causing him to form it, Craven may have cursed himself to many more years of abject servitude. He quickly and expressionlessly laid his burden down on the other side of the fire and pulled the sack from around it with no hesitation.

  A thin, young, dead girl was revealed. A thin, young, dead, pregnant girl.

  His master lurched in the seat, one hand reaching for her, but then he froze, his expression changing. It was not distaste, but it was clearly a memory of a flavor he had tasted from Craven’s previous offerings.

  “Fresh,” Craven said softly. “No preservatives.”

  His master’s eyes locked on his for the second time. “Tonight?”

  Craven nodded. “Tonight,” he echoed. “Her blood may still be—” But, by the time he said it, his master was already on his offering.

  Craven looked away. He always had when his master fed, and since his master had never corrected him, he didn’t dare change, no matter how impressive the offering. As he waited, however, he did dare something. He dared to dream.

  He, and certainly his master, knew that he could hardly do better than this. Yes, he could bring live offerings, but his would never compare to those of the others, simply by nature of his environment. Certainly he could take younger and richer prey, and, while their terror might make them more exciting to his master, they also both knew that sort of prize would not be long in coming. As long as Craven remained in the bowels, any authority might look the other way. But once he set foot above his station, he risked exposure to everyone. And exposure was the one thing his master would not tolerate.

  But now, tonight, his master might contemplate finally fulfilling his request. Tonight would be the perfect time, when Craven was certain all the circle knew that this was his crowning offering. From here it would only be repetition, or attempts to recapture previous tastes.

  So Craven waited for acknowledgement, even long after the sounds of feeding had diminished—sounds that, to Craven’s ears, included both the carrier and her unborn passenger. He waited, hoping and daring, until all that remained was the crackling of the fire and the moaning of the wind.

  Finally he dared to look back toward the flames. He looked just in time to see his master feeding on his offering’s bowels.

  His mother’s words returned to him. Watch! Watch, for when they devour the still living offal, they devour the life essence!

  His master had never done that before—not in front of him. Now was truly the time to dare more than dream.

  “Master, please,” Craven pleaded in agony. “Fulfill my request. Fulfill it now!”

  Craven found that his eyes had closed in supplication. When he opened them again, he was alone with a dying fire.

  Craven did not know anything else until he found himself standing by the roaring Ganges, directly above the spot where his mother had died. Here, the fifteen-hundred-mile-long river seemed to boil with its own angry life, like the pulsating back of a serpent coiling to strike. As he looked into the broiling current, it seemed to form the face of his mother—both mocking and entreating him.

  He took a step to join her but stopped when he heard another voice in his mind’s ear. A deep, soft, soothing, female voice—one that was nothing like his mother’s, even before the disease gripped her.

  “What did you want?”

  Craven turned to see his master’s companion—the one who had lain at his feet—standing a yard away from him. She wore a thin robe, belted at her waist—a robe that revealed both her shapely legs and astonishing cleavage.

  “From your master,” she continued as if the roar of the river were nonexistent. “What did you want?”

  All he could do was stare. Her beauty was cathartic, even hormonal.

  She smiled, making him feel even weaker. “Do you think I am a dream?” she asked. “Do you think all of this is a dream?” She motioned gracefully at the surroundings. “Do you think it has all been a dream since the moment you became aware?”

  When she glanced away, it gave him the power to answer, despite the gasping w
eakness of his reply. “A nightmare.”

  Her smile widened and became more believable. “For you, I’m sure it was.” She lowered, and shook, her head demurely. “But I can assure you it is not.” When she raised her head again, her eyes locked on his. “When your master was beheaded eons ago, a deity took pity on him, for he was once a proud warrior. The deity quickly replaced it with the first head that could be found.” She shrugged sadly. “But what do gods know, or care, of mortals? The result was grotesque, and people became ill and terrified at the sight. So he took refuge in graveyards—”

  “Like me,” Craven realized.

  The woman’s smile became tender and knowing. “Like you. So tell me. You have told him, so now tell me. What is it you want?”

  Craven was not intimidated by her question. In fact, quite the opposite. He suddenly felt superior to her. She must be Tajabana, he realized. Freshly made. Her awakening hunger must be enormous. It had to be the only reason she would dally with him.

  “Power,” he answered, perhaps being truthful for the first time in his life. But not insightful.

  She laughed. Although he reacted at first as if she were mocking him, he immediately realized that her laughter was honest.

  “Oh, my dear fellow,” she said sympathetically as she took her first step toward him. “You’ll have to do better than that. Now really, what is it that you truly want?”

  “Power,” he repeated as her lovely, elegant hand reached for his scalp. “Over innocence.”

  The forefinger of her other hand caressed his cheek, turning his face from hers. “That’s better,” she assured him, her fragrant breath making his flesh crawl. “Although I cannot guarantee you that, there’s one thing I can do—”

  He was tempted to inquire further, but then her tongue was at the back of his head, at the exact spot where his skull met his spine. Then, there, on the banks of the Ganges River where his mother had died, Craven was set free.