Vampire Mage 4: An Urban Fantasy Harem (The Vampire Mage) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Vampire Mage 4 Copyright © 2019 by Joshua King

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Joshua King

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joshua King.

  1st Edition

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  Contents

  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

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  About the Author

  Vampire Mage 4

  Book 4 in the Vampire Mage Series

  Joshua King

  1

  "What do you mean he knows?"

  Bex’s eyes were wide as they stared back at me. I kept mine trained on them, forcing him to concentrate on me so he wouldn’t think about dangling over the crumbling edge of the balcony. His hand clung to me, his fingertips digging into my wrist as he flailed, trying to find some grip with his feet on the stone.

  "The Dark Fae King. He knows we’re here in the fortress, and what we’re trying to do. He’s sent his guards after us. We need to get out of here."

  His legs continued to kick, and I reached for him with my other hand to keep from dropping him.

  "If you stop thrashing around, I might be able to save your ass."

  I didn’t know what species had blended together to make Bex, but the chances seemed pretty small that if he slipped out of my hand and smashed onto the rocks below, he was going to bounce back from it. Bex didn’t seem of the Rubber-Made persuasion to me. That meant he needed to get over his eel impersonation and let me get him up. I braced myself to give him another tug. More of the edge of the balcony crumbled beneath my knees and I felt my body tumbling forward. Bex gasped and I launched myself back, hoping I could maintain my grip on him and get us to solid ground again. Twisting to the side, I extended one leg and latched it around the decorative stone spindles on what bit of the balcony rail still remained. It gave me some stability to pull harder on Bex. After one tug, the spindle snapped, and we slipped forward again.

  "Oh, fuck," Bex gasped and his eyes squeezed shut. "You know, right about now would be an awesome time to use that fancy floating skill Stephana was bragging about in the woods."

  I laughed.

  "That one is still pretty new. I don’t think you want to witness what it takes for me to tap into it, either. That and I usually need my hands for it."

  Bex shook his head.

  "I appreciate the courtesy."

  He gave another flail, his legs shooting out to his sides before he twisted around.

  "What are you doing? That is not helpful."

  All at once, Bex let his body relax. He went completely limp and for a second it seemed like he’d passed out, but I felt his hands tighten on my wrist and knew this was his attempt at being cooperative. Gathering my strength, I started yanking him up, moving backwards as I went, so he slid on his belly over the edge of the balcony. He continued to hold onto me even after he was fully up on the balcony, sprawled out with his face flat on the stone. Knowing he probably wasn’t accustomed to dangling quite that way, I gave him a few seconds.

  "Is it over?" he muttered into the stone.

  "Yes."

  His head snapped up and wild eyes darted back and forth. Letting go of me, Bex scrambled to his feet.

  "What the hell happened? How did you end up dangling off the building like that?"

  "As soon as I realized the king knew we were here, I knew you needed to know, so I set out to find you. I've never been here before and don't know how to get through it, so I just ran, hoping to run into you at some point. Unfortunately, one of the hallways I chose fed out onto that balcony, and I fell over the edge."

  "Did you try your flailing to get back up?"

  "It didn't work. There really wasn't much else I could do, so I just started shouting for you."

  "Seems like a pretty solid plan. What were you going to do if I wasn't anywhere near this part of the fortress and didn't hear you?"

  Bex’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Shrugging, he shook his head.

  "There really wasn't any plan other than that. I'm not known for doing my best thinking when I'm dangling from the edge of a building."

  "Are you known for hanging off buildings frequently?"

  "Things happen."

  Now it was my turn to shrug.

  "Fair enough. If the Dark Fey King knows we're here, we are in a lot more danger than we thought."

  "Exactly. That's why I said we need to get out of here. Now."

  "We can't just leave. The women are still missing, and we have to find out what the dark side took from the other village so we can move through the portal. This is the path Malakan wanted us to take, we have to see it through."

  By the look on his face, I could tell this wasn't what Bex wanted to hear, but he quickly relented.

  "Then you know I'm here with you. You have my loyalty, whatever it takes."

  "Where are Aurora and Stephana?"

  "When we were in the courtyard fighting the guards after Ashe was taken, they both split off from me. All of us went into the fortress at different angles. I didn't know if I should follow either one of them or go in on my own, so I went to the direction you did to try to find you."

  "No one's been able to find Ashe?"

  "No. I haven't seen any of them since we were in the courtyard."

