Page 1 of Nyte

Prologue

Blood splattered acrossCy’s face in a torrent of crimson spittle as he drove his stake further into his prisoner’s stomach. Not the heart—not yet. He couldn’t kill this one too soon. There was still more pain he could inflict. He’d enjoy it for as long as he could.

Beside him, Jax observed silently, brown eyes narrowed in assessment, and a cold smile painted across his normally placid face. This, more than anything else, united them. Brought them together as nothing else could.

Nothing felt as good as killing vampyres. Nothing. And it was what Cy did best.

The beast hissed and writhed as it glowered back and forth at the siphons forcibly inserted into the inner crook of both of his arms. Blood pumped through the attached tubing, collecting in barrels at his feet. Soon, they’d be filled. And then, when he was finished, Cy would put the bastard out of his misery. But only after they’d taken every last drop.

There was such sweet irony in draining a vampyre’s blood, in watching the minuscule color drain from its already pale skin. This one, a man with short black hair, glared at him with those cold, red eyes, his expression pulling in a tight, angry grimace, a distortion of his deceptive beauty.

“Fucking ferals!” the vampyre snarled.

Ferals. That was what the vampyres called them, the humans who had escaped captivity. The ones who fought back against vampyre rule.

“How does it feel?” Cy leaned in so he was only inches from the vampyre’s jaws. He wasn’t afraid. Not anymore. Fifteen years after being freed from their imprisonment, the only thing that frightened Cy was going back there, losing the freedom he’d fought so hard for. “How does it feel to be under someone else’s control?”

Held in silver shackles as he was, the vampyre could do nothing to retaliate. Silver was one of the weaknesses the Veritas had learned early, the stuff of legends made real. Silver burned vampyre skin, weakened them. Cy loved the way their flesh sizzled and cracked when silver was held against it. He couldn’t help it. Watching them suffer was as potent an aphrodisiac as he’d ever experienced.

The vampyre struggled and flailed. Their positions had been reversed, and Cy knew the vampyre hated it. Of course he did. No creature enjoyed being ensnared, trapped against their will.

But after everything they’d done, the evil they’d unleashed on the world, it was what vampyres deserved.

“Just kill me!” the vampyre snarled, and Cy laughed.

“And spare you the fun we’re about to have? I don’t think so.”

It was hours of torture, stabbing the vampyre with silver and wooden stakes, cutting off appendages just to watch them grow back so he could do it all over again. By the time Cy was finished, the vampyre was a drying husk, skin gray and flaking away.

A stake to the heart would do that.

At Cy’s feet sat four pails of freshly pumped vampyre blood, theirs for the drinking. To share among the Veritas, to make them stronger and better suited to fight the vampyres.

Jax approached, helping Cy to hoist the buckets up and transport them out of the underground dungeon. This was their way of life now, living in tunnels constructed of dirt and concrete. A life meant to protect them from the vampyres who ruled on the surface.

It was the only life Cy had ever known: one where vampyres held Dominion.

Cy hadn’t been alive to experience the slow dimming of the sun. It had happened hundreds of years before he was born. It was ironic how humans themselves had contributed to their own demise.

Pollution had blotted out the sun, a product of over-farming and overuse. And eventually, the earth could no longer produce. The sun’s absence had seen all things once green and full of life shrivel up and die. Only trees survived, the hardiest of them still standing and clustered together for miles and miles. But the forests gave life to nothing—no animals rushing through the undergrowth, no plants nor flowers nor weeds bloomed. This time in history was known as the Great Extinction, and afterward, only humans and vampyres remained.

Humans had descended into madness then, starving and terrified. And when all hope was lost, the vampyres made their move.

The story of the vampyres’ Dominion was more folklore than fact at this point, passed down only through spoken word and only ever in secret. The vampyres wanted to control the narrative, Cy knew, to make themselves appear the saviors of the world as it existed now. But in the shadows, the humans whispered the truth.

The vampyres hadn’t saved the world. They’d enslaved it.

The uprising had been slow and deliberate. They’d infiltrated the humans with patience and precision. As the sun’s light had dimmed further and the days had grown shorter, it became easier and easier for the vampyres to disguise themselves among their prey. When humans had finally realized what was happening, it was too late.

They’d taken everything. Human advancements in science, technology, medicine—all gone. Hundreds of years of research and dedication decimated so humans would no longer be able to communicate with one another, would no longer be able to survive unassisted.

Humans then began to fall sick, starving to death. Diseases had run rampant, and populations dwindled. Civilizations once overpopulated had crumbled to the ground. Humans warred over dwindling resources and were driven to cannibalism to survive. They’d fallen to the brink of extinction. The weak had died quickly in those days.

When the vampyres had stepped in, it had almost been a reprieve.

Almost.

What remained now was nothing short of a nightmare. Across the world, humans were enslaved in every horrific manner possible. The Veritas was the only hope for human liberation. How fitting that their name meant truth, when all that existed around them was lies.

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