Sanctuary (Forsaken Realms Trilogy) Read online

  SANCTUARY

  Book One of the

  Forsaken Realms Trilogy

  By: Lillian Sage

  SANCTUARY

  By: Lillian Sage

  Published By Avery & Co. Publishing

  New York, NY USA

  ISBN 0-9725604-6-7

  First Edition

  Copyright © Lillian Sage and Avery & Co. Publishing

  http://www.LillianSage.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  GLOSSARY OF CHARACTERS

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  For updates on the Forsaken Realms Trilogy, and to be notified when the next book is released, sign up for my free email newsletter at ForsakenRealms.com

  To contact me or follow my other books, check out my website at LillianSage.com

  And be sure to follow me on Facebook, and Twitter.

  CHAPTER ONE

  He waited...

  It was well past the time when he should be safely underground for the night yet something compelled him. The distant sky flickered eerily with the hint of dawn; but still Alexander waited...

  In the distance a glimmer of movement caught his eye, and a scent...that scent...caught in his nostrils. The smell stirred something long dead within him, like the hint of something lost, or something never fully held.

  At that moment the first rays of dawn broke majestically across the skyline and Alexander instinctively ducked behind the nearest building, protecting himself momentarily from the deadly sunlight that meant instant death to his kind.

  Unhurriedly, he pulled out his smartphone and tapped a few times, sending the signal that would quickly bring safety.

  Within moments a long silent limousine pulled up and the door opened.

  "My Lord Graves..." intoned the slight figure from within.

  As he ducked into the protective walls of the limo, Alexander cast one last furtive glance towards the warehouse across the street but it now appeared completely empty; no trace of the haunting scent remained.

  He nodded the command to depart and the car glided away.

  * * *

  His name was Alexander Graves and he was the powerful head of the House of Graves, which for over 400 years had ruled both the Elder Council as well as his own Medai Clan.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, and eternally young; Alexander resonated an air of command that one felt as soon as he walked into a room.

  The burdens of absolute rule had not taken a toll on him; quite the opposite, centuries of authority had merely made him sharper, wiser, and more deadly.

  As the car pulled into the underground garage of the massive glass and steel high rise building that was both his home and business headquarters, Alexander pondered the previous night's work.

  It was folly, he knew that. Now was the absolute worst time for this sort of nonsense...

  The global economy had been in recession for several years affecting virtually all aspects of his sprawling business empire, and the Clans had begun to grow restless.

  As of yet, no outright rebellion had reared its head, but the grumblings had become imperceptibly louder and Alexander would need to take steps soon to quell the ranks or face almost certain destruction from within.

  Only the powerful came to rule their own House, and only the most elite Houses came to rule their Clan. Few could fathom the ruthlessness needed to maintain supremacy over the entire Council.

  Yet lately the maneuvering for power seemed less important to Alexander and for the first time in his long life, he knew uncertainty.

  "It's just boredom," thought Alexander. "The curse of the long-lived".

  But now he knew it was something else. Something far more deadly that could topple everything he'd spent centuries building. That scent...

  The thought troubled him.

  By now the sun would be fully shining and Alexander needed to rest. The Council was scheduled to meet tonight and he'd need all his energy to maintain order, and bend the Elders to his will.

  Although they may be more or less civilized today, the Council was still made up of creatures who's base instinct was to slaughter and devour everything in their path. A killer in an Armani suit was still a killer.

  Vampires, like humans, vary from person to person. They all share a certain capacity for cruelty that could manifest itself in many unexpected ways.

  To be sure, the Elders respected a certain etiquette whenever they gathered together for Board meetings, but no one ever truly knew what would happen...

  The thought made Alexander smile as he closed the door to his luxurious sun-proof sealed apartment.

  With a quick look around to make sure everything seemed to be in order, he climbed into bed and drifted off to sleeplessness, haunted still by a scent...

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Be careful out there Natalia, the wind has a foul taste to it tonight." whispered Tym.

  For several months he'd been complaining about an uneasy feeling to anyone who would listen.

  "It's just hunger, Tym has always been superstitious." thought Natalia.

  "Don't worry, when have I ever not been careful?" she murmured over her shoulder as she crawled out of the sewer and into the dusky beginning of night.

  She was one of the Forsaken; Clanless wanderers forced to live on the fringes of Vampire society. Hunted by the other Kindred, they maintained a desperate life wherever they could.

  Natalia's family lived deep within the sewers where they survived on the blood from rats and whatever else found its way deep beneath the ground.

  Lately the rats had grown few, and Natalia needed to venture out to hunt for something more substantial or her family would starve.

  Any trip above ground was dangerous, but rumor had it that the Elder Council was in town for a Board meeting tomorrow, so wandering out tonight could prove fatal...yet her family needed food.