  "Neither have I. We need to find her and the other women and figure out how to get to the center of the fortress to the king’s collection. If he knows we're here, he probably knows what we are after, and he might take steps to protect it. I don't care what he tries to do. He doesn't realize who he's fucking with."

  At this point, being in the fortress and finding the collection was about far more than just earning our way through the portal. That was the original intention for coming here and I still knew it was what we needed to do, but this went beyond that. As soon as the guards took Ashe, they crossed a line. They had stolen her right from in front of me. They had threatened the rest of us. I was pissed. They were obviously underestimating us, and I was more than happy to rise to the occasion to show them exactly what we were capable of.

  "What do we do?" Bex asked.

  "The first thing we need to do is find out where each of the women are. If we can isolate their
locations, we can go to them. It's going to be better for all of us to stay together as much as possible. Especially now that the king knows we're here, he's going to send his forces after us, and we'll be stronger fighting as a unit rather than taking on an unfamiliar place one by one."

  Drawing in a breath to try to calm myself, I first tried to connect with Ashe. She was the one I was most worried about. The image of her being dragged away by the Dark Fae guards made my fists clench and my skin prickle with heat. She was likely in the most danger, which meant finding her had to be the top priority. My mind sought her out the same way it did when she was running through the industrial site. I hoped to connect quickly, to meld with her mind so I could see through her eyes and know where they'd put her. After several seconds, nothing had changed. She felt distant and blocked off from me, and that only made me worry more. Next, I reached out to Aurora. Our minds blended almost instantly and the sound of her breath in my ears was a relief. My eyes joined hers in scanning thick stone walls to either side. At first it looked exactly like the hallways I had followed to get to the balcony, then I noticed jagged blue chips like broken glass embedded along the wall. That set her surroundings apart from where Bex and I were, and I tucked the detail away before reluctantly pulling away from her and searching for Stephana.

  Connecting with her wasn't as easy as it was with Aurora. I fought to get into her mind. Flashes burst in front of my eyes, but I couldn't get hold of them for long enough to see what she was seeing.

  "Anything?" Bex asked.

  I shook my head.

  "Some, but not enough to know where she is. I could see where Aurora is, but it's harder with Stephana. It's like she's going in and out. I can't hold onto her. I wish they could communicate back with me, so that she could hear what I was thinking."

  "She can't?"

  "None of them can."

  "I still don't really understand all this."

  "I'll make sure you get an annotated version of the textbook series. A lot of this is still new to me, too. What I learned is because of my warlock blood, having sex with a woman gives me a connection to her. It lets me know what she's thinking and sometimes what she's feeling. Just recently it started letting me see through their eyes so I'm able to experience the same things they are experiencing."

  "But they can't do the same to you."

  "No. Since none of them are warlocks, the link only goes one way. It would be so much easier if it went both ways and we could communicate that way."

  "Maybe it's something you can teach them."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Malakan taught Aurora to make the cabin appear using an incantation."

  "She explained that. It's not that she can use magic, it's that the words she says work this spell he put into place."

  "According to him. What if he just didn't want her knowing he was actually teaching her magic? and even if that wasn't what he was doing, what's to say you can't strengthen the link between yourself and the women?"

  Before I could say anything else to him, I heard footsteps coming in our direction. For a brief second I was hopeful it was one of the women, but I quickly realized the steps were too loud and heavy, and there were too many of them to be just one of the women. Bex and I started for the hallway, but two hulking Dark Fey guards stepped into the entryway, completely blocking our path. Their wings hung down their backs, bound with leather straps. I noticed scars along the edges, speaking to some long-ago battle. Their expressions were somehow both ferocious and empty as they stared at us, as though they were filled with blind rage and bloodlust they were happy to assuage on anyone for any reason.

  Each of the guards held a long staff in their hand. Rocks sharpened to lethal points were lashed to either end with narrow leather straps not unlike the ones that bound their wings. Further narrow straps wrapped around the staff and a row of polished pebbles dangled along the side. These appeared to be the only weapons the guards had brought with them, but that brought me no comfort. When I first came to the underworld, I might have been arrogant enough to laugh at men who came to battle with so little. Since then I learned it wasn't always the ones who looked the most lethal who should elicit the most concern. When a warrior came to battle with nothing in their hands, it meant their hands were their weapons.

