Voltana & the Rogue Vamps (The Voltana Adventures Book 1)

  Voltana & the Rogue Vamps

  The Voltana Adventures: Book 1

  C.M. Blackwood

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by C.M. Blackwood.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.

  Chapter 1

  Shadow City was not a place to wander unaccompanied past dusk – especially when you were twenty-five, five-foot-four, slim and incredibly attractive. So naturally, Andrea De Luca dressed in high-heeled boots, a tube top, and a miniskirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs, then sashayed out into the street in front of her tenement at midnight. The summer night was hot and sticky, cloying to her as if she’d just dropped into a jar of peanut butter.

  Andi had her switchblade tucked into one boot, and her cell phone in the other. Her miniskirt wasn’t exactly built for extra cargo, but it worked wonders when a buyer came to close a deal. Sometimes, they were so preoccupied with checking her out that they even fell for a twenty-five percent price markup.

  Her long hair was twisted into tight dreadlocks that she wore well, her alcoholic, cokehead mother having been half-Jamaican. Before she took one too many hits on the bathroom floor one night, anyway. But hey, what’s life if you ain’t livin’ it, right? Yeah, that’s probably what all the rock stars say right before they overdose.

  Andi went down the sidewalk, demon-eyeing the men who looked at her sideways. She hated people checking her out, nowadays. Ever since Carmen left her.

  They’d been together for five years, through thick and thin. Andi had thought that nothing could divide them – until one cold winter morning, she woke up to find her bed empty, and a bag containing one hundred thousand dollars vanished.

  Not that Andi was too worried about the men who eyed her. If they did more than look, she had that knife in her boot to do the trick. Most of them didn’t even bother to glance in her direction, anyway. They knew perfectly well who she was. She was one of the top drug pushers for the Jack Street Hounds, one of the city’s more prominent gangs. Everybody knew that if they touched her, she’d probably mess ‘em up – and if she didn’t, Rocko sure as hell would.

  Rocko came from a large Puerto Rican clan, and family was everything to him. He was incredibly protective of Andi, almost like a big brother. Which was actually kind of nice, since her real brother was a sniveling junkie dirtbag who stole from her every chance he got. To sweeten the pot, he was the only family she had. She must have drawn the short straw on that one.

  She turned down Jack Street, clacking along the cracked, uneven sidewalk in her heeled boots, her dreads swaying with a comfortable weight around her shoulders. The side door to the warehouse was open, and she went right in. No one around here was stupid enough to even think of entering uninvited. Rocko would kill them without a second thought, and then he would probably eat their livers for breakfast. Whether he paired them with some fava beans and a nice chianti would depend on his mood at the time.

  Andi caught sight of Rocko at the long metal table at the back of the warehouse, logging a large quantity of new bricks in his catalog book, his brow covered with sweat from the humid air. He was a huge guy, almost as big as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – kind of ironic, given that his name was Rocko – and he always wore tight white T-shirts that showed off his muscles.

  “Hey, girl!” he shouted across the warehouse, smiling brightly. He might have been a tough-as-nails gangster, but he never pretended he wasn’t happy to see Andi. Which, of course, was one of the things Andi loved most about him.

  “Who’s coming to pick up the stuff?” she asked, pulling up a chair beside him.

  “Iggy J,” he answered, eyeing her clothes sideways. “So it looks like you picked the right outfit. You know Iggy has the hots for you.”

  “Is it my fault I’m bangin’?” Andi inquired with a chuckle. “The guy should train his junk not to stand up at the first sign of ass.”

  “Word,” Rocko agreed with a laugh of his own. “Anyway, he’ll be here around midnight.”

  Rocko pushed aside some of the bricks he’d already logged, wiping his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand. The Hounds made a killing in the drug business, because they bought pasta – the dried material farmers created by pressing coca leaves through a complicated process – directly from the Colombians, then used their own lab to turn the pasta into coke. No other gang in the area had their own lab, but Rocko did, and he was even fully versed in the process of the drug’s production. You could almost say he was a scientist.

  “How much is Iggy buying?” Andi asked.

  “Ten bricks,” Rocko answered with a grin. “250 Gs.”

  He glanced up at Andi and showed a slyer smile. “That is,” he added, “unless you can manage to convince him that we’ve had a price increase.”

  “No doubt,” Andi said lightly. “I got this.”

  Her face clouded over with sadness, as it sometimes did at unexpected moments. “Better not let me hold onto the money for you, though,” she added. “Carmen might come back just to steal it.”

  Rocko looked at her with a sympathetic expression. “Listen, li’l mama,” he said. “You gotta stop thinking about that ho. She ain’t worth your time and energy. What she did, that’s on her – and you know that I don’t blame you, even one little bit.”

  Andi just stared at him, knowing how deeply he meant those words. But for some reason, she’d never been able to stop blaming herself. Maybe she just felt stupid for trusting Carmen. That had been the first time she’d ever picked up so much money for Rocko, and because it was so late at night, she’d planned on giving it to him first thing the next morning. Trouble was, when morning came – the money had disappeared, and Carmen with it.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how hard you’ve been working lately,” Rocko said, obviously trying to break Andi’s sudden depression. “You brought me three high rollers last week alone. You’ve got a big bonus coming your way, mamacita. Fifty Gs in your pocket before the night is through.”

  Andi’s eyes widened, and she practically licked her lips in anticipation. If Rocko had been trying to cheer her up, he’d done a hell of a good job. “Thanks, bro,” she said with genuine affection, reaching out to bump Rocko’s fist.

  “You never have to thank me, mama,” Rocko reminded her, smiling with brotherly love. “I got your back. Always remember that.”

  “I know it, Rock,” she told him. “I know.”

  This tender little moment, however, was suddenly interrupted by the occurrence of something extremely freaking weird. The entire roll-up door of the warehouse, which had been closed tight, just burst inward without warning, as if it had been blown down by hurricane-force winds.

  But of course it was no hurricane. The culprits were quick to show themselves – and Andi and Rocko scowled in disgust.

  Vampires. Half a dozen of them. They looked emaciated, their bones pressed against their pale flesh, their hands shaking from withdrawal. They were strung out, there was no denying it.

  Now, this might sound a little odd – but Shadow City was overrun with vampires. And no, there weren’t any werewolves. This was no Twilight-y vamps vs. wolves stuff. There were only vamps. And t
hey were a problem.

  Now, most people in Shadow City had no idea that vampires existed. It was one of those “vampire codes” – the humans are not to know of our existence, blah blah blah.

  But vampires were exactly like humans. There were the ones who didn’t cause trouble, and there were the ones who did. Problem vampires used drugs to supplement the blood they fed on to get high. Most of them knew better than to come after Rocko, but that didn’t mean Andi hadn’t seen her fair share of street dealers murdered by junkie vamps.

  The vamps who’d just come into the warehouse obviously wanted coke. And they must have been desperate, if they were busting down Rocko’s door looking for the stuff. They knew better than to come here, but they obviously didn’t care.

  Rocko rose slowly from his seat, staring coldly at what appeared to be the leader of the vamps. He was crazy tall, with short blond hair, wearing a long black leather jacket. He looked just like Spike from Buffy the frigging Vampire Slayer, and he seemed pretty damned proud of that fact.

  “What the hell, homie?” Rocko inquired in a low, dangerous voice.

  “Give us those bricks,” the vamp demanded, indicating the bags on the metal table.

  “Like hell I will,” Rocko replied, turning his head towards a door in the back wall. “Tito!” he called. “Malik! I need backup out here.”

  In the blink of an eye, two men appeared, carrying guns and wearing hostile expressions. Tito was Rocko’s younger brother, and he had his back at all times. Malik had been a part of the crew for years and was no less trustworthy. When it came time to throw down, these were the guys you wanted on your team.

  “We got trouble, bro?” Tito asked.

  “Seems like it,” Rocko answered. He looked at Spike’s doppelgänger with narrowed eyes. “Unless you changed your mind, homie?” he inquired pointedly.

  “Afraid not,” the vamp replied with a cruel smile. “We’re taking those bricks, even if we have to kill you to get them. In fact, we’re feeling a little hungry, anyway. So it’s a win-win, really.”

  Andi surveyed the other vamps gathered around the leader. There were three men and two women, all with the same expression on their faces. They were craving a fix, and they clearly did not give a shit what they had to do to get it. Their leader started moving forward towards the metal table, and they followed suit.

  “You have to shoot them in the heart to kill them,” Rocko said without fear. “Aim straight, mi familia. Let’s do this.”

  He pulled his own gun out of his belt, taking another out from under the table to give to Andi. She wasn’t all that fond of guns – she much preferred her knife – but she didn’t think it would be too easy to decapitate a vamp with a switchblade, so she accepted the weapon and nodded.

  She was no coward, and she never backed down from a fight, but the truth was that she’d never killed anyone before. Rocko, Tito and Malik had all killed at least once. Rocko had the most hits under his belt. When a deal went south, he cleaned it up, and he made sure there was no evidence left to be traced back to the gang.

  Still, despite the fact that she’d never taken a life, Andi certainly wasn’t about to run into the back and let the guys do the dirty work now. Hells to the no. Besides – these were just vampires. It wasn’t wrong to kill them.

  Right?

  Rocko stepped around the table to protect the coke, aiming his pistol at the lead vamp. He was a perfect shot, so there was no doubt about his aim. He fired directly into the vamp’s chest – but nothing happened. The vamp showed that same cruel smile from before, exposing his sharp fangs.

  “Kevlar,” he explained. “Usually, I’m not one for human innovations, but these bulletproof vests come in pretty handy.”

  For the first time, fear flickered across Rocko’s strong face. It was obvious his mind was working quickly, trying to come up with some way out of this fucked-up situation, but he seemed to be drawing a blank.

  Andi had an idea. It was a long shot, but it was all she had. She remembered the old machete on the wall in the back, brought to the States from Colombia by Rocko’s great-grandfather, who’d been a harvester of sugarcane. The vamps might have been wearing Kevlar to protect their hearts from bullets, but they couldn’t save their necks from a machete.

  Andi tossed the gun on the table and ran into the back. She heard the lead vamp call after her. “What’s the matter, little girl? Are you scared?”

  His companions laughed, and Andi raged inwardly. But she remained focused, running for the machete. She yanked it down off the wall in the big room where the crew kept their TV, then turned around and ran back out into the warehouse. Rocko looked over at her, and his face filled with hope when he saw the machete. “Give it to me,” he said, holding out his hand for the weapon.

  She hurried to him and passed it over. It was better off in his hands, anyway. He was much stronger than her, and he’d be a lot more likely to get the blade all the way through the vampires’ necks. It didn’t exactly sound like the most fun thing in the world to have to do – hell, paying taxes might have been more of a kick – but if there was one thing about Rocko, he was down for what needed to be done, and he didn’t quit until he’d finished. Andi didn’t know if he could do this, but she knew that he was going to try.

  Armed with that machete, the guy actually looked like the Rock in one of those cheesy action movies. Cheesy or not, though, they’re usually pretty good. Good old Dwayne never fails to give you a show – and it didn’t look like Rocko was going to fail, either.

  “You think you’re going to kill us all with that thing?” Blondie Vamp asked with a dry laugh. “Before we can kill you? You’re dreaming, Muscle Man.”

  “Mama always did say I was a dreamer,” Rocko replied with a wry grin. “But then – my mama drives the hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes I bought her, while you break into people’s warehouses on foot to steal blow. So I’m not really all that offended.”

  The lead vamp hissed at Rocko and bared his teeth, then flew at him. Rocko pulled back the machete in his strong arm, and with a single, fluid slice through the air, he removed Blondie’s head.

  The head fell to the floor with a splat, and the body dropped beside it, leaking dark blood everywhere. Everyone just stared for a minute. And then – the shit-storm commenced.

  Two of the male vamps rushed Rocko, while the two women and the third guy came at Andi, Tito and Malik. Andi picked up the gun she’d tossed earlier, knowing she couldn’t kill the vampires, but trying to slow them down by aiming for their faces, namely their eyes.

  It was a weird feeling, shooting someone for the first time. Even if they were only vampires. It just felt . . . unnatural.

  Tito and Malik followed Andi’s lead, and they managed to slow down two of the vamps, but one of the women was a feral bitch, and she got a hold of Malik. With a single, gut-wrenching twist, she snapped his neck, and he fell dead to the concrete floor.

  Swallowing down her fear and anger, Andi glanced towards Rocko, their last hope. He’d managed to chop off one of the other vamps’ heads, and was now only tangling with one, leaving Andi and Tito shooting at three. But then, at just about the same time, Andi’s and Tito’s clips emptied out, depriving them of ammunition. Tito had another clip, but Andi didn’t. Tito tried to toss her an extra clip, but it fell to the floor as one of the female vamps rushed her.

  Andi and the vamp fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Andi had never touched a vampire before, and it wasn’t as cold as she would have imagined. Her skin was cool, but not frigid. Not that that was one of the biggest things on her mind as the vampire lay on top of her, gnashing her sharp teeth in her face.

  Andi used every ounce of her strength to keep the crazy vamp at bay, but when she heard Tito’s strangled cry, she craned her neck to look behind her. He was on the floor, too, with the other two vamps attacking him. Andi tried to see Rocko, but the psycho bitch assaulting her was blocking her view.

  This was definitely not good. This was the polar op
posite of a good situation. It was beginning to look like they were completely and totally screwed – and Andi wasn’t the type of person to throw in the towel before the time came. But she had no weapons to fight with, Tito was screaming bloody murder behind her, and the strength in her arms was giving out. Finally, the vamp on top of her wore her down, pushing her arms flat against her chest and banging her head against the floor.

  She closed her eyes, blocking out everything around her. Sounds became muffled and muted. She felt sharp teeth at her throat, ripping her tender flesh. Hot blood poured down her chest.

  She felt sure that she was going to die. There was no way around it. But then, suddenly – there was a spark. A flash. Like lightning.

  The nasty vamp was torn away from Andi’s throat, and she shot her hands up to the open wounds to try and stanch the flow of blood. But, before she even knew what was happening, someone shoved her hands away from her throat and clamped their own over it. She felt a surge of wild heat – like rogue electricity, so much hotter than the simple heat of the night – and then the hands disappeared. She touched her throat gingerly, and she found that the wounds were closed. Well, they were cauterized. By something she couldn’t explain.

  She wanted to know what was going on. She wanted to know what was happening to her friends. But her strength was gone, and she felt her eyes slipping shut. She clawed at the concrete floor, blinking hard in a last desperate attempt to look for Rocko, but it was over. She passed out hard.

  Chapter 2

  She woke up in a huge bed in a bright room. It was immediately obvious that the place where she currently found herself had central air conditioning, because the temperature was cool and comfortable. The curtains at the window were already open, presumably so that she would be able to take in her surroundings. The room was massive, with a beautiful Oriental carpet on the floor that was woven in a dark pattern. Everything else was light-colored: eggshell walls and cream bedding.