  As she moved warily down the street, she silently cursed the Medai and their war that had unified the Clans centuries earlier by forging a common cause against the Forsaken.

  Natalia was young when the war had started over 400 years ago, but she remembered. She remembered the night when most of her family were systematically wiped out without mercy.

  She remembered the shame that burned as she fled; knowing that everyone she knew and loved had died to make sure she could escape.

  Her "father", the vampire who had originally turned her, was a powerful leader and Natalia had been his heir. Emotion was rare in most Vampires, but the Forsaken had always been a little strange by Vampire standards and Natalia's sire had treated her like a true daughter.

  She missed him fiercely.

  Now she had a new family made up of a handful of straggling Forsaken who had banded together out of desperation and forged themselves into a sort of family.

  They relied on each other and they survived.

  There were other Forsaken out there, but no one was really sure exactly how many or where. At most there were only small groups spread throughout the wide world here and there. Most Forsaken lived alone and scratched out their meager lives as best they could.

&nb
sp; Natalia didn't want to accept the fact that her own father was partially responsible for the war.

  For centuries he had been gathering other clanless Vampires into a sort of loose knit society that had grown stronger, richer, and more politically powerful...strong enough to begin openly threatening the interests of even the powerful Medai Clan.

  But the Medai were not to be threatened... and eventually they acted.

  The Forsaken, as they became known after the culling, had grown too powerful for any one clan to destroy which was why Natalia's father had been caught unawares.

  No one dreamed that the Medai could unify all the Clans against the Forsaken because their interests were too widely disparate and their feud's too ancient.

  But that is exactly what had happened, and without a whisper of warning.

  The only solace that Natalia had was the fact that her father had killed Ruark the head of the Medai Clan, who had been maneuvered into leading the final assault on the Forsaken by the other Clans who eventually came to make up the Elder Council.

  But it didn't really matter in the end. Natalia's father was so greatly weakened during his final combat with Ruark that he was quickly dispatched by Medai foot soldiers afterwards.

  And anyway, destroying Ruark had only elevated his son Alexander to command, and no Vampire before or since was as brilliant, deadly, and ruthlessly competent as Alexander.

  In the years following the culling, he managed to forge his father's original loose alliance of Clans into the world-wide powerhouse that it was today...The Elder Council.

  And the scattered remnants of the Forsaken were all but swept away.

  But tonight was not the time to sulk. Her family needed food and the Council was in town which meant all their retainers and support staff would be out looking for entertainment.

  And hunting Forsaken was a national sport to Council members...

  She pulled her mind out of the gutter and began to focus on the task at hand.

  * * *

  As the hours ticked by, Natalia became more and more desperate. She'd come across a few skinny cats, and a few rats...but nothing that would sustain her entire family.

  She needed human blood but dared not venture too close to the heart of the city. Time was running out though, so she began to edge closer to the warehouse district.

  It was less likely she'd run into a Council member in such a low rent neighborhood, but she didn't want to take any chances.

  She was confident in her ability to defend herself. In fact, she was one of the more skilled fighters alive today. But against a group of five or more she knew her chances would be slim. Best to keep a low profile and hope that her luck would stay with her.

  The sun would be up soon, but she knew of a warehouse nearby with direct access to the sewers where she could make her way back to her family.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught what might have been movement. She began to move towards it, but the scent was all wrong. It wasn't remotely human, nor was it any of the animals one would expect to find in the warehouse district.

  Natalia shivered slightly as realization struck.

  "Time to go." she thought to herself as she ducked into the warehouse that would lead back to the sewer and the relative safety of her family.

  She'd have to try again the next night.

  In the skies above the warehouse, the first rays of dawn broke majestically across the skyline and moments later a limousine pulled up...

  CHAPTER THREE

  The most powerful members of the Council began to file out of the massive conference room atop Medai corporate headquarters, followed by the rest of the Council as befitted their rank.

  Moments later Alexander sat alone at the head of the massive black marble conference table, slowly strumming his fingers across the surface; lost in thought.

  A side door slid open and in walked Gabriel, Alexander's long standing assistant and the closest thing he had to a friend...if anyone in his position could afford to have friends.

  "That went smoothly." noted Gabriel.

  "Too smoothly" shot back Alexander, "With things they way they are in the world right now, the Council should have been much more vocal. What do our eyes and ears within the Clans say?"

  "Much as always" clipped Gabriel "the Elders grumble but nothing serious. Business is down, and no one's particularly happy. Why, what's on your mind?"

  "I'm not sure yet." murmured Alexander almost to himself.

  "Does this have something to do with where you've been the last few nights? It's not like you to go wandering alone." quipped Gabriel "Why won't you tell me what you've been up to?"