  Strategy rushed through my mind as quickly as I could think it through. The guards standing at the entryway to the fortress meant we were stuck outside on the rapidly crumbling balcony. If we weren't careful, Bex and I could both tumble off the edge. There was a slight possibility I could maneuver myself to catch him before he hit the ground, but even though I knew I'd recover from the impact, it wasn't something I was eager to try. Instead, we needed to fight these two men off and make our way into the building before they were able to force us off the balcony.

  One of the guards took a lunging step toward me, his hands quickly flipping the staff, so the pointed stone came at my throat. In one swift motion I ducked out of the way and reached up to wrap my hand around the staff. The guard wasn't discouraged. He yanked up on the staff to try to shove me away and I tightened my grip, jumping up to kick the guard in the stomach. Him stumbling back seemed to spark his companion and out of the corner of my eye I saw the second guard rush Bex. The former spy dropped down and rolled, forcing the guard to jump over him. It kept him away from the crumbling edge and put him at the vantage point of being able to pounce on the guard, wrapping an arm around the man's knees to knock them out from under him. The guard dropped hard, his head cracking against the ground behind him, but his hand wouldn’t release the spear. In front of me, the guard coming for me lifted the spear up and brought it down hard, smashing it onto my shoulder. Pain shot up the side of my neck. The second guard brought his own staff around to hit Bex on the side of the head, sending him crashing to the side. His body skidded toward the railing and I let go of the spear, leaving the guard to go to Bex.

  My hand grabbed onto Bex’s shirt and I pulled him across the balcony floor as I whipped back around. Sweeping down, I reached for one of the stone spindles. When Bex was far enough away from the edge, I channeled my vampire strength to snap the stone piece out of place. Smashing it across the side of the guard’s face brought a rivulet of blood to trickle as he struggled to stay on his feet. While he was still disoriented, I ran up the side of the fortress and swung forward to kick the guard in the back of the head. He stumbled forward, crashing into the railing so his head and shoulder slipped through the gap created by the missing spindle. He struggled to pull himself back up and the second guard moved to help him. I rushed forward and grabbed the spears, finally pulling them from the hands of the distracted guards. Swift cracks against their backs took the crouching guards to their faces on the stone floor. Without hesitating long enough to think it through, I gathered a blast of magic inside my chest and shot it forward from one hand, obliterating the stone railing and starting the edge crumbling again. Bex and I dove off the balcony through the open entryway into the hall.

  I didn’t look back. We didn’t slow as we made our way deeper into the fortress. The hall seemed to build itself at our feet as we went, becoming more complicated and twisted the further we went. I tried to keep track of the turns and details of what I was seeing as we ran, wanting to remember what we’d already seen. The further we went, the more confusing the catacomb of rooms, alcoves, and corridors became. My mind went to the bags we’d left behind at the Fae village. Not for the first time since we left, I wished we had them with us. The paper and pencil Malakan left for us would have been helpful. Tapping back into my days of sketching treasure maps of the backyard could help the twisting hallways from becoming overwhelming. I hadn’t had many plans for my future when I showed up in the Underworld, but getting lost in the fortress and spending the rest of my life wandering the halls wasn’t exactly appealing.

  2

  I was positive we'd already gone down this hallway at least three times and my frustration levels were reaching a boiling point. The
feeling of not knowing where I was going was bad enough. Knowing my women were scattered throughout the fortress, likely in serious danger, and I couldn't get to them, was enough to push me to the very edge of my sanity. It was pure torment not being able to find them, being torn between the mission that brought me here and the loyalty I had for them.

  Reaching into the women's minds gave me few new details to go on. Aurora was no longer in the area of the fortress with the blue pieces of glass embedded in the walls and now moved through a narrow passage with white walls that sparkled like sand. The further she went, the tighter the passage twisted around itself until it seemed she was coiling in around a never-ending circle. Her steps got faster as she went, and I could feel her anxiety building as the building twisted. The flashes of Stephana's thoughts were farther between, showing me nothing more than dark stone around her. I still couldn't connect with Ashe.

  As Bex and I moved further down the corridor, I was on edge, my senses vigilant, waiting for the next attack by the guards. Countless locked doors on either side of us spoke to unseen rooms while open entryways showed us cavernous spaces studded with heavy furniture and thick, faded rugs and tapestries. My focus was only on getting through the fortress and finding the collection, but suddenly I felt like something grabbed inside my chest and started pulling me down the corridor. I was being drawn toward a room at the end of the hall, unable to resist the urge to go inside and see what was there. As I got closer, Bex called out from behind me, trying to stop me.