  Alexander returned a stare that would have turned Gabriel's blood to ice, if he still had any.

  "Fine, fine, I won't ask again..." demurred Gabriel "What do you want me to do about the Elders, should I increase surveillance?"

  "Do nothing...yet." commanded Alexander as he stood up from the massive conference table and began to walk back to his office.

  As he walked along the polished corridors, his mind wandered back over the Council meeting that had just taken place. The Elders were too compliant, too agreeable throughout the meeting. It could only mean that some plot was underway.

  That didn't bother Alexander, the Elders lived to plot and scheme. What bothered him was the fact that he'd been unable to uncover a hint or whiff of the plot so far. The Elders weren't usually this subtle.

  Before he realized it he was sitting behind the large onyx desk in his luxurious office; deep leather furniture contrasted the flat panel screens covering the far wall showing global business news and stock market quotes non-stop from around the world.

  His mind had wandered back to that scent...

  "I said your wife, the Lady Graves, has requested an appointment for early next week. Do you want me to put her off again?" prodded Gabriel.

  "What?" said Alexander "...ah, my good wife...no let's see what she's up to. How long has it been since we were last graced by her presence?"

  "Must be nigh on a decade now" suggested Gabriel "I'll put her down for Wednesday night - early."

  Alexander and Melyndra had been nominally married for over 300 years though they seldom saw each other. Alexander had married her to cement his control over the Clans and the marriage was merely ceremonial.

  Still, he needed to keep her happy. The last thing he needed was to have his grip over the Clans disrupted by a falling out with his wife. Losing the support of her Clan would be problematic, and coupled with some larger plot within the Council; could be deadly.

  It was just the sort of nonsense that an enterprising Elder might choose to take advantage of.

  Marriage among the Vampires was vastly different than among humans. Love and emotion never entered into it, except sometimes amongst the Forsaken - but they were considered abnormal by civilized Kindred.

  No; marriage was more about alliance and power. Vampires used it to seal treaties and strengthen Houses and Clans within the never ending game of power.

  But still, the formalities must be observed so he'd meet with her next week.

  Pushing thoughts of his wife, the scheming Clans, and that haunting scent from his mind, Alexander Graves settled in and began to focus on running his sprawling global empire...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "Why should we be the ones pushed aside and hunted, I'm tired of living in this filth, I'm tired of the hunger, and I'm tired of living in fear of the Medai. It's not right!" fired Brenden.

  Natalia's family had gathered in their main living chamber which was an overly large sewage connection where several branches of waterways met and offered a bit of a great hall like appearance.

  News of her previous night's hunting failure had spread and the atmosphere was quickly taking on an air of desperation and anger.

  "Right?" shot back Markus "There is no right...there is only power. And we have none."

  "It wasn't always that way..." murmured Tym "...in the beginning we were
all equal and the Gods' blessing shone down among one and all. It was never supposed to be like this..."

  "What do you mean?" asked Natalia as several others snickered in the background.

  "Huh?" answered Tym.

  "You said back in the beginning...what did you mean?" prodded Natalia.

  "I don't know what you're talking about" replied Tym with a slightly dazed look in his eyes, "Did I say something? I...what?". He got up and scurried off.

  Natalia let it pass. Lately Tym had been slipping further and further into what could only be described as madness...though Natalia had never heard of a Vampire going mad before.

  She had thought it was just lack of food, but more and more began to fear it might be something worse.

  "We just need food. Everything will be better then. I'll go back out tonight and I'll find something. The Council should have left town by then and I'll be able to roam further abroad." announced Natalia.

  "No!" bellowed Brenden, "We need something more. We need to fight back. It's been four hundred years. Will we wait another four hundred more before taking back what's ours?"

  Natalia rose, "And how do we do that? We can't begin to march against the Medai, we don't even know how many of us are out there, or where. We can barely feed ourselves. It's madness to even consider!"

  "We need to organize." suggested Markus "Why don't some of us head out and search for the others. There's no food here anyway. I've seen humans using the Internet, we can use it to keep in touch and begin to piece our kind back together. It's better than rotting away".

  "Maybe" mused Natalia, "let me think on it". Lately she had been coming to the same conclusion but was hesitant to divide their already small numbers.

  "What's to think about?" shot back Brenden "Do you want to spend the rest of eternity in this dump? And who made you King anyway?"

  None of her recent family knew Natalia's history. None knew who her father was, but from nearly the beginning they had looked to her as their leader.

  It began when she made a few simple decisions; things like where to find food, when to hide; simple common sense things that came easily to Natalia.

  Over time a natural order had emerged and the others simply followed her lead in everything. There was no formal agreement, just an easy alliance that everyone fell